Reading Matters

'The Cardboard Crown' by Martin Boyd

Fiction - Kindle edition; Text Classics; 288 pages; 2012.

Martin Boyd's The Cardboard Crown is the first part of a quartet exploring the secret history of an  upper-class Anglo-Australian family.

It's an amazingly vivid and absorbing saga supposedly based on Boyd's own family —  in his author's note he claims the plot is factual, but "the characters and certain episodes are fictitious".

Unsurprisingly, for a book that is so gripping and entertaining, it became a bestseller in the UK when it was first published in 1952. But Australian audiences didn't agree. It wasn't until it was reprinted almost 20 years later, in 1971, that it garnered critical acclaim in Boyd's homeland. Now it has been reissued again, this time by Text Classics, for a whole new generation of readers to enjoy.

A story set in England and Australia

The story revolves around the independently wealthy Alice Verso, whose marriage to Austin Langton forges a dynasty that spans two continents. But at the heart of this alliance lies a shocking secret kept hidden from the world for three generations.

The secret is discovered by Alice's grandson, Guy Langton, some 50 years after her death. Guy, who narrates the novel, finds her diaries in the Melbourne home he has inherited. By going through the diaries and talking to his uncle and a cousin about the family's history and mythology, he is able to piece together his grandmother's amazingly privileged if somewhat tragic life.

The tale he tells swings between England and Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where the Langton family leads two very different lives depending on which country they happen to be living in.

A rootless existence

In Australia, the Langtons are well regarded and socially pre-eminent with connections in all the right places, and their newly built home, in native bushland 30 miles outside of Melbourne, becomes a home away from home for a vast array of family and friends.  In England, they have less social standing, but life is gentler and more cultured, and their surroundings at Waterpark, the traditional family home, are far more pleasant with grand gardens and plenty of land upon which to go hunting. England also has the benefit of being much closer to continental Europe, specifically France and Italy, where the family can experience high culture, art and travel. (I should point out that quite a bit of this novel is set in Rome.)

But despite having the good fortune to be able to reside on either side of the world as and when they feel like it, there is a downside to this inability to put down permanent roots. Alice, for instance, never feels truly at home in either country and a restlessness develops that can not be cast aside. This is how Guy describes the dilemma:

A Cornishman once told me that when he was a boy he caught a seagull, and clipped its wing so that it could not fly away. After a while the feathers grew and he forgot to clip them again. It flew back to its companions who killed it. In its captivity it had acquired some human taint which they sensed was hostile. My family were captive seagulls, both at Waterpark, and even more, as time went on, in Australia.

A story about love, money and class

I will admit that it took me a little time to get into this story. I think that's largely because it starts off in a kind of meta-fiction type of way, with Guy Langton recalling a conversation in which he was encouraged to write his grandmother's story. And following on from this, there's a lot of ground-setting to be done and what appears to be a complicated cast list to get your head around. But once I got into the nub of the story — Alice's marriage to Austen — things really took off and I found myself completely hooked on this story about love and money and class on two sides of the world.

It's quite witty in places and terribly sad in others. Indeed, the narrative is full of light and shade, a reflection, perhaps, of the two very different countries in which the book is set.

But what I liked and appreciated most was the way in which Boyd portrays Alice as a woman before her time — a matriarch with plenty of money who did not flaunt her riches but used her wealth to keep family and friends in comfortable circumstances. And while she seemed to always put others before herself, she was not afraid to do her own thing and to forge her own path even if that meant upsetting social conventions of the time.

As an exploration of Melbourne's colonial past and Australia's early history, The Cardboard Crown is a fascinating read. But what this book really excels at is capturing that terrible sense of dislocation when you're never quite sure which country to call home.

Note that the three other books in the Langton Quartet are A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love and When Blackbirds Sing. All but the latter have been republished by Text Classics. Do visit the publisher's website for ordering information.

To read about the author's extraordinary life (and family) check out the entry on Wikipedia.

..........................................................................................................................

I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout April 2013. The idea is to simply celebrate and help promote literature from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog and on Twitter using the hashtag #OzLitMonth. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

'The Tivington Nott' by Alex Miller

Fiction - paperback; Allen & Unwin; 180 pages; 2013. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

It somehow seems appropriate to post this review on the day of the Grand National, a horse race over jumps that has its roots in both hunting and steeplechasing (in which farmers would race their horses from one church steeple to another, jumping over ditches, hedges and whatever else happened to get in the way as they did so). Whatever you think of the National, there's no doubt that it demonstrates the superb athleticism of the horse. It also demonstrates the special relationship between horse and rider — how the two can work as one to achieve great feats of courage and stamina.

