If I see words written anywhere I have a strange compunction to read them, this means I have read everything from the Mr Men and Enid Blyton to Tolkien and Asimov, that includes a few “wummins books” by awful authoressess like Virginia Andrews!(I say awful, but I still read and enjoyed).
Anyway, here goes, in no particular order.
1/ Neanderthal by John Darnton.
This is by no means a brilliantly written book, it apparently took him several years to write, in between other assignments(he was/is?, a journalist for the New York Times).
The story is about a couple of palaeontologists who are duped into going on an expedition to find their missing mentor.
He had been on the trail of, for want of a better word, a Yeti.
High up on the Pamir Mountain range in Tajikistan they stumble across a cave which is the opening to a warren of tunnels reaching deep into the mountain, a warren that leads straight into a clan of Neanderthals.
These are brutal killing machines who are evil and cunning, they are all the more dangerous because instead of developing speech, they have developed a kind of ESP(that explains the bulging ridge on their foreheads), they could enter someone’s mind and see through their eyes, so to speak. This explanation tells us why they have been so elusive and able to remain undetected. They could see anyone coming and what they had in mind and so avoid them and their traps and baits.
After escaping the Neanderthals, with a little help from a landslide, they are found by another tribe of Neanderthals, this tribe is the antithesis of the brutal one, not only are they vegetarian, they are so docile that they know no violence.
It is within this tribe that they find the missing palaeontologist.
The narrative is shared between the two main characters and of course there is a love interest between the two. I don’t want to say too much about the plot or outcome, I will let you find that out for yourselves, suffice to say it’s a good read for the holidays and it will leave you wondering.
2/ Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian.
This is the debut novel by this author and it is a book primarily for children.
Set during the war it tells the story of a young evacuee, sent to the countryside and put into the care of a grumpy old so and so(Mr Tom). Of course, an adult reading this will guess from half way through the first chapter that Mr Tom will come through for the lad and be great in the end, but remember, this is aimed at children, so pretend your twelve again!
I never thought a book for children could stir up so much emotion in an old f*rt like me, but it did, more than once .I was so immersed in the story that I actually had to dry my eyes, the emotion is literally sucked out of you and unless your Idi Amin or Hitler, it would be advisable to read this alone or with a discreet hankie at hand.
Failing that, read it in the park on a cold windy day, that way you will have an excuse for wiping away the dampness from your cheeks.
Like I said, there’s Mr Tom the good guy, the mother who’s mental and the bad guy, his friends in the village(the first he’s ever had) and loads of other characters who help fill up the plot into a well rounded story.
Here’s a wee anecdote I have about this book; In the school I work in, one of the teachers gave everyone in her class this book to read. They read a chapter a day and did projects on the war and evacuees. More than once a child was sent to my office asking for tissues. “Have you all got colds?” I asked, “No, we’re all crying” the little girl said, “Why” says I, “Because Mr Tom’s crying too” she said.
The teacher explained later that it was almost like hysteria, one or two of the girls started sobbing whilst reading a certain part, soon nearly everyone in the class was too, she had to let them read another two chapters that day, just to put their minds at rest that everything would work out ok.
Goodnight Mr Tom won the Guardian children’s fiction award.
3/ The Borrowers by Mary Norton.
Brilliantly original. The Borrowers series of books should be a must for parents to read to their children, you can explain away the reasons why pins, pencils, thimbles, and any number of small objects disappear from under your nose.
Mary Norton gave us tiny, endearing characters with very real personalities and made them giants in the realm of children’s fiction.
The Borrowers are a bit like real fairies without the wings, tiny images of ourselves with all the same foibles and neuroses. The stories are exciting, funny and morish, I honestly couldn’t get enough of them. When I finished reading one story I had to rush out and find the next one.
I think nearly everyone has seen the brilliant television adaptation on the BBC, although the Movie version was a bit of a let down.
Even if you think these books sound and look a bit dated, give them a try, I am convinced you will be hooked from the first page.
4/ Dirty White Boys by Steven Hunter.
I have already written an opinion on this book but it was crap, (the opinion, not the book).
If you like your reading to be fast paced, full of interesting characters(likeable or not) and for the ending to surprise you, then this is the novel for you.
It follows, for the most part, the routine formula of a good cops and robbers book, you know, good guys, bad guys, good guys chasing bad guys, bad guys escaping against the odds, one good guy getting lucky, bad guys eventually getting caught, that sort of thing. The difference between this particular book and others of the crime ilk, is that the bad guys are truly evil and as such they gain a certain anti-hero following where you want them to evade capture for just a few chapters more. The good guy in this book is not as squeaky clean and wholesome as he should be, he has flaws, he’s getting on a bit, he has a dysfunctional family, he cheats on his loving wife, he has all the luck in the world and he doesn’t know it.
Of course he isn’t all that bad, he has human faults, he is no white knight but he is human, he has the reader on his side from the start because he knows his faults and hates them. He tries so hard to do the right thing but fate robs him of the chance to appease his conscience but at the same time, it gives him the resolve to hunt down the “Dirty White Boys” no matter the cost.
Honestly, if you like a good crime thriller then this is the one to read.
5/ Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
Everyone seems to be raving about the rather mediocre Harry potter series.
The JK Rowling publicity, merchandising, film righty people have pushed poor Philip Pullman into the background. This is a crying shame as his trilogy, about a young girls adventures in strange parallel worlds, far outshines anything Rowling has come up with.
In Northern Lights we are introduced to Lyra, the young heroine of this story, and her Daemon Pantelaemon. They travel from the cosy, familiar home they share in a university as the wards of some crusty old scholars, to the wastelands of the north in search of their friend who has been taken by some unsavoury group known as the Gobblers. The story is dark, sensual and riveting, a lot of imagination is used to weave a spellbinding read for all ages, although the book is primarily aimed at the older child, (that’s me;-)