Top five non-crime books of 2013

Ajay Close - ‘Official and Doubtful’ 

Read twice within a couple of weeks - flight to the States and on the return.  Intriguing, intelligent.  Characters are rich and interesting - the gradual revelation of Nan's personality and her past is compelling; Danny and Callum well-drawn and their interaction complex. The language, the prose is vivid, original and exciting.  For once, for me, I’d use the word ‘mind-blowing’.


T. Geronimo Johnson - ‘Hold it ‘Til it hurts’
Exceptional on several levels. The language poetic - unsurprising to learn that T. Geronimo Johnson is a poet - and the story totally absorbing, both in Achilles search for his brother and his own self-examination in coming to terms with life after Afghanistan.

Emma Darwin - ‘The Mathematics of Love’

Gorgeous. One of those books you are so conscious of the joy of reading for the very first time that you keep stopping so as to delay reaching the end, and rich enough so as to be able to do so without suffering too much.
And discovering that Emma Darwin practices what she so very well preaches, i.e. the art of writing (although 'preaches' is entirely the wrong word since she is very much an enabler) was a bonus.



Andrew Greig - ‘At the Loch of the Green Corrie’
I should have known. This is about far, far more than fishing. Much more than mountains. Intended as a paean to Norman MacCaig, it says so much more about life and belief and friendship and vision and about Andrew Greig.  Who puts into words philosophies I hold but have barely realised, and never articulated.  

Sophie Jonas-Hill - ‘My Crooked Little Sister’

Many, many delicious phrases, page-turning tension, irresistible end-of-chapter hooks, the dialogue and the descriptions. To say nothing of that trepidation (rare these days) that maybe you've read it wrong and it isn't going to turn out as you hope.