The Fragility Of Identity

Set in the mid nineteen sixties this is the story of Charlotte a young, talented painter, struggling with the demands of motherhood and the pressures of surviving on the salary of her academic husband, Henry.

Deeply rooted in Cambridgeshire, she is nevertheless persuaded by Henry to emigrate to Australia in search of a better life; but the reality of their new environment is nothing like the brochures Henry has browsed.

In this new, alien country, Charlotte becomes entirely unmoored, while Henry, an Anglo-Indian who had not previously questioned his Britishness, finds himself confronted by an insidious barrier of covert racism.

Their marriage quickly starts to unravel and ultimately Charlotte begins to fall apart, unable to give herself to her children or her husband because she no longer possesses enough of herself to do so

Precise, unflinching, sometimes painfully sad but always beautifully-observed, The Other Side Of The World is an exploration of what we understand by the idea of home, and a study of the fragility of identity. A first-rate work of literary fiction

Trying To Be Clever

I loved The End Of Mr Y but Scarlett Thomas's latest novel has left me entirely cold. The story features a family of famous botanists, the older generation of which disappeared on a hunt for a miracle plant. The plot revolves around a series of moments in their lives after the death of the surviving family matriarch.

The trouble is, it's almost completely unreadable. There are umpteen characters and they're impossible to tell apart because they aren't properly described or differentiated. They're also deeply unpleasant and universally preoccupied with rather shabby sexual fantasies.

It's not a world I recognise or one I feel able to care about. None of these characters is even remotely like anyone I've ever met. They are, at best, ideas about people because this is, like all Scarlett Thomas's fiction, a novel about ideas – ideas about consciousness primarily.

I understand that Scarlett Thomas is trying to do something interesting with her writing and I applaud that. But, for me, there has to be something more to a book than verbal and conceptual experimentation.

There have to be characters who feel real; there has to be dialogue that is emotionally engaging; there has to be a plot that contains some element of drama. This book has none of that. It's trying way too hard to be clever.

The Terrible light Of Childhood

Discovered wandering and amnesiac when she was ten years old, Madeline, now in her mid-thirties, has been locked away in an asylum where she has become deeply institutionalized. However when a new doctor arrives he is determined to get her to recall the events of her childhood.

Aided by the diary she kept at the time, Madeline reluctantly sets out on a journey towards recollection, painfully reliving the claustrophobic experiences of a childhood dominated by the religious zeal of her father, a childhood in which she perceives the world with a hallucinogenic intensity:

All around me the garden rustles and sways. It watches, it tries to distract me. As I look at it, green becomes greener, the flowers glow like little lights...At night when I take off my clothes there are seeds in my socks, there are stains on my knees, my nails have soil beneath them and my hair smells of sky.

Struggling to make sense of what she sees, Madeline uses the only frame of reference she knows - the stories of the bible. The result is a vivid and passionate confusion in which poverty, isolation, and a passionate response to the natural world are all mixed up with her understanding of the personality of God.

But when sexuality begins to dawn, Madeline comes to believe she is responsible for the financial mire into which the family is steadily sinking. She has sinned and the only way out, she decides, is sacrifice.

Brimming over with the dazzling and terrible light of childhood, this is a courageous and compelling study of innocence and misplaced spirituality.

Deconstructing Innocence

Set in the nineteen fifties and inspired by real events, this is the story of a community devastated by a series of terrible plane crashes. The narrative perspective is shared by a large cast of characters but at the centre of the book is fifteen year old Miri, a girl coming of age at a time when the certainties of small town life are disintegrating all around her.

The America of the nineteen fifties, comprehensively evoked in the carefully crafted vignettes that make up this novel, is a country in which masculine authority is at its most confident; but in that very assurance lie the seeds of its own undoing. The great victory of World War Two is in the past, the messy compromise of Korea is beginning to become evident. This is a world in which promises are going to be broken, above all the promise of safety.

Judy Blume is most famous for children's fiction and her insight into the difficulties of adolescence, and at times this feels a bit like a Young Adult novel that has outgrown the limitations of its genre. However, it soon becomes clear that this is not writing for children; it is writing about childhood. Intelligent, compassionate and moving, In The Unlikely Event is a meticulous examination of the way society constructs and dismantles notions of innocence and responsibility.