Book review – “In Search of Lost Time – Vol. 1: Swann’s Way” by Marcel Proust

Many months ago, while sitting in an airport in Cairo, awaiting my flight home from a holiday in Egypt, I opened this book. I had taken it with me, somewhat optimistically I now realise, thinking that I would have plenty of down-time to, at last, tackle a book my husband bought for me as a gift just before we had our first child. There was no way I was ever going to be able to read it at that stage in my life! It has been hard enough at this stage in my life, when I am at the other end of the parenting spectrum and my chicks are flying the nest! It took me until the new year to complete this 500-plus page book. And that is just volume one of Proust’s life’s work, À la recherche du temps perdu, known in English as In Search of Lost Time. There are a further six volumes.

I read a lot of long novels – I recently completed Kate Mosse’s The Burning Chambers, coming in at 586 pages, which I zipped through relatively quickly, but Proust is something else altogether. I could read The Burning Chambers for ten minutes before going to sleep, plus it was pretty action-packed with lots of characters, events and short chapters. In the same amount of time I would get through maybe two or three pages of Proust and often have to go back to re-read to check my understanding. Proust is famously a master of clause and sub-clause; sentences can go on for many lines, and paragraphs often straddle two or even three pages. It is slow-reading. In the same way, perhaps, that slow-cooking is good for rich and succulent casseroles!

This first volume, Swann’s Way, is divided into three quite distinct parts, some of which could be considered a stand-alone novel within the overall scheme of the work. Part one, “Combray”, is itself sub-divided into two further parts. The book is a first-person narration and in “Combray”, which is the name of an area in Normandy where the narrator spent much of his time in childhood, at the family estate, he recalls in detail the long days, the walks, family members, particularly his mother, and the socialising. We are introduced to M. Swann, a family acquaintance. Life seems to be dominated by relative trivialities, gossip and inconsequential pastimes. What is portrayed is an Edwardian life of privilege, largely insulated from world events, which would of course, soon explode into the First World War. Proust began this work in 1909. 

Right from the outset, it is clear that this is a novel about recollection and memory – both the deliberate and the involuntary. (Formerly, the English translation of the work was known as Remembrance of Things Past.) The narrator at first remembers very little about his childhood times at Combray, but then the famous incident of the madeleine cake takes him right back to that period and triggers a whole series of memories. It is an insight into the workings of the mind, the incidents and images we store unconsciously, which may be recalled through sensory arousal. There is a great deal of reference to sensory arousal! The subject of the first volume, M. Swann, falls passionately in love with Odette de Crécy, a woman of great charm and beauty, but who is considered by some to be of dubious character, and appears to be a lover to many. Swann does in fact end up marrying Odette, despite their very on/off affair and his bitter jealousy when she fraternises with other men. The couple have a child, the beautiful Gilberte, with whom the young narrator will himself fall in love when they both find themselves taking walks in the same part of Paris. This section of Proust’s work was made into a film in 1984, starring Jeremy Irons as M. Swann and Italian actress Ornella Muti as Odette. 

The novel is long and philosophical and challenging but it also gives a wonderful insight into the Belle Epoque in Paris, the “beautiful era”, characterised as a period of creativity and innovation. Also, there is the insight to the nature of middle and high society at this time – the gossipping and scheming, the pettiness and snobbery and the concern for rank and appearances. Proust was writing about this period, but at a point when the Belle Epoque was coming to its end and the First World War would soon start (this first volume was published in 1913). I wonder to what extent Proust was using the concepts of memory and nostalgia interchangeably? The “time” the narrator was in search of was indeed all but lost at this point. 

By coincidence, the novel I am working through at the moment, which is also very challenging, is called Nostalgia and is by Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu. The narrator is recalling pre-war Bucharest and makes reference to Proust, when the sight of a pink cigarette lighter causes him to have flashbacks. 

I am quite proud to have completed at least one volume of Proust’s great work in my life. I have one more on the TBR shelf – my husband bought me two volumes (I wonder if he realised there were seven altogether!) I might give myself a break before embarking on volume two and enjoy something faster-paced for a while.

