Tag: Literature

Booker book review #2 – “Glory” by NoViolet Bulawayo

This is my second Booker Prize shortlist review and I hardly know where to begin in writing about this novel. I don’t think anything I write could truly do it justice. It should be sufficient for me to just say “please read” and leave it at that. This book is a remarkable piece of work and I honestly felt in the presence of something great throughout. I listened to it on audio and the reading by Zimbabwean actress Chipo Chung was pure perfection – the range of voices and narrative tones she was able to deploy was outstanding. And you know when you listen to an audiobook and you feel like the narrator is reading it for the first time? Well, that is definitely not the case here; the narrator feels every word.

NoViolet Bulawayo is a new author to me but she is undoubtedly a literary heavyweight, being the first black African woman to have been shortlisted twice (her debut novel, We Need New Names, was shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2013). She was born in Zimbabwe, but completed her higher education in the United States. 

Glory is political satire at its acerbic best. The novel is set in the fictional African country of Jidada (“with a da and another da”) and all the characters are animals. It opens at a rally where The Old Horse, the country’s elderly ruler who has been in place for decades since the War of Liberation from the colonisers, supported by his wife, Dr Sweet Mother, and other denizens, are celebrating their great achievements before the ‘people’. This is a lengthy section that exposes the ego, hypocrisy, untramelled power, and unlimited (and stolen) wealth that characterises the leadership.  Jidada got rid of its colonial ruler, but got a tyrannical and autocratic leader in its place. The regime is cruel, murderous and corrupt. It is a thinly-disguised critique of Robert Mugabe and his followers in Zimbabwe. It is more than that, however, for it does not let so-called advanced nations off the hook. With its linguistic echoes of Trump and its suggestion that other governments are happy to turn a blind eye to what is happening in Jidada where it suits them, it implicates leaders well beyond the borders of Jidada for the cruel oppression of the population. It also takes to task the “clicktivists” who criticise from afar, largely to satisfy their own needs, but to very little tangible effect.

The nation eventually tires of The Old Horse and particularly his wife, and there is a military coup, led by Tuvius Shasha, the former Vice President. The Old Horse goes into exile. The situation for the country does not improve, however. The economy in fact worsens still further and discontent abounds. Enter Destiny Lozikeyi, a gentle female goat who fled her village many years earlier but who has now returned to search for her family and her history. She shows her fellow citizens how desperate their situation is and, slowly, a citizen-led uprising begins.

It would be easy to describe this novel as an African Animal Farm, as many indeed have already done. True, it does many of the same things, but it is borne of an entirely different tradition, I think, and to draw parallels between the two is to over-simplify. The writing in Glory is breathtaking – it is a linguistic tour de force. The precision of its attack is awesome as it deftly dismantles every pretence of democracy, fairness and good governance that the leaders of Jidada claim. Africa is not the only focus of the author’s laser-like gaze, however; in her observation of referenda that return 90% plus votes in favour of the leaders she wags a finger at every dictator currently on the planet and the hypocritical international order that often enables them.  

I was blown away by this book. It is long, but worth every second. Highly recommended.

Literary Edinburgh

The Edinburgh Festival is currently underway. This almost month-long “event” is one of the highlights of the Scottish cultural calendar and world-renowned for its high quality, its breadth and its edginess. Between the main festival, the Fringe and not forgetting of course the book festival, there are literally hundreds of events to attend. So many events in fact that I don’t know how you would choose which ones to go to! I went once, many years ago, pre-children, and I remember seeing a comedian, a couple of plays, one of which was Shopping and F***ing by Mark Ravenhill (I can’t remember the other one) and going to the book festival. I went with a friend and we stayed with their grandmother. Accommodation in the city is at a premium during the festival, one of the main reasons I have not been since.

I have been to Edinburgh many times over the years and like the city very much. I’ve been for conferences, training events for my day job, to the Christmas markets, but I went recently with my son to a gig. We saw The Smile at the Usher Hall. It was a brief visit, but we did a self-guided walking tour which took me to parts of the city I had not previously seen. I thoroughly enjoyed it and vowed to return as soon as I could – perhaps when it’s less busy, although as it is the UK’s second most visited city, it is probably never not-busy!

