I love books by Jonathan Coe (see my blogs on Middle England, Bournville and Mr Wilder and Me), so was dying to read The Proof of My Innocence, surely one of the cleverer book titles ever landed on, given it’s crime fiction with a number of suspects but that My Innocence is actually itself a book and the clue may lie in the proof copy. This is a delightful romp through the weeks of the Queen’s death and Liz Truss’ doomed prime ministership and is set in the dark world of hard right politics and a get together in an English stately home for an CPAC-style conference. The story jumps back and forward in time, from student days in Cambridge to this present, examining how the seeds of friendships and secrets began that led to the crime. It was a thoroughly delicious read and I was so glad I’d got it on Kindle so I could read it wherever I was, on whichever device.
Despite being of a very different generation, I really enjoy the beautiful writing of Sally Rooney (see my blogs on Beautiful World Where Are You? and Normal People), so bought Intermezzo in an airport paperback format in January on my way to Fuerteventura on holiday and read it on the four hour plane ride home. This is so up-close to the protagonist brothers and their girlfriends that some have described it as claustrophobic, but for me it was a clever study of grief, neurodiversity, familial love and strained relationships, which was all the more powerful for being told that way. A master craft in writing, as always with Sally Rooney.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn was a brilliant and challenging read. A love story of two young men set against the backdrop of the First World War, flashing back to their boarding school days to juxtapose that now unfashionable pre-war era with the daily horror of the front, the trenches, the stench, the blood, the body parts, the trauma of seeing your friends and colleagues blown apart one by one. The title comes from the school magazine and the pages that appear from it throughout the novel listing the names of the dead are extremely powerful. A book that everyone should read.
Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan provided me with delightful light relief in the dark days of January as I listened to it on Audible. This has everything I like in detective fiction – a wonderful historical setting of Bombay just after partition, a fabulous protagonist who you are rooting for from page one (the no-nonsense and feisty Persis Wardia, Indian’s first female police detective), a hint of romance that I do hope develops through the series, and a fantastic hook – a man found dead at midnight at a party without his trousers. I cannot wait to read the rest in the series.