The joy of re-reading – “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen

There will never be enough time to read all the books I want to read. As I get older, this is a fact I am trying to come to terms with. One brief stroll around a bookshop has me adding so many titles to my mental TBR list and that makes it hard to walk away from special offers! The result is that I have dozens of impulse-purchased books on my shelves that I aspire to one day get around to. Even worse is the charity bookshop, where the financial consequences of over-purchasing are lower. (Let’s not forget that, although book prices are increasing, the cost per hour of pleasure derived remains pretty low). 

So, with so many new books being published every day, self-published books, audiobooks, and, indeed, other high quality content (such as book blogs!) there is much competing for our reading attention. As such, re-reading can feel like a bit of a luxury. My husband is a great re-reader, often choosing to go back to things that he feels still have more to give. Me, less so. So, when my book club decided it was time for a classic, we picked up on the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth at the end of last year (16th December 2025) and chose Sense and Sensibility, which I had last read when I was an undergraduate at London University. As an Austen lover, I knew the story well, of course, plus I’ve watched the (in my view) iconic 1995 film by Ang Lee, starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman. There is also a 2008 BBC television adaptation which received good reviews, and which purports to focus more on the sisters’ burgeoning sexual awakening, but I haven’t seen this. 

Going back to the text, however, sent me on a journey I did not expect. I did half read, half listen – the audiobook was read by Rosamund Pike, and I appreciated her narration very much – but sometimes I found myself listening to a section or a chapter and then going back to my paperback book, because the text was so rich that I just wanted to savour the words on the page, as the author intended. One problem I had (and I have found this with other classics that I have revisited that I already own copies of) is that my Penguin paperback dates from the late 1980s when I would have bought it whilst at university, and the text is so tiny! The conversation at the very beginning of the book between John Dashwood and his wife Fanny, where they are discussing how much of the inheritance he should give up for his widowed step-mother and his three sisters to live on (fulfilling the stipulation in his late father’s will that he should provide for them) is priceless! When you think that it is likely Austen was perhaps nineteen or twenty years old when she wrote this novel, it makes her talent as a writer and as an observer of human nature even more astounding.

Which brings me on to my own maturity as a reader of this novel, compared to the teenager I was when I first encountered it. I was always a pretty sensible young person, so would probably have identified with Elinor more than Marianne anyway (I really can’t remember!). But Sense and Sensibility is considered to be one of Jane Austen’s more problematic novels in the sense that the outcome for the younger sister, Marianne, she of the more emotional, romantic, impetuous nature, is not really satisfactory; Willoughby, the man she falls so deeply in love with, turns out to be flawed and unreliable, and she is ultimately married off to the much less stimulating Colonel Brandon, a decent husband for the young Marianne but rather far from being the man of her dreams. A neat ending but fraught with disappointment. A younger reader might react more strongly to Marianne being unable to choose a life-partner more compatible with her own personality. As a mother of daughters around this age (though definitely not considering marriage!) I found myself very glad indeed that Marianne did not end up with the feckless Willoughby (prepared to bad-mouth his own new wife!). Brandon is definitely more solid, but I would certainly want my daughters (and my son) marrying for love and not prospects. But that is the Georgian era for you – the brother inherits the lot and leaves his sisters in virtual poverty, so what else could they do? And it is a world that Jane Austen well understood. 

I love this novel, I love everything by Jane Austen, even though she was clearly not at the peak of her writing powers at this point. She was still honing her craft. Pride and Prejudice was published just two years later, in 1813 and there is a huge evolution in her abilities, showing us just what a unique gift she had. Her canon is small but remarkable and each of the novels has its strengths and bears re-reading many times. 

I would like to think that I might re-read all of the novels in the coming months and years, see how I react to them well past the age that Austen lived. I visited her home in Chawton, Hampshire many years ago. I’d like to go there again. It is worth seeing the tiny desk from where she wrote these novels, by hand. If I manage to re-read all these novels, I will treat myself to the trip!

