"The Granta book of the Irish short story" by Anne Enright (ed) (Granta, 2010)

In her introduction she writes -

• 'There is in the short story at its most characteristic something we don't often find in the novel, an intense awareness of human loneliness' (Frank O'Connor)
• The novel requires 'the concept of a normal society, and though this, O'Connor seems to say, is available to the English, there is in Irish society a kind of hopelessness that pushes the artist away'
• John Kenny says that the short story has flourished 'in those cultures where older, usually oral forms, are met head on with the challenge of new literary forms equipped with the ideology of modernisation'
• the number of stories about priests and the sadness of priests that have not made it into this volume are legion

The writers were all born since 1899.

• The Road to the Shore (Michael McLaverty) - The sisters are having their yearly trip to the sea. In the chaffeured car they talk, sometimes with emotion, about trees from their childhood. They help a cyclist who's had an accident. The Reverend Mother insists they give the reluctant cyclist a lift to the hospital. They have to postpone their annual day out. The Reverend Mother wants to offer the teetotal cyclist a gardening job.
• The Pram (Roddy Doyle) - 2005. Dublin. Alina (Polish, recently arrived - an au pair) loves the baby she looks after. She liked his sisters less. They tell their mother that Alina has a boyfriend (actually a Lithuanian biochemist who she meets when with the pram). The mother is excitedly nosey. Alina, in revenge, tried to scare the girls with a story about a wicked woman with a pram who stole girls. The girls say the old pram is haunted. Alina begins to believe it. When she scares the girls too much the mother sacks her. She walks with the pram and baby into the sea.
• An Attack of Hunger (Maeve Brennan) - John has left home to become a priest. He was his mother's confidante. She has a boring, restricted marriage to Hubert. When there's an accident while lighting the fire, they blame each other. Then she blames him for John's departure. He says that she turned John against him and he left because he found her too smothering. She leaves the house then realising she has nowhere to go, returns, consoling herself that she might eventually look after John's house when he's given a parish. [At times a little too wordy. I like how my sympathies wavered]
• Summer Voices (John Banville) - a brother and sister escape from an old relative reading a religious tract and cycle to the sea where Jimmy, and old man, shows them a body recovered from the water. Back home, the sister says that they saw the drown man on a hill when they were cycling. She's scared in bed that night.
• Summer Night (Elizabeth Bowen) - 30 pages - easily the book's longest story. Emma is on a long drive. Meanwhile Queenie (deaf) and her single, holidaying brother Justin (40ish) make a surprise visit to Robinson's house. Justin wants to know Robinson better. Robinson, rich, lives apart from his wife and 2 children. Back at Emma's house the Major is checking on the 2 children. Aunt Fran is religious and doom-ridden. Justin and Queenie leave. Justin writes a letter to Robinson apologising for the awkward evening. Emma arrives at Robinson's house for the night.
• Music at Annahullion (Eugene McCabe) - Annie, Liam and Teddy live together? Teddy (who hasn't confessed for 40 years) and Liam are brothers. Teddy (I think) buys a clapped out piano but it doesn't fit in the house. Eventually it's smashed up.
• Naming the Names (Anne Devlin) - She works in a big second-hand bookshop in the Falls Rd, Belfast. When a young researcher from Oxford arrives she starts sleeping with him. She says she has a lover Jack. The researcher's father' is a judge. He has a fiancee Sue back in Oxford. He's says he's going to marry Sue but he loves the narrator. He's found dead. During the police interview we learn that she lured him to his murder. She's known Jack, an English journalist for years. She's been delivering IRA money to wives of's interns. She knows them by the codenames, chanted thoughout the story like section names on the bookshelves.
• Shame (Keith Ridgway) - In the age of sailing ships, a man with (perhaps unfathful?) wife and child decides not to continue working for his boss. [I'm confused]
• Memory and Desire (Val Mulkerns) - Bernard, a rich owner of an old glass-works, feels appreciated by a TV crew led by young Martin. Bernard's brother died at sea. His wife left him 5 years before with his daughter. He may be gay. When the TV crew are about to leave, he invites Martin to Greece. Martin's married with kids. Bernard goes out in a boat knowing there'll be a storm.
• The Mad Lomasneys (Frank O'Connor) - Spirited Rita Lomasney and posher Ned were 12 and 14 when they started being friends. Rita went away, became a teacher at a convent, then got sacked because a man wanted to give up a priesthood career because of her. He was 300 pounds in debt to his mother who said he'd have to repay it if he was giving up the priesthood. Rita returns home and meets Ned who says he'll give her the money. She says she'd have married him if he'd asked earlier. Justin, a lawyer, is interested in her too. Her mother suddenly arranges for Rita to be a nun in England. At her farewell party she gets proposals. She marries Justin. Later, pregnant, she admits that her choice of husband had been rather random. It was difficult to compare different types of affection for men.
