A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi

 

Strange concept - a central character/narrator who is a different version of the same person every day of the week. And each version of the narrator has trust issues with the other versions.

Oyeyemi's prose style is unsettling and brilliant - surprising, obscure, eccentric, funny all at the same time.

I'm only up to Wednesday (Kinga-C is narrator) but liking it more and more, after being put off by the Monday narrator's verse for awhile. All will be revealed, I hope.

11/5/2025 - Up to Friday (Kinga-E) now and still confused but trying to complete the journey. Oyeyemi's style is cutting and intelligent, but I don't always follow. Oh well.

Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven

 

Like this very much, complex family love with discovered connections, half siblings, step siblings. Hunever moves back for through time to constantly unsettle us as to what we really know - vs what we thought we knew - about each character.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

 

Good - great even - but I will admit that all of her Jackson Brodie crime novels blend in my mind, and I usually have no idea which one I'm reading, I'm just worshipping her motion.

This one is set in Scotland/Glasgow during the Fringe festival, and involves the spouse of a corrupt real estate developer, a Russian sex worker, a timid crime novelist, and of course, Jackson Brodie who is as muddled and ineffective and heroic as ever.

The Finishing School by Muriel Spark

 

Lovely, compact, dense as usual. A precocious 17 year old historical novelist squares off with his frustrated, envious private school headmaster.

 

Good, odd unsettling - but do I really have enough time left in my life to read the whole thing (again, apparently, this is third time apparently - I mentioned Prince Myshkin in my high school valediction, which is some serious pretension and presumption - think I said he was Christlike. true enough. but aren't we all, in the end?)

Still at it a month later and approaching the 200 page mark (not even halfway through). The plot is almost entirely psychological - it's an unusual novel even for Dostoevsky, his last and his favorite, apparently, but critics are split.

The naive, child-like, but clear-headed Prince Myshkin arrives back in Russia after many years abroad in Switzerland recovering in a spa from TB or epilepsy or something. He moves among an ungainly collection of St. Petersburg upper middle class folk, all jockeying for position and money and love.

11/5/2025 - Still working on this but hard work. 

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

 

Another masterpiece miniature. She's already in my pantheon of short novel geniuses for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, with the likes of Penelope Fitzgerald.

Big Machine by Victor LaValle

 

Early strange one. Spends an awful lot of time getting started, which I remember in his other later novels was part of the thrill and the horror and the revelation of it all. But wondering if this one will pay off.

Didn't even finish it. Got close enough that I could have, easily, but it was boring and frustrating. Good writing but no paydirt, or at least it didn't pay off for me.

Time of the Child by Niall Williams

 

This one I'm finding hard. His prose style is very beautiful indeed, but now feels overwritten in places to me. If every single sentence is so dense it feels like it's from a poem, my cosciousness has a very hard time moving in a linear narrative fashion and getting involved with characters, plot, and setting.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

 

Particularly good Jackson Brodie episode. Criss-crossing murder, kidnapping, and trainwreck plots serve up lots of tension and release. Some of the good guys win, but not all - and Jackson, as usual, fumbles around with his set ways and ends up not doing too much damage. Despite a near-death experience, coma, a fleecing from his new much-younger wife.

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

 

Amazing novel, less about Hollywood than about existential despair, more Dostoevski than the Pat Hobby stories.

Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

 

Re-read this after, say, 45 years. It was de rigeur as a tortured undegratuate - and is even more bleak to read now. The alcoholic advice columnist tormented by his boss, whose wife he's dallying with, and further confused by his own thoughts. It's known as a "black comedy" but I counted exactly zero fun.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

 

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

 

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

Return to Barry after some months. a young Irishman signs up for WWI and ships off to Belgium. An exruciating four years is served, his loyalty to Ireland and to the British crown, his father and his girl friend and his faith, are all tested. Unshockingly, the war takes everything from him. Descriptions of mustard gas attacks are particularly terrifying.

The Words of Dr. L and Other Stories by Karen E. Bender

 

Only read the title story and "The Extra Child." Fascinating sci-fi dystopian concepts baldly done.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

 

Tore through 100+ pages late last night without a pause. Brilliant as usual - and a whodunit!

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

 

Another WWII novel from the master. I liked it but didn't love it. It still went down easy though. Another obscure young woman protaganist caught up by forces that are beyond her, starting up with MI5 in 1940 and then with the BBC in 1950.

Spies, counter-spies, and maybe counter-counter-spies. I got lost but enjoyably!

Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb by Philip K. Dick

 

Reading the Modern Library edition of five of his early novels.

This one is slow going - a thalidomide quad electronic repairman and the architect of a nuclear holocaust, among other characters. Fascinating as always.

Picks up speed halfway through, as we are suddenly jetted into the future - the late 1980s - from the 1972 starting point when a couple is launched into orbit, and a global thermonuclear war suddenly and literally explodes.

In the 80s, we pick up with survivors, who live their cultural life via nightly transmissions from the orbiting vessel, where the man (who was quickly widowed after the launch, reads aloud from his digital library. Animals have mutated and grow in intelligence, there is a barter economy, and local law and order (and violence).

Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

 

Surprised to have never read this. A racial parable as whodunit. Amazing.

History of the Rain by Niall Williams

 

More prose gorgeousness. Reminds me of THE TIN DRUM in its playful, pointed family-history-as-myth-and-larger-history style.

Two-thirds of the way through, it's still a fantastic book - but Williams prose style is laborious with narrative - the language is so rich, the back-story and motifs are so intricate and historical - so it's a bit of an ordeal too.

Definitely echoes (and references) A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, too.

Finally finished and was sad to do so, even with it taking me two long weeks (at least) to finish it. Williams' sure hand and funny, sad mind are a marvel. The story of a family told via the invalid daughter who uses the father's extensive literary library to move along the tale.