batrock's reviews
861 reviews

Strangers by Taichi Yamada

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes

3.5

Stay away from this review if you don’t want to know anything about the movie All Of Us Strangers

The Japanese book that became the quite different but excellent All Of Us Strangers is a cheerful ghost story. A recently divorced screenwriter sees two people who look exactly like his parents, who died when he was a child. He can’t help himself; he keeps visiting them. By night, he starts a relationship with the only other woman who lives in his building, which is mainly used as offices.

Strangers isn’t a uniquely Japanese story, but Andrew Haigh took a fairly different tact when he adapted it. It’s the same basic shape, but the emotional pull is completely different, and the narrator of Strangers definitely knows himself. He actually sees and interacts with a plethora of characters and has an active work life, which gets in the way of his desire to dally with ghosts. One thing that Yamada definitely tackles effectively is the nature of the red ribbons of fate that intertwine people, living and dead, and how dynamics change as life progresses. 

Can you remain friends on a personal and professional level with a man who intends to marry your ex-wife? If that man sees you out with ghosts, is he duty bound to intervene lest some darker entity claim you? These social niceties are what drive Strangers as much as Harada’s desire to connect with a facsimile of his parents, to test them to see if they know things they could not know if they were the real deal. It is the interpersonal details that give Strangers its internal glow.

The controversial “twist” to the movie is rendered completely inert by Yamada’s text and its cultural context. The possibility is floated immediately in the book and in Japanese culture it’s not an unreasonable assumption. Strangers is a dreamy sort of book, almost a reverie of revenants, but it never feels like a rug pull is going on. The matter of factness of its approach to the subject material is a great source of its charm. Straight acceptance that you’re involved in a ghost story should be a more common factor in the genre. 

With its literal title, “Summer of the Strange People”, Strangers suggests that all things in this life are transient, that we can derive pleasure and meaning from even the shortest acquaintance. It is a far less lonely book than the movie that it became, yet both of them are well worth your time. Sometimes the concert of two different versions of something is in their dissonance rather than their harmony; try one, then the other, and see if they balance each other out.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

1.5

 In 2024, The Silent Patient feels like a book that has escaped containment. It represents the tail end of the mid-10s thriller, and it has all of the elements that you’ve read before. A lot of what Michaelides does here still endures to this day, but there’s something about his approach that synthesises everything into the platonic ideal of the genre. But in a fundamentally dumb way, it must be understood. 

 

Alicia Berenson appears to have shot her husband in the face five times, and thereafter never spoke again. Theo Faber is a psychotherapist convinced that he can fix her, so he seeks employment at The Grove, the experimental facility that has custody of Alicia and is constantly on the verge of being shut down. 

 

The Silent Patient is primarily Theo’s narration, occasionally interspersed with entries from Alicia’s diary leading up to the night of the murder. Theo is your traditionally self-aggrandising male saviour protagonist who preaches dangerous myths about the psychology of sexual abuse (that second part isn’t quite so traditional); Alicia’s diary is the most standard “first person woman document read in hindsight” document that you’ll ever read, vacillating wildly between ultra mundanity and Michaelides revelling in “this directly contradicts the plot threads disclosed in the Theo sections”. If you’ve always wanted to read a diary in a novel that says “it would be really incriminating if anyone read this diary”, this is the book for you. 

 

Michaelides lives up to his surname by basing his novel around a particularly obscure Greek tragedy, and peppering the novel with various other references to the classics. That the titular character got the idea to be silent from an ancient play is possibly one of the least absurd elements of the book, and that’s saying something. The consistency of the description of the facility is such that it often feels like Michaelides self-published rather than going through the traditional blockbuster channels; it feels like it is never stated that The Grove is a single-gender facility, yet everyone interred appears to be a woman. Theo seems uniquely bad at his job, and the description of his home life is excruciating. You know that it all has to add up to something, but the narration reveals a cruel edge that suggests Michaelides isn’t as good at covering his traps as he would perhaps like you to believe; the hand shows. 