Booker shortlist review #5 – “Flashlight” by Susan Choi

This is my last review from last year’s Booker Prize shortlist and comes from American novelist Susan Choi. This is her sixth novel and her other works have been highly acclaimed although she had not crossed my radar before now. Flashlight is a novel with a wide scope, spanning several decades to tell the story of one family. That family comprises Serk, his wife Anne and their daughter Louisa. Seek was born in Korea. His family moved to Japan when he was young but were then lured back to the new Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). Serk refused to go and later moved to the United States where he became an academic. In the US he meets and marries Anne and they have Louisa. Anne’s son from an earlier relationship, Tobias, is also significant. She was largely estranged from him until his teenage years, kept apart by the boy’s father. There are a handful of other minor characters.

The story begins with a drowning – Serk and 10 year old Louisa are walking on a beach in Japan; Serk is undertaking an academic secondment there and has taken his family with him. Water and swimming are recurring motifs in the book and Serk cannot swim. The pair do not return home after their evening walk and Louisa is found on the beach the next morning, alive but unconscious. She has no recollection about what has happened to her father and he is presumed drowned. This is a monumental event in the young girl’s life. She is precocious and intelligent and has a difficult relationship with her mother, Anne. Serk and Anne had a difficult relationship and there was tension in the household which Louisa seems to have imbibed. It does not help that Anne has a mysterious chronic illness which limits her mobility and leaves her constantly fatigued. 

The plot looks backwards then, to Serk’s childhood in Japan and his family’s move to North Korea; they are outsiders in Japan, not welcomed, and are attracted by the offer of employment, housing and a good lifestyle in the new state, where they will feel more secure in their identity. Serk cannot think of going to North Korea and will instead move to the United States where he becomes an academic, though he will always feel somewhat on the outside. 

We also learn of Anne’s back story, how she had a child as a young woman, fathered by an older man, who then prevents her from seeing him. When she meets and marries Serk it seems like a match of convenience for both of them. Anne’s first child, Tobias, comes back into the story later on, when as a young man he seeks to develop a relationship with his mother and half-sister Louisa.

Louisa is a somewhat troubled child and, like her father, seems always to feel like she does not quite fit in. When the family moves to Japan she works hard to learn the language and blend in, but her father’s disappearance puts paid to her sense of belonging. We learn how she struggles at university and has mixed feelings towards her mother, from whom she seems remote and different.

There is a plot twist which I will obviously not share here, which gave the book some interest and purpose, but overall I found I did not love this novel. It is long, not a problem in itself, but I felt there was a great deal here that felt superfluous, for example, the lengthy accounts of Anne’s life and routines in the retirement village where she lives in her older age felt to me like they added very little to the story. The author writes a great character, but I really did not like any of them! Apart from Tobias, perhaps, and Walt, Anne’s friend, although both are quite marginal characters. There were also parts of the plot that I felt lacked credibility – for example, Louisa’s experience at the hands of border police in England made me cringe! The editor really should have got a British reader to look at this – we just don’t speak like that! This was a shame because for me it detracted from the really important story at the heart of the novel, the reach and cruelty of the North Korean regime, something I knew very little about. 

I listened to the novel on audio and I feel the narration was not the best. That did not help. I feel this novel could have been somewhat better. 

I don’t think the 2025 Booker Prize shortlist was a particularly strong one – the winning book (Flesh by David Szalay) was one of the top two for me, but I did prefer Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter. The fact of two very long books slowed my reading right down. I love a long novel but both this novel, Flashlight, and Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny felt like something of a slog. 

I would find this a difficult novel to recommend.

Booker shortlist book review #4 – “Audition” by Katie Kitamura

This was my penultimate read of the 2025 Booker shortlist. I finished it over the Christmas holiday but it has taken a while to get my blogging act together so far in 2026. (I have also now completed my final book of the shortlist, Flashlight by Susan Choi, which was long and took me a few weeks to get through). Audition is Katie Kitamura’s fifth novel and she is an established writer and literary figure, earning praise and plaudits from many high profile figures as well as being shortlisted for other prizes. I was familiar with her name but I had not read any of her work before. 

Coming in at just over 200 pages, Audition feels more like a novella than a novel to me. It also has the atmosphere of a dark thriller and an ending which seem s more consistent with the novella format. Set in Manhattan the central character is a successful actress in her middle years who has achieved popular and critical acclaim and lives a settled and comfortable life. She is married to Tomas, a writer, and they live in the city, sharing the sorts of routines and rituals that anyone in a long-term relationship would recognise. They drink a little too much wine and eat a little too much pastry but otherwise their life is relatively unremarkable. Our central character remains unnamed.

