Londoners by Craig Taylor

Photo by Filippo Diotalevi available through a Creative Commons license

In keeping with my U.K. kick started with Robert Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling, which features a careworn private eye in London, I mixed in the nonfiction book Londoners: The days and nights of London now—as told by those who love it, hate it, live it, left it, and long for it (942.1086 TAYLOR).

Over the course of five years, author Craig Taylor — a Canadian who moved to London — collected stories from 200 people in or from his adopted city. Taylor gives us the best bits — and they are wonderful; each one a gem in its own right — in Londoners, a pastiche of anecdotes and reflections about what make this city of 8.5 million people one of the world's most revered. Take, for instance, the ruminations of Peter Rees, a planning officer for the City of London:

"You can't pull out a sheet of paper and say how London should work. London already does work. It works in a way none of us understand. It's so complex, so multilayered, so interrelated with places around the world and activities within itself. You have to look at how you can manage London, not plan it."

He presents a wonderfully well-rounded amalgam of views, including that of current and former Londoners, tourists, laborers, professionals and more. Most are labeled in the table of contents with what they do for a living; some are simply labeled "Londoner."

There's an entire section alone dedicated to London's famously tough housing market. Taylor fills that section with narratives from an estate agent, property owner, property seeker, squatter, and longtime residents. In another interview, Taylor proves his dedication by following around market trader in the wee hours of the morning as the trader sorts out meat and produce purchases for his clients.

Taylor keeps his narration to a minimum, letting his interviewees' words shine through in the same vein as Studs Terkel's oral histories. Indeed, such is Taylor's skill at drawing out his subjects' thoughts that the memories they share are laced with color, humor and insight. Through their eyes, we explore issues of race, class, wealth and geography. We see the spectrum of emotions that London elicits: nostalgia, resentment, yearning, exhaustion.

Viewed as a whole, the reader begins to get a sense that living in London is a particular challenge and to overcome that challenge means simply to be living in London. The city is a cauldron of roiling energy coupled with ancient history, a place that offers rough edges and shiny corners that both repulse and beckon. Opines interviewee Michael Linington, a man leaving London:

The funny thing about London is how everything feels like it's trying to push you out. So all these people are trying to get in, but the city itself and the infrastructures that have been created and the social issues, everything is trying to push you straight back out. Everyone's trying to fight to get into the middle, but then there's something in the middle that's just trying to force everyone out and it's saying, you've got to earn your place.

This book will ring true with anyone who's dared brave London long enough to live there for any length of time. It's also perfect for armchair travelers who wish to see the grit, the workaday and the fascinatingly prosaic behind the veil of London's sheen and reputation.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

By now, you most likely know that Robert Galbraith, author of the mystery The Cuckoo's Calling (FIC GALBRAIT, also on ebook), is actually J.K. Rowling, mega-selling author and creator of the Harry Potter world.

As an unabashed Hogwarts fan, I knew I immediately had to give The Cuckoo's Calling a try. Having read her first foray into adult fiction, The Casual Vacancy, I admire Rowling for tackling such vastly different types of stories from her Harry Potter saga. While I did not enjoy The Casual Vacancy — it was peopled by characters too petty and unpleasant to care about any of them — Rowling certainly fashioned a story that shared very little with her previous works except perhaps her language.

In The Cuckoo's Calling, even the language has changed; you'd never know it was written by Rowling if not for her having been outed as its author. What it does feature, however, is Rowling's flair for complex, meticulous plotting. In Harry Potter she had the luxury of drawing her grand plan out over the course of seven books, in The Cuckoo's Calling, she nimbly compresses that into a single, tautly-told tale.

Several months have passed since the paparazzi-plagued model Lula Landry turned up dead in the snow, having apparently fallen from the balcony of her third-story London flat. That's when the brilliantly named but imminently broke private investigator Cormoran Strike finds himself sitting across from Lula's brother, who wants him to look into her death. The brother believes that Lula's death, though ruled a suicide, was actually murder. He hires Strike to determine the truth.

