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This is the second Macomber book I’ve read and I enjoyed it rather more than the first. 16 Lighthouse Road is the first of the ‘Cedar Cove’ series and chronicles a year in the life of Olivia and her friends and family. I found the beginning of the book a bit tedious – there was a lot of telling and not so much showing – but I soon found myself so enchanted with Ms Macomber’s skilful characterisation and nimble plotting that the pages flew by. I’m already looking forward to the next instalment.

I’m feeling very proud of myself for having read this book. As one reviewer said:

“The State of Africa is a heavy book, but it is light reading because it is so unfashionably straightforward.” Wall Street Journal

To be honest, I’m not even very sure why this book is in my library or why it survived the cull. I’ve nearly given it away unread on several occasions. I felt intimidated by its size and unsure of my ability to understand the content – or even be particularly interested in it. I like history but not modern, international history. I’ve studied politics and didn’t enjoy it. And I tried economics in my first year of University and changed courses after the first tutorial.

Mr Meredith chronicles the past 50 years (1955 – 2005) of African political and economic history in a manner which I found captivating. It’s not that I enjoyed reading about famine and genocide – I didn’t and remain haunted by some passages – but his approach in following the ‘Big Men’ who shaped modern Africa (for better or for worse) and the quality of his writing have created a page-turner that also serves to educate. It is to be hoped that the book reaches a wide audience who, perhaps, like me start reading without really knowing why.

The cover of this book reminds me strongly of The Kite Runner but the story it tells is different. Ms Busfield’s is a grittier Afghanistan, seen through the eyes of Fawad – an 11 year old boy whose family is scarred forever by the Taliban. Fortune smiles on Fawad and his mother, however, when she finds work as a housekeeper for an Englishwoman named Georgie and with whom Fawad promptly falls in love.

This is much more than a romance novel, however. Ms Busfield’s characters often adopt the tone of lecturers as Fawad and the reader learn more about Afghanistan. At first, I found this rather irritating – if I’d wanted to read non-fiction I would have done so – but I was soon so immersed in the lives presented to me that the pages turned easily and I’m sorry now to have finished and to be leaving them behind. Ms Busfield has tied up all the loose ends very neatly and without, I think, leaving herself space for a sequel but I do hope this is not the first and the last book we shall see from her.