• Walking Away (Philip O Ceallaigh) - only 4 pages. It begins with "Her telephone number remained in the pocket of his funeral trousers for over two weeks". He's having depersonalisation symptoms. Eventually he phones her, goes round to her house. He knows he won't become attached to her. She's written a novel, done AmDram, visited Thailand and wondered about what's beyond. They spend the night together. We learn that the funeral was of an old friend. Next day he leaves early, having recovered.
• Villa Maria (Clare Boylan) - Sally and Rose are on holiday in Palma. They talk about men, attraction and their future. Rose dreams of houses with pools, and a TV in the bedroom. When American sailors arrive, the 2 girls take 2 of them to their room. The men show them family photos, and photos of girlfriends. The girls are bored. Rose pulls a man onto her. It's not clear whether they have full sex. Later the men play like boys in the hotel pool before walking back to their ship. Rose follows them from a distance.
• Lilacs (Mary Lavin) - 24 pages. On the day Phelim proposed to Ros, he had the idea of collecting dung from farmers and selling it to townsfolk. The idea worked, and they sent their daughters Kate and Stacy to boarding school. The girls are home now. The dung arrives each Wednesday, stinking the place out. Stacy in particular hates it. For the first time, Ros suggests to Phelim that they stop. Phelim suddenly dies. Ros feels guilty. She keeps the dung trade going. Perhaps they could plant lilacs to disguise the smell. But they'd take years to mature. Then Ros suddenly dies. Kate thinks that they should move and collect 3 times the amount of dung. She marries a farmer and moves away. Alone, Stacy decides to plant lilac trees where the dung had been piled. [A neat plot]
• Meles Vulgaris (Patrick Boyle) - The title means "Badger". A man in bed with his wife recalls their honeymoon when they saw badger baiting. He's reading a book about badgers, from which we get extracts. He ignores her advances. She suggests they should return to their honeymoon location. The badgers were tenacious. A Father was among the dog owners.
• The Trout (Sean Faolain) - About 3 pages. A girl finds a trout in a quart of water, wondering how it got there, what it ate. She releases it into the river, telling her little brother that a fairy godmother released it. [I don't get it]
• Night in Tunisia (Neil Jordan) - He (14), his sister and his sax-playing father are on holiday. He plays the piano. He befriends the older boys who fancy his sister. There's a 17 y.o. girl, poor, who lives there all year. Her drunk father is often away. He watches her play tennis with a man and go off in his car. A local boy says she's a whore. He doesn't know what that is. His father thinks he's wasting his musical talent and offers to pay him if he lets his father give him piano lessons. [Episodic, poetic, with much unsaid. I like it]
• Sister Imelda (Edna O'Brien) - The narrator (18?) and her friend Baba are in their last year at convent school. Sister Imelda has returned from 4 years at Dublin University. Why has she returned? It's a strict sect. She gives the narrator little gifts. She says she misses the narrator when a new term starts, then says that it's wrong and becomes distant. The other girls notice that the narrator is no longer Imelda's pet. The narrator's sad, decides to become a nun. But then she goes to Dublin university with Baba and gives up the nun idea. On a bus trip, made up, they notice Imelda and another nun on the bus. The narrator is shaken, but the nuns get off before the narrator steels herself to talk to them.
• The Key (John McGahern) - A father living in barracks with his kids thinks he's going to die. He tells the first-person character (his son or daughter) what to do when he dies, giving him/her a key to his chest. He's sent to hospital, returns, and the son/daughter throws away the key. [I don't get it]
• A Priest in the Family (Colm Toibin) - A priest visits Molly to tell her that her son is going to plead guilty to indecency charges going back 20 years. He leaves and her daughters (who have sons) visit, suggesting that she go to the Canaries during the trial. She has a busy social life and wants to stay, wants her friends to talk to her rather than avoid her. Later, her son visits, saying that she should go to the Canaries. She says she's ok and watches him drive off [Can't see much in it]
• The Supremacy of Grief (Hugo Hamilton) - Damien's drunk. His wife Sarah died 5 years before. His sisters have cleared away Sarah's possessions. They've taken him to stay with his family in Dublin. They avoid talking about Sarah. He mentions her, saying that there was something he'd wanted to tell her. He's jokey with the kids. He plays dead, very dead. He's not dead. [I don't get it]
• The Swing of Things (Jennifer C Cornell) - a widower leaves his daughter (9 - her first-person PoV)) and demented father with a stuntman who's just turned up to say that the old man won a stunt. The stuntman tells anecdotes that the old man contributes to, then jumps off the house and survives. [An interesting set-up. The 8 y.o. thinks about "the thoughtful perambulations of the silent instructor ... this is why we fall in love: because we need another's eyes to convince us we remain things of beauty, because without another's tongue to tell us we assume such words cannot be said"]
