Tag: Richard Price

Top 10 Books Of The Year 2021- Part One (10-6)

On By philshanklinIn 100 Essential, Books, Uncategorized1 Comment

So, here we go, time to look back on another strange year to see which books made the greatest impression upon me in 2021.  This Top 10 is not just based upon books published this year. (3 out of the 10 were, which seems to be par for the course as that has been the same proportion for the last couple of years). If I read it during 2021 it is up for inclusion.

This year I read 64 books which is a typical figure but a bit down on my Good Reads goal of 70. Like last year 13 books have made the five star rating level, which means once again that some of my five star reads will not make it onto my Top 10 of the Year. There were 28 four star reads and 23 books I rated three stars. Like last year there was nothing I rated below three stars. I think with all this reviewing experience I’m less likely to choose to read duff books. Gender-wise, my Top 10 has a 50-50 split. It is perhaps a more diverse list than previous years with 40% black authors and 30% identifying as LGBT+ Like last year there are two non-fiction titles and like last year they are broadly speaking, autobiographical. Three of the authors have featured in previous year Top 10’s. There are two debut novels.

Right, here is the first part of the list, numbers 10-6.  If you would like to read the full review (and I hope you do as these are the books I’m really prompting you to find out more about) just click on the title.

10. Bond Street Story – Norman Collins (Collins 1959) (Read and reviewed in July)

Good luck with finding this one as like nearly all of this British author’s (1907-82) work it seems to be out of print. It’s the second year in a row for Collins and even though this is not quite up there with last year’s #2 read “London Belongs To Me” (which is more readily available as a Penguin Modern Classics) this tale of lives in a London Department store, the family who own it, the staff who work there is still a captivating read. I’m going to be on the look-out for more Collins to read next year. Perhaps some enterprising publisher could commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death by re-publishing more of his work.

9. Goodnight Mister Tom – Michelle Magorian (Puffin 1981) (Read and reviewed in May)

I took advantage of this children’s classic’s 40th anniversary reprint to read this for the first time. I know this is a special book for many people, in my day job at the library we often get adults requesting it to read to their children and I think it is now established as an important book in children’s fiction. I said of it; “It was one of those books where my vague ideas about it had cemented into what I believed was fact but I was often wrong.  I knew it was a tearjerker but what I had always thought occurred never actually happens.  The twists and turns of the plot were quite a revelation for me.” If you’ve never read it I urge you to seek it out, if you have read it you will know you probably want to read it again.

8.The Whites – Richard Price (Bloomsbury 2015) (Read and reviewed in February)

I’ve now read two Richard Price books and both have made it on to the Top 10, this is another under-rated author. His 1974 debut “The Wanderers” was my 2014 Book Of The Year and 41 years later he is still churning out gems. The title refers to those who have got away with murder which obsess a group of NYPD members past and present. It’s hard-boiled American crime, which I don’t always go for but characterisation here is so strong. Stephen King summed it up perfectly when he described this book as “grim, gutsy and impossible to put down.”

7. Dreamgirls: My Life As A Supreme – Mary Wilson (Arrow 1987) (Read in January posted in February)

This was a re-read of a book I have read I have read a couple of times before but not for years. I think it is one of the best showbusiness autobiographies, with just the right balance of career and private life and the career is extraordinary. It was written alongside ghost-writers Patricia Romanowski and Ahrgus Juilliard but benefits because Mary was a keen diarist and that ability to access details is evident. Tragically, on the day I set aside to post this review the news was announced that Mary had suddenly died (authors and publishers, don’t let this put you off asking for books to be reviewed, the two events are not related!) I did wonder whether that would result in this book being given a new lease of life but that has not happened.

6. Sing, Unburied, Sing- Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury 2017) (Read and reviewed in August)

Critically acclaimed in her homeland. Mississippi resident Jesmyn Ward made history with this book when she became the first Black American writer as well as the first woman to win a second National Book Award for fiction. This is a powerful, haunting read. I described it as “a Southern-set contemporary novel enriched with the rhythms and the sense of folklore, rhythms, spiritual beliefs and history of the community”. The reason why this had such a powerful effect on me as a reader is due to the quality of the writing and story-telling which really drew an initially resistant me in.

Next post: The Top 5

The Whites – Richard Price (2015)

On By philshanklinIn Murder They Wrote...1 Comment

I have  read one other Richard Price novel, his 1974 debut “The Wanderers” which when I discovered it in 2014 I made my Book of The Year.  This tale of a teenage gang in the Bronx in the early 1960’s I described as “unsympathetic, gritty and yet touching”. It was published when Price was 25 and 41 years later came his 9th novel originally written under the pseudonym Harry Brandt, although this edition puts Price’s own name to the forefront.

The title refers to the nickname given by a group of NYPD members past and present to those individuals who literally got away with murder, whose obvious guilt in the execution of terrible crimes becomes an obsession to the detectives – becoming their own personal nemesis.  Still serving in the Night Watch is main character Billy Graves who regularly meets up with ex-colleagues “The Wild Geese” where their Whites are often a topic for conversation.  When bad things begin to happen to those they obsess over is it karma kicking back or is someone taking the law into their own hands?

Alongside this we have sections devoted to another serving policeman, Milton Ramos, more obnoxious and obsessed with revenge, which is a major theme of the novel.  This begins to infiltrate the lives of Billy, his ER nurse wife Carmen, their two children and Billy’s Alzheimer’s stricken father, himself an ex-cop.

This is very much a hard-boiled crime tale but it really works for me as it is so character led.  It is hard to initially warm to all the characters, but Price, as he did in his debut over 40 years before, does draw the reader in.  These are undoubtedly flawed individuals but you still end up caring.

