The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

An extraordinary story well told. Lale Sokolov was a survivor of Auschwitz and the man who tattooed numbers onto arms while he was there. Having kept quiet about his past for most of his new life in Australia, for fear of being labelled a collaborator, he selected Heather Morris to tell his tale. What emerges is a moving love story amidst brutality and horror, all the more touching for being true. We follow dapper young Slovakian Lale into Auschwitz, where he quickly learns that those that survive are the ones with non-manual jobs. Lale wants to survive. Finding himself selected to assist the tattooist, which gets him a room and food, Lale attempts to give food away. One day he tattoos the arm of a girl he just can’t get out of his mind. They meet in secret, bringing small interludes of joy to an otherwise grim life. Bittersweet, with clear-eyed descriptions of life in this terrible place, it is a story worth hearing and clearly took courage to tell, at last.

The Note by Zoë Folbigg

Quirky little romance story, by magazine journalist Zoë Folbigg, in which a note dropped in a stranger’s lap plays a significant part, hence the title. Not sure why I was drawn to this, as I don’t usually read romance at all, but it kept popping up everywhere and I am a sucker for a lovely cover. Perhaps not surprising then that our heroine Maya is an online fashion writer for clothing giant FASH, and the object of her crush ‘Train Man’, works in advertising, in London, which they both commute to from the burbs. In lots of ways it’s the usual tale of boy meets girl, or rather doesn’t, lots of times - which in the end of course is the suspense and fun. There are important life milestones for James and Maya along the way, and winningly, Zoë Folbigg manages to lead us around the houses until we begin to wonder, will anyone get together at all? Based on her own experience with her very own Train Man, the writing has the ring of authenticity to it, and the characters feel genuine. My only gripe would be, do they all have to be so breezily successful, copping television careers and newspaper columnist contracts with seemingly little effort? Ah well, we all like to dream…   

I am, I am, I am by Maggie O'Farrell

Loved this autobiographical account of seventeen incidents in which Maggie O’Farrell had a brush with death. Thoughtful, slightly odd because of its subject matter, and original. Your first thought is, how strange because I’ve had no brushes with death, until you remember ‘oh yes there was the time that…’ and suddenly you too are wondering, what if?  From her near miss with a wandering hiker who went on tragically to murder another young woman, to an attack by two unknown men on her stationary car, or a childhood illness that immobilised her for months, or a rash decision to jump into deep water; they are stories beautifully told. And gradually a life unfolds, woven into the mesh of these random happenings, in which truth is just as unnerving as fiction. Maggie O'Farrell at her best.

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

New York in the war years. Engaging and warm, evocative of the pressures of women's war work in a male shipyard culture and one woman's struggle to realise her singular ambitions.Wanting to be part of the war effort, Anna Kerrigan has got herself work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, as a sorter of small parts for shipbuilding. But she longs to be a diver and don the impossibly heavy diving suit and helmet, sinking into the murky harbour water to undertake ship repairs. True to the times, all her efforts in this direction are blocked by male colleagues. Her free time is taken up with her severely disabled sister Lydia, and mother Agnes, a former Follies dancer, who now devotes her energies to Lydia. Meanwhile Italian mobster Dexter Styles, who is somehow connected with the disappearance of Anna's dad Eddie some years ago, is having trouble balancing the demands of his boss and his wife. Things get complicated when Anna and Dexter's paths cross in one of his uptown nightclubs. Unusual, evocative, we tend to forget that war-work went on in the heart of New York.