A fair bit of travelling meant I read more than usual in May (but reviewed even less). I did finally crack and bought books for the first time in 2012 but a four months-plus fast was an achievement for me.
Even better, May included three five-star reads, way above my average. All three took me to places I know little about, which is often enhances enjoyment, but as one author was a Nobel prizewinner and the other claimed the 2010 Man Asia prize, I am not alone in being impressed.
My Read the Walk trip to Zoo City, took me through Algeria, with Yasmina Khadra's What the Day Owes the Night, a wonderfully told story of a life that is scarred by poverty, by betrayals, and the brutality of French imperialism, which I found very moving.
I have had review copies of the second and third instalments of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy on my shelves for over 20 years but only recently got round to buying the first part, Palace Walk.
It was worth the wait! This is a very well constructed novel, beginning slowly with vivid descriptions of life in the household of a relatively prosperous Cairo businessman who rules his family with a rod of iron. As the book progresses, the narrative thread shifts from mother to daughters and sons, and as the focus broadens, from home to what was, for me, an illuminating account of the British occupation of Egypt at the end of the First World War.
The third five star read was Three Sisters, by Bi Feiyu. Again the narrative begins by focusing on the mundane daily lives of a family living in rural China in the 1970s. It is recounted in three parts, one for each of three sisters in a family of eight, and the overlapping stories again broaden to give a glimpse of power and corrution at a higher level. In some ways it is not an easy novel for someone who doesn't understand China as it is not always easy to visualise some the ideas and events, and harder still to get used to what seems to a very different view of self. It is also marked by acts of physical and verbal brutality that are shocking to (this) Western sensibility.
Inspired by many positive reviews, I took a rare trip to the USA, visiting the Deep South of Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. In another month this might have been my best read, as it is this tale of misfit loner Larry Ott, blamed for the abduction and presumed murder of a teenage girl, that will set the standard by which my crime reading will be measured for quite a while.
I read two crime novels featuring journalists which, when I have time, will feature on my badly neglected Scoop! Journalists in Fiction blog. The disreputable Jörgen Blad plays a significant role in Stefan Tegenfalk's Anger Mode, which also introduces one of the better police partnerships in the form of grumpy Walter Gröhn and reluctant heiress Jonna de Brugge.
I had had Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman, on my wishlist for quite a while, and was pleasantly surprised when a new Bateman-branded edition turned out to be probably the only readable novel among the the small selection of big print thrillers on offer on the Ijmuiden to Newcastle ferry. Not sure I will stick with the Dan Starkey series but it was fun way of passing the crossing.
Finally, I read two British classics, both short reads, both perhaps more famous as films than novels. The Triple Echo by HE Bates and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark, were eloquent reminders of how, in some ways but not all, the past is another country, too.