mad harper book worm

great novels and novelists

I think Mary McGarry Morris is far and away America's best living woman novelist. Songs in Ordinary Time is her masterpiece but Vanished and A Dangerous Woman, although shorter, are also brilliant. It's incredibly moving and superbly well-written. Ignore the two lukewarm Amazon reviews: trust me. It's unputdownable.

I am not sure why Paul Watkins isn't much better known. He's a master of the "rites of passage thriller" - there's rarely any romance: these are stories about young chaps, up against it. His novels' settings are incredibly varied - a World War I trench (from the Germans' perspective), a North Atlantic fishing trawler, a desert outposting with the Foreign Legion, Ireland (fighting for the Black & Tans). I recommended Paul Watkins to one friend and she was rather disparaging, calling them boys' books. They might be, were it not but for Watkins' extraordinary powers of description - often breathtaking - and taking his books far above mere excitement. As well as Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn, try The Promise of Light (a Booker nomination), In the Blue Light of African Dreams and Night Over Day Over Night - another Booker nomination. His autobiography Stand Before Your God was also good but appears to be out of stock. I must admit I was disappointed with Archangel and The Story of My Disappearance but looking forward to reading The Forger.

A plug here for my friend Rachel Morton's book. The photographs in this cultured coffee-table tome are beautiful but what's extraordinary is to see just how mixed a society Britain has become. One couldn't possibly imagine that so many different faiths are practised fervently - and pretty much peacably - on such a tiny island. There's well over a hundred pictured here, from white witches and druids to Orthodox Jews and Roman Catholics. And by focusing on ordinary people practising their faith in - what's for them - an ordinary way, she has created a fascinating portrait of Britain 2000.

Another plug for a friend - this time novelist Melissa Jones. Sick at Heart is her second novel and I think even better than her first, Cold in Earth which was excellent. Sick at Heart depicts the relationships between protagonist Alex and the three women in his life: his mother, his wife and his lover. The story is told through his letters which look back over his life starting with an idyllic but dangerously isolated childhood. Slowly - and in the most chilling way - the reader begins to realise that Alex is deeply deranged. It's beautifully written, completely gripping and the characterisations, including his ghastly, clinging mother, are scarily authentic.