That's one of the central themes of Alex Miller's debut novel, The Tivington Nott, which was first published in 1989, but has just been made available to British readers for the first time thanks to a reprint by the publisher Allen & Unwin UK. It is an extraordinarily vivid account of one young man's participation in a stag hunt on the Exmoor borders and is filled with beautiful descriptions of Nature and the countryside — "the last ancient homeland of the wild red deer in England" — as well as depicting the bond between horse and rider like nothing I have ever read before.

An outsider's view

The story is set in 1952 on a farm in Somerset, where the unnamed narrator is a teenage labourer from London struggling to fit in. The first part of the novel sets out to describe how he is at odds with everyone around him — he refuses to call his boss master as tradition dictates, gets bullied by local labourers and is viewed with disdain by the farmer's wife ("Mrs Roly-Poly") who believes "boys from London cannot be trusted".

The only person with whom he should feel some affinity is another outsider, Major Fred Alsop, a retired Australian army officer trying too hard to be accepted by the locals who secretly despise him. The Major wears the attire of the landed gentry, talks too loudly and goes about as if he owns the place ("An Australian horseman in fancy dress prancing around on Exmoor. Out of a book, this bloke. A tourist!"). But even our narrator cannot fail to notice that the Major will never fit in —  he is tolerated because he has a rather impressive, and much sought-after, black stallion imported from Australia called Kabara.

It is Kabara that forms the bridging link between the first part of the story and the (far larger) second part, because our narrator ends up riding the stallion in the stag hunt, which is so evocatively described that you feel as if you are right there in the saddle with him.

Based on real people and events

Alex Miller makes no secret that this book is largely autobiographical — he, too, was a farm labourer in West Somerset when he was 15, before he emigrated to Australia alone when he was 17 . His "author's note" at the front of my edition claims that all the characters are based on real people and that he even used some of their real names.

This probably explains why the novel feels so authentic and "animated". You get such a sense of the claustrophobic closed social system in which he finds himself that it's hard not to share his loneliness and alienation. And it's easy to understand why he so identifies with Kabara, a gutsy stallion who defies the odds to compete with other horses more used to challenging West Country terrain than him, and the "Tivington nott", a local stag that has no antlers rumoured to live in the area.

What I loved most about the book was the sense of adventure and excitement it conveys as the narrator rides second horse to the stag hunt. Every little moment of the chase is recorded — the uphill battles, the treacherous descents, the death-defying jumps — so that most of the time your heart is in your throat willing him to stay on the horse and keep in sight of the hounds. And all the time Miller is conscious of conveying the mysterious beauty of the natural world.

In front of me the wide silent ride winds deep into the dark green and dun shadows of the ancient woods. I peer down this track, shaded and thick on either side with bracken and underbrush. A bird is calling repeatedly in there; a sharp short urgent sound, again and again. Then it stops and everything is silent and still around me. Those great dogs are in there too, somewhere. They are intently unravelling the labyrinth of animal scents, some of them perhaps staying true to the peculiar signature of the Haddon stag, approaching his secret lair, working the complex line closer to him by the minute.

Threaded into this thrilling narrative are little insights into various characters — the houndsman Grabbe, the whipper-in Matthew Tolland, the red-coated huntsman Perry, the chairman of the Hunt Damages Committee Harry Cheyne and the master of the hunt, Mrs Grant, among others — so that a well rounded picture of this close-knit community, where class and social standing is everything, is evoked.

But this is not just a fast-paced spinetingling read: the conclusion is a deeply moving one as our narrator realises Kabara has found his place, but he still hasn't quite found his...

..........................................................................................................................

I read this book as part of Australian Literature Month, which runs throughout April 2013. The idea is to simply celebrate and help promote literature from my homeland and to encourage others to do the same. Anyone can take part. All you need to do is read an Australian book or two, post about Australian literature on your own blog or simply engage in the conversation on this blog and on Twitter using the hashtag #OzLitMonth. If you don't have a blog, don't worry — you just need to be willing to read something by an Australian writer and maybe comment on other people's posts. You can find out more here.

