Month: April 2021

Earth Day 2021 and a lost cat

It’s Earth Day today and I am relieved at last to see the United States taking a global leadership role once again in pushing urgent climate matters forward, setting new and ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions. Let us hope all nations follow-through (and in fact go further than) the promises that have been outlined today.

The global coronavirus pandemic has, I think, caused many of us to reflect on the way we live our lives and to ask ‘How did we get here?’ What bits of the present world order have led to this desperate situation? I think our cavalier attitude to the environment is right up at the top there among the possible answers. Over this last year of curtailed movements many of us have got to know our local areas much better and I have become well-acquainted with many of the beautiful and interesting trees in my neighbourhood that I see on regular walks. It’s not that I didn’t know they were there before but I definitely paid less attention. Even the most pedestrian trees are quite spectacular when you get close to them. Here are a few in my locale:

Two trees side by side that have become one!
The exposed roots on this tree, which is growing on a slope, look other-worldly!
I wonder what caused this midriff bulge!

I started to see trees and their importance in a different way after I read The Overstory, the 2018 Booker-shortlisted novel by Richard Powers. It is an extraordinary book that I still consider one of the best I have ever read. Another book I read more recently, Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness, was a rather more frightening foreshadowing of where we might end up if we, as the nations of the world, continue in the present direction of travel. Both books are sobering reads for World Earth Day.

Another thing that has made me very reflective this week, and, indeed, got me out and about in my neighbourhood, is that our lovely family cat Ziggy went missing seven days ago. We have had him almost eleven years and we think he is about twelve (he came from a cat rescue centre so we are not really sure), but he is the friendliest cat I have ever shared my space with and we all miss him terribly.

Our handsome boy

He never goes very far so we have hunted high and low for him in the neighbourhood. I have put up posters and leafleted all the houses in the vicinity of our house, but so far to no avail. I have had so many calls from different people wishing me luck in the search as well as possible sightings (all false alarms sadly, as a neighbour of ours has a very similar-looking cat). It is heartwarming to think that people take notice and want to help.

We continue to look and to hope.

It is that spirit and human kindness that has got us through a pandemic and will, I hope, get us through the challenges we face in the future.

Haven’t picked up a book at all this week – too distracted.

Happy reading everyone.

Book review: “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig

This was the March choice for my Facebook Reading Challenge. Some members of the Facebook group had already read it and it’s fair to say that there were some mixed feelings. It was described as “triggering” since it concerns a woman suffering from severe depression, some loved it, while another found it predictable. The central character is Nora Seed, a thirty-five year old woman from Bedford whose life seems to be in a deep rut. The book opens with a neighbour delivering her dead cat, Volts, who he has found in the road. Nora assumes the cat has been hit by a car. This would be upsetting enough on its own, but there follows a cascade of bad news: she loses her job at a music shop, she learns that her brother, from whom she is estranged, came into the shop on her day off (to avoid her she assumes), she loses her only private piano pupil, she has an argument in a shop with an old friend, with whom she was in a band with her brother. To make matters worse, everyone else’s life seems to have moved on to bigger and better things – all her social media contacts seem to be leading great lives and her best friend Izzy is in Australia. When her elderly neighbour, Mr Bannerjee, whose medication she collects regularly, tells her that he no longer needs her to do this for him because the pharmacy will deliver, it is the final straw. Nora feels her life is pointless and she decides that she will end it.

This is the triggering part, the first twenty or so pages. But if you can get beyond this section, the book changes quite dramatically. On the stroke of midnight, Nora finds herself transported to ‘the midnight library’ where the librarian is a person from her past, the school librarian Mrs Elms, who had had a strong an influence on her. When she was younger, Nora had had a lot of potential; she was bright, something that Mrs Elms had recognised and encouraged, and went on to do a philosophy degree. She was also a gifted swimmer, encouraged by her father, and had she not quit, might have had significant sporting success. Nora also had musical talent, both as a performer and songwriter, and had been in a band, The Labyrinths, with her brother Joe and another friend, Ravi (with whom she has the confrontation in the shop). All of this potential came to nought, however. Her mother’s early death affected her badly, she quit swimming, disappointing her father, she quit the band (too anxious), leading to the falling-out with her brother and her partner left her two days before their wedding.

Nora is full of regrets. Her life seems to be one long series of ‘might have beens’. When she reaches the midnight library she is given the chance to experience what might have happened in some of these lives, had she pursued them. She meets herself as an Olympic swimmer giving a speech at a conference, as an international pop superstar, living in Australia with Izzy (another chance she turned down) and married to Dan her former lover. Of course, Nora learns, that life is always complex and nothing is ever completely good or completely bad, that even in these other lives, about which she fantasises, there are downs as well as ups.

The book is an interesting one, a really original idea. I like Matt Haig’s work, both his fiction and non-fiction. I found this an enjoyable read, but I don’t think it is his most creative or interesting book – I prefer How To Stop Time. I did find it a bit predictable and after the third of fourth ‘life’ which Nora gets to try out, you work out where it is all going. It is quite simplistic in some ways, but it also lays out some simple truths very powerfully, and that is its main strength. Matt Haig is regularly scathing about the effects of social media and he has plenty of digs in this book too about its damaging effect on the mental health of so many people:

“Nora went through her social media. No messages, no comments, no new followers, no friend requests. She was antimatter, with added self-pity. She went on Instagram and saw everyone had worked out how to live, except her.”

Nora has been sucked into the fallacy that life is only real if it is lived on social media. If it’s not on Facebook it didn’t really happen. There is a lesson in here for all of us, regardless of our mental health status.

I would recommend this book, although some people might find the beginning quite challenging.

Facebook Reading Challenge – April choice

I’m a bit late posting my April choice for the reading challenge this month, which is ironic given that I finished the March book ages ago! I hope your Easter weekend was a good one. Mine was strangely very busy and had been preceded by a very busy, I would even go so far as to say an intense week, so that is my excuse for my tardiness and I am sticking to it.

This month’s theme is a children’s book (always a joy!) and I am delighted to be returning to an author whose first book was the very first January choice for my very first reading challenge in 2018! Emily Bain Murphy’s wonderful debut novel The Disappearances was a resounding success and almost everyone who joined me on the reading challenge that first month loved it. My elder daughter, who is now almost seventeen read it at the time and considers it one of her favourite ever books. She has re-read it at least twice since! Emily Bain Murphy’s new novel is called Splinters of Scarlet and it was published in July of last year by Pushkin children’s books. My daughter devoured it within days of getting it, and it comes highly recommended from her. She says it is a slower burn, not quite as compelling as The Disappearances to begin with, but it gets much better.

Look out for my review of last month’s book in the coming days – Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library. I did enjoyed this book very much, but, as many others have pointed out, it was a hard read to begin with.

I would love for you to join me on the reading challenge this month or to hear your thoughts if you have already read this book.

Happy reading!