The Piano Teacher - Janice Y K Lee

This captivating novel describes two love affairs involving the same man in colonial Hong Kong, set a decade apart. The narrative structure, switching between the 1940s and the 1950s, works well, as the central plot is revealed through a mixture of memory and real time, and the characterisation is interesting as the main characters switch roles, with Will being first the more naive and then the more cynical partner in his two relationships. I found it an unexpectedly traumatic read in places - having picked it up thinking it would be a light period romance, I found it to be a surprisingly disturbing story including political intrigue and some shocking material about the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. I think that this would repay a re-read at some point.

The Camel Bookmobile - Masha Hamilton

Thoughtprovoking story about a meeting of cultures, as the books brought to a small settlement in the Kenyan desert have a strong impact - and unexpected consequences for the people of the tribe and the American woman who is so passionate about the project. Nicely written, with varied narrators so that different perspectives are voiced, and an honest - if painful - conclusion. The book shows the potential benefits of the project, but also reveals the dangers of wrong assumptions, and the risks of arrogantly trying to 'educate' others - one character reflects on "how uncivilized it was to bring an unsolicited gift from their world and then dictate how it must or must not be used".

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

I'd heard a lot of positive comments about this book but when I finally got around to reading it I was a little disappointed. In my view the lighthearted writing style, although funny, distracts from the subject matter, which is actually pretty serious in places, dealing with family memories, identity, and the impact of wartime traumas on adult relationships in addition to the main plotline about two women's attempts to disentangle their elderly father from a bizarre marriage.

Amenable Women - Mavis Cheek

A quirky book that blends historical drama about Anna of Cleves (narrated by a portrait, no less) with an 'aga-saga' style story about a widow adjusting to life lived outside of the shadow of her irritatingly flamboyant husband. A fun and satisfying read, although I preferred the historical sections, which avoided the tendency of the modern-day narrative to drift towards caricature.

Music, in a Foreign Language - Andrew Crumey

Self-consciously intellectual novel about the construction of a (literary, historical, personal) narrative. The "author" presents several attempts at writing about two people who meet on a train, but each time veers off into a story about death and betrayal centred on the father of one of the characters, and complains that

the tree of possibilities branches so quickly, that it soon becomes impossible to follow with any degree of completeness, all the many middles and ends which can spring from a single beginning.

The whole thing is set in an alternative present, the inverse of the situation the "author" describes when he observes that

the alternatives seem impossible only because they didn't happen. It's left to writers now to dream of all the other equally probable outcomes which history could have chosen - like that genre of novel now appearing, based on the premise that the German occupation never occurred, and that the Communists were not elected in 1947.

Despite all the complexity, the central story is presented as a straight narrative and was engaging and satisfying.

The Lucky Ones - Rachel Cusk

Five interlocking short stories with themes of parent-child relationships, identity, and family memories. I found two of them particularly compelling: Confinement, about a woman going into labour in prison, and Mrs Daley's Daughter, a bleak tale about a rather unpleasant woman struggling to cope with her daughter's post-natal depression as memories of her own difficult experience of motherhood, and the harsh way she treated her daughter as a child, seep to the surface and threaten to overwhelm her.

I was drawn to this because I'd enjoyed (if that's the right word!) the dark humour of her rather gruelling account of becoming a mother, A Life's Work, and I wasn't disappointed. The difference was that whereas with A Life's Work I recognised myself in even the darker passages, and found it comforting to read about someone else having the same experiences, the comfort in The Lucky Ones came from feeling (extremely!) lucky not to be sharing the situations or feelings of the characters - in fact, reading about painful transitions to parenthood and difficult family relationships during the "honeymoon phase" of motherhood made me feel rather smug.