To celebrate the festival, I thought I’d share some photos of my trip, particularly the literary aspects of the city.

The impressive Scott Monument, commemorating the city’s most famous literary son Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Edinburgh Castle dominates the city from every point!
One of the many highlights on the stunning Royal Mile, the John Knox House, parts of which date from the 15th century, is one of the oldest buildings in the city. It is now a museum telling the story of the Reformation. John Knox himself, the firebrand preacher, is not thought to have actually lived here!
The Burns Monument, commemorating Robert ‘Rabbie’ Burns (1759-1796), unofficial national poet of Scotland

Sir Henry Raeburn’s famous Reverend Robert Walker skating on Duddingston Loch. One of the many treasures to be found in the outstanding Scottish National Gallery, overlooking Princes Street Gardens

There are other literary highlights that I did not get to see (and some I saw but did not photograph!), such as the Conan Doyle pub, named in memory of the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories and an Edinburgh physician. There is also the Elephant House cafe, said to have been patronised by the likes of Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and JK Rowling. There is even a ‘Harry Potter trail’ which takes in locations that JK Rowling is said to have incorporated into the novels.

Edinburgh has so much to offer bookworms and literature buffs as well as just being a beautiful and interesting place to visit. If you go on a walking tour, however, wear your most comfortable shoes and be prepared to climb lots of stairs!

[Note to self: must improve photography to ensure I capture fewer random strangers in future!]

Women’s Prize shortlist announced today

Each year the Women’s Prize seems to get bigger and better! The idea for this wonderful initiative was first conceived in the early 1990s when it became apparent that despite women authoring the majority of books published, they rarely achieved more than one or two places on the shortlist for the prestigious Booker Prize; in 1992, there was not even one woman writer on the shortlist. Author Kate Mosse was the driving force behind the prize and remains its Director. She is a formidable character and I am not surprised she was the one to get this going! The first winner was the late Helen Dunmore for her novel A Spell of Winter. Other winners have included Carol Shields, the late Andrea Levy, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Eimear MacBride, Ali Smith and Maggie O’Farrell.

Over the years the Prize has had a number of sponsors and has previously been named after them (the Orange Prize and the Bailey’s Prize), but since 2018 it has been known simply as the Women’s Prize and enjoys a range of joint sponsors. Its remit is not simply to award prizes for literary achievement, but also to support reading and creativity in the community more generally and to make a space in the literary world for women’s voices.

In many ways, the Prize feels more relevant than the Booker even, and I have particularly valued how, during the pandemic, the talks with authors, which often only took place in-person in London, came to Zoom, making the work and the writers more accessible.

The shortlist for the 2022 Women’s Prize was announced today and is as follows:

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead – I’ve already read and reviewed this one as it was shortlisted for last year’s Booker, and it is AMAZING!


The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak – set in Cyrpus in 1974 at the time of the island’s division.


Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason – 40 year old Martha seems to have it all until her marriage breaks down and she has to move back to her dysfunctional family home. Can her life ever be ‘fixed’?


The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini – Alethea is in an abusive marriage. She witnesses a woman murdered by her jealous lover and seems to see what her own future might be. Can she change her life’s trajectory?


The Sentence by Louise Erdrich – set in a Minneapolis bookshop during the tumultuous period November 2019 to November 2020 which is haunted by one of its now deceased customers. New employee Tookie must solve the mystery and make sense of events.


The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki – teenager Benny starts hearing voices after his father dies and his mother develops her own mental problems. He finds solace in the public library where he meets the characters who will help him through his grief.

This is a fascinating list of books and I would happily curl up on the sofa with any of them! I have long wanted to read Louise Erdrich’s work, so I think that may be the one I go to first.

Which do you fancy?

The winner is announced on 25 May and you can enter a competition to win copies of the shortlisted books by signing up to the the newsletter here.


Book review – “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens

This book has been a phenomenal success since its publication in 2018 and has spent most of that time on various best-seller lists. A film is now in production starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (who played Marianne, to great acclaim, in the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People) and I am reliably informed by a young person that Taylor Swift has written a song for it! I approached it with some trepidation – I don’t normally go for best-sellers and I feared this might be over-hyped and overly sentimental. I could not have been more wrong and my book club decided this might be one of the best books we had ever read.