Life is easy, that is until one day the actress meets Xavier, a young man who, over a slightly clandestine lunch, claims to be her son. She tells him this is impossible – she was pregnant once, but she had an abortion as it was not the right time for her and Tomas to have a family. Xavier is undeterred in his pursuit, however.

At first, the actress tries to keep her meeting with Xavier secret from Tomas; she did fear that he had spotted her at the initial lunch and that perhaps he might have thought she was having an affair, which would explain an apparent change in his behaviour towards her. But Xavier gradually infiltrates the couple’s life, getting a job supporting the director on the play the actress is working on (where she is alarmed to find how indispensable he makes himself). Furthermore, Tomas also seems to be seduced by Xavier and far from being suspicious, welcomes Xavier into their home, almost at the expense of their own relationship. 

The actress observes all the events with increasing dismay, unable to comprehend or to influence Xavier’s actions and events soon spiral out of her control. 

I found the book quite compelling to read; it moves at a good pace and the characters are interesting, but, I’m afraid for me it was ultimately unconvincing. I disliked the ending, which left too many loose ends and unresolved questions for my taste and I found myself asking what the point of the novel was. 

I would like to read Kitamura’s 2021 novel Intimacies, which was highly acclaimed. Audition it seems to me, has been less well received. I’m slightly surprised it was shortlisted, especially when I look at the books that did not make it. 

A fairly quick and interesting read but not highly rewarding for me.

January travel – Marrakech and Bucharest

I had the great good fortune to add two new places to my list of countries visited last month – Morocco and Romania. It is not usual for me to travel early in the new year, not least because I am usually running around taking kids to university, as well as recovering from the cost of Christmas! But I happened to see an opportunity for a very cheap (and quite short) break in Marrakech and we were invited to a christening in Bucharest. It did mean that this usually rather bleak month passed satisfyingly quickly, and I got through a fair bit of reading whilst travelling. Here are some photos of my trips.

Top row – El Badi Palace

Bottom row (L-R) – restaurant overlooking Jemaa el-Fnaa; Madrasa Ben Youssef; wandering through the souks; Koutoubia mosque at daybreak

Marrakech is a stunning place to visit, with all the senses assaulted at once. January was a great time to go, it was 16-18 degrees and not too crowded. I will definitely return, so much still to see.

Top row – Carturesti Carusel bookshop; Church of Saint Vissarion

Middle row (L-R) – National Museum of the Romanian Peasant; example of domestic art and craft; The Little Paris Museum

Bottom row – Palace of Parliament

Bucharest on the other hand was FREEZING! It’s an interesting place that is still coming out of a very dark period in its history. The Palace of Parliament was built by the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and appears to be mostly a vanity project he conceived following a visit to North Korea. It is enormous and is said to be the heaviest administrative building in the world. I don’t know how this could be verified but it apparently contains 2.5 million tonnes of marble.

I am always interested to find out about literary connections to places I visit. I’m afraid to say I am not familiar with any Moroccan authors, although I have heard of French Moroccan author Leila Slimani – I think I may have read her novel Adèle (published in English in 2019, the original French is called Dans le jardin de l’ogre and was published in 2014). Mohamed Choukri (1935-2003) is another internationally renowned Moroccan author whose autobiography, For Bread Alone, recounts his early life surrounded by violence and poverty and then his self-education and flowering as a writer. Something else to add to the TBR list!

I was even less familiar with Romanian literature, although I was delighted to visit the beautiful Carturesti Carusel bookshop in Bucharest (coincidentally, this also featured on the January page of my 2026 bookshops of the world calendar!) I bought a copy of Mircea Cartarescu’s 1989 novel Nostalgia, which is said to be a surrealist cult masterpiece. Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionescu is perhaps the most famous writer to emerge from that country, another surrealist and considered part of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ school.

I recommend both of these cities for a visit if you have the opportunity. January is the perfect time to visit Marrakech, in my view, but perhaps Bucharest might be better in the spring!

