Tag: Reading

Crime fiction – Val McDermid

Crime fiction is not one of my favoured genres, although whenever I have read any I generally enjoy it. I have really enjoyed dipping into Agatha Christie (I’ve reviewed Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and The ABC Murders on here and I really enjoyed Betty Boo by Argentinian author Claudia Pineiro, whose work I’d really like to get more into.

I have a lot of time for Val McDermid; she’s so interesting and entertaining, very funny when she appears on literary panel shows or festival events and just seems like a great ambassador for her profession. I decided over the summer that I really needed to sample some of her writing so I listened to the audiobook of A Place of Execution, one of her earlier works, published in 1999.

Review – A Place of Execution

The central character is George Bennett, an up and coming young detective in the Derbyshire force in the 1960s, somewhat disliked by a few of his colleagues due to his having received a university education, rather than coming up through the ranks. He is put on a very disturbing case involving the disappearance of a young girl, Alison Carter, from the small isolated village of Scardale. Many of the inhabitants of the village are members of the same family and the missing girl is in fact the step-daughter of one of the more well-to-do residents, Philip Hawkin, informally known as ‘the squire’ and very much considered an outsider. Although he has family connections to the village and inherited the manor house he now lives in with Alison’s mother Ruth, he grew up in the south and is not well-liked.

George and his assistant, Tommy Clough, encounter resistance in their investigations and George has a powerful sense of something not being right but he cannot put his finger on why. There is evidence of Alison having been harmed, perhaps sexually assaulted, but even though a thorough search of the vast rural area is conducted, no body is found and the case goes cold. This part of the novel is set in 1963 when the infamous Moors murders took place in Greater Manchester and there are references to the missing children in that case, as the respective forces share information to try and tease out common leads, but none are found.

Years later, journalist Catherine Heathcote, sets out to write a book about the famous unsolved case, and seeks out the now elderly George Bennett. As she digs deeper, however, she uncovers more than she bargained for, and when George suddenly writes to her and says that she must not publish and he can no longer cooperate with her in the work, she is dumbfounded.

I found this a brilliant novel and I was hooked. I could not work out what was going on and then at some point I thought I’d cracked the case, but I hadn’t! the plotting is superb. The characters are also all very authentic and well-drawn. It is no surprise to me that this book won awards and plaudits and was shortlisted for some prestigious prizes.

After reading this book, I encouraged my book club to read a Val McDermid novel. She has written so many so we searched for a ‘Top 10’ online and Past Lying was recommended.

Review – Past Lying

I listened to this novel on audiobook too and I found it to be much less interesting and somewhat more cliched. Published in 2023 and the seventh in McDermid’s Karen Pirie series (the name of the detective) it is set in Edinburgh during the Covid pandemic. Detective Karen Pirie is the head of the Historical Cases Unit at the Leith station, and is supported by two more junior colleagues, one of whom she now finds herself in a ‘bubble’ with in the apartment of Karen’s current boyfriend Hamish, who is spending lockdown in the Highlands making hand sanitiser.

Karen’s assistant Jason is contacted by a librarian at the national library who is in the process of cataloguing the archive of the famous now-dead crime writer Jake Stein, and has found an unpublished manuscript the circumstances of which bear a strong resemblance to an unsolved murder, that of a young student in Edinburgh some years earlier. With nothing better to do in the lockdown, Karen and her colleagues set about following up leads, going in whichever direction their investigative noses take them. They slowly uncover a complex story of literary rivalry and foul play, lust and betrayal. All perfect ingredients for a good crime novel, but for me there was something missing.

There are parallel stories in the novel too, as indeed there are in A Place of Execution, the personal lives of the characters. And Karen’s back story has some drama – her long-term partner was killed a couple of years before (in a previous novel, I believe) and she is still grieving, while working out what Hamish means to her. There is also a refugee story, another theme which appears in an earlier Karen Pirie novel, but the author does not draw out any connections between the case and this side story, which begs the question what then is it for? I wasn’t hooked in the same way as I was with A Place of Execution and when I thought I’d worked out what was going on I was eagerly awaiting a twist, but none came, so the ending of the book just felt anti-climactic.

