January reading non round up!

I read lots of books in January and while none of them were bad nothing stood out quite as much as Take Courage which I did review at the time.

There are a couple of books which are worth mentioning but none of them are particularly ones I'm leaping up and down pressing into people's hands.

The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg

This was a graphic novel based on the 1001 Nights, again a woman has to tell stories to save herself but this had a really strong feminist message as well as being all about the power of stories.  I missed some of the allegories but overall this was a really nice read.

Exit West by Moshin Hamid

Back in 2011 when I set myself the challenge of reading all of that year's World Book Night titles I read my first book by Hamid and loved it since then I've tried others but did wonder if he was a one trick pony.
This book started the same way, I wasn't very involved and thought it decidedly off, but then I found I was over half way through and utterly gripped if incredibly unsettled.
It is a book about how easily a nice life can become disrupted and any of us could end up as refugees fleeing for our lives.

The book veered in to magical realism with doors appearing around the world for displaced people to travel through and it did get very bleak at times, however in our 'interesting times' it feels very pertinent.

This book isn't published until the start of March, I read an advance copy thanks to NetGalley

Thought Provoking

The Virgins by Pamela Erens

(book supplied by Bookbridgr.com)

I saw this on the shelf in a bookshop a few months ago and noted it down as one to read over the summer and then when the chance came to review it for Bookbridgr I was really pleased.

It wasn't an easy read in terms of content and style but I certainly found myself racing through the pages.

Set in an elite and relatively free thinking American boarding school in the late 1970s we follow a few of the students through one academic year, mostly from the view point of the graduating class. Our narrator is truly unreliable although this only comes to light a little while into the book. He however does let us know that a lot of what he is saying is supposition or discovered after the event and so as a reader you are informed of this.

Two of the students develop a passionate relationship and this spirals out of control during the course of the year in many ways and while a lot of reviewers talk of a surprise and shocking ending I did find this signposted throughout by our narrator and enjoyed seeing how skilfully Erens managed to build to the event.

I found the book deeply unsettling, a good reminder of just how far women have come since 1979 - the casual acceptance of sexual assault (although again all from our unreliable and rather nasty narrator) really made an impact on me.

Very much like Stoner last year I enjoyed this book but I can't see myself recommending it to all and sundry - it will make an interesting reading group read for some as there are so many ideas to discuss.