Audiobook review – “Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night” by Sophie Hannah

A couple of weeks ago I caught a debate on Radio 4’s PM programme about whether listening to a book on audio counted as ‘reading’. The conversation was linked to the announcement of 2026 as the National Year of Reading, an initiative launched by Queen Camilla, who has done a great deal of work as a literacy and literature champion, and has been supported by many high level people from across the worlds of culture, media, politics and sport, including Richard Osman, the wonderful Stormzy (just when is he going to get a gong!?), Bridget Phillipson and Theo Walcott. Reading as a pastime continues to hold its own, and audiobooks have recently seen double digit growth in popularity year on year. I stopped being sniffy about audiobooks a very long time ago so was slightly surprised to hear this issue being debated! Whilst I still prefer, on the whole, the feel of a book in my hands and the imaginative freedom it gives me, I definitely would read a lot less were it not for audiobooks. It enables me to enjoy reading whilst doing other things that do not require much intellectual engagement, such as cleaning, running, driving or gardening. I find the combination of the two quite therapeutic as it brings a meditative quality to an otherwise mundane or repetitive task.

I listened to two audiobooks over Christmas, which were perfect candidates for the medium. The first was Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, read brilliantly by the inimitable Hugh Grant. (I re-watched all the Bridget Jones films and Love Actually over the Christmas holiday and found myself loving him all over again!) Anyway, he read A Christmas Carol with aplomb and it was well worth using up one of the credits on my Audible subscription for rather than listening to the free version (perhaps I’ll listen to that one next Christmas). 

My other Christmas audiobook was Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night, the fifth of six Hercule Poirot novels penned by Sophie Hannah, in honour of the great detective and his creator, Agatha Christie. It is the first Sophie Hannah Poirot that I have read and I will definitely seek out the other five as she does a brilliant job of recreating the spirit and character of Poirot, his linguistic quirks, self-regard (well-deserved) and of course his genius wit. This particular novel is set primarily in Norfolk where Poirot and his sidekick, Inspector Edward Catchpool, are summoned by Catchpool’s mother Cynthia. Her close friend Arnold is terminally ill with an unspecified condition which does not appear to hinder him either physically or mentally. A seemingly safe local hospital is identified as the place where Arnold will spend his final days when the time comes, but when a baffling murder of a patient is committed there, Edward’s family is split. His wife, in particular, does not want him to be admitted, fearing that he will be murdered too, and the couple’s two sons, and their wives (who are sisters) are thrown into a bitter conflict at a time when they should be supporting one another.

To make matters worse, Arnold is very keen to be admitted to the hospital as soon as possible; as an amateur sleuth himself he is keen to try and solve the murder, and it is his dying wish that he should assist his hero Hercule Poirot in doing so, hence the summons from Cynthia. Edward seems to have strong negative feelings towards his mother and though the two men agree to the plan, albeit somewhat reluctantly, their goal is to solve the case quickly and to return home to London before Christmas (giving them about a week). A tall order perhaps when the local constabulary have been unable to make any headway, but not of course for Poirot. 

I am not sure why murder and death are such powerful and engaging topics for artistic endeavour, especially when handled with a degree of comedy, but we are endlessly fascinated and entertained. The ongoing popularity of the great master Agatha Christie, attests to this. Sophie Hannah deploys great skills of characterisation, plotting worthy of Christie and dark humour to tell this tale and I enjoyed it very much. As an audiobook, it was a great example of how the medium can work particularly well.

Highly recommended.

Audiobook review – “The Names” by Florence Knapp

This is the debut novel from British author Florence Knapp and she has taken the literary world by storm; the Sunday Times described The Names as the best debut novel in years. It is a really good page-turner which explores the range of possible outcomes in a scenario where one detail is changed, a ‘sliding doors moment’, if you will. This idea was of course popularised by the 1998 film of that name starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The novel is ambitious in scope, opening in 1987 and finishing in the present day, enabling the author to explore the impact of the key decision on the life outcomes of each of the main characters. 

