The Right Hand of the Sun - Anita Mason

Having fond memories of studying the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire at university, I was very interested to find this book and I was not at all disappointed. This is a brilliantly researched account which tells the story from multiple perspectives, emphasising the voices of Cortés's two translators, a Spanish man and an Aztec woman, who had both spent years as Mayan slaves and so both sat uncomfortably between the clashing cultures. This is made particularly clear through the use of names in the book, particularly that of the Aztec emperor - Cortés arrogantly refers to him as "Muckety", the Spanish translator Gerónimo is careful to learn his correct name of Muctezuma, and the Mayan woman Marina (whose name has in turn been "given" to her by Cortés) has grown up hearing tales of his power, and calls him by his title of "Lord-Who-Is-Severe".

Although I am not usually a fan of macho war stories, the battle scenes in this book were so well written that I found them totally gripping, really imagining what it would have been like to be there. Similarly, the engineering feat of constructing several ships in pieces to be carried for miles and assembled in place is described with human passion through the eyes of their designer, bringing the achievement to life. Cortés's coexisting motives of greed, ambition, and sincere religious fervour are also very well portrayed.

My only criticism of this book probably just reveals me as a lazy reader - in the middle section where the narration is given in turn to several of the Spanish gentlemen in Cortés's company, it was hard for me to keep their details and allegiances clear in my head. Other than that, I found the book compelling, rewarding, and convincing. I particularly enjoyed the tantalising glimpses at the end into the possible motivations of the strangely passive Muctezuma: Marina felt that he "knew everything that would happen" in the moment when "a low-class woman from the coast, a slave, raised her eyes and looked him in the face", and Gerónimo remembers a conversation where the emperor mused that "the Lord of the Near lacks a sacrifice" since the youth who had lived for a year as his incarnation on Earth had been killed by a Spaniard before his ritual sacrifice could take place - and as Gerónimo later realises, the other incarnation of the "Lord of the Near" was Muctezuma himself.

The Gospel According to Luke - Emily Maguire

This is a gripping but ultimately rather unsatisfying book based on the intriguing premise of an encounter between a "youth pastor" for the "Christian Revolution" and the manager of a nearby sexual health clinic, with the most endearing character being the pregnant teenager who gets caught between their colliding worlds. Although it's unfair to blame an author for how their book is marketed, I did feel that the cover image - of a young girl whose accentuated pout manages to be provocative despite the stylised tears running down her face - was a fair reflection of the book's contents. Although it touched on some serious issues and the characters were likeable and interesting, this verged on Mills & Boon at times as a passionate attraction overcame all rational objections, and the emphasis on the transformative power of a sexual awakening seemed a little teenage...

Love Marriage - V. V. Ganeshananthan

A young woman tells the story of her "globe-scattered Sri Lankan family" through a collage of fragmentary narratives which focus on 'Marriage' and the different experiences her ancestors have had of it. As her reasons for needing to explore her (Tamil) family's history become clear, we are drawn into the story of the "unofficial war" in which "no one would be right, but ... some would be more wrong" and the terrible impact it has had on her family's lives. Coming to this as someone with practically no knowledge of Sri Lankan history or politics (shamefully, I had thought the conflict was much more of a historical one than it emerges here), I found the subject matter fascinating and shocking. I was particularly interested in how the conflict continues to influence and disrupt the lives of emigrants, and a note in the acknowledgements section about preserving the anonymity of those who helped with the research brought the reality of the situation home to me. I was also interested to read a piece by the author in which she discusses the difficulty of being perceived as the spokesperson for a whole community's view of an under-reported conflict.

