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April

Libraries use the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress method of categorising (and therefore shelving) books. Bookshops are a little more relaxed but generally you know what you’re getting on a shelf marked “Local Interest” or “Literary Fiction.” What about the libraries in our own homes? Things might be colour co-ordinated or alphabetised on the bookshelf, but what about the teetering pile by the bed? And then there are the books you don’t actually own, but which take up space in your mental reading list. This first book is one of those, in my list.

I resisted Don DeLillo for a long time, put off maybe by the fact that at one time everyone I knew was reading him. I thought of DeLillo as a modern-day Hemingway – a bit blokey and macho. I was finally drawn to this in the library by the slightly misconceived idea it was a “campus” novel – one of my favourite things to read. It was a droll surprise. Funny, moving, and very timely. The only unbelievable plot device is that a professor with multiple ex-wives, children and step-children could support a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. I’d recommend it if you are musing on mortality, environmental disaster and the loss of a loved one.

If you know Trevor Noah from his live act or television show you already know this is going to be funny. I wasn’t prepared for how warm, how loving and humane this would be. The towering figure at the centre of the teeming, gritty world is Trevor’s mother. She’s very strict, loving, and vulnerable. Her love for Trevor’s stepfather puts them all in danger. Trevor sticks to his early years, by the end of the book he’s making money and building a career, but we get little detail about that, though he’s unsparing about his own brushes with the law. His early life was a crime (in apartheid-era South Africa) but his current presence is a joyous celebration of much more than survival. He paints a picture of tight communities, children with nothing making something, and through it all, deep love – as a child and a grown man – for his remarkable mother.

Sometimes I pick a book because I’m interested in the central story, or because a character sounds appealing. Sometimes a writer I’ve liked before publishes something new I want to read. I did not pick this book. In fact, I was set against it and it took a stern talking-to by an old friend to show me the error of my ways. The old friend even put the book in the post to me, so I had no excuse. I’m writing here to say old friend was 100% correct and I was wrong to resist this for so long. The device which I’d thought would be tricksy is carried off with simplicity and charm and the story rolls along with laughs and plenty of tears. The central character tries out a number of lives incluidng one which would change the world. The closing chapters tie almost all the strands, leaving enough unsaid to haunt and provoke me for days after. Lots of people (including old friend) talked about the scenes in wartime London, and I’d go further and say this book added to my understanding of women’s lives in the first half of the last century. I’ve discovered there is another novel featuring characters from this book, so I have to thank old friend RR sincerely for intervening.

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Akala and his famous sister (Lady Dynamite) look blessed and successful now, but it wasn’t always so. This is a story of poverty and hope. The poverty lies in the expectations of the young Akala and his contemporaries expressed by the state education system. Akala debunks received wisdom, challenges assumptions and demands the reader follow him through knife crime, racist teachers and police, and much more. There’s so much interesting and challenging history here. Slave rebellions in the Caribbean, the role of Cuba in ending apartheid and some quick debunking of blinding obvious cliches. I’m not ashamed to say I was forced to confront my own assumptions and unpick some things I’d taken as facts, when they might be described as conveniences for the ruling class in this country and others. Akala should be angry, but this isn’t an angry book.

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What is an emotion? As hard to describe in a blog post as it obviously was in years of scientific research distilled in this book. Why are some emotions – fear, anger, disgust – instant and experienced by babies and full-grown humans, while others develop over time and change with age. I discovered that emotions experienced at the time of an event have an impact on the way memories are created and stored. This is the explanation for how you can remember in horrific detail a minor humiliation from decades ago, but can’t remember how you drove to the supermarket this morning. The book assumes no scientific knowledge, but you do need to be paying attention to the technical language. It could have been a bit dry, but it was a real tear-jerker because the writer lost a parent (during the pandemic) while he was working on the book. So he had a home laboratory of frequently uncontrollable and inexplicable emotions – his own – which he examines honestly and with compassion. Highly recommend this for a readable guide to a scientific subject, and also a handy guide to recognising and accepting the maelstrom within.

Do you love The Great British Sewing Bee? No? How sad. The BBC show is a delight; charming and gentle, full of colour and texture. The judges are exacting and Esme is one of them. Television likes to convince us that it “discovers” people but Esme points out, with her basilisk judge gaze, that she existed before she was on television. She worked, she loved, she designed, she dressed as she wished, and lived her authentic and defiant life. This is a conventional autobiography of an unconventional woman. She takes us with good humour and honesty from a childhood shaped by her father’s heroism to a major part of the London fashion scene in the 1970s. You’ve seen her designs, though you might think you haven’t. If you’re even slightly interested in where having a point of view and a taste for adventure can take you, this is one for you.

If you’ve been reading my blog since January you’ll know I’m in a bit of an Ali Smith feeding frenzy. I chose this because it is a follow-up or maybe full stop to her Four Seasons and because it was short. It roves over some familiar territory: pandemic, poverty, misfits, loss, love. It moves with the same momentum as those longer novels and you have to just gulp it down. Very moving, faintly optimistic.

Last year I read The Book of Delights by Ross Gay which I adored. Images from the lush gardens of that book still dance in my mind. The idea of delight is what appealed to me. “Delightful” is a word I already overuse, along with “vexing” and “tiresome.” I’m aware I’m sounding like a Wodehouseian Dowager (and why not?) but the idea of finding things delightful (rather than awesome, or unbelievable) is surely more useful? Gay’s book, like Priestley’s before it, reminds us that delight can be found everywhere. The delight lies in the noticing, not in the creation of a special moment, a memorable occasion. Priestley’s essays cover everything from Tobacco to Shakespeare – he’s obviously very funny on the subject of actors and theatre – and all expressed in his good plain prose (the subject of an essay itself.) Essay 39 will find you out if you are one of Tolstoy’s happy families. Essay 3 begins “reading detective novels in bed…” how can you not share his delight at that? He’s not sweet, though, or twee. He sets his current delights against past discomforts and he can be pleasantly waspish. From a good night’s sleep to a hot bath, a tinkling fountain and a walk in nature, Priestley’s delights – like his writing – are simple and universal.