Central character Cora is an Irish woman who lives in suburban London with her GP husband Gordon, their 9 year-old daughter Maia and their newborn baby son. All appears to be quite normal but it is clear there is a degree of tension in the household, Gordon getting angry with Cora, for example, when the baby cries at night. Over breakfast one morning, Gordon reminds Cora that her task that day is to register the baby’s birth and we learn that his instruction is that the baby is to be called Gordon, after himself and the child’s grandfather, a family tradition that is to be maintained. Cora clearly has no say in the matter and her helplessness becomes apparent when she fantasises about giving the child an alternative name. She toys with the name ‘Julian’, liking its meaning – ‘sky father’. Her daughter, Maia, also offers a suggestion, ‘Bear’ which connotes both brave and fierce, and soft and cuddly. 

Thereafter the book explores the three possible scenarios proffered in the opening pages, exploring each pathway in alternate chapters – what happens if Cora obeys Gordon’s instruction; what happens if she defies him and goes with her own choice, Julian, a respectable name; and what happens if she goes with Maia’s suggestion, Bear, something quite unusual, bohemian and very unlike the middle-class suburban kind of name that goes with Gordon’s carefully cultivated image. In the very next trio of chapters we learn of Gordon’s reaction and the domestic situation that the couple are in is laid bare. When Cora obeys, Gordon is satisfied, but his control over her and her submission is reaffirmed. When Cora selects Julian or Bear, the act of seeming defiance triggers a violent reaction in Gordon. 

It is not just Cora’s life that is explored in the alternate scenarios in the rest of the book, but also that of the children. To what extent does ‘naming’ pre-figure a person’s destiny? Is the baby a different person because he was called ‘Bear’ rather than Gordon, for example, or is it the reaction of the father and the result of that reaction that impacts on the child’s future? I think the author is saying that both can be true. As well as exploring this interesting idea, the author also gives us a real page-turner of a book, in effect three stories for the price of one! It is also well-written and she handles the difficult topic of domestic abuse sensitively. 

I did initially find it quite challenging to follow all the stories and found I forgot which aspects of the history related to which narrative. It might have been better to explore two alternatives rather than three. My difficulty could also have been due to the fact that I listened to this on audiobook; had I read it in book form I would have been able to flick back to earlier chapters to keep track. On the plus side, the audiobook was read brilliantly by Dervla Kirwan. 

I recommend this book highly – it deserves the praise it has had and I can’t wait to see what else this author comes up with. 

Audiobook review – “The Lamb” by Lucy Rose

I am still working my way through the Booker shortlist so no further reviews to offer there at this point in time, so I’d like to share with you, a book I listened to on audio a few months ago. This is the first novel from young writer Lucy Rose (although she has a number of short film credits to her name) and I feel sure it will not be her last. I understand that this book falls into the sub-genre of fem-gore and I can’t think of anything I have read that is quite like it. 

The novel is set in a small town in Cumbria. The era is not specified; it seems contemporary, but there is an air of datedness about the setting that suggests somewhere left behind, or even timeless, removed from the modern world of technology. The story centres on the relationship between Margot, whose age is not stated, but who seems pre-adoloescent, and her Mama. There is no father – he disappeared a long time ago. Margot and her mother live in a remote rural location close to the woods in a dilapidated cottage. They live an isolated life although Margot does go to school – she walks to the main road to pick up the school bus. The bus driver is one of the few people outside of the home that Margot has any meaningful interactions with. He clearly has some concerns about Margot and her home life. Margot has one school friend. 

Quite early on in the book it becomes clear why Margot’s Mama wishes to live away from prying eyes; she has cannibalistic urges and fulfils these by luring lone wanderers from the woods (whom she terms “strays”), and killing and eating them. The descriptions are graphic, not for the faint-hearted, but powerful and vivid. Mama is a damaged individual – she has devastating mood swings and is unable to care for her daughter. She is neglectful both physically and emotionally. But of course, Margot knows no different and loves her mother. She seems to have a sense that their lifestyle is unusual, and Mama instils in her a deep suspicion of the outside world which compels her to maintain secrecy about their lives. 

There is a sense that the state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely. One day, a “stray” called Eden arrives at the house. Initially, Mama plans to kill her, just like all the others, but Eden seems to have a hold over Mama. Tensions arise in the three-way relationship between Margot, her Mama and their visitor. Margot’s approaching adolescence also threatens to upset the hitherto peculiar equilibrium of the household and a point is reached where action must be taken.

