The Lion Women of Tehran, by Marjan Kamali (Simon & Schuster)

This is a novel about Iranian women whose plight, I suspect, has been overtaken in Western minds, certainly mine, by the virtual cancellation of women in Afghanistan.

Yet Iranian women have recently made the Western news cycle, specifically with the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini by security forces in September 2022 for wearing her hijab incorrectly.

This appalling incident led to women and girls taking to the streets of Iran in protest, which filled many Iranians in the diaspora, including author Marjan Kamali, with hope once again that something might change. But no. In an author’s note she writes: “I watched as the women and men of Iran rose up to fight for freedom and were quashed by security forces.”

The Lion Women of Tehran is Kamali’s third novel. She says writing about Iranian women’s rights has been a central theme of her life. She comes from a long line of “strong, very vocal, and opinionated Iranian women who in some instances broke new ground… in other instances saw their lives stymied and constrained by a patriarchal culture, and in all cases experienced a hard-line government eradicate almost overnight rights for which women had fought for decades”.

But beginning the review this way I am probably doing the novel an injustice, because while it certainly has political themes, it is primarily a wonderful story about the power of women’s friendship. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

Nobody’s Fool, by Harlan Coben (Century)

If, for 20 years, you have believed someone was dead and then saw her in front of you, you would be forgiven for reacting with shock. But chasing after her is probably not the most useful reaction.

Sami Kierce grew up wanting to be a physician. But on a post-college trip to Europe with a bunch of friends, something happens that alters the trajectory of his life.

When Nobody’s Fool opens, Sami is a 40-something ex-cop – booted off the force – doing freelance private-investigator work and teaching criminology to assorted students in night classes in Manhattan.

One night he looks up at his class and notices a woman at the back, a woman with whom he fell in love 20 years ago on the Costa del Sol in Spain.

Not only does he believe she is dead – he believes he killed her. And yet there she is. When she realises he has recognised her, she bolts. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

Careless People – A story of where I used to work, by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan Macmillan)

The tech bros – or the broligarchy as someone called them – may have met their match.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former young New Zealand diplomat working at the United Nations, got a coveted job with Facebook for seven years before being fired.

She has called her gripping memoir of working there Careless People, drawn from a paragraph in F Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

By the end of her career at Facebook, which she had joined believing its interconnectivity was going to change the world, for the better. “I was in awe of its ineffable potential.” Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

Precipice, by Robert Harris (Hutchinson Heinemann)

The poor news is that Precipice, historical novelist Robert Harris’s latest book, is the first Harris novel I have read; the good news of course is there are 16 novels in his oeuvre and I plan to get going on them.

We’ve all heard of Conclave, now a major film, and for months a friend has been urging me to read Pompeii, so I’m being nudged in a Harris direction.

Precipice tells an extraordinary story of the first year or so of World War 1, when H H Asquith was the Liberal British prime minister. He was the husband of the outspoken Margot Asquith, but had always enjoyed the company of attractive and clever women.

When this novel opens, in July 1914, it is just a few days after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, and at this stage the biggest political crisis facing Asquith and his government is Irish agitation for home rule.  But within a month Britain – and all Europe – is at war. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

The Favourites, by Layne Fargo (Chatto & Windus)

Ice dancing on television is lovely – gliding, serene, the smiles, the gorgeous costumes, the wonderful music, the balletic beauty of it all.

But according to this novel – and author Layne Fargo gives every indication of having thoroughly researched the world of competitive ice dance – it’s a savage, even cutthroat, business.

Ever since Katarina Shaw was four and living near Chicago, she has dreamed of skating glory. She wants to emulate her hero, Sheila Lin, winner of two golds at the Winter Olympics in Calgary in 1988.

Kat is 16 when this novel begins, skating with Heath, the survivor of many foster homes. Kat wants to win gold, Heath wants Kat, and so he learns to be her ice partner. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

Sir Herbert Baker – A biography, by John Stewart (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

Teak, dressed stone, pillars, barley-sugar chimneys are all among the trademarks of the work of the great British architect who left such an indelible imprint on our architectural heritage.

Yet I had no idea of the range of Sir Herbert Baker’s work in the dying days of the British Empire. From the Union Buildings, the Reserve Bank Building and the Railway Station in Pretoria, to Groote Schuur (the residence), Rust en Vrede in Muizenberg and all those grand and gracious homes on Parktown Ridge, Baker’s work is ubiquitous in South Africa.