• Train Tracks (Aidan Mathews) - Timmy, 12, is on a plane from Dublin to Dusseldorf without a guardian. He's going to stay with a German family for 10 weeks. Before, someone tells him that the allies didn't bomb the train tracks to Auchwitz, and that Luther was thought be some to have been as bad as Hitler. While there, he uses a piece of toy train track to move a piece of his unflushable poo. His host family start hitting each other when the track is found.
• See the Tree, How Big It's Grown (Kevin Barry) - A man, 50, wakes on a coach not knowing who or where he is. He finds that he's rented a chipper in the next town. He has flashbacks about his youth. He drinks. He is liked at an open-mic sing-song. He finds simple beauty in these new surroundings. [I like it]
• Visit (Gerald Donovan) - Luke, jetlagged, is visiting his mother in her carehome. She wants to be wheelchaired to the nearest village. He thinks people are staring at him as he pushes her along a pavementless road, pumps up the tyres at a garage and buys her sweets. At the end "She was smiling. Her eyes were closed and her face was calm, turned to the sun" [Neat and moving. Rather short though - less than 6 pages]
• Everything in this Country Must (Colum McCann) - a 15 y.o girl and farmer father try to pull their horse from a flooded river. Her mother and brother had beenkilled by an army truck. An army vehicle stops. 6 soldiers get out and help, bravely saving the horse. The girl offers tea after. The ungrateful father asks them to leave. He goes out with a gun. She hears shots. He's killed the horse [Poetic language. I've read this in the story collection of the same name, and in "The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories". I remain impressed. The child feels powerless against fatalism - "Stevie and the draft horse were going to die, since everything in this county must". Perhaps the father knew that the horse was too injured to survive anyway.]
• Curfew (Sean O'Reilly) - Men are in a dark room. Fergal's brother Eamon is back after 4 years. Fergal's teased about having a girlfriend, Nuala (Huala on p.365). Fergal's told to stay indoors while the rest go out. He goes out, meets Nuala. They see something happening at a farm. They go there and he gets caught. He and Harkam had made a hidden lair. Had Harkham shown it to a girl, a gipsy? The men return to the house. [I'm often irritated by stories where the reader's the only person who doesn't know what's going on. I liked this though.]
• Language, Truth and Lockjaw (Bernard MacLaverty) - Norman, a philosphy lecturer, is on holiday with his family. He's suddenly had to have a tooth extracted. They've rented a place next to where some mentally challenged men stay. He wants to write a paper. After 9 years his marriage is going stale. His wife tries to engage him in conversation - does intelligence encourage vivid emotion? During sex (which they still enjoy) his jaw locks open. He sounds like their neighbours. His wife sorts him out. [I grew to like it]
• Midwife to the Fairies (Eilis Ni Dhuibhne) - A stranger knocks late at a married nurse's door to ask her to help his wife who's in labor. He drives her 10 miles to an isolated farmhouse. She delivers the 5lb baby and says it should be taken to hospital. A week later she reads that the baby's been fond dead and the mother arrested. The nurse tells the police. She's threatened at knifepoint so retracts her statement. Scattered in this story are about 4 lines of italicised text, telling a fairy-taled version of the events.
• Men and Women (Claire Keegan) - She works on the farm for her father while her brother Seamus studies for school. Her mother, like nearly all the women she knows, can't drive. Her parents sleep in different rooms. She (her first-person PoV) still believes in father Christmas. They go to a New Year's Eve event. Her father dances with other women. Old men want to dance with her. On the drive home her mother wins a psychological game of power. [I like it]
• Mothers Were All the Same (Joseph O'Connor) - Arriving at Luton from Dublin, he sees Catriona who'd been on the same flight. He'd met her at a party. He's come to find a job. She just over for the weekend. She invited him to her cheap hotel near Kings Cross. She says she's in a good relationship. They sleep together. She disappears for the day, comes back emotional, sick. She disappears again. The hotelier tells him that she's had an abortion. [I suspected Catriona's purpose quite early, but I don't see why the persona should have guessed it as early as I did. It could indeed have been food poisoning]
• The Dressmaker's Child (William Trevor) - Cahal (19) helps his dad in the garage. A Spanish couple ask if he could give them a lift to a miracle statue of the virgin Mary. He rips them off. On the drive back he thinks he might have hit the dressmaker's mentally retarded daughter, who has a habit of running out to cars. He worries overnight. There's no news. A few days later the girl's body is found. The dressmaker, 12 years older than him, tells him that he knows he was driving the car, and suggests that they should marry. A year later, Cahal's girlfriend marries somebody else. He wonders if the dressmaker killed her daughter. He knows that one day he'll go to her.

