Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

 Maryam and Zahra have been friends since childhood, so long that they can barely remember a time before they knew each other, despite their different backgrounds.  Maryam was born into privilege; the granddaughter of a wealthy Karachi businessman, destined to take over the family firm one day. Her family is one with connections - to rich government insiders, to the 'fixer' who sorts out any little problems encountered in the business and factory; if something needs sorting, they know a way. Zahra's family, while comfortably wealthy, is not in the same league; her mother is a teacher, her father a TV cricket commentator, both opponents of Pakistan's dictator, General Zia.

 At fourteen, in 1988 as Pakistan throws off its dictatorship, and elects Benazir Bhutto, they're inseparable. With a woman in charge of the country, anything suddenly seems possible.Then one night something happens that derails their futures. 

The story picks up in London, in 2019, when both are now successful women. Maryam is a venture capitalist with an interest in hi tech and social media, happy to exploit government connections to further her business deals; Zahra, the head of a civil liberties organisation, fighting the government's immigration policies. Somehow the two are still firm friends, until an acquaintance from the old days in Karachi turns up, and their instinctive reactions prove how different their morals are.

While primarily a novel about the sort of friendship that lasts a lifetime, one that withstands disagreements and challenges, it's also about money and power, the advantages they offer in life, and how both can be used for good or bad.

In comparison to, say, Shamsie's previous novel, Home Fire, the story seems a slow burn; the emphasis being on character development rather than events, but it's enjoyable and well worth reading. In fact, it wasn't till the absolute last section, set during the first lockdown of 2020, that I felt all the pieces slotting into place. 

Top Ten of 2018

For once, I've managed to restrict myself to ten for my 'best of the year' list - all, in their own way, absolutely brilliant ...

Take Nothing With You - Patrick Gale (Tinder Press) - in his fifties, when he thought he was past the age of being surprised, Eustace finds himself falling in love with a man he meets on the internet, and diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition. Undergoing long solitary hours of hospital treatment he looks back over his life - the fumbling sexual misadventures of his teenage years, and his escape from a dull, repressive home life through music. Gale's writing is engrossing, intelligent, and compelling.

Missing - Alison Moore (Salt Publishing) How to quickly sum up a novel by Alison Moore? Not easy without giving away too much plot. Jessie Noon lives a solitary life, cut off from neighbours, friends and family. The story follows her trying to start up a new relationship, and fix the gap that has grown between her and her family. On the surface, little seems to happen; beneath it, everything does. Moore is wonderful at playing with words, at building atmosphere, and at creating characters that linger long after the final page.







Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury) a book club read which absolutely stunned me. In this story of love, politics, family ties and radicalization, Kamila Shamsie brings Sophocles' Antigone bang up to date, setting it in present day London, where Aneeka finds herself torn between loyalty to her twin brother Parvaiz (despite his extreme beliefs) and her lover, Eamonn, son of the Muslim Home Secretary. I read hoping for a happy ending, but not even today is there an easy way out of this dilemma.









Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkeviciute (Peirene) Based on actual events, this book is a gripping, moving account of the fate of Lithuanians forcibly moved from their homes during WW2 and 're-settled' in Siberia, in inhumane conditions with inadequate food or shelter. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Dalia Grinkeviciute's account doesn't ask for sympathy, but faces the situation head on, doing whatever she needs to to survive.












From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan (Doubleday) Three very different men, whose lives are linked in only the slightest of ways, but for whom sorrow has crept up unexpectedly and engulfed them. Donal Ryan always has an amazing way with words, enabling the reader to walk in someone else's shoes for a short time, to experience their fears and hopes, and maybe find sympathy for them.

In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne (Tinder Press) A gripping portrayal of life on a run-down, inner-London estate, of the precarious balance between hope and despair in which its inhabitants live. It follows 48 hours in the lives of three teenage friends from different backgrounds, as outside events kick off riots and change these boys' lives forever. The writing is pacy, and 'in your face', capturing 'street-talk' in a way that feels natural and unforced. It's hard to believe this is a debut novel.










