Elena Ferrante - My Brilliant Friend*****
These are the best books I have read in a long time - the first 2 in a quartet complex, deep & beautifully written & translated. It centres on Elena (Lenu) & her brilliant, difficult friend Lila growing up in the patriarchal society of Naples - so far, Lenu has escaped to university in Pisa, while Lila has been trapped in a violent marriage
Deborah Copaken Kogan- The Red Book ***
I finished this but only just - a novel about middle aged middle class people finding themselves at their Harvard reunion - the cover was the best bit.
Suzanne O'Sullivan - It's All In Your Head****
Really interesting book by a doctor on her patients who suffer the real pain and disability of psychosomatic illnesses - eye opening answer to if the body rules the mind or if the mind rules the body ( it's b)
Mary Stewart - My Brother Michael*****
A re-read for one a series of this lovely books - romantic thrillers written in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This turns on the fall out from of the second world war, but it's the strong characterisation and fabulous descriptions of Delphi before mass tourism which makes it feel like a mini holiday.
Harry Bingham - This Thing of Darkness ****
Four stars because of a giant hole in the plot of what is otherwise a really interesting, different series of police thrillers with a brilliantly unusual main character - a policewoman who is not a loner alcoholic or a multitasking supermum but dealing with serious mental illness. Also - funnier than that sounds. I've read this once already since it came out in summer and will read it again.