'Jellybird' by Lezanne Clannachan

Fiction - hardcover; Orion; 432 pages; 2013. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

It's no secret that I like a good psychological thriller. I especially like stories that are fast-paced, the kind that make you want to stay up all night reading, and even better if there are plenty of plot twists and loads of secrets to unveil, so you're never quite sure what the ending might hold in store. Throw in a feisty lead character, a liberal sprinkling of paranoia and menace, and I'm pretty much sold. I'm pleased to say that Jellybird, the debut novel by Lezanne Clannachan, ticks all these boxes.

A dangerous friendship

The story (which is told in the third person) revolves around Jessica, an up-and-coming jewelry designer, who has been married to Jacques, an ex-pat American, for five years. But  despite their obvious happiness together, Jessica has a slightly tortured past — her father deserted the family when she was a young girl and her anxious mother never quite recovered from the betrayal. This manifests itself in Jessica through nervous energy, a propensity to self harm, and lack of self confidence.

So when a flamboyant client, Elizabeth ('Libby') Hargreaves, strikes up a friendship, Jessica is delighted by the attention even if she is puzzled by Jacques' obvious distaste for her. "Why would you want to be a friend with a woman like that?" he asks.

Of course, Jacques' opinion is swept under the carpet — even when it starts to become clear to Jessica that Libby's friendship is taking on a slightly stalkerish dimension (think Single White Female). As the narrative unfurls, this cloying sense of claustrophobia heightens to almost unbearable proportions. But to what end is Libby developing this almost unhealthy interest in Jessica? And what does it mean when Jessica finds her talking to Jacques, their heads together in what appears to be some kind of collusion?

Two narrative threads

This rather menacing narrative thread is only one half of the story. The other half, which is told in alternate chapters, explores Jessica's back story — what it was like growing up in a caravan park, run by her mother, in a seaside town, and the secret friendship she struck up with a local teenage boy, Thomas, also known as the 'ghost boy', who later disappeared in mysterious circumstances.

These two threads are drawn together when Libby's "friendship" so upsets Jessica that she makes the seemingly unwise decision to track Thomas down. Along the way, Jessica must confront some horrible home truths, including a brutal murder, a dodgy policeman and a troubled relationship with her mother.

This might sound rather far-fetched, but Clannachan writes with an assured hand, so there was never a time when I thought, this is getting ridiculous now. (That said, there were a couple of false notes that I wasn't too sure about, including the policeman mentioned above, and an unreported sexual attack). Her exploration of sibling rivalries, marital tension and mother-daughter relationships is deftly and intelligently handled.

But it is Jessica's downward spiral into a kind of manic frenzy of paranoia which makes the narrative work, because you're anxious to see how events are going to play out — has she completely lost her marbles or is there a very real reason for her fear and anxiety?

Jellybird is an exciting read and all the loose ends are tied up neatly at the end, even though I wasn't quite convinced by some of the explanations. It reminded me very much of Nicci French's work and Anna Raverat's chilling debut Signs of Life. It's dark and unsettling, but it never sways from its course: a dramatic, often nail-biting, story told in a clear, heartfelt voice. 

'The Old Romantic' by Louise Dean

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 292 pages; 2011.

Louise Dean's The Old Romantic couldn't be more different — in tone, subject and style — than the last novel of hers that I read, the brilliant but oh-so bleak This Human Season (2006), which was set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of The Troubles and explored the political divide.

The Old Romantic is right at the other end of the spectrum: it's a warm-hearted comedy set in on the south-east coast of England and is one of those lovely novels that you eat up in a day or two and feel all the better for having done so.

Grumpy old man

The story is essentially about the ups and downs, trials and tribulations of one family headed by the cantankerous Ken Goodyew — the "old romantic" of the title — who has become slightly obsessed by his own death. Ken is retired and lives in Hastings, a rundown coastal town in East Sussex, with his second wife, June.

When the book opens he has just been reunited with his eldest son, Nick, a solicitor, for the first time in 15 years at a hastily convened lunch with the extended family. You know things are not going to bode well for the newly established relationship when Ken announces that he has decided to leave all his worldly goods to his younger son, Dave — and that he wants Nick to draw up the will.

His marriage to June also looks to be on the rocks when he announces — just a few minutes later — that he also wants Nick to sort out a divorce. "I don't want her lot, June's family, to get their hands on a penny of it, see?" he says, while June sits there and does her best to ignore him.

