The Boy from the Sea – Garrett Carr – (Audiobook) BOOKGROUP – 22.04.25

This was my book group read for May and like the last book group read (The Colony, by Audrey Magee) it was set in Ireland (one of the ladies said, ‘not being funny, but can the next book we read please not be Irish! ‘ – I know what she means, even thought we are all proud to be Irish (honorary Irish for me) a change is as good as a rest, they say!).

The boy from the sea is found as a baby on the beach and is adopted by a local fisherman, already the father of one small boy and the story surrounds him – from the stormy relationship with his adopted brother, to his parents, aunt and grandfather and the people of the town who are given a collective voice like a Greek chorus narrating their views on the boy’s journey through life.

The boy has a gift of giving ‘blessings’ to people – or is it just that a mythology has built up around his unusual start in life, and the people will cling to any hope of a little bit of extra help against the cruelties of chance? Either way he is somewhat revered and sought after, much to the annoyance of his brother.

It’s a very relatable and believable portrayal of life in a family as well as the claustrophobic nature of a small town where everyone is all up in each other’s business. On the whole, the book group ladies enjoyed the book, and we talked about it a fair bit, but we agreed that it didn’t have the same ‘wow’ factor of the previous book we read.

I listened to it as an audiobook (loved the narrator!) so I missed some of the unusual punctuation or structure that the other ladies mentioned.

B of the Bang – Andrew Shanahan – 18.04.25

I was super excited to see this novel by Andrew Shanahan because I loved his zombie apocalypse books Before and After and Flesh and Blood. This book is witty satirical look at human behaviour in a time of crisis.

**SPOILERS**

It’s funny because the plot of this book is like a comedic farse version of Naomi Alderman’s novel The Future, which I recently read, in that both revolve around a near apocalypse warning and rescue system for people rich enough to pay a huge premium for the service.

In both books, the ultra rich were being duped to a degree, in this one it turns out the B of The Bang company were selling snake oil, thinking that in the event of a global disaster there would be no-one left to come after them for breach of contract or whatever, so they didn’t need to actually have the rescue system set up(!).

The plot is that a hungover employee running a training session at B of The Bang accidentally instructs the trainees to send out live alerts of all kinds of impending disasters, including incoming nuclear missiles from North Korea headed for central London, the news of which a well meaning rich man shares with his employees and it quickly spreads on social media until mass panic ensues.

There’s a lot of social commentary and some very funny moment, and I did enjoy it, but for me it wasn’t as good as the Before and After books.

The Cracked Mirror (AUDIOBOOK) – Chris Brookmyre – 14.04.25

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS**

How I felt about this book was a bit of a roller coaster ride from quite intrigued to loving it to not sure to hating it to quite intrigued again to pretty satisfied!

So, we start with two seemingly separate stories following nice little old lady amateur sleuth in Scotland (Penny) solving local crimes, to hard ass cop in LA bending the rules and endangering himself and others in his unerring attempt to get to the truth of his cases (Johnny).

Then the two get together as they both end up at a society wedding in a fancy Scottish hotel, Penny after receiving a mystery invitation, and Johnny following a lead on a potential perp.

Things get hairy scary with murders and car chases and shoots out (which is where I tend to get a bit bored, not loving that sort of thing) and Penny and Johnny flee to LA to try to get to the bottom of a series of ‘suicides’ which they think were actually murders. (I can’t help thinking of how Alan Cumming says ‘Murrr derrr’ in his scottish accent when he hosts the American version of The Traitors whenever reading about murders in Scotland!)

Then I guessed the big twist right before it was revealed (so it was probably engineered that way) and initially my heart sank. Not another blooming book where the story is not real even in the world of the book, it’s all a dream/novel/simulation/hallucination whatever, in this case a kind of augmented reality literally put-yourself-inside-a-book computer in your brain thingy.

To be fair, when it was properly explained, the concept actually grew on me, and I went back to being intrigued and I did quite like the ending.

There was a fun mix of cozy mystery, noir mystery and sci-fi and I did actually quite enjoy it.

Son of a Witch (Wicked Years Book 2) – Gregory Maguire – 14.04.25

This is the sequel to Wicked and follows Liir, who may or may not be Elphaba’s son in the immediate aftermath of what Dorothy did to his ‘mother’. He goes on quite the journey, trying to find his identity and place in the world. He is searching for his half sister Nor, who was last seen imprisoned in the dungeons of Oz, as well as trying to fulfil a promise to help an enchanted half elephant half human princess who lives in endless suffering, and to help the sentient birds who are being menaced by dragons trained and used by the soldiers of Oz.

Like Wicked, this is a deep and thoughtful book and sometimes a hard read. I found it worthy but not always fun and I’m not sure how I feel about reading the other books in the series – I feel like I should to get completion but it’s not like I can’t wait to read them.

The Way Out: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Heal Chronic Pain (AUDIOBOOK) – Alan Gordon, Alon Ziv, et al. – 08.04.25

So, I’ve had psoriatic arthritis for over twenty years, but in the last four or five years (since Covid) my levels of pain, tiredness, insomnia, low mood etc etc have escalated and last year my rheumatologist diagnosed me with fibromyalgia in addition to the PA. On a fibromyalgia forum someone recommended this book, so I bought it and gave it a go.

A lot of it is stuff I already knew (although no harm in being reminded) – that our perception of pain varies hugely on the circumstances, with anecdotes about people in agonising pain when they believe they have a nasty injury (a giant nail through the sole of their boot, and out of the top via their foot), only to discover that the nail actually went between their toes and they’re not injured at all when the pain miraculously vanished, to people actually having terrible injuries that they don’t notice until later because they are too distracted (e.g., running a marathon on a broken leg etc). The book also talks about how in almost all cases, chronic (i.e. long lasting) pain is caused by our brains being over protective and telling us we’re hurting when the actual cause of the pain has long since healed.

