sharkybookshelf's reviews
511 reviews

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

3.0

Anisa dreams of translating “great works of literature” instead of writing subtitles for Bollywood films - a dream which feels unachievable, especially in the face of her boyfriend Adam’s remarkable ability to acquire new languages, until he reveals his secret…

This was an interesting concept - the ability to acquire an entire language to the level of native fluency (which of course means fully understanding the associated culture) in an absurdly short space of time is a fascinating idea to explore. But the story took a strange turn towards the end which I just couldn’t quite get behind - things got weird and pivoted away from what I was most interested in (the actual learning of languages and everything that entails).

There were some interesting observations around friendship, belonging and insidious racism. I particularly enjoyed Anisa’s reflections around our relationship to the different languages we speak and our relationship to ourselves when speaking those different languages (themes which are basically catnip to me). But it was not enough to carry the book.

I found the chatty tone rather painful to read, particularly the inclusion of verbal tics that just don’t work when written (listening to the audiobook might make this more tolerable, but I cannot confirm). I eventually understood the reason for it, but that didn’t make up for the irritation.

An intriguing story of the power of languages, gatekeeping of knowledge and friendship, that takes an odd turn and doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt

I enjoyed this poetry collection, particularly the first parts that deal with Holland-Batt’s father’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, helplessly witnessing the progression of the disease and her subsequent grief. The poems are raw and beautiful, capturing so many aspects of that experience - I’m forever searching for well-articulated accounts of grief, and many of the poems resonated.

The latter parts of the collection were enjoyable, too, but as the poems dealt more with her own life and relationships, it felt like a slightly separate collection thematically and I just wasn’t as taken by them. Reading poetry is always deeply personal and subjective (hence I don’t give poetry collections star ratings), so that is very much a reflection of me rather than the poetry itself.

Time of the Flies by Claudia Piñeiro

4.0

Released after 15 years in prison, Inés starts a business specialising in pest control and private investigation with her best friend - however, one of their clients is interested in more than just killing pests and wants to make use of Inés’ criminal past…

I had not realised this was technically a sequel, so when it arrived I had a slight dither over whether I should read the previous book first. I decided to forge ahead anyway, and I’m happy to report that this works perfectly well as a standalone - I never felt that I was missing any critical information.

I very much enjoyed it, though not quite as much as Piñeiro’s two previous novels, which I loved for their very effective immersive narration - this one isn’t quite as immersive due to the multiple POVs, but is still superbly written. I’m in two minds about the chorus chapters - they enable clever commentary on what’s happening in the story, but also took me out of it.

The story is effectively a mystery - Señora Bonar has clearly chosen Inés for a specific reason, but why and what is going to unfold? The whole book was engrossing, but becomes increasingly propulsive towards the end - I was connecting the dots more quickly than Inés and Manca and reading with my heart in my mouth to see if would they figure things out in time.

But Piñeiro elevates the story to so much more than literary crime fiction with her astute social commentary on relationships between women. There’s Inés and Manca’s wonderful friendship, but also mother-daughter relationships and darker themes of “bad mothers” and motherhood, though not necessarily in the traditional way. Crimes committed by and against women are another major thematic strand, tied in with the obsessive nature of revenge. There’s also a surprising amount of information about flies, which I appreciated as a lapsed biologist. Piñeiro skilfully weaves all these strands into an unputdownable story.

A superbly-written and enthralling mystery packed with social commentary on crimes against and by women, motherhood and friendship.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

3.0

1930s Pottstown, Pennsylvania, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, run by Chona, sits at the heart of Chicken Hill, the run-down neighbourhood populated by the town’s immigrant Jews and African Americans…

This one left me a bit cold. It was fine, but I never felt invested in any of the characters - obviously I wanted things to work out for them because I’m not a total dick, but wasn’t desperate to find out if they would. Equally, I wasn’t particularly invested in the overall story or even who the skeleton was (the revelation felt rather anticlimactic actually).

There were just a few too many offshoots to the story - in fact, it started off as a story about Moshe and Chona and their theatre and grocery store, but then morphed into a completely different story. Instead of painting a rich, complex portrait of Chicken Hill’s dual community composed of two groups each marginalised in their own ways, the story felt disjointed, as if even the book itself wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to be about. I also expected Malachi the Dancer to play a greater part in the story - with so much emphasis on how magical his dancing was, I really thought something would come of it.