I end my April reading with this from Essay 93: “We complain and complain but we have seen the blossom – apple, pear, cherry, plum, almond blossom – in the sun; and the best among us cannot pretend they deserve – or could contrive – anything better.”

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Enough books?

In 2010 I started recording the books I read each year in a slightly feeble attempt to simplify my life. Once read and recorded, the book could be passed on, kept or (mostly) returned to the library.

As always, my list contains some classic and classic-style crime (I’m not into gore) and some re-reads of favourites. There’s one set of diaries and a biography and lots of travel and natural history. It is always a good year when there’s a new book by Elinor Lipman, one of my favourite writers, and although I’m rationing my intake of Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym there’s one from each.

2020 was a difficult year personally and for the entire globe. It is easy to spot the comfort reads but I’m pleased to see, looking back, there are some more challenging chunks in there, and one stand-out*. Here they are, in the order I read them.

The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher

A Talent to Amuse by Sheridan Morley

The Seas by Samantha Hunt

The Wrong Place by Brecht Evens

Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

Reasons to be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe

Turbo Twenty-Three by Janet Evanovich

Blue Moon by Lee Child

Diary of a Somebody by Brian Bilston

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Peter Hall’s Diaries by Peter Hall

Plume by Will Wiles

Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman

Leonard and Hungry Paul* by Ronan Hession

Nocturne by James Attlee

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Masked Prey by John Sandford

Hamlet Globe to Globe by Dominic Dromgoole

The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

Crooked House by Agatha Christie

The Truants by Kate Weinberg

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Dark Salt Clear by Lamorna Ash

The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos

A Month in the Country by J L Carr

Dangerous in Love by Lesie Thomas

The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

Miss Iceland by Auchur Ava Olafsdottir

The Floating Admiral by The Detection Club

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Salt on Your Tongue by Charlotte Runcie

A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym

The Way to the Sea by Caroline Crampton

Conversations with my Agent by Rob Long

The Confession by Jesse Burton

Magie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Blythell

Nod by Adrian Barnes

The Burgular who Counted the Spoons by Lawrence Block

Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson

With Child by Andy Martin

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

The Killings at Kingfisher Hall by Sophie Hannah

https://suzydharris.org/2021/01/09/enough-books/

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Pandemic Poems

Just before lockdown, Samuel West (a British actor) asked his twitter followers what poems they’d like him to read for them. He was driven by a need to do something – the play he was about to perform in was cancelled – and a desire to offer something of meaning to people.

Hundreds of people sent suggestions, and Sam enlisted other readers. Readers of colour for poems by writers of colour, and women to read poems by women, (the first of my selection) but also a range of voices to speak lines which range from the classics and household names to song lyrics and children’s favourites.

Each reading is set in a brief context which adds something to the meaning and also highlights the difference between normal workaday speech and the polished, crafted jewel of the poem itself.

Listen with caution though: It is through poetry that ideas take the shortest route to the heart, cutting through the insulation and connecting us with the live wire of feeling.

Try this one:

I’ve spent a lot of time in nature over the past six months. I’m no better at identifying birdsong, but this poems captures the bittersweet joy of it.

Although there were lots of autumn poems to pick from, this one spoke to me, I hope you’ll like it. You can find all the poems on Soundcloud.

Cool reads for hot days

What a joy this was – a journey through a working life, but so much more. At the start of his career outlined here, Burrows was working on TV shows that, though huge in America, meant little to me. In the midpoint and right through his career, though, he was in everyone’s house every week. Friends, Cheers, Frasier, those three alone got him into the nation’s hearts and psyche. There were lots of secrets told, and some things we thought we knew that he confirmed or denied. The best thing to come from this book was the way it sent me to various channels, tracking down scenes from the past, snatches of laughter, and the bitter-sweet first notes of a theme tune, conjuring up scenes and sounds long gone, ever present.

I’m a huge fan of Sophie Hannah’s Poirot books, and you know the Christie estate doesn’t introduce a writer to the famous Belgian lightly. This is one of her contemporary thrillers, and although I enjoyed it and it kept me highly entertained, it won’t be my cup of tea – my tissane – again.

What a complex delight this was. Like all good books, it sent me off down paths and shady walks in search of the inspiration the writer mentions – Paradise Lost, for one, plus images and writing about gardens from all over the time of gardens. Laing meets neighbours and locals who knew the garden when it was first made, and in various iterations since. There’s a delightful description of an “Open Garden” event she throws, when the visitors bring stories of the garden. She doesn’t shy away from the negative aspects of this and all gardens: Enclosure, colonialism, slavery, dominion over humans and nature. It is nature, in Laing’s hands, that delivers solace and peace.

Another Covid-19 book. How odd. I don’t plan my reading, though one book often suggests the next, but this slim volume came from a charity shop and filled a gap between something life-changing (above) and a request from the local library.

The characters are classic Bennett. Older people, slightly sly, frequently fey, and with rich pasts. I think he spent too much time with one character who ended up being shipped out of the home where the novella is set, but it has the usual Bennett charm, and a victory for art and love.

I’ve long followed Lyn Slater on Instagram, where her account (originally set on the streets of NYC) provided great visual joy and energy. This book traces her journey from professor to retiree, starting in the early days of social media, becoming a star, invited to all the right places, with gifts, travel, and acclaim. There’s a lockdown here too, and a re-evaluation. This might have been called How to Be, instead of How to Be Old, since her age is only tangentially related to the arc of the story. Though she might claim that only when we’re old can we look back along that arc and see what really matters. It was charming and inspiring and beautiful, and I’ve revisited her on Instagram for more rural images and pleasure.

When I went into the library to check on my order and this popped up on the list, the librarians swooped. Some had read it, some were waiting to read it, everyone had heard about it, and everyone had an opinion. It isn’t like me to read a new and interesting book within about 5 years of it being new and interesting, so I felt good about my choice.

Initially, I thought it was going to be a road-trip book, and I settled in because there’s nothing I love more than a road-trip book or movie, or an actual trip. The crucial thing though is that the protagonist doesn’t drive on. She doesn’t go anywhere, and she doesn’t really do the crucial thing she’s wanting to do throughout the novel.