This is a startling but utterly compelling novel. It is violent, graphic, sexually explicit and very dark, but the psychological horror makes it a real page-turner. The main characters of Margot, Mama and Eden are powerfully drawn and convincing even though their actions beggar belief. Even the minor characters, like the bus driver, add real depth to the story. 

We read it in my book club and all loved it. The audiobook is brilliantly read by Emma Rydal who brings some very special qualities to her narration.

Highly recommended.

Literary adventures in the Netherlands

Relaxing Zeeland

I spent a couple of weeks in my beloved Zeeland recently, a place we have been visiting annually for almost 25 years now. It’s a place where you meet so few Brits and I often find myself feeling the need to explain why I would holiday in such a remote and seemingly unprepossessing place. I am always shocked, therefore when, very occasionally, I bump into someone who knows exactly where I am talking about. This happened just a couple of days ago while chatting to someone I have not met before in my organisation, who is Dutch and knew exactly every town I was talking about!

Middelburg, the main city in the province of Zeeland might just be my favourite place in the world and the only other place I would want to settle permanently outside of Greater Manchester or the UK. It is more of a large town than a city and it is beautiful and relaxing and historic and friendly. It also has probably the best bookshop in Zeeland, a wonderful independent store called De Drukkery, a must-see if you ever find yourself in this part of Europe.

Getting ready for Kerstmas in the Markt, the main square in Middelburg

This trip was our longest ever and very off-season – now that we are not so bound by school term times. We decided to take a trip to Den Haag, just a couple of hours by train from our nearest train station in Goes. Den Haag is a city we have visited briefly before and were very impressed with so wanted to spend a bit more time there. It does not pack as big a punch as Amsterdam or Rotterdam (both of which are actually very close by) but it is a lovely city, rather more relaxed and less touristy than its brasher neighbours. It is also the home of the Dutch parliament and most government ministries, the offices of the Dutch royal family, the International Court of Justice and many international embassies, so it has a feeling of gravitas and authority about it.

The Binnenhof, the home of the Dutch parliament is one of the oldest parliamentary estates in the world still in use. It is undergoing some extensive renovation at the moment so we were unable to visit it. The International Court of Justice is housed in the stunning Peace Palace – again, unfortunately, it was not open to visitors on the days we were there, but I feel sure we will go back.

The Binnenhof, Den Haag

I did not mind this too much as my main objective was actually to visit the world famous Mauritshuis museum, a lifelong ambition of mine. This is a small and stunning museum, located close to the Binnenhof that houses two paintings with literary connections – Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius.

I adore Vermeer’s work – it captures everything that Holland means to me. There was an exhibition of almost all of Vermeer’s paintings at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2023. I would have made a special trip to go and see it, but it very quickly sold out so I was unable to get tickets (although I have just learned that there is a documentary about it now available on Amazon Prime). Girl with a Pearl Earring did not have to travel very far as the Rijksmuseum is less than 60km from the Mauritshuis, the home of the painting since 1902. Tracy Chevalier hit literary gold with her 1999 novel of the same name. It was only her second book and it made her name. I remember reading the book when it came out and I absolutely loved it. It was also what stimulated my interest in the work of Vermeer. We made out first visit to Zeeland in 2002 and I have been in love with the Netherlands and with painting from the Dutch Golden Age (broadly, the 17th century) ever since.

If it was a joy to see Girl with a Pearl Earring in real life, Fabritius’s The Goldfinch (Het Puttertje in Dutch) took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes. It is tiny, a little over 30cm high and 20cm wide, and it is so simple, but so deeply captivating – a wild bird, fixed to a perch by a delicate chain. The colours are muted and earthy, apart from a dash of yellow gold on the bird’s wing. The shadow of the bird on the plastered wall behind it creates a sense of foreboding and shows the painter’s skill at creating a sense of light and shade.

