L. Beukes, Zoo City
A. Christie, Taken at the flood
J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man
F.S. Fitzgerald, The Basil and Josephine stories
G. Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a death foretold
D. Lodge, Paradise News
G. Orwell, The road to Wigan Pier*
P. Theroux, Sailing through China
P.G. Wodehouse, A Pelican at Blandings
Some reputations suffered this month. The Ginger Man is a classic, but by God it's dated; I love Fitzgerald, but these stories were ropey. And though Orwell's reportage is excellent, his prescription lamentable, and though not the only criterion on which it should be judged, manages to be wrong on just about every prediction of what would happen to Britain.
That still left me a decent selection, of which Garcia Marquez was was outstanding and well worth the (very short) read, but Gellhorn's triptych the best. I generally find Africa boring, but this was a compelling sequence of stories, only notionally linked, which vividly brought it into focus. There's a nice little introduction where her writing style was discussed, and in particular her approach to fiction, which largely seems to have been writing, cutting and cutting some more. And I think that shone through - there's no spare fat on them; it makes them extraordinarily compelling reading.
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