Books I read recently

State of the Union and A Special Relationship by Douglas Kennedy, and the first 100 pages of And When Did You Last See Your Father by Blake Morrison. The first 2 are sort of best-selling page-turners with a strong "brand identity". Of them, State of the Union is definitely better, the author constructs a chilling nightmare scenario and sets you thinking about the nature and effects of defamation. (the characters were a bit black-and-white though, especially the bad guys!) For some reason I found Blake Morrison's book a whole lot less interesting after I realised it was a true story, not fiction. It doesn't always work that way round, I remember in the early 80s finding The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole less interesting when I found out that it was fiction.