This week's reading

    Here is what looks to be very varied reading for the next few days.

Having just read one book in translation, I've got another: Philippe Claudel's Brodeck's Report is "literature of the highest quality", "a magnificent book", and "free of the least sentimentality, Claudel's writing is of an astounding beauty and grace". High praise, then, for a story set just after the Second World War on the borders of France and Germany where the solitary Brodeck lives in the mountains, collecting data on every aspect of the natural environment. Called upon to write a report of a very different kind - one into the atrocious death of an outsider - Brodeck's calm is disturbed and his own life becomes the subject of record.

Irish novelist Josephine Hart's The Truth About Love is next on the pile. I have a proof copy of this, so no blurb to give the gist, but I see John Banville rates this 'dangerous' love story very highly.

A contender for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award, Susanna Kearsley's Sophia's Secret features Slains Castle in the north east of Scotland; the mysterious place is used by bestselling writer Carrie McClelland as the setting for her latest novel, but...."the lines between fact and fiction become increasingly blurred"! Historical fiction with a twist, this is a chunky book to kick off with.

Last but not least, The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt begins in Cambridge in 1913 when G. H. Hardy, considered the greatest British mathematician of his age, receives a rambling letter from a self-professed mathematical genius who claims to be on the brink of a huge breakthrough in the field. With the First World War as backdrop and a cast including D.H. Lawrence and Bertrand Russell, this sounds very interesting and intriguing.

Comments

[Simon S]

I have the Indian Clerk on my TBR, I might have to race you. Hope your feeling better backwise!

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I loved the Susanna Kearsley which was published in hardback as The Winter Sea. A lovely story set in the present & past & the Scottish setting enticed me straightaway. I've read all SK's books & loved the time slip aspect of them all.

[Cornflower]

I'm about half way through it now and enjoying it very much indeed.

[adele geras]

I read Philippe Claudel's GREY SOULS some while back and I can't recommend that highly enough. It's brilliant, so I have high hopes of Brodeck's report which is on my next book list...

[Dark Puss]

The Indian Clerk in question is Srinivasa Ramanujan. If you read the book you may well discover the significance of the number 1729! I think (warning, a non-expert opinion expressed here) one might rate Russell as an equal in the circles of British mathematicians. We were, in general, rather behind the stellar heights (especially in rigour) being reached by France, Switzerland and Germany at the time. I strongly recommend to you, as a non-mathematician, Hardy's excellent essay A Mathematician's Apology, available on-line from http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~mss/misc/A%20Mathematician's%20Apology.pdf .

[Cornflower]

Just finished it, Simon!