The People's Act of Love - James Meek

A novel set in Siberia the uncertain aftermath of the Russian revolution, The People's Act of Love charts the reclusive and seemingly simple lives of a religious sect of people living in the town of Yazyk. Under the watchful and curious eyes of Czech soldiers, the town tries to live peacefully without attracting attention. But the town and the secrets of the sect are threatened when a mysterious stranger called Samarin arrives and says he is being tracked by a cannibal called The Mohican.

The novel charts 1919 Russia's political paranoia and volatility with glimpses of brutality littered throughout the novel. From dozens of allusions to women being raped by soldiers to the fate of Samarin's beloved Katya, who was taken to the White Garden prison as a plaything to the prince, to Anna Petrova's camera being removed when she takes photos of unionists being slaughtered, the novel constantly shows and develops the sense of fear and distrust experienced by people at that time. This fear seeps through to the relationships between the soldiers. Even when they are fighting for the same side, they are constantly in fear of their psychopathic leader Matula. With no sense of morality, Matula is a leader to be feared, constantly planning and plotting the downfall of anyone he wants removed. Fearing the respect Mutz has from his soldiers, Matula plots against him, setting him up as a power-hungry soldier desperate to save himself over his colleagues. These machinations act as a microcosm for Russia's political climate at the time: paranoid, brutal, and filled with distrust.

This theme of deception, distrust and lies is woven throughout the novel's plot and characters. From Anna's father, the painter who paints portraits of people as they want to appear, not as they actually appear, to the 'widow' Anna, who is actually married to the castrate Bashalov, to the mysterious Samarin, who turns out to be the monster depicted in his own stories. Upon his arrival, Samarin is given the benefit of the doubt; he is given a chance to explain his story and weaves a number of the townspeople and the soliders under his spell. He tells them he is an escaped political prisoner detained in a the White Garden, a prison in the north which descended into chaos and cannibalism when its supplies were cut off. He tells them he was only saved after being taken under the wing of a cannibal called The Mohican, who fed him and fattened him in order to eventually kill him. Samarin tells them he knew The Mohican's plans and managed to flee from him after they escaped from the prison. He tells the townspeople that The Mohican is tracking him and will arrive in their town.

After securing their trust enough to be released into the care of Anna Petrova, he sleeps with her. But the next morning, he takes her son Alyosha to a train as bait in order to steal it. It is in this time that Anna and the town realise that Samarin is The Mohican, the cannibal prisoner intent on causing a revolution. It is the most dramatic depiction of deception and storytelling in the novel. His stories created a man the town feared more than anything, a man so evil he will mercilessly murder and turn to cannibalism for his own gains, a man he fears more than anyone. In fact, he is that very man, using his ability to conceal parts of his personality, to shift and change, to work achieve his revolutionary gains.

Aside from deception, sex and sexuality is another key theme to the novel. Politically, sex becomes a weapon as the soldiers rape countless women throughout the revolution and its aftermath. That is the fate of political prisoner Katya, who is given to the prince and his friends to be used as punishment for her disloyalty to the state. In Yazyk women who want foo, clothes and to protect themselves become the sexual partners of the soldiers, using sex as self-preservation. On the other extreme, is Bashalov and his religious sect of followers. As a soldier, he had never partaken in the attacks on women and as Anna's husband he had enjoyed the pleasure of sex and even fathered Alyosha. But following his experience at war, he is so repulsed by his male sexuality and convinced of its path to evil, that he is castrated. He believes that castration will make him an angel and bring him closer to God. In the process, he becomes asexual, unable to have sex, to father more children, to physically express his sexuality. Further than this, he then brings this belief to Yazyk and becomes the castrator, spreading the belief that it will bring men closer to God. In the process, he wipes out the town's future as the men are unable to have children. After experiencing the ugliest use of sex by his comrades in war, he embraces the other extreme, wiping out the town's ability to procreate.

On the other end of the spectrum is the novel's depiction of female sexuality, which is represented solely in Anna. Anna is a wife who is sexually widowed by her husband's castration; they can no longer have sex and they can no longer have children. As part of the castration, Bashalov and Anna agree that she should live as a widow and that their marriage should be kept a secret in Yazyk. As a result, Anna lives on the outskirts of the town as a widow, a woman free to be with other men. Her sexuality is portrayed as voracious. After the castration, she literally tries to make Bashalov have sex with her until she finds the castrated gap. After that, she has an affair with Mutz. But her desire goes into overdrive when she sees Samarin and hears his story. She agrees to take him home and seduces him, a seduction which ultimately nearly leads to her son's death. Through its portrayal of Anna, the novel reinforces traditional views of female sexuality; Anna is irrational, hysterical and driven by her desire. Her desire exposes her son, the most important thing in her world, to grave danger and nearly leads to a devastating act of terrorism. This unease about female sexuality is unfortunatley never reconciled in the novel.

An unique, disturbing and graphic depiction of the lengths people go to in times of war, revolution and political unrest, The People's Act of Love is a fascinating insight into how deeply people deceive and can be deceived. Dark and grotesque in parts, it exposes how people can create fictions about their personality and even religion and the devastating results these lies can achieve.

My next read - Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier

A tale surrounding the creation of innovative tapestries for an advisor to the king in 15th century Paris and Brussels, The Lady and The Unicorn exposes the gender, social and sexual politics that govern the lives of the people who commission and create the tapestries. From the initial idea to the tapestries' unveiling, the novel charts a world governed by rules which people are desperate to break.

The novel begins with nobleman Jean Le Viste's commission of the tapestries by painter Nicolas des Innocents. An aloof, proud and patriarchal man, Le Viste wants a scene of battle and bloodshed, enforcing his masculinity and power. Le Viste's obssession with status is quickly revealed by his demands for the family coat of arms to be prevalent on the soldiers' shields throughout the imagined scene. But Nicolas' encounter with Le Viste's wife Genevive sets the tapestries on an entirely different course: she wants them to tell the tale of a lady and a unicorn. By lying to La Viste and preying on his obssession with status, Nicolas convinces him to change the tapestries' theme.

This beginning establishes a number of key themes in the novel. Instantly the reader is shown that Le Viste believes only his ideas stand when in fact he is being influenced by his wife from afar. Like a puppeteer, she is manipulating him from behind the scenes. This is a central strand to the novel. Women are consistently marginalised, feminised and underestimated by men who do not realise their worth. Although they formally have no way of expressing their voice, feelings and opinions, their influence finds its way through and dupes men. Nicolas believes Marie-Celeste, the Le Viste family maid who lost her job after he made her pregnant, wants to sleep with him again and follows her to her new household; in fact it is a trap and he is beaten to a pulp by her friend. Jean Le Viste believes he has sent his daughter Claude to the convent to mark her impending marriage; in fact it is her mother's plot to keep her away from the man she truly loves. In Brussels, weaver Georges de la Chapelle believes his daughter Ailenor has been made pregnant by Phillipe; in fact she fell pregnant to Nicolas, her plot to save herself from a marriage to Jacques Le Bouef, a man she despises. The novel shows that while women may not appear to have power socially and in their households, they are able to use men as pawns carrying out the plots they aren't allowed to master.

From the novel's outset, the nobility are set up as the people everyone aspires to be. They have power, status, respect, money and time at their leisure. In fact, that couldn't be further from the truth, especially for the women. Jean Le Viste's every decision is in fact influenced by his advisor Leon Le Vieux. And when his wife Genevive asks for the tapestries' themes to be changed, the reader is given a glimmer of lack of respect for the Le Viste family. She explains to Nicolas that a battle scene would enrage the soldiers who fought in the battle and their relatives as her husband had been holed up away from the battlefield. Here we see that Jean's appearance of power and authority may just be an illusion.