I have found subsequently that other reviewers have been lukewarm about this book, so I’m puzzled as to why it was recommended as one of McDermid’s top ten; earlier books in the Karen Pirie series seem to have garnered much greater praise, such as A Darker Domain, published in 2009.

So, a mixed experience with Val McDermid. She has many more books in her oeuvre, and legions of her fans can’t be wrong, so I am sure I will trial a few more and hope I find them more satisfying, like A Place of Execution.

Booker shortlist review #6 – “The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden

Winner of the Booker prize 2024

This is my sixth and final review of this year’s Booker Prize shortlist. The winner was announced a couple of weeks ago so I didn’t quite get all my reviews in before the big day! The prize went to Samantha Harvey’s Orbital which is a worthy winner in my view and it is interesting that the Chair of judges said the decision of the panel was unanimous. It feels like it was a book for this moment, when we seem to be on the cusp of something big globally and could all do with stepping back and looking at the world from a different perspective. If only!

The Safekeep is one of the longer books on the shortlist and that’s partly why I left it until last to read. It is also the debut novel of its Dutch author (the first from the Netherlands to be shortlisted I believe) and is a very impressive piece of work. It is set in the rural east of the country, bordering Germany, in 1961 and the central character is Isabel, a young single woman living alone in the house formerly occupied by her and two brothers (Hendrick and Louis) and their mother. The mother is now dead and Isabel is still clearly deeply in grief. She is obsessive in trying to preserve the house and all its contents, even broken fragments of crockery that remind her of her mother. She creates an inventory of the contents when she believes that the maid Neelke is covertly taking items away. Isabel is an anxious and paranoid woman.

In many ways she has every right to be anxious; she sees herself as the only custodian of their parents’ legacy. Her older brother Hendrick escaped the small town as soon as he could, preferring to live in the city with his boyfriend, and the younger brother Louis is an irresponsible womaniser. He will also inherit the property when its official owner (Uncle Karel, who obtained the house for his sister during the war) dies. Isabel will be homeless without any means of supporting herself, a fact which they all seem to brush over. Isabel is lonely, isolated and grieving.

When Louis invites his siblings to meet his new girlfriend Eva (whom Isabel views with disdain at their very first meeting) and then installs her in the house when he has go to England to work for the summer, Isabel is furious and desperate. To make matters worse, Louis gives Eva their mother’s old room, which Isabel has treated almost as a shrine, and cannot understand why his sister is so affronted. Over the course of the summer, the development of Eva and Isabel’s relationship will transform their lives. 

It is hard to say more about this book without revealing the significant plot twist. It took me a while to warm to any of the characters: Louis is insufferable and selfish, Hendrick is bitter and Isabel is uptight and unreasonable. Eva, initially, seems dull and insipid. But the book is about Isabel’s transformation and her coming to terms with loss. She has lived in the shadow of her mother, her brothers, the war (which would still have been fresh in everyone’s memory in 1961) and not been allowed to be herself or even acknowledge who she is and what she stands for. It is also a book about memory, and legacy, and the importance and value of “things”, what we hold on to when our life feels outside of our control. There are some significant sex scenes which felt a bit cringey – the portrayal of the intensity was powerful but they went on too long and were overdone for me. I also listened to this on audio and found the reader not great, almost to the point of distracting, so I’d recommend reading the book on paper. The book is undoubtedly a powerful debut, however, and I look forward to what more this author has to offer in the future. 

It’s the Booker Prize winner announcement tonight! (And here’s my review #5 – “Held” by Anne Michaels

Held is the shortest novel on this year’s Booker shortlist and of the five that I have completed so far (I’ve almost finished The Safekeep) the one that I have found the most difficult to read. My brief scan of the reviews suggests that opinion differs quite widely and I suspect it is one of those ‘Marmite’ books. I’m afraid I didn’t love it. I have a copy of the author’s highly acclaimed 1996 novel Fugitive Pieces in my house somewhere, a book I have attempted to read a few times over the years and never quite managed to get into. That novel won the Orange Prize and many other awards when it was published so there is no doubt that Michaels is an author of quality. She is not prolific, Held is only her third novel, but she has published a number of poetry collections and is I believe the current poet laureate of Toronto. In my view she writes prose like a poet and her novels perhaps need to be approached and read in a different way. 