Delia Owens
Delia Owens is better known as a conservationist than an author. Crawdads was her debut novel, published when she was 69.

The novel covers events in the period 1952 to 1970 and the central character is Kya (short for Catherine) Clark, known to the local rural community of Barkley Cove as “the swamp girl”. The North Carolina setting of the novel is crucial because Kya becomes an integral part of it. And the setting is brilliantly and powerfully evoked by the author.

The novel is told on two timelines. It opens in 1969 with the discovery of a body in an old tower beside the swamp. The victim is Chase Andrews, a local man, the sporting pride of Barkley Cove, suave, confident and outgoing, he is married but has a reputation as something of a playboy. The local police begin their investigation. The novel then reverts to 1952 where six year-old Kya, the fifth and youngest child of a ‘swamp’ family (one which lives in a rundown house beside the swamp, where their income is precarious and their reputation as outsiders separates them from the mainstream Barkley Cove community) watches her fragile mother walking down the dirt track away from their home, leaving the family for good. Kya’s father is a feckless, violent drunk and Kya’s older siblings gradually leave the home too, unable to bear his aggressive dominance. This leaves Kya on her own with her father. At times they are able to live relatively agreeably together – he sometimes gives her money from his war pension (the family’s only income) and she is able to purchase supplies from the town – but mostly, he disappears, sometimes for days at a time, and Kya is forced to learn to fend for herself. Eventually he disappears altogether. Kya manages to evade the local authorities who try and get her to attend school; they give up eventually too. Kya grows up alone developing an intimate knowledge of the natural world of the swamp, living in harmony with it.

Kya avoids everyone in the town, she has learned to stay under the radar of both the authorities and the two gossips, to whom she is a mystery, to be treated with suspicion and disdain, but she makes three friends: Jumpin’, and his wife Mabel, the proprietor of the swamp-side general store where she must go to replenish her basic supplies, and childhood playmate Tate Walker. When the young child Kya starts to visit his store alone, Jumpin’ quickly realises that she is living alone and he and his wife support and protect her discreetly as best they can; as “coloreds” they are themselves marginalised. Tate Walker was friends with Kya from a very young age when they played together, and is well aware of her father’s violent tendencies. His mother died, a loss which binds them, and he lives alone with his father. When Kya’s father vanishes they renew their acquaintance and their relationship deepens. They eventually become “lovers” of a kind, though avoid intercourse. Tate receives the education Kya is denied and is ambitious to go to college and study natural science. He promises that he will visit Kya during the vacations, but on his first visit home he spots Kya from a distance on the beach near her hut and realises that she is almost a wild creature (that is indeed part of what he loves about her) and that she will never be able to fit into the new academic world he now inhabits. Tate leaves Kya without saying goodbye or explaining.

In her deep grief at being abandoned once again Kya falls into a relationship with Chase Andrews. He seduces her and the two begin a secret affair. Chase tells Kya that he will marry her, though he never introduces her to his family. On a visit to Barkley Cove Kya sees an announcement in the local newspaper that Chase is engaged to be married.

Kya’s progress, from small child learning to live by her wits to beautiful young woman living alone on the swamp, fending for herself, is told alongside the story of the police investigation into Chase Andrews’s murder. Inevitably, the twin stories collide when Kya is accused by Chase’s mother and charged with the murder. The account of the trial is told in gripping detail in a way that is reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird. No spoilers here, however, as it will have you on the edge of your seat!

I listened to this on audio and it was read brilliantly by Cassandra Campbell, the same actress who read Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle so powerfully. If you’ve read the hype about this book then believe it! I cried several times throughout – there are so many big moments in it. The plotting is extremely clever. The characters are all strong, fully thought through and well-rounded. But what makes this book so brilliant, and what for me makes it great, is that it is just a cracking good story!

Highly recommended.

Book review – “Fear of Flying” by Erica Jong

I chose this book for the penultimate month of my 2021 reading challenge, the theme of which was an erotic novel. It is a genre that has a lot of trash, for sure, and most serious readers probably don’t delve into it that much, not for their reading pleasure anyway! But it is a legitimate literary genre and some undoubtedly heavyweight books and authors would be included on any list: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, of course, probably comes to mind first, but then there are also The Lover by Marguerite Duras, Fanny Hill by John Cleland, The Story of O by Pauline Reage, and Delta of Venus by Anais Nin. Some of these I’ve read, others not.