The writing itself was good and it was easy to keep turning the pages once I was reading. But I never found myself itching to pick the book up.

An easy-to-read but ultimately disjointed and flat story of a marginalised community surviving in the US of the 1930s, resilient and resourceful in the face of racism, xenophobia and antisemitism.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

5.0

Ten strangers are invited to an island mansion by its mysterious owner where, on their first evening, they are each accused of a crime - with no way of leaving the island, they find themselves picked off one-by-one…

This is the first Christie I ever read back when I was 12 or 13, and over 20 years later, I still remember feeling completely mind-blown. It’s the book that kick-started my love for Christie’s mysteries and was my firm favourite going into my Sharky Reads Christie project, so I was actually a little nervous about picking it up - it had a lot to live up to…

Anyway, I’m happy to report that it did stand up to the heavy weight of my expectations - it’s a Christie classic for a reason. Enduringly clever, and even though I’ve read it before several times (but couldn’t quite remember the solution), I did not figure it out. My only minor criticism is that explaining the solution via epilogue feels slightly clumsy, but I also don’t know how else Christie could have done it - bringing detectives in and having them going over everything would rapidly become repetitive in a format that already runs the risk of feeling repetitive (but doesn’t).

There is an excellent Author’s Note (swipe to read), and I agree with Christie - she had every right to be pleased with herself for pulling off such a difficult premise. It is a book to pit your brain against, not one to read for character development. It’s a puzzle, pure and simple, and that’s what I truly love about Christie’s mysteries.

Would I say it’s still my favourite Christie? Well, I’m not sure I can pick a hands-down favourite actually, but a joint-favourite, certainly - it just has to share the top spot with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Murder in Mesopotamia.

The ultimate locked room murder mystery, ingenious yet elegantly simple without being obvious.

Ultramarins by Mariette Navarro

4.0

The female captain of a transatlantic container ship allows the all-male crew to take an unprecedented dip in the middle of the ocean - subsequently, the ship’s atmosphere is tinged with unease…

Look, if the ocean makes you feel uneasy then this is not the book for you, because it perfectly captures the ocean’s potential for creepiness. I really enjoyed it - it’s ominous and atmospheric and got under my skin. I adored the writing, which had a rhythm to it reminiscent of the swell of the ocean - it was a pleasure to read and perfectly suited the story.

If you’ve ever been swimming and had the unprompted thought that something could be right behind or below you and freaked yourself out a little bit because once you’ve thought it, you can’t unthink it - that’s the feeling that pervades the book, the unease prompted by the unknown and human vulnerability in an environment that is not our natural habitat (the ocean).

As the ship seems to be taking on a life of its own, the lore of the sea (ghost ships, strange phenomena) and the isolation play on the crew after their one brief rupture in the normally highly-regimented routine of life onboard. With the only woman at the top of the ship’s hierarchy, Navarro also touches on gender dynamics and the potential precarity of female authority.

An ominous, atmospheric and slightly claustrophobic story of human vulnerability and the opposing allure and unease prompted by the vastness of the ocean.

Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water by Amorina Kingdon

4.0

An exploration of biological sound in the oceans: its production, detection and utilisation by underwater animals.

Although I never worked on acoustics over my short marine science career, through various professors, a co-supervisor, labmates, flatmates and a brief stint working for a consultancy specialising in acoustics, I frequently found myself acoustics-adjacent. Which is to say that while I’m certainly no expert, I did not come to this book as a total lay person either.

I very much enjoyed this interesting and accessible overview on biological sound in the oceans, covering both the actual science and a brief history of this burgeoning field. There’s a good balance between the science and Kindgon’s own journey of curiosity on the topic.

Given the title, I did not expect marine mammals to feature so heavily, although I’m not surprised since we do know the most (though not heaps) about them in terms of sound use and vocalisations. I most enjoyed the chapters about the ocean’s other occupants since they cover science that doesn’t usually get much fanfare outside academia, but is certainly fascinating.

