October 2018 – Julia's books

Seven stories to spook you this Hallowe’en!

halloween-2870607_1280 — *I just adore this picture!*

The clocks have gone back, the nights are drawing in so it must be time to curl up with a book! It’s Hallowe’en (sorry, I’m a pedant when it comes to this particular apostrophe) this Wednesday. 1st November is All Saints Day, the day we remember the dead. The night before was traditionally All Hallows’ Even, which has got shortened over the years. My attachment to the apostrophe spelling stems from a preference for the original festival rather than the saccharin, plasticised, commercialised, trick-or-treat dominated version that has taken over. I say this as a mother of three teenagers who went along with it all for many years, so no criticism at all intended (though I’m afraid I could NEVER bring myself to accept murdered schoolgirl costumes which still appal me).

However, not to be a party pooper, I thought you might you might like some Hallowe’en reading suggestions. Ghosty, spooky, scary books. Here are a few that I thought of:

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters – a poltergeist in an old manor house terrorises the inhabitants!
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins – dramatised brilliantly for television earlier this year, a legal drama but with the spectral presence of Anne Catherick.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – there will be a few of these knocking on my door next week no doubt. A brilliant, gory, scary book.
The Shining by Stephen King – or anything by Stephen King really! Great movie too.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt – still one of my favourite novels ever. Less about ghosts and ghouls, more about death, rituals and a dysfunctional coterie held together by a shared dark secret. If you liked The Blair Witch Project you’ll love this.
Dracula by Bram Stoker – well, obviously!
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James – this Edwardian novella ticks all the boxes – ghosts, orphans, wicked uncles, country houses – and is the perfect length for the time-pressed who want a scare!

I hope you like these suggestions. I’d love to hear yours. I can’t bring myself to say ‘Happy Hallowe’en’ (really?) but I’ll enjoy the cold, the dark, the treats, the pumpkins, the candles and the small skeletons knocking on the door.

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Man Booker shortlist review #3 – “Everything Under” by Daisy Johnson

This was my third book from this year’s Man Booker shortlist and the one I have enjoyed the least so far. At just 277 pages it’s the shortest novel on the shortlist, but, I’m afraid to say, for me, the end could not come soon enough. At just 28, Daisy Johnson is apparently the youngest author ever to grace the shortlist, and her achievement is remarkable considering this is her debut novel (she has had a short story collection published previously). There is no doubting her talent: the concept of the book is ingenious (a modern re-telling of the Oedipus myth) and her prose is as fluid and alive as the river that dominates the book. However, for me, there was something in the execution that was missing.

Everything Under img Gretel is a 32 year old woman living alone in Oxford. She works as a lexicographer, a natural career for her as her life has been dominated by words – their invention, their use, and, perhaps also, their lack. She had an unconventional upbringing with an eccentric mother on a canal boat. In her early years, Gretel and her mother developed their own language, a succession of private words for things for which a single expressive term did not exist, for example “sheesh time” refers to a desire to spend time alone, and “Bonak” will come to mean something to be afraid of, something threatening.

Gretel has been estranged from her mother since she was 16 years old. It is remarkable that this young woman has managed to make any sort of life for herself at all, given the background which we come to learn about. But Gretel has always known that she would be reunited with her mother, either dead or alive. For years she has occasionally contacted morgues and hospitals to ask if any unclaimed, unidentified older women have been admitted. One day, a morgue assistant says that, in fact, yes, a middle-aged woman fitting Gretel’s description had been admitted. Gretel believes this is it, and she goes off fully expecting to find the body of her mother. She is disappointed to find that it is not, but it sets her off on a quest in search of her mother.

This is where it gets confusing, because each of the eight chapters is divided into sections headed “The Cottage”, “The Hunt” and “The River”. The novel jumps back and forth between different times – the ‘cottage’ sub-chapters refer to Gretel caring for her mother at her home (she found her). Sarah, the mother, either has dementia or a serious mental illness so the circumstances are challenging to say the least. The ‘hunt’ sections refer to Gretel’s search for her mother, and the ‘river’ sections look back on the past, to Gretel’s past, her childhood, and Sarah’s life before Gretel was born.

