The Secret of Father Brown – G.K. Chesterton

Thoroughly amiable, utterly absurd and cheerfully entertaining mysteries. I’ve only one Father Brown book left to go, sadly.

How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman

I’ve never come across this style before, a stream-of-consciousness written in the third person. Combine this eccentric decision with the use of demotic Glaswegian, liberal use of the f word and a unique way with paragraph breaks and you get something…pretty compelling actually. Not quite enough to justify 370 pages of essentially plotless book, but certainly highly memorable.

I'm sure that this gives no real impression oh how the prose reads, so here's an example:

Ach it was hopeless. That was what ye felt. These bastards. What can ye do but. Except start again so he started again. That was what he did he started again. …ye just plough on, ye plough on, ye just fucking plough on … ye just fucking push ahead, ye get fucking on with it.

Wisdom of Solomon

This argues that wisdom is the greatest thing a man (sic) can possess, and that God is the source of it. In parts the poetry is breathtaking.

5:14 For the hope of the ungodly is like dust that is blown away with the wind; like a thin froth that is driven away with the storm; like as the smoke which is dispersed here and there with a tempest, and passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day.

It’s almost convincing, that.

There are also some amusing echoes of the Christian response to the New Atheism movement. This sounds like an apologist blogger moaning about the “strident” Richard Dawkins:

13:1-2 Surely vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the good things that are seen know him that is: neither by considering the works did they acknowledge the workmaster;But deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world.

Prayer of Manasseh

So it’s only a 15 line poem of terrified submission to a wrathful God, but it’s a book of the Bible, so it still counts, OK? It still counts.

Diary of a Provincial Lady – EM Delafield

There are so many great English comedies from the 1930s, and this faux diary of a harried middle class woman dealing with financial worries, the servant problem and generally keeping up appearances is a classic of the type. It would be easy to make the central character unsympathetic, but an underlying sense of quiet desperation and a surprisingly progressive political agenda keep the reader onside.

The Idea of Perfection – Kate Grenville

Quirky is a double-edged adjective, but this book is quirky in a good way. Basically a depiction of small-town Australian community, the plot hangs on the unlikely love story between two middle-aged outsiders visiting the town for apparently contradictory reasons. I particularly like the randy butcher, Freddy Chang.

The Little Friend – Donna Tartt

Looking at the online reviews of Donna Tartt’s second novel after the blockbusting (and ace) The Secret History, many of them complain that it doesn’t have an ending. Actually, the narrative pulls off the same trick as Orson Welles’ masterpiece Touch of Evil, in that the story opens with a murder mystery but by the end the resolution of the mystery has become incidental to the tale’s central concerns. It worked fine for me.

This is primarily an exercise in mood, specifically the tone of Southern Gothic epitomised by Faulkner (with the teenage heroine very reminiscent of To Kill A Mockingbird’s Scout). The faded aristocracy, black servants and white trash are all represented effectively, and the swampy atmosphere will remain with me long after the plot intricacies are forgotten.