The Way I Found Her, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and Eeny Meeny

I have very mixed feelings about The Way I Found Her by Rose Tremain. At times it compared with anything written by this brilliant author and at others it became rambling and boring. I'm all for the odd description of a dream, but this book overdid this device. The descriptions of Paris were great to begin with, but these also became a little repetitive. The development of the main plot is interesting when thirteen year old Lewis sets himself a quest because of his adolescent adoration for the voluptuous Valentina, with whom he and his mother are staying for one hot Parisian August. But the last hundred pages could have been halved to better effect. There is a fascinating undercurrent about plagiarism and a cute use of this in this novels' narrative. A good story that could have been better.

I'm just a sucker for this type of conversational prose written in the first person, especially when it is done so well. Karen Joy Fowler's writing is so good, it didn't matter about the plot. Our narrator, Rosemary, tells the story of her extraordinary childhood and the effect it has on her time at the University of California, Davis. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, always gripping. On the one hand a light family drama, on the other a highly literate discussion about science and philosophy. An amazing combination.

Gruesome detective fiction that is badly written is just not my sort of book. It seemed like M.J. Arlidge was just preparing a draft for a TV series (where it will actually work a lot better). Give me Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie any day.