Working class hero

From this fateful lunch, Dean spins a simple tale about Ken and the ways in which his actions, both past and present, impinge on his two wives and his two children. He is wilfully ignorant, marvellously grumpy and blatantly proud of his working class roots. I loved that all his dialogue is written phonetically, so he sounds like a London cab driver, and that almost everything that comes out of his mouth is appallingly rude or appallingly funny.

But even though Ken is the central character around which everything else tends to revolve, the book devotes equal attention to Nick and the ways in which he has spent his entire life trying to escape his humble beginnings — and his father's overbearing shadow. That he changed his name from Gary, that he decided to study law, that he goes on holiday to exotic locations abroad, all speak of his desire to reinvent himself as a middle-class "somebody".

His relationship with younger brother Dave — his polar opposite — is beautifully fleshed out, too, and you get a real sense of their sibling rivalries, tensions, contradictions — and love.

Other standout characters include Astrid, Nick's beauty-parlour girlfriend obsessed with her looks and staying young, and Audrey, the business-like 40-something undertaker, whom Ken falls in love with — until she shows him the delicate and specialised art of embalming.

Comedy of manners

The Old Romantic is a wonderfully witty read that showcases Dean's ability to write funny set pieces. But she's also very good at developing drama, constructing believable dialogue and fleshing out back stories without losing that all-important narrative tension that keeps the reader turning the pages. The plot might be lean, but it's the characters and the exploration of life, death and family which makes it rather special.

I loved this book and laughed out loud quite a lot, although I must admit that part of the enjoyment came from knowing that much of it was set in areas with which I am familiar. Indeed, I read this while on holiday in East Sussex, just a stone's throw from Rye where much of the action takes place.

But even if you don't know these places, there is much to enjoy in this rather fine comedy of manners.

'A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar' by Suzanne Joinson

Fiction - hardcover; Bloomsbury; 384 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Suzanne Joinson's debut novel, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar, is a fascinating account of a trio of English missionaries working in a Muslim-dominated region of China in 1923. It also features a dual narrative, set in present day London, in which a young woman learns she has inherited an apartment full of belongings, including a pet owl, from a stranger.

A narrative composed of diary entries

The missionary side of the story unfolds in a series of diary entries by Evagaline English, who is penning a lady cyclist's guide to Kashgar, hence the title of the book. Eva, as she is known, is in Kashgar, East Turkestan, with her sister, Lizzie, and their benefactress, Millicent, to help set up a Christian mission on behalf of the Missionary Order of the Steadfast Face.

The book opens in dramatic fashion when the trio, somewhere in the desert, stumble upon a woman giving birth by the roadside. They stop to help, and Millicent delivers the baby using a pair of forceps. The mother dies, presumably from blood loss, and a crowd of onlookers blame Millicent for her death.

'They say we have taken the girl to give ourselves strength, and that we plan to steal the baby and eat it.' Lizzie spoke quickly, in that odd, high voice. Her ability with this impenetrable Turki language is much better than mine.
'She died in childbirth, natural causes, as you can all very well see,' Millicent shouted uselessly in English, and then repeated it in Turki. Lizzie set about bringing water in our tankards and a blanket.
'They are demanding that we are shot.'

From thereon in, the three women tread a dangerous path. Not only are they in a Muslim-dominated area of China — where other religions are not tolerated — they now have a baby who does not belong to them in their possession and are being charged with murder and witchcraft.

While under a kind of "house arrest" the baby's welfare falls largely to Eva. Meanwhile militant-like Millicent is hellbent on converting the locals and dreamy Lizzie spends her days taking photographs. The narrative charts the tensions between the trio and the local community as it rises from resistance to calamity. More interestingly, it also charts the tensions between the three women, each of whom has a secret to keep.

A present-day story set in London

The present-day narrative, which is told in the third person, follows Frieda, a woman who lives alone in a South London apartment. Frieda has a busy job that involves lots of travel; she's estranged from her mother; and has been involved in a long-term affair with a married man that is unravelling at the seams.

Then two startling things happen to her, which turn her life upside down: she finds a homeless Yemeni man living on her doorstep and befriends him; and then she receives a letter informing her that she has inherited a council flat full of property, including a caged owl, belonging to a woman she doesn't know. According to council records, the woman is Frieda's next-of-kin.

