Being Emily - Anne Donovan

Engaging tale about a likeable Glaswegian girl with an Emily Brontë obsession trying to find her way in life despite family tragedy and turbulent relationships. Does well at conveying the spiralling effects of grief and self-destructive behaviour as well as the struggle to balance reason with emotion and the difficulty of opening up to well-meaning adults. (I also liked her previous novel, 'Buddha Da'.)

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

An epic hallucination of a novel that somehow manages to blend a plot about modern life for immigrants in London with fables about angels, demons, miracles and revelations without diminishing either, asking big questions along the way about identity and morality. The opening section is dramatically supernatural, which I found a little alienating, but before long sincere observations were mingling with the magical farce, as with the description of the contents of a plane falling to earth, starting with the physical detritus but moving on to the "debris of the soul" of the migrants killed in the crash:

"broken memories, sloughed-off selves, severed mother-tongues, violated privacies, untranslatable jokes, extinguished futures, lost loves, the forgotten meaning of hollow, booming words, land, belonging, home."

I was also struck by the explanation, in the middle of a plot about monstrous mutant immigrants attempting to escape police custody, of how the transformation has been imposed upon them: "They describe us... That's all. They have the power of description, and we succumb to the pictures they construct."

The novel's central values are integrity - characters are tested with possible compromises of the truth, or 'easier' false identities - and mercy, as choices must be made about forgiveness or revenge. The way that these choices are handled as the story unfolds is gripping and thought-provoking.

Runaway - Alice Munro

A collection of beautifully written short stories which were utterly absorbing but easier to admire than to love. The overwhelming majority were rather bleak, and while I don't have a problem with a bit of grit in fiction, I did find it disturbing that the darkness in these tended to come from the inadequacies of the main characters themselves, or even more depressingly, from the implied impossibility of meaningful connections or true understanding between people. The story Tresspasses really got under my skin and left me quite shaken - a sign of powerful writing, but not a particularly enjoyable read!

The Road Home - Rose Tremain

A fascinating insight into the lives of economic migrants and the sheer determination required to succeed when starting out with nothing, as well as a compelling exploration of life after bereavement. The past can never be recaptured, and so the road home after a period of exile in England leads not to life as it was, but to a fresh start in a nearby town, and the central journey is about reconnecting with people and finding hope and energy after a period of numbness and flight.

The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton

A family saga told backwards, as a young woman tries to complete her grandmother's attempts to uncover her own mysterious origins and the narrative shifts between several points in time as the secrets of the past are gradually revealed. Readable and absorbing, but too reliant on a rather predictable plot, with an unfortunate tendency towards melodrama and caricature - fun to read once but would not be satisfying a second time around.

Gifted - Nikita Lalwani

This is the story of the teenage years of a young Indian girl growing up in Wales whose life comes to be increasingly defined by her mathematical ability and her father's ambitions for her, which ultimately tear the family apart. It perfectly captured the painful emotions of a teenage girl out of step with her peers - her self-defeating interactions and compulsive behaviour are utterly convincing and I really felt for her throughout, hoping against all the evidence for a happy ending.

Starter For Ten - David Nicholls

Comic novel set in the 80s, about a working-class boy's disastrous experiences as he arrives at university, joins the University Challenge team, and falls headlong for his beautiful teammate. Funny in parts, but some of his struggles & pathetic behaviour made me cringe too much on his behalf to be fully enjoyable, and the more serious sections about his background and his father's death seemed to sit uneasily alongside the humour.

The Bad Mother's Handbook - Kate Long

A lighthearted and often funny look at mother-daughter relationships and the transformations brought about by family connections, as a teenage girl's pregnancy impacts each of the three generations of women living in her home. The characters are flawed but likeable, and some serious subjects are touched on without disturbing the flow - the main premise being that it's better to appreciate what you have than to waste your life fantasising about some implausible alternative.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

An endearing tale about a boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard, growing up through a series of captivating magical adventures and ultimately vanquishing his enemies and reclaiming his human life. I didn't pick up on the parallels with the Jungle Book until I saw Gaiman quoted as saying that he had set out to write something similar set in a graveyard - and on reflection, this hits that mark perfectly, evoking the same feelings of loneliness and confusion as the hero tries to move between the world of his upbringing and that of his birth.

