Books We've Loved This Year

We're fast approaching autumn, and many of us will have read at least one book this year that we absolutely loved and can't stop recommending to people.  For me, there have been two, about which I have already waxed lyrical: The Gargoyle  by Andrew Davidson and Skin Lane  by Neil Bartlett.  Here, three bloggers give you their favourite book of the year so far.


"Blue Boy" by Rakesh Satyal
Recommended by Brian Centrone from New York 
(Site: BrianCentrone.com Twitter: @BrianCentrone)
Anyone who knows me knows that I have a love for all things Indian: The Food, the culture, the men (especially the men), and the literature. So it was not a surprise that when I came across Rakesh Satyal’s Lambda Award winning novel Blue Boy, I fell in love at first read...
Set in Cincinnati, Ohio in the 1990s, Blue Boy tells the story of young Kiran, an Indian American trying to fit in. His world is split between the Indian families his parents socialize with and the very Middle-American kids and teachers at the public school he attends. Poor Kiran doesn’t feel he belongs to either world and the situations he finds himself in in both groups are just as awkward and endearing as they are funny and heartbreaking.  Kiran believes his difference is Divine and sets out on a journey to transform into who he feels he really is, the reincarnation of Krishna himself.
A magical voyage of self-discovery, spiritual understanding and pop culture references, Blue Boy is the book for every boy who had a secret love of dolls, ballet and singing, and for every person who grew up wondering where they belonged. This novel will not disappoint. 

"Free Fall" by Nicolai Lilin

Recommended by Marc Nash from London 
(Site: Marc Nash's Kindle Store Twitter: @21stCScribe)

War memoirs are dominated by those of WW2 and of course Vietnam. This memoir of a more recent and modern war blows those portraits out of the water. The second Russian war in Chechenya was dirty, pitiless and ultimately pointless on both sides. Lilin was a conscripted sniper in a specialist anti-terrorist unit that fought on the front line in ordinary clothes rather than uniform. He paints brutal pictures of the effects of modern weaponry on human flesh, but not in a Hollywood relish of gore fashion, but rather one that makes you realise why soldiers try and avoid engaging in combat with the enemy from any closer than an airborne helicopter gunship. This updating of the deadliness of modern weapons again removes us a million miles from the Vietnam/WW2 battlefield axis.

The cruel treatment and dispatch of captured prisoners on both sides, in order to send a message to the enemy, is graphic and yet almost neutrally detailed. And finally, I have never come across better descriptions of physical states of being during battle. The physiological symptoms of a body overtaken by fear, exhaustion, sensory deprivation, concussion from a grenade, are astounding pieces of writing. There are some ruminations on the purpose(less) of the war, as the book begins with a Kafkaesque account of his conscription and ends with a short but debilitating section on his failure to adapt back into civilian life and an undiagnosed PTSD. Lilin's writing is so good as to bear the weight of its gravity, its philosophising and to convey the mix of muscle and technology throughout: "God was a haven for our souls, the only place not regulated by military code". Simply stunning. 

"Blueeyedboy" by Joanne Harris

Recommended by Jemima Valentino from Shropshire 
(Site: JemimaValentino.com Twitter: @jemimavalentino)

"Blueeyedboy" is the brilliant new novel from Joanne Harris: a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy, and a serial murderer who is not who he seems. Told through posts on a webjournal called badguysrock, this is a thriller that makes creative use of all the multiple personalities, disguise and mind games that are offered by playing out a life on the internet.

The word ‘creepy’, is somehow not enough. Harris has truly opened up her dark side and within these brilliantly crafted pages, unfolds a story of a lonely 42 year old sociopath who lives with his mother and his online friends. Through his web journal, his disturbed mind is truly let loose, his style - intelligent bordering on genius, his motives - dark and intensely dangerous; pulling the weak and vulnerable into his tribe, badguysrock.

Our Blueyedboy dreams of killing mother, stalks a blind child prodigy and harbours an unhealthy fascination for Albertine, a girl that holds more influence over this life than he dares to admit. As he entices Albertine out to play on badguysrock, we realise that there is far more to their relationship that meets the eye.

Just as you think you know this would-be serial killer and can predict his actions as easily as Columbo, Harris throws in a twist, and then another, and another until the entire story fits together like the perfect jigsaw and leaves you breathless.  I have read some intense books this year, and have loved many, but Blueeyedboy jumps to the top of the pile. Now this book is inside my head, I don't think it will ever leave.

Book Review: Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris

Joanne Harris rocketed to fame with her culinary fairy tale Chocolat, which is to date the title that readers associate her with.  What many people seem to be unaware of, sadly, is her work in the seedy thriller genre.  While her latest offering, blueeyedboy, claims on the cover to be "From The Author of Chocolat", it has much more in common with her darker novel Gentlemen & Players.  For one, both books are set in Malbry, Yorkshire - a not entirely happy place.  St Oswald's, the grammar school that acted as chessboard and battlefield in Gentlemen & Players, is obliquely mentioned, although it is by no means necessary to have read that book in order to enjoy this twisted little fable.

B.B. is approaching middle age and still lives with his mother.  His inner life is played out in comfortable anonymity on the Internet, where under the nickname blueeyedboy he blogs about his troubled past.  His posts are part fiction, part confession, almost always revolving around the same themes: his formidable mother, daydreams of murder, and a growing fixation with a girl in a red duffel coat.  A girl that blueeyedboy seems to know...

To say anything else would be to give away a number of the twists and turns in this novel.  It is safe to say that Harris is on form here, taking pleasure in yanking the rug out from under the reader time and time again, and populating her sad story with a host of entirely believable characters, from the mannered Dr Peacock to the ridiculous hippy Feather, and angry, troubled shells like Nigel and Bethan.

The unreliable narrator here brought to my mind American Psycho, and while Harris's style couldn't be more different from Bret Easton Ellis's, blueeyedboy does make a suitably British companion piece to that novel.