For noblewomen, their plight is all the more miserable. Genevive is desperately alone and unhappy, a woman who has failed her husband by not producing a male heir. Sexually rejected by her husband and jealous of her eldest daughter Claude's blooming sexuality, she wants to embrace the antithesis of a sexualised woman: she wants to become a nun. She tries to convince her priest to ask her husband's permission for her to go, knowing he will refuse if she puts in the request herself. When he refuses, she is trapped. She cannot have the one thing she so desperately desires. This fate also befalls her daughter Claude. Infactuated with Nicolas from the moment she meets him, she is desperate to consummate their relationship. When Genevive learns of her daughter's wishes - and the threat this would pose to her "valuable maidenhead" - she does everything in her power to ensure it can never happen. She surrounds Claude with maids, ordering them to never leave her side, and later sends her to the convent she herself is so desperate to join, banishing Claude from male contact until she marries the man chosen for her. Her cruel treatment of her daughter, and sexual jealousy, is complete when she invites Nicolas to the announcement of Claude's engagement, proof that she has won and snatched away her daughter's chance of happiness.

The mother/daughter relationship is similarly marred by betrayal between weaver's wife Christine and her daughter Ailenor in Brussels. As Ailenor is blind, Christine and her husband George have only one suitor offering to marry her - smelly, repulsive wood-dyer Jacques Le Bouef. Ailenor despises Le Bouef, recoiling at the sheer smell of him and hiding from him at every opportunity. Despite Ailenor's disgust, Christine secretly plots her marriage to Le Bouef with her husband, never telling Ailenor. When Ailenor learns of the plan, she has the opportunity to take her fate into her own hands unlike Claude. She sleeps with Nicolas and falls pregnant, meaning she can never marry Le Bouef. Painter Phillippe, who has always loved her, claims parentage and marries her, saving her from a life as an unmarried mother. Unlike Claude, who is constrained and cooped up as a noblewoman, weaver's daughter Ailenor has enough freedom to plan her escape from a loveless marriage, earning herself a happier fate with a man who loves and cares for her.

Aside from social and gender politics, senses are key to the tapestries and to the novel. Each tapestry surrounds a different sense: sound, taste, sight, touch and smell. These senses are woven into the novel as they are woven into the tapestries. Nicolas and Claude's first meeting is filled with the senses, Claude sucking on a clove to allieviate toothache. Touch and sound are key to the novel's sexual themes and is at its pinnacle when Ailenor sleeps with Nicolas. As she is blind, Ailenor relies on touch and sound for her first sexual experience. When she asks Nicolas what she is missing by having no sight, he tells her touch is all she needs. It is here that Ailenor feels most free from being blind; it is finally an experience she can feel wholly without her sight. Nicolas plays with this fact in the tapestry for sight, adding Ailenor's face to represent the sense.

A novel pulling together multiple narratives of people involved in the arduous process of creating tapestries, The Lady and The Unicorn is a lyrical novel which uses the tapestries as a backdrop to expose the very different lives of the nobility and the masses in the 15th century. Rich, evocative and quietly tragic, it shows that status can be built on illusions and that the lives of nobility weren't really anything to envy at all.

My next read: The People's Act of Love by James Meek

The Gargoyle - Andrew Davidson

A novel about a love that seemingly spans seven hundred years, not to mention many social barriers, The Gargoyle explores our perceptions of beauty, sanity, faith and love. Written in the first person by an unnamed narrator and intertwined with classical allusions, it tells his tale of recovery and rediscovery when a burns victim finds he can finally fall in love.

Graphic from the outset, the novel opens with the narrator driving in a cocaine-induced haze. Distracted by a vision of flaming arrows flying towards his car, he loses control and crashes down the hillside, the car bursting into flames. His life is only saved by the car rolling into a river, extinguishing the fire. He then winds up in hospital, discovering that he has been hideously burnt and disfigured. The burns are so horrific, he even lost his penis during the accident.

Davidson's prose here is unflinching. His discriptions of bubbling skin and its consequences are written to fill the reader with discomfort and horror. Using his extensive research, he builds up a painstaking account of the narrator's horrendous treatment, from operations to maggots to skin slicing, all designed to rebuild as much of him as possible. All the while he doesn't want to survive. Until he meets Marianne. Her seemingly mad belief that they are past lovers from centuries ago intrigues him and slowly gives him the will to get better.

Despite the corny-sounding concept, the narrator and Marianne could not be further from the traditional novels' lovers. Before the burns, the narrator was a cocaine-addicted porn star, who owned a production company churning out graphic adult movies. He was a man who thrived on his sexuality and good looks. The epitome of male sexuality. At first, Marianne is an inpatient at the hospital's psychiatric wing. She seems to be a manic fantasist who believes she's meeting her long-lost lover again. The narrator is scared and unsure, writing her off as a psychiatric patient. But her tales of love and intriguing sayings about their past reel him in. And with no family, and being abandoned by his fairweather friends , he has no-one else who pays any interest to him.

Appearance and love are central themes to the novel. Before the accident, the narrator is handsome and virile, a famous porn star with no concept of live. But after the accident everything he prided himself on has gone. He loses his looks, his speaking voice, his friends,his production company and the life he knew. Even worse for him, he is literally castrated; he has lost the ultimate physical male symbol. When he starts to fall for Marianne, he explains that they could never consummate their relationship, a fact Marianne nonchalantly accepts. The contrast between his hedonistic lifestyle before the accident and the celibate one afterwards develops the idea that their relationship and love is from a higher, divine place. Their love is almost holy, built on a meeting of minds and souls rather than initial sexual attraction. The narrator's apparent journey through Dante's hell to return to Marianne as he cold turkeys from morphine reinforces this notion; he is granted safe passage through hell to be reunited with her. They are apparently reunited by a higher order.

Marianne's tale-telling is another central theme to the novel. She weaves a narrative of their lives in the thirteenth century, when she was a nun who treated him, a burnt soldier, in Engelthal monastary. She weaves a tale of his miraculous recovery, their love and how she leaves the order to be at his side. Like their modern relationship, their love is unconventional and frowned upon. In the modern times, he is a castrated severe burns victim and she is a woman with a history of mental illness. In the thirteenth century, he is a wanted mercinary and she is a nun who turns her back on her vows to follow the man she loves.

In between her narrative of their love, she tells traditional tales of love, spanning Japan, the Vikings and twelfth century Italy. From a man who catches a fatal flu from his wife to die at her side to a Viking warrior who sacrifices his life for his friend's child, they all represent sacrifices for love. And the reader later discovers that Marianne apparently made her own sacrifice for their love in the thirteenth century. She kills the narrator to save him from an agonising death at the hands of his enemies, the ultimate act of love.

While Marianne cares for the narrator during his recuperation during hospital, it is him that cares for her during her manic moments of creating her gargoyles. Artist Marianne says she gets divine inspiration for each gargoyle she creates, unable to stop until she has freed them from the stone. But her carving is laced with mania. She eats coffee granules from the spoon to keep carving without sleep and refuses to eat as she says suffering is needed. It is during these episodes where the narrator gets to care for her, encouraging her to eat a little and bathing her with a sponge as she carves. When her carving is over, he bathes her and puts her to bed like a child before feeding her up to renourish her.

With each passing day, the power balance in their relationship changes. At first, Marianne rescues the narrator, helping him to recover from his injuries by lavishing food, stories and attention upon him. Her help fills him with the will to survive, leading him to become strong enough to move into her home. But after he moves in, this power starts to shift. Gradually he becomes more independent and becomes Marianne's source of support, feeding her and physically caring for her as her body becomes ravaged by her need to carve.

A novel that spans centuries and stretches the reader's imagination, The Gargoyle is a thought-provoking tale that asks readers to believe in the impossible. Riveting, innovative and vivid, it questions our perceptions about fact and fiction and makes the reader ask whether the line between fantasy and reality really matters when it leads an ostracised man to find love for the first time.

My next read: The Lady and The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier.

