Into the Darkest Corner is quite frankly a terrifying book, and it contains some truly horrific and disturbing scenes. But it’s also a necessary book, one that anyone who’s ever uttered the immortal line “But why doesn’t she just leave?” should be made to read, and read again, until they finally get it.

It’s a story about obsession; about stalking; domestic violence; rape and abuse. But it’s also a story about one woman’s determination to fight back, to not allow her history to define her or to determine her future.

Catherine’s story is split into two parts: there’s the part that begins in 2007, where Catherine is suffering from debilitating OCD and PTSD, to the extent that it can take her hours to get out of her flat in the morning and hours more to get back into it at night, thanks to all the checks she has to go through to ensure that all of her doors and windows are secure and that she is safe. And then there’s the part that begins in 2003, where Catherine  is a carefree fun-loving young woman who goes out clubbing with her friends on weekends, one who would never pass up the chance to go out partying with her mates.

As the chapters alternate between the two narratives and the two completely different versions of Catherine, we gradually come to learn what turned the 2003 Catherine into the even-scared-of-her-own-shadow one of 2007. We also get an insight into the life of an abuse victim/survivor, and a chilling glimpse into what it means to be not just physically abused, but mentally/psychologically tortured as well.

Into the Darkest Corner is a gripping read and an important and powerful book: I couldn’t put it down once I’d started it. It’s well written, and the author’s knowledge of the issues surrounding domestic violence shines through. But it’s not a book I’d recommend to anyone who might be triggered by graphic descriptions of abuse, or to anyone  looking for a light easy read: Into the Darkest Corner is anything but that.

One day Meg reviews a book by the science writer Kelsey Newman: The Science of Living Forever, about the end of time and its never-ending afterlife, or something – cue lots of philosophical debate about the meaning of life and all that.

There’s also a lot of philosophical debate about the novel in this novel: debate about narrative and about the ‘story-less story‘. In fact there’s so much debate, and so many people sitting around contemplating all these big philosophical questions, that not a lot actually happens in the novel itself.

Don’t get me wrong, Meg is a sympathetic, likeable character; there is a plot of sorts, and some of the ideas and concepts put forward by Newman and other characters in the novel are really thought provoking. However, for me there was just too much ‘cleverness’ about the whole thing, there was too much navel gazing, to the extent that I quickly became bored and came close to giving up.

I’m glad that I didn’t though, because on the whole Our Tragic Universe was an enjoyable read. Thomas is a skilled writer, adept at conveying complex theories in an accessible way, and the descriptions of Dartmouth and the surrounding Devon countryside were an especial treat for me because this is an area I know really well. I just wish there’d been more story to this story-less story, and less philosophising over purgatory, heaven and narrative.

As luck would have it one of the hotel guests and survivor of the aforementioned train derailment is a retired police inspector, Hanne Wilhelmsen, who is paralysed from the waist down as the result of a previous shooting incident; she’s also incredibly grumpy and antisocial, but surprisingly likeable none the less. Anyway, before long our intrepid detective is tasked with solving the mystery of why people are being picked off, and more importantly, of who is doing the killing.

If that all sounds a bit too formulaic for your tastes then don’t worry, because that’s not how it comes across when you read it. Wilhelmson is an intriguing character, with enough depth and personality to make the reader want to stick with her. And the mystery of who or what was in the sealed last carriage of the train when it went off the rails adds another dimension to the story, one that kept me hooked to the end.

This is actually the eighth book in Anne Holt’s series about retired lesbian police inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen, but it’s the first, and so far the only one, to be translated into English. There’s obviously an interesting back-story to Wilhelmson, one that’s only touched on in this novel, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series (which is due to be published in English over the next two years) to catch up on that.

So, since I reviewed Room back in August, I’ve read:

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which I hated. Seriously, if you want me to enjoy a book at least write in one character I can identify with, not an entire cast of horrible, nasty people I couldn’t give a shit about.

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, which I loved. Atkinson is fast becoming my favourite writer, and if she keeps it up may one day even come to replace Dickens in my affections.

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen, which I enjoyed, but found truly harrowing.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, which I found to be over-rated and not the Great American Novel everyone was hyping it as (and it took me far too long to read, which is always an indication that I’m not enjoying a book).

Sister by Rosamund Lupton, which I found really moving, and again, pretty harrowing.

And that’s about it.

I aim to read a lot more in 2011. I should manage it; well, as long as I don’t get stuck in another boring tome like Freedom that is.

But of course I was wrong, again, and once I’d got over my initial reaction to the narrative voice I really loved it.

