David Mitchell "Cloud Atlas"

It is a pity I've just given 'The Observations' the Edwards Prize for the Most Original Work of Fiction, 2007. Had I not done so this would have made a worthy winner of that award. Or perhaps its just plain weird. It was written in 2004 and I am finding it very hard to describe it adequately for this blog post. One of the reviews I read depicts it as science fiction, fantasy, historical novel and thriller. To those I would add 'philosophical novel' though in fact it is a series of interlinked novellas with a common theme which might best be called "Man's inhumanity to man". It was a nominee for the Booker Prize in 2004 and won the dreaded Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year 2005!

Once started, this is a book which drives you on to the finish even when, at times, you feel as though you know what the outcome is going to be.

They key question at the end of any book is "Would I recommend someone to read it?" And this is one book where I still cannot decide what my answer would be!

DAVID MITCHELL a former bookseller who was born in 1970. He currently teaches in Hiroshima. His first novel, Ghostwritten, a section of which was included in New Writing 8, was published in August 1999 to huge acclaim.

Here are a few of my favourite quotes:-

"...every conscience has an off-switch hidden somewhere."

"Sometimes the fluyffy-bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left , ago, in the starting cage."

"Every nowhere is somewhere."

"We - by whom I mean anyone over sixty - commit two offences just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world wit do business with dictators, perverts and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down, it cannot abide..."

"The heating systems composed works in the style of John Cage."

"Middle-age is flown, but it is attitude not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead, or else proffers salvation. In the domain of the young there dwells many an Undead soul. "

"Mrs Wagstaff's contempt for her young husband, if bottled, could have been vended as rat-poison.... 'My husband could not compleat his schooling, Sir, so it is my sorry lot to explain the obvious, ten times a day.'"

Happy Religious-person-mas

Isaac Asimov – ‘Facts and Trivia’

I had intended originally to keep this to fiction but this bit of non-fiction has crept in. Perhaps more will...

Thousands of things you didn't know you needed to know. Not the very best of trivia books (and too Maerican a bias for me) but nevertheless good fun and a fine source of quiz questions.


ISAAC ASIMOV (January 2?, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was a Russian-born American author and professor of biochemistry, a highly successful writer, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.

Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards, and he has works published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System (all except the 100s, Philosophy).

Asimov is widely considered a master of the science-fiction genre and, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, was considered one of the "Big Three" science-fiction writers during his lifetime. Most of Asimov's popularized science books explain scientific concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. He often provides nationalities, birth dates, and death dates for the scientists he mentions, as well as etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms.

Bernard Cornwell – “Sword Song”

Cornwell is one of my favourite historical novelists and his great plots are matched by the realism of his settings. This is the fourth volume in the Saxon Chronicles; preceded by The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North. I have also enjoyed his Warlord Chronicles about King Arthur and the Grail Quest series. Bernard Cornwell is also the author of the acclaimed Richard Sharpe series, set during the Napoleonic Wars and the Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles, about the American Civil War.


BERNARD CORNWELL OBE (born February 23, 1944) is a prolific and popular English historical novelist. As a child he was adopted by a family by the name of Wiggins. After he left them he changed his name to his mother's maiden name, Cornwell.

Cornwell was born in London in 1944. His father was a Canadian airman. His mother was English, a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted and brought up in Essex by the Wiggins family, who were members of the Peculiar People, a strict Protestant sect who banned frivolity of all kinds and even medicine. Cornwell was sent away to Monkton Combe School, attended the University of London, and after graduating, worked as a teacher. He then joined BBC's Nationwide and was promoted to become head of current affairs at BBC Northern Ireland. He then joined Thames Television as editor of Thames News.

He married an American, Judy, in 1980 and relocated to the U.S.. Unable to get a Green Card, he started writing novels, as this did not require a work permit. He lives in Cape Cod.

In June 2006, Cornwell was awarded an OBE (Officer, Order of the British Empire) in the Queen's 80th Birthday Honours List.

Jane Harris – "The Observations"

Virtually every book one picks up in the bookshop nowadays had a cover which claims it to be an international best-seller or the winner of some prize or other. No such claims were made on the cover of ‘The Observations’ but it earns the Edwards Prize for the Most Original Work of Fiction, 2007. Not since I read “The Time Traveller’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger (2005) have I found a book with such originality. This is a superb account of the life of a less than ordinary maid in a less than ordinary Scottish household. Even five sixth’s of the way through I was still unsure whether I was reading a murder story, a ghost story, or simply the tale of a Victorian maid caught up in unusual circumstances. I shan’t tell you which it turns out to be... The writing style is very believable and the setting – Scotland 1863 – really lives.

