Trespass by Rose Tremain

This book uses its elegant prose to examine familial betrayals and impositions in the lives of two pairs of siblings brought together over the sale of a house in the South of France. I thought this book was particularly aptly titled--as various kinds of trespassing (on people's land as well as emotions) resonated throughout the book. The pace of the book was leisurely at first, but it all came together to a moving ending.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

This book, which spoils itself both in its title and in its first six pages, is actually a meticulously-plotted, sweeping, and engaging account of the tragedies, cons, and even triumphs of an Irish boys' school. The characters were round and human, yet engaging, and despite knowing Skippy's fate, there were plenty of twists and turns in the plot--Murray forces the reader to move beyond common assumptions in his nuanced plot. It's quite a long book, but it repays its reader in kind.

February by Lisa Moore

This elegaic book follows the life of Helen, who lost her husband when the rig he worked on at sea sunk in 1982. It mainly focuses on recent events--as she opens herself to love again and her son becomes a father, late in life. The story is beautiful, but constrained. I really enjoyed reading this book.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

This book shows the radiating effects of one event: a man slaps another couple's child at a barbecue. Told from eight different points of view, and extending in time far past the initial slap, this book refuses to make any one of its characters into a villain, but shows them all as human, just as you think they couldn't possibly behave any worse (or that they couldn't possibly have been more wronged). I don't know that I'd care to hang out with this circle of people--mostly because there's a lot of what strikes me as gratuitous drug use--but the characters are well-realized, and the book works.

The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore

This book had me captivated from almost the first page. It tells the story of Andrei, a skilled pediatrician, and his wife Anna, a nursery school teacher, who are living in Leningrad during some (at first) unspecified point during Stalin's rule--a time when World War II and the deprivations everyone faced in Leningrad are still high in many people's memories. Andrei gets called into to consult on the case of the son of a Party leader. The son has an aggressive cancer, and when his treatment doesn't go well, Andrei and Anna must negotiate their survival in a society where they cannot trust their neighbors or their colleagues. Dunmore's elegantly written book probed themes of paranoia, survival in a state of terror, love, family, betrayal, friendship, and loyalty. I probably would not have picked up this book based on its description, but I think it overcomes its description to offer a compassionate portrayal of the possibility of ordinary people to survive and even shine in their humanity even during the most difficult historical epochs.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

It took me a long time to get into this book. I guess I didn't know where the characters were going and I had a hard time grounding myself in the story. I think to a large extent, I still don't quite get what's going on. Lots of reviews praise the book's comedy, but I didn't really see it. Treslove struck me as lame and wandering rather than as a compelling leading man. Odds are, this book will be the one that wins the Booker Prize this year, as it's the shortlisted title I've liked least....

C by Tom McCarthy

This book is a strange and amazing tour-de-force. It's the story of Serge Carrefax, who is born in his caul in 1898, grows up in a school for deaf children (although he's not deaf himself), fights in World War I, and then goes to Egypt to work on an imperial telegraph project. The story is not really driven by plot, and Serge is not a well-rounded character. But it's intensely playful, has a sort of dark humor, and I found the book a quite enjoyable read.

Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue

I found this novel to be both horrifying and captivating. Narrated by a five-year-old boy who's known nothing but an 11' x 11' room for his entire life, it tells a little of his life in Room, his daring escape, and his life in the outside world. The set up is frankly horrifying. But the narrator is believable and it's at times quite the challenge to figure out just what's going on. I wouldn't push this book on anyone, but I think it was worth the read.

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut

This book comprises three novella-like segments in which the same protagonist, sometimes "he," sometimes "I," and even "Damon" in the first section, goes on three different journeys (to Lesotho, to Malawi, and to India). These travels rarely seem directed and never end as the narrator/protagonist thinks they might. The story seems disconnected, so a sense of place doesn't always come through. Instead, the plot is driven by encounters with other travelers--some planned, some happen-stance. The narrator shows some development in his increasing connection to other people and in his ability to take responsibility. Between the lyric prose and the unstable narrator, there's something heady and unreal about reading this book.

The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner

This book tells the story of five Scottish girls and one's English roommate who get stuck in an airport while trying to go on a cheap holiday together. While the girls themselves aren't the type you'd necessarily want to hang out with (they love drinking and buying clothes), Warner does a great job of capturing six individual personalities--they seem vivid and real. Furthermore, the girls are clearly trapped by their surroundings, life in a small town, and poverty and dealing with it (or not) as best they know how (or can). It's a grim book, with a grimmer twist at the end, but all-in-all well done.

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

This book, purportedly a story told by the publisher's mother, gives a compelling story about the end of slavery in Jamaica. As the story goes on, you gradually realize that the narrator is telling the story about herself--and that she's not entirely reliable--as her son keeps correcting the story. I really enjoyed reading this book. I particularly thought that the characters were well-drawn--they were all shown as flawed, but real. Of the two books so far that I've read on the short list (this and Parrot and Olivier in America), I would say that while the scope of Carey's book is more ambitious, this one is more satisfying.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

This book is a complex meditation on the nature of love, responsibility, and honor set in Dejima, a Dutch trading post near Nagasaki, around the turn of the nineteenth century. It took me a little while to get into this book because there are many characters and many bits of plot going on--and people drop out of view for long portions. Still, I was fascinated not only by the feel of the place and time, but by the characters, who confront greed, corruption, and temptation on all sides.

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

This book gives a fictionalized account of Alexis de Tocqueville's trip to America. The book opens with an account of it's hero's (Olivier de Garmont) childhood, which reminds me a lot of Marcel's childhood in Swann's Way. Garmont's parents decide to send him to America to investigate the penal system (but really to escape the wave of revolutions and anti-aristocratic feeling in France); a British man working for a friend of Garmont's mother accompanies Garmont as his servant. Despite the vast differences between the two men, they form a friendship, as each learns more about America itself. This book is quite enjoyable.