Actually maybe “loved” is pushing it a bit. After all, a story about a young woman who has been abducted and imprisoned in a 12 foot square room for seven years, a room in which she has been repeatedly raped, and where she has given birth to her abuser’s child, five year old Jack, the aforementioned narrator of the novel, isn’t exactly a story to warm the cockles of anyone’s heart. But Donoghue’s skill as a writer is such that despite the macabre nature of the plot, I found myself completely absorbed in the story and unwilling to put the book down, even after I’d got to the end.

Room is a horrific tale, inspired, or “triggered” to quote the author, by the Josef Fritzl case; but far from being the exploitative, cynical money-spinner that some have pegged it as, I found it to be a compassionate and fascinating study into the mother-child bond, a bond that in this case prevails despite the deprivation and depravity of the child’s conception, and I also felt that it gave a compelling insight into a dark, nightmarish place that for most of us, thankfully, is usually well beyond our imaginings.

Because of the subject matter of Room and its parallels with the Fritzl case, there are those that have called this novel voyeuristic: and perhaps in the hands of a less talented writer that might well have been so. But I really didn’t feel that was a fair or accurate description of Room, and I’m pleased to see this challenging and wonderfully crafted novel on this year’s longlist for the Man Booker Prize.

And yet. Somehow. Audrey Niggenegger has managed to pull it off again.

Niffenegger, as you’ll remember, is the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife (and yes, I do want to amend the spelling of ‘traveller’ every time I write that title!), another book with an outlandish plot. But just as I was completely sucked into TTTW and able to suspend all disbelief, so I was able to with Her Fearful Symmetry as well.

This is mainly because Niffenegger is such an accomplished writer: her style is as clear and accessible as it was with her first novel. So no matter how bizarre or preposterous the story, she manages to pull the reader along with her, rather than leaving them behind, shaking their head in disbelief while mumbling “now this is just getting ridiculous.”

Well, that’s how it worked for me anyway.

Here’s the official blurb from Random House to give you some idea of the plot:

Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers – normal, at least, for identical ‘mirror’ twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn’t know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin … but have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt’s mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins’ mother – and who can’t even seem to quite leave her flat….
With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger’s familiar themes of love, loss and identity. It is certain to cement her standing as one of the most singular and remarkable novelists of our time.

Her Fearful Symmetry is a ghost story, but it’s a ghost story with a difference. The ghost here for example isn’t some kind of lurking malevolent presence, but instead is a fully developed character with a central role in the story. She’s also someone you can completely empathise with. Well, up to the end of the book that is, when things suddenly take a turn for the macabre and if you’re anything like me you find yourself exclaiming “Oh no, don’t, that’s horrible!”

That’s not to say that there aren’t any faults with this book, because there are. Some of the characters aren’t as well developed as they could have been for example, while others seem completely superfluous to the plot and you wonder why Niffenegger bothered including them. Similarly there are a couple of plot lines that I felt didn’t really go anywhere, where I came to the end and wondered what the point of them was.

Overall though Her Fearful Symmetry is a great read. It’s got ghosts, it’s got romance, it’s got humour, it’s got long-held family secrets, it’s got murder, and if that’s not enough for you, it’s even got The Little Kitten of Death.

What more could anyone want?

Suffice to say this a horrible book, but then by the very nature of its subject matter it has to be. On the plus side it’s also really well written, and it’s also quite moving in parts, well, if you can get beyond the misery and depravity that it’s centred on that is.

Forgetting Zoë tells the story of the psychopath Thurman Hayes, a victim himself of a brutal and hateful upbringing, and his abduction and subsequent eight year incarceration in a bunker below his house in the Arizona desert of a young girl, Zoë Nielsen, who he kidnaps when she’s on her way to school one day. It tells the story of how the abduction impacts and ultimately destroys Zoë’s mother, and of the impact, both immediate and long-term, of the abduction and abuse on Zoë herself.

Robinson’s novel takes in Stockholm Syndrome, domestic and sexual abuse, murder, torture, and all points in between. Thankfully though the writing is sparse, and so much of the worse stuff is left for the reader to guess at. Anything else and I suspect I’d have been denouncing this book as exploitative and sensationalist, but as it stands it’s not.

This novel is pretty unrelenting in its ugliness. It is a good book, but it’s definitely not a book to reach for if you’re after something life-affirming or if you want something to cheer you up.

The premise of Nicholls’ book is really simple: the story begins with the two main characters, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, meeting on 15th July 1988, St Swithin’s Day, which is the night of their graduation. The next day the couple have to go their separate ways, but we get to catch up with what they’re up to, on the same day, 15th July, for the next 20 years.

So we follow Emma as she moves to London and gets a mundane job in a Mexican restaurant, and then later in an inner-city comp, and we follow Dexter’s rise to C-list celebrity fame as the presenter of some godawful late-night mockney yoof programme. All the while the couple keep in touch, through letters, phone calls and meals out, and at the weddings of mutual friends and acquaintances. We follow them as they grow older and as they develop relationships with other people, and we follow them as they deal with the everyday challenges of 20th/21st century living.

