100 word review: The Buddha of Suburbia
This novel by Hanif Kureishi was really good but, on some level, didn't quite live up to its hype. The plot satires race relations, the art world and the seventies in general beautifully. You'll definitely enjoy it if you like reading about race, sexuality, the seventies and the world of artists and actors. It was a funny book, but not as funny as I had expected, not laughing out loud at any points. I would still, however, highly recommend it and agree with what Salman Rushdie said: "utterly irreverent and wildly improper, but also genuinely touching and truthful". Really good.
100 Word Review: His Illegal Self
His Illegal Self is by twice winner of the Booker Price Peter Carey and from reading this book I can certainly see why has has won those awards. The structure of the novel, with no speech marks, constant change of narrative voice and flashbacks to the past, would be extremely difficult to the average writer and would normally make the book far too confusing to read. However, Carey does it wonderfully and instead of getting confused, the these things only enhanced the story and made it much more original and interesting to read. Everything about it is fantastic, I loved it.
100 word review: Burning Bright
I disliked this book after reading the first paragraph. I hated the writing style. It is over descriptive and leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination and the whole book is filled with ambiguous sentences that are meant to make it "dramatic" but just get annoying. The plot itself is quite predictable, implausible in parts but not bad, it would work if written well. The poor writing means the climax takes ages to arrive and is very unsatisfactory. I would only recommend this book if you don't want anything left to the imagination whatsoever. It reminds me of Dan Brown's writing.
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