As you can tell, these two narratives are poles apart, but part of the mystery and enjoyment of reading A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar is trying to determine the link between them — and it's not as obvious as one might think.

Satisfying storytelling

Joinson writes each thread in a different prose style — the first has an old-fashioned feel and is reminiscent of the period in which it is set, the second is more contemporary in tone and style. And while some readers might find this juxtaposition jarring, I quite enjoyed moving backwards and forwards in time like this, although I much preferred the missionary storyline, probably because Eva's voice was so engaging. I also enjoyed the judicious use of cliffhangers, which keeps the momentum going.

As I read this book I felt that I was going on a rather intimate journey, because Joinson captures periods and settings so vividly that exotic places, such as Kashgar, come alive on paper. Her attention to detail — especially in terms of historical facts and cultural references — pay off without you ever feeling as if she's shoehorned in a bunch of research just to get the "flavour" right.

And while the title is somewhat of a misnomer (there's not much cycling in this book at all), A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar is a gorgeous read, tempered by a lovely sense of wry humour, that whisks you away to another world. It's peopled by a cast of unforgettable characters and covers their journeys — physical, emotional and metaphorical — with care and compassion. It's a perfect rainy day read.

'The Colour of Milk' by Nell Leyshon

Fiction - hardcover; Fig Tree; 176 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The very best novels are always the ones that tell a story in a truly distinctive voice — Nell Leyshon's The Colour of Milk does just that.

A teenage farm girl

Beginning in "this year of lord eighteen hundred and thirty", it is narrated by the ever-feisty and sharp-tongued Mary, who is 15 years old and has an extraordinary tale to tell.

Mary, who has a crippled leg — "mother says it was like that when i come out into the world" — lives on a farm in the West Country with her parents, her beloved grandfather and three sisters. One day her father tells her that she is to move to the local vicarage, where she will work for Mr Graham, whose wife is unwell, as a live-in help. The prospect is shocking, because she's never been further than the top field of their property, and nor has she slept in any bed other than the one she shares with her sister.

She goes to the vicarage relunctantly. As much as she hates her father and the way he treats her, she misses her family and her usual routine desparately. But there is one good thing about working at the vicarage: Mr Graham has promised to teach her to read and write. And that is how we get to read Mary's first-hand account of her new life.

An unforgettable voice

The most striking thing about The Colour of Milk is the prose style. There is not one capital letter in the entire narrative, but the sentences, so heart-felt and direct, are easy to follow.

this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand.
in this year of the lord eighteen hundred and thirty one i am still sitting by my window. the wind comes through the cracks in the window frame.
i am tired from doing this and my wrist aches from doing this.
but i promised myself i would write the truth and the things that happened. i will do that.
and my hair is the colour of milk.

The narrative, which is very much tied to the seasons, is divided into four parts — spring, summer, autumn, winter — so that we experience the full cycle of rural life in the early 19th century. During the year we see Mary transform from a naive farm girl into a semi-literate woman, but along the way she gets to experience far more than she bargained for when Mr Graham wants to teach her more than her letters...

A memorable ending

The Colour of Milk is a truly compelling book because Mary's voice is so urgent and authentic. And the ending, which is shocking, unexpected and heart-breaking, is the kind that makes you gasp out loud — and then you want to have a big sob. The story is so imprinted on my mind it has stayed with me for more than two months now (I read it on the plane to Canada back in April) and is by far the best (and most memorable) thing I have read so far this year.

It's the type of novel I want to press into everyone's hands and say, here, read this. If that's not an endorsement for a fine little novel (it comes in a very compact size), I don't know what is.

'God's Own Country' by Ross Raisin

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 211 pages; 2009.

Ross Raisin's debut novel, God's Own Country, is about a troubled young Yorkshire farmer who develops a friendship with a teenage girl and runs away with her. It turns the notion of pastoral literature on its head, and is a compelling mix of adventure, Gothic romance and black comedy. Mostly, it is a very disturbing and unsettling read.

No ordinary man

The story is narrated by 19-year-old Sam Marsdyke, who lives on the family farm with his mum and dad. From the outset, we know that Sam is not an ordinary young man — he delights in throwing stones at ramblers, whom he describes as "daft sods". Later, we learn that he despises "towns", those people who move from the city to live in rural Yorkshire, because "they couldn't give a stuff for the Moors, all they wanted was a postcard view out of the bedroom window".

