Best Reads of 2024

I promised in 2024 to tear myself out of my ‘reading comfort zone’ of historical fiction and step into the literary world ‘beyond’.  As the curtain falls on 2024, did I succumb to a new genre, or did I reach back for that good old comfort blanket? 

Dark Rising by Greig Beck, (Momentum) was recommended on the Damian Barr Scottish Book Club.  It’s a thriller set in the Iranian desert and reveals a world full of black holes and elongated distorted human beings.  It was only when Alex Hunter, the most invincible SAS soldier ever, was bitten by a snake, that the book came alive. Alas, he had a myriad more trials to endure until finally, things settled down for him and his team.  At least it gave me a better understanding of where Doctor Who was coming from when David Tenant stretched and morphed into Ncuti Gatwa. Just blame the black holes.
3 Stars

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, (Oneworld) was my next step into a dystopian world. Winner of the Booker Prize 2023, this novel is set in Ireland, where far-right extremists have formed a government, imprisoning anyone considered a threat. The relaxed domesticity of Eilidh’s family slowly disintegrates as her husband, an education union rep disappears without trace. The gradual build-up of tension and terror permeates this tale as it simmers and finally reaches boiling point. It’s a masterpiece.  (However, the lack of punctuation, direct speech marks and indents throughout, broke my heart slightly for all the hours I spent as a teacher helping pupils to redraft and improve their writing).
4 Stars

The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen (Vintage Classics) is a psychological drama written by no less than my hitherto unknown grandmother’s cousin.  The book was pressed into my hands by a relative, and I reluctantly read the tale of wealthy young women in the 1920s waiting for life to begin. The pages are littered with desirable locations of London, Cork, Paris and Italy. There is love and betrayal as well as the sadness of the innocent child Léopold, who is burdened with the unusual mystery of his parents’ past. It’s beautifully written, and Bowen has a more fluid style than the better-known clipped exchanges in Nancy Mitford novels. (The authors both deal with similar themes of the idyll rich playing with the lives of lesser poorer beings). Still, it is the ending of this novel that gives it heart.  
4 Stars 

A Single thread by Tracy Chevalier.  This book was recommended by a friend as a ‘must read’.  After World War I, many young women were left mourning their loved ones who never returned home, and watched on the sidelines as other husbands, who had survived, went on to live fulfilling lives with children and homes.  Violet is left to care for her embittered mother, until finally she leaves to work as a secretary in freezing conditions in Winchester. The poverty she endures is in true George Orwellian style. However, by joining the embroidery group at the cathedral she finds companionship, accomplishment and fulfilment. In this novel I found pain and grief, so evocatively healed by the gentle art of needlework. 
5 Stars  

The Lives and Loves of Saint Columba by Tim Hetherington (Amazon). I read this book for research purposes on Scotland’s Celtic past. How I underestimated this man Columba and the great cultural connections between Ireland and Scotland before Christianity.   I had no idea how far people travelled in the 600s and that the humble curragh was like a luxury-coach taking saints and scholars on the highways of the sea, quicker and less tiring than by land.  It's a story where ancient kings, druids, poets and nobles intermingle. It’s an ancient tale of copyright when the young Columba is discovered secretly and painstakingly copying a treasured book from Rome and then not allowed to call it his own.  His objection causes a great war in the clans, resulting in many deaths and finally his expulsion from Ireland. Discovering Iona, he vows to save as many lives as those that were lost in the war he triggered.  From Tiree to Jura, from the Firth of Clyde to Inverness, this book is a work of art and a must-read.  
5 Stars

Columba’s Bones by David Greig (Polygon). Sparked by my interest in St Columba, my next read had to be this breath-takingly bawdy tale set in Iona in the 800s. The author, a playwright and theatre director, stayed on the island for six months before writing this book and he was utterly captivated by the light and the landscape. This led him to imagining how terrifying it must have been when the Viking invaders landed and ripped the hearts out of the pious mead-making monks.  It’s a serious subject told with a humorous touch. There are some wonderful similes, (the former teacher in me smiled), but reader beware, the amount of schoolboy humour.  There are shit-pits, pooh-plops and ball spearing galore.  
4 Stars

