The Borrowed Book Club

Mark Haddon's 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time' (a quotation of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes) is one of those rare, utterly transformative books that causes you to forget your surroundings, commitments and problems.This is absolutely credit to Haddon's fantastic and utterly believable portrayal of Christopher Boone, the first person narrator and protagonist of this journal-come-murder mystery novel. The novel begins when Christopher finds Mrs Shears, his neighbour's, dog dead, with a pitchfork sticking out of him. He then decides to start investigating. like his favourite character Sherlock Holmes, and uses the book to record his investigations exactly as they happen. Yet what starts off as an investigation into the murder of a dog ends up revealing significantly more than Christopher bargained for.  Christopher's particular quirks: not liking yellow or brown, but liking red, lacking empathy and being unable to d...

Ian McEwan's first novel, The Cement Garden , is also largely regarded as one of his most disturbing works, and earned him the nickname 'Ian McAbre'. The plot centres around four siblings, aged 5 to 17, dealing with the death of both of their parents in short succession and suddenly flung into an independent existence in the mid 1970s. They are determined to avoid being taken in by social services, so place their mother's body in a barrel and then fill it with cement. This leads to an enormous amplification of the already somewhat dysfunctional practices of the children, as they are left orphaned, with 17 year old Julie adopting the role of mother. As the children's dysfunctionalities grow, they become increasingly cut off from the outside world, having no family or friends to speak of, aside from Julie's 24 year old boyfriend, Derek, and the ending leaves the future of the siblings highly uncertain. The novel's narrator is 15 year old Jack, who is...