Donna Tartt’s book of the same name is one of my all-time favourite reads – I read it about five years ago and it sparked my interest in both this painting (which I had only been vaguely aware of up to that point) and the painter Carel Fabritius. His story is also a fascinating one – he died in an explosion in the city of Delft in 1654 (the year The Goldfinch was completed), at the tender age of 32. His canon consists of only thirteen known paintings, others are assumed to have been lost in the tragedy in Delft which claimed his life. I read Laura Cumming’s excellent biography of the painter, Thunderclap, earlier this year and it has made me want to see all of his works in real life. I now have three under my belt – in addition to The Goldfinch, I saw Young Man in a Fur Cap and A View of Delft, with a Musical Instrument Seller’s Stall on a visit to the National Gallery last January. There are three more in the Netherlands (in Amsterdam and Rotterdam) which I am sure I will get to see at some point, a further two in Germany and Poland, and all the rest but one are in North America. Sadly, I suspect the one in the Pushkin museum in Moscow will never be ticked off.

The town of Delft, where Fabritius died, and also the home of Vermeer (there is a museum there dedicated to him), is just a half an hour tram ride from Den Haag. We paid a brief visit to the town and will definitely go back as it is beautiful.

So, another magical, inspiring and restorative visit to the Netherlands and to Zeeland, a place hardly anyone thinks to visit. Their loss, but that suits me just fine!

Booker shortlist review #3 – “Flesh” by David Szalay

This was the fourth book that I read from this year’s Booker shortlist (this post is entitled number three because I read The Land in Winter back in February) and it is the title that won the prize. This book is undoubtedly better (in my humble opinion) than The Rest of Our Lives and more compelling than The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, although I’m not sure I prefer it to The Land in Winter. It is David Szalay’s second attempt at the Booker, his 2016 novel All That Man Is having been shortlisted previously. This review does not contain significant spoilers, but it is a tough one to review without giving away a little of the events. 

The novel centres on one main character, István, and follows the ups and downs of his life. We first meet him as a teenager in a small town in Hungary where he lives with his mother. István is on the cusp of sexual maturity and, not untypically, feels himself alone, different from other boys around him. When one of his classmates arranges an initiatory sexual encounter for him with a willing girl he at first seems to believe that this will launch him into a world he so desperately wants to belong to – the sexually experienced – but it goes embarrassingly wrong and he finds himself further isolated. From there he falls into the arms of a neighbour – a woman in her forties – with whom he embarks on a journey of sexual discovery. Events will soon spiral out of control, however, and will lead István to the first ‘down’ in his eventful life.

A few years later István is in the military, and serves in Iraq, where he distinguishes himself. His life finally seems to be ‘up’ although his experiences leave him with PTSD. After the army, more disappointing sexual encounters follow and then a lack of direction and meaning until István finds himself in London where he is employed as a security guard in a nightclub. Late one night, whilst heading home after his shift, István intervenes in a street mugging and saves a man’s life. The man, ageing, but still active as a businessman running a high-end protection services agency, takes István under his wing. This will set István on another upward trajectory that will take him into the worlds of high finance and the English upper classes. 

There is a lot going on in this novel – we follow the path of István’s life from the moment things start happening for him (as a boy in Hungary), to, really, a point when things stop happening for him. A period, I am guessing, of about 40 years. The novel is almost picaresque; it reminded me a little of the 1975 Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon (starring Ryan O’Neal as the eponymous character) – a brilliant film if you haven’t seen it. The central character is not a bad person, in many ways he is highly sympathetic and someone who has a lot of love to give, but he also is blighted by a handful of bad decisions and some unforeseeable misfortunes. István, like Barry Lyndon, will experience tremendous highs and very deep lows. Sex is also a common theme and whatever stage István finds himself at, there is a sexual situation to match – sometimes this is part of the bad decision and sometimes it shows István at his most tender, some of his finest moments are in his intimate encounters with women.

Szalay’s writing style in this novel is spare, and the dialogue is particularly interesting, particularly authentic in its perfunctoriness, which, alongside the pretty fast-paced plot, makes it quite a fast read. I can see why it won the Booker – it is quite the novel of our times and with this particular writing style (so antithetical to Kiran Desai’s Indian epic) it seems to encapsulate the short attention span culture, the Instagram-worthy outer life but beneath which lies deep darkness. István lives in an era and a continent never more densely populated and yet as a man he finds himself so often alone.

This is a good read and I recommend it.