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

This book, with its twin narratives about the same life, raises some unsettling questions about the nature of memory and identity. An elderly woman attempts to write "some kind of brittle and honest-minded history of myself", and even after the factual accuracy of many of her memories is called into question, this still seems more compelling and authoritative than the facts uncovered by the detective work of the psychiatrist who must assess her to establish whether she can be "put back into the community" as the asylum where she has lived for many years is being dismantled. The characters are engaging, particularly Roseanne herself, and the book contains plenty of interesting historical context about the Irish civil war and its aftermath. The casual judgemental cruelty of a woman whose own shaky claim to respectability makes her unable to tolerate any impropriety is particularly well portrayed, as is the pain of living as an outsider in a small community. My only complaint is that - as so often happens - the book's back cover blurb dropped a hint about the story's conclusion which led me to anticipate the way that the narratives would converge and so reduced the impact of the final revelations.

How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk - Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

I enjoyed this book on parent-child communication more than I expected to - despite its rather simplistic presentation style, with lots of cartoons and "exercises" full of leading questions, I felt as though I learned quite a lot from it (particularly the sections on acknowledging children's feelings, building autonomy, and giving praise using description rather than evaluation.) The aim of the book is to present patterns of communication which represent "the most respectful, effective ways to deal with the endless challenges presented by children" and I was sufficiently impressed to want to capture the gist of it here (this is mainly based on the 'reminder' sections within each chapter).

Helping children deal with their feelings:

• Listen quietly and attentively
  
• Acknowledge their feelings with a word ("Oh... mmm... I see...")
  
• Give the feeling a name ("That sounds frustrating!")
  
• Grant the wish in fantasy ("I wish I could..." - use exaggeration and humour, even write it down)
  
• All feelings can be accepted; certain *actions* must be limited. (E.g. anger acceptable, hitting not...) Sometimes a physical outlet or an opportunity to "draw their feelings" may help them calm down to the point where they can talk.
  

Engaging cooperation:

• Describe what you see ("There's a wet towel on the bed")
  
• Give information ("The towel is getting my blanket wet")
  
• Say it with a word ("The towel!")
  
• Describe what you feel ("I don't like sleeping in a wet bed!")
  
• Write a note (e.g. a reminder above the towel rail)
  

Alternatives to punishment:

• Express your feelings strongly - without attacking character ("I'm furious that my new saw was left outside to rust in the rain!")
  
• State your expectations ("I expect my tools to be returned after they've been borrowed")
  
• Show the child how to make amends ("What this saw needs now is steel wool and elbow grease"
  
• Give the child a choice ("You can borrow my tools and return them, or you can give up the privilege of using them. You decide.")
  
• Take action (lock the tool box!)
  
• Problem solve (talk about the child's feelings and needs, and yours; brainstorm together; write down ALL ideas; work together to eliminate ideas you don't like and decide on a plan to follow through on)
  

Encouraging autonomy ("encourage your child's sense of herself as a separate, competent, self-reliant person ... is there anything you've been doing for your child that they might start doing for him or herself?"):

• Let children make choices (e.g. about clothes & food)
  
• Show respect for a child's struggle ("It can be hard to ... Sometimes it helps if...")
  
• Don't ask too many questions ("Glad to see you. Welcome home.")
  
• Don't rush to answer questions ("That's an interesting question - what do you think?")
  
• Encourage children to use sources outside the home ("Maybe xxx would have a suggestion")
  
• Don't take away hope ("That should be an experience" - even if it's tempting to try to set more "realistic" expectations)
  
• Also:
  • Let her own her own body (refrain from continual touching / invasion of physical privacy)
    
  • Stay out of the minutiae of a child's life (don't nag on trivia)
    
  • Don't talk about a child in front of them (they're not your possession)
    
  • Let a child answer for himself (redirect 3rd-party questions)
    
  • Show respect for their eventual "readiness" (don't force, urge or embarrass, just express confidence that "when you're ready"/"one of these days"/"when you decide to" it will happen)
    
  • Watch out for too many "No"s (try alternatives, such as "we're about to...", "if it were up to you...", "I'd like to help, but...", "we can do that later", "let me think about it")
    

Praise: (describe, don't evaluate!)

