Seven Thousand Days in Siberia by Karlo Stajner

First, an admission - I did not read all of this book. But it is important and compelling and a reminder of how things can be for other people in other lives. Like taking a cold shower - you enjoy a hot one so much more once you know that things, always, can be otherwise.

It is as dispassionate account as one can imagine of one person's experiences of the Stalin-era death camps. As Stajner (Steiner, in the Austrian version of his name) himself says, he did not want to write about feelings and motivations, just about what happened. He was freed in 1956 after Kruschev met Tito and the Marshal asked about a list of missing Yugoslav officials, who had disappeared into the Soviet Union of the 30s and 40s. Kruschev came back 2 days later with an answer - of the 113 on the list, 13 survived, all as prisoners in Siberia. They were then released, Stajner among them. He had been arrested in 1936.

Stajner's account is incredibly thorough and detailed. But it is, because of that, repetitive and the reader's sensitivities become blunted. Its real value is as an authentic record, rather than a narrative masterpiece. He also recounts the stories of the other prisoners he lived with. Many of these are fascinating and you marvel at the appalling waste of humanity sitting in all prisons, everywhere.

This all happened, in Europe, while my parents were alive. Reading of the blank inhumanity and bureaucratic oppression, it makes you wonder where else today such things could happen. Sadly, the list of even the most obvious is not a short one: North Korea, China, several Middle Eastern states, Afghanistan, several African countries, Burma. In all of them, like the Soviet Union, you could be arrested for some transgression, political, religious or social, and taken away from your friends, family and life.

Sure, the Soviet death camps were on a different scale. But that possibility, of the knock at the door and the  unyielding force of the state suddenly and inexplicably destroying your life, is present in too many places.

I would not recommend this book to everyone. But even if you only do as I did, and skim a bit, it is sobering, disconcerting and troubling.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

How to follow 'The Corrections'? That question must have been a tough one, since 'The Corrections' sticks in my mind as a book that really lived up to all the hype and was utterly brilliant as a novel. 'Freedom' is not totally different, in fact. It is all about families, relationships and what it is like to be human in a certain sort of America. But it is also pretty brilliant.

There are endless reviews around so I won't add to them, except to mention two things I especially enjoyed. The first is the writer's insight into how different generations relate to one another. He is very good at looking at things from varying perspectives and living and breathing the preconceptions that come with age, as well as with social background.

The second is the way in which one individual's integrity acts as a pole around which the actions of others circulate. The fact that this integrity is maintained, without ever becoming too improbable, is really masterful.

It is also nice the way the freedom motif increases in prominence as the book progresses.

My only complaint is that it is a bit long - could have done with a bit more editing.

But a deep and enjoyable read.

Can you forgive her? by Anthony Trollope

Trollope is a bit unfashionable these days, I fear. People like John Major saying 'I like to go to bed with a Trollope' and acting as if it is so...droll.

But he is a very readable writer and that is what I most liked about this book. Like other Victorian writers, you can see how the discipline of the regular instalment keeps the pace up nicely. Dickens wrote many of his novels as serials in various periodicals and this novel, the first of Trollope's Palliser novels, or the 'political novels' as they are called by the afficionados, benefits from the need for suspensive breaks and regular reminders of what is going on. The cadences are rhythmic and engrossing, after a few chapters.

The characters are not all convincing and this is very much a novel about the upper middle classes. But it rattles along and Trollope is all plot and action; he doesn't dwell on long descriptions or long digressions.

This is the first of a series of about 6 novels and I will certainly get hold of 'Phineas Finn', which comes next. It may sound odd, to say of a Victorian novelist, but Trollope is great recreational reading.

I won't spoil the plot for you by talking about it in detail but one of the most fascinating things about it is the way in which social  mores are so suffocating and yet so formative. The sense of human passions and emotions being diverted by inviolable social custom, like a river meandering in response to rocks and other obstacles, underpins the whole book.

