Yes, I have had all four of these books on the go this week. Not my usual practice, really, but after a glut of vintage thrillers (Joan Aiken and Agatha Christie) I could not make up my mind what I wanted to read next. In fact I started The Resurrectionist well before the thrillers and found it interesting enough to want to pursue it but somehow I haven't managed to get back to it. It's a historical gothic novel set in nineteenth-century London and is about body snatching and opium addiction among other things -- not, really, my subjects of choice, but seems to be well written so I shall definitely continue with it and see how I get on. Then there's Beyond Black, which I picked up in a charity shop a few days ago. I had read Hilary Mantel's wonderful memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, a few weeks ago but had never read her novels. This one is really promising -- it's about a psychic woman, Alison, and her sharp, down-to-earth assistant, Colette -- I've only read a few chapters but was enjoying it tremendously. But then I had to go to the library to return said vintage thrillers and my eye was caught by Charlotte Mendelson's When We Were Bad and Sam Taylor's The Amnesiac. I read Mendelson's earlier novel, Daughters of Jerusalem, a few years ago and loved it, so started this one -- in the garden, in the sun -- full of optimism. So far I am slightly unsure about it. It is a wonderfully drawn portrait of a dysfunctional Jewish family, and full of terrific comic moments, but the central character, the older daughter of the family, is so unrelievedly gloomy and depressed all the time that I am getting a little fed up with her. As for The Amnesiac, I managed to stop myself from buying it on Euston Station last week in a 'Buy One Get One Half Price' deal (I didn't buy any, in the end) so thought I should see what I'd missed. Well. As the numerous references to Borges throughout the novel can't help but alert you, Sam Taylor is clearly a great admirer of that brilliant South American writer. So if you happen to like convoluted, post modernist, magic realist thrillers, this is the one for you. Not really my thing, I'm afraid, though I could see it might appeal to a certain kind of reader -- one with a lot of patience, for a start, as this is a very long novel.