Digested reads

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

"Put some Enya on the CD, Balram," said Ashok. Fucker thinks he's some kind of Mahatma Gandhi just because he gave some lying, homicidal runt from the Darkness like me a job as a driver. But then life's not all Salman Rushdie mogul fairy princesses in India these days and a bloke's gotta graft. So I done a bit of duckin' and divin', stitched up some Mozzers and then coshed the bastard on the head, nicked his cash and moved south to Bangalore. And look at me now. A right diamond geezer ... Guy Ritchie? You may be washed up in London but you got a career in Bollywood.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

Most of my life I never knew whether to pity, ignore, judge, adore or murder my father. Then all his life he never really knew what to do with Mr Criminal Big Shot aka his brother, Terry. That's families. Can't live with them, can't live without them. He could tell us some cracking tales and get us into some right dodgy scrapes - and yeah, OK, it did go tits up when Eddie and Caroline got murdered in Thailand - but I couldn't not bring him back to Australia to die. So what now? I guess Anouk and I might give it a go after all.

The Clothes on their Backs by Linda Grant

Until I was 10 years old, I was completely unaware that I had a relative. "Who is that spiv in the mohair suit?" I asked. "Stay away from your wicked uncle Sandor," my mother said. "He is an evil slum landlord who has been to prison and we are an ordinary Jewish family trying to preserve our anonymity in 1970s London." I felt imprisoned by their insularity as my femininity burgeoned. I met a man who improbably drew me closer towards my uncle. "The Nazis did some bad things to the Jews," said Sandor. Hmm, I thought worthily, truly the world is a morally ambiguous place.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

My story is a story of terror and hurt. Then what else do you expect from a 100-year-old woman who has been locked up in an Oirish mental hospital. "To be sure," said Dr Grene, "the Troubles were a bad time for many people and the Catholic priests can be a terrible menace." I can see a baby, I can see a burning building that my father set on fire, I can see I am bad, bad, bad. "And I can see the hallmarks of a rather over-wrought melodrama with a ridiculous ending," Dr Grene continued. "Is that my adoption that I see before me?"

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher

Daniel lay back on the sofa in his parents' Sheffield semi, not bothering to conceal his erection while eating a vol-au-vent. "Get up, you dopey bugger," his mother said. "This may be the three-day week, but you're not going to get that state-of-the-nation epic written if you're lying playing with yourself." "But there's no one else to play with in Thatcher's Britain," Daniel complained 10 years later. "That's still no excuse for all that over-writing and unnecessary period detail. We don't need a history lesson." "You've got no sodding idea how serious fiction works," Daniel replied 20 years later. "I think I'll open a restaurant and cook Pacific Rim."

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Deeti chewed on a mouthful of roti as she ground the poppies. "I must be in the book that ticks the historical, multi-layered, multicultural shortlist box," she said. "In which case," her husband replied, "I had better hurry up and die so that you can show off your research about the Opium Wars and sail away from Calcutta on board the Ibis with a cast of colourful characters who will use wilfully obscure and caricatured language that the judges will fall over themselves to call a tour de force of comic invention." "You're right," Deeti agreed. "And the best thing is I don't even need an ending as it's only the first in a trilogy."