Strike, a former military policeman, is aided in his inquiry by the stalwart Robin, a temp secretary assigned to his office for the time being. The two greatest pleasures of this story are watching Strike sussing out fact from fiction and the burgeoning friendship between the gumshoe and his secretary, who rapidly rises to the role of trusty sidekick.

Throughout the investigation, Strike grapples with a host of personal issues, including his dwindling bank account, a recent break-up with his long-time girlfriend and the difficulties of maneuvering London wearing a prosthetic leg. Even with all those distractions, he impresses with his determined focus and his clever way of reading between the lines of witness statements.

Admittedly, I found the revealed culprit to be somewhat predictable but it was nevertheless fascinating to watch Rowling's stellar plotting skills. She plants a subtle path of breadcrumbs that we can see in bits and pieces. But we truly need Strike's help to see them all and make sense of them. Understanding the many gears of the grand scheme keeps you reading to the end, but it's the characters of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott who will have you looking forward to Rowling's next installment.

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

If you’re looking for a story with characters who happen to live in a time of war and who take the circumstances as they come, trying to make the best of it, I would recommend this 1950 book by Nevil Shute, which was voted a place on the BBC’s 2003’s list of “the nation’s 100 best-loved novels”. Although the heroine is British and her story concerns British colonialism in the Asian country of Malaysia, the hero is Australian and his life in the wilds of Australia can be likened to our own history of pioneer settlement.

Shute writes in a detailed quiet fashion, using as his principal narrator an interested observer, lawyer Noel Strachan. This device helps support the narrative by giving us the interest of Noel, the older man, hearing of the heroine Jean Piaget’s experiences as a Japanese prisoner in Malaysia, and of her meeting with the Australian rancher Joe Harmon, also a prisoner.

The amount of brutality in the book appears less in comparison to narratives of current crime fiction, or compared to stories of rape and murder in Darfur. However, Shute based his novel on true experiences of women and men who were Japanese prisoners in World War II. While the brutality may have been less horrific, more than 16,000 men died building the Burma railway for the Japanese, through sickness and exhaustion and malnutrition. And the experience of the women prisoners in the novel also happened, although in Sumatra, not Malaysia. Shute shows their suffering and how they died quietly one by one.

The love story is a good one, with their meeting by chance, then slowly making their way back to each other. Just when one obstacle is dealt with, another comes along to keep things interesting. The book presents the racial setting of Australia as it was in 1950, with native people considered as being below the white settlers. Interestingly enough, Jean notices a rancher married to a native woman, sees his intelligent face and wonders at his choice. But she herself is in love with Joe, a rancher who has had no real education and whose family emigrated to Australia out of the slums of London.

In the end, it is Shute’s essential humanity that resonates in his fiction and keeps your interest, even when the characters have the prejudices of an earlier era. That’s how he keeps them alive. When they come to a crossroads, they do everything they can – like when Joe sees Jean being beaten, and when Jean sees the world pushing Joe away from her. We want them to act, and we also want to act as they do, knowing our limitations but still risking everything for the things that count.

Strangers / by Anita Brookner

Anita Brookner is one of those writers which few people know about and even fewer will understand. But her genius won't be lost on those who commit to her work. Successfully completing her Art History Ph.D. in 1949, she worked as a fellow and a scholar in the profession for the next few decades, ultimately becoming the first woman to be awarded the Slade professorship at Cambridge and later receiving a CBE (Commander of the British Empire). Brookner didn't start writing until 1981 when at the age of 53 she published A Start in Life; three years later her novel Hotel du Lac won the Booker Prize. In the time since, she's churned out 24 books with Strangers, her latest, successfully incorporating all of the intuition and high comedy she's come to be known for.