I strongly recommend it, especially of you are planning a long journey. It is, in the best sense of the word, diverting.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

This I found to be a slightly mannered novel, in that all the dialogue is crafted to carry meaning rather than sound authentic. Nothing wrong with that but it weighs heavily on the comedy.

The book is essentially about being, and not being, Jewish. It is also about the rather rarified world of the London intelligentsia and, as far as one can tell, the world to a large extent inhabited by the author. It has some funny and bathetic moments but the artfulness of the dialogue makes it hard to empathise with the characters. The emotion feels created rather than felt.

But it moves along nicely and is an enjoyable read.

The Ambassadors by Henry James

I was listening to the radio and writers were being interviewed about books that had been tough to read but which in the end proved worth the trouble. Henry James was mentioned more than any other writer. I can half see why they said that, after reading this; but only half. Unfortunately for me, I think the half that is missing is the half when you say 'ah, so it was worth it'.

I had only read the Turn of the Screw before this, which I enjoyed. But that is only a novella or, perhaps, as short story.

His style is so vague and elliptical, in this book, that it is often hard to figure out what, if anything, is going on. He uses ambiguous phrases like 'make out' and 'bring on' in the course of dialogue which is often opaque in its meaning. This is clearly deliberate, as we share in the protagonist's journey of understanding. He has been sent by a rather buttoned-up American family to bring the son, perceived to be errant, back from Paris. He realises during his mission that things are not so simple, of course. This creates a bit of dramatic tension, hard though that is to follow behind the linguistic mists of James's style. It also supports one of the novel's central themes, the nature of civilisation and the differences between cultures.

Much is inferred rather than stated, not least in relation to sex. I spent a lot of the book trying to understand whether we were dealing with friendships or love affairs. Perhaps that uncertainty reflects real life and is to be appreciated on that basis. But it can be bewildering when spread out over a whole novel.

A practical point - I was reading the Penguin Classics text and it contained a number of annoying typographical errors.

I won't be rushing to read another novel by Henry James, to be honest. The period he wrote in fascinates me, however, and I fancy Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. But for this reader, James is a bit too much like hard work, for now at any rate.

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

There can have been few better times in the last 100 years or so to read this book. It was written in the 1960s by the American historian Barbara Tuchman and it deals with August 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War.

I have read several books on this period, trying hard to understand the reasons for what we think of today as a war of unexampled pointlessness yet destructiveness. This is the best I have read. She portrays brilliantly the unthinking nationalism and direly stupid autocracy of Europe's governing elites. British readers, brought up like me on the myth of unstinting British heroism in both world wars, will find the cool analysis of British intransigence and disorganisation in the weeks preceding the outbreak of war and, especially, the early and crucial weeks of the campaign, unsettling. And any American reader who thinks the French deserve the nickname of cheese eating surrender monkeys (ironically created though it was) can be disabused by her account of amazing French heroism.

It is shocking still to read of how atrocity and gross intimidation were written into the German approach to war; these were formal policy,  not isolated incidents. So fearful were they of French and Belgian snipers that they adopted a disciplined approach to horror, shooting whole villages, including children, with bureaucratic dispatch, as reprisals.

Tuchman describes the events through personalities and the telling anecdote. When Europe is going through economic convulsion, it is timely to remind ourselves just how corrosive nationalism has been in Europe in the relatively recent past. We still see vestiges of it in the Balkans and elsewhere. World War I was, according to this distinguished and readable account, ultimately caused by a collective derangement over 'national interests'. Where have I heard that phrase invoked in the councils of Europe recently?

A visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

This is the first book by Jennifer Egan that I have read. I can't remember now why I bought it - I think I had read a good review somewhere.

I thought it was only OK. It lacks universal appeal; it might wring some wry smiles from young professionals but I didn't find the characters engrossing at a human level. It is basically about how time changes people: "time is a goon".

It is cleverly written - by no means a bad book. It just didn't grab me.