I can understand some of the reasons for the notoriety, and I wonder if the reason it didn’t hit the spot for me was that it reminded me (in the impact, as much as the theme) of reading Erica Jong, back in the day. That sense of something being articulated which you hadn’t seen described before, but had always known was there. Perhaps it is that, for a new generation of readers. I enjoyed the read, the insightful language makes the mundane seem fresh. And the bathroom tiles will haunt me for a long time.

The final part of a trilogy, though it stands alone. If you’ve been a student or a professor and have ever been on a field trip, you’d enjoy it, I think. The ending was a slight let-down, but the novel is charming with a hapless, bumbling hero and unexpected depths in the student body. Funny, poignant, insightful.

Another library order, and I don’t know what generated the order – perhaps the Laing book referred to it and sent me here? It comes from Australia, where free fruit growing on neighbourhood trees and lush vegetation are possibly more available. Full of good ideas though for spending less (money, resources, time) and making space to enjoy the good things in life, which generally are cheap and priceless, if you know where to look.

Ooh I do love Lipman. She’s bright and sunny and kind, with a dark corner in every room. Her books are small stories, like a modern, liberated Barbara Pym. Though her heroines usually end up in a marital bed, not the back bedroom of a damp vicarage. Lipman explores the characters of small towns, peeling back the layers of history and family fable to get to the heart of things. This new one isn’t entirely vintage Lipman, (though the heroine does work in the estate-sale business) but it is full of laughs and conjures rooms into which you’d walk, lunch spots in which you’d happily while away an afternoon. If you haven’t already discovered Lipman, I highly recommend her brand of balm for troubled times.

Petroc presents on BBC Radio 3 and you can hear his voice any time you like. This is his story, and it is complex and moving. He’s encouraged to doubt that even his childhood home and stereotypical Cornish name qualify him as a Cornishman, so this is a trip into painful territory. His descriptions of his parents and their lives are very tender – his life is tragic in an ordinary way. He travels and length and breadth of the county, but starts his journey and puts his focus on his childhood home. He grew up on the Lizard, a remote and very particular part of a fascinating place. I learned a lot about Cornwall, a county I thought I knew quite well. I highly recommend this if you like any kind of history: natural, industrial, human.

A small, haunting, remarkable book. Very short, but containing multitudes. It started plainly enough – a sea traffic controller in France gave bad information to the occupants of a small boat crossing the Channel. Almost all of them drowned. This much is true. This happened. Gradually, the writer turns the story, which is simply told: the woman, her interrogator, and the fatal phone call. The narrative becomes a mirror, held up to reflect the reader. After finishing it, I returned again and again to the final pages, not wanting to accept the truth, couched in the plain, elegant writing. If you can’t bear the whole book, just read the final page.

April, May (if we’re lucky)

Confession: I didn’t enjoy the Jackson Brodie book before this one; I found it a bit bleak. No hint of that here – although like all the protagonists of crime series, Brodie has his demons. This is a wild romp through the genre, with humanity and good humour. Atkinson doesn’t shy away from the central problem with a repeated character – they have to age. She lets Brodie dwell on this and on the other characters who are getting older with him. There’s a house full of guests stuck in the snow, a killer, a private detective, and a police officer. Everything you need for a good read. Great plotting, good fun, a treat of a book.

I don’t think anyone does state-of-this-particular-nation better than Coe. He’s not afraid to mention Brexit and he has a great voice when writing about young people. This is a clever, unsettling meta-novel with a series of observations about modern life and post-university ennui. Fans of Coe will love it for his usual middle-England wryness with a twist of rage.

This fascinating book begins with an archive, and reading it made me think about what we throw away and what we keep. It only needed a few people to manage centuries-worth of records, documents, committee minutes, letters, and newspapers, and what a valuable gift that has proved to be.

The book unfolds through decades of slow-building rage and resentment, the horror growing quietly. The central theme is obvious, but the final outcome is more complex and subtle. Is it possible to be a good person individually while being an active part of an evil and destructive regime? Is it inevitable that genuine grievance and concern lead to violent resolution? What happens after – when prison guards and prisoners attempt to pick up their lives as neighbours?

The alpine village is full of fascinating people and their histories. There is one particular story where the real names of the two participants (victim and murderer) are changed, and even now, almost a century later, the people of the village don’t speak of it. Long shadows up there in the beautiful mountains.

Robert Crais used to be a screenwriter, and it really shows in his writing. If you like your thrillers noir-ish but with good food and not too much inner darkness, you’ll love this. I like his main hero, Elvis Cole, who lives a full life, unlike many brooding central characters in thrillers. I love the descriptions of Los Angeles, too, and the layers of society that Elvis moves through. Unlike Kate Atkinson, Crais doesn’t refer to the age of his hero and has dropped references which will date him, but if you haven’t discovered this series, you’re in for a treat.

This slim volume is full of thoughts I’ve never seen expressed before, and had struggled to define for myself. On almost every page, there’s an insight into the world of friends and the struggle to engage and sometimes endure them. The author lived an enviable life in many ways, though she hints at family struggles. She moves through New York telling tales on notable writers and family members with equal asperity, reducing us all to the same group of friends, lingering on the sidewalk on a hot summer night, leaning in to a story before going our separate ways.

Another triumphant republishing from Persephone Books which has published other volumes by Dorothy Whipple. A gorgeous story of a poor life made rich through hard work, nerve, and some good friends. The essential kindness and spirit of the central character are what save her, though she’s possibly not destined for the fairy-tale happy ending. Beautiful period detail, lovely fabrics and notions, a great insight into the lives of the women who came before, and a testament to the publishing house that is rescuing their work.

This complex and painful novel reads like a thriller. The carnal tension builds, and you long for the damaged characters to fight their way through the shadows of the past, but underneath the relationships blossoming in the quiet, calm house there’s something much darker. You’ll work it out before the main character, and then you won’t be able to stop reading as the horrible past catches up with an entire society, and the two individuals at the centre of the story. Of all the postwar stories, this one was unfamiliar to me, and all the more haunting.