My Piece of Happiness - Lewis Davies

My Piece of Happiness is a novel exposing the flaws and shortcomings of social care in modern Britain and the stigma attached to those the care system serve. Set in Cardiff, it centres upon the life of care worker George Rees, his clients and his colleagues. Silently raging against the constraints and bureaucracy that come hand in hand with his job, he gets more and more frustrated by the lack of support offered by the system he works in.

From the outset, George goes above and beyond the call of duty. He gets a paper round to complete with his client Sean even topping up his wages with his own money. Although an unorthodox approach in terms of the care worker rule book, the job gives Sean a sense of pride and self confidence. He later proudly tells his girlfriend Sarah's mother that he has a job and even continues the job after George's departure. George has the same approach to his other client Andy, who is severely disabled. He takes him to church every Sunday to sing and also takes him to the pub, giving him beer in his cup. During these times the reader is told of Andy's smiles and contentment, proof that he enjoys the interaction.

But throughout the novel George's techniques aren't approved of by his colleagues. He is working extra hours and getting too involved. His colleagues are all far more traditional in their approach. Mike is a unenthusiastic jobsworth, obssessing about the weekend rota and the fact that his teenage sons will be alone. Angel does things by the book and is defensive when George criticises her. Apart from one secret liasion, she constantly contradicts George, approving an approach which is most economical for the service. Boss Test is nervous, miserable and unhappy, stuck in a job he detests with responsibility he doesn't want. George's colleagues represent everything he rails against; pen-pushers obssessed with budgets, rules, meetings and set working practices.

The novel poses awkward questions about responsibility for people needing care. Following his mother's death, Sean has been cared for by his alcoholic father. But when it becomes clear he cannot cope with caring for his son, the care team are forced to decide his fate. Sean is sent to live in a hospital temporarily, an experience that leaves him scarred, agitated and upset. He repeats his wish not to go back there. The team are forced to ask his sister if she can care for him. But as a mother who works full-time she refuses and is unable to commit to caring for her brother. Sean's experience reflects how people in the care system can simply get found in a situation where they have nowhere to go and no-one who wants to take responsibility for them. Should it be Sean's father who gets his act together? Should his sister sacrifice her job and her family to care for him? Or should the care team use their stretched budget to care for him?

The relationship between Sean and Sarah is perhaps the most uneasy part of the novel's frustration with the care system. Because they are in the care system, their relationship is presumed by many to be a chaste and innocent one. It is assumed that because they are mentally disabled and more vulnerable than others, they won't venture towards sex. Sarah's mother helps her to apply make up but it never occurs to her that her daughter may be considering, or may even have already had, sex. When Sean confides in George that he wants to sleep with Sarah, even George is a little reluctant to talk in depth. But after discussing safe sex, he decides they should be left to it. However, when they are caught together, the fall out is devastating for both George and Sean. The episode makes the reader question whether George was right not to tell anyone that their relationship was sexual and whether the people who assumed it wasn't were simply naive.

A damning indictment against the social care system, like Poppy Shakespeare, My Piece of Happiness shows that 'care' may be the last thing on the list for the care system. Trying to balance budgets, case loads and rules all become above the clients' needs. Angry and realistically set against a brilliantly portrayed backdrop of Cardiff, My Piece of Happiness exposes the shortcomings of a system that puts clients last.

My next read: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The Welsh Girl - Peter Ho Davies

A novel set in a Welsh village in 1944, The Welsh Girl shows how war makes people question everything they thought safe and familiar and stuggle to adapt to a world filled with fear and uncertainty. Playing with gender roles and the false stereotypes surrounding enemies and heros, the novel shows that war, love and hate are never simple and that humanity can connect people who are meant to be foes.

The novel centres upon three main characters: Esther is a 17-year-old barmaid who feels trapped and frustrated in her home village; Karsten is a German soldier incarcerated in a POW camp after surrendering under enemy fire; Rotherham is a German Jew tasked with interviewing Nazi Rudolph Hess, who claims to have no memory of his part in the Nazi party but swears he was not involved in the Final Solution.

Identity is a central theme to The Welsh Girl. Rotherham is desperate to hide his Jewish roots from Hess and those around him, struggling with hatred for the anti-Semitism he and his family faced but keen to hide his Jewish roots from his colleagues and the people he interrogates. He passes himself off as an Englishmen, using his fluent German to his advantage. During the novel, we discover that Rotherham has often pretended to be a captured German soldier, hiding among the ranks to gather intelligence. But he is discovered. Hess also sees through his facade; he confronts Rotherham and tells him he believes he is a Jew. Rotherham's repeated failed attempts at hiding who you are shows that no matter what lengths he goes to, he canot escape who and what he really is.

Esther finds herself violated and abused after believing the English soldier who courts her is a gentleman. She finds herself in a situation she can't handle and is raped by the soldier, an encounter which leaves her pregnant. It is her naive notions of right and wrong that let her down again following the rape. The reader sees her thinking of the word but dismissing it because her idea of rape involves horror, screaming and melodrama. She tells herself that she went out with the soldier and that they had been seen in public together and entirely dismissed the idea that she was attacked.

The notion of nationality is important here. Later in the novel, when Karsten is on the run, the villagers fear the roaming German could violate their women; there is no notion that these violations could already be happening and have happened closer to home. Because Karsten is 'the enemy' he is the man to be feared, the man without morals, the man who will take advantage. But ironically this very man Esther is meant to fear is the one man that shows her love, care and unswerving loyalty. The notion of nationality is important in terms of Esther's baby. She is 17 and an unmarried mother, two facts that could be guaranteed to ruin her in 1944. But by pretending the child is that of lost war hero Rhys, Esther is embraced and supported by the community, a young woman who would be a married mother if her 'lover' had returned from war.

Absent mothers are another key theme in the novel. Karsten pines for his mother's approval, torturing himself over his surrender. He lies to his mother, pretending he is fine, and she lies to him in return in the single letter he receives from her while in the POW camp. He is desperate for her to perceive him as a hero, not a coward. Esther's mother is also absent after passing away. In her mother's absence, she finds herself taking on the motherly role, keeping the farm and house running, her life a constant drudgery of household duties. Her maternal role is reinforced by her care for evacuee Jim. She loves, disciplines and watches over him like a mother, positioning her as a woman far beyond her 17 years.

Overall, The Welsh Girl is a fascinating insight into three people's very different experiences of war. It shows how set notions of enemy and hero are a lot less clear cut, even though the people left behind may not want to face up to that. The novel is filled with lies, deceptions and omissions, all of which allow people to continue in these deluded notions to enable them to continue to comfort themselves during the harrowing realities of war.

My next read: My Piece of Happiness by Lewis Davies.

My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult

For this read, I'm going to do something a bit different. I am going to compare Jodi Picoult's novel to the film. I saw the film a few weeks before reading the book and I was surprised at how much was condensed, changed and omitted. So here goes...

My Sister's Keeper is a novel which explores one of the biggest moral dilemmas a parent can face: should you have a child to save their sibling? And, if you do, at what point does your 'saviour' child have the right to say no? The novel centres around thirteen-year-old Anna, who was born to save her sister Kate from cancer. Anna decides to sue her parents Brian and Sara for medical emancipation, telling them she doesn't want to donate a kidney to her sister.

The novel is split between the perspectives of several characters: Anna, Sara, Brian, Anna's brother Jesse, Anna's lawyer Campbell and her guardian ad litem Julia. It is only in the novel's conclusion that we hear from Kate. This is an interesting choice. In many ways, the novel is all about Kate; her illness is the driving force behind the events. It links and polarises the characters and her survival is the Fitzgerald family's mission. But until the novel's conclusion, the reader is never given her voice, her opinion. It is all second hand, the characters' perceptions of who she is and what she wants. And as the novel progresses to the conclusion of the court case, it is clear that Anna is the only one who really knows what Kate wants. In the novel, Kate only gets her voice after Anna's death. It is only then, and some years in the future, that Kate gets her chance to speak. With its dramatically different ending, the film does not do this. Instead, Kate dies and Anna lives, meaning that, apart from through Anna at court, the viewer never gets Kate's perspective. Like in the novel, she is seen in scraps, a picture of her character built through others' conversations and recollections.