Unfortunately there’s no way to convey what makes this book so special through a plot summary like that. But take my word for it, it really is. Special that is. It’s the sort of book you regret finishing: that you get to the end of and then wish you had another 400+ pages to go. It’s the sort of book you push on all your friends and family, saying “go on, read this, I just know you’re going to love it!”

So go on, read it, I just know you’re going to love it.

The best thing of all though about this book, or should I say about this series of books, because there’s certain to be even more of them, is the central character Stella Hardesty. And yes, I do still want to be her.

Here’s a taster:

Because that woman was Stella Hardesty, who’d taken her own husband out with a wrench those three and a half years ago – and who never intended to let another woman get smacked around if she could help it.

And usually Stella could help it. Could help the woman who heard about her in a whispered conversation, who tucked her name away in a far corner of her mind, until the day came when things finally got so bad that there were no other options. When the courts failed, when the restraining order didn’t manage to restrain anything, when the man who promised he’d never do it again at ten o’ clock forgot his promise by midnight. When a beaten woman finally picked herself up off the floor and washed off the blood and took inventory of the latest bruises and something snapped and she decided this time was the last time – when that day came, she knew where to go and who to see: Stella was ready for the job.

There is a slight change of tack this time around, in that instead of doling out vigilante justice to a man, Stella finds herself defending one. But whatever you do, don’t let that put you off

Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Stella Hardesty, avenger of wronged women, is getting cozy with Sheriff “Goat” Jones when a tornado blows none other than Goat’s scheming ex-wife, Brandy, through the front door. Adding to the chaos, the tornado destroys the snack shack at the demolition derby track, pulling up the concrete foundation and unearthing a woman’s body. The main suspect in the woman’s murder is Neb Donovan—he laid the foundation, and there’s some pretty hard evidence pointing to his guilt. Years ago, Neb’s wife asked Stella for help getting him sober. Stella doesn’t believe the gentle man could kill anyone, and she promises his frantic wife she’ll look into it.

Former client Chrissy Shaw is now employed at Stella’s sewing shop and she helps with the snooping as Stella negotiates the unpredictable Brandy and the dangerously magnetic sheriff.

This is the thrilling sequel to Sophie Littlefield’s critically-acclaimed debut, A Bad Day for Sorry, which won an RT Book Award, was an Edgar Award Finalist, and is shortlisted for an Anthony and a Macavity Award. Stella Hardesty is a heroine to watch—join her on this next adventure for as fiercely funny and riveting a story as there is to be found in crime fiction.

I’ll second that.

The story follows the life of the writer Harrison Shepherd, who is the product of a short-lived marriage between a dull and disinterested American father, and a spirited, flamboyant Mexican mother. It begins in the late 1920′s, when Shepherd’s parents have already split up, and when his mother has taken him with her back to Mexico; and it ends in the late 1950′s, when McCarthyism is at its height (Shepherd has moved back to the US by this point), and when Shepherd’s writings and past associations with communists such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Leon Trotsky have brought him to the attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In the period in between this Shepherd grows from boy to man: he briefly attends school in the US, and then, following his expulsion from the place for some mysterious “scandal” involving him and another (male) student, he finds work, first as one of Rivera’s plaster mixers, then as a cook in the Rivera/Kahlo household, and then later as Trotsky’s translator/secretary and some time confidante.

Following Trotsky’s assassination Shepherd returns to the States and there begins his new career as a writer. Well, I say new, but in actual fact Shepherd has spent almost his entire life writing, as the journal entries and letters that Kingsolver uses to make up the bulk of the book attest. Let’s say instead then that he becomes a professional writer, penning best-selling Aztec novels, and achieving such popularity that he’s eventually driven to hide away from his rapidly growing army of fans.

He hires a secretary, Violet Brown, to help him cope with the daily deluge of fan mail, and it is Brown who, following his disappearance, ultimately pieces together the story of his life, carefully transcribing notebooks and letters that Shepherd thought had been successfully destroyed.

And if any of that sounds boring, trust me, it’s not (well okay, apart from the first bit, but persevere and I promise you you won’t regret it). Kingsolver is an accomplished writer, and she manages to bring alive an intriguing period of history, one which I for one knew very little about. I’d never heard for instance of the Bonus Army before I read this book, and I have to confess to being completely ignorant of the Rivera/Kahlo/Trotsky friendship as well.

Don’t get me wrong, this is fiction: but it’s fiction that’s based on true historical events and people, and it’s written with the same consummate storytelling skills that Kingsolver brought not only to The Poisonwood Bible, but also to her earlier works.

The Lacuna is a cracking read, and Kingsolver well deserved to win this year’s Orange Prize for it.