 

The audiobook is notable because Jack Hawkins does all of the accents that the story demands of him — dangerous with a character from the Caribbean, an Indian woman, and an old Greek doctor — and Louise Brealey … does not. Both of them bring a professionalism that the book doesn’t necessarily warrant, but it goes down easy on a commute. 

 

The Silent Patient is that cocktail of blockbuster sales with a complete disregard for credibility or respect for its audience. Breathlessly told in a fashion that hopes you won’t take long enough to process what your eyes or ears have taken in, The Silent Patient is big, dumb, and flashy. It’s enjoyable, but maybe not for any of the reasons you really want in a novel. 

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly

4.0

The third Bosch, and already our man is returning to the well that saw him busted down to Hollywood before the series even began. The Concrete Blonde is Connelly’s most complex Bosch to date, full of premature accusations, multiple credible suspects, and several blind alleys. It represents a maturation of the man’s craft, while also leaning very hard into the genre hallmarks of the nineties thriller in the best possible way.

Bosch is being sued by the widow of the Dollmaker, the alleged serial killer that he shot in self defence, who turned out to have been reaching for the toupée under his pillow (in many ways, these early books are very nineties). As the case is underway, a note purporting to be from the Dollmaker turns up a body that the dead man could not have possibly killed. In between court appearances Bosch must clandestinely hunt this new killer while making sure that he put down the right man in the first place.

The first thing to note about The Concrete Blonde is that Bosch can’t sleep inappropriately with a coworker or someone involved in the case because he’s still sleeping with the inappropriate pick up from The Black Ice. You might not think it, but that’s actually a huge relief to the running of the story. It means that his distraction is about what he is or isn’t saying to the woman waiting for him at home, not actually interfering with him conducting his job. Of course, he’s supposed to be on leave to deal with the court case rather than chasing leads, but it’s best not to go there.

Connelly is somewhat clear-eyed about public levels of distrust for the police department and the depths of its corruption, but it always feels like this is lip service for an author who has to keep the police onside so that he can keep telling these stories. It’s been bubbling along since the beginning, and it likely will for the entire series, but it’s particularly pronounced in this one, when Bosch’s own conduct is literally on trial. It’s the standard experience of almost anyone with a social conscience reading a crime novel in the current era, and Connelly is, at the very least, not fascist about it.

Bosch commits one of his classic sins, which is to be gung-ho about accusing someone of being the criminal, but at least this time it’s not someone that he’s sleeping with, and he doesn’t burn too many bridges. Yet Connelly folds multiple crimes into the fray, and they’re not all related, into the sort of cosmic gumbo that Lieutenant Crashmore himself would be proud to solve. Both of the predecessors to The Concrete Blonde were quite good, The Black Echo’s convolutions notwithstanding, but this one really does seem like it’s on another level already. The thing is that you like the man, and a fictional character doesn’t have to be held to the exact standards of a real person (Bosch would be a nightmare in his job to all sides of the equation: fellow officers, civilians, and criminals alike).

Connelly is still in the process of fine tuning the cast, some in positive directions, others less so, but it pretty much all works. The downhill run to the solution is so tautly plotted that you can forgive Bosch for so often fingering the wrong guy (so to speak) because the outcome is so satisfying, no matter how extreme.

With The Concrete Blonde’s multilayered approach to constructing a crime, Michael Connelly continues hitting his stride. It’s possible that he’ll hit a wall somewhere along the way, but maybe these things are consistent along 38 titles. With a long running series that has managed to endure more than thirty years, it’s fun to be able to track the evolution of a character; as a man who ages and changes with the time, Bosch is the perfect candidate if you’re looking for a detective, you’ve exhausted all of the Rebuses, and you’re okay with his slightly outré approach to the profession. 