Both the film and the novel are more about the ripple effect Kate's illness has on her family. Jesse is pushed into the shadows and Anna becomes important for her genetic ability to save Kate. Sara's quest to save her daughter becomes her number one priority. Even her husband gets pushed aside emotionally as she focuses her energy on Kate alone. In the book, her emotional neglect of her family is shown in Jesse's actions. He's a thief, an arsonist and experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Sara and Brian have lost patience with him, seeing him as a selfish attention seeker. In the film, however, Jesse is a different character. He is soulful, lost and searching, roaming the streets to find a sense of purpose. It could be that the film would have been too long to focus on Jesse's delinquency; or it could be that the film was dulling his character, making him more sympathetic to the American filmgoer.

The film makes a number of changes to Kate's relationship and last night with Taylor. In the book, Kate decides not to wear a wig as it scratches her head. She also has to wear a dress which fits over her medication line. This practical detail is glossed over in the film, during which Kate is transformed into a flame-haired beauty in a revealing white dress. In the book, Sara chaperones the dance Kate and Taylor attend. In the film, this doesn't happen, leaving them free to slip out and sexually experiment in a disused part of the hospital. When Taylor doesn't call in the film, Kate thinks it is because she let him go too far; in the novel, she thinks he's just cooling off. These subtle changes adapt the tone of their relationship, making Kate's experience something filmgoers could relate to more.

The choice to adapt the ending of the film is the biggest and most controversial change to the novel. In the book, Anna is killed in a car crash hours after winning medical emancipation. Her kidney is used to save Kate and she survives. In the film, the family accept Kate's wishes to die and she passes away. It ends with Anna and her family making their annual holiday on the anniversary of her death, looking into the sunset. At the back of the novel, Picoult says: "...if I wanted it to be a true story, [Anna's death] was the right conclusion". It is interesting, therefore, that such a change was made to the film. The film's ending certainly is more predictable and more "Hollywood". It is also less shocking for the filmgoer. Killing Anna kills everything she battled for. It flips everything the reader expects. But that's what makes it a good ending.

Harrowing, thought-provoking and tragic, both as a film and a novel My Sister's Keeper explores the complex relationships of families and how the illness of a loved one affects every person. But they do so fairly differently and these differences will keep you thinking almost as much as the moral questions Picoult poses.

My next read: The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller

A novel which questions our perceptions of friendship, family and sexuality, Notes on a Scandal is a read which reveals the weaknesses we expose ourselves to by trusting those who appear to be our confidant.

It is written in the first person in the voice of Barbara Covett, a cold, old-fashioned comprehensive school teacher and spinster, who is writing an account of the fate which befell her colleague and friend Sheba Hart. Early on, the reader is told that Sheba is in fact the infamous art teacher convicted of sexually assaulting her 15-year-old pupil Steven Connolly. The novel is an account of the circumstances that lead to the affair, its exposure and its effect on Sheba's life all from Barbara's skewed point of view.

From its first pages, the novel is dripping with malice thanks to Barbara's impossible standards, obsessional codes of conduct and complete contempt for every person around her. At first this contempt also extends to Sheba, who Barbara silently derides for her see-through skirts, her messy buns and, most importantly, her lack of control of her pupils. But this contempt ebbs away when she sees that Sheba distances herself from staff alliegances. It also disappears after Barbara's plot to reveal that Sheba's children are privately educated falls flat in the staff room when Sheba reveals her son Ben has Down Syndrome. After Barbara helps Sheba control a wild class, the women strike up an unlikely friendship. Sheba begins implicitly trusting the woman who will ultimately machinate her downfall.

As the novel progresses, it reveals snapshots of Barbara's meticulously structured and unhealthily intense lifestyle. She agonises over what to wear to Sheba's informal dinner and berates herself for buying lilac sandals with bows. When the sandals cause a blister which bleeds so badly Sheba gives her a plaster, Barbara sees it as a physical punishment for her vanity. Throughout the novel, Barbara is calculated, remote and often emotionless. But the biggest insight into her emotions happens when she discovers her cat Portia is dying. She is consumed with grief, lovingly cooking a sausages-in-butter last supper for her only companion for the past 12 years. The fact Barbara feels like this about a cat is significant. Unlike people, animals are constant, loyal and cannot infringe the layers of social codes she has constructed.

Through Barbara's eyes, Sheba is willowy, idealistic and ethereal, desperate to help her students and "make a difference". Married at 20 to an older man Richard, she put her dreams of being an artist on hold to raise her children Polly and Ben. Beautiful, tall and slim, Sheba is desperately frightened of losing her looks. She is intimidated by the blossoming beauty of her daughter Polly and feels flattered by Steven's crush and the attention he lavishes upon her. Desperate to feel young again, she gives into her sexual attraction to him and their illicit, illegal relationship blossoms. In her desperation, she overlooks his immaturities, focuses on his nearly-manly body and lets herself believe it is love to justify what she is doing. She retains this delusional almost holy perception of the relationship long after it is revealed, making a sculpture of the two of them together modelled like a Madonna and her child.

It is in the character of Steven that the novel forces the reader to ask many questions about sexuality and where the line between a legal and illegal relationship is drawn. In the court case, and its racy tabloid coverage, Sheba is the seducer, taking away Steven's innocence. But in Barbara's testimony, Steven is the pursuer. Sexually experienced, he makes the first move and seemingly lavishes in the relationship until he bores of her. But the reader has to ask whether this version of events can be trusted. The reader is only given an account from Sheba, which is transcribed by Barbara. There is no account from Steven himself. Even when the affair is revealed, it is Steven's mother who confronts Sheba, painting a tale of her son sobbing at his loss of innocence.

On the question of where the line between legal and illegal can be drawn, the reader must consider Sheba's relationship with her husband Richard. Richard was Sheba's lecturer and they married when she was just 20. Like Sheba, he was her teacher. Like Sheba's relationship with Connolly, there is a significant age gap. But by Sheba being a few years older and by being conducted outside of the context of school, their relationship is legal, accepted (although, significantly, not by Sheba's mother) and given the ultimate stamp of approval from society: marriage. Twenty years on, she feels bored, stifled and unappreciated and repeats the cycle herself with a much more dangerous affair.

Alongside the issue of what society deems sexually unacceptable is the issue of class. It is a central theme throughout the novel. Sheba is the daughter of a world-famous economist. She lives in a massive Victorian house and enjoys a never-a-care middle class lifestyle. Being the model of careful budgeting and prudence, Barbara envies Sheba's wealth and the apparent carefree lifestyle it has given her. For all her envy, Barbara is the perpetual snob, looking down on her colleagues and the students she teachers. She feels she is socially, intellectually and morally superior. Class is important in Sheba's relationship with Steven. With little experience of "working class" people, Sheba believes she has found a diamond in the rough. A sensitive, artistic boy she can mould and encourage. It adds to her general sympathy for him and the delusion she has surrounding their relationship.

While the balance of power teeters between Barbara and Sheba throughout the novel, by its conclusion it is solely Barbara in the driving seat. The clues to their personalities which lead to the conclusion are in their surname. Sheba is a Hart, a sensitive woman who thinks with her heart and sees the good in people to her own detriment. Barbara is a Covett, a woman who desires something intensely. This something is kinship, human love and affection. But the exact motiviation for this desire - purely friendship or sexual - is never entirely clear. A sexual motive is hinted at in her jealousy of Richard and Steven and her attempt to stroke Sheba's arm to comfort her, like she did with the girls at school.