I’m embarking on a large project and this was just the ticket. The writer explores all the usual things we learn from early studenthood – outlines, plans, visions. She goes further, though, and researches and discusses the impact of posture, breath, exercise and rest on our ability to complete things. She reassures us about the importance of breaks, excuses our procrastination, and explores what it is to be a creative individual in a time of mass production and conformity.

Have you seen Mr Burton, the movie? I did and it prompted me to get this out of the library. You see, I’m related to Richard Burton. Don’t believe me? You would have if you’d met my aunt Gwladys, who was convinced. And maybe she had a point. She was a Jenkins, after all, as Richard (Rich) was, before he took the name of his teacher. We certainly did have a family member who was also taught by Philip Burton, and my own grandparents and father lived two streets away from Rich and his sister, Cis, who raised him.

Many people in Port Talbot were very pleased (later) to be related to Rich, as he made provision for them in his lifetime and beyond. He was haunted by his inability to find £200 for his friend Dylan Thomas when asked, and was adamant he’d never be in that position again. There are other biographies of the actor, but what this one has is access to the 300,000 words of Burton’s notebooks. He was a well-read and formally educated man, and Bragg considers that he would have preferred to be an academic or a writer rather than an actor. He certainly didn’t like the cinema and watched few films, which would account for some of his choices.

As the biography progresses, more space is given to Burton and it is fascinating and moving to read his clear, honest assessments of his work, his wives and his world-famous life. It is hard to fathom stardom like that now. Movie stars are more careful. Can we imagine anyone of Burton’s stature now smoking 100 a day or drinking at least two bottles of vodka a day, (plus wine with meals, naturally.) He met everyone and was adored by most for his charm, his generosity, and his bravery. Bragg’s singular style grates at times, but the thoughtful biography gives Rich room to breathe.

What a beautiful, cool dream of a book, like coming into a dim room on a hot afternoon. It begins in lockdown but has a timeless message. The nature writing is vivid, but what will haunt you as you rush through the book (you won’t be able to put it down) is the hare itself. The sheer amount of thinking, reasoning, and remembering the wild animal does as it slowly enters into a relationship of trust with the writer is breathtaking. It evokes exactly that sensation of seeing an animal in the wild, keeping quite still and counting the seconds, feeling blessed when the moment passes.

This very readable, slim volume is hard to categorise and impossible to forget. It starts as an autobiography and then veers into an obsessional interest with a different subject from the self. The author becomes fascinated by David Starr Jordan. He’s hard to categorise too. Is he just a taxonomist and explorer of some repute? Might he have been a murderer? We move past his vigour, his domestic tragedies, and his love of order into something much, much darker. The writer discovers she’s in thrall to one of the godfathers of American eugenics. Those godfathers, as we know, presided over the birth of European eugenics, and their work lives on in the present day, right in the seat of power. There’s much joy in the book too; romantic happiness for the author, haunting and beautiful illustrations, people rising above their fates, and an answer, sort of, to the central mystery. Do fish exist? It’s a long story; you’ll have to read the book.

I don’t know how Hallett does it! She builds a book on documents; reported conversations, transcripts, diary notes, formal reports and makes the whole thing bowl along like a thriller. This has the added bonus of being set in the art department of a university, so it felt horribly real. It is thrilling and full of surprises and shocks. You’ll be wrong-footed and delighted.

March(ing) with books

I was in the mood for something slim. Something with pictures. A book with each page dedicated to a new topic. This really hit the spot. The format is limiting, of course, but sometimes boundaries are helpful, aren’t they? This book is the partner to a tv show of the same name. Giving the same amount of space to each topic doesn’t work in all cases, but I learned a lot, I enjoyed it and I ended the book with information and inspiration to take me elsewhere.

I started to read this book in connection with a completely different project. I thought I’d flick through it, but one chapter in and I was hooked. Like all theatres, the Old Vic has a patchy, threadbare history, peppered with colourful characters and pocked with actual and financial disasters. Household names and unknown heroes tread the boards and countless generations of visitors throng the corridors and crush onto the backless seats. The writer gets a bit dewy-eyed about Kevin Spacey (he’s just handed over artistic direction at the end of the book) so we must suppose some of what followed just wasn’t public in time. Certainly, Hollywood money and influence brought the old venue a long way from the Purity Hall days, though it was nothing new. Charles Laughton, Laurence Olivier, Nelly Melba and Winston Churchill all brought their spotlights to bear on the building at times. Although it was the birthplace of the National Theatre, the Old Vic remains a personal endeavour, driven forward mostly by women: Emma Cons, Lillian Baylis and Sally Greene are standout figures in theatre history not just in this highly readable and enjoyable story of The Old Vic.

Another slim book, but packed with all the treasures of the world. Well, all the treasures in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The writer takes a job as a museum guard, following a bereavement. This beautiful memoir reminds us about beauty, value, friendship, and the life-affirming power of art. The writer has plenty of time – he frequently works 12-hour shifts – and sometimes he’s alone with a work of great antiquity, or fame. He uses his time wisely, and shares his wisdom. Anyone who has had a job where there’s a front and back of house, will recognise the fierce loyalties in the team, and the moments of connection when front and back meet for a moment. I was driven to the Met’s website, trawling my brain for distant memories of visits in the past, and I will use some of what I gained from this book in my next encounter with a painting.

This history of the mythology of Britain was a revelation. Some of the figures are already household names: Lear, Merlin, Cordelia, Bladud, but we’re soon in the realm of giants, murderous queens, dragons and sorcery. There are hills named for the dragons beneath them, cities named for the heroes who conquered them, and a rich vein of fable and fact. The original writers of these stories were real people. They worked to capture the froth of fable and reality, building a history to explain an ancient land with no fixed identity. The writing is beautiful; images swirl around and misty history comes into sharp focus in tales of suffering and endurance. The book serves as a timely reminder that we construct reality ourselves and then try to impose it on the sketchy facts.

