What We're Reading

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Neil

The Mistress Contract, by She and He (Serpent's Tail, December 2013)

What an extraordinary, and strange, little memoir this is! In 1981, 'She', an intelligent, educated woman, actively involved in the feminist movement of the time, asked her wealthy lover, 'He', to sign a contract with her, by which he would provide her with a home and income, and she would provide sexual acts as requested, with no emotional issues. 30 years later, the contract is still in place.

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Neil

More Than This, by Patrick Ness (Walker, September 2013)

It's very difficult to say anything about this brilliantly exciting novel without giving away some of its many twists and revelations. In the opening chapter, Seth drowns .Then he wakes up, naked, thirsty and hungry. And alone, in the suburban English town where he grew up. The town is clearly abandoned. How did this happen? Seth needs to find out, all the while tortured by excruciating memories and strange, inexplicable events. To say more would be to give away much of the pleasure of reading this book. Suffice to say, it is incredibly exciting, thought-provoking, surprising and epic.

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Neil

A Long Walk Home, by Judith Tebbutt (Faber, July 2013)

Back in the 1990s, there was a flurry of books written by people who had been taken hostage in Lebanon. Some Other Rainbow, by John McCarthy and Jill Morrell, An Evil Cradling, by Brian Keenan, and Taken On Trust, by Terry Waite. I think there were one or two more, but those were the ones I read, and loved. I hadn't thought about those books for a while, until Judith Tebbutt's similar book came up.

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Neil

Familiar, by J. Robert Lennon (Serpent's Tail, September 2013)

J. Robert Lennon was seen as a rising star of American writing in the late 1990s with his debut novel The Light of Falling Stars in 1997, and On The Night Plain in 2001, but he seemed to disappear after that, at least from my view, and this new novel looked really intriguing. It's a strange, almost science fiction scenario - a woman is driving home from visiting her deceased son's grave when something changes, and she finds herself the same person but different.

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Neil

Maddaddam, by Margaret Atwood (Bloomsbury, August 2013)

Maddaddam is the third of Margaret Atwood's trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake in 2003, and continued with The Year of the Flood in 2009. The first two books ran in parallel time streams, and ended at the same place and time, Maddaddam begins at that point, and takes the story forward, but also fills in detail about much more that went on in the past.

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Neil

Subtle Bodies, by Norman Rush (Granta, November 2013)

I hadn't come across Norman Rush before, but he's written 3 previous novels, one of which, Mating, won the National Book Award in 1992. He was born in 1933, but has published only 3 novels and a short story collection since he started writing in the 1970s.