For me ‘erotic fiction’ is more than just ‘a book with lots of sex’; from more recent times I’d say, for example that Fifty Shades of Grey is an erotic novel (probably, since I haven’t read that either!) whereas others have fairly graphic sex in them, but it’s just part of the characters’ lives rather than being the main subject of the novel. Books I’ve reviewed here which I would put in this category include Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Beautiful World Where Are You?, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Call Me By Your Name, and Luster, to name but a few. Some of these are about sexual awakening, and there are others where sex involves a degree of abuse or exploitation. All of the above books appeared in various lists I consulted when I was considering which title to read, but I think there is nuance that is missing: many of these are good books where the sex scenes are well-written and won’t make you cringe, while in others the whole purpose of the story is an exploration of sex and sexuality, meant to in some way stimulate the reader’s own feelings on the subject – the depths and darknesses, fantasy, the timelessness of it, the human condition, the reproductive drive and animal pleasure.

So, that’s my mini-essay on what constitutes an erotic novel! The question is does Fear of Flying fall into that category? For me, no it doesn’t, though many compilers of lists of erotic fiction disagree with me (I wonder how many of them have read the books they are recommending!) What’s the book about? Well, the narrator and main character is Isadora Wing, a Jewish New Yorker, writer and daughter of a bohemian mother who had ambitions to be become an artist but ended up having children instead. This is the central tension in the novel: can a woman be an artist while also being a mother (for me this is the greater question, not the sexual freedom). Remember it was written in the early 1970s when the act of sex was still, in the minds of many, inextricably linked to reproduction rather than pleasure (at least for women), and for many more, confined to marriage. So, it was probably more erotic in its time than it feels today.

The novel opens with Isadora and her psychiatrist husband Bennett on a plane to Vienna (along with many other psychoanalysts of various types) where she will accompany him at a conference (it is no accident that the city is the birthplace of Sigmund Freud). Whilst there she meets English academic Adrian to whom she is deeply sexually attracted. Adrian has a partner and children in London but seems to have a fairly open relationship (though it becomes clear later that he is more committed to the mother of his children than Isadora originally believes). Adrian and Isadora have a passionate affair; the sex scenes are graphic, but perhaps more shocking to a 1970s reader would have been how much Isadora wants and enjoys the sex. And so the expression “the zipless fuck”, for which this book is so well-known, is coined. The problem is that Isadora also loves her husband and he has many qualities Adrian does not: he brings her calm and stability and we learn later on that Bennett came to her rescue when she was in a very difficult place, her first husband, a brilliant musician, having been committed to an asylum. Isadora leaves Bennett for a time and sets out on an adventure touring around Europe with Adrian living out a carefree life of sex and fun.

I have to admit that I found this book quite boring at times! As with many books that have a lot of sex in them, you become a bit immune to it after a while. This book did not fit my definition of exploring sex and sexuality. Rather, it struck me as a fictionalisation of the same sorts of issues raised by Nancy Friday in My Mother My Self. It seems to me to be more about feminism and about breaking free of a patriarchy which says that women are only entitled to a limited experience of sex, a view that no longer holds in developed societies. *(Largely anyway. In secular ones. With some notable exceptions.) It is also a book about the struggle of an artistic personality to reconcile her creativity with her femininity and what this means for her reproductive status. Again, an issue that I think most developed societies have moved on from (the same caveats * as above apply).

This book was more interesting and meaningful to me as a student of feminist writing than as a reader of erotic fiction although it probably does deserve its place in the erotic pantheon too. I have just started reading Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown, following a recommendation. This book explores sexual pleasure from a much broader perspective (brown identifies as a pan-sexual woman of colour) and although it is a work of non-fiction it will be interesting to explore how or if the debate has shifted. A topic I will return to!

So, as for Fear of Flying, would I recommend? Well, yes, if you’re interested in the topic, but not necessarily for “pleasure”!

If you have read this book, I would be interested in your views.

