#scriniumplenum

A very personal memoir. But beautifully written and a superb account of how an artist thinks.

A collection of Carver’s essays, poetry and short stories. He is one of my favourite writers. He has a sort of exquisite sensibility, that allows him to penetrate to the very heart of feelings and sensations. The final two short stories, ‘Where is everyone?’ and ‘So much water so close to home’, are among his very best. The former is about alcohol and alcoholics, who figure in many of his…

Great style and a brilliant recreation of a place and a time. Also psychologically intriguing, as much for the afterword from the author, which seems to have been written to coincide with the release of a film of the novel, as for the novel itself. It seems the whole thing is a kind of homage to his mother, who was raped and murdered when he was a child. A real authenticity for what is anyway an excellent crime story.

Christmas Holiday by W Somerset Maugham

A bit of a period piece, this. Written in the 1930s, it is an allegory for Britain’s complacency as the continent of Europe began to tear itself apart.

The main character is Charley, we wealthy young Englishman who decides to go to Paris for Christmas, satisfying a yearning for something a bit more daring and exotic than the comfortable, traditional Christmas at home he would otherwise enjoy. He…

The Girl at the Lion d’Or by Sebastian Faulks

I enjoyed this book but found myself wondering at the end what the point of it was. It tells the story of a girl and the people she meets and interacts with in a small town in France between the twentieth century world wars. Love and sex and sadness and desperation and pity are all involved. In some ways, it reads more like a screenplay than a novel – perhaps that is what it started out as,…

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

I chose this book on a bit of whim, partly because I like Japanese writers. But it is a bit trite and sentimental and a bit too predictable. It may well read better in the original Japanese.