Held is set in a number of different time periods, from early 20th century Paris, to 1950s Suffolk, to London, Estonia and the final brief chapter in Finland, 2025, when who knows what might have happened. The periods are not linear, the novel jumps back and forth. Many of the characters in each chapter are connected by a family thread although mostly they do not know each other well, others seem completely random, but are connected via the greater human story. The other common feature is that each chapter is overshadowed by war, either being in an actual war zone, or affected by an experience of war, or troubled by the threat of war, and its twin, death. Each character has been affected by the premature loss of a loved one, a partner or parent, or the loss of what might have been, and the novel explores how grief is passed down through the generations, of the terrible trauma left by war death and the power of memory which both sustains us but can also be a heavy weight to carry.

I read this on my Kindle and I think that was a mistake; it’s probably a book that benefits from being on paper in your hands, beautifully typeset and with a wonderful cover (like the one in the photo above). I hate the way that with a Kindle you keep looking at your reading speed! I was astonished when I opened to the book that “most readers” had read it in under two hours! (Probably all those literary journalists under pressure of a deadline.) It took me almost twice that and even then I felt I would have enjoyed it more if I’d read it more slowly. You can’t speed read poetry and you can’t speed read this book. 

I enjoyed it more towards the end once the narrative thread had emerged for me out of the literary mist, but for me it was still not strong enough to carry the book. There is some very powerful writing in here and I was moved by many of the characters – their griefs and passions felt very real – but it was just too disparate for me to feel a strong connection with them or with the themes of the book. Many of the novels on this year’s shortlist wear their politics very boldly, but with Held I would suggest it is more subtle, so much so that it is almost lost. This is a more philosophical novel than that.

I would recommend this book, and I may indeed try it again once I relieve myself of the pressure to get through the shortlist before 12 November. But it’s a book that is probably not for everyone. 

So, who is going to win…?

Well, I have completed five of the six books on this year’s shortlist and have almost finished the sixth (The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden), but I’ve read enough of the last one to be fairly confident that it’s not a Booker winner, although I am enjoying it.

My hunch is that Percival Everett will take the prize with James. It would be quite a statement if this book wins, in the light of current political events in the US, although I doubt most people will be listening who need to listen. I did love the book and think it’s a great achievement. But I would be very happy if Samantha Harvey’s Orbital won. I think it is so imaginative and beautifully written as well as being captivating and profound. It also says a great deal about geopolitics, even bigger and more profound than the election of a US president for the next four years, and the world really does need to listen.

The winner is announced at 9.45pm UK time, with a live programme on BBC Radio 4 and live-streaming on the various social media channels.

Booker shortlist review #4 – “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner

I was on quite a roll with the Booker shortlist and beginning to think this was perhaps the strongest field for years. This is Rachel Kushner’s second time of being shortlisted, her 2018 novel The Mars Room also having enjoyed that distinction. I wasn’t mad about that novel and I’m afraid I’m not mad about this one either. I found I just kept waiting for something to happen and then there was a sort of denouement that was sketched out rather quickly and then it ended and I found myself asking what it was all about. 

The narrator and central character is a self-styled “Jane Doe” whom we know in this story as Sadie. She is a shape-shifter, trained in taking on alternative identities for her line of work. She learned her craft as an undercover agent working for the FBI in the United States, but seems to have found the rules of working in an organisation too stifling and now works freelance, often for people whom she also does not know. This is a book about people who can change who they appear to be. In the particular operation covered in this novel, Sadie is required to infiltrate a commune in southern France, influenced by the ideas of a reclusive intellectual (Bruno). The members of the commune are activists against capitalism and the modern world, living in an agricultural region, tending the land using traditional methods and attempting to live sustainably. Sadie’s mission is to cause havoc in the group and to urge them towards a big action that will ultimately undermine their cause. 