Reading Challenge – December choice

And so, the final month of the year begins and it’s time for the last book in my 2021 reading challenge. I usually choose a theme for each month, but this year I picked a very specific book for December- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I almost always select something short for December because it is such a busy month, and this novella fits the bill perfectly at less than 100 pages, which should be easily achievable. I have an almost complete collection of vintage Dickens editions, bought in secondhand bookshops in the 1980s, as I did a special study of the author for my English literature degree. Strangely, A Christmas Carol is not in my library so I will have to acquire a copy. I quite fancy one of those lovely clothbound editions, even though they are quite pricey, to match all my other Dickens hardbacks.

We all know the story but how many of us have actually read this 1843 Dickens novella?

I love Dickens and A Christmas Carol might be one of the only books of his that I have not read. Honestly, I cannot remember if I have because of course most of us will know the story and all the main characters – Ebenezer Scrooge, Jacob Marley and Tiny Tim. Published in December 1843 it was an instant best-seller. It has never been out of print and has been adapted for stage and screen many times. It was Dickens’s sixth work to be published; his well-known classics Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop had already been serialised to great acclaim. My own personal Dickens favourite, Barnaby Rudge, came out just before A Christmas Carol.

November was a very busy month for me so after my Booker Prize reading marathon, I have not actually managed to read very much this last month and have only just started my reading challenge choice (Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying). I don’t expect it to take me very long, however; it’s quite a page-turner! My day job has kept me very busy, my kitchen renovation drags on and my youngest child had an operation (a routine procedure) so life has been pretty hectic. I am expecting December to be quieter and I am looking forward to a gentle build-up to Christmas. With the Covid Omicron variant threatening to alter everyone’s plans in the coming weeks, I will most likely be hunkering down at home with the family and not doing too much in the way of partying. My Christmas shopping will be largely local and outdoors, no bad thing, as I await my booster jab.

So, I hope to be able to get back to regular posting in the coming weeks and will be sharing my usual thoughts on bookish Christmas gift ideas, so look out for those.

Happy reading!

Booker book review #3 – “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers

This is my third Booker review of this year. The winner will be announced this coming Wednesday. At this point I have completed four novels, almost finished the fifth and have yet to start my final one, although, at this point, I am pretty hopeful that I will succeed in my goal of completing and reviewing all six before the winner is announced. That will be a first and I am particularly pleased with that since my house in in chaos, due to a long-awaited kitchen refurbishment, my day job has been super-busy and there has been a lot of family stuff going on these last few weeks.

I was really looking forward to reading Bewilderment; Powers’s 2018 novel The Overstory, which was also shortlisted for the Booker that year, remains one of the most powerful books I have ever read and is particularly apt for our times as the Cop26 negotiations get underway in Glasgow today. The Overstory did not win in 2018, Anna Burns’s Milkman did. That was also a brilliant book, although for me Powers had the slight edge. I don’t envy the Booker judges!

The stunning cover of Bewilderment

The reviews of Bewilderment have not been quite as strong. It is indeed a very different book, but it bears the author’s characteristic attention to detail, and a quite breathtaking amount of research.

Theo Byrne is an astro-physicist whose life’s work is to try and uncover the secrets of the universe. His research has furthered knowledge on the stars and planets with whom we share this universe and he is pursuing the biggest question of all – is there other life out there? And yet, he struggles to understand his nine year-old son Robin. Theo’s partner Alyssa, Robin’s mother and an activist advocating for the rights of animals, is killed in a car accident and their lives are thrown into turmoil. Robin, neuro-divergent, it is intimated, struggles at school, both with the constraints of the routine and getting on with other kids. After he fractures another child’s nose when the boy repeats a disparaging remark about his dead mother, Robin is threatened with exclusion from school. Theo comes under significant pressure to medicate his son, which he refuses to do. Instead he takes the decision to home-school him, but this presents numerous other challenges, not least with managing his own work.

Before they had Robin, Theo and Alyssa were involved in some highly experimental research by an esteemed neuro-scientist and former lover of Alyssa’s, Marty Currier. He is trying to map the brain patterns associated with certain emotional responses in the hope that in the future, others might be able to learn to manage their behaviour through a treatment which would involve their brain ‘learning’ from the better response patterns of others. Theo and Alyssa agree to be early guinea pigs. When Theo approaches Marty for help with his son, Marty suggests putting Robin through the treatment where his brain will learn how to mimic his mother’s responses to events. Although she is dead, Alyssa is a powerful presence throughout the book. Theo places her on a pedestal and is constantly reaching for her as he grapples with what to do about Robin, believing she was the only one who could truly understand him and was therefore able to support him.