"Sturgis had always known that it was his destiny to die among strangers." (p. 1)

Londoner Paul Sturgis is 74, comfortably retired and alone. He's always been alone. And he's learned to accept it. Never having married, though not for want of trying (his only two serious liasons ended because both women felt he wasn't exciting enough), Paul's routine existence steadily plods along, revolving around morning coffee, visits to the library and Sunday trips across town to see his only other relation, Helena, who's not even a blood relative, only the widow of a cousin. He's keen on how he fits in to society, conscious of his effect on people, knows he can sometimes come off as too eager, too polite. An always internally recurring "You're too nice", a sentiment expressed on more than one occasion by a former girlfriend promptly before she left him, is the opinion firmly imbedded in his mind as too how others receive him. He's gotten used to it. A particularly emotionally cold upbringing, he knows, has committed to this life of obligatory inoffensive behavior. But he can always postulate (repeatedly) on the personal inadequacies post-childhood which may have contributed to his current disposition, chief among them his steady though decidedly non-essential career as a bank manager, a job he worked dutifully at until retiring early to avoid the humiliation of being replaced by "the new man with new ideas".

But even amidst his introspective, settled manner, Paul is no invalid; he's not a recluse or confirmed loner who won't approach even the idea of an active life or companionship and, inevitably, he can always begin to sense the restlessness of his station. Trying to shed his melancholy by changing his atmosphere, Paul suddenly jettisons off to Venice for the Christmas holiday where he hopes the sights and scenes, revisiting the same museums and restaurants he's been to before and staying at the same hotel with the same beds, will refresh his outlook. It doesn't work. He returns from his little vacation as desultory as when he left. But something which happened on the trip, an encounter on the plane and later reacquaintance at a restaurant with a fifty-ish divorcee, has ruffled his routine enough to take his mind off himself, if only for a little while. Or so he thinks.

What may seem another boring tale of elderly incapacity and despair upon first appearance (a sentiment parlayed by more than a few dour reviews) is actually something else entirely. Look closer. Take the time to let Brookner's words seep in and discover that Strangers is a truly poignant novel by an astoundingly gifted author. The book is in no way a sad novel; neither does it offer false hope. Rather it captures the condition of solitude in a staggeringly accurate, almost infallible way, unmistakeable in its manner of exacting a life lived inside the mind, from waking to sleeping, walking to sitting, almost on a moment to moment basis. And yet, at the same time, it's as charmingly candid an exposition of subject matter as anything could ever be, the author's manner and style a pleasant discovery at every turn. With Strangers, seemingly even the most mundane, the most pitiful and pathetic of lives becomes as engendering (and more so) as the youthful exuberance of more well-connected characters. No one who attempts to read Brookner with willing attention will be disappointed. (FIC BROOKNER)