The propagation of sound in the oceans and what (little) is known about marine animal hearing are well-explained, though a few more diagrams wouldn’t have gone amiss to explain some of the concepts - sometimes it is easier to understand something visually. Likewise, some photos of the various species mentioned would have been a nice inclusion (yes, it’s easy to Google, but I don’t want to pick up my phone whilst reading). But honestly, I am nit-picking.

An interesting and accessible overview of biological sound in the ocean, including some of the latest discoveries around this overlooked dimension of the marine environment - worth reading for those with an interest in marine science of course, but also anybody who spends time in and around the ocean.

ARC gifted by the publisher

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

4.0

Ireland, 1985, Bill Furlong is at his busiest with coal deliveries in the lead-up to Christmas when he comes face-to-face with the local convent’s open secret…

With her remarkable ability to imply so much with so few words, Keegan is undeniably the queen of concise prose - this is a novel of reading between the lines of what people say and don’t say, both in terms of the reader and the characters themselves.

This is a poignant story of community complicity in the open secret of the Irish Catholic Church’s laundries - the abstract knowledge of what is happening can be swept under the rug, but what to do when actually confronted with the truth face-to-face? It’s well-written and Keegan perfectly captures the factors driving the community complicity - faith, denial, fear of ostracism. But I’m actually not sure Bill was the most effective character to tell the story - I’d have really liked his wife, Eileen’s perspective, either for the whole story or as an additional POV. She had such a vehement reaction that it would have been interesting to explore where that came from.

Although the outcome beyond the end of the novel is implied, I was left a little dissatisfied. I’d have liked to actually see the community’s response and how the unfurling of the Church’s long tentacles would play out. It felt as if there was more story to be told, and the novella would have benefitted from being slightly longer and including the fallout.

A remarkably concise and poignant story of community complicity in 1980s Ireland and facing an individual moral reckoning.

Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou

4.0

A series of tiny portraits of various people connected to Cyprus’ glamorous Ledra Palace Hotel.

Presenting Cyprus’ history through a series of micro portraits of characters each paired with a drink is such an interesting format, and I really enjoyed the novelty of it, even if ultimately I’d have liked each portrait to be a bit more expansive.

Cypriot history happens around each of these people, but it’s passing references and in truth, I wanted a bit more - the second half was more satisfying in that respect. That said, beyond the island’s division, I am not familiar enough with the details of Cypriot history to pick up on all the fleeting references that I assume were there, so that slight disappointment is probably a reflection on me more than anything.

My favourite portrait was probably that of the Mayor - it might deal with the mundane, but actually it was fascinating (sewage is far from sexy, but boy is it important) and came with more background and information. The Photographer was interesting too, with the feeling of remove that comes from witnessing wars happening to other people.

The past 70-odd years of Cypriot history touched on through a series of brief character portraits - a refreshingly novel, if not very in-depth, format.

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

3.0

Musings on travel and anatomy; moments of life, death, motion and migration through time…

This was my first Tokarczuk, and although I didn’t particularly enjoy it, it has actually left me keen to read more of her work - the writing was undeniably excellent and full of astute observations, especially on travel and language and the philosophy of life.

My struggle with Flights was its highly fragmented nature. The fragments were just far too disparate, and although some did link up to form small storylines, taken all together, they never coalesced into something cohesive. I spent the book wondering how the themes of travel and anatomy were going to come together, and, well, I’m still waiting. I loved the random maps (I find maps fascinating), but they were mostly exactly that: random, with no clear connection to the text.

Cabinets of curiosities are mentioned and alluded to throughout, and it’s an apt analogy for the book itself - filled with plenty of disconnected objects/observations, displayed/collected together because they arouse curiosity or are interesting, but without any particular relation to each other. To take the analogy further, the longer fragments that formed a story could be equivalent to objects of which much is known, the shorter ones to objects that don’t have much background information but are vaguely interesting and so kept in the collection. The fragments were also very uneven in terms of holding my interest or attention - I whizzed through some, and others felt like slogs, even at a few pages long.

A highly fragmented novel that explores travel and anatomy, excellent writing and clever observations but lacking overall cohesion and consistency.