In order to complete her task, Sadie must develop a network of complex relationships, including a sham marriage, in order to gain the trust of the group members, to avert suspicion, and to cultivate an authentic identity. For me, Sadie comes across quite simply as a sociopath. She has no feelings for any of those she exploits in order to complete her mission, seems even to enjoy their vulnerability, and there is a kind of arrogance in her non-selfhood. I wondered whether this might be the point of the novel, that she might come unstuck as a result of excessive self-confidence.  

There is some clever prose in this book and some thorough research – Bruno the intellectual writes extensively about Neanderthals, about Home sapiens, our ancestors, which I assume is accurate? There is also some interesting exposure of some of the contradictions in the philosophy of those living in the commune – they really do not get along, and demonstrate that humans could never live in this kind of mutual arrangement. (I had many “we’re all doomed” moments listening to this book!) Like some of the others novels on the shortlist this is also a deeply political book, which I appreciated.

I’m afraid to say though that for me the narrative just wasn’t strong enough to hold it all together. There were parts I found, frankly, a bit boring and the plot just petered out, there did not seem to be any consequence and the sense of suspense just did not go anywhere for me. Kushner has cited John le Carre as one of her influences for the book and I can sort of see that, but le Carre’s novels deliver comprehensively on both plot and character and I felt this book was not really strong enough on either. 

I would struggle to recommend this book and will be surprised if it wins, but I have been very wrong before so let’s see!

Booker shortlist book review #3 – “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey

I have to confess that I wasn’t looking forward to reading this book. I find I have zero interest in space. Super-telescopes, yes okay, but rockets and astronauts? No. I feel it’s all a colossal waste of money, pure hubris. Sometimes, blurbs don’t give much away in terms of what a book is about and I tend to avoid reading reviews of books I plan to review myself, lest I be influenced, so coming to this book has been a very pleasant surprise.

The book is set in an international space station, with six astronauts of varying nationalities, on a single day where their craft makes sixteen circumnavigations of the earth. The group is there primarily for research purposes but their days are curiously languid; they have mice and plants in laboratories, but they too are lab animals, their body’s responses to the conditions of space being monitored. To what end? The novel explores the minute details of their everyday life: eating, hygiene, games they play to pass the time, their waking thoughts and their dreams whilst asleep, and the routine is made poetic. The prosaic details give us an insight into what aspects of life make our existence special and meaningful. What is the point of food if it is only nutrition? What about taste and texture? I think this gets to the heart of my problem with the ambition of some of those currently engaged in space exploration – who wants to live on a spaceship or another planet if it means we lose the pleasures of a beautiful meal, or fresh fruit, breaking bread with loved ones, a hot bath?

And I think that is where this novel is coming from; setting it in space means the author can take a step back and provide a panoramic view of the earth and our lives on this fragile and beautiful planet. The astronauts admire the earth from a distance and express a child-like wonder at the oceans, mountain ranges, weather systems and natural phenomena, echoing their own childhood ambitions about going into space.

“Without the earth we are all finished. We couldn’t survive a second without its grace, we are sailors on a ship on a deep, dark unswimmable sea.”

This novel is also about what it means to be human and in that sense is deeply political and speaks to our time. Borders are not visible from space. The authorities attempt to create borders in space – the Russians have their own toilet – but away from earthly politics, none of the astronauts take this too seriously. They share stories and find they have much in common. One of the astronauts, a Japanese woman, loses her mother while she is on her tour of duty on the space station. There is no question of her returning for the funeral or other rituals that follow death. And it is the absence of that connection to what makes us human that is the most painful.

I loved this book. It is very short, less than 150 pages, but every word seems deliberately and carefully chosen. The prose is beautiful and spare and in its conciseness packs an incredible punch.

“Who can look at man’s neurotic assault on the planet and find it beautiful? Man’s hubris. A hubris so almighty it’s matched only by his stupidity. And these phallic ships thrust into space are surely the most hubristic of them all, the totems of a species gone mad with self-love.”

Highly recommended and must be a contender for the winner.

