1. Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris
A gripping psychological thriller
set in a rather decrepit independent grammar school, this is a tightly-crafted
story about class divisions, unrequited love and the pain of being desperate to
belong. All the characters (even minor
ones) are well-drawn and I had no trouble picturing them or the surroundings in
which the novel is set. The story is told by two first person point-of-view
narrators - the ageing, cynical classics teacher (who just wants to be left
alone to get on with it) and the outsider (a ruthless character bearing a huge
grudge). I had no problems differentiating between their voices and their alternative
points of view of the same events. The author deftly knits together these
differing points of view to deliver a killer twist at the end. The novel is by
turns funny, thought-provoking and chilling and the fact that I did not see the
twist coming made me like it all the more!
2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
This is another
tense and tightly-wound thriller but very different in tone to Gentlemen and Players. The premise is simple;
a woman makes a daily train journey, looking out at the same houses and creating
an imaginary life for the people she sees within. So far, so mundane - but then
the story gathers pace and you soon realise that there is so much more to it.
The main character - the ‘girl on the train’ - is depressed, alcoholic and
really struggling to keep her life on track. This is a big part of how the
author creates a strong sense of tension, as you are never completely
sure whether her recollections are fact, figments of her imagination or a
combination of both. The story is told from three
different viewpoints and all the characters are complex and deeply flawed.
Nothing is as it first appears and nobody is as they first seem. I did twig
what really happened but only a few pages before the big reveal at the end. This novel had me gripped and I highly recommend it if you are a fan of thrillers.3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Set in a dystopian future in which mankind has been ravaged by a killer strain of flu
(akin to Stephen King’s masterpiece The
Stand), this story manages to convey a sense of global catastrophe while
focussing closely on the intertwined lives of a few key characters. It uses
flashbacks to contrast the pointless nature of a materialistic life pre-‘Georgian
Flu’ with one that is spent just trying to survive in a world which has reverted
to pre-technology days. The glue holding the different time frames
together is a character called Arthur Leander, a famous actor who died (not of
the flu) on the day that the pandemic struck. His legacy lives on, connecting some of the survivors and creating memories that they cling
to. What is most striking about this book is the strong sense that you are
reading about events that could actually happen in the not too distant future. There
is a revelation towards the end which makes me hope that the author will write another novel focussing on one particular character in this book as I really
want find out how they ended up doing what they did.
Mrs Osafo