Catrina Davies’ first book – Homesick – was a haunting memoir of rural poverty and the search for shelter. This book is a memoir of types, though not hers. We only find out through the book how she comes to tell the tale, but the story she’s telling is that of a man who was born and grew up on Exmoor, from the 1950s until his later life in Wales. He wanders the woods and lanes of the moor, learning about the trees, the deer, the birds. He leaves school early but later in life learns new skills easily. He’s thrown out of home, travels abroad for work. He experiences poverty, but eventually buys his own cottage and he works for establishment employers, and state-funded agencies. The writer draws a parallel between his life in nature and the loss of nature from the world. This isn’t a coincidence. Scientists now think that it was in the 1950’s that human intervention in the planet’s systems started to create irreversible damage. As he takes shelter in trees and poaches for his family, the clock is ticking down for his beloved habitat. He’s an enigma, despite his brutal honesty in the tapes he leaves for Catrina. He’s raw like the moors, and like him the book is kind but not dishonest about his failings. You won’t meet him, but you’ll mourn him.

Glad that’s over

The worst of the winter is behind us. January, what a month – lasts 7 weeks, all of them cold and overcast, and all the big events are disasters. February, short but bitter. Good thing we have books.

This wasn’t a comfort read or comfortable, but highly enjoyable. Set in Kyiv in 1919 it concerns an almost-hero who – like everyone else – is hiding from the authorities, hoping the authorities don’t commandeer his home, surviving on gruel and cabbage. Thanks to a sabre-happy Cossak his ear is cut off. Nothing daunted, he stores the ear in a sweet tin (who wouldn’t?) and after a while discovers the ear continues to hear.

I learned a lot about Ukrainian history, and the gritty, grimy terrors of everyday life were fascinating. The book (by one of Ukraine’s best-selling writers) bowls along like the thriller it is. Highly recommended for something structurally familiar but challengingly different.

Caroline Lucas was for a long time one of my favourite politicians – issue-driven, outspoken, warm and thoughtful. This book is the same. Lucas examines the history of England – not Britain – in preparation for a possible splintering of the United Kingdom. As the daughter of a Welshman and an Englishwoman, I support her view that the regions are different and that England – so often thought of as the same as Britain – actually has the slimmest and faintest sense of national identity (probably for that reason?) Lucas writes with great passion and knowledge; I know much more about the Charter of the Forest, the Diggers and the Chartists than I did before. She’s not afraid to address the two things guaranteed to get right-wing knickers in a twist (slavery and Empire) and she manages to be optimistic and to show us a way forward. The book offers a new view of an old issue with lots of poetry and literature to delight.

What if this book was the best book I read all year? I won’t know until December, but readers are naturally optimistic aren’t we? We don’t know – when we discover a new writer – if we’re starting with the best, or if the best is not yet written. I wouldn’t have chosen this book: I like a small tale, in a compressed time-frame and this novel is spread over centuries, though largely in a single location. A wiser friend sent it to me, and how glad I am that I read it in January. It was the first attack of book-fever this year and I carried it with me everywhere in case there was a chance to read a page, a paragraph. The closing passages made me gasp out loud with wonder and shock, and I read the final sentences over and over again. The writing about nature is beautiful, the images and characters haunting. A beetle is as important as a character who builds a wing on a house. I learned a great deal about history and landscape. The characters move through the novel with agency, changing their states, leaving clues, leading full lives, on and on into the future. Death and destruction are not the end of anything, just a point in time.

If you watched Chewing Gum or I May Destroy You on tv, (or any of her other projects for streamers) you’ll be familiar with Michaela Coel. Her mobile face and sharp writing have delighted and horrified tv audiences. So it shouldn’t have come as a shock when she was invited to give the MacTaggart Lecture in 2018, one of a still tiny group of women since the first one in 1976, (though she was surprised.) This slim book is the text of the lecture bookended with Coel’s story of life before and after the text of the speech. Even if you don’t know her work, you can’t fail to be enraged and inspired and enraged again by her treatment in the industry. She famously refused a million dollars from Netflix, though by working as a poet, musician, actor and writer Coel has reached a worldwide audience and inspired millions.

As well as reading, I also write, and here’s what I produced this winter. I hesitate to include it in such exalted company, but readers are generous, readers are kind, readers are always searching.

Words in Winter

This was the perfect winter read. Set on hot humid days (and nights) in New Orleans, the novel perfectly captures the dreamy, hazy, insubstantial quality of that place.

The characters are charming, funny, doomed. The scale of the story is small, but the emotions and consequences are epic. The novel was published in 1997 but seems to come from decades earlier than that. A time when a man was forgiven his sins if he was charming, and a woman forgiven hers if beautifully dressed. It is funny and heartbreaking (again, like the city) and a great dose of the South.

This is a great read for any day of the year – a ribald frilly-knickered book with danger and hope in equal measure. There are lost children, doughty spinsters, gangsters, cocktails and beautiful (and tawdry) frocks. Everyone travels on from where they started and the author is ever-present, intervening and working as hard as the characters to ensure things come out well. There are scenes you’ll swear you’ve seen in movies; the brilliantined hair, the shiny shoes, the supercilious doorman, and there’s darkness and sadness too. There’s no happy-ever-after, Atkinson’s too good for that, but the sourness of some of the story gets burned off, ships come into harbour, some of the lost are found.

I’d heard this in adaptation on the radio but never read it, so when I found a copy in a charity shop I snapped it up. I’ve been bellringing for a year now, and I knew that hobby figured largely in the story (and the title) and was keen to read in full.

I wasn’t prepared for how much detail there is – in fact the whole thing is structured around a peal and Sayers needs you to understand a great deal about ringing. I was struck by how much space she was allowed to give to this and reminded of Das Boot by Lothar Gunther Buchheim. For that novel to be a satisfying read you need to understand how a submarine rises and sinks, so the author puts a journalist on board, in order for that character to do the learning on our behalf.

Sayers just speaks directly to the reader, with some helpful bellringing hints provided by one character to another along the way. I wondered if modern readers are tempted to skip all that? You could, I suppose, and there’s enough melancholy and mystery to keep you satisfied. As always, Peter Wimsey is patrician though kind and would now be called “entitled” in a different way.

