As 2024 ends I take a look through the books that not only fed the well, but also made my commuting train journeys a thing of joy. I’ll share a thought or two on each book and offer a star rating out of five. Only six books of the twenty novels received a five-star rating. Happy new year's reading to all.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.
2023 Booker Prize nominated and for good reason. The Barnes family live in a small Irish town and they’re struggling in the aftermath of a financial crisis. A sweeping family saga that held me in thrall throughout as it spiralled headlong to a stunning climax. The ending has polarised opinion among readers. Spoiler alert: The eponymous ‘bee sting’ is itself a stunning twist. *****
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.
2023 Booker Prize Winner. Set in Dublin in a near future where the government exercises tyrannical powers during a time of ‘national emergency’. Eilish Stack’s family life is torn apart one dark, wet evening when the GNSB (Garda National Services Bureau) come knocking at the door. We follow a desperate mother’s attempts to try and save her family. This story may not have been plausible had we not all lived through the over-reach of power shown by some governments during the Covid-19 epidemic. The writing is exquisite in its lyricism. The nightmare scenario powerfully and believably told. Sits alongside Orwell’s 1984. The most deserving of Booker Prize winners. *****
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. Story of a woman, name never revealed, who walks away from city life and her marriage with Alex to seek respite in a convent. Not religious herself, we sense she has found solace in this remote community on the Monaro Plains of southern New South Wales. It’s a contemplative story, introspective, meditational, with a quiet interiority. Diary entries punctuate the telling: ‘I was grateful to lead this life here, now.’ ****
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld.
Three women’s stories intertwined across different time zones; ever-present in each is the prevalence of male violence and the looming Bass Rock – an island in the Firth of Forth off the Scottish coast. It’s a gothic tale laced with spirits, ghosts, and witchery. Wyld’s writing fearless and angry as she catalogues the psychological and physical abuse inflicted on these women. One is left with a disquieting feeling the sins of the past, perpetrated by men, are destined to be repeated. ****
The Coast Road by Alan Murrin.
It’s 1994, and Colette Crowley, writer and bohemian, has returned to the small village she left to have an affair with a married man in Dublin. It’s a closed community, shackled by religion, where everybody knows each other’s business and are prejudiced against Helen’s free spirit. The story is told with a tenderness that endears the hapless Helen to the reader. One senses though, that small town bigotries can only lead to tragedy. The Coast Road is an addictive page-turner. ****
Baumgartner by Paul Auster.
When the author Paul Auster died in April of 2024, I realised I’d never read any of his work – Baumgartner was his last book. Baumgartner is 71 years of age and is feeling discombobulated. He’s forgetting things and generally lives in a state of confusion. A widower of ten years, he misses the love of his life, Anna, his wife, who went for swim and was tragically killed by a freak wave. Hers, then, a most untimely death. Baumgartner at one stage tells his therapist: “Life is dangerous, Marian, and anything can happen to us at any time.” A cautionary piece of advice from the author who died five months after the book was published. A tender, compassionate story quietly aching with loss. ***
Border Districts by Gerald Murnane.
This Australian author has an almost cult status and, in the past, has been tipped to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In this story the narrator, an old man, moves from the capital city to a remote country town in the border country (much like Murnane himself). Deftly crafted writing with little or no adherence to plot. The ‘story’ told in long sentences of descriptive passage discussing the phenomenon of observation. There are, throughout, many observations of light seen through coloured glass. To quote: “In all my adult life, I had merely glanced or looked sideways at such things, partly from my belief, mentioned earlier, that a glance or a sideways look often reveals more than a direct gaze and partly from my reluctance to make any sort of show of my interests or motives.” A beautiful, if baffling, read. ***
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy.
Fanny Stone is on a mission: to follow the last of the Arctic terns on what might be their final migration. Set some time in the near future where many of the world’s creatures have become extinct or are on the verge of disappearing, this epic tale is an adventure with a love story at its core. We get the sense throughout that Fanny has some dark secrets that threaten to catch up with her. Heartbreaking page-turner. ****
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.
Hadn’t read this Hardy classic since high school days. Went to hear the author of Prophet Song, Paul Lynch, speaking at a Writer’s Festival and he referenced the influence this novel had on him. I recall it being about a young man who while drunk had behaved most deplorably in selling his wife. About how fate will catch up with you at some time down the track even though you might think you’ve out-run it. Pretty well sums up the story of Hardy’s ill-fated mayor, Michael Henchard. Still holds its own 138 years after publication. ****
Limberlost by Robbie Arnott.
Tasmania’s wilderness is the setting for the story of Ned, whose two older brothers have gone off to war. He, his father and older sister work on the family orchard, Limberlost. Ned hunts rabbits, to sell the pelts so he can save enough to buy a small boat. Beautifully written, it’s a story of grief and familial love. I’ve just picked up Robbie Arnott’s latest novel, Dusk, the story of a puma named Dusk that is killing shepherds in the Tasmanian highlands. ****
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff.
America in the 1600s. A young girl on the run through a dense forest where danger lurks around every corner. We find out later why she had to flee the settlement – needless to say she had her reasons, and they involved a violent man. The Vaster Wilds she encounters are populated by bears and other hungry creatures, as well as hostile men. It’s a racy read, a thrilling adventure where we’re running with the unnamed girl, urging her on. ****
The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy.