• Describe what you see ("I see a clean floor, a smooth bed, and books neatly lined up on the shelf")
  
• Describe what you feel ("It's a pleasure to walk into this room!" but note that "You must be so proud of yourself!" is better than "I'm so proud of you!"...)
  
• Sum up the praiseworthy behaviour with a word ("You did ... Now that's what I call ...")
  

Freeing children from playing roles:

• Look for opportunities to show the child a new picture of himself or herself (comment on behaviour that goes against the role)
  
• Put children in situations where they can see themselves differently (give them opportunities to act against the role)
  
• Let children overhear you say something positive about them
  
• Model the behaviour you'd like to see
  
• Be a storehouse for your child's special moments ("I remember the time you...")
  
• When the child acts according to the old label, state your feelings and/or your expectations. ("I don't like that. Despite your strong feelings, I expect sportsmanship from you")
  

The Concert Ticket - Olga Grushin

This unsettling story, set in Soviet Russia, describes the effect on a small family (mother, father, son and grandmother) of their participation in a year-long queue to secure a concert ticket, rumoured to be for a one-off return performance by an exiled composer. I read it assuming that it was written as a parable, exaggerated for effect, but bizarrely, the epilogue explains that it was inspired by real events: when Stravinsky accepted a 1962 invitation to return to Russia after 50 years away, "the line for tickets began a year before the performance and evolved into a unique and complex social system, with people working together and taking turns standing in line". The same thing happens to the characters in this novel - their 'real' lives gradually disintegrate as their obsession with the tickets grows, and the social world of the line becomes more significant to them than their existing relationships - or sometimes even the promised ticket itself... The book is engagingly written and the characters are believable and (mostly) likeable despite their often destructive impulses. I was intrigued by the mysterious old man near the start of the line who initially invites Anna (the mother) to "join us", explaining that the kiosk is selling "whatever you'd most like to have", and later reflects on the enlivening power of their shared experience of hope, quoting a poem:

"When you long for something intensely,
when you long for a long time,
the purity of your wait transforms
your very nature from within"

I was interested to see in an interview with the author that she says that this character contains echoes of her much-admired father.
For most of the book I found it quite bleak, as the characters seem to be neglecting opportunities to rebuild their relationships in favour of future fantasies about the solutions the concert ticket will bring, but towards the end of the book there is a major shift - perhaps proving the old man's point - as they all start to face up to their own flaws and move from deceitful scheming about how to acquire the ticket for themselves, towards a more honest and generous way of relating to each other, which makes for a more satifsying and uplifting ending.

Mobius Dick - Andrew Crumey

This was a satisfying continuation of my 'books to make your head explode' reading series started by Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr. Y. I liked the fact that the utterly bizarre cover image, with its pairs of mirrored characters, is in fact a fairly accurate representation of the plotline of much of the book. The whole thing is dense with cross-references, and yet starts with a character poking fun at the people who treat simple verbal coincidences as profound insights. The 'main' narrative concerns a physicist attempting to prevent a possible breakdown of reality caused by a secret plot to build a network of quantum computers, while another narrative strand (which is possibly a piece of writing by the main protagonist about things he doesn't know yet...) describes the experiences of his double.

Like Music, in a Foreign Language, the novel (or at least part of it!) is set in a parallel universe where Communists came to power in the UK following a German occupation during WWII, and in this book this scenario is extended into the past, with one of the narrative strands being, somewhat confusingly, an account of Schrödinger's discovery of his 'wave mechanics' theory of quantum physics, but one written as a counter-factual fiction in a universe where that did not occur. This allows for the cute observation by the author of the Schrödinger novel that it is set in a world that is "quite deliberately one that could not possibly exist. Who could believe such a thing as a female Prime Minister of Britain, or a movie actor elected President of the United States? It would be hard to be more evidently ironic without lapsing into farce." More seriously, the book ends with the same 'author' criticising 'our' world for being indifferent to truth, with our 'ridiculous and decadent' acceptance of the idea of a multiverse of realities leading to relativist chaos.