The Searcher by Tana French

4.0

 Tana French can be a bit hit and miss around these parts. The Likeness couldn't pass the first bar of suspension of disbelief, and The Wych Elm left such a bad taste in the mouth that The Searcher lay dormant for four years. The Searcher is neither of those books. For better or worse, French hits a hard reset each time she puts out a new title, and it is to be taken on its own terms. The Searcher's terms are quite favourable indeed. 

 

Retired Chicago police officer Cal Hooper has decided to start a new life in rural Ireland, renovating an abandoned house and minding his own business. When 13 year old Trey Reddy comes asking for help finding Brendan, the eldest Reddy brother, Cal has to balance the peace that he's found against his instinctive taste for justice. 

 

French's approach to The Searcher is languid, to say the least. Cal is slow and methodical about his home improvement projects, and French is the same way about building her character. Cal is an outsider and, though he's been in town a bit longer than the reader, he's still feeling everyone out. It's very far into the piece before we find out why he retired, but it was very American of him. 

 

Cal is an arresting character, lonesome and resistant to curing his solitude, and he carries the book in a way that, as he frequently notes, would be quite different if he were still a practising officer of the law. By cutting out the Police and Garda elements almost completely, French introduces a new brand of justice to her mix that is too old to be considered frontier. 

 

This is a book almost completely devoid of set pieces, as it's more about people running into each other (sometimes more literally than others). It's about vibes, and while Cal does vibe with the townland, there's always the barest hint that at least some of those vibes are rancid. It's a distinct feel of unease that's not quite unique to books set in small Irish townships, but if there's one thing French knows, it's how to discomfort a reader. There's a cumulative effect to The Searcher that makes the piece feel smaller and more claustrophobic rather than of a kind with the expansive nature of the scenery. 

 

Arknakeldy is a townland populated by the sort of people who hide poison behind their smiles, insular while ostensibly welcoming, and tightlipped to the point that no policeman really stands a chance amongst their number. Trey is Cal’s excellent foil, although a mid-book twist is one that can only ever really work on the page; Cal’s love interest is altogether less interesting but it is important that he has at least one person on his side. Of course, he also has his slightly dodgy next door neighbour, Mart, but the man is more barometer than comrade. French puts everyone into a pot that steadfastly refuses to melt and waits for the pressure to burst out of the reader’s ears. It works, but it hurts. 

 

The Searcher is a meditative novel that's keen to provide answers while hesitant to offer solutions. It has a classic surrogate father and daughter set up and an ultimately uneasy sense of belonging. The reason The Searcher was returned to, apart from the passage of time healing all wounds, is that Cal Hooper will be back in March 2024 for The Hunter. It may well be worth spending some more time in his company. 

Northranger by Rey Terciero

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Rey Terceiero's graphic novel about a young queer Texan boy who reluctantly spends summer working on a ranch and accidentally develops feelings for the rancher's son. There are family secrets, ridiculous gothic fixations, and openly warned about homophobia, sexism, and racism – only some of which is shrugged off (did you ever notice that going along to get along so often involves tolerating being slurred?). 

 

Illustrated in muted tones by Bre Indigo, it is never really possible to buy into the mystery of Northranger because it's too grounded to believe that anything worse than the mundane horrors that have already befallen the characters is going to happen - but it's quietly affecting despite that. 

 

The one bum note is in the author bio. Based on the author's note at the end, Northranger was written in 2020. It wasn't published until 2023, and the bio still reads "[h]e is a queer writer who has always been drawn to strong female protagonists, including ... Hermione Granger." 

I would argue that 2020 was already too late to have this sentiment, but I would definitely say that there is no way that the lead time on Northranger was so long that this one part of the bio couldn't have been amended in three years. 

 

Books remain written, but their connotations can change with time. And sometimes the author does not die. That is the truest horror of them all. 