Portobello: A Novel / by Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell could be considered a modern day Agatha Christie. She's that good. Her numerous mystery and crime fiction books, published since the mid-sixties, tally over 60 total novels to go along with several short story collections and novellas. The staggering amount of praise she's received has as much to do with her standalones as with her Inspector Wexford series which has been a TV broadcast since the 1980's. One of her career highlights came in 1998 when she received a life peer award and CBE (Commander of the British Empire) following which she became assumed a seat in the House of Lords for Britain's Labour Party. Portobello, one of her most recent standalones, chronicles the intersecting lives of several city dwellers in the Notting Hill section of London.
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50-year-old bachelor Eugene Wren is the sort of person who's lucked into the good life. An art dealer and owner of a shop in the antiques market of London's Portobello Road, Wren's made a series of favorable deals in which some wealthy collectors overpaid for several obscure pieces. Now he lives semi-retired in a posh section of Kensington where he casually monitors his shop's business and spends most of his time with his girlfriend and fiance Ella Cotswold. A doctor of general medicine, Ella's not only well-off financially but ten years his junior and quite a catch. There's a slight problem though: Eugene's an addictive personality type. Never fully free of a dependency, he's gone through life fighting alcohol, cigarettes, prescription drugs and food, essentially trading one addiction for another periodically. Currently he's hooked on a particular brand of sugar-free sweets which he takes great pains to hoard, purchasing the candy at different stores and concealing all traces from his soon-to-be wife who can't stand hidden habits.
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One day Eugene stumbles across an envelope overflowing with cash just lying in the street. In an attempt to partly offset the guilt over his addiction and balance the scales of his conscience a bit, Eugene tries to personally locate envelope's rightful owner, publishing a notice in the paper in hopes of getting his man. Of course multiple persons try and claim the money. One of the phantom claimants, Lance Platt, is a burglar and petty thief who constantly prowls around the neighborhood, lurking amid the upper-class homes seeking to potentially rob any of the less secure ones. This time though, Lance meets with Eugene not to check out his house, but because he actually needs the money: his girlfriend's got a busted jaw after he'd smashed it with his fist and she needs a thousand pounds for surgery. The other notably odd respondent is a peculiar invalid named Joel Rosemund, who may or may not have a mental illness (he hears voices) and who latches on to Ella as his personal physician. It's not long before the situation initialized by Eugene's little discovery spins out of control as the secrets and lies get knotted up into a sinister web of betrayal and intrigue.
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Portobello is a great 'neighborhood' novel and the borough of Notting Hill is as good a place as any to set a story. For anyone who doesn't know about Notting Hill or the Portobello Road Market, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a good movie to rewatch. Thriving with culture, rich in tradition and full of colorful characers, it more than measures up as a backdrop for Rendell's exquisite prose. And the writing is just that. Smart, fluid, funny--it's everything even a non-mystery fan could want. The characterizations are especially charming. The author's portrayal of her characters is as comprehensive as it is fascinating, the narrative fleshing out each's finer points, their psychological makeup and chronic neurosis, personal convictions and internal inhibitions. The evocative depictions of Eugene, his psyche and motives; of Lance and his ever-deepening well of problems; and Joel, who may seem the most out of touch but has a knack for getting what he wants, are what combine to make Rendell one of the truly special contemporary mystery authors. (MYS RENDELL)

Daniel Deronda / by George Eliot

Born to unknown parentage, Daniel Deronda has been raised by respected gentleman Sir Hugo Mallinger since infancy. Now a grown man, Dan's a well-educated, well-traveled and well-groomed proper Victorian gentleman. Yet not all's quite right; intuition tells him he needs to re-examine his life from a root perspective, to pursue a more philosophical mode of existence. And so, after a series of circumstances in which he rescues a young woman, a Jewess, from the river, Deronda begins a twisting, soul-searching journey, one leading him down an unforeseen path of enlightenment and self-revelation.

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Meanwhile not far away, Gwendolen Harleth is a beautiful, adventurous young girl from a middle class family. Well-versed and privy to the fact that she's a desirous prospect among men, Gwendolen has the role of the minxish coquette down pat and though discrete to the proper degree, sees no reason she shouldn't enjoy her life to the fullest. But when her father dies, leaving her mother widowed with limited assets, the family is forced to move in with relatives, a situation obliging Gwendolen to "marry up", thus providing financial leverage for herself and her family. Wealthy neighborhood bachelor Henleigh Grancourt seems a timely match for Gwendolen. The nephew of Sir Hugo Mallinger and heir to a vast fortune, he's well-regarded and can provide the type of life Gwendolen feels she deserves. But things change quickly as, after the wedding, Gwendolen finds Grancourt to be a cruel, emotionally abusive man who's already fathered several children with a previous mistress, a woman he'd previously promised to marry. Now trapped in a fate she never could have anticipated, Gwendolen foresees a bleak, foreboding future as her life becomes one of relentless, daily misery.