A dark, witty and wonderfully observed novel, Notes on a Scandal is a perfectly conceived psychological thriller that shows your enemies may be much closer than you could ever imagine.

My next read: My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.

The Visible World - Mark Slouka

A novel documenting one man's quest to find out the truth about the mysterious man his mother truly loved, The Visible World is a sweeping, poetic tale encompassing war and the unyeilding strength of wartime love.

Split into three parts, the novel begins with the unnamed narrator remembering growing up in New York after leaving his parents' native Czechoslovakia. After his mother's suicide, it then documents his journey to Prague to find out the truth about his mother's lover before she married his father. When he doesn't find the answers he seeks, in the third part the narrator then imagines the story of the love affair, envisioning his mother's lover as Tomas, one of the men involved with the assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.

Using long, winding prose, The Visible World unfurls slowly, scattering the horrendous tales of World War Two Czechoslovakia among stunning observations about love and relationships. In its first section, the narrator remembers his parents entertaining fellow Czechs in New York. They swap folk tales and play traditional music to keep memories of their homeland alive. His parents' relationship is seemingly based on compromise and the narrator is infuriated by his father's quiet acceptance of his mother's love for this mysterious, absent man.

In its first part, the novel builds up appearances of contentment, which are quickly punctured by events bubbling under the surface. The facade of happiness is shattered with mini parables dotted throughout the narrative, such as his parents' aquaintance Mr Chalupa, a suspected Nazi conspiritor, who dies quickly of cancer and his mother's flowers in the garden, which, after an excited buying frenzy, wither and die after she stops tending to them, replaced with weeds.

When the narrator travels to Prague in the novel's second section, he hopes to find the truth about his mother's love. Instead, he finds war veterans whose scraps of memories intersect with his mother's life. There is no definite, concrete answer to this man, how they met, why they parted and what happened to him, much to the narrator's frustration. It leads to the book's third section, his fictional account of what may have been.

It is here that Slouka's writing truly comes into being. With his never-ending sentences and catch-a-breath images he creates and imagines a blistering wartime love affair doomed from the start. In this popular genre of fiction, it would be easy to verge on cliches and tired characters. But Slouka gives it an entire new dimension, writing a relationship which is so true to life it's easy to forget it is fiction.

Tomas and Ivana quickly fall for each other and it is a world-stops-turning romance. Ivana turns her back on her boyfriend and her family for just a few days with Tomas. They creep away from the real world, inhabiting their own space in a forest, foraging for food and living in dream-like bliss. After those few days, what time they have left together happens in snatches and shadows - a chance encounter at a tram, a day walking the streets and hiding together in a cemetary. It is convincing and engrossing, showing just how far reaching war and its consequences are. Slouka writes like an angel, describing Tomas's fears, weaknesses and terrors as perfectly as he conjures up his love for Ivana.

A novel which brings to life the sheer madness of war as expertly as it captures the obssessive way love can make nothing else matter, The Visible World is a magnificent read which shows how love can stifle and ruin lives once it is snatched away.

My next read: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller.

Poppy Shakespeare - Clare Allan

Set in a mental health hospital's day centre, Poppy Shakespeare is an enlightening vision of modern British mental health services and how they ultimately fail people. It shows how very thin and fragile the line between 'madness' and sanity and how the poor service itself can drive people over the edge.

It tells the tale of N, a young woman who has lost the majority of her family to suicide and has been a day patient at the Dorothy Fish hospital for 13 years. N is very happy in her world at Dorothy Fish, plodding along taking tablets for an impresive list of mental health problems she appears to have. N splits her life between the Dorothy Fish and her flat in the Darkwoods Estate. She knows the mental health system inside out, getting the most "MAD money" by playing her therapists in assessments and filling out application forms with creative and inventive lies.

N's life is changed when she is asked to be a tour guide to new patient Poppy Shakespeare, a young mum who insists she is not mentally ill and doesn't need to be at the Dorothy Fish. Poppy sticks out from the other patients. She is glossy, well-presented and eloquent, insisting she has been admitted as a day patient by mistake. Soon N becomes much more than a tour guide, assisting Poppy on her quest to prove she is sane.

Written in the first person using N's colloquial tongue, Poppy Shakespeare quickly draws the reader in to the life at Dorothy Fish, where patients are equally terrified of being discharged and being moved into 24/7 wards. The patients are categorised alphabetically, each assigned a seat according to the first letter of their name. New patients with names starting with the same initial are only admitted after the demise or exit of the last patient. They are constantly trying to outdo each other, without tipping over to the point of appearing too mad. They barter their pills for other medication and know when to join the queue precisely to ensure they don't miss out on their free lunch of fatty lamb.

Allan's writing is earthy and realistic, making Poppy's plight even more harsh. She is met with impossible conundrums and closed doors. She cannot fight her treatment as she doesn't receive MAD money, but she is refused MAD money because she isn't mad enough. Her presence at the Dorothy Fish isn't compulsary, but if she doesn't attend she will be made to attend.

As Poppy's quest to prove she isn't mentally ill becomes increasingly futile, we see her confidence and belief in her cause ebb away as N's strength and confidence flourishes. This contrast is shown most markedly in their physical appearances. Poppy slowly becomes unkempt and uncaring as N is transformed using Poppy's unwanted clothes and make up. By the novel's devastating end, they have swapped places and positions. N is discharged from the Dorothy Fish; Poppy is committed after seemingly descend into mental illness.

Like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Poppy Shakespeare is a terrifying vision of mental health services in Britain. The drive for targets and quantifiable results allows people to be used and slip through the net. Poppy is a guinea pig, a human yardstick used to measure the apparent madness of the hospital's patients. But in the process, she loses her life, her daughter and her sanity. Patients discharged throughout the novel commit suicide, unable to cope with being released for no real reason. And N, the patient so adept at showing others how mad she is, doesn't seem to be mentally ill at all.

Poppy Shakespeare is an angry and damning vision of how targets and efficiency can overshadow the real mission of mental health care: giving people appropriate care and support for their needs. A shocking yet oddly funny read, it uses traditional perceptions of mental illness to show how people can play the role of the "mad man" when the ones who really need help are sitting quietly in the sidelines.

My next read: The Visible World by Mark Slouka.

One Day - David Nicholls

A novel telling two sides of a love affair that never quite seems to happen, One Day is a refreshing and gut-wrenchingly honest tale of love in modern times.

Set on the same day, July 15, over 20 years, the novel flips between the perspective of Em, a bright, witty feminist dreamer and Dex, a spoilt self-centred rich boy who has a soul well-hidden under his looks and designer clothes. The couple meet on the final day of university and the novel tracks their lives in the 20 years after their graduation day.

With this premise, the unlikely coupling could have been a corny, trashy romance. But with Nicholls's masterful touch and ability to perfectly capture the realities of relationships One Day is a hauntingly honest portrayal of how our prejudices, insecurities and day-to-day lives can delay and get in the way of what really matters: love.

Em is insecure, afraid and disappointed by the reality of life after university, finding herself working in a Mexican restaurant chain despite her first class degree. She believes Dex is too good for her. Dex is rich and without direction, travelling the world before landing a job in TV. Handsome and vain, he is too busy sleeping around to confront his real feelings for Em.

By treating the reader to both characters' thoughts and a life-changing letter which is never posted, Nicholls shares the nearly-said and nearly-happened moments that make putting down the book impossible. From the unspoken feelings on a holiday together and during a painfully horrendous meal during Dex's drug and alcohol addiction, the book charts how our fears of being rejected delay world-stops-turning romances. Em and Dex are divided by their unsaid feelings and class differences. Dex has the swagger and confidence of the perpetually rich; Em is obssessed with being downtrodden and feels inadequate.