Books about new motherhood – 2 reviews

In my ‘day job’ I work with new parents and parents-to-be, mostly new mothers, supporting them both as they approach birth and in the transition to their new lives with a baby. It is work that I love and have been doing for quite a while now. I also believe it is a role that is increasingly necessary as maternity services and parent support services in the UK are at the lowest ebb I can remember and much worse than when my children were born. Coupled with the mental ill-health epidemic that we seem to be facing, I rather feel that new parents, and new mothers in particular, are having a very tough time.

One of the reasons I have blogged so little in the last few months is that I have been doing additional studying for my work and I came across the first of the two books reviewed below (Matrescence) in the course of this study. It had been on my radar anyway, since it was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-fiction earlier this year, but was on our course reading list. The second book is a novel and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, but it was coincidence that I happened to read both around the same time.

Matrescence by Lucy Jones

Jones has been a writer and journalist for most of her working life, mostly in the fields of science and nature; her second book, Losing Eden: why our minds need the wild, published in 2020, was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. But it is this account of her parenting journey that has really captured mainstream attention. ‘Matrescence’ is a beautiful word that Jones seems on a mission to bring to the forefront of public attention since it captures the physical, emotional and spiritual transformation that people undergo when they give birth to children. Yes, fathers and co-parents change too, but not nearly as much as mothers. There has been some fascinating research published recently in the US that has looked at the actual way the human brain changes during pregnancy and in the early months of motherhood. The brain seems to stand-down certain areas and functions that it is assumed will be less necessary such as the bits that do tasks, remember things and organise, and boosts the emotional centres, the bits that will make us fall in love with our infant and therefore help assure its survival. Fascinating. But hard in the modern world. 

The author’s journey is a very personal one and there were bits that made me bristle (she is critical of pretty much everyone) and I felt a bit personally attacked, having worked in this field for more than 10 years. But there is no doubting that it is meticulously researched and powerfully written. She bemoans the lack of ceremony around the ‘passing into’ motherhood which is particularly the case in western industrial society, and about the failure to both understand what the role really entails and the lack of support. I cannot agree more with this. Where I had more of a problem is where the author seems to believe there is a conspiracy of silence around what it’s really like to give birth and to mother a baby. I don’t think I do agree entirely; I am not sure most people are really ready to hear it plus it is deeply personal and subjective. I do think there is a case for a more open discussion but this would be inconvenient in a western capitalist society where we need to (quite literally) buy into a fantasy, so it probably won’t happen.

Whether you are a parent or not, this book bears reading not least because of how the author brings her knowledge and expertise about the natural world into her writing. Each chapter is prefaced with a snapshot of a reproductive or young-rearing phenomenon from nature, that reminds us we are just creatures on this earth.  And that is pretty thought-provoking. 

Soldier, Sailor by Claire Kilroy

Matrescence might be the notes that accompany Soldier Sailor so it is fascinating that they should have come out at around the same time. Where Jones is research, science, rage and manifesto, Kilroy is visceral. It is a first-person narrative which is rambling, confused, devoted, passionate and lost. There are no names here, they are unimportant; all that exists is the mother (Soldier) and her baby (Sailor), practically one, almost interchangeable. It’s her and him against the world, and particularly against the husband, who has no clue what is going on. He is a man who at times she loves and hates in equal measure, because her life (the mother life) is changed beyond recognition, and his has not. She cannot hate the child who has caused this transformation so she must rail against the child’s father, a person she no longer recognises and with whom she finds she must learn a new way of being if their relationship is to endure.

There are times when this book is almost unbearable. There are times when it is hard to tell what is real and what is not, distorted by her fevered state of mind. Things that seem real are turned on their head later on. Like the meeting with an old friend from student days in a playground, now a father of four whose wife, who has the greater earning power, works full-time. His experience is the same but different, the flip side of hers, and his balance and calm represent a degree of hope to her that things might one day become normal. Or was the encounter just the work of her imagination, giving her the strength to continue when she has not an ounce of mental or physical energy left and her whole world seems to be falling apart?

There are parts of this book that most mothers would recognise – I certainly felt a frisson at some of the emotions Soldier expressed, they were familiar. But there are other parts, rather like the personal parts of Jones’s account of her mothering journey, that are not universal and it would not be right to think that they are. 

It is a powerful read that has garnered a great deal of attention and whilst this book did not win the Women’s Prize this year it has achieved many other accolades, including The Times novel of the year.