Lucky Larry by Pat Feehan (Amazon) is a tongue-in-cheek crime novel, set in the least likely backdrop of a pet shop. The main character, Larry is married to an ungrateful wife, and he stays with her for the sake of the kids. When taking a break from the daily grind of cleaning out animal cages, he accidentally witnesses a gangland murder. There are plenty of suspects, but the story really picks up pace when it reaches the Barras and the mystery of the stolen jade buddha.  Feehan includes many recognisable Glasgow locations including Kelvingrove Art Galleries, Argyll St, Park Bar, and richly accompanies them  with some famous ‘Glesca’ pattoir’. But my favourite moments are the glimpses of pathos, as the luckless Larry reflects on his failed life and the happier times he shared  with his dad. 
5 Stars

Ice Cream Boy by Lindsay Littleson (Floris). Dementia is not a topic often broached in children’s fiction, so I was interested in reading this book to see how this theme developed. 12  year-old Luca struggles with the ‘fallout’ from the family business, Verani’s Café. His dream is to run it himself, prising it from the hands of the present incumbents who are running it into the ground. Meanwhile, his Nona, who cares for him while his mother works, is displaying worrying signs of sudden anger and amnesia.   Despite the gloom, Luca is determined to pursue his goal and enters an ice cream competition with a family secret recipe. The rest as they say is sugar-coated magic. 
5 Stars

Caledonia Road by Andrew O’Hagan (Faber & Faber) If you have ever had a hankering to live the good life in London with sophisticated art galleries, restaurants and members clubs all on your doorstep, well this is the book for you. Or perhaps not. Set in post Covid days, a university professor and social commentator Campbell Flynn is in demand for interviews, scriptwriting and podcasts. He is fortunate to be married to an extremely wealthy woman, and yet he is beset with the perpetual fear of 'losing it all'. Extravagant living in London is a drug and a curse, as Pip in Great Expectations discovered, and I’m sure that’s why O’Hagan’s genius novel has been compared to that of a classic Charles Dickens. Russian money, cryptocurrencies and trafficked migrants all inhabit these pages along with a nostalgic harking back to Flynn’s childhood days and his loving upbringing in Glasgow. A silent voice inside me screamed: 'Give it all up Flynn and settle for a nice apartment in Glasgow’s leafy west end. You’ll be sorted.’  It took O’Hagan 10 years to write this book, and it shows.  As he said himself, it took him time to safely land all the planes, and he did. 
5 Stars

Life of Robert Burns by Catherine Carswell (Canongate) Finally, for research purposes, (as my latest novel is set in Ayrshire in the late 1700s), I re-read the wonderful biography of Scotland’s national poet, and I was immediately transported back to my comfort blanket of historical times.  In this biography, I found the highs and lows, the light and dark, the wicked and pious, the rich and poor, all featuring in Robbie's humble life. In one of his final letters as an exciseman, where he offers His Majesty’s Government a grovelling apology for purchasing canons from a smuggling ship he’d seized, in order that the canons be sent in aid of the Revolutionaries in France, he learns a painful lesson for all writers: not to bite the hand that feeds them. The author of this wonderful biography, Catherine Carswell learned this lesson herself, when as a young literary critic for the Glasgow Herald, she published an enthusiastic review of DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow and was subsequently sacked. Like Campbell Flynn in O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road, the writer, no matter how high he or she flies, is always susceptible to self-doubt and that feeling of what if it all falls apart wrong? And yet, something spurs them on, as they well know, the pen is mightier than the sword. Catherine Carswell’s Life of Burns is testament to this. 
5 Stars

Thank you for reading my 2024 Reading Round Up. Please let me know if my choices have inspired you in any way.
 
My latest novel, Smugglers’ Midnight Escape will be published early 2025. To order your copy, please message me directly through Drop Me A Line on this website.