“So there I was with two pens, my two titties, Charles Dickens, two slices of bread and a blank book at the end of my first day in the middle of nowhere. Except as it turned out it wasn't quite the end ...” . In an attempt to escape her not-so-innocent past in Glasgow, Bessy Buckley - the wide-eyed Irish heroine of "The Observations" - takes a job as a maid in a big house outside Edinburgh working for the beautiful Arabella. Bessy is intrigued by her new employer, but puzzled by her increasingly strange requests and her insistence that Bessy keep a journal of her most intimate thoughts. And it seems that Arabella has a few secrets of her own - including her near-obsessive affection for Nora, a former maid who died in mysterious circumstances. Then, a childish prank has drastic consequences, which throw into jeopardy all that Bessy has come to hold dear. Caught up in a tangle of madness, ghosts, sex and lies, she remains devoted to Arabella. But who is really responsible for what happened to her predecessor Nora? As her past threatens to catch up with her and complicate matters even further, Bessy begins to realise that she has not quite landed on her feet.



JANE HARRIS was born in Belfast and brought up in Glasgow. Following university she trained as an actress and acquired an equity card by touring the alternative cabaret circuit with all-female acapella/comedy team ‘The Gumdrops’. Subsequently, she worked as a singer and then, realising she didn’t want to be an actress, left Britain for France and Portugal where she worked variously as a dishwasher, a waitress, a chambermaid and, finally, a teacher of English as a Foreign Language.

It was while she was in Portugal that she began writing short stories. These have since been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. Her story ‘Those Nails’ was runner-up in the Penguin/Observer Newspaper Short Story competition in 1993 and she received an Arts Council Writer’s Award in 2000. From 1992-1994 she was Writer-in-Residence at HM Prison Durham.

She has also written a number of award-winning short films, two of which - Going Down (2001) and Bait (2000) - were nominated for BAFTAs. Going Down also won the prize for best short film at both the BBC British Short Film Festival and The Angers Film Festival and came second in the Turner Classic Movie Awards. Another short, Bubbles (1999) won awards for Best Film, Best Script and Best Story at the Italian TRINI Festival and was Best Short at the Leicester Film Festival. In 1999, Jane was shortlisted for the BBC’s Dennis Potter Award with her script Turning Back the Clocks.

The Observations is Jane Harris's first novel and is soon to be made into a film..

Margaret George - "Helen of Troy"

It must be a busy time of year - I wonder why! I've only managed this one book in the last ten days. But what a book. A lush, seductive novel of the legendary beauty whose face "launched a thousand ships," from the bestselling author of Mary, Called Magdalene. A brilliant collection of the myths of Greece, the Gods, the heroes and the Trojan and Spartan ways of life all revolving around the beauty known as Helen of Troy. Whether Helen ever existed or not is questionable. Similarly Menelaus, Agamemnon, Achilles and Paris have no evidential corroboration. But none of that matters once you get involved in Margaret George's novel. They all live in these 750 excellent pages.


MARGARET GEORGE was born in Nashville Tennessee. When not continuing research for her novels in such places as Egypt, Rome, Israel and England she lives with her husband in Madison, Wisconsin. She is the author of the bestselling novels The Autobiography of Henry VIII, Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles and The Memoirs of Cleopatra

Juliet Marillier – “Wolfskin"

Continuing my need for some simple escapist literature I have just borrowed this from the library.

Growing up on a prosperous farm in Viking Norway, young Eyvind longs for the day when he can join Jarl Magnus's elite warrior group, the Wolfskins. Set in Norway and the Orkneys at a time when historical records were not written down, this heroic fantasy is full of adventure, rivalry, loyalty, love and death. A fine view of Orkney, the Viking way of life (and death) with a touch of Norse Gods, all set in an exciting tale of war and settlement. This will not be the last Marillier novel I read!

This book, written in 2003, is the first in a trilogy “Children of the Light Isles” of which part two – “Foxmask” was published in 2004. A previous trilogy “Sevenwaters” ( Daughter of the Forest (2000); Son of the Shadows (2001) and . Child of the Prophecy (2002)) had already won Juliet Marillier international acclaim. It is a historical fantasy set in ninth century Ireland.



JULIET MARILLIER was born in New Zealand and brought up in Dunedin, the 'Edinburgh of the South'. She has a passionate interest in Celtic music and Irish folklore. A mother of two daughters and two sons, she lives in a rural area outside Perth in Western Australia.