They share a lot, astronomy and childhood. Both are voyages across huge distances. Both search for facts beyond their grasp. Both theorize wildly and let possibilities multiply without limits. Both are humbled every few weeks. Both operate out of ignorance. Both are mystified by time. Both are forever starting out.

“Bewilderment”, by Richard Powers

Theo finds his own ways of parenting his son and the relationship the two of them develop in the absence of Alyssa, the new way of being that they must find for themselves, is delicately and beautifully handled by Powers. Theo is able to share his fascination with the universe with his son, but also learns from his attention to detail, his fascination with the minutiae of nature, that Robin has inherited from his mother. The degree of knowledge and understanding of these disciplines (astrophysics and natural history) that Powers brings to the story is astonishing, as it was in The Overstory.

Powers won the Pulitzer Prize for The Overstory. Can Bewilderment bag him the Booker?

This is a powerful story with two highly contrasting themes – the devastating human impact on the natural world, and the struggle to parent in the face of tragedy and adversity, especially in a world that seems so hostile to anything outside the norm. It has a huge canvas (the universe), but also intimate detail (a father-son relationship).

I did not find the book as gripping The Overstory, but frankly, it would be unjust to compare anything to that book, in my view. Some parts of it I struggled with, the long passages on the universe, for example, I found the least engaging. But the characters are well-drawn and I felt close to both Theo and Robin, pulled into their small world.

Highly recommended, but a tough read at times.

The river of forms is long. And among the billions of solutions it has so far unfolded, humans and cows are close cousins. It wasn’t surprising that something on the fringe of life – a strand of RNA that codes for only twelve proteins – was happy, after one small tweak, to give another host a try.

A devastating disease amongst livestock threatens to jump the species barrier in “Bewilderment”.

Booker book review #1 – “No One is Talking About This” by Patricia Lockwood

And thus begins my annual attempt to read my way through the Booker Prize shortlist before the winner is announced. Customarily, the shortlist is announced in mid-September and the winner announced at the beginning of November, giving about six weeks to read six novels. I have never yet managed all six. I think the closest I have come is about four. I am optimistic this year as I have a strategy – a mixture of audiobook, e-reader and actual book – and a plan. So far I have completed one (the shortest), am part-way through another (the longest) and I am the proud owner of a signed copy of a third. With just over four weeks to go I am, if not optimistic, then at least hopeful. I expect kitchen renovations at the end of the month to disrupt all my plans!

The first book I am ticking off the list is Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This, which has become one of the most talked about books of the year since it was first published in February. This is Lockwood’s first novel; she is better known as a poet and published a memoir in 2017 entitled Priestdaddy which was highly acclaimed. No One Is Talking About This has been compared variously to William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, and James Joyce’s Ulysses. I count all three of those among my all-time favourite reads so I should have loved this book.

It is a really difficult book to describe (for me, that’s where the comparison with Ulysses ends). I should also add, by way of a caveat, that I listened to this on audio and may well have been affected by the slightly manic reading of it. It is narrated in the first person by an unnamed character who has an unnamed family but who lives, we can assume, in New York City. The first half of the book is pure stream of consciousness, a portrayal of the wildness of modern life, particularly those parts conducted through ‘the portal’, which is pretty much everything. We see the ridiculousness of life lived out online, where only appearances matter, where substance and empathy and humanity appear to have vanished. Where photographing and documenting your food is more important than eating it. Where how your relationships look is more important than the relationships themselves. I think most of us can recognise this as the way we might all actually be heading if we are not careful. If indeed, we are not already there.

The second half of the book, described by the author herself as ‘autofictional’ centres around a devastating family event. The narrator’s sister becomes pregnant and the journey is duly recorded on the portal, until a scan reveals an irregularity in the baby’s head measurement. The pregnancy and the baby are no longer as photogenic or fit for the portal, but the event will have a seismic impact on the family and on our narrator in particular. She is completely unprepared for the immense love she feels for the severely disabled baby girl her sister delivers, a child whose life expectancy is limited and whose quality of life would usually be described as poor. And yet, the baby, with her rudimentary abilities, her dependency on her loved ones and her complete helplessness, draws out the humanity in those around her, that, because of the evils of the portal, they had forgotten they had.

