November 2017 Favourite Books

Sorry for the long delay between posts, I've had a hell of a couple of weeks with everything happening at once but the main thing was that my cat had his pelvis shattered by a car. Long, stressful week but he is finally pinned together and home, but I haven't been able to get much work done.

Now he's recovering normal life can sort of resume again, although he does have to be on crate rest for six weeks and is already desperate to come out!

Anyway, onto books.

I read some real stand out books in November. They're all a bit dark this month, maybe something to do with the time of year, and they're mostly concerned with murder and mystery.

The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrère

Book Review

"I was thinking of the big white void that had slowly taken over inside him until all that was left was that semblance of a man dressed in black."

The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception is written by Emmanuel Carrère and published by Vintage.

I'd never heard of The Adversary before, or Jean-Claude Romand, but when I saw this latest edition on NetGalley I had to request it as the true story sounded so incredible. In fact, I think if the story of a man conning his family for almost 20 years and then killing them all before his secret could come out was written in a fiction, I would have said it wasn't believable.

And yet, real life is often stranger than fiction, Luckily, Carrère tells this story in a way that is quite understated, letting the brutality of the crime do the talking rather than courting controversy by inserting thrills. The Adversary is a well written and fascinating exploration of a crime and the criminal.

The Evenings by Gerard Reve (translated by Sam Garrett)

Book Review

In The Netherlands The Evenings, published in 1947, is considered a classic and is taught in schools, but many English readers have never heard of it or author Gerard Reve, who was the first openly gay writer in The Netherlands.
Finally, almost 70 years after its original publication, The Evenings has been translated into English and was published by Pushkin Press on November 3rd 2016.