A good detective story, unconventional, atmospheric and satisfying – more so for bellringers.

I read this between Christmas and New Year and it was perfect for that dark, dreamy, unfocussed time.

There was a lot of discussion (around the time the novel won the Booker Prize) about the modest length of the book. For me, the speed with which I was able to read it was part of the momentum of the writing and I welcomed the modest proportion.

Time repeats constantly in the novel, with the residents of the International Space Station (ISS) experiencing sunrise after sunrise, but those dawns don’t all mark a new day. There’s a strict pattern of eating, sleeping, working and thinking. The daily grind in weightless conditions is brilliantly evoked with tiny details – the velcroed toothbrushes, the faces puffy without gravity to hold them in shape. The thinking was the best part, though sometimes heartbreaking. The image of the sleeping cosmonauts, hanging tethered silently in their sleeping bags like larvae, continues to haunt me. Below them always, the earth, constantly drawing them to look out at their home, their only vessel and the grave of all they love.

There’s been a little flurry of activity on various book sites with reviews suspended for a while after review-bombing because Harvey included a Russian character. (There are Russians on the ISS.) On a more positive note, this is one of the best-selling Booker Prize winners and has apparently (certainly in my case) driven thousands of people to the website and YouTube channels of the ISS.

I’d recommend you read the book. Join the cosmonauts above the fray, circling the earth, watching the sun rise, again and again.

Falling leaves, turning pages

This is the month to snuggle up with easy reads and Fremlin won’t let you down – though she’s not a cosy companion. This is another reprint from the author of the terrifying Uncle Paul, a smash hit a few years ago (after being a smash hit many decades ago.) This is equally scary; gothic and suffocating. It feels weirdly modern too, post-decimalisation, but the difference between survival and destitution is measured in shillings, not pounds. The heroine works hard to scrape by but finds time for some digs at the British class system and domestic disharmony. Will she survive the shadowy figure dogging her journey to freedom?

I read Sanghera’s previous volume – Empireland – with great interest and dismay last year. This book has a wider reach and feels a bit thinner for that, though no less sobering and shocking. Very readable, though I had to dodge the grislier footnotes, but the message hit home, nonetheless. Very timely, while some politicians are continuing the argue that the British Empire was a good thing.

A fascinating writer with an interesting history. This bestselling novel (published in 1958) is a riot of parties, ripped satin and late nights. The central character seems world-weary and unbearably young as she rollicks around Paris and the South of France. It made me laugh and cry, made me think of Fitzgerald and (Helen) Fielding. There’s not much plot, but loads of interesting people you want to spend time with, and a totally convincing look at infatuation, desire and love.

I didn’t read “Such a Fun Age” which everyone was raving about, so I thought I’d catch up with this writer here. I really enjoyed this book, the central character is sweet and serious and makes one tiny, terrible mistake which has devastating consequences. It is a campus novel that shares the protagonist’s desire to move off campus. The characters were drawn with incredible honesty and detail, sometimes uncomfortably so, but I enjoyed my time with them and was ultimately highly satisfied.

Another spin for Anthony the author as character, and his deeply unpleasant sidekick, Hawthorne. Horowitz is quite happy to present himself in this series of novels as a hapless loser, bumbling along after Hawthorne and never quite getting the point. This book is built around the conceit that the writer owes his agent another book but hasn’t got a good murder that Hawthorne could solve. He looks back to a case which – it seems – Hawthorne didn’t solve, but with all these layers, there’s bound to be something the writer (and the reader) has missed. If you like the dual narratives of Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, you’ll love these. Hawthorne is a dour and opaque character, but the gorgeous mechanism of the writing allows you to settle back in deep comfort and security.

This was fascinating. If you are interested in New York, home renovation or how to build things – including a meaningful career out of raw elements – you’ll enjoy it. The writer overcomes a few false starts and works as a carpenter and project manager in some spectacular and spectacularly expensive homes in New York and beyond. He brings his hard-won wisdom and observation to bear on modern life. He tackles all the good stuff: motivating staff, working for terrible managers, how it is possible to have more money than sense, and how to keep your cool. A must for all the D-I-Y brigade or anyone not yet sure of their path in life.

I chose both these books because everyone’s talking about Slow Horses on tv (or whatever device you like) and although I don’t watch it, I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. They are page-turners, there’s no doubt about that, and full of sly wit and good political detail, but… I just didn’t like anyone, particularly the anti-hero, Jackson Lamb, who I believe is causing all the stir in the adaptation. There you go, you win some, you lose some.

This was a revelation. Aneurin Bevan is probably the best-known of the 1945 Labour politicians, and his creation – the NHS – as central to British life as any religion. His near-namesake Ernest Bevin is lost in the mists of time, I don’t recall ever hearing about him in school or university, even though he was born in Somerset and lived and worked in his early career in my home town. What a giant of a man, what an elegy of a history by another Labour politician, Andrew Adonis.

Bevin was born with nothing, not even a father, but he had brothers who supported him when he ran away from the brutal farm where he was earning his keep. He had access to the lecturers of Bristol University in their public education programme, and he had a guiding vision of a socialist future for the working people of Britain. He started as a drayman and built the largest Trade Union in the world. He was hand-picked by Churchill to mobilise workers and keep Britain supplied during WWII. Even in the darkest hours, he introduced legislation around workplace canteens, health and safety and working hours.

After 1945 Atlee appointed him Foreign Secretary (though he’d asked to be Chancellor, his loyalty to Atlee was complete.) Bevin was one of the post-war politicians who saw the need to contain and corral Stalin. He dealt ruthlessly with communism in the Trade Union movement and the Labour Party and he correctly deduced that Communism and Fascism were equally inimical to the working people he cared for. American scholars may take a different view on this, but Adonis makes the case for Bevin as the driving force in the foundation of West Germany, the relief of the Berlin blockade and the eventual founding of NATO. Bevin came close to the idea of a European union but he died before he could realise many of his plans.