Nicholls writing isn't wordy, worthy prose packed with metaphors; it is quietly observed, finding the love in people's flaws, however big or small. Dex is easy to hate with his selfish demands, his ruthless promiscuity and emotional dependence on Em. He is an alcoholic drug user who pushes away everyone around him and leaves his baby screaming upstairs when he decides he can't cope with her. But despite his list of flaws, he is written so well, the reader can't stop loving him. The same goes for Em and her chronic insecurities. They are both so well-drawn and realistic the reader roots for them even more.

The book is also packed with loves that never quite match up. Ian is a not-very-funny stand up comedian, who would do anything and everything for the smallest piece of Em's heart. On paper, he's the perfect man - but he's just not the man she loves. Sylvie is Dex's beautiful, cold and unnerving wife, the only woman he commits to apart from Emma.

One Day is a charming read about how love, however strong, can easily go unsaid and unrequited in a world where people are too afraid to say and let themseleves believe what they feel. Frustrating, sad and unrelentingly romantic, it shows that however we try to hide it and run away from it, true love cannot be escaped or avoided.

My next read: Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan.

The Virgin Blue - Tracy Chevalier

A novel documenting the lives of two women living 400 years apart struggling against the prejudices of the society surrounding them, The Virgin Blue is an uncomfortable and sometimes devastating read.

It surrounds the linked but very different lives of two female characters. In the 16th century, Isabelle lives in a harsh French village, where she is cast under constant suspicion and disdain because of her red hair. Four hundred years later, her ancestor Ella moves from America to a rural French town with her husband Rick. Both have very different struggles against the people around them.

Despite the 400-year gap, there are similarities and themes which link the women. Both live in unhappy marriages; both feel osctracised in the villages they live in; both are outsiders. Ella is phonetically similar to Isabelle and both are midwives. As the novel progresses, Ella is also nicknamed La Rouss as her brown hair gradually turns red.

But for every similarity, there are dozens of historical, social and cultural changes that separate them. Isabelle is forced to marry bullying rapist Etienne to save her family from financial ruin. He beats her, virtually imprisons her and sexually abuses her. Ella married Rick for love and he is a loving and respectful husband. Isabelle is made to give up midwifery by Etienne; Ella must give it up until she gets her qualifications in France. Isabelle has no choice but to have children; Ella decides to have a child and gleefully empties her contraceptive pills into the river near her home.

Their parallel yet often opposing experiences act as a mirror for the different pressures, expectations and limitations of women's lives. Isabelle is at the complete mercy of her husband, his violence and his wishes. She is controlled, stifled and locked away. When she is accused of an affair which she never had, she is beaten to within an inch of her life.

Ella has the freedom to make friends, indulge in an affair and explore her vilage. She makes the choice to leave her husband and end their stale marriage despite his wishes. But for all her freedom, Ella is still not completely free. She falls victim to the wicked gossip of women in the village and feels trapped, frustrated and isolated by her inability to work.

Isabelle isn't the only woman who falls victim to the misogyny of the world surrounding her, however. Her daughter Marie is joyous, wilful and passionate; her brave words save her Huguenot family from slaughter when they are confronted by Catholics. But Marie's lively personality lead to her downfall. When she is found with her mother's precious patch of blue cloth underneath her black dress, she is eventually tricked and drowned by her father and brothers. In killing Marie, they take away Isabelle's only love in her life.

Colour is a central theme in the novel. Isabelle is obssessed with the blue of the Virgin Mary and deceives her husband in order to purchase the precious cloth in the shade. Ella is plagued with nightmares of this blue, which suffocate and terrify her.

The Virgin Blue is Chevalier's first novel and it sets out the interest in gender politics and colour that shape her later works. While colour is central to the novel, it is not realised as expertly as it is in Chevalier's later classic work Girl with a Pearl Earring.

By contrasting Isabelle and Ella's lives, Chevalier beautifully exposes the gulf between both women's experiences. But the gender politics don't ring so true in Ella's story. She is swept off her feet by her lover Jean-Paul, who accepts her unquestioningly even when she is pregnant with her husband's child. While the reader can understand that Ella feels lost and isolated, the character of her husband Rick is so marginalised it is difficult to sympathise with Ella and her affair. Rick isn't a bad husband like Etienne; he does nothing wrong. This makes it difficult to empathise with Ella and her choice to end her marriage.

Despite this, The Virgin Blue is an interesting read filled with brutal examples of how hard life was for women in the 16th century. Packed with atmosphere and lyrical observations, it shows the devastating lack of choice women 400 years ago had, how far we have come and how far we still have to go.

My next read: One Day by David Nicholls.

The House at Riverton - Kate Morton

The House at Riverton is a deep, brooding and gut-wrenching novel about how the choices we make for love can shape families, fate and history. Weaving time frames between 1914 and 1924 and one woman's memories in 1999, the novel exposes how loyalty, love and family ties can transgress right and wrong, truth and fiction.

The novel's narrator is Grace Bradley, a 98-year-old woman in a residential home, who was a maid at The House of Riverton as a young woman. Grace is visited by a filmmaker who is making a film about the suicide of war poet Robbie Hunter in 1924, a suicide Grace witnessed. As Grace remembers that fateful day, she slowly reveals a tragic secret she has hidden from history.

A beautifully plotted novel, it is in its characterisation that The House of Riverton comes into its own. From Grace, the maid loyal to the end, to Robbie and Alfred, who are changed and battered by the horrors of war. The Hartford sisters are beautiful, privileged and polar opposites. Hannah is an intelligent, wilful suffragette, determined to have an independent life on an equal footing to a man; Emmeline is gorgeous, feminine and traditional, desperate to marry well.

But as the novel unfolds, the sisters fates are flipped. Hannah finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage, stifled and suffocated by her husband's patriarchal, class-obssessed family. A few years younger, Emmeline managed to carve out her independence following the death of their father, able to smoke, drink and take lovers. The tensions of class and social norms threaten, stifle and forbid many of the relationships throughout the novel, leading to many unhappy endings.

But the relationships between the characters show the different types, depths and strengths of love. Reunited after the war, Hannah and Robbie are besotted with each other, seemingly willing to go to any lengths to be together. But Hannah's love for her family ultimately dooms their fate. Grace discovers a secret tying her to Hannah and, when she finds true love with Alfred, allows it to pass her by to remain loyal. Even the Hartford sisters' father Frederick has his own secret about love, which ultimately led to his lover's doom.

In its predominantly post-war setting, The House at Riverton recreates the psychological aftermath of World War One. Grace and Hannah find the men they love are changed, hardened and damaged by the war, tending towards a cold-bloodedness they can barely understand. And the men who survived are the lucky ones, with many men wiped out in he novel. Hannah and Emmeline's brother David and their uncle Lord Ashby are annhilated by the war, wiping out two generations of the Hartford family. Lord Ashby's pregnant widow Jemima is left to deliver their baby alone after years of tragedy, losing two sons before her husband.

In its sections in 1999, The House at Riverton mirrors the servant/master relationship between Sylvia and Grace. Unlike Grace, as a care home assistant Sylvia doesn't need to give the same level of servitude. She goes beyond her duty and is close to Grace, but she also leaves her alone at times and doesn't bend to her every demand. The film of the events at Riverton also acts as a mirror to the lies surrounding what happened. It reveals history's perception of what happens and how the so-called events are bent for the purposes of fiction. While Grace's version of events are bent to protect the Hartford family, the film's version is changed to make a better story.

While it is atmospheric, well plotted and beautifully realised, The House at Riverton isn't as much of a mystery as Morton's other novel, The Forgotten Garden. I worked out much of the twists and turns hundreds of pages in advance, unlike the narrative of The Forgotten Garden. But Morton's writing and characterisation still make it a can't-put-down read till the end.

A stunning and heartbreaking read, The House at Riverton invokes a critical time in British class and social history to show how everlasting love and loyalty can be.

