Anyway, it was splendid, about the ending of a marriage; beautifully written, dreamy, accurate and painful. It pulls a mean trick about 4/5ths of the way through which is unnecessary and should have been taken out; the quotidian truths the novel contains are diminished by a tragedy which feels out of place and a little unfair, but the rest of it is absolutely great. It went well with my new Lisa Jewell proof, After the Party, which is about a bad year in a marriage and is similarly elegaic, delicate and true with feelings. One can’t help but feel if men were writing these extraordinary contemporary accounts of everyday lives, people would be throwing them ticker tape parades. Tant pis!

Spring did spring here in France, but is beating a temporary retreat today. Michael-Francis and Delphie are having a snooze and Wallace is wearing his father’s motorcycle kit and hanging around the door saying ‘WHEN ARE THEY COMING? SOON??’. Waiting twenty minutes for your friends to turn up is quite a long time when you’re only JUST five.

YES: Race of A Lifetime, almost a follow up to Primary Colours, the fabulous, gossipy, fascinating story of Obama, Hillary, Palin, Edwards and McCain racing for the White House in 2008. It’s just incredible- as Obama himself said at one point, ‘this would be a fascinating story, if you didn’t have to live it’. Even makes you feel sorry for Palin, dumped into a world she didn’t understand and frantically missing her baby. It’s an absolute classic, and how fantastic that a story this good gets writers who can do it justice.

NO: I won’t put the title or the author’s name as it’s a horrible thing to google yourself and come across something unpleasant, to which one would say, don’t google yourself, to which one would also say, HA!

Anyway, if you loved Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, do not be tempted to pick up the recent sequel. If you didn’t or haven’t read it, I can’t even imagine how incomprehensible it would be to you. An utter disaster of a book.

Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout I bought on a whim (I do this a lot- you know what it’s like when you’re in a bookshop or browsing Amazon. You walk in thinking, wow, look, they have TONS and TONS of books, how amazing, then you realise that you have either read everything, or it’s absolute pish, or you just don’t like the sound of it (’a man, confronting his own mentality and mental state, begins a dangerous affair’… you know the type of thing), and I don’t even go near the fantasy section (yes yes, calm down Terry Goodwind fans). So often I find myself so desperate for reading material I buy stuff almost at random. I did that with this book, but it is actually wonderful and, it turns out, won the Pulitzer last year. It’s a collection of short stories linking this woman, Olive, who gradually realises certain things about herself, late in life. But it’s more the absolutely accurate description of emotions it contains, and the fully 3D recognisable people who make an impact. I loved it. But it did make me simply not want to get old.

The Old Boy’s Network by John Rae, shouldn’t work- it is very very short diary entries over thirty years that he spent as a headmaster at Westminster, the famous public school. Yet it gives wonderful snapshots of life at the very top of the ladder; naughty boys, unhappy boys, startlingly clever boys; and weaves a wonderful picture of the interconnectedness of the British elite. I suspect twenty years ago it would have made me furious. As a historical document of time passing though- with what I always romanticise as the master’s dilemma; the teacher always gets older, the pupils never do-though, it is entirely fascinating.

And incidentally two recommended books if you really are interested in the end bits: Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Ampthill, and The Last Cigarette by Simon Gray. We all know that, if we are terribly lucky, old age is coming; it’s nice to think too that there is some wit and humour and understanding there too.

On the other foot completely, I am ADORING Race of a Lifetime, the story of how Obama won the White House in 08. It is full of passion and clever ruthlessness; change and youth and hope and vigour, and the writing is, thrillingly, up to the amazing story.

In the meantime three corkers: Dan Rhodes is a friend of mine but I think- it was a long time ago- but we became friends because I went to a reading he did with another friend of mine, Matt Thorne, and he was totally brilliant so I suppose we became friends because I liked his work. Anyway, his new book, out in April, is called Little Hands Clapping and is totally brilliant, spooky, fun and he has such a clear voice. I’m also loving Set This House in Order, by Matt Ruff, which everyone else has probably read already- I thought would be gimmicky- it’s about two people with MPD- but is actually great and so gripping you forget how difficult it must have been to write. It’s not an easy read- mind you, since I had children, anything that even hints at cruelty to children I find unbearable- but it is excellent.

And the best thing I’ve come across recently, which was so amazing I’ve pressed it on everyone- it was published in 2004 and was supposedly a bestseller, but I’d never heard of it till an aquaintance recommended it to me. It’s called The Long Walk, and is a memoir about a young Polish office who escapes from the Siberian gulag. It is heartbreaking, breathlessly exciting, compelling, readable and, most of all, utterly true. Anyway, I gave it to my mother who was looking for something to read over Christmas and she stared at it with a look of utter shock on her face and said, ‘I know! And he goes through the Gobi desert and they have to survive on snakes and…’ and she told me the entire thing. And do you know what; the book wasn’t published in 2004 at all, that’s the reprint date. In fact it was written in 1945, just after it happened, and my mother had read it in 1956- she remembered exactly, because she knew she was twelve years old- and, more than fifty years later, recalled everything about it. Isn’t that amazing?? Except it was even more shocking for her, because back then they didn’t know what a terrible monster Stalin actually was.