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Eliot's final completed novel, published just before her death in 1880, was also her only book set in contemporary Victorian society; her others usually dated back a generation or two previous. As well as rendering themes associated with ethical soul searching, the perils of marriage and conflicting intellectual paradigms, the story is notable as an early reference to Jewish mysticism, namely its associations with Kabbalah and proto-Zionism. Deronda's introspective quest for personal truth contrasts well to Gwendolen's egotistical, self-seeking nature and the pair's ironical relationship and correlating problems elicit a clever nuance. This complementary dichotomy of characters was a signature literary device Eliot had used previously in Middlemarch and Adam Bede and an arrangement which Tolstoy and others would similarly incorporate into their own work. (FIC ELIOT)

High Fidelity / by Nick Hornby

Rob Fleming sees things in fives. For anything and (nearly) everything, he's got his top-five lists: his top five girlfriends, top five most memorable breakups, top five bands, top five bands for each genre, top five songs of each top five band, top five dream jobs (including several choice gigs set in bygone eras), top five songs to play at a wedding, " " at a funeral, etc. and so on. A London record store owner/manager, Rob's definitely a connoisseur of all things popular music, and he's never ashamed to set someone straight about, say, The Kinks top five greatest concerts or which song on the Beatles White album is the most euphonic. Though, being a proprietor, he tries to maintain a somewhat professional demeanor. He's not quite as fanatical or finicky an aficionado (read: snob) as Dick and Barry, his two nerd-extraordinaire store clerks who each possess an unhealthy excess of opinionated verbage.

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After breaking up with his longtime girlfriend Laura (who he's always considered his soulmate despite the fact that her record collection is, incidentally, intolerably incompatible with his own), Rob employs various diversions to comfort his broken heart and dissatisfied worldview. In addition to rearranging his music into the order in which he bought each album, Rob tries to reconnect with many of his previous girlfriends (some of them top fivers and some not), each encounter odd in its own way. He also forms an interesting relationship with a troubador-esque American named Maria de Salle, whose free-flowing, less pretentious outlook on life offers Rob a different outlet for his constant, perpetually neurotic ruminations.

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Hornby, author of bestsellers Fever Pitch and About a Boy as well as recent YA favorite Slam!, has been one fiction's most readable novelists for the past two decades and most people, especially Gen X'ers, are easily able to tap into his upbeat style and plethora of cultural references. In High Fidelity, his second major novel, published in 1995, Hornby excels at characterizing the cult of "musical elitism", a trendy, satirical term for describing the ambiguous, often over-the-top world of pop music criticism. Hornby is a fun writer and this is a fun book, entertaining and comedic but with a nominal serious streak and reflective aura. (FIC HORNBY)

The Girls of Slender Means / by Muriel Spark

Award-winning Scottish novelist Muriel Spark (1918-2006) lived quite a globe-trotting life during her illustrious career as a writer, having her only child with her first husband in Zimbabwe, working for Allied Intelligence in London during WWII, and making a home in New York, Rome, Budapest and Israel prior to becoming a permanent resident of Tuscany by the time of her death. Her most well-known work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was well-received at its 1963 publication and continues to receive acclaim as a novel, a 1965 film starring Dame Maggie Smith and, most recently, an off-broadway play. Her short, poignant novella The Girls of Slender Means follows several young single women bonded together during London's post-war years.

In Britain in 1945, the severe economic strain means that the practices of rationing and partitioned work duties must continue for a time while the infrastructure, particularly in London, is collectively rebuilt. For this reason, establishments like "The May of Teck Club" have been founded to aid the cause, its primary purpose being to house women of a young age so that they could safely live and work in London apart from their families. The women of the May of Teck are concerned with the news that Nicholas Farringdon, an anarchist intellectual writer and inspirational friend known to all the girls as Nicky, has been suddenly killed in Haiti. As news about the death catches hold, reminisces about Nicky coincide with each girl's lives, loves and convictions.

Their current romances, past love affairs, ambitions and dreams are mutually conveyed as their daily routines are collectively imbued with demanding duties, meager salaries and longing for a better situation. This is one of Spark's most concise, well-written books; winningly realistic and consistently witty with rare, appealing characters from familiar circumstances. All readers may not catch on to Spark's style immediately. The narrative tends to jump around a bit and a takes some re-perusing to get the characters right, but its a story which seems to mesh well more as a collective, first-person plural narrative--a singular tone amidst multiple voices. Fans of Spark's other works are sure to enjoy this one. (FIC SPARK)