The Bostonians

What an epic sense of relief? Not relief to have finished; relief to have begun. Henry James has, to my view, climbed to sit in the lonely company of the other authors who are, I consider, capable of ending a book appropriately. The Bostonian’s gentle paragraphs, characters, scenes, ideas and plot fell, with delightful tenderness, through my eyes like rain on the desert. I cannot say enough to recommend this book, nor to express my personal sense of gratitude that I have been led to return to the literature of this period. You don’t find too many identified as an interlocutress in the popular fiction of today!

Erewhon

Dark Fire – by CJ Sansom

The second of fifty-two books I will read this year is Dark Fire. A cajoling crime novel set in Henry VIII’s sixteenth century London. Falling from the pen of Christopher Sansom, himself qualified to practice law in England and Wales, the plot follows humble, honest, and yet streetwise barrister Matthew Shardlake as he investigates a murder and the disappearance of the eponymous Dark Fire. You take a curious character, hump and all, and drop him in the thick of the historic plots against Thomas Cromwell.

Swallows and Amazons

As you may have guessed my first good book of the year is Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. I read it a long time ago now and realising how close I was to falling behind with my reading I snatched it from the shelf and re-read it. It’s changed. The tale of the young Walkers has become very much shorter than I recalled. It seemed such a big book when I last thumbed its pages.