This second half of the book is based on an event in Lockwood’s own family – her sister gave birth to a child with Proteus syndrome – and knowing there is truth in it, makes it a powerful read indeed. For me, it is not Ulysses, and Lockwood is not yet Woolf or Faulkner. I wasn’t awed or stunned by the book, but it is innovative. Her instincts as a poet serve her well. It reminded me a little of the 2018-shortlisted book Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman, which I have recently finished. I have to say I found that book better, but Lockwood has a good chance of winning with this novel.

So, recommended. I’m looking forward to what the rest of the shortlist has to offer.

Book review – “Beautiful World Where Are You” by Sally Rooney

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a work trip to London. I’d bought a copy of the very newly minted Sally Rooney novel Beautiful World, Where Are You which had been published earlier that week amid great excitement (there were queues and bookshops were opened at midnight to enable the keenest readers to get their hands on a copy). Whilst in London I also happened to stumble on a ‘pop-up’ in Shoreditch selling not only the novel, but other books to which there are references in the novel, and some merchandise echoing the design of the book’s cover. This book has surely been the most anticipated of the year, and who can blame the publishers, but it has definitely become a ‘product’. As has the author I suspect. I hope she is okay.

I sort of hoped I might devour the novel on the return train trip to London, but I didn’t and in fact it took me a further week or so to finish it. Rooney’s previous novel, Normal People, was a sensation, not least because of the success of the television series, one suspects, which was brilliantly put together with brilliant performances from the two wonderful new young Irish actors playing the lead parts. It was all a moment of pure serendipity and it was a joy that something so good got the attention it deserved.

Rooney’s follow-up novel therefore was always going to be a challenge and I admire her for just getting the thing out under what must have been intense pressure. It is unmistakeably Rooney – the beautiful prose, the masterful dialogue, the introspective characters, Dublin, the palpable tensions between the characters and the things unsaid. There are four characters: Alice, a successful, famous and thus fairly wealthy author (hmm) who has recently had a nervous breakdown and whom we meet when she is renting a seaside house in the country. Felix, her lover, whom she meets on Tinder, a warehouse worker and cash-strapped under-achiever. Eileen, who lives in Dublin and is Alice’s best friend from childhood. Eileen works for a publishing company in a junior role which pays poorly. She is intellectually and emotionally unfulfilled, and bitter at the hand life has dealt her. Simon is Alice and Eileen’s friend, also from their youth, but a little older, a political researcher he lives in Dublin too. He is single, but seems to have a series of much younger girlfriends, handsome, gentle and compassionate, with a strong Catholic faith.

Much of the novel is an exchange of long and detailed communications between Alice and Eileen. They are more like letters, the kind that middle class people of previous centuries might have exchanged, full of lengthy discourse on the meaning of life, love, sex, career, fame and mental health, cleverly punctuated with much more prosaic gossipy tidbits on their love lives. These of course are emails, though, not letters. In between the letters chapters we follow the various events of the characters’ lives, primarily Eileen’s gradual descent into personal crisis and her relationship with Simon, and Alice’s recovery and unlikely relationship with Felix.

It is some way into the book before the characters collide, when Simon travels with Eileen to visit Alice at her rural retreat. The weekend is a kind of catharsis for them all. Everything must break before it can be reassembled in a meaningful way.

If you are expecting a re-run of Normal People you will get some of the same things – a good deal of sex, middle-class angst and working-class insecurity, and a grown-up exploration of Irish identity in the 21st century. But it is a very different book. There are surely some autobiographical elements. It has a lot less pace and it seems a long time before anything significant happens. This novel is a much slower burn. I liked it but I didn’t love it. I did not care as much about any of the characters as I did about Marianne and Connell. I think it is the book Sally Rooney needed to write though, good enough to follow Normal People but perhaps not quite as good, so that, one hopes, some of the hype around her dissipates and she can get on with being a brilliant author and not have to worry about being a celebrity.

I think it will always be worth reading what Sally Rooney writes, so I have no hesitation in recommending this book.

