Blame My Shelf

Lullaby, also known as The Perfect Nanny, is another novel that has been particularly lauded this year. The short narrative centres around aspirational lawyer Myriam on her return to work, where she and her husband Paul thrust their two small children Mila and Adam into the care of Louise. Louise, as titles may suggest, seems to be the perfect nanny. She is motherly and cares for them as if they were her own, and to Myriam and Paul’s surprise and embarrassment, and later, reliance, cooks their meals and cleans their tiny “stifling” Paris apartment before Louise creeps back to her own, cold and decrepit apartment to savour limited hours of sleep before she starts the cycle again. Inevitably, Louise and the families’ lives become entwined, working hours become blurred and job description thrown aside to help them out in any way she can. The crux, as we find in the first sentences of the book, is that Louise has killed the two children in her care. The writing style is simple – ...

Celeste Ng – Little Fires Everywhere Be wary of a narrative that switches perspectives between numerous characters, for sometimes, it is darting wildly trying to conjure an interesting story because the writer is unable to do so with limited characters. Frustratingly, Little Fires Everywhere is not one of those. Whilst the narrative focuses on several characters and darts between their perspectives, the characterisation is unrivalled in anything else I have read this year. Central to the story is Shaker Heights, a middle to upper class development and community of perfectly designed houses and roads that were designed so children didn’t have to cross them on their way to their over-performing schools – “the underlying philosophy being that everything could – and should – be planned out.” Our focus is on the Richardsons, a family who seemingly embodies the Shaker spirit and values. Trip, the athletic older son, Lexie, the lithe and attractive girl to be feared, arty outsid...

The Opposite of Loneliness We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life The Opposite of Loneliness brings together Marina Keegan’s short stories and essays, both previously published and unpublished, to great effect. Personally, I have rarely found the draw of short stories alluring. I see Edgar Allen Poe as overtly sombre and more akin to something I would have read at school, and Ali Smith unsatisfactory – without the chapters of back story I can find her work clipped, and care little for the characters. However – Marina Keegan shows masterful skill over the short story and for the first time had me rapt. After each story I felt as though I needed a break, to digest and wrap myself in the characters for a moment. They did not appear to be the beginnings of a novel, each one, in a chapter sized length, is a whole and complete journey –rarely resolved by our writer, however never concluded predictably. I love...

My Beach Holiday Recommendations 2018 Having had a recent relaxing holiday – an entire week to sit by the pool and read (5 books this year – I don’t know if I was the most sociable companion) it got me thinking about what makes a fantastic book to take in your hand luggage. For myself, I prefer to take “easy read” books, but equally there must be enough interest sustained without predictability. This is what I would see as a happy medium; How to be Famous by Caitlin Moran . Hilariously funny, Moran writes at a voracious pace, with every phrase loaded with humour and clever observations. We follow our protagonist Dolly, a music journalist through the typical debauched London landscape Moran would have frequented. Unlike previous releases, this one is written to appeal to an adult audience, however it has the trademarks of her style – the poor, council house upbringing with several siblings, journalist elements and social commentary – particularly regarding feminism. The End We Sta...

The Party by Elizabeth Day The Party surrounds scholarship and bullied pupil Martin, who befriends the magnetising aristocratic Adonis Ben. Their lives intertwine, from school to University and there is something Martin witnesses there that changes both of their lives, and forces them closer. Years later we are then witness to their reunion intermittently between vignettes from Martin’s perspective of the past. Ben’s party becomes the catalyst for decade long resentments and palpable tension, between Ben and Martin, but also Lucy, Martin’s wife, towards both Martin and Ben. When champagne flutes are given, looks are passed, betrayals are made, and thinly guised grievances rear their heads. Horrors that lay in Martin’s childhood are juxtaposed with Ben’s summer’s spent swimming in the lake on his estate. I flipped through the pages ferociously, where Martin’s obsession with Ben results in him presenting himself as a substitute to the family for their dead son, and the claustrophobic...

A story told in reverse, you meet Emily and Robbie, the dreamy, fateful couple that any good romance novelist would dream of. We quickly realise that, whilst they are fated to be together, there is a secret of some form which both drives them apart and binds them throughout the novel. At the inception, in the present day, they live in their idyllic coastal home, content and happy with their respective seafaring and obstetrician careers and two sons. We work backwards, and see a story of infertility and infidelity, alongside battles fought with alcoholism in Maine, Florida and Cambridge.   Importantly, as a reader, you do not have to wait for the final reveal that occurs in the last few pages, as everything is not as it seems. Cohen has displayed dexterity in this technique, where it seems as though the facts have been presented, but quickly, Cohen leads you to scratch the surface beyond this. Quickly, the characters endear themselves to you, and I tore through this book due...

I read a book recently that was discussing alcohol, and essentially discussing what excessive looks like. According to this novelist, if you drink beyond three glasses of wine or thereabouts a sitting, or lose a level of control over yourself, or do not have a full recollection the next day, more than occasionally – you should book a GP appointment. Whilst this is probably true according to NHS and health body guidelines, I do believe that this is not representative of many people’s University experience or the duration of a stereotypical British person’s twenties (or thirties…or forties). If your experience and opinion towards alcohol looks similar to those guidelines, I do not think you will enjoy, or perhaps understand, this book. Our eyes of the novel are Laura, on the very edge of her twenties and entering her thirties throughout the novel. An aspiring writer who has worked a string of different unfulfilling jobs, she is the antithesis of her classical musician fiancé, Jim...