None of it proceeds in a linear fashion, which is fine, and normal for modern novels, but within the sub-stories (ie, cottage, river and hunt) there is jumping back and forth in time, so you need to be on your toes…which I was not, so I found it difficult to follow. Threaded through the ‘hunt’ and ‘river’ stories is the story of Margot/Marcus, a transgender child/adolescent who was the child of Roger and Laura, a couple Gretel meets in her search for her mother. Marcus was born Margot, and grew up as part of Roger and Laura’s family until one day he/she disappeared without explanation or further trace, a fact the couple have never come to terms with. There is a connection with Sarah that only becomes apparent much later.

I knew before I read the book that this novel is a re-telling of the Oedipus myth – in Greek mythology, Oedipus, you may know, inadvertently killed his own father and married his birth-mother, Jocasta, who then hanged herself when she discovered the truth. Even when you know the ending to the Oedipus story, it is difficult to see how Everything Under is going to end. It wasn’t until about three-quarters of the way through that I had the a-ha moment. In that sense it’s an extremely clever novel, brilliantly conceived, and I felt that perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention, but, in a way, that’s the point: I wasn’t paying enough attention because the book rather lost me as a reader. I found the narrative voice confused and confusing, the handling of past and present was not done as well as it might have been, in my view, and this was frustrating. There have been some comments from the Man Booker judges this year about editing, and how some of the books on the longlist could have been much the better for being shorter. This is clearly not the case with a shortish novel like this one, but I did feel that it needed a jolly good edit, a reordering, and I’m afraid I did think there was quite a bit of chaff (I still don’t understand the significance of the dog that Gretel finds!)

If you are interested in the Man Booker and in literature generally, I think this is an interesting read, to see how the modern novel is evolving, and to see how an ancient story might be handled in a modern setting. (I think a lot of popular soaps handle some of the same themes pretty successfully!) I found this novel somewhat laboured in its adherence to the myth and it sometimes got itself in knots. For me.

What has been your favourite/least favourite of the books shortlisted for the Man Booker?

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Man Booker Review #2 – “The Long Take” by Robin Robertson

Time for my second Man Booker shortlist review and of the three I have read so far, my favourite. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did; the subject matter – a D-Day veteran suffering from PTSD – did not appeal particularly and when I saw the format – extended verse – I found my heart sinking slightly. That’s totally unfair, and I can in no way begin to justify that reaction other than to say I just love a good solid novel! I am delighted to say I was completely wrong, and I think it’s great when our prejudices and preferences are tested and we are pleasantly surprised.

The Long Take img The central character is Walker, a man from rural Nova Scotia, who fought with the Allied forces in the D-Day landings. He has seen and experienced terrible events, death and injury that most of us can barely even imagine, and he survived. After the end of the war, he goes back to the United States and finds himself living among the homeless in New York City. The book is divided into four sections: 1946, 1948, 1951 and 1953 each set in a different US city (though Los Angeles is the setting for both 1948 and 1953). As he reflects on his experiences, it becomes clear that it was impossible for him to return home to Canada. He reminisces about the quiet, gentle life he led there, where the rhythms of the seasons, the dependence on the harvests of the seas, and community events (such as village hall dances) dominate everyone’s existence. It’s as if the contrast between that life and the brutality he witnessed in the war means he fears contaminating the innocence of those he has left behind. He can never go back, never unsee what he has seen, and those he once loved will never be able to understand how he has been changed.

In New York City, Walker lives among the vulnerable and the dispossessed. He is already suffering the effects of his PTSD:

“A dropped crate or a child’s shout, or car

Backfiring, and he’s in France again’

That taste in his mouth. Coins. Cordite. Blood.”

In 1948 Walker moves to Los Angeles and begins working on a city newspaper, initially writing film reviews, but then, as his profile grows and he earns respect among fellow journalists for his writing, he is given weightier projects. He persuades his Editor to let him do an extended investigation into homelessness. This takes him to San Francisco in 1951, and then back to LA in 1953. Walker is an observer, he seems to move on the periphery. He earns the trust of the cast of characters he befriends on the streets and his own personal trauma enables him to empathise with them:

                “People; just like him.

                Having given up the country for the city,

                Boredom for fear, the faces

                Gather here in these streets

                Like spectators in a dream.

                They wanted to be anonymous

                Not swallowed whole, not to disappear.”

