Review: Behind Her Eyes

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

#WTFthatending

“A tenner says you’ll never guess this ending”

When the promotion for a book emphasises the ending so strongly, more strongly in this case than any I have come across before, the ending becomes the focus, the thing by which the story's success is measured. I would not have won the tenner and the conclusion certainly was #WTF but unfortunately not in a good way.

'Behind Her Eyes' is a well constructed psychological thriller, a story of martial infidelity narrated by two women who may not be what they tell us they are. The narrative moves quickly, the characters are compelling and the dialogue is good. But the twist.... The ending is so out of context, although there are clues that here is something strange going on below the surface, that, when I realised where this was going, I was completely thrown out of the story.

So, despite its merits, when the publicity concentrates on an ending that, for me, is unsuccessful, I have to judge the book accordingly.

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Review: Before the Fall

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stopped reading the X-men about the same time as Charles Xavier's son, Legion turned up. I didn't like the character and although I've watched the movies, I didn't think much of Apocalypse. So I was surprised when, having watched the first episode almost by accident, I was blown away by the Legion TV series. Even more so when I discovered the series was written and created by Noah Hawley and that he is also behind the Fargo series, another I had avoided simply because I enjoyed the movie so much. And then, courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley, I received a review copy of the same Noah Hawley's Before the Fall. Synchronicity...?

Before the Fall is the story of Scott Burroughs, a down on his lunch artist, who accepts an invitation to travel by private jet from Martha's Vineyard to New York. When the jet crashes into the sea all but Scott and the jet-owners' four year old son are killed. Scott becomes part of, perhaps subject of, the investigation and is pursued by news agencies eager for the story. That is essentially the plot. A large part of the narrative is the backstories of the passengers - the 24-hour news mogul and his wife, the dodgy businessman, the bodyguard, the flightcrew - and how they came to be on board the doomed plane.

But plot is not what Before the Fall is about. The novel is an exquisitely written examination of life in the 21st century; what it means to be living in a society where news has to have an 'angle', where so many people base their world view on 'what's in it for me' that it becomes impossible to comprehend that someone may just act rather than act selfishly. It is in the passengers individual stories, the little connections, the seemingly unrelated choices, that lead to larger consequences, where the real weight of the book, the message, is contained -

"Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you."

Noah Hawley has a real gift for language, an ear for dialogue. Whole passages deserve re-reading, the reader's appreciation of the lyrical, mesmerising quality of the writing only grows. I will be going back to watch Fargo and The Good Father is on my to-read list and i might have missed it all had I not read the X-men....

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Review: The Blade Itself

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have always struggled a bit with Fantasy novels. As a pre-teen I discovered Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian by way of Marvel's Roy Thomas and John Buscema and proceeded to read everything I could find. I to see the Arnie movie version two nights in a row. But I couldn't get to grips with Tolkien and, although I later read and enjoyed the Lord of the Rings, it is still somewhat po-faced and humourless, not to mention full of irritating diversions with the likes of Tom Bombadil. Game of Thrones was a revelation and, after watching the first episode of the TV series, I read the first volume of George RR Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' in a week and quickly caught up with the those who had been reading the books for ten years.

GRRM also inspired Joe Abercrombie to begin his First Law saga, and it is a saga, a return to the days when Fantasy was still called Sword & Sorcery. It has barbarian heroes (at least I think they are heroes), powerful wizards, women who can hold their own with the men, politics, warmongering and generally a lot of strange goings on. But just as importantly, 'The Blade Itself' has a sense of humour and a huge amount of fun. It was the humour in Howard's work that kept me reading Conan's adventures and it is the playfulness in Abercrombie's writing that will keep me coming back. His cast may be archetypes but they are written as real people, three dimensional characters with understandable, if sometimes contradictory, motivations, not a few faults and insecurities. We have Logen Ninefingers, the Bloody Nine, the Conan character, a legendary but tired killer who questions his black legacy and whose berserker rages are ferocious; Jezal dan Luthar, a nobleman whose snobbery forms his world view and who may be really out of his depth; and Bayaz, First of the Magi, a possibly centuries old wizard, whose sardonic wit is a source of much of the early humour in the book.

Abercrombie has a real talent for naturalistic dialogue, profanity and bloodshed. 'The Blade Itself' is very entertaining; I loved it and the second book in the series has just moved up a few places in my 'to-read' list....

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