"The Bones Beneath My Skin" by TJ Klune

An audio book.

1995. Nate, 27, hasn't seen his parents for years. His father chucked him out for being gay. Now his father's killed himself and his mother, leaving Nate a cabin and a truck. He drives to the cabin to think about his life. He's lost his journalism job in Washington. An armed ex-marine, Alex, and a 10 y.o. girl, Art, have broken in. The girl can read fast, has never eaten bacon or seen toast, and may have special powers. She asks Nate direct questions that Nate sometimes finds therapeutic. She often speaks using phrases from Westerns - the books she's read. Nate wonders whether they're on the run. He fancies Alex and wonders whether the feeling's reciprocated. He manages to phone ex-colleague Ruth Davis, asking her for info about missing persons. Alex disappeared 10 years ago - some kind of secret soldier. The FBI arrive, describing the girl as an "it", saying that it's a test to see how the "it" would react to someone like Alex. The 3 of them escape despite roadblocks and helicopters.

20 years before, Art had landed on Earth, and started a symbiotic association with a man. The man was captured. Then Art transferred to the body of a brain-dead girl. Alex is helping Art to return home - Art's sure their race will return. The aliens only wanted humans to know that they are never alone. Nate wants the same message. Art is concerned about how Alex will cope when Art goes. Art lets Nate see into Alex's mind. Alex tells Nate he's bisexual.

We then get the story about Art's incarceration, how Alex (weakened by grief) was used in a test to see if Art could control people. Alex helped Art escape.

A comet has appeared. They track down Peter, the man who was Art's first host. He's started a Vegan community. He sees Art, a girl possessed by the being who once possessed him. He's a cult leader. He poisons his followers and drugs Nate and Alex, forcing them to play a Russian Roulette game until Art agrees to take him and his followers onto her mother ship. They manage to kill Peter. The FBI have found them. They escape thanks to Art's psychokinetic powers. The aliens arrive to take her away. She decides to stay.

