Books of 2007

Books not neccessarily published in 2007, but discovered and recommended over and over to readers.

1) Time Traveller’s Wife- Audrey Niffeneger

This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing. "The Time Traveler's Wife" depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's passionate love for each other with grace and humour. Their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of a force they can neither prevent nor control is intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

2) Alias Grace- Margret Atwood

This tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery is wound around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s. Was Grace Marks a female fiend? A femme fatale? Or a weak and unwilling victim? The accusation of murderess follows her "like a taffeta skirt along the floor".

3) The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

Presents the story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy, who dreams of travelling the world in search of a worldly treasure as fabulous as any ever found. From his home in Spain, he journeys to the markets of Tangiers, and from there into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him.

4) Duchess of Nothing- Heather McGowan

After leaving her husband and their suffocating marriage for a new lover in Rome, the narrator of Heather McGowan's "Duchess of Nothing" has her freedom, but is still trapped by the routine of life and haunted by her past. Even worse, her lover, Edmund, is just as self-absorbed and remote as her former husband. Her one source of entertainment is Edmund's seven-year-old brother, a curious, precocious and defiant child who becomes her responsibility during her lover's long absences. Spending their days together, they wander the city, simultaneously repelled by and drawn to each other as she tries to provide him with some kind of education. But when Edmund abandons them altogether, the amusing relationship between the narrator and her charge suddenly becomes a necessity, and she realises how much she has come to depend on the boy.

5) My sister’s keeper- Jodi Picoult

The only reason Anna was born was to donate her cord blood cells to her older sister. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since she was a child. Anna was born for this purpose, her parents tell her, which is why they love her even more. But now that she has reached an age of physical awareness, she can't help but long for control over her own body and so she decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body.

6) Marshmallows for Breakfast – Dorothy Koomson

When Kendra Tamale returns to England from Australia, looking forward to a fresh start and simple life, she rents a room from Kyle, a divorced father of two, and begins a new job. Kyle's five-year-old twins have other ideas and quickly adopt Kendra as their new mother. Then Kendra bumps into the man who shares her awful secret, and things fall apart: she can't sleep, she can't eat, she's suspended from work, and the kids are taken away by their mother. The only way to fix things is to confess to the terrible mistake she made all those years ago. But that's something she swore never to do...

7) Vernon God Little- DBC Pierre

Fifteen-year-old Vernon Gregory Little is in trouble, and it has something to do with the recent massacre of 16 students at his high school. Soon, the quirky backwater of Martirio, barbecue capital of Texas, is flooded with wannabe CNN hacks, eager for a scapegoat.

8) The Girl with a Pearl Earring- Tracy Chevalier

When Griet becomes a maid in the household of Johannes Vermeer, she thinks she knows her role: housework, laundry and the care of his six children. But as she becomes part of his world and his work, their growing intimacy spreads tension and deception in the ordered household and, as the scandal seeps out, into the town beyond. Tracy Chevalier's extraordinary novel on the corruption of innocence and the price of genius is a contemporary classic, and has sold over two million copies worldwide.

9) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time -Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

10) The Lighthouse – PD James

Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is vilated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered. Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discreetly, but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team, who all have worries of their own. Hardly have the team began to unravel the mystery when there is a second brutal killing and the investigation is jeopardized when Dalgliesh is faced with a potentially fatal danger...This powerful novel combines all the elements P D James fans have come to expect: a vivid evocation of place, sensitive characterisation and a superbly structured plot.

11) The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets- Eva Rice

Set in the 1950s, in an England still recovering from the Second World War, "The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets" is the enchanting story of Penelope Wallace and her eccentric family at the start of the rock'n'roll era. Penelope longs to be grown-up and to fall in love; but various rather inconvenient things keep getting in her way. Like her mother, a stunning but petulant beauty widowed at a tragically early age, her younger brother Inigo, currently incapable of concentrating on anything that isn't Elvis Presley, a vast but crumbing ancestral home, a severe shortage of cash, and her best friend Charlotte's sardonic cousin Harry...

12) I’m the King of the Castle- Susan Hill

‘I didn’t want you to come here’. It says in the note that Edmond Hooper passes to Charles Kingshaw upon his arrival at Warings. But Charles Kingshaw and his mother have come to live with Edmond Hooper and his father, in the isolated, ugly Victorian house for good. To Hooper, Kigshaw is an intruder, a boy to be subtly persecuted.

In the woods nearby, their roles are briefly reversed but Kingshaw knows that Hooper will never let him be and that he can never win. Hooper knows this too. And the worst is still too come.

Article by Muthamma Prasad, 7 Jan 2008
Posted in Book Club

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