Cormac McCarthy released his last two books in 2022, Passenger, followed three months later by Stella Maris. A long-time McCarthy fan, I finally got around to reading both books this year. Passenger tells the story of Bobby Western, deep sea diver on a salvage ship, and his sister Alicia, a maths whiz and schizophrenic. The story opens with Bobby and a fellow diver exploring the wreckage of a submerged private jet – with dead bodies on board. After a massive digression into quantum physics, Oppenheimer, and the bomb, we follow Bobby’s exploits after Alicia has taken her life. Not vintage Cormac McCarthy, I’m afraid. ***
Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy.
Released three months after Passenger, Stella Maris is actually set in an earlier time. It mostly revolves around the discourse between Alicia (the schizophrenic maths whiz from Passenger) and her doctor. I’ve read far better Cormac McCarthy novels, but I still had to read these two out of respect for the author’s body of work. Still managed to find nuggets in there: “The spiritual nature of reality has been the principal preoccupation of mankind since forever and it’s not going away anytime soon. The notion that everything is just stuff doesn’t seem to do it for us.” For McCarthy fans only. ***
The Lock-Up by John Banville.
The body of a young woman is found in a car in lock-up garage in the city. It’s assumed her death was by suicide. Pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford team up and between them they soon suspect foul play. Story of the investigation is linked to events at the closing days of the Second World War. Pacey crime writing in the hands of Banville, a master storyteller. It included a witty retelling of how the actor Robert Mitchum, in real life, is said to have proposed to his wife; “Stick with me, baby, and you’ll be farting through silk for the rest of your life.” ****
My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent.
Raw. Confrontational. Brilliant. Turtle Alveston is fourteen and lives alone with her survivalist father, whom she fondly calls daddy. The author, Gabriel Tallent, has written a harrowing and confronting examination of an abusive relationship, the material so challenging at times that you almost flinch. This story is raw, just like the eggs Turtle cracks straight into her mouth for breakfast each morning, throwing her daddy a beer as she does so. I wondered how female readers might respond to this novel and jumped online to check reviews. From what I could see the response from female reviewers was unequivocally affirmative. There was recognition that My Absolute Darling whilst a harrowing read is nonetheless a brilliant book. *****
An Ungrateful Instrument by Michael Meehan.
In the court of Louis XIV, Antoine Forqueray, a brilliant viola de gamba player tries to mould his son into a similarly brilliant instrumentalist. The son, Antoine Forqueray, while a child prodigy, struggles to be more than just an instrument of his father’s vaulting ambition. Explores themes of generational conflict and the very act of creativity. Complex historical read rich in period detail including a superb section on how to construct a viola de gamba. ***
Edenglassie by Mellissa Lucashenko.
Lucashenko won the Miles Franklin Award in 2019 for her novel, Too Much Lip. Edenglassie tells two extraordinary indigenous stories set five generations apart. It’s an epic novel that begins with elderly Yagara woman, Granny Eddie Blanket, taking a fall that lands her in hospital. Then the story jumps to 1855 and the colonial area called Edenglassie – a mash-up of Edinburgh and Glasgow – which in modern times has become Brisbane. Yagambeh man Mulanyin falls deeply in love with the beautiful Nina. But the path of love isn’t a smooth one for Mulanyin and Nita caught amid the violence and disruption of the rapidly expanding colony. Lucashenko has written a powerful protest novel, the bloody history is captured, but so too is the intense spirituality, love, and pride of the indigenous people. A stunning fact is shared: “There was more dead on the Queensland frontier than Aussies killed in World War One.” Should be obligatory reading on the high school syllabus across Australia. *****
Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan.
May 2021, London. Campbell Flynn, art historian and celebrity pundit, is floundering in middle age. Early in the story he mistakenly trusts one of his students, the provocative Milo Magnasha, to teach him the workings of the black web. There is a strong sense of foreboding this will not go well. This complex novel explores the world of privilege within London society, the buying of politicians by outrageously wealthy foreigners – Russians, Chinese – to wield influence that will further top up their swollen coffers. We delve also into the seedy underworld of people traffickers using trucks to ferry the unwitting from Europe across the Channel to England. A wonderfully observed cross examination of a society in meltdown, the greed feels thick on the page and O’Hagan chronicles the times in acid detail. ****
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.
An overwhelming read! Birdsong, as the blurb says, is a story of love, death, sex and survival. The central protagonist is Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who arrives in France in 1910 and falls in love. This is in stark contrast with his return to France some years later, in 1914, to fight in the bloody trenches of the First World War. Can’t believe I haven’t read this book until now. It was written in 1993 and has sold over three million copies. It is taught at school and university on both English and History syllabuses. Deeply moving. A recommended read. *****
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan.
Richard Flanagan’s latest book is a hard one to categorise. Memoir? History? Fiction? I will say, though, that it is undoubtedly brilliant. Moving as it does from family history including his father’s stint working as a slave labourer in a Japanese mine, to H.G. Well’s love affair with writer Rebeca West, to the development of the atom bomb, to the dropping of said bomb on Hiroshima and all its ghastly consequences. Peter Carey is effusive: ‘Question 7 may just be the most significant work of Australian art in the last 100 years.’ *****