The Sorrows of an American - Siri Hustvedt

I thought this was brilliant - beautiful, intelligent, and compulsively readable all at once. The characters were complex, ambiguous and likeable, the plot was filled with mysteries in the current lives of the central characters as well as their family histories, and it included a convincing and positive portrayal of the work of a psychotherapist illustrating the power of honesty and awareness when directed towards oneself and others. I particularly liked the way it managed to avoid an overly neat resolution without being unsatisfying.

Baby-led Weaning - Gill Rapley & Tracey Murkett

Rather militant exposition of the self-feeding approach to weaning, emphasising the importance of allowing the baby to be in control of the process by using finger foods and tolerating mess, and including babies in family mealtimes eating the same food as everyone else. Helpful in places, with some good lists of suitable finger foods and useful information on nutrition etc. and worth it if only for the photos of babies tucking into the most unlikely foods, but a bit extreme in the way it portrays spoon-feeding as tantamount to cruelty, and arguably not the most efficient way to increase the calorie intake of a baby that is starting to lose weight & sleep less well...

The Baby In The Mirror (a child's world from birth to three) - Charles Fernyhough

This was one of those frustrating reading experiences where an interesting book held my attention throughout, but I forgot most of it as soon as I put it down. I enjoyed the author's attempts to describe life from his infant daughter's point of view (laughing out loud at her initial recognition that her world is populated by two main characters, "a tall person, whose clothes open at the front at mealtimes, and an even taller one, who has no such talent"). A few random pieces of information about babies' cognitive development that have stuck with me are:

• Newborns emerge with a kind of synesthesia, taking a while for the senses to become differentiated (for example, in a study where infants were shown clearly different visual stimuli, there was no difference in the reactions of the visual cortex, but olfactory, auditory and even motor control areas showed differences) - "The smell of her shawl might be a dim flash of light to her. The daylight beyond her eyelids might reach her as a faint hum. She is tasting in colour, smelling in sound. Compared to that, dreaming seems positively mundane."
• Babies are born able to perceive a distinction between things that move like people and things that don't.
• Fat in the diet is massively important in the first few months because it's being used to produce the myelin sheaths that coat nerve cells in the brain and improve communication between them.
• Private speech (i.e. talking to yourself) is extremely positive for problem solving and learning and should not be discouraged.

How Not to F*** Them Up - Oliver James

Quite an easy read from a psychologist with a largely psychoanalytic approach presenting his opinions on caring for under-threes - his main assertion being the importance of a consistent, calm, responsive and tuned-in carer. I found this quite useful as it helped me to clarify my thinking around my gut feeling that I didn't like the idea of a nursery at a young age but wouldn't mind one-to-one care from a relative. I also liked the discussion of the loss of status associated with taking on the traditional "housewife" role and the importance of explicitly thinking this through and doing household chores without resentment by making it a conscious choice to do them in order to create a positive home for your baby. The most interesting idea that was new to me was his emphasis on the importance of cultivating the belief that abilities and behaviours are malleable rather than genetically determined, quoting studies showing that bad behaviour, academic underperformance, and mental illness are all more likely to "stick" if carers and children believe that they cannot be changed.

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

Reading this straight after The Other Boleyn Girl, I was unable to appreciate its complexity and depth - in comparison it seemed dry, excessively male, and rather heavy going. I found it a little inaccessible, although as with so many of the books I've tried to read recently, I expect it would be far more rewarding if read with the energy to concentrate on it properly...

The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory

Exactly the big dose of escapism I was after when I read it - absorbing and dramatic, with an enjoyable and convincing emphasis on the female perspective on life in a powerful family at the Tudor court. I did wonder occasionally whether her desire to make her heroine engaging and fresh led her into some anachronisms, for example her attitudes to the treatment of her children sometimes seemed a little too modern.

The Clothes On Their Backs - Linda Grant

Absorbing story dealing with the way people perceive each other based on the images we choose to present and what we choose to reveal or conceal about ourselves. Interesting insights on the subjects of who controls our identities and the way that these images are interpreted. The pervasive themes of clothing and image managed to be subtle and unobtrusive without losing their power.