The final part of the book is the most intensely drawn. Walker recalls the devastation of older parts of the city, the traditional buildings, to make way for modern concrete highways and car parks, fuelled by corruption in the city authorities and mafia money. In the process many of the itinerant population were made homeless from whatever meagre shelter they had created for themselves and effectively thrown onto the scrap heap. The account of the destruction of the soul of the city is juxtaposed with vivid and detailed descriptions of the war:

                “The side of a building fell like a tree.

                Then the rest of it just collapsed

                In on itself, immediately lost

                In a dense cloud of brick dust;

                The delay of the noise and shock waves.

                There was an army there, pulling down everything north of 1^st.

                …

The sound of mortars like gravel on a metal slide; a running tear. Right next to me, young Benjamin took some shrapnel in the throat: his windpipe torn open, so he’s gargling blood and staring at me, fumbling at his neck like he feels his napkin is slipping.”

What is fascinating and moving about the work is how Walker’s wartime experiences have made him more human, more empathic, whereas those who live oblivious are consumed by inhumanity, lack of feeling for others and, in the case of the authorities, cruelty. America is failing those in need in the pursuit of economic growth, greed and modernism.

I thought I would find the verse structure annoying, but it is beautiful, as is the economy of Robertson’s language. It perfectly suits the slightly ethereal, enigmatic central character and his own relatively silent presence in the communities in which he moves and verse provides a way of creating the vivid imagery of his wartime recollections.

I recommend this book highly. Don’t be put off if you are not used to reading verse, you will get used to it quickly. An amazing piece of work.

What is your favourite book on the Man Booker 2018 shortlist so far?

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Man Booker Review #1 – “Milkman” by Anna Burns

With just a few days to go now until the announcement of this year’s Man Booker Prize winner, my goal to read all six titles by the 16^th is not going well! In fact, it’s my worst performance in several years; I have only just started on my third title. Milkman took me some time to read. It is quite long, but it is also written in a way that I found it nearly impossible to read at my usual pace. The lyrical prose style that means you have to read nearly every word in order to feel the full impact. The same is true of the second book I read, The Long Take by Robin Robertson, which is in fact an extended poem, although it is somewhat shorter. I’m now on Everything Under, also quite short, but I’m not really enjoying it so finding it quite hard going.

Milkman is set in Belfast during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the central character and narrator is a young Catholic woman who finds herself drawn unwillingly into a relationship with a local paramilitary leader. It is not clear when the book is set, but I am guessing around the late 1970s, early ‘80s. Northern Ireland is known to be socially conservative, but the general sense of the place of women in society suggests to me that it dates back quite some time. Our central character (not named, I’ll come onto this) is from a large family. Her father is dead and she has several siblings, both older and younger. She is in a “maybe-relationship” with a local young man, who she has been seeing for about a year, though they have not made a commitment to one another. She is keen on running as a hobby and shares this with “third brother-in-law”. Whilst out running one day in a local park she finds that she is observed by a man in a white van. Over subsequent weeks he infiltrates her life by stealth, indicating that he expects her to have a relationship with him. He is known only as “Milkman”. It becomes clear to her that he is quite a powerful local figure in the paramilitary world, so not only does she have little choice about whether to become involved with him or not, it is made quite clear to her that as long as she goes along with him no harm will come to her “Maybe-boyfriend”.

The pace of the novel is slow as we follow her complex internal dialogue about what she should do, her fears, her accounts of how the community reacts to her activities and descriptions of what life is like in this environment of threat, surveillance, oppression and violence. At first I found this slow pace frustrating, especially as there were parts early on that I felt could have been edited down. However, by the end of the book I could see that the author was building her character’s world quite carefully. Some readers will no doubt be only too aware of what life was like at this time in Belfast, the segregation, the violence, the suspicion, but most of us will not, and the slow pace ultimately helped to draw me in and help me appreciate the character’s dilemma. The sense of how she had no choice, the sense of how any behaviour outside the accepted norms is considered beyond the pale. For example, our character has a habit of “Walking while reading”, which almost everyone around her considers unacceptable behaviour and comments upon and encourages her to stop doing. It is ironic that such innocuous behaviour is thought to be dangerous and provocative in a context where shooting, killing and blackmail are not.

None of the characters in the book are named, all are referred to by their relationship to the central character (eg Ma, wee sisters, first sister), or some other title. This is not as complicated as it sounds and I think the author is trying to make her characters representative of the lived experiences of so many ordinary people in Northern Ireland at that time. It is also indicative of the dehumanising effect of the Troubles, and in particular what our young woman went through. By removing any autonomy or choice from her (and it was not just Milkman doing this, it was the strictures of the community) there is a gradual destruction of her selfhood.