In the intervening years between “The Wanderers” and this, apart from the 7 other novels, Price has written Hollywood screenplays for movies such as “The Sea Of Love” (1989 starring Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin) and “The Color Of Money”(1986 with Paul Newman and Tom Cruise, for which Price was nominated for an Oscar) and also wrote episodes of “The Wire”, rightly regarded as one of the best written crime TV series ever, so you can see the credentials right away.  There is no doubting his ability in getting the feel of authenticity in his writing.

The day to day (or night to night) crimes in Billy’s professional life go on in the background in an unrelenting, grinding, life-sapping way which is very effective and shifts the novel in a direction I was not really expecting when I started it, when I felt that it would be this aspect which would take centre stage. 

This is impressive writing and I think, that especially here in the UK, this writer is under-valued.  Stephen King described it on publication as “the crime novel of the year, grim, gutsy and impossible to put down.”  I would find it very hard to disagree.

The Whites was published by Bloomsbury in 2015.

My Top 10 Reads Of 2014 – Part 2 – The Top 5

On By philshanklinIn Uncategorized11 Comments

 

 

 

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  1. What Was Lost – Catherine O’Flynn (2007) – Read in October 2014

This debut novel did well in various first novel awards when it was published and I’m not surprised as the writing is of a high standard. It starts out with an absolutely captivating central character, ten year old Kate Meaney who covers up her miserable background with her preoccupations of herself as a girl detective, in search of a crime to solve. It’s the mid 80’s and there’s a very good feel for the period. Kate spends hours in a bleak “modern” shopping centre, where she vanishes under suspicious circumstances. The story moves on twenty years and the improved Green Oaks shopping centre becomes the centre character, throwing up ghosts for those who work there, challenging their mundane existences in what they see as fairly dead-end jobs. I found both strands of the story engrossing. There’s some laugh out loud humour and good plot twists.

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    4. 12 Years A Slave – Solomon Northup (1853) – Read in September 2014

The book has had a new lease of life as a result of the Oscar winning film, which I waited to watch until I had finished the book and which very much captures the flavour of this extraordinary memoir. Northup was a free man living in New York. On a trip to Washington he was kidnapped and sold into slavery, ending up at a cotton plantation in the South, by then it has been beaten into him that to reveal his real status would only lead to more thrashing and probable death. He cannot even reveal he can read and write. As a slave it’s relentless work, cruel treatments and thrashings for the next twelve years. I was willing on his plan for escape and bitterly sorry for those left on the Epps plantation. He very effectively conveys the futility of the slave existence and the terror that lived inside them all, knowing each day could be their last. There’s occasional deviations outlining how cotton is produced, how sugar is harvested, which is actually quite fascinating and makes his memoir of interest as a historical document as well as a dramatic story. I am ashamed that I did not know of this book before as I have read much Afro-American writing. Thankfully, the film has brought the book back into prominence and Northup’s words can take their place in the canon of great American writing.

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  1. Dead Tomorrow – Peter James (2009)- Read in October 2014

I know the similar sounding titles get confusing but this is one of his best I’ve read so far. (I think “Dead Simple” is just slightly ahead).  A couple of teenagers with their organs removed are recovered from the sea which develops into a human trafficking plot with a subplot of a teenage Brighton girl whose liver is on its last legs and whose mother is contemplating desperate measures to keep her daughter alive. It is both tense and thought-provoking stuff. We are tantalised by the ongoing plot strand of DS Grace’s wife’s disappearance and Grace’s sidekick Glenn Branson has his part beefed up a little and shows human failings. This is the fifth book of a very strong crime series.

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2 .The Last Town On Earth- Thomas Mullen (2006) -Read in May 2014

This is a thrilling debut. Set in the small American mill-town of Commonwealth, founded by Charles Worthy, a philanthropic mill-owner who wants to offer a fair deal for his workers. All seems to be going well at the tail end of the Great War, with the USA now involved in the combat when a more catastrophic event (in terms of American lives lost) occurs – a Flu epidemic .   Commonwealth decides to go into quarantine and post guards to prevent entry from potentially flu-ridden outsiders. One of the guards is Philip, the Worthy’s adopted teenage son. Whilst on duty he has to make a decision which has a tremendous effect on the town. Mullen has produced a balanced, rich tale with great moral implications and depth, very good characterisation and the plot is engrossing, tense and unpredictable. I loved it. (Just don’t read it when you have the flu!)

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1. The Wanderers – Richard Price (1974) -Read in January 2014

I cannot understand how this book has passed me by up to now. If I had read this as a teenager – Wow! Even though my teenage years are long gone this still packs a hell of a punch. Set around 1961-2 in the Bronx, The Wanderers (after the Dion song) are a teen gang obsessed with sex, fighting, staying alive and pop music. In a episodic set of interlinked stories Price so effectively conjures up this group of friends moving towards adulthood. It is shocking, violent, sexy and like many teenagers full of bile for anyone apart from themselves! It does, however, work superbly. It’s unsympathetic, gritty and yet touching. This is certainly one of the best books of the 70’s and my favourite book I read for the first time this year. I loved the characters; Eugene, the stud with a secret; Joey, a victim of his outrageously aggressive father; Perry, home alone with his mother and Buddy whose wrong choices cause him to grow up too fast. (The 1979 film of the same name despite similar themes is unrelated)

So that’s my Top 10 Books of the Year. Okay, nothing in that list was actually published in 2014 but it takes me a while to get round to books. (I did read a couple that did make their first appearance in 2014 but they didn’t make my Top 10 list). Next post will be my favourite re-read of the year. Clue – it’s a non-fiction examination of the two of the biggest stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.