My next read: The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier

The Pirate's Daughter - Margaret Cezair-Thompson

A novel documenting the tensions of race, class, sexuality, and gender in a changing Jamaica, The Pirate's Daughter is an epic novel about the pain of love and family relationships.

Spanning 30 years, the novel tells the tale of Ida Joseph, a teenager entranced by the presence of Hollywood actor Error Flynn in her home country. Beautiful, passionate and wilful, Ida finds herself in love with Flynn and, after a brief love affair, has his child, May.

The novel documents Ida's struggle to find her way in the world and to let go of Flynn, doing her best to provide for her daughter. The focus then switches to May, a deep, intelligent and lonely child, who in turn fights to find her place and to fall in love with the right person.

Epic, atmospheric and evocative, The Pirate's Daughter uses Jamaica's changing political climate as the backdrop for a winding saga probing the complexities of families and love. With her parents unmarried and from different ethnic backgrounds, Ida is uncomfortable with her place in the world. Unable to relate to her traditional Jamaican mother, she finds herself turning to her father Eli for comfort and to be understood. As she nears womanhood, she increasingly turns to Flynn before they become lovers when she is 16.

In the novel, Flynn personifies colonialism with mere presence and his relationship with Ida. He is blown onto the island in a storm. While there, he buys his own island, transforms it and makes it known as a paradise to his friends and fellow celebrities. He arrives, buys, transforms and conquers. In his relationship with Ida, he decides she is beautiful and starts a brief love affair, one which cools after it is consummated and when May has his unborn child. She is cast aside like an unwanted toy. Her pleas for help and her love for him go unacknowledged evermore.

Her daughter May is later even more uncertain of where she fits in. She is a mixed race child, the daughter of a Hollywood legend. Her peers brand her a "white witch" while her fiance Martin later jilts her for being "coloured" and illegitimate. Like her mother, she uses sex to try to validate herself. May works her way through a multitude of lovers and one night stands before finally finding love and happiness.

Beautifully weaving fact and fiction against Jamaica's changing political landscape, The Pirate's Daughter is an unusual read, which has the echoes of Wide Sargasso Sea. Poetic and perfectly plotted, it is a dark, sad and desolate read which shows just how unwavering love can be, even if it is unrequited and built on fantasy.

My next read: The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

A stunning, beautifully observed novel, The Secret Scripture is a raw insight into Ireland's turbulent history and its devastating consequences on the life of a young woman.

The novel tells the story of Roseanne McNulty, a 99-year-old woman who has spent most of her adult life in a mental hospital. As she approaches her hundredth birthday, Roseanne writes her memoir, revealing a tragic web of misery that leads to Roseanne's incarceration. Throughout the novel, Roseanne's pyschiatrist Dr Grene attempts to analyse her, but more often analyses himself as Roseanne resists his questions and enquiries.

The Secret Scripture is a stunning read, which slowly unfurls the tragic truth behind Roseanne ending up in a mental home. As a girl, Roseanne is beautiful, loving and naive. She idolises her father, who includes her on his adventures working in a graveyard and as a rat catcher. But by being included, Roseanne is exposed to horrors. She sees her father struggle against poverty and accidentally cause a fire which kills more than a hundred children at an orphanage. Soon after, Roseanne, 16, is left to care for her mother alone when her father is found hanged. She quits school and gets a job as her mother slowly descends into madness.

It is from there that the tragedy which blights her life continue. Blonde and beautiful, Roseanne becomes an object of lust for older men in Sligo, one of whom attempts to rape her. Soon she marries but after being accused of adultery the marriage falls apart and a few years after she finds herself in a mental hospital.

The novel is a raw and disturbing insight into Ireland's history, with Roseanne falling victim to the prejudices of the civil war, varying religions and the men who control her. With no parents to protect her, Roseanne's short-lived independence as a waitress is chipped away when she marries. She is moved to the outskirts of the village, can no longer work, her mother is committed and she is kept under the watchful eye of her husband and the community around her.

Barry uses parallels to expose the extreme injustice Roseanne faces. She is cut off, ostracised and her marriage is annulled beyond her power after she is seen meeting a man by her local priest, despite nothing ever happening. In contrast, Dr Grene is punished less obviously by his wife Bet after his infidelity. Roseanne is judged savagely by her husband, her community and even the Catholic church for her perceived "nymphomiania"; Dr Grene is simply subjected to separate bedrooms.

A fascinating insight into attitudes towards gender, sexuality, religion and madness in Ireland in the 1920s and 30s, The Secret Scripture is a brilliantly observed and dosturbing read.

My next read: The Pirate's Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson

Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

A prequel responding to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea gives a voice to Jane Eyre's most mysterious and marginalised character, Rochester's first wife Bertha Mason.

The novel tells the tale of Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole woman struggling to adapt to an impoverished life in the West Indies after the abolition of slavery. It charts Antoinette's childhood and womanhood, when she marries Mr Rochester and is gradually moulded into Bertha Mason.

Wide Sargasso Sea is a literary classic, which is still studied today more than 40 years after it was published. After wanting to read it for years, I finally picked up the novel and was surprised by what I found.

The novel charts a world which couldn't be further away from the grey, dreary England of Jane Eyre. It is hot, exotic, mysterious and hostile, with racial tensions underpinning and overwhelming Antoinette and her family's every day life.

Like her future rival Jane, Antoinette is naive, lonely and unloved. Her father already dead, she is rejected by her mother who lavishes her attention on her disabled brother Pierre. Her only friend Tia only associates with her after the friendship was engineered by Antoinette's nanny Christophine and then turns on her viciously. Antoinette is pushed out further when her mother remarries Mr Mason. When the family home is set alight in a blaze of racial hate, Antoinette's mother is tipped into madness and the girl's life is never the same again. Her mother later dies, leaving Antoinette rich.

Through Antoinette's narration, we soon discover that she has married Mr Rochester (although he is never named). Honeymooning in a place called Massacre, the marriage soon turns sour when Rochester starts to believe wicked lies and rumours about his new bride. He pushes Antionette away and beds one of her servants, determined to break her.

Rochester is cold, vicious and unfeeling, a man who married Antoinette for her fortune and has the gall to take away everything she is and owns, including her name. Antoinette is the ultimate other; she is a woman, white yet Creole, exotic but still rejected by the community surrounding her. She loses power with each page of the novel, completely shackled by her marriage. She has lost her fortune, her status and her independence.

Against a backdrop of magic, rumour and mystery, Antoinette is driven into madness as she is stripped of everything she ever had, including her dignity and freedom. Rochester takes her to England and locks her up without ever visiting her.

Dreamy, disturbing and dark, Wide Sargasso Sea is a fascinating response to Jane Eyre, giving a voice to the so-called mad first wife. Rochester is shown as a calculating brute, a man who undoubtedly does not deserve a second chance of love that he gets with Jane. While it is a good read, it is so short part of me felt some opportunities were lost, particularly the surprisingly brief section of Bertha's imprisonment. Although not completely satisfying, Wide Sargasso Sea is a must-read for anyone who wants to see Jane Eyre from a new, exciting and darker perspective.

My next read: The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry.

Scottsboro - Ellen Feldman

A novel weaving facts and fictions about the real-life 1931 case of nine young black men accused of raping two white women, Scottsboro reawakens the intense racial tensions of America and the very different worlds inhabited by people of different races and classes at the time.

The novel starts in the build up to the accusation and the reader is given the facts of the case from the outset. Victoria Price and Ruby Bates are young prostitutes plying their trade travelling on a freight train. Nine young black men are also travelling on the train. When the train is invaded by a group of white men baying for blood, they ask Victoria and Ruby if they were attacked by the black men. Surrounded, Victoria tells them they had been raped. From there, the novel unfolds the devastating ripples of consequences of the girls' lie.

