John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed podcast is a favourite, but I’d been put off reading his novels because I’d first seen (but not watched) them as teen-targeted films.
With the podcast coming to a close, I picked up this copy of The Fault In Our Stars in a charity bookshop a while back, and have enjoyed it very much. The tone is on occasions a bit American Knowingly Arch Teen, but the plot and the themes can cope.
Life in the slums of an unnamed city in present day India, told by 9 year old Jai – who, with his two friends Pari and Faiz, turns detective when other children living in their basti go missing.
Two girls on a north west London council estate join a community dance class and become friends. We follow their lives as they grow into their teens through their twenties and thirties.
One ends up a single mum living in the council flat she grew up in, the other PA to an international pop star doing Good Works in West Africa.
But, as always, Zadie Smith’s novel is about much more than this.
A smart, sassy female Private Detective. Family. Love. Boy Band Reunions. The crash of the Celtic Tiger. Recession. Depression….. The Mystery of Mercy Close is a not-so-easy easy read. But a good one.
My first Marian Keyes novel, and I think I’ll find time to spend more time with the Walsh Family.