17 years later: they've been living with new identities. The aliens arrive again. This time Art goes.

The mix of genres (including comedy) is entertaining. I like the opportunities that SF offers for the exploration of grief and love - how much does the body matter? How much can one know about an other? How many dates are tests or manipulations? Art seems like an autistic person learning about love.

Other reviews

• booksbonesbuffy (Klune explores several heavy themes, like family and belonging, and loss and grief, but also what it means to be human.)
• whatisquinnreading
• Annie Mills (Unfortunately, as the characters drive the story, the plot and the action take a backseat. It moves slowly at first; the characters spend a lot of time meandering around the cabin and sharing quiet, intimate moments together before they finally find a reason to leave or explain the truth behind what’s going on. That slow pace can feel frustrating at times, and it takes quite a while for the novel to really find its feet. ... The fact of the matter is, The Bones Beneath My Skin doesn’t have quite the same shine as some of the author’s later books. It’s a little messier and less refined.)
• Chris Kluwe
• Julia Kitvaria Sarene (There’s also beautiful LGBTQ+ representation, not just through the m/m romance, but through the gentle way the story affirms identity. The idea that people have the right to choose who they are and what they’re called is treated with quiet respect, and it adds another layer of warmth and acceptance to the story.)
• haleysbookhaven.com (the chemistry between Nate and Alex was severely lacking. They were bonded by proximity and their mutual fatherly love for Artemis, but I didn’t get the sense that if they’d met in more ordinary circumstances that they would have fallen in love. Art was the glue that held them together, and without her I suspect they’d eventually fall apart. ... How do you grieve a parent who committed such a crime as to kill your other parent? These questions are only ever briefly touched on. By not exploring them, Klune did a disservice to Nate’s character and the book itself. The plot of this novel is predictable and a lot of the time it’s meandering as well. That isn’t to say it isn’t entertaining, though. This is a cozy book, but there are also moments of darkness and tension and crazy action scenes, too.)

"All shook up" by Trebor Blanc

An audio book.

Preston. Covid is just about to start. Tommy West, 49, Elvis Impersonator, has been married twice and has a daughter Cilla who is his contact with his money-grabbing second wife. His van etc is all under his first wife's name. She's long been dead. He likes hash, and deals in it, specialising in old varieties. He's just about solvent. After a gig, Penny propositions him, recalling his one-hit-wonder days. She's fancied him since school. They go back to his flat. She tidies up and returns the next night, getting his key from Bernard, a married neighbour in exchange for sex. Meek Bernard's wife has revenge sex with Tommy.

Penny returns with a suitcase. She's been battered. Tommy takes her in and threatens her ex using karate moves from his act. His flat is broken into. Kevin Jackson is a thug who insists that Tommy performs for him, though he's been pre-booked on that day. Because of Covid Kevin's concert can't go ahead. Tommy has to return the deposit, but is skint. Kevin offers him a job instead - to transport an illegal immigrant from the coast. There are issues with a brothel managing to stay open. Trans-dressers come in handy.

Quite short. Some laughs. Some emotional loose ends.

Other reviews

• goodreads (2.9/5)

"The Essex Serpent" by Sarah Perry (Serpent's Tail, 2016)

London, 1893. Dr Luke Garrett (32, short, lame - nicknamed "the Imp") has fallen in love with Cora Seaborne, young widow of one of his patients. He's barely solvent. She encourages him. He has a tall, fair friend, George Spenser. After the funeral, Cora goes with maid Martha (a socialist) and son Francis (11, obsessive) to Colchester. She's not sad. She enjoys nature, collecting fossils. She's told about the Essex Serpent, a winged water-dragon that appeared in the area in 1669 then disappeared until an earthquake 8 years before re-awakened it. Charles (a political colleague of her late husband who's worried about Darwin's ideas) and his wife Katherine happen to be there. They suggest that she stay with William Ransome (a parson who lives on the nearby estuary at Aldwinter) and his wife Stella to explore nature. Their children are John, Joanna and James. Martha dislikes Spenser, though he likes her and donates money to her social housing cause. Garrett become famous among peers for successfully performing a difficult operation in Edward Burton, the victim of a knife attack. Martha subsequently befriends him because of his difficult housing situation.

