Well, that went quickly. Here's a catch up list of my fiction reading in the last four months (with my absolute favourites in bold)...

• Karla's Choice, by Nick Harkaway
  I'll confess: I read this with great trepidation. Nobody is going to be able to pull off a Smiley novel in a way to match Le Carré. Harkaway may be his son, but literary talent isn't inherited in the genes. But fairly soon into this book I relaxed. He's got it, I realised, he's really got it.
  
  By the end I was overjoyed that he'd written it, because it filled a big gap in the Smiley history that I'd always wished Le Carré had written more into. A great read, and I'll be looking out for more.
  
• Gabriel's Moon, by William Boyd
  Like the last Boyd novel I read, this was a perfectly decent novel. But that's all. It didn't need a writer of Boyd's talent to pull it off. I'm sure it's unfair to expect genius in every book from a single writer, but I do with Boyd. Sorry William.
  
  In particular, I became a bit set against this one because the main character is a bit of a prat. He's wet, self-absorbed, not particularly competent. And not much to redeem him.
  
  But also, the prose. It kept falling into what I can only describe as 'Peppa Pig narration'. I'll give a made-up, only slightly exaggerated, example of what I mean. It began to feel like this: "Gabriel entered the pub. He bought a drink. He sat at a table. Gabriel sipped the beer. He looked around. The pub was quiet. He got out his book. He began to read."
  
  And the internal monologue, which there's a lot of as the main character is constantly decorated with "wondered Gabriel", "Gabriel speculated" and "Gabriel considered". It became very distracting and would have been much better as free indirect speech.
  
  Also, this loses points with me for being yet another damn book about a damn writer!
  
  The reviews were glowing, however, so what do I know. Marcel Theroux in The Guardian was particularly glowing, but this wouldn't be the first time Marcel and I have had our differences ;)
  
  Boyd inexplicably intends this to be the start of a series, but Gabriel can moon around all he likes and I won't be following along.
  
• Trust, by Hernan Diaz
  Clever, well-written and thought-provoking.
  
• The Overstory, by Richard Powers
  I read this while I was ill, and so wasn't as attentive as normal. As a result I'd like to go back and read it again in a few years, because I think it deserves more from the reader. It's a multi-epic tale across families and generations, cleverly woven together. I loved the concept, and some of the issues considered.
  
• The Eagle Has Landed, by Jack Higgins
  What a talent Higgins has for plot and prose that propels you through a book. So assured. And I found the clever way of setting it up as a true story really convincing.
  
• The Nix, by Nathan Hill
  Another book in which the main character is a writer. Authors, please can we dream up some other things people could do in life and still be considered worth having a novel written about them? But anyway, leaving that aside, this is a good story, with great writing. I like the epic style, and this is the kind of thing that William Boyd constructs when he's at his best.
  
• Smiley's People, by John Le Carre
  A classic.
  
• Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E Butler
  Blimey. Stunning world-building, fantastic development of the character. And all in a masterful writing style that just unfolded. We feel so close to the main character, and believe in her world though it is so shockingly different. Though this was written a long time ago, it's set now, starting in 2024 and continuing for three or four years. Thought-provoking.
  
• The Housekeepers, by Alex Hay
  A really well-written period caper. Not a genre I'd normally pick up, but I enjoyed this a lot.
  
• Pines, by Blake Crouch
  A great premise and a solidly-written action thriller, but a bit too intensely detailed in the violence for my tastes. Like sex, violence is best when left mostly to the reader's imagination, rather than getting into describing specific body parts and fluids and sounds.
  
• Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
  A brilliantly imaginative time-travelling story. Loved it (though it did include another main character who's a writer, probably modelled on the author. Argh! But there's more purpose to that than usual, and the rest of the book carried me past it being an issue.) I won't say much more to avoid spoilers, but highly recommend it.
  
• 10:04, by Ben Lerner
  Aaarrrgggh, It's another writer as protagonist. And they're neurotic and self-absorbed, too! Even worse, it's clearly a thinly disguised avatar of the author. Nearly abandoned this as a result. But there is gentle humour too, and the writing is good. I enjoyed it despite my prejudice against this kind of book. But the critics and book prize judges (who of course love navel-gazing about writers and writing), so again, what do I know? Perhaps what we have here is just a great writer who doesn't have much imagination or interest in other people.
  
• Europe in Autumn, by Dave Hutchinson
  I started this thinking it was a classic spy novel in sixties Europe, like many others. Then a few references made me think I had to update that. Then I spent a while being confused... and then the reveal came. Ohhh! I won't give anything away. Very creative and thought-provoking, with writing that rattles along. I enjoyed it and will read others in the series.
  
• The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy
  A classic. I remembered the film more, though, so I got surprised by how much of a 'bureaucratic thriller' this is. So much of the action is meetings, memos, documents and so on. And Jack Ryan is so much more passive than we came to know him as (and as he somewhat ridiculously became in later stories). A good read.
  
• Kafka on the Shore, by Huraki Murakami
  Always love a Murakami, and this really drew me in to the strange world in his mind once more.
  
• The Satsuma Complex, by Bob Mortimer
  I nearly abandoned this in the first few chapters as it seemed it was going to be simply page after page of blokey banter. But I stuck with it and it did turn into more than that. An entertaining caper, that was a pleasant light read.
  
• The Dark Remains, by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin
  I hadn't read the blurb, so got a bit lost at first at where I was in the Laidlaw universe. It turns out this is a prequel to the other Laidlaw books, following Jack's first case. Therefore it's not as dark as the other books. It's a perfectly decent crime story.
  
• The Tsar of Love and Techno, by Anthony Marra
  I love epics with multiple characters across multiple generations, all linked through some particular thread. And I've enjoyed Marra's writing a lot before. So I really enjoyed this again. He's a great writer, brilliant at portraying people in such different circumstances in such trying times.