Okay, so now I've told you about some of the non-fiction books I've read recently, here's my rundown of fiction books I've enjoyed but not yet reviewed.
I read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when I was on holiday in Madeira in the summer. I had high expectations for this much-lauded Swedish crime novel -- and I can't say I was disappointed. It was a wonderful, near-perfect read, the type of book you get completely immersed in and don't want to end. There are two strands to the plot, investigated by two completely different people -- a male journalist and a female computer hacker (she's the girl with the dragon tattoo of the title) -- but everything converges in a cracking narrative, leaving me desperate to read the yet-to-be-translated remainder of this trilogy.
Next up, Susan Johnson's Life in Seven Mistakes. This one isn't available outside of Australia, but Susan -- who blogs here and lives in London -- was kind enough to send me a copy. I raced through it in the space of a weekend and loved its black humour and emotional tension. There was something very refreshing about reading a rollicking good family drama set in modern day Australia, because it seemed so much more familiar than the American fiction to which I've become conditioned. That said, it reminded me of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, but there were also elements reminiscent of Anne Tyler and Anita Shreve within its pages. I think this was largely due to the complicated family relationships depicted, the dual storylines and how we can never truly escape our upbringing, because it shapes how we view the world for the rest of our lives. Wonderful stuff.
Finally, I've just finished Nami Mun's Miles From Nowhere sent to me by Penguin USA for review. This debut novel, set in New York in the 1980s, will be published in the UK in January. It's a coming of age story told through the eyes of Joon, the daughter of Korean immigrants, who flees the family home when she is just 13. Admittedly, it's quite a depressing read, because Joon experiences so much hardship on the streets as a young runaway -- drugs, prostitution, petty crime and violent bashings -- but you get the feeling she'll make it through OK in the end. It's beautifully written, but I've read so many books of a similar nature -- see How the Light Gets In by MJ Hyland and Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill -- that I'm not sure this one manages to say anything that I hadn't already heard before. Stay tuned for a proper review coming soon...