Autumn is officially here

As I write this, the sun is setting for the day and the moon (a waning one now, since it was also a full one just two days ago) will soon be visible. We are at the precise mid-point between the summer and winter solstices when the sun is positioned directly above the equator, giving equal time to darkness and light. In the northern hemisphere, our nights will now start to grow longer, while in the southern hemisphere it is the day that is lengthening as the spring turns into summer.

Not the view from my window! Rather, beautiful photography from Ingo Jakubke on Pixabay

It is an important time of the year in the literary world too; as we begin to spend more time on home-based pursuits we inevitably read more. The shortlist for the Booker Prize was announced last week and a number of literary festivals traditionally take place in the autumn – I am looking forward to the Manchester Literary Festival in October. And like it or not, some of us will be starting to think about Christmas shopping and publishers are competing to attract our attention in the hope that one of their new releases will make it into your shopping basket as the perfect gift. So, it’s a bumper time of year for new books to be published. I posted on here last week about the furore surrounding the publication of Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World Where Are You? It is surely one of the most hotly anticipated books of the year.

But the noise surrounding that book has obscured somewhat the many other big publications of the season. Here are some of those that have caught my eye and which I very much hope to add to my TBR list over the coming weeks.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Powers maintains his Booker-nominated streak with his new novel. The Overstory was shortlisted in 2018 and remains one of the best books I have read in recent years. Bewilderment is a good deal shorter but continues with similar themes of the environmental damage wrought by humanity. The main characters are a widowed father and his troubled 9 year-old son seeking connection in the face of global, national and personal tragedy. I can’t wait to read this.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Another author whose last work was one of my absolute favourites of recent years (All the Light We Cannot See, 2015). Doerr’s latest novel is a complex interweaving of five characters and three parallel storylines set in the past (the 15th century siege of Constantinople), the present (during an attack on a public library in Idaho) and the future (a community under threat). They might all be separated by centuries, but the author explores the things that connect them.

The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir

Lost for 75 years, this novel was not published in de Beauvoir’s lifetime as its themes were not considered appropriate. It concerns the friendship between two young girls and how it unravels as they grow up. It is based on a friendship de Beauvoir herself had. The novel’s discovery has caused a frenzy and you can read an extract from The Guardian here.

The Magician by Colm Toibin

I am always wishing I’d read more Toibin, but I never seem to manage it and have only read Brooklyn (after I’d seen the film!). So, I’m determined to read this one as its subject is the great German author Thomas Mann, a favourite from my German A level days.

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

I watched a discussion between Burkeman and Guardian journalist Zoe Williams a couple of weeks ago about this book. I have enjoyed Burkeman’s columns in The Guardian’s Weekend magazine for some years and like his take on life. This is not a traditional book about producitivity, apparently, despite what the title might suggest, it sounds more like an ‘anti-producitivity’ book, encouraging the reader to focus on what is really meaningful in life.

Pax, Journey Home by Sara Pennypacker

I make it my business to read plenty of children’s literature. It helps me reconnect with the sheer joy of reading that I felt as a child. I loved Pax, Pennypacker’s first novel, and this is a follow-up. I am keen to find out what happened to the young fox and his human companion Peter.

And yet more…

There are a number of other books out which readers might like to note: The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman is the second in his Thursday Murder Club series, and looks to be an equally big success. Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty is out – will it continue her run of best sellers, following Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers? I expect so! And in a similar vein, Paula Hawkins’s A Slow Fire Burning looks set to bring the author more success. I probably would not pick up this kind of novel, but I loved The Girl on the Train so I might give it a go. Michaela Coel is everywhere at the moment, deservedly so after the phenomenal success of her television series I May Destroy You. She is an incredible role model and continues to campaign on the issues the series raised. She has now written Misfits: A pesonal manifesto which promises to be a powerful read. Finally, Pat Barker’s The Women of Troy, the follow-up to her 2019 success The Silence of the Girls. I found that book difficult to get into, but it was critically acclaimed and shortlisted for The Women’s Prize.

So, plenty to get my teeth into there. Not sure how many of these I’ll actually manage, given that my present TBR pile is toppling, but I am ever the optimist!

What are you reading this autumn? Do enjoy this beautiful time of the year, before the winter kicks in.

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