Cora, Martha and Francis move to Adwinter. Cora tells William that he's wasting a good mind on religion - myth and legend. They both see a ship - an illusion. Cracknell is an old believer who once groped her. He fears the water-dragon. Martha influences William's clever daughter Joanna, who drifts from her friend Naomi. Cora gives a talk about fossils at Joanna's school. She doesn't rule out the existence of the water-dragon. The class of children seem possessed for a while. She asks Luke to visit her and help. Garret hypnotises Joanna. Her father is furious and severs contact with Cora. Cora returns to London.

Stella has consumption. At her prompting, Cora and William dance together, which angers Garrett, who sleeps with Martha. Willian defaces an old carving of the water serpent in his church. Cracknell dies - a victim of the serpent? Naomi disappears. Back in London, Edward's attacker attacks Garrett, damaging his right hand. Garrett proposes to Cora. Edward proposes to Martha. Both are rejected.

One morning there's a stench over the village. They go to the shore and find a 20ft rotting fish. The village celebrates - the mystery explained. Katherine contacts Cora to update her and question how she's cut herself off from Garrett and the Ransomes. Cora restores contact. She visits Stella, who's obsessed with all things blue and gets on well with Francis. Then Cora meets William in a field and they have sex after arguing. Meanwhile, Garrett considers suicide. What changes his mind is Spenser's friendship, though he hits Spenser when he next sees him, blaming him. Francis and Naomi's father think they see/hear a monster. Naomi is found in Colchester. She and Joanna, friends again, think they see/hear a monster. It's Naomi's father's lost boat, named after his dead wife. Stella is found by the water. Francis has helped her there. Martha is with Edward.

I remained interested, wondering where the various subplots would go. 2 little things -

• I like "I've never liked the look of you (do you mind?). But I seem to have learned you by heart" (p.259 - William in a letter to Cora)
• In "his visitor dredged her chips with vinegar" (p.203) should that be "drenched"?

Other reviews

• novelnotions
• M John Harrison (a novel of ideas, though its sensibility is firmly, consciously, even a little cheekily, gothic ... Perry artfully exploits her monster’s symbolic potential, leaving the reader to sort the many subtexts from the good red herrings, displaying both with a collectorly enthusiasm, on equal terms)
• julias-books (Perry also explores the position of women, from Cora, the scientist, for whom marriage had “so degraded her expectations of happiness” and for whom widowhood and thus the single life had “freed her from the obligation to be beautiful”, to Stella the model dutiful Victorian wife and mother, afflicted by a quintessentially 19th century illness. There is also Martha, Cora’s maid (although her exact position in the household slightly defies definition!), also a political activist who utilises the connections she has made through Cora to further her Marxist leanings.)
• j.d.levin (For the first 100+ pages, Perry's book wanders and winds through several seemingly unconnected storylines, leaving the reader without much of a solid thread to follow. ... many readers will undoubtedly meander through chapter after chapter of passable prose until stumbling upon a profound passage or plot point. Perry is strongest when she subverts expectations - which she does frequently throughout the novel.)
• bookssnob (the issue that I have with most modern fiction is the trend to have several plots happening at once, with a wide cast of characters doing things that are entirely unnecessary to the main story and are merely there for some sort of metaphorical significance. Such is the case with The Essex Serpent. What could have been a marvellously thought provoking novel about the conflict between faith, science, reason and doubt in the nineteenth century became a series of diluted romances between people who didn’t really seem to interact with or be necessary to one another at all, and the actual story of the serpent did get rather lost somewhere along the way.)

"To Rise Again at a Decent Hour" by Joshua Ferris

An audio book.

