Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Piccoult

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I’m a big Jodi Piccoult fan. I’ll say that up front.

Songs of the Humpback Whale is about a single child family going through a crisis. Within the first 20 pages, Jane and Oliver, mum and dad, argue. Jane and daughter Rebecca leg it to find Jane’s brother, Joel. Their journey across the United States, including Oliver’s attempts to find them, is actually a backdrop for the real story: how they became who they are.

It’s not a straight journey, starting on day one and finishing when they get there. Piccoult uses flashbacks and five different voices to get her story across, which I like, even if sometimes it’s annoying. I want to keep going with the first character and find out what happens!

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Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins

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We all know Jackie Collins. She’s up there with Jilly Cooper, and writes about the people who fascinate us: Hollywood celebrities. Ahh, celebrities – fascinating, mysterious and hailed as the leading lights of each successive generation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as taken in as the next person, but let’s be honest about it.

This is the original bestseller, not ‘The New Generation’ published in 2001. This one was published in 1983, pre-dating our modern celebrity culture, ambitions and expectations – well, I thought so anyway. I’m not sure if it’s reassuring or depressing to think attitudes 25 years ago are actually the same as now. We haven’t changed much at all.

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American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

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Patrick Bateman is an American Psycho. He’s a successful Wall Street broker in the eighties, he gets nose bleeds from the amount of cocaine he takes, and he’s the source of all men’s fashion knowledge for his friends. He also murders colleagues, strangers, hookers and bums, alternately keeping them, eating them and torturing them in graphic detail.

Wow. Yuck. Is this really us? Could we really be this society? Is this really a satire? Or just a disturbing stream-of-consciousness rant by a writer with a razor-sharp but slightly sick intellect and the desire to shock the shit out of us? Was this really written 20 years ago? I wonder if Easton Ellis thinks we’ve become worse or better?

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Auto Fiction by Hitomi Kanehara

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Japan through the eyes of a woman

I've just finished a book that reminds me of 'Catch 22' but it's set in Japan, with a young woman, in the 21st century. So actually not like 'Catch 22' at all. Except that once you finish it, you'll have a similar response, like you've just got off a roller coaster where you felt all the sensations of going up and down and hurtling around corners, but you wouldn't be able to describe the corners or the layout of the roller coaster to someone else. That's what 'Auto Fiction' by Hitomi Kanehara feels like.

I borrowed this from a friend who has been reading a lot of Japanese fiction lately, translated into English of course. The only Japanese book I'd heard of is 'Letters from Iwo Jima' and I only know that because Clint Eastwood made a movie of it (which I haven't seen). 'Auto Fiction' is pretty far from the stereotype of Japanese life and what you might expect Japanese fiction to look like. Or maybe it's just me who had this idea that Japanese fiction would look like tai chi and be graceful and more like 'Memoirs of a Geisha' - which was actually written by a man so I don't know what I was thinking.

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