So, a long and complex read, but a brilliant novel from a very talented writer. The prose is sublime, the language is like nothing I’ve read before, except perhaps Lisa McInerney. It won’t appeal to those who like action and plot, but for an examination of the day to day life of a young person in Northern Ireland during that terrible period it is something quite special, and very enlightening. Recommended.

Have you managed to read any of the Man Booker shortlisted titles yet?

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7 ways that reading improves your mental health

World-Mental-Health-Day

On World Mental Health Day, I would like to flag up the obvious – reading is good for you. If you need a reason, here are seven:

Reading reduces stress – it can slow your heart rate and help you relax.
It can help you sleep – reading before bed induces sleep much more effectively than any other activity. Switching off your mobile phone and picking up a book will promote good sleep hygiene.
Reading stops you ruminating – many of us build up our anxiety levels by going over and over stressful experiences. Reading a book will take you out of that negative thought cycle.
Books do not mess with your melatonin – unlike a phone. Young people in particular benefit from putting the phone, with its melatonin-suppressing blue light, away and picking up a book.
Reading explands your mind – much more than YouTube or EastEnders ever will.
Reading improves focus and concentration – and that can help you manage the demands of life more effectively, especially if you find it difficult to complete tasks, with all the consequent pressures that brings.
You won’t be comparing yourself with perfection – most characters in good books are flawed…like the rest of us. Normal. You will not meet people living seemingly amazing lives, with perfect bodies and hundreds of friends, who are going to make you feel rubbish. You will meet characters like you. And others not like you. Life’s rich tapestry in fact.

So, celebrate World Mental Health Day by doing something for yourself and sitting down with a book.

New rules for life?

I dip into self-help books from time to time and have a reviewed a few on here, from Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying, which aims to improve our relationship with the things in our home, to Big Magic: Creative Living beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, which helped me to change my mindset about my right to be creative and to think of myself in that way. Both very powerful. Over the last few weeks I have been listening to Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet (audiobooks seems to take me much longer to get through), which I have found immensely enjoyable. I’d even go so far as to say it was inspirational. I also picked up Jordan Peterson’s much-hyped 12 Rules for Life: An antidote to chaos although I’m afraid I found it quite turgid and didn’t get very far before I had to take it back to the library for the next person on the reserve list.

So, I originally planned for this post to be a compare and contrast between the two, but it’s going to focus more on the Haig, which, from what I read, was better anyway. Matt Haig has suffered with depression and anxiety for much of his life and it sounds as if this has at times been debilitating. Mental illness is a huge topic of conversation at the moment, rightly so, and it is very much a spectrum from occasionally feeling down or going through periods of stress and anxiety, to full-blown depression that afflicts people for years, to suicide. Matt Haig does not use this book directly to examine or discuss his own battles with depression, it’s not a memoir, but he does refer to it throughout as a way of illustrating his points.

Matt Haig’s book is more about how modern life is placing almost unbearable pressures on human beings today. He is particularly concerned about young people, and the impact of social media on their mental health. Social media forces us all into unrealistic comparisons where we will inevitably fall short. And the fact that we are constantly connected, constantly reachable and how it is so difficult to ‘switch off’ (both literally and figuratively) makes so many of us vulnerable. It is ironic that at a time when we have more ‘friends’ and followers than ever before, we seem to be more lonely than ever. This topic has been in the news again this week as new research undertaken by the BBC is revealing the extent of loneliness felt amongst young people in particular.

Notes On A Nervous Planet is, in my view, required reading, especially for young people. There are lots of people on my Christmas list who will be getting copies. I listened to it on audiobook and found Matt’s lovely, warm voice, made it particularly compelling. I will now buy the book, however, it’s one I’d definitely like to read again.

By contrast, the little bit I read of Jordan Peterson’s left me rather cold. I think with self-help books, there are just the ones you like and the ones you don’t, and I’m afraid 12 Rules for Life probably falls into the latter category. His rules include “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping”, “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something that you don’t” and “Do not bother children when they are skateboarding”. I’m sure there is some real wisdom in some of these more cryptic headlines, but there are a lot of words to plough through before you get to it and, sadly, it did not resonate with me. I fell asleep several evenings, just reading the (very long) Foreword! I’ll give it another go, when my turn comes around for the reservation, but I’ll not be rushing out to buy it. As a general rule, I don’t do very well with ‘Rules’ and prescriptions, particularly for something as chaotic as life.