Paul O'Rorke is a hard-working dentist living in NYC, obsessesed with the RedSox - he records each game on VHS. His father killed himself. He went out with a receptionist, Connie, for a while. She's a poet and she wanted children. His love affairs have always been obsessive, his break-ups traumatic. When in love he loses his own identity, giving his lover nothing to love. He realises that he uses guilt to get money from his patients, much as catholics use it. He's an atheist who's been involved with religious people. He's been prepared in the past to accept some of the limitations of Catholicism and Jewish because his girlfriends (or at least their parents) were believers.

He's rather anti-tech. Somebody has created a website for his surgery. He wants to shut it down, not least because it includes obscure religious quotes about the Amalokies faith. Posts under his name start appearing on Forums - is a disgruntled patient stealing his identity? The internet's distracting him from his job so he disconnects the surgery. He learns that he's been identified as an Amalokite - after DNA testing and heredity research. Ancient texts pre-dating the Bible are found. Amalokites were anti-semitic. He meets the 17th richest man in the States, Mercer, who's in the same situation as him and has doubts. He learns from his patients to live for the moment. He proposes to Connie but she quits from the job and goes to live with a poetry teacher. The RedSox threaten to mess up at the end of a season. Mercer cashes in his assets and kills himself.

In the penultimate hour there's a too long section about Grant Arthur wanting to become a Jew - circumcision; 6 hours of study/day - but not wanting to believe in God.

Other reviews

• Alex Clark (To Rise Again at a Decent Hour at times struggles to bear the weight of its conceit (digressions into the history of the Amalekites confound after a while), but at its best it is enormously impressive: profoundly and humanely engaged with the mysteries of belief and disbelief, linguistically agile and wrongfooting, and dismayingly funny in the way that only really serious books can be)
• samstillreading (I really enjoyed the first part of the novel. It’s witty and cynical, ... Paul’s lack of direction in terms of where his life is ‘going’ is quite funny to read ... But as the novel got deeper into religion, my mind tended to wander ... Chunks of the dialogue had a textbook feel, rather than the sharply balanced wit of Paul previously. I found myself skimming over these)
• mookseandgripes (Ferris it too keen to see the best in everything and can’t quite bring himself to be coruscating enough to truly hit hard. There are many fine comic digressions but Ferris too often pulls his punches far too early and ends up passing them off as clumsy and unorthodox (and weak) high fives. The book runs up a head of acerbic steam and then fizzles out to gently satirical. It dallies with serious intent and then plays it too safe. ... It’s a novel-length outburst of good-natured dyspepsia and about 200 of its 330 pages of far-from-original neurotic posturing fly by.)

"The Museum of Failures" by Thrity Umrigar

An audio book

Remy, 35, has flown from Ohio back home to Bombay to meet Janez's neice, Monaz. He plans to adopt her unborn child. He's been married for 15 years to a white American doctor, Kathy. He'd gone to the US to be a poet. His loving father died 3 years ago, and he hasn't visited his difficult mother since. He's bought a flat near his mother's for a couple of relatives so that they can care for her. He discovers that she's in hospital (perhaps electively mute and not eating). Monaz has changed her mind about handing the baby over.

He's Parsi, a shrinking minority. He meets up with Dina, an unmarried lawyer who, he suspects, had always wanted to marry his father. He's treated rather like a foreigner in India. He's noticed the increased xenophobia in the US. Monaz changes her mind again, insisting she wants to give birth in the states. He doesn't want to tell his mother about the adoption, nor does he want to tell her about Monaz coming to the US - because his mother had wanted to stay with them in the US. Kathy convinces him to tell his mother. He does, and Monaz gets on well with her. He begins to reconnect with his culture.

We go back to before Remy was born, from his mother's third-person PoV. Her first-born Syla was mentally disabled. The father was ashamed, and wanted a second child quickly. Remy is born. Syla punched and kicked Remy. Without fore-warning or permission, the father puts Syla in a care home. He claims that the mother has neglected Remy. She's allowed to visit Syla provided she didn't tell Remy. Syla died in a fire when he was little. His mother went into a mental home for a while after. When Remy is old enough for university, his father offers to pay so that he can study in the States. His mother says that if Remy leaves, she'll tell him about Syla. She delays, and when she sees how happy Kathy makes Remy, she decides to say nothing.