This Is Happiness by Niall Williams

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

It’s always* advisable, when you’re not feeling one book, to stop it at a quarter in and then go to the author’s previous title. Time of the Child, one of the picks for Christmas 2024, seemed difficult to get into; the chapters were very long, the breaks were few, and the narrative kept referring to earlier events in the village. Picking up This Is Happiness, to see what Niall Williams had previously written about the Irish village of Faha, is an instantly rewarding experience. 

 

Of course, eventually you will figure out that this is the second Faha novel. The first is called History of the Rain, and the entirety of the first chapter of This Is Happiness is “The rain had stopped.” But you don’t feel like you’ve lost any important information by starting here. 

 

In 1958, the town of Faha sees sunshine for the first time in years. Seventeen year old seminary drop out Noe Crowe is visiting with his grandparents, Ganga and Doady, when the coming of the electricity is announced. Enlisted into helping lodger Christy collect signatures to allow the power poles to be constructed, Noe goes through the warm season feeling the old world inching towards the new — all from the vantage point of someone who has lived with electricity in Dublin all his life. 

 

Told exclusively from Noe’s first person point of view at a sixty year remove, This is Happiness boasts the omniscience of age rather than of someone who knows and perceives everything. This is a folk tale told by someone who lived through part of it and gathered the rest. Noe’s surmise is the engine that powers the telling, and he is a charming host. 

 

This means that the parts of the novel that are explicitly “seventeen”, like his dalliances with the Troy sisters, are ill-considered and awkward. They ring true enough, but there is a largely baffling chunk about visiting the cinema in town and what ensues in the dark. Perhaps because you already know that it’s a fruitless endeavour, that Noe is merely embarrassing himself, you want to elide it; the juxtaposition of Noe’s amateur hour longing with the endurance of Christy’s throws their relative significances into relief. 

 

What it really shows is that, in This is Happiness, Noe is primarily an observer and reporter. We feel for him and the reason for his loss of faith, but we’re more interested in him in relation to his family and to Christy than to his openly admitted hopeless romances. A Spring season spent attempting to mend a love gone for half a century, and chasing after an elusive master musician, is always going to be more interesting than a fumble in the dark — and you can tell, ultimately, which had more impact on the boy and the man. 

 

Through Noe, Williams captures a moment in Irish history with charm and wit. With the rain gone, Faha can breathe and so too can the reader. This Is Happiness is generous and expansive, amusing and quietly touching. There is event, but it is largely defined by character; it is rare to see a novel with such exquisitely defined start and end points. 

 

This is Happiness is such a satisfying piece that it gives strength for one to reconsider tackling Time of the Child, which was instantly denser, less inviting in its composition. Not once does it feel like homework, but rather something that might have been nice to read years ago. Still, there’s no time like the present, or like Ireland in 1958, when the crackle of electricity was in the air and young love was as foolish as it ever was.

*Rarely.
**But also, and this is truly objective: maybe the lead up to Christmas and wind down of the working year isn’t the best headspace for reading.

The Narrows by Michael Connelly

4.0

The quintessential way to return to Bosch: our hero finds himself embroiled in investigating a serial killer from a different series (The Poet), who has murdered a protagonist from another (Blood Work). Michael Connelly blends multiple techniques, including mixed first and third person narratives in a work that is mostly pretty good but doesn’t all gel.

FBI Agent Rachel Walling, toiling in obscurity since the end of The Poet, is called back to the big leagues to consult on the return of the serial killer, who has been personally taunting her. Harry Bosch, still a private investigator, is asked to look into a natural death that may have been a murder. When the trail leads him to an FBI dig site, the cases combine, and our man on the outside teams up with Walling to ensure that the truth is uncovered, no matter how bad it makes the establishment look.

Like Lost Light before it, The Narrows treats the reader to Bosch’s first person narration. However, this being a two hander, the chapters that are either Walling taking on the case solo or observing Bosch for herself are third. Whether this is because Connelly wasn’t confident providing a woman’s direct voice or wanted a point of difference is unclear; unlike more omniscient Bosch novels, or the offbeat Void Moon, we get one more touchstone: that of The Poet himself.