Then there is St George’s Cathedral, Rhodes Memorial on Devil’s Peak, the Woolsack in Rondebosch, along with Welgelegen, both now part of the University of Cape Town, and Sandhills, Baker’s own beach cottage on the dunes at Muizenberg. Continue reading →

Review: Lyn Mair

Kirstenbosch – The most beautiful garden in Africa, by Brian J Huntley

The first person to write anything about the area we now know as Kirstenbosch was that intrepid early explorer William Burchell who, in 1822, thought the area “the most picturesque of any scenery in the vicinity of Cape Town”.

Amost a century later, in 1911 H H W Pearson, professor of botany at the South African College (later the University of Cape Town, together with a young botanist Neville Pillans and George Ridley, the curator of the Cape Town Municipal Gardens, set out from Cape Town in their horse-drawn cart to look for a suitable spot for a new botanical garden.

They went up the avenue of young camphor trees planted by Cecil John Rhodes till they came to the majestic views of the splendid eastern slopes of Table Mountain and the craggy Castle Rock. Pearson simply declared: “This is the place”, and so it is. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

The Last Letters from Villa Clara, by Sarah Steele (Headline Review)

Spanning 60 years, this is a bit of a saga, with all sorts of wonderful elements: the outbreak of war, a long-lost Old Master, a couple of love stories, London at the beginning the Swinging Sixties, two court cases, an Italian villa and a treasure hunt.

On top of all that there’s a handful of memorable characters.

At the centre of the story is Bruce Cato, an accomplished artist who has made a good living painting copies of famous paintings. These are not fakes, he emphasises, but copies, and demand for them comes from filmmakers, people who would like to have a quality copy of a famous picture on their walls, or people who really own famous paintings, but who for security and insurance reasons don’t want to display them. Continue reading →

Review: Annamia van den Heever

Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber)

Sally Rooney’s bestselling fourth novel, Intermezzo, is said to mark a significant evolution in her literary journey, philosophically focusing on themes of grief, familial relationships, language and the complexities of love.

Love wins in the end. Which is the beginning of more life for everyone concerned.

The story is about the two brainy and beautiful Koubek brothers, introvert and socially awkward chess genius Ivan, 22, and older brother Peter, 32, a successful Dublin human rights lawyer.

(Rooney, a notable Irish public intellectual, turned 33 on February 20.)

Set in 2022, the novel follows the brothers navigating their lives after the death of their father who moved to Ireland from Slovakia in the 1980s. Peter grapples with his relationships with two women: Sylvia, an English professor with whom he shares a complicated history, and Naomi, a cash-strapped 23-year-old student about to lose her home. Naomi makes ends meet with sexy online photos, drug-dealing and the odd handout from Peter.

Ivan finds solace in an unexpected romance with Margaret, a 36-year-old programme manager at the rural venue of the chess tournament at which they meet. Continue reading →

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall (Penguin Books)

Preamble: This review was published in The Conversation on April 1, 2024; the book first appeared in hardback on October 3, 2023, just four days before the horrific Hamas attack on Israel, followed by Israel’s war on Gaza.

So, not a brand new book, but I have decided to post this review because I think, in the light of the unfolding situation in Israel-Palestine, it raises important issues and offers new perspectives. I have just finished it, and was both horrified and mesmerised.

It was named book of the year by numerous eminent publications including Time, the New Yrker, Financial Times, and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for general non-faction.

It was originally published in the United States with the subtitle Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, because the publishers believed sales would be poor in that country if the subtitle had been A Palestinian Story (which was used in the first British edition). The edition I read had no subtitle at all.

Thrall is an American journalist and writer who has dived deep into the daily life of Palestinians in Israel, where he is currently living. In a talk at Brown University in the US in October last year, Thrall said the widespread Western notion that maverick settlers were responsible for the technically illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank was incorrect. The settlements were Israeli government policy, based on the maxim: “Maximum land, minimum Arabs.” – Vivien Horler

Review: Ned Curthoys

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall (Penguin Books)

Nathan Thrall’s stunning book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: a Palestine Story explores a dreadful accident, where six Palestinian kindergarteners and a teacher died in 2012 after their bus collided with a semitrailer, on the Jaba road, northeast of Jerusalem.

At the book’s centre is bereaved father Abed Salama, who tragically loses his five-year-old son Milad.

Thrall, an American-Jewish journalist who’s lived in Jerusalem since 2011, reveals the accident to be influenced by a range of political decisions. These include the elaborate system of control that governs the West Bank, particularly the byzantine ID system, borders and sections that restrict the everyday access of Palestinian residents. Continue reading →