Consequences - Penelope Lively

I loved this book. It was the first novel I found time to read after my baby daughter was born, and the clear understated writing style had a soothing and calming effect which fitted my mood perfectly while being absolutely captivating and transporting me to the times and places being described. It lived up to its own description of "the function of books", from the musings of a young girl working in a library:

That is the function of books: they offer a point of view, they offer many conflicting points of view, they provoke thought, they provoke irritation and admiration and speculation. They take you out of yourself and put you down somewhere else from whence you never entirely return.

This is essentially a family saga, written as a collection of short descriptive passages capturing significant, or everyday but revealing, moments in a manner which sometimes resembles a collage or photograph album more than a linear narrative. The shifts of focus between the generations are handled smoothly and draw your affections and interest along with them, and all of the characters are distinctive and likeable. The main theme of the book is the impact of chance meetings and extreme choices on the lives of generations...

"More provocative was the erratic process whereby you went in one direction rather than another, did this, not that, lived here, not there, found yourself with this person and not someone else quite unknown, quite inconceivable. How did this come about? Oh, you made choices, but in a way that was sometimes almost subliminal, at others so confused that, in recollection, the area of choice is obscured entirely: what was it that was not chosen? And, sometimes, choice is not an option."

Reading this as a new mother with my own mum staying with me at the time I was also struck by the comment that:

"When Ruth became a mother she had the universal, unexceptional, hackneyed revelation - she perceived her own mother differently."

All in all, the perfect first book for me as a new mother :)

Tribe - Bruce Parry (with Mark McCrum)

An interesting account of the experiences behind the recent TV series where Parry spent a month at a time living with 15 different remote communities around the world. I enjoyed some of the 'behind the scenes' material - such as initial misunderstandings where his hosts did not understand his determination to share their lifestyles and assumed that he was sharing the rich feasts that his crew were having in their tents. I was also fascinated by the reflections on ethical issues such as the impact of the filming & associated gifts on the host communities, and most challengingly, Parry's conclusions about the inappropriateness of passing judgement on traditional practices, even ones as extreme as cannibalism, the ritual whipping of women, or female circumcision.

This book did leave me a little confused, however - if the book could be described as the 'making of...' for the TV series, it left me wanting to go back another level and read a 'writing of...' for the book, because the thing that I found most compelling about the book was Parry's 'voice', his frequent self-examination and reflection on the process and impact of the filming, and so I couldn't help but become extremely curious about what this meant when there was clearly a ghostwriter involved - how much of this voice was authentic? (In Parry's thanks section at the end he thanks the writer for putting up with him being an "insufferable control freak" which seemed promising!)

The Best a Man Can Get - John O'Farrell

One I wouldn't normally have picked up, but I felt like something light & it came recommended, so I gave it a try, and was glad I did as I found myself laughing out loud all the way through it. The story itself, about a young father whose secret double life as an unencumbered bachelor is starting to unravel, plays out fairly predictably for the most part (one section did take me completely by surprise & make me laugh even harder, but this was balanced by the next "twist" being really predictable), but the writing style - full of genuinely funny one-liners - makes this well worth a read.

Winter in Madrid - C J Sansom

A big book with a great mix of intricate but satisfying plot, detailed historical setting and believable characterisation - the social and political realities of Madrid in 1940 are vividly described, as are the complex interactions of a small group of English people whose past relationships lead them to keep powerful secrets from each other in situations that they do not fully understand and cannot really hope to control. The back cover blurb mentions "the profound impact of impossible choices" which seems like a fair assessment...

The Lieutenant - Kate Grenville

The Lieutenant is set during the initial British settlement in New South Wales in 1788, and describes the impact on a young astronomer of a tentative friendship he forms with an Aboriginal child with the intention of learning her language. His character is convincingly drawn and easy to empathise with, starting with his childhood in Portsmouth where he is initially dismissed as stupid "for failing to respond to a question so simple he had not thought to answer it". I enjoyed, and found plausible, the way in which the plot develops as the unsociable outsider, who has always found it hard to relate to his peers and retreats alone into a love of mathematics and order, is paradoxically the only one who is able to recognise and connect with the humanity of the "other" as he discovers a shared enjoyment of language and learning with the Aboriginal girl Tagaran. I was also moved - and challenged! - by the moral strength of his eventual refusal to rationalise and compromise to ensure his own survival, as he concludes that:

"If an action was wrong, it did not matter whether it succeeded or not, or how many clever steps you took to make sure it failed. If you were part of such an act, you were part of its wrong... If you were part of that machine, then you were part of its evil."

In fact, I found his courage and integrity almost unconvincingly impressive - until I reached the author's endnote and was delighted to discover that the book was inspired by true events. I think that this novel captivated me a little less than it deserved to because I'd already read her previous book, The Secret River, which (together with her account of writing it, Searching for the Secret River) covers some of the same territory (geographically as well as thematically), and did make a huge impression on me.

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.