The main narrator in the novel is Alice Whittier, a fictional journalist who is reporting on the case. Alice is modern, rich and out to carve her career. But when she meets Ruby, she cannot help but get pulled into Ruby's world. A desperately poor mill worker and prostitute, Ruby is trapped by her lie and Alice is determined to tell Ruby's side of the story. From there, the women strike up an unlikely and, from Alice's perspective, unprofessional friendship as Ruby plucks up the courage to tell the truth.

Ruby is the other narrator in the novel, speaking in her colloquial, Southern style. Vain but endearing, sometimes worldly beyond her years, sometimes naive, Ruby's unprivileged and unhappy life is a world away from Alice's media parties and casual sexual relationships.

Based on a nutorious miscarriage of justice, Scottsboro could have been a book centring upon the most obvious and burning issue: race. Instead, it is a novel that goes way beyond, delving into the issues of class, gender, sexual attitudes and anti-Semitism as it covers the differing views on the case. From Victoria and Ruby, who don't want to tell the truth as it will stop the flow of dresses and make up they have received since the 'rape' to Alice who finds herself checking her belongings to see if Ruby has taken anything when she stays with her, Scottsboro unearths the most unsettling, deep-seated views of 1930s America.

No character is perfect - we discover even Alice's seemingly saintly father has an illegitimate child - and everyone has an agenda. Alice is always getting a new line for a story; Ruby is always craving material things to outshine Victoria; Abel speaks to the boys and Ruby and then twists their stories to suit the plot of his play. Feldmen's writing flows beautifully, perfectly capturing Ruby's plight and Alice's mixed motives as a journalist and a woman emotionally involved in the case.

Fascinating, intelligent and impeccably written and research, Scottsboro is an insightful read showing prejudices at their worst and capturing the climate of a case which put America's differing racial attitudes on trial.

My next read: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

A brooding, moody, and ambiguous read, The Little Stranger captures the uncertainty surrounding class, gender and society as Britain recovered from the ravages of World War Two.

With painstaking detail and characters drawn full of flaws and contradictions, Waters describes the doomed lives of the Ayres family and their home, Hundreds Hall. Rapidly losing their money, social status and land, the novel sees the family slowly chipped away as they are befriended by their local GP, Dr Faraday.

Widow Mrs Ayres is a shadow of her former self, dreamy, fragile and out of touch, trying to remember times long past with dinner parties and dresses; her son Roderick, scarred by a wartime accident while in the RAF, struggles to keep the family afloat as the new master of the house; 'spinster' Caroline is intelligent, forthright and masculine, dressed in mismatched and oversized clothes with unshaven legs.

As the narrative progresses, Hundreds Hall and its inhabitants seem to be slowly terrorised by an unwanted presence, a little stranger. While one by one the family begin to believe in the presence, stoic and patriarchal Dr Faraday explains the incidents away using his logic and apparent fascination with psychology. With every page, the family rely more and more upon his advice and with every page, they lose control of themselves, their loved ones and their home.

Like all of Waters's writing, The Little Stranger is a perfect snapshot of history, exposing society's foibles, flaws and contradictions. Dr Faraday is a self-obsessed control freak, determined to control the Ayreses and Hundreds Hall despite his belief that he has the best of intentions. As his control slips away, he becomes manic, trying every method to win it back, believing others to be deranged or tired when they refuse to obey him.

With his facial scars as a permanent reminder of his time in the RAF, Roderick encapsulates everything that is left behind by the war and how it destroyed the lives of all the men involved in fighting it. Mrs Ayres is an anachronism, physically clinging on to every remnant of the past from photographs to records to dresses. Caroline is an anachronism of her own, an independent and intelligent woman who, until Roderick's departure, has no voice or power in her family's affairs. Defined as a spinster and a squire's daughter, she, like the rest of her family, lives on the fringe of her village and society, not quite sure of where she fits in.

A complex and intriguing read, the novel, sadly, does not live up to Waters's masterful Fingersmith and The Night Watch. Those expecting her expert plot twists and turns will be disappointed; this is an altogether deeper read. Still it is atmospheric, unsettling and uncomfortable, never fully giving definite answers and conclusions. Disturbing and disquieting, The Little Stranger marks a shift in Waters's writing towards less plot trickery and a more understated, though still unsettling, read.

My next read: Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman.

The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway

A lyrical, understated and moving novel detailing the lives of three people who struggle to deal with life during the seige of Sarajevo in the early 1990s.

Galloway writes beautifully and simply, describing the lives of Kenan, a man dicing with death trying to get his family a supply of water, Dragan, a man attempting to cross the streets under the gaze of snipers and Arrow, a female counter sniper who struggles with her unwanted talent of killing the enemy. All three characters are united by one man, The Cellist, who plays music at the same time every day in memory of 22 people killed in the street while queueing for bread.

By writing about the horrors Kenan and Dragan witness trying to do simple day-to-day tasks, Galloway has created detailed scenes of war, harrowing in their apparent normality and the characters' often muted responses. Kenan and Dragan are emotionally shut off, terrified and fighting against their consciences as they realise they prize their survival above helping others. Both silently rage against the injustices and indignities of war.

Arrow starts out as a confident counter sniper, working to her own agenda and moral code. But as the conflict deepens, she finds her control slipping away and she is faced with choices she never believed she would face.

As it slowly reveals the harsh lives of civilians caught up in war, The Cellist of Sarajevo plays with gender roles, showing just how skewed their lives have become. Kenan is a petrified father, emasculated and fearful for his wife and his children. Parted from his wife and son, Dragan struggles with selfishness and cowardice as he leaves a friend lying bleeding in the path of a sniper. Repressed and numb, Arrow is the only main character to fight in the novel. She distances herself from her femininity and emotions, even adopting a new name in order to feel able to kill her male enemies.

Thought-provoking, illuminating and haunting, The Cellist of Sarajevo is a stunning novel which investigates the sickening depths and the comforting highs of humanity during war.

My next read: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.

The 19th Wife - David Ebershoff

A fascinating novel that mixes fact and fiction about the origins of polygamy in the Mormon Church. With a collection of narratives spanning more than 160 years, Ebershoff contrasts the life of a modern-day gay young man kicked out of a polygamous Mormon sect as a teen with that of the real-life Ann Eliza Young, a woman who became the 19th wife of Mormon Prophet Brigham Young in 1868.

The novel constantly plays with real accounts and fiction, combining fictitious articles, a Wikipedia entry, letters and memoirs of Ann Eliza with snippets of Brigham's actual speeches. With accounts coming from a range of characters and real-life historical figures, the reader is given a choice of narratives, leaving you wonder who, if anyone, you should trust.

At the centre of the novel is the issue of faith and why people believe what they believe. It spans the historical account of how polygamy was first introduced to a fictional interpretation of what life is like in a modern day polygamous sect. By playing with these separate time frames, Ebershoff exposes the physical and emotional consequences polygamy has on wives, children and, perhaps surprisingly, men. From the power-hungry men who devise rotas to see their wives to the women who are shouldered out for the newer, younger and prettier wives, The 19th Wife shows just how damaging polygamy can be while also explaining why so many women found themselves agreeing to the institution.

An intricate read, Ebershoff doesn't quite shifts time frames and narratives as expertly as A.S. Byatt in Possession. But as the novel reaches its intriguing end, the narratives slot together expertly like a jigsaw. Informative, thought-provoking and well-crafted, The 19th Wife is a novel that tells you all you need to know about polygamy and the controversy surrounding it.

My next read: The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

My Little Bookshelf begins

I decided to start this blog on a rainy Wednesday after raving about another fantastic book to my colleagues. After finishing my English Literature degree nearly three years ago, it seems a lifetime since I just sat down to write about my thoughts, feelings and responses to the books I read. As books are one of my main loves in life, I wanted to find a way of discussing and writing about them like I used to as a student. So from now on I will blog about my thoughts on each book I read and hopefully generate some debate. Here goes...