There are other, darker, elements to his character, which the reader discovers the further you get into the novel (I won't mention them here, to prevent spoiling the plot, suffice to say they are quite shocking). And as the narrative slowly unfolds, so, too, does Sam's hold on reality.

And while there's a menacing undertone to this book, Sam is sympathetically drawn. He has a deep love of the countryside (the descriptions of the moors are particularly vivid) and a love and respect for the livestock he tends. He has an especially tender relationship with a puppy, whom he dotes on.

Black comedy

The story is not without humour. And because it is written in a regional dialect, it ties the narrative to a specific place and imbues it with a real sense of authenticity. The use of language is inventive — a Labrador jumps up onto a gate and "jowled the top of it with drool", a breeze is "chirring through the trees",  there's a "hubbleshoo of small boys spewing out the bus" — and Raisin effortlessly brings scenes to life in gorgeously crafted sentences, such as this one:

Father took hold the wire and wrenched it up. A shimmer of raindrops spring out, arching a rainbow an instant, till they fell to the sod and he began pulling the wire off his post with his hands.

God's Own Country — the title refers to the beauty of the North York Moors — is best appreciated when read in large chunks, as opposed to a chapter here and a chapter there. It takes a good while for any narrative tension to build, but the patient reader is amply rewarded when Sam goes on the run with the teenage girl who has moved in next door. But the story does get quite confusing towards the end, a reflection of the state of Sam's mind at the time.

It reminded me very much of Patrick McCabe's Butcher Boy and even MJ Hyland's This is How, both of which are far stronger (and more disturbing) novels featuring deeply troubled male narrators, but as a first-time novelist it marks Raisin as an exciting new talent.

God's Own Country won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2009, The Guildford Book Festival First Novel Award in 2008 and a Betty Trask Award in 2008. It was shortlisted for a host of other awards, including The Guardian First Book Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

---------------------------

This book was chosen by Claire for our Riverside Readers book group. It generated quite an interesting discussion — about everything from mental health to living your life according to the label you have been assigned by others — so if you are in a book group looking for something to generate debate, do consider reading this one.

'An Experiment in Love' by Hilary Mantel

Fiction - Kindle edition; Fourth Estate; 272 pages; 2010.

Whenever I feel like I am reading too many newly published books, I seek out something that has been languishing on my shelves for more than a year or two. In this case, it wasn't so much my shelves, but my Kindle — yes, I have a virtual TBR as well as a physical one — and that was how I came to read Hilary Mantel's An Experiment in Love, which was first published in 1995.

I have only read a couple of Mantel's novels — Eight Months on Ghazzah Street and Beyond Black — as well as her extraordinary memoir Giving Up the Ghost, and enjoyed them all. Previously, I would have described her as an under-rated and under-appreciated writer, but winning the Booker prize for Wolf Hall, which I am yet to read, has put paid to all that.

A novel based on personal experience

Even though An Experiment in Love was her seventh novel, it feels semi-autobiographical. The main character and first person narrator, Carmel McBain, comes from a poor Catholic family in northern England — just like Mantel — and she attends university in London to study law — just like Mantel. I wouldn't like to draw further comparisons, because I am sure authors hate been accused of pilfering their own lives for creative content, but even the year in which the novel is set — 1970 — is the same year in which Mantel went to university for the first time.

While largely set in Tonbridge Hall, a hall of residence for female students, the novel is not so much a university (or college) novel, but one about a young woman, breaking free of her childhood roots to find her place in the real world. Carmel describes it as "a story about appetite: appetite in its many aspects and dimensions, its perversions and falling off, its strange reversals and refusals". That's probably a good summary, because in its broadest sense An Experiment in Love revolves around appetites for sex, education, food, freedom and equality.

It is also one of those stories that begins full of optimism and hope, but as the narrative progresses, becomes tinged by melancholia and tragedy. It is not a cheery read, but its depiction of young womanhood at a time when society was changing rapidly — it was the era of the contraceptive pill and feminism — feels particularly authentic and poignant.

Tied to her past by an ever-present childhood friend

The narrative is one that flips backwards and forwards in time as Carmel recalls incidences from her childhood — all of which relate to Karina, who grew up on the same street and is now living in Tonbridge Hall. The relationship between the two women is complicated, because they are very much alike — studious, intelligent, independent — but also polar opposites in other respects — Karina is a "big girl", while Carmel is so thin she becomes anorexic; Karina does not have a boyfriend, while Carmel is sexually experienced; Karina is prone to making hurtful remarks, while Carmel passively accepts them.