So the solution offered by the book is largely about mindfulness and re-training the brain. The author suggests thinking hard about the sensations of your pain and describing it in neutral descriptive terms like warmth, pressure, pulsing etc, while at the same time reminding yourself that you are safe and fine and that these sensations are nothing to worry about.

Does it work?

Well, I actually quite enjoyed playing the describe your pain game and did feel like it was having some level of positive effect initially. However, I haven’t really stuck with it (the author does say it takes a long time to re-learn something that is so ingrained in our brains) plus I’m getting a new kitchen which has involved me moving furniture and big boxes of crockery etc in readiness and then all the stress of having workmen in the house for two weeks so my pain and insomnia has actually got worse, but I acknowledge that it’s unfair to test it in these circumstances. I do believe that it must be possible to re-train the brain to reduce chronic pain, and I will try to get back to it, once the kitchen is finished!

Whale Fall (AUDIOBOOK) – Elizabeth O’Connor – 07.04.25

Funnily enough, this book was similar to my two previous book group reads, The Colony and The Whalebone Theatre. Like The Colony, it is set on a small island that clings on to old ways and old language (in this case, Welsh, whereas the language in The Colony was Irish) and like The Whalebone Theatre, the plot loosely revolves around the decaying corpse of a beached whale on the edge of the community.

Like in The Colony, a young islander, Monod,’s head is turned by the arrival of sophisticated English visitors, who come to make a book/documentary about their image of island life, often manipulating the truth to fit their narrative. They use Manod, and let her believe they will help her in return, but like the metaphor of the decomposing whale, they just take what they can exploit and sell and leave the rest to rot.

I liked it well enough – not as much as The Colony, but more than The Whalebone Theatre!

The Library at Mount Char – Scott Hawkins – 31.03.25

AMAZING!

I thought this book was brilliant and just the kind of thing I love to read. It’s hard to define the genre – hmmm, horror, dark humour, mythology… some reviewers compared it to Neil Gaiman, and that’s fair, I think.

I loved the feisty funny female protagonist, Carolyn, one of twelve children adopted and raised by a person (entity?) they know as ‘Father’ who kept them completely separate from everyone else in the world and made them each become experts in fields such as talking to animals, fighting, healing, reanimating the dead and so on using books from The Library.

Carolyn employs an ex-criminal now peace-loving Buddhist, Stephen, to help her in some very violent and criminal activities, and the chemistry between them is fun.

The book is sometimes a bit confusing, but (in my mind at least) it all became clear in the end and was all the better for the plot not being spoon fed to the reader.

I can’t believe it is a debut novel because I thought it was very well constructed and written. Five out of five from me!

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West – Gregory Maguire. Narrated by: John McDonough – 31.03.25

I loved the film adaptation of this book, which prompted me to seek out and read the novel. Well, it is definitely the same story as the movie, but the tone is very different. While the film was full of joy and whimsy, the book is quite a bit darker. More ribald for a start (sexual humour) and much more politics and philosophy. It’s the first book in a series of four (with a fifth, prequel coming soon, I believe) and yet it goes quite a bit beyond the point where the movie ended (I think there is a movie sequel coming) following Elphaba beyond her school years, during her time in hiding and working with a resistance movement in Oz protesting the wrongs against people and sentient Animals carried out by The Wizard’s regime, and into her later life. I did buy and read the second book, and will probably read the rest eventually, but I did feel a bit ambivalent about them.

The Future (AUDIOBOOK) – Naomi Alderman. Narrated by: Guinevere Turner, Natalie Naudus, Jeremy Bobb, Santino Fontana, Graham Halstead, Lorelei King, Fred Sanders – 23.03.25

I was excited to read this as I loved Naomi Alderman’s previous book, The Power, and although I didn’t hate this one, I didn’t love it as much.

Set in a near future with things like artificial weather and slightly more technology than we’re used to, it follows (mostly) two women dealing with an approaching global catastrophe. One was raised in a sort of cult and her beliefs and takes on Bible theology are quite interesting as she joins in chats on a preppers forum.

The other is working on a high tech system for predicting when an apocalyptic even is imminent and extracting certain very rich individuals to safety before it’s too late.

The book combined elements of action thriller, thought provoking musings and romance and I mostly enjoyed it although I got a bit confused and a bit bored at times.

The Passengers – John Marrs – 23.03.25

I really liked the first two thirds of this book. Set in a near future where automated (self driving) cars are mandated because of how much safer they are than human driven cars and how they improve the roads by driving more efficiently etc.

Unfortunately, the government body that polices any accidents that occur with driverless cars is (surprise, surprise) corrupt and more interested in their own interests than fairness and safety for everyone.

As a protest to this, someone manages to hack into the computer ‘brain’ of several driverless cars and broadcasts to the world live footage of the passengers who are on a pre-set collision course that will kill them all in two hours time. The hacker invites the world (as well as the committee that was meeting to judge on previous driverless car accidents) to vote on which one of the passengers they want the hacker to save or else he will just kill them all.

This part of the book was pretty darn exciting and thought provoking but as the crunch time was seconds away, and there was still at least a third of the book left, I wondered what was going on, and indeed there was a further twist.

The book took a slightly different turn then, and while I didn’t see it coming, I also wasn’t so interested any more and found the last part of the book a bit of a drag. Ah well.