Now that I’ve finally discovered Maggie O’Farrell, I’ve been scouring the bookshops for more of her stuff, and ‘The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox’ was my latest purchase.

It didn’t disappoint.

Whilst the story (the piecing together of why Iris Lockhart’s previously unknown great aunt has been locked away in a psychiatric unit for 60 years) got me curious, Maggie O’Farrell’s style has me hooked –
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I won’t be surprised if you miss the link between book reviews and finding your identity; it’s not that obvious. I’ll admit that I’m being a tad indulgent here – but then books and literature are a big bit of me.

And they’ve helped me work out who I am.

A good book is a gateway to another way of being, it’s a way of exploring and travelling and seeing. It gets you in to different ways of thinking.

A good character can tell you heaps about yourself, can test your emotions and responses, challenge your perceptions and assumptions. It helps work out who you are.

A good author can say the things that you can’t put in to words, can articulate the things you’ve thought and felt. It helps to see that you’re not unique.

A good read makes it all better.

There’s nothing more satisfying when you’re reading then the sudden clarity of a ‘that’s exactly what I think’ or ‘that’s exactly how I feel’ moment.

Seeing yourself in someone – or something – else is like a big breath of relief: suddenly, it all makes sense or answers the question that you hadn’t quite realised you were asking.

Some books do it through the characters and the events; others, Aesop-fable-like, through the story; and, some, just give it to you on a plate.

‘This book will save your life’ fits into the latter.
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A regressive future is far more ominous than a progressive one. There is something distinctly unnatural about evolution undoing itself; something horribly unsettling in the inference that we’re going in a direction that needs to be undone –

The Pesthouse heightens the discomfort.

Even though it’s wonderfully written.

And even though it’s full of love.
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It has been years since I last read a book in a day.

I thought that the voracious page after page consumption of a novel was a pleasure that you reluctantly said goodbye to when life got serious and camomile tea became the nightcap of choice.

‘Talking to the Dead’ proved me wrong. I had forgotten what an outstanding author Helen Dunmore is. The elastic band taut tension and the palpable desire shoots right off the page and into the reader; it pulses through the language and the actions and the characters, so that you can’t resist the suspense and you can’t stop turning the pages and you tumble, word over word over word –
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I said goodbye to The White Tiger last night. He’s been talking to me when I’ve been drifting to sleep over the past few weeks.

I had become the audience that Balram’s (aka The White Tiger) addressing. It’s the sign of a clever narrative. In the absence of the intended listener, His Excellency Wen Jiabao, I’ve been taken into his confidence and held in the relished suspense. I’ve become accustomed to his voice – because it jumps
straight out of the page.

Aravind Adiga’s novel is possibly not the best night time reading because it revs you right up again. It takes you into the hustle and bustle of Bangalore – and the words are audible: you can hear Balram in your head.
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The Book Thief. Satisfying on so many levels. I tend to read things quickly but I luxuriated in every delicately picked and carefully placed word. The text sings. It’s a delight to read.

Even though the subject is horrific and the narrator is death.

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