They effectively hate one another but cannot escape their shared — and "shackled" — history.

And yet the proximity of Karina, the sight of her stumping out into the London traffic and dirt, the presence of her name in our mouths—all these things led me helpless back into the past, memories pulling at me strong and smooth as a steel chain, each link hard and bright and obdurate, so that I was hauled out of my frail, pallid, eighteen-year-old body, and forced to live, as I live today as I write, within my ten-year-old self, rosy-skinned but rigid with fear, on my way by bus to take my entrance exam for the Holy Redeemer.

A fast-paced narrative

While not much happens in the book, it is a fabulously gripping read. There's a real sense of excitement following Carmel and her student friends as they take their first tentative steps into the world of adulthood.

It is the immediacey of the writing which makes it a page turner, almost as if Carmel has taken you into her confidence and is letting you in on family secrets. And while Carmel is far from perfect — she can be petty, jealous, filled with self-loathing and occasionally xenophobic — she has a rather dry wit, which provides some unexpected laughs. Here's an example:

In London that summer the temperatures shot into the mid-eighties, but at home the weather was as usual: rain most days, misty dawns over our dirty canal and cool damp evenings on the lawns of country pubs where we went with our boyfriends: sex later in the clammy, dewy dark. In June there was an election, and the Tories got in. It wasn’t my fault; I wasn’t old enough to vote.

Clear prose but rich in detail

Mantel's writing is free from literary flourishes, but she has an uncanny eye for detail — the "angry-looking women" in the cotton town of her childhood wear "shoes like boats"; the factory walls are "plum-coloured brick, stained black from the smoke and daily rain"; and thin girls at university "blow up like party balloons". And she has her finger on the pulse in terms of social — and femininst — commentary:

Still, our lives were neither free nor pleasant. There was an agenda. We were to be useful to society. We would graduate, then marry, then be mothers, also nurses and teachers, brainy, dowdy, overstretched: selfless breeders with aching calves, speaking well of support stockings by the age of thirty-five, finding our comfort in strong tea with one sugar. We would be women who never sat down, women with rough hands and a social conscience, women with a prayer in their heart and a tight smile on their lips; women who, seeing an extra burden offered, would always step forward and suggest ‘Try me.’ You have heard of schools that train life’s officers: this was a school that trained life’s foolish volunteers.

As a portrait of the claustrophobic life of a women's hall of residence — where the poor rub shoulders with the rich, where everyone knows everyone else's business, and where a good meal is hard to find — this is an extraordinarily vivid novel. And Carmel's battle to come to terms with her past in order to move into the future, is also brilliantly realised — and structured.

In 1996 Mantel was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for An Experiment in Love. You can listen to her discuss the novel on the BBC Radio 4 archive. She has some very interesting things to say about women's education.

'Signs of Life' by Anna Raverat

Fiction - hardcover; Picador; 320 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The unreliability of memory is a common theme in many novels, and never more so than in Anna Raverat's chilling debut Signs of Life.

From the opening sentences — "Beginning this book, there is something you should know. This is not a confession" — we are taken on a haunting journey through one woman's difficult past. Ten years ago Rachel had an affair with Carl, a colleague at work. When it was over she had a breakdown and suffered a "year or so of feeling numb". It clearly left her traumatised, but now with a new job, life and relationship, Rachel wants to figure out why the affair and the aftermath devastated her so much.

The narrative structure, which flips backwards and forwards in time, reflects Rachel's struggle to piece together her past. There's a kind of scrapbook feel to it, with lines of poetry, verses from songs and quotes from novels littered throughout. "Memory is not a pocket," she writes. "It's like this. Here's the story: there are holes in it."

A strong narrator

Rachel's voice, close and confiding, is the strongest aspect of the novel. There's something about her increasing paranoia and distress that is reminiscent of the female protagonists in most of Nicci French's work. The rising tension gives the book a page-turning quality: what is it that makes Rachel so frightened? Can we trust her recollection of events? What is she forgetting to tell us?

I'm conscious of not wanting to give anything away, so if this review feels a bit vague it's deliberate. All you really need to know is that it is a very dark story — about love and lust, passion and obsession — but there are fascinating snippets about writing and storytelling in it, too.