Remy tells people about his late brother. His father has turned from role model to the type of person Remy doesn't want to be. His mother turns out to have some good qualities. Remy insists that Monaz tells her strict father about the arrangement. Fearfully she does. Her father wants her to keep the baby, so he does. Monaz is grateful that Remy had made her tell her father. Remy decides that it's fate. Her mother arranges for him to see a 4 y.o. orphan. Remy thinks he's too shy at first, but finds a way to make the child relax.

The dilemmas - will Monaz give the child over? will Monaz tell her father? will Remy tell his mother about the adoption? will Remy tell people about his brother? - pile up after a while

• Jenny Maattala (there is a lack of unity throughout the first book. Although necessary to lay the foundation down for what is to come, at times the dialogue is redundant and monotonous)
• bookreporter.com (In getting to know and love his mother in an altered context, Remy starts to appreciate what is precious about his homeland. ... his stream of consciousness is more like a flood of self-observation. There isn’t a sight, sound, smell or person he doesn’t react to and analyze in minute detail. ... I also wondered about Remy’s unbelievably patient wife back in Columbus.)
• Mariam Tahir (Despite its many strengths, The Museum of Failures is not without its flaws. The novel occasionally belabours its political commentary, with pages full of reflections and inner monologue. ... Moreover, despite many beautiful passages, the dialogue sometimes feels forced, relying on clichéd metaphors that detract from the gripping plot.)

"The Suffering of Strangers" by Caro Ramsay

An audio book.

Glasgow. 2017. DI Costello sees married Archie Walker (Costella's sometime lover?) with a younger (30s) woman. She's given a case where Roberta and James' baby is taken from a car, replaced by a Down's syndrome baby. She's suspicious of James.

DCI Anderson (Costello's ex-boss) is working on cold cases. He visits the house of Gillian Witherspoon (an old victim) to find that she's suddenly died. His wife sacrificed her life to save their daughter Clare. He has a son, Peter. He helped a victim, Paige. He's single in a house worth £1.2 million. He visits Sally Braithewaite, someone he knew at university, a rape victim who could help the police promote their activities. She's married to Andrew, who used to do obstetrics but is now a cosmetic surgeon.

Abegail has a medical degree. Her husband is George. Jane and Malcolm are her children. Her sister Valerie has a law degree. Archie is her godfather. She has a drinking problem and wants a child. She may have tried to influence Archie. Her husband had an affair. Sally confesses to Anderton (who was recording the conversation) that she's had the child caused by the rape, and Andrew was selling babies and had kidnapped the child. She falls off a rooftop terrace. Pushed?

Actually, Sally (or Valerie?) abducted the child. Sally had sold her baby to a family friend. The Down's syndrome child has Anderton's DNA - sally's child was his.

With audio books I have trouble remembering all the characters clearly. In this book characters like Libby Hamilton and Paige have cameo roles that bloat the cast. I'm guessing that they appear in other books of the series. The characters in general are well written, and the plot's sufficiently interesting.

Other reviews

• Kirkus reviews
• Rob Weir (My late-to-the-table status notwithstanding, this is simply not a very well written book. ... This novel is overpopulated with characters. Again, I presume that much of the detective force has been introduced in earlier novels, but be wary of reviews that say this book works as a standalone novel. It does not. I had to make lists of characters and relationships to keep them straight. This is problematic on several levels. First, my list was much longer than it needed be. Ramsay drops names in ways that give a new reader few clues as to whether the character in question is relevant, or just police station wallpaper. The same is true of past and pending cases mentioned. Second, Ramsay complicates matters by introducing new characters whose relationships to the story are murky. ... Ramsay brings all of this to a conclusion through logic-defying subterfuge. If that's not enough–and believe me, it is–Ramsay tacks on a cloudburst of coincidences that revolve around Anderson.)