So, I am basically only reading this book because I got it free from work.  I didn’t like Mo Hayder’s other Jack Caffrey novel and the tagline makes me feel sick (You’ve got something this killer wants… Skin).  Having said that, although I almost put it down after reading chapter one (needless to say, all about the largest organ in/on our bodies), I am now gripped.  Let’s see how it goes. I’m reading Wolf Hall over Christmas, but it’s too big for tube so need something to tide me over until Christmas Eve…

Set in Barcelona at the turn of the last century, this is another creepy book from the author of The Shadow of the Wind.

David Martin is a writer. He starts out by working on the crime pages of the local paper, and gets his big break when a last minute story is needed for the back page. He writes a short piece of crime fiction which the editor loves.  Soon he has a weekly column, but the hatred and jealousy of everyone he works with.  He gets fired from his job, but thanks to his patron, the wealthy Senor Vidal, he finds himself in a 10 year contract ghost writing thrillers for a low-rent publishers.  The books are enormously successful, and they allow him to move in to an old, abandoned house that he has always loved, but never been able to afford.

His writing also brings him to the attention of the intriguing Mr Corelli, a French publisher who seems desperate for David to work with him.  He offers him a huge amount of money and promises to give him everything he ever wanted.  He even promises to rid David of the headaches that have been plaguing him for years.  His 10 year contract is binding, but when his publishers die in a mysterious fire, suddenly he is free to work for whoever he wants.

The book Corelli wants him to work on is unusual, but David feels bound to him and becomes absorbed and obsessed with his new project.  But this publisher definitely isn’t what he seems and as bodies start piling up around him, David starts to wonder how much he really knows about the man with the angel brooch…

This book revisits Sempere and Son and the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, and there were many points where I thought ‘Didn’t that happen in the last one?’.  The plot is quite different, but it is incredibly similar in style and there are many overlapping themes (mysterious stranger, sinister police, obsessive book lovers etc).  If you have read The Shadow of the Wind very recently, I would probably wait a while before picking this up, but otherwise, thoroughly recommended.  A bit of a disappointing (and also, gross) ending, but I really enjoyed this for the most part.  Definitely worth a read.

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The tagline of Skin really put me off.

You have something this killer wants… SKIN.

Ew.

Every time Mo Hayder wrote about this creepy, creepy man, sitting in his house in the country, aching to stretch a woman’s skin over a tanning bench, I felt a little bit sick.

Luckily, this took up only a fraction of the book.  The bulk of it follows Flea and Jack, two police officers in Bristol, trying to solve a series of murders, posed to look like suicides.  While Jack tries to convince his superiors that the suicides aren’t what they seem, the entire police force has been mobilised to search for an actress who vanished outside her rehab clinic late one night.  The (dead) actress soon shows up, but only Flea knows where she is, and she definitely isn’t talking.  But what do you do with a dead body that has been decomposing in your car for three days?  What do the suicide/murders have in common?  And why do Flea and Jack keep getting the feeling they are being followed by something less than human?

Very gripping stuff.  Only a little bit sick inducing – no worse than an episode of CSI.

Skin by Mo Hayder

Wolf Hall follows Thomas Cromwell as he navigates his way through the politically charged court of Henry VIII. After leaving his home as a young boy to escape an abusive father, Thomas goes from the son of a poor blacksmith to the closest adviser to the King. On the way he loses his wife, two daughters, and his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey.

This is a tome of a book. I read it over Christmas because it is far too big to take on the tube. It is well written, if slightly confusing (apparently there were only 5 men’s names in the 1500s), but I still don’t really understand why this book won the Booker prize. It is a very compelling fictionalised account of a fascinating time in England’s history (and really makes you wonder how the monarchy and class system managed to sustain itself all these years!), but by the end of it I was much more interested in the Agatha Christie book I was reading on the tube, and couldn’t wait to be over and done with it!

Of course, this might be because the book is so heavy I could barely prop it up in bed…

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This book is incredible. The plot is so unebelivable and so extraordinary, it is hard to believe that the entire thing is based on real stories and the lives of real people who lived only 150 years ago.

It follows the life of Robert FitzRoy, who was captain of the Beagle for two round the world trips, and Charles Darwin.  Darwin, obviously, is a well-known figure, but FitzRoy was also well ahead of his time.  He believed that “savages” were not lesser people to be brutalised, but equals, just without the same opportunities that “civilized” men had.  His interest in geology and science were the only thing that landed Darwin on the Beagle in the first place.

The journey they took was amazing - not just because of the discoveries that Darwin sent back - but because this was really a new world for Europeans - places that had never been mapped were being charted for the first time. Some of the things are so unreal I had to look them up on Wikipedia to see if they were made up.  (And they weren’t!)

12 year olds wrenched from their families to live a life on the sea; slaves still being traded as if they were animals; no concern paid to the well-being of the natives; London a completely industrial town, full of factories pumping out thick smoke & fog; people in power purely because of their family or wealth - the world has moved on in some ways and yet some things stay the same. Darwin at one point meets General Rosas, a political but brutal man, trying to create the country of Argentina and wipe out the natives. Because there is no record of what was said when they met, the author used quotes from Tony Blair’s justification of the war in Iraq to fill the gap. It is striking how well the rhetoric fits.

There is lots of action in the earlier years, battling storms and engaging with hostile natives, and life on board the ship really sucks you in.  The characters are also really well drawn. Their relationships are so real and complex - even though I side with Darwin on the evolution vs. God front, when Darwin & FitzRoy fall out, you really can see both sides of their arguments.  Although this book could have done with a bit more editing (it is over 700 pages long!!!), it is so interesting I’ll forgive it. Definitely worth a read if you have a long commute to get through or want something thought provoking to read on holiday.

This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson

About half way through The Little Stranger, I had to put it down.  It was late, I was in bed, I still hadn’t washed my face or brushed my teeth, and I was reading a passage about a man being haunted by something very scary in a bathroom. I couldn’t read any more for fear that I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed again that night.

Most of this book isn’t scary.  If you read any of it out of context, you probably wouldn’t find it scary at all. But it is a constant accumulation - the story creeps into you.  It is set post WWII in an old country estate, which is slowly but surely crumbling as the Ayres family living there struggle to keep up with its maintenance.  Everything is seen through the eyes of an outside - Doctor Faraday - who becomes close to (and later slightly obsessed by) the family.

I can just picture the house - old, creaky, endless dark corridors and damp, cold rooms.  Rodderick, the eldest son, was deeply affected by the war. He was left with burn scars over his arms and face and went in to a deep depression when he returned home to be nursed by his mother and sister.  With all the pressure of being the lord of the manor weighing upon his 20-something-year-old shoulders, it seems that stress is an easy explanation for his certainty that there is something evil living in the house - an infection that he has to stave off.

But is stress all that’s causing it? Despite the doctor’s best efforts, soon the mother and sister are soon starting to believe in ghosts.  Even our kind protagonist, Doctor Faraday, who starts out with all the good intentions in the world, soon starts to turn obsessive and sinister as the house weaves its way deeper into his life.  Something is just not right about Hundreds House.

Read it!  Read it, read it, read it.  I love Sarah Waters. I realised when I finished this that there are still two books that I haven’t read by her, something that I aim to correct as soon as possible!

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters