The Other Hand - Chris Cleave

Hard to say much about this without disobeying the instruction in the back cover blurb to refrain from telling people what happens... but this is an extremely compelling story about the power of chance encounters and the impact of people's choices in the way they respond to each other and to situations. Much of the subject matter is truly shocking and "should" make for a very bleak and draining read, but somehow there is a dreamlike beauty to it - coupled with some very funny observations and well-rounded characters - which makes it feel uplifting and strangely enjoyable to read.

The Spirit Level - Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett

A clearly written and yet powerful book with the subtitle "why equality is better for everyone", this struck me as one of the best presented books based on mathematical findings that I've ever come across, although I'm prepared to believe that this is because my preferences tended towards simpler writing that usual due to reading this while pregnant, and therefore tired & hormonal!

The key argument is that once a certain level of economic development has been reached, equality is more significant than absolute wealth as a determinant of wellbeing within a society. The evidence presented here is based on showing strong correlations between inequality and many different measures relating to health and social wellbeing (including infant mortality, homicide rates, obesity, teen pregnancy etc) when measured across developed countries or US states. It is striking how the same countries appear at the "good" and "bad" ends of the graphs for each measure (with Japan & the Scandinavian countries consistently doing well, and Portugal, the UK, and - often spectacularly - the USA doing poorly). The two points that stuck with me most strongly were that the effects of this are felt at almost all levels of society (i.e. it's not just at the levels of extreme relative deprivation that people feel negative effects within an unequal society), and that the mechanism by which equality is achieved is less important than the result (as shown by comparing Japan, where pre-taxation incomes are more similar but goverment intervention is low, to other societies where this effect is achieved through redistributive taxes and benefits).

I liked the idea, apparently taken from Richard Layard, that "the consumption of the rich reduces everyone else's satisfaction with what they have, by showing it up as inferior" and that this dissatisfaction is "a cost which the rich impose on the rest of society" which could reasonably be used as an argument to justify a 60% tax rate on the better-off. I was also persuaded by the sections that attempted to interpret the data by reference to the corrosive effects of inequality on communities, and on the dangers of the increased - and often desperate - focus on status that results from greater inequality. Some of the other conclusions, for example democratic employee-ownership of businesses as part of a possible solution, while appealing to me, seemed less grounded in the data, but on the whole I found this a very convincing book.

An ongoing campaign has grown out of this book - see http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/ - and there are some slides available there showing the key findings presented in the book.

The Carpenter's Pencil - Manuel Rivas

"The most widely translated work in the history of Galician literature", this story of love surviving during the Spanish civil war is intensely poetic, in the sense that what stood out most for me was not particular phrases or incidents that I am able to describe coherently here, but a lingering "aftertaste" of profound beauty. Although the book starts with a cynical journalist going to interview Dr Da Barca, an old Republican exile who we are told miraculously escaped death in 1936, most of the story is told through the memories of a former prison guard, who now works as a bouncer at a brothel, where the journalist reappears briefly at the end of the book - perhaps the purpose of this is simply to remind us that the essential meaning of a life is best expressed not in a simple narrative as told to a stranger, but through observing the influence it has had on others.

Herbal the guard initially followed & watched Da Barca not only because of his official orders but also through a bitter, jealous hatred, fuelled partly by his obsession with Da Barca's beautiful girlfriend Marisa, and their lives remain entwined throughout the book. The "carpenter's pencil" of the title refers to a souvenir kept by Herbal following his killing of a painter who was a fellow-prisoner and friend of Da Barca. This violent murder strangely stands out as a kind act in the brutal guard's life, since it was carried out to save the painter from a prolonged and painful death, and from that point onwards the painter's voice appears to encourage him to act as a protector to the doctor and his love, and he repeatedly intervenes positively (although discreetly) protecting the doctor from death several times and colluding in allowing the couple a "wedding night" in a hotel during a prison transfer.

I liked the complexity of the guard's character, as he struggles with the competing influences of the dead painter and another internal voice who encourages him to gain power through bullying and cruelty, and we see his relationships with family members (particularly his sister's husband) which show him in a different light. A few brief passages describing prison life at that time also stuck in my mind, such as a "meal" conjured by hypnotism as a favour to another prisoner, culminating in chestnuts as served by his mother, and a moment of subtle resistance as a hall-full of men cough quietly in unison in response to an announcement about a victory for Franco's Spain.

Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith

I enjoyed this book on two levels. The main plot - a thriller about a rogue state security agent on the trail of a serial killer - kept me gripped and made me want to devour it in large chunks until I reached the end, but I ultimately found the resolution a little too neat to provide more than a one-off burst of satisfying escapism. The window that the story provided into life in Russia under Stalin, however, was totally compelling and raised challenging questions that were still going around in my head weeks later. The transformation of the lead character is fascinating, as he gradually changes from a loyal believer, able to ignore obvious inconsistencies in an official report in order to uphold the principle that "there is no crime" in the perfect new communist society, to a rebel on the run in search of the truth, learning how false the foundations of his life have been and starting to experience a genuine relationship between equals for the first time. My favourite parts of this book were its exploration of the distorting effects of an environment of fear and unequal power on everyday relationships, and the believable way that it showed the capacity of ordinary people to make devastating choices when their own or their families' survival depended on it.

The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles

I picked this up without knowing much about it other than that it was "a classic" with a famous film based on it. I think I enjoyed it all the more for not even knowing when it was written, as it took me a while to understand that the all-knowing Victorian narrator was not what he seemed. In fact this read as a swinging sixties take on Tess of the D'Urbervilles, with an unsettlingly uncertain ending. Fascinating stuff, with a lot of good material about Victorian ideas on science, progress, Darwinism, religion, sex, class, & the role of women - I found it impossible to put down, and read it in a day.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves - Karen Russell

This is one I borrowed from the library solely on the basis of the intriguing title. I didn't have particularly high hopes of it, as I thought I might find the magical aspects a little alienating. However, in most cases the fantastic touches (such as the children of werewolves sent away to be rehabilitated in the title story, or the determined minotaur bravely pulling his family's wagon westward) lived up to the suggestion of the review on the back that they would "jog something in the childhood memory department" - in fact the mythical elements served as helpful metaphors making the characters easier to relate to (rather than harder, as I often find with magic realism). In the stories that worked best for me, I think this was because although the scenarios and characters described drew on an altered reality, once the situations had been introduced they played out entirely according to the rules of our own world.

I also liked one or two of the tales that were entirely unmagical - a lonely old man encouraging his (community service) "buddy" to visit by leaving out medication for her to steal, and a young astronomer drawn into stealing baby turtles by his desire for social status (a story which did a great job of capturing the destructive momentum of a joke gone sour). The fragment that sticks with me is the horrifically plausible story of a boy whose adoptive father boasts proudly that the first thing they ever did together as father and son was to bury the bear cub that was the boy's only friend (which had of course been shot the day he was collected from the children's home).

Eating - Peter Singer & Jim Mason

Subtitled "what we eat and why it matters", this book focuses on three US families - one whose food choices are based largely on cost & convenience, one family of "conscientious omnivores", and one of vegans - and investigates the impact of their food choices on animal welfare, the people involved in its production, and the environment. Having read Singer's earlier "Animal Liberation", I did not expect to be shocked by any of this, but was almost reduced to tears by one passage describing the casual cruelty of slaughterhouse workers observed jumping up and down on live chickens or ripping them apart for entertainment. The authors attribute this sort of behaviour to the desensitizing effects of fast-paced, monotonous, bloody work, in environments where supervisors routinely refuse to stop the processing line when mechanical failures lead to conscious animals being killed in slow and painful ways. Many large companies - bizarrely, led by McDonalds - have introduced audits to improve this situation, but critics claim that there is evidence from some slaughterhouses that the lines are simply run slower when an auditor is on site. Although the information about regulations and production practices in the US was interesting - for example the disturbing fact that most states' anti-cruelty laws contain exemptions for "common farming practices" - and the general principles were obviously universal, I would be interested in a UK-specific version of this book that went into more depth about UK suppliers.

As well as focusing on animal welfare, the book also includes a lot of material about environmental impacts, such as the vast quantities of feces and urine produced by large pig farms. In one incident in 1995, 25 million gallons of liquid waste were released into a river in North Carolina when a "lagoon" burst due to heavy rain, and even under normal conditions these farms can have such an impact on human health that the American Public Health Association passed a resolution in 2003 calling for a moratorium on the construction of new factory farms ("CAFOs"). The book also describes the inefficiency of meat production in terms of land use and water consumption - concluding, for example, that it takes 13 pounds of grain to produce a single pound of boneless beef.

The chapter on "the ethics of eating meat" includes my own reason for becoming vegetarian rather than attempting to apply welfare standards when purchasing meat - that "since we are all often tempted to take the easy way out, drawing a clear line against eating animal products may be the best way to ensure that one eats ethically - and sticks to it". (Although whenever I read anything like this I realise that my own position is inconsistent, and veganism would be a more rational place to draw that line, given the number of male chicks & calves that are killed by the egg & dairy industries...) It applies a similar argument to producers, pointing out that "as long as animals are commodities, raised for sale on a large scale in a competitive market situation, there will be conflicts between their interests and the economic interests of the producer" - and corners will be cut. I was particularly struck by the inclusion of a quote from Roger Scruton - the philosopher whose opposition to the concept of "animal rights" led him to name a pig "Singer" and then personally turn it into sausages: his assessment of modern large-scale factory farming is that "a true morality of animal welfare ought to begin from the premise that this way of treating animals is wrong".