If you have read either of these books, I’d be interested to know what you think.

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Kids book review: “The 1,000 Year Old Boy” by Ross Welford

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a huge fan of children’s literature and regularly post about kids’ books I have read. I would encourage all adult readers to dip into children’s literature from time to time. For many of us the love of reading was fostered in childhood, and it can be a lovely experience to rediscover that innocent joy. For some, that might mean going back to old favourites (for me it was Enid Blyton, Lewis Carroll and Puffin Books, and it was wonderful to re-read these with my children when they were younger) but I would also urge you to explore current authors and titles. If you have school-age children or grandchildren it can be a great way of understanding what their priorities are, their hopes and fears, and the challenges they face, which may be rather different to our own.

As you may know, I set up a Facebook Reading Challenge at the start of the year, with a different theme for each month. September was a children’s book and I chose Ross Welford’s The 1,000 Year Old Boy. This was Welford’s third book, published earlier this year. I loved his first novel Time Travelling with a Hamster which I read with a book group I used to run at my youngest daughter’s primary school. The children all loved it too.

The 1000 year old boy img This book, like Welford’s others, is set in North Tyneside (where I used to live, so it resonates with me for that reason too), on the coast east of Newcastle. Alfie Monk is over 1,000 years old, having been born at the time of the Danish invasions of Britain. When he was young, his father was custodian of some ‘life pearls’ within which were stored an elixir of eternal life. To access the elixir the life pearls had to be smashed and the liquid consumed. Alfie’s father was involved in a fight with someone who tried to steal the life pearls, and he was killed. Alfie (unfortunately?) smashed two of them accidentally; he and his mother (and their cat!) drank the liquid, meaning they will never age and therefore never die of natural causes. The curse can only be lifted by drinking another dose of liquid, but there is only one life pearl left. This is hidden on a remote island off the Northumberland coast.

Alfie and his mother live a quiet and discreet life in a secluded cottage in the woods. By moving around every few years they have managed to avoid discovery and the authorities. Alfie’s existence is awkward though; if he makes a friend they soon become suspicious of the fact that he does not grow up like them, and it is the betrayal of one former friend in particular which leads to a fire at the cottage which destroys Alfie’s home and kills his mother. Alfie finds himself in the care of the local authority and is unable to reveal anything about himself, fearing the consequences. Fortunately, Alfie makes two good friends, Aiden and Roxy, both of whom live on the estate close to Alfie’s cottage. He reveals his secret to them and they set out to help him.

Roxy is a feisty young girl, and a wonderful character. Shrewd, able, quick-witted and intelligent, she has a resourcefulness which no doubt comes from her being the sole carer for her disabled mother. Aiden is less sure of himself and is a thoughtful young boy, whose family moved onto the estate after running into financial difficulties. His parents argue a lot and his friendship with Roxy and Alfie helps him get away from his problems at home. All three main child characters are strongly developed, well-rounded and believable. The narration switches between Aiden and Alfie and I loved the way the author uses their different speaking styles to convey character.

I love the way Welford writes; he has a real ear for the language that young people use and there are great comic touches in this book which will appeal to kids’ sense of humour. There are some challenging themes here – I read Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time earlier this year, where the main protagonist has a condition which means he ages extremely slowly. Rather than being some miracle to be aspired to, Tom Hazard, like Alfie Monk in Welford’s book, finds it lonely and isolating because it prohibits normal human relationships. Alfie says throughout that he just wants to be a normal boy, to go to school. At one point he talks heartbreakingly about the “Prison of my deathless life.”

This novel has everything you want from a children’s book – pace, plot, great characters who grow and learn from their experiences, and suspense. It has a happy ending. Although I believe that children should not be completely shielded from some of the tragic realities of life (Alfie’s mother is killed and for a time he believes his cat was also), I also think it’s important for the 9-12 age group that there is positive resolution and that good things can come out of bad. That way, I believe, we can help build children’s resilience, a role that books have always had in my life for sure.

Highly recommended for 9-12 year olds.

If you have read this book, I would love to hear your thoughts.

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