Anyway, my husband came in the other night and said ‘where’s that book you’ve been going on about? I’m ready to read it now (he’s just finished Kitchen Confidential) but he was too late:  my mum nicked it and took it home. I think she’s allowed.

Happy New Year! xxx Ooh, and you can follow me on Twitter now, I’ve got the hang of it and really like it. I’m just @jennycolgan. ALthough if you don’t watch UK tv you’ll probably find it a bit confusing…

Meltdown

But best of all was The Bolter by Frances Osborne (who incidentally, depending on next year’s election, may well be the wife of the next Chancellor of the Exchequer), about her distant relative, Idina Sackville, an impossibly torn and glamorous figure of the roaring twenties, who married an unprecedented four times and was one of the original happy valley members who got up to SO much trouble in Africa (see also White Mischief).

The book is utterly fascinating. Osborne obviously wants us to feel sorry for Idina, who lost contact with her beloved son and never recovered from her first, terribly handsome, husband dying. But dreadfully sad stories like that are so common from that period; in fact I liked Idina enormously and didn’t think her life was so tragic, in the end: she was always free. Osborne is splendidly good on the detail of the time; how precisely one got to Paris in 1917, or how far you could drive in a motorcar in 1921. I loved the descriptions of wild London nights where everyone popped to the Ritz at 1am every night. And their alcohol consumption was *not* within recommended government units. Highly recommended.

The thing that struck me though in all the books my friends passed on were their condition: they were PRISTINE. Spines intact, pages correct, nothing turned down at the corners or underscored. You could have taken them back to the shop. I can’t get through a book without dropping it in the bath at least once.

“Are you sure you’ve read these?” I asked in disbelief, in case they were just being kind and trying to sneak me a secret gift.

“Oh yes” said my friend. “We both have.”

And the very next morning they got engaged to be married. Don’t you think they’re a good match?

Independent

It is a SENSATIONAL book, truly one of those books that is as simple as opening a door to another world, like The Crimson Petal and the White. But jings it is gigantic, 700 pages of foggy Tudor fantasticness. As a stepping stone to the period, I like that you could start with Phillipa Gregory, move on to CJ Sansom and end up here. Its learning is so lightly worn, its world so confidently assured. The only thing slightly irritating is that it is in second person present, quite the oddest tense to write in I can imagine. Ie, ‘He thinks about a snake he knows in Tuscany’. Sometimes confusing. Apart from that it’s brill. Anyway, I was getting off the flight, tragically without it (and even more tragically, having acquired a copy of The Exmoor Files, as I am a crazy masochist (and she IS quite funny, even if clearly bonkers as conkers)) when I saw a woman looking burdened down, queueing up to board the flight with one in her hand: she obviously hadn’t been able to leave it behind. It made me think there should be some kind of airport swapping system for TOO HEAVY books. Also made a good argument for that amazon kindle thing I suppose, although I firmly believe that part of the pleasure of a long book is its heft.

The coda is, I got summoned back to London four days later for a quick meeting, which was tiring but did mean- hurrah!- I got to bring it back home, where its sombre face is sitting by my bed to summon me back from warm, busy France to a sterner, harsher world I can roam at will. I hope it wins .

Also, as a side mention, I can’t believe how good Spotify is. Pretty much every song you’ve ever dreamed of, two seconds after it’s occurred to you. You can get lost in it for hours; I spent all of yesterday listening to Janacek, when I’d actually gone looking for something else. It’s so wonderful, either, a) it can’t last or b) it will happen to books as well- any book, any time, for free- and I’ll be stuffed either way. Let me just think of this as a golden age, even though the one year old is currently trying to get the baby to eat moisturiser.

So in haste, if you were interested, what I’m listening to this month:

http://open.spotify.com/user/jennycolgan/playlist/09bR48I73iM0gYRVpVBm9N

Anyway, a bit later and I’m doing Simon Mayo’s book panel with Joel Morris, whose taste I generally respect (except over Marina Lewyncka) and he has a Lee Child to review and is really excited about it and I’m like, ‘WHAT?’. So, stuck at an airport I pick one up, and read the blurb ‘My favourite author’- Bill Clinton. As blurbs go, that’s quite a good one to have. And sure enough, it’s terrific. Like Dennis Lehane. They’re thrillers, the main character, Jack Reacher is fantastically indestructible, a deductive genius, irresistible to women and quippy, and they rocket at nine million miles an hour and frankly they are like PRINGLES. I simply can’t stop reading them. This is how bad it is: a friend said she had the whole lot, so I could borrow them but she was about to go on holiday. But I couldn’t wait and went and bought a new one anyway, just to tide me over. Fabulously there are about nineteen of them I haven’t read yet. I SO have to write a series.

And even better; I got my hands on Twenties Girl, the new Sophie Kinsella. Hands up, Maddy and I are v. good friends, BUT we became friends partly through liking each others work so it kind of doesn’t count. Twenties Girl is such a funny, magical, captivating book that I actually hid in a bathroom (my parents were staying) so I could finish it uninterrupted in a day.  It’s pure enjoyment. The only problem-as with pizza- is that I tend to guzzle these things too quickly. Must get some roughage back in my diet…