ANY HUMAN HEART by William Boyd Penguin, £8.99 A great read. It covers one man’s ups and downs from the early 1900s through to the millennium and has him meeting great names of our time. The author gave a talk at my son’s school and was very entertaining.
ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE by Anthony Doerr Fourth Estate, £8.99 This is a wartime story about a German boy who turns out to be a genius with radio and a blind French girl. Their lives run in parallel as children and eventually coincide. I liked the approach, how the boy was swept up in the Hitler Youth but was never comfortable with it and how the girl viewed things differently.
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by Arundhati Roy Harper, £8.99 This is about class in India and what happens when somebody falls for somebody of the wrong caste. I was taken up with the lyrical writing. A strong and wonderful story.
THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS by Tan Twan Eng Canongate, £8.99 An odd story set in Malaya about a Chinese lawyer and a Japanese gardener. It’s about how enemies can find common ground. It’s quite dark but beautifully written. It’s a time I know as I was in Singapore in the 1950s.
SAMUEL PEPYS by Claire Tomalin Penguin, £10.99 Tomalin’s husband gave her Pepys’ diaries when she was ill and she got so wrapped up in them that she wanted to do a biography. You’re there in the period with the smells and sounds, such as when Pepys leaves his lobsters in a cab. Plus you get all the machinations of politics. It makes history live.
BIRDSONG by Sebastian Faulks Vintage, £8.99 The most erotic first half of a book I’ve ever read and deeply moving on the First World War. It’s about the intense sadness of war and its aftermath. Magnificent. A classic that everyone should have read.
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