Adonis obviously feels huge respect and affection for his subject. He doesn’t shy away from Bevin’s failings (largely around Palestine) and his obvious anti-semitism. A stranger omission is his glancing reference to Bevin’s reluctance to embrace equal pay for women teachers during the war. Adonis never returns to that topic in the chapter called Failures.

Unlike most politicians, Bevin’s political life was ended by death, not decline. Without him, Atlee did not survive the next election and Adonis argues that since Bevin, no major British politician has come from a similar background, or forged such a close bond between the labouring worker and the Labour Party.

This was a stirring, inspiring read about a remarkable man living in and shaping remarkable times. Highly recommended, whatever side of the House you are on.

What I read on the beach*

*there was no beach

I have a soft spot for Cally Taylor ever since I attended one of her writing workshops. She’s Bristol-based too, but the main reason to read one of her thrillers is the sheer ease with which you’ll slip through the pages. She piles the tension on and the characters will hold you while you work through the twisty plot. Great for when you want a low-effort high-impact read.

I’ve never finished a William Boyd novel without feeling I understand the world a little better. This is set in 1968, and if you like in-jokes about writers, actors, producers and directors, Boyd is his usual sharp observer. There’s a huge cast of characters but gradually three people come into focus and we see the edits they make to arrive at the final version of themselves. One can’t escape, one opts out completely, and one makes it into a tentative future. The novel is faithful to the beloved three-act structure and is divided into three sections each shorter than the last, called: Duplicity, Surrender, Escape. Very enjoyable, full of period detail that reveals the characters trapped in a strange time between war and liberation.

This was the big beast I read in the summer, and the big beast on the literary scene for a while. Fortunately for anyone keen to read it now, just out in paperback in the UK.

Naomi Klein is a well-known writer with bestsellers stacked up behind her. But that doesn’t stop people – even those who think they know better – mistaking her for also well-known writer, Naomi Wolf. Klein wonders if we can only have one Naomi in our lives, though the confusion was understandable when they were both left-of-centre feminists with brown hair writing in broadly similar fields. When Other Naomi goes over to the dark side, appearing regularly on Steve Bannon’s channels and promoting ever more dangerous conspiracies, that’s bound to have an impact on the Naomi writing this book. Klein takes that as her starting point. She examines the long history and present versions of the doppleganger: the body and the soul, the online brand and the person, the evil twin, imperialism and fascism, medicine and experimentation.

From here Klein expands her idea of the doppleganger and the book becomes more disquieting. There’s so much in here that challenged and unsettled me, though Klein is a warm and engaging writer, always completely human and humane. One chapter of the book deals with Israel and was written before the events in Israel in October 2023, but prefigures them. Klein is incisive and passionate on the plight of Palestine, for what is a two-state solution if not a doppleganger?

A haunting read, no simple answers, just more questions, with Klein’s comforting voice as a prompt.

Maintaining my unblemished record of reading the “big” reads slightly too late. This was everywhere when it first came out, and rightly so but you won’t feel the same about the business of books after reading it. It made me squirm slightly with social and cultural embarrassment but it was worth the discomfort.

I’ve written about Tom Cox before and about the way he funds his writing career. It is worth a look at Unbound if you are interested in books and writers. This was a magical read – with multiple narrators and a story stretching across centuries. Very moving and very funny – you can read the chapter which is the village e-noticeboard on his Substack and I’d highly recommend it as a taster.

Lovers of Cornwall, this is for you. A rich mix of walking, listening, geology, geography, the past and the future. A native of the far West, Hannigan walks from the border with Devon back to his home, and takes us through the particular history of this special place. He is clear-eyed about the bits that aren’t so magical. Very readable, packed with facts, figures, and fable.

Now this is really leaving it late, but I finally caught up with this absolute treat. Yes, it is a sobering example of women’s lives, and some of the religious bits are impenetrable (to me) but who wouldn’t love to look in on poor exhausted Mrs Quiverful and all her children? And let’s all avoid Dr Fillgrave. The authorial voice is someone you want to spend time with, and next time you visit a Bishop’s Garden or wander down a cold cloister you’ll be looking out for the characters.

I finished my summer reading as I started it, with a sweet treat, though this packs an emotional punch I wasn’t expecting. We open on a dislikable heroine who is already dead, and watch as she learns to love, forgive and move on. She doesn’t go where she’s expecting to end up, but sometimes heaven is just order restored.

May

After visiting Gibraltar I thought I really ought to read more about what does still appear to be its defining characteristics – natural fortress, maritime haven, strategic treasure.

This book romps along with tales of derring-do, heroism, idiocy and many many deaths. Rankin doesn’t hide anything away, and he carefully puts the human at the centre of a massive martial enterprise. Although this book deals with WWII Rankin sets the scene, explaining how Italy, Spain and Germany all beset Gibraltar, and going back into the history of the Rock and its people to give context and clarity. Like all war histories there are chances taken and sometimes missed, huge colourful characters and terrible suffering. I felt I understood the world a little better after reading this, it filled some woeful gaps in my education and was engaging and thoughtful.

A gorgeous Cornish cream-tea of a Feast. This is one of the mid-century books we’re so lucky to have republished and brought blinking into the summer light to delight a new generation of readers. It is a broad allegory of the Seven Deadly Sins, but much more subtle than that suggests. The characters are beautifully drawn, it is charming and funny and it isn’t at all obvious (until a decent interval has passed) who will be saved and who will plunge to their destruction. It is set at a time when British society was changing rapidly and the cracks in the cliff aren’t the only life-changing fractures. I couldn’t put it down and neither could anyone else who read it on my recommendation.

I urge you to put this book down, at least before bedtime. So thoroughly does Barnes create the atmosphere of terror and dread that pervaded Stalin’s Russia, I found I was getting more tense and nervous with every chapter. Near the end, the external terror loosens, but by then the internal guilt and self-betrayal are worse. Each small section is filled with dread and near disaster and they add up to a sobering read in these difficult days.

When you need a break, and a book to take you away, Moriarty never lets you down. Her plots are twisty, her characters are detailed and flawed, and the time you spend with the book is engaging and satisfying. While reading I thought this possibly didn’t have the external threats of some of her other stories, but then I noticed she’d done something much darker indeed, putting the twist deep inside. Read it and see.