Incredibly charming. It really was. However…it was charming in the same way that I find Disney’s new releases of actor led classics. If you were to watch the films, they are undeniably delightful, but ultimately you are aware of how Cinderella ends before it even begins. The tale follows Anthony Peardew, a now ageing man who in his youth lost his fiancée tragically the same day he lost her keepsake, and from there on he harbours all lost items he finds with the intention to reunite the objects with their owners. On Anthony’s death this task is passed on to his housekeeper Laura, a woman whose age is potentially alluded to too often,   who takes on the task with the aid of Freddy the gardener and Sunshine, a teenage local girl with down syndrome. With a sprinkling of ghostly happenings and Sunshine’s ghostly intuition, the novel of course reaches a happy ever after. The narrative is interwoven with stories explaining the history of the lost objects. First of all, the ...

This is another book that was not as simple as my predictions. The blurb discusses a woman who leads a simple, monotonous and empty 9-5 and compensates with a vodka fuelled weekend. From this, I assumed that this would be an ‘Animals’ esque, heavy drinking novel, with Lena Dunham style characterisation. I assumed that the protagonist would overcome her demons by finding something more meaningful in life (and in predictable fashion; a boyfriend to sew it all up nicely). A fraction of this assumption was correct, although it is more comparable to The Rosie Project than the sordid encounters of the beautiful people in Skins. However – charming Skins is not, and Eleanor Oliphant certainly does possess charm. In opposition of being drug and party fuelled, Eleanor’s life is charged only by loneliness, and Honeyman creates the interesting angle of what it is like to be young and lonely, something seldom explored. Essentially, Eleanor witnesses the fall of an elderly man, and her ass...

Deliciously scary, the novel revolves around 15 year old Annie, the daughter of a serial killer of children, as she is settling into her new life living with psychologist Mike, his wife Saskia and daughter Phoebe, with the pseudonym Milly. A competent misfit, Milly is bullied at school and the tyranny doesn’t stop when she gets home, with jealous and temperamental Phoebe exerting power over what is to her, a never ending line of foster siblings. Land is cleverly suggestive, and does well not to be too graphic as she drip feeds us information regarding her mother’s crimes, which increases the tension and horror. Similarly, the unreliable narrator technique is expertly deployed as she carefully and expertly explores the relationship between mother and child, and what happens when that relationship is black, perverse, dark and withered. It explores the genetic element in addition to psychological – was Milly born bad, made bad, or bad at all? There is suggestive foreshadowing throug...

A completely varied assortment of books that I have read recently; between a gothic horror, an account of organic dairy farming and a book about forensics and what we can tell from the types of flies found on the deceased, at least it cannot be said that my taste is limited. The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell This antiquated yet chilling novel follows pregnant and widowed Elsie as she travels back to her spouse’s family estate in the 1860s to live with the housekeeper and untrained servants, who hold Elsie and her companion, Sarah, with thinly veiled contempt. Throughout, the novel switches between the present in a mental hospital with Elsie, the violent prisoner who slowly begins telling the story to her new doctor, and between Elsie living at The Bridge, and further, to her husband’s late relatives in the 1630s. It transpires that Rupert’s predecessors, in an attempt to entertain an upcoming Royal visit to The Bridge, purchased optical illusion wooden boards, which b...

Perhaps I have not been around long enough to know that this genre of book has always been written, or perhaps I am right and the memoirs with scatterings of collected pieces of writing, whether that be recipes or poetry or lists, have become increasingly popular recently. However I feel that Everything I Know About Love, is a really good example of one, the best I have read. It does not have the political awareness and social comment that Lena Dunham and Caitlin Moran’s counterparts do, and it is not as self-absorbed or career orientated as “celebrity” books of this genre can be. Thereby making it an easy read, easily engorged in a day or two. Dolly Alderton, a journalist and previous Made in Chelsea producer chronicles the disaster that is most people’s twenties. There is plenty here to relate to, especially if you are of a certain age, such as heart-break, soul crushing and cringe inducing first dates, MSN messenger, and general drunken debauchery. It is true to the time-...

Frustratingly, sometimes you will finish a book and be left with a myriad of questions to mull over. Even more frustratingly, is His Bloody Project , which has left me with more questions than I dare to count, and a will to read it all over again, doubting my read of the entire novel and searching online for Macrae’s address in order to demand a few answers. The concept is simple yet interesting. In 1869 seventeen year old Roderick ‘Roddy’ Macrae committed a triple homicide in the Highlands where he and has family had worked agriculturally. It is not to ruin the reading of the novel by revealing this, as it is made known from the start. The story is told through several mediums, commencing with testimony of witnesses, the memoirs from Roddy, then through the perspective of a psychologist at the time through to documentation of the trial and newspaper accounts. Throughout the novel you discover the hardships of croft life (“there are no other ships for us”) the starvatio...