However, The Poet’s segments are so brief and infrequent that they don’t really add to the piece, and mostly don’t contribute to a cat and mouse feel. It’s a rare misstep in pacing and revelations for Connelly, but it doesn’t hurt the novel so much as it feels slightly undercooked compared to the rest of it.

Still, when Connelly cooks, he cooks: lone wolf Bosch shows that he needs a system to work within and push against in order to get his best results; often he is on the outside looking in, which gives him more freedom in some avenues but less in others. The first person perspective works to reinforce his loneliness (he stopped taking saxophone lessons because his tutor died), and his alienation in his Las Vegas rental is heavily reinforced.

The Walling chapters are impressive in that they showcase a woman who made poor judgment calls in The Poet, who continues to make them again with Bosch here — you're not a Connelly protagonist if you don't make increasingly bad decisions that involve unprofessional application of the genitals — and they give Connelly himself the freedom to be critical of the legal apparatus, as he never feels the need to hold the feds in as much awe as the police. If nothing else, these books provide a masterclass in how a fictional law-enforcement worker can cover themselves in plausible deniablity on their way to getting results (you stupid chief).

Connelly subverts expectations in other ways: after the dust clears from the first solution, there's almost always an extra piece of the puzzle in these books. In The Narrows, Bosch's commitment to the truth interferes with his interpersonal relationships again; the real surprise being precisely how many times he can burn the same freshly rebuilt bridges. It's a case of playing to and against type at the same time, and it reinforces Connelly's own commitment to messy neatness — which works better here than it has in the past.

Good authority has it that Bosch returns to the third person in his next adventure, and his future is already more certain than it had been these last two outings. It's been fun riding on Bosch's shoulder, but the slight distance from the man may pay off: can you ever truly know a grizzled war veteran detective who fancies himself an amateur bluesman? Probably. Yet the mystique lingers still. 

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

reflective slow-paced

3.0

Awards give much needed exposure to authors who might otherwise not be read. But the mortifying ordeal of being known opens an author to the mortifying ordeal of being less well-received by wider audiences. Regardless of how stalwart your mind may be, it’s quite likely that the book will be perceived through the prism of “I see why this won the award” or “How could this have won an award?”

Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for Orbital.

Orbital is a slim volume that is not for everyone. A brief meditation on the weightlessness and gravity of humanity and existence, there is ironically — or fittingly — not much to grasp onto here. There are six astronauts, all from different backgrounds and all with different reactions to space, but they may as well be interchangeable. There are moments of poetry, but Orbital often reduces itself to sets of lists both literal and metaphorical.

If Orbital works for you, it might really work for you. But its increased audience — and I certainly don’t regret buying a copy — means that by design Orbital is going to end up in the hands of those who won’t appreciate it as well as more who will. It’s a niche work gone wide, and I wish it luck; it just didn’t do much for me.

Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave

5.0

A singularly* important document in so many fields; it hits very different between reads when you're young and coming up and out, and then again when you're settled down and older than Timothy Conigrave and John Caleo. A vital piece of history that many people would rather forget - are in the process of memory holing - but really shouldn't.

*Ideally, it should be singular. Realistically, it's emblematic, which makes it all the more tragic.

Foe by Iain Reid

3.0

The greatest trick I ever pulled was making two very literal minded people at work read this because I thought it was a psychological thriller about a marriage. How you package a story definitely affects how it is received, because while there's psychology in Foe, there's no thrills.

Foe is a slow burn with a good pay off, but there are sci-fi elements that are impossible to ignore. Good if you care about stories that explore the nature of humanity and artificial intelligence (before that became such a dirty term), not so much if you just want to read something about the misery of modern relations.

Thoughtfully composed, and you've always got to respect a novel that uses its punctuation to tell the story, not just tell the story.