Everyone’s raving about Taylor’s latest novel and that prompted me to get this down from the shelf where it had been languishing unread. The character in this novel is a scientist and he experiments on nematodes, tiny transparent creatures. Like the nematodes, the characters are subjected to scrutiny, incision, excision, and sometimes destruction. There’s a brief flash of sunshine but not what anyone could call a happy ending. Very thoughtful on campus life, groups of friends and their casual cruelties, and profound weighty loneliness. The writing is lush and beautiful but the novel made me feel unsettled and sad.

A slim novel from the 1920s. An awkward young woman ages and finally – despite her brother losing her inheritance – moves away from the family she’s lived with for decades and strikes out on her own. This is full of startling thoughts on solitude, self-reliance and independence. The scenes of the long woodland walks (not always pleasant, frequently tiring and hot) are painfully honest. A later heroine might have really built a life on her own but Lolly ends up living in a village where there are strange gatherings on dark nights. There’s finally a man in her life, even if he does have cloven hooves. An entrancing curiosity. I’m haunted by Lolly Willowes.

Another book from the dusty shelf, I was so glad to end the month with this warm pastry of a memoir. I laughed out loud frequently, and was challenged and moved by Janzen’s exploration of faith, family and food. I like a book with recipes, even if I’m never going to make Warmer Kartoffelsalat. I might give Platz a go, and imagine myself in Rhoda’s mom’s kitchen, soaking up the love and warmth and watching the Mennonite in the Little Black Dress letting go of the past.

March into April

This book was fascinating and challenging but I felt excluded. The writer explicitly states she’s writing for women in their 40s and 50s so older women don’t form part of her analysis. The examples are chilling, but the last person I want to disagree with is another feminist. A good read though, well written, equally engaging and enraging.

Have you ever been driven somewhere in a car much better than your own? Maybe even a limo? It purrs along and you put your head back, relax, look out of the window as the scenery flashes by. That’s what a Richard Osman book is like. You know someone’s in charge and you are just along for the trip; warm and safe, great upholstery. That’s not to disparage, not at all. Sometimes we need to walk, sometimes we want a comfy ride. Don’t think for a minute there won’t be bumps in the road. If you set a novel in a retirement complex, your characters are always close to death. Or worse. The crime strand is very strong, and the characters are charming and funny. Osman himself is bringing the car to a stop for the time being, but if you haven’t traveled his way before, start now.

Robin Ince is well known to Radio and TV audiences and I was surprised at how hard he works for tiny bookshop audiences the length and breadth of the county. I was exhausted reading about it, he must need a complete physical overhaul when it ended. Like all book-lovers he can’t go into a bookshop without buying something and his special delight is a copy (sometimes a duplicate or better version) of something rare and strange which he’s been seeking for years. The book made me laugh out loud in parts, and covered lots of towns with bookshops I knew, which was a lovely trip down memory lane, and gave me some new places to explore. A delightful read from a charming and slightly unsettling writer.

A gorgeous book, in which nothing much happens, but a family structure shifts and creaks and never returns to quite the same shape. Everyone’s in the same place at the same time, but they are all having a uniquely intimate experience of the time and of each other. It was fascinating to see how tight the budget was for a normal working family, but their delight in the vacation, the little games and traditions they’d built and the lovely melancholy of the closing days of the holiday felt very familiar and painful. If you ever had a traditional family holiday by the sea you’ll recognise so much.

This was an odd choice for holiday reading, but it flows along nicely and Hannah Fry (another writer better known to audiences than readers) is a clear and gentle teacher. I know much more about algorithms than I expected to learn, and I’m much clearer about AI and the dangers therein. Fry doesn’t duck the difficult stuff, but she does it with a dose of good humour and even optimism.

I’m a huge fan of mid-century mass fiction which is gradually, (through publishers like Persephone and Dean Street Press among others) becoming more widely available. This didn’t disappoint. Our heroine is the youngest member of a family which we can clearly see is full of sharp and selfish characters, and it is that – and not her perceived lack of personality – which makes her feel like an outsider. We follow her to London in her one good dress where she has a disappointing encounter and fails to confide in her cool and clever sister. We know who the good people are and if the skewering of the privileged intellectuals and bored socialites is a bit broad we can identify with the plainer homebodys who finally get their just desserts. A real pie, not one containing petals.

January

I’m not sure why I selected this book and having finished it I’m still bewildered by it. With a weirdly complicated and meandering plot and a large family of only mildly pleasant characters it held me in thrall despite myself. It was overwhelmingly moving at times and perfectly captured the haunting power of a favourite children’s book. The second half plays with sly humour in the modern circus of chat-show and celebrity. A very modern story with roots in the dark forest behind the family home.

This is misery for the middle-classes. A marriage disintegrates but the household remains well-managed by staff and the child attends a good school. The details of the early 1950s are gorgeous, the cars shiny and the houses large but the heartbreak is real. Beautifully detailed about the tiny moments on which the future can turn, with complex and believable characters. The heroine has done everything right but despite her fortunate beauty, she’s overtaken.

When is Agatha Christie not Agatha Christie? When she wrote the play and Charles Osborne turned it into a novel. Christie remains by a long way the most popular female playwright in the world, not that you’d know it if you read any serious studies of theatre. She continues to astonish and delight and for every Christmas Christie on TV there’s probably something familiar in the line-up at your local regional theatre. This book suffers from the need to keep the action “on stage” but if you’re reading it you probably don’t mind. For a good look at Christie’s work on stage I suggest All About Agatha, a great podcast with an episode called All About The (stage) Plays of Agatha Christie.

Continuing my trend of reading the big hits about a year after everyone else, I raced through this in darkest January. I really enjoyed the reading but found it slightly unsatisfying. I wish the central character had been able to adapt slightly, but maybe that’s the point? The suffering rains down on her and she’s unchanged, unbending. We’re encouraged to find her uplifting but the impact she has on other women felt a bit late-in-the-day for me. Charming dog and child though. The subject is serious, and for working women of a certain age there will be lots of nodding in agreement.