I have decided that I should include my own base actions and low words, those that are relevant. [...] The material is already so compromised. It has been edited once, by memory, then again by substances — both processes I recognize but can't know the extent of — and now I am editing again, to shape events into a story. I want the story to be true, and I see that if I leave out certain things I said and did, I am taking away from that.

Signs of Life was named on this year's Waterstones 11, a list of books by debut authors that are billed as "great reads". It's a worthy inclusion.

'Me Before You' by Jojo Moyes

Fiction - paperback; Michael Joseph; 512 pages; 2012. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Jojo Moyes is a former newspaper journalist turned novelist. Her books tend to fall into the chick-lit category — she has won the Romantic Novelists' Association Romantic Novel of the Year Award twice for Foreign Fruit (2004) and The Last Letter From Your Lover (2011). But Me Before You, her ninth novel, isn't so easy to pigeonhole. I was looking for a light read to take away on holiday with me, and convinced by Simon's recent review, I packed it in my suitcase.

Before I explain about the story, I must say that the pastel pink cover is truly terrible. It looks so girlie and twee, and if I saw it in a bookshop I would pass over it without a second thought. (I was reading a proof edition adorned in a plain, sunset-yellow jacket so I didn't feel so self-conscious reading it.) Why do marketing departments insist on packaging "women's fiction" in this clichéd, dare I say it, patronising way? Does it really shift copies?

Me Before You deserves better treatment, because this isn't your average run-of-the-mill romance. Yes, I can see that it is probably aimed at 20-something women; yes, it's not "literary"; and yes, it occasionally feels over-written and predictable. But the story deals with big issues — the class divide, quadriplegia, rape and the right to die, among others — and is handled with acute sensitivity and a good dollop of humour to lighten the load.

Waitress turned carer/companion

Louisa Clark is 26 and still living at home with her invalid grandfather, her parents, her younger sister and her sister's young son. She has a dead end job working in a local cafe, but it's hugely important to her, because she's the breadwinner of the family. When she loses that job through no fault of her own — the cafe is closed down — she must hurriedly find something else to keep the family afloat. And that is how she ends up becoming a carer/companion to a local man, eight years her senior, who was paralysed from the neck down in a road accident several years earlier.

The job throws Lou in at the deep end. She has no experience as a professional carer, but she's been employed because she has a bright personality and it is hoped her presence will lift Will Traynor out of the doldrums. What Lou doesn't know is that she has six months to convince Will that life is worth living — he has already made an appointment with Dignitas to end his life through assisted suicide.

The narrative, told from Lou's point of view, shows how her relationship with Will develops and changes over time. (There are also solo chapters from Will's magistrate mother, Will's adulterous father, Will's New Zealand male nurse and Lou's intelligent sister, which provide a three-dimensional view of the relationship.)

At first, the pair intensely dislike each other. Will was once the type of man who relished adventure sports such as mountain climbing, scuba diving and motorbiking. But now, stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he is bitter, angry and frustrated. He takes this out on Lou by snapping at her or making patronising comments. (In one scene, he pretends to drool and have a fit, just to scare her off.) But as time goes by and they spend more time in each other's company a true friendship — and love — ensues.

Two people who change each other

The essence of the story is that these two people, from completely different backgrounds and mindsets, must find common ground to get along. Lou, who has settled for a quiet life living in the town of her birth, learns it's okay to want to spread your wings and live a different kind of life. And Will, once a richly paid City worker with a beautiful girlfriend to match, discovers that small moments of joy can be found in unexpected places.

Moyes somehow manages to balance deep poignancy with black comedy — there's one episode at a racecourse which is outright hilarious — so the narrative never feels heavy-handed or overly sentimental. And her depiction of life as a quadriplegic, including the detailed medical care required, is handled with compassion and dignity. She makes Will a flesh-and-blood real, three-dimensional character, when it would have been so easy to resort to cliché and stereotyping.

Despite the sadness at the heart of this novel, Me Before You is actually a life-affirming read about making the most of our lives and not taking anything for granted. The ending is hugely emotional — and not quite what I had expected — so if you decide to take the plunge and give this book a whirl, here's one piece of advice to take on board: read the last 40 or so pages in the privacy of your home, unless you particularly like sobbing into your Kleenex in public.