The Truth about Archie and Pye: a mathematical mystery  by Jonathan Pinnock (Farrago) - an off-beat, quirky thriller. After a chance encounter on a train, Tom Winscombe finds himself in possession of a case full of mathematical equations that everyone (including the Belorussian mafia) seems to want, and they're not afraid to kill anyone standing in the way. It's fast-paced, funny, and you don't need to know anything about maths to enjoy it.










Elsewhere, Home by Leila Aboulela (Telegram) - a moving, thought-provoking collection of short stories dealing with the search for 'home' and the difficulties of migrants caught between two places that answer to that description, between the heat and vibrancy of Cairo or Khartoum and the dull, damp streets of Aberdeen or London, or, conversely, the old-fashioned, limited world of Africa and the modern, opportunity-filled one of Europe. Having chosen to leave, though, home can't really be returned to.





Shatila Stories edited by Meike Ziervogel - an ambitious project from the founder of Peirene Press, in which she and London-base Syrian editor Suhir Helal travelled to Beirut, to the Shatila settlement created for Palestinian refugees, and worked with hopeful, enthusiastic, but inexperienced, writers from the camp itself to develop the stories that go into this collection. Again a book that lets the reader into the lives of the people so often dismissed as mere 'numbers' in a news report.






Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield (Doubleday) This last choice is a sneaky inclusion, as it's currently only available in the UK as an e-book, and won't be available as a hardback till January 17th. It was too good to be made to wait a whole year though. It's a masterpiece of story-telling concerning a girl pulled out of the river Thames. Assumed to be dead, she miraculously comes back to life but then the search is on for her family - with several people claiming her as theirs she becomes the centre of a 'tug of love'.

A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie

review by Maryom

 For a young woman growing up in the early twentieth century, Vivian Rose Spencer has had a remarkably liberated upbringing. An only child, her father has brought Viv up almost as he would have done a son, encouraging her interest in history and archaeology, and supporting her desire to study at university.   Now in the summer of 1914, aged 22, she finds herself in Turkey on a dig supervised by an old family friend. The Armenian-Turkish archaeologist, Tahsin Bey has been a familiar figure since Viv's childhood, but away from home under the blue Mediterranean sky, she begins to fall in love. Their idyll is cut short by war and Viv returns to London, volunteering as a VAD nurse. When the stress of treating wounded soldiers grows too much for her, she 'escapes' from the war by heading to India, to excavations taking place near Peshawar, where she hopes to fulfil a dream of Tahsin Bey -  to re-discover the Circlet of Scylax; a highly-decorated silver 'crown' given to the explorer Scylax by the Persian Emperor Darius and lost for centuries.
Meanwhile Qayyum Gul has come from Peshawar to Europe as part of the British Indian army called in to bolster Britain's forces at Ypres. Amid the horrors of the battlefield his loyalty remains firm but the attitudes he encounters during convalescence after a serious injury start to sow seeds of discontent. Invalided home, he searches for a new meaning to his life in the growing resistance to British rule.

A God in Every Stone is a novel of many themes - a search for lost treasure, an exploration of the relationships between men and women, British and Indians, the conflict between personal desires and duty.
It's wonderfully written, brilliant at capturing atmosphere - from battlefield to dazzling Mediterranean - or bringing to life small personal moments, such Qayyum's first encounter with the ancient statues in Peshawar museum but the storyline seems to dart about at tangents.  I don't want to say too much for fear of plot spoilers but I found this threw me a little, and, because of it, I felt my attention wandering in the middle third of the book. New characters are introduced and take over the centre-stage, particularly in the compelling section with which the novel ends.

Throughout I found echoes of EM Forster's A Passage to India; again people are trying to bridge the gap between cultures and Viv has certain qualities in common with Adela Quested - she's mostly well-intentioned but insensitive to others and often accidentally offensive. This is certainly not just a re-working of an old story though, but a powerful novel in its own right - one that I feel will pull me back to re-read several times.

This is one of this year's Bailey's Prize Shortlist; see other reviews below
A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre - adult literary fiction