Week four, book four

A book by an author you've never read before - NW

I was a little tentative going into reading this, even though I've had Zadie Smith's various books recommended to me by just about everyone I know.

She has a very distinctive way of writing, which was particularly noticeable in NW as it's told from several different characters' perspectives. I usually avoid reading anything like this at all costs (I once read a book set across eight centuries and via at least one ghost and I'm still not sure who was alive by the end).

Happily, though, NW does not jump perspectives from chapter to chapter, instead following one person's life in the months leading up to one weekend in summer, and then backtracking again and retelling it through another's eyes. It's pretty daunting to begin with, as the thoughts and surroundings of the first storyteller - Leah - are piled on top of one another. Memories, half-heard conversations, and that endless London rush build up to establish setting more effectively than just about anything I've read recently.

Since finishing NW I have read a handful of reviews, and a recurring criticism seems to be its slump in pace. I've been guilty of giving up on books that do this but I persevered here and didn't find the novel especially slow. If anything, I think a slower pace works in its favour, adding to this feeling of the oppressive, lazy city heat. I finished reading this while sat in a doctors' surgery on a grey January evening, and I still felt like I'd been transported to London in a bustling summer.

I really enjoyed NW, once I'd got used to Smith's writing style and lack of speech marks (this always, always throws me) and I've since found a copy of her book On Beauty in a charity shop, which I can't wait to start reading.

I borrowed a copy of this from the library but failing that it can be bought directly from Random House here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.

Week three, book three

A mystery or thriller - The Secret Adversary

Wow. I'm really bad at posting these each week.

I'm an absolute sucker for crime dramas, and especially period crime dramas. So when the BBC commissioned an adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Secret Adversary (broadcast last summer) I was interested to see these new characters, as I'd not come across Tommy and Tuppence before.

The two private detectives are not, perhaps, her most likeable creations, although they are at least a good deal more so than Poirot. Tommy can come across as rather pompous and a little slow, but he's mostly reliable and can be a quick thinker in tight situations. I found Tuppence really quite endearing, although I did get the impression that Christie didn't like her all that much.

(Is this just me? I find this with so many of Christie's female characters, especially young women.)

What marks The Secret Adversary out, too, is its setting. Beginning shortly after the end of World War I, it follows the now-unemployed Tommy and Tuppence setting up a detective agency and quickly becoming embroiled in the delicate international politics of the 1920s. It can get a little overcomplicated at times, and isn't always successful in building and sustaining tension, but at its heart there is a good thriller and the beginnings of a great writer.

This novel is more overtly political than some of Christie's later work, but still with the twists and turns you'd expect from her writing - I had no idea who the criminal mastermind, Mr Brown, might be until he revealed himself - and the lightly humourous dialogue Christie came to master is there almost from the start.

The Secret Adversary is available for free here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.