Both of these books offer perspectives on motherhood and parenting that are long overdue and both have affected me deeply. Working with people on the transition to parenthood, these books provide a rich resource on the themes of changing identity and how society needs to change to support people on this journey. It is a journey that most of us go through but which many of us are poorly prepared for. That needs to change.

3 non-fiction book reviews

A couple of weeks ago I posted about some of the books I had been reading during my unintended blogging sabbatical, three fiction titles I had enjoyed. I’ve also been reading quite a bit of non-fiction and here are three I’d like to share with you.

When the Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope

This was one of my book club reads. Published in 2022 it is a memoir from one of the country’s foremost disaster experts. This was a profession that I confess I had never really thought about or even knew existed, although after reading this book, that feels like a stupid thing to say. Easthope and her colleagues manage the clear-up after natural and man-made catastrophe, their primary focus being the retrieval, preservation, cataloguing and retention of human remains, from tiny fragments, such as pieces of bone where DNA testing can help to establish identity and ownership, to items of clothing or belongings. Easthope cares passionately about her work and empathises deeply with the loved ones of victims, for whom she sees her role as being part of the grieving process. Easthope writes candidly (and at times this can be challenging) about her role in many significant disasters such as 9/11 in New York city in 2001, to the Lac-Megantic rail disaster in Canada in 2013. She also has much to say about disaster planning in the UK, drawing from her experiences of working with flood victims in Yorkshire and the Covid-19 pandemic. It is fascinating reading. Easthope is a talented writer and also weaves in her personal story, the smaller tragedies in her own life, such as her husband’s near-death and her recurrent miscarriages. This is both a highly personal memoir but also a reflective piece of work about the lessons she has learned (and the many lessons governments fail to learn) about handling disaster. Whilst this is not a book for the faint-hearted, it is a highly-engaging and important read.

How They Broke Britain by James O’Brien

To say I enjoyed this book immensely is probably to come out about my political leanings (for which I make no apology, by the way, but not something I make a big deal about on this blog). I saw James O’Brien give a talk at this year’s Hay Festival (alongside the Financial Times journalist Peter Foster, who was also promoting his own book What Went Wrong with Brexit and What We Can Do About It) and bought both books. It is written in O’Brien’s trademark discursive style and each of the culprits in the tragi-comedy gets a chapter of their own. There are all the faces you would expect to see – Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss – plus a few you might not, and may not even have heard of such as Paul Dacre, Matthew Elliott (who?) and Jeremy Corbyn. O’Brien is excoriating about the role of each of his culprits in the dumbing-down of public discourse, on the commercialisation of thought, and how each has in their own unique way (sometimes wittingly, sometimes not) corrupted public life. His central thesis is “Shame on you!” which regardless of your politics, is hard to disagree with. I found one or two of his points stretched credulity for me, but only a little. When you see it all written down, page after page of it, it is deeply troubling and it is clear that a lot of painstaking cleaning-up work needs to be done (Lucy Easthope?)

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady

This was another of my book club reads and one that I had mixed feelings about. I should also say that I listened to it on audio, and it was read by the author and this may have affected my view. Fern Brady is a comedian and she is autistic. She did not receive a diagnosis until she was well into adulthood and this memoir is her account of growing up in Scotland with the condition. She writes about her difficult time at various schools, her struggles with her parents (who seem to have found her behaviour difficult to cope with) and the challenges of going to university. It is at times laugh out loud funny and at others deeply upsetting; she has clearly had some rough times. Her accounts of finding herself homeless, experiencing abuse and unable to navigate social relationships well are heartbreaking. This is hard to write but there were also parts where I found my sympathies did not lie with her. For example, her parents come out pretty badly and that felt unfair, especially when I did some research afterwards about her background and upbringing – it does not seem to have been as bleak as it came across to me. Also, the reading was sometimes vulnerable, sometimes bombastic, even boastful. It drew some general conclusions about ‘people with autism’ from the standpoint of her personal experience. From my own experience of the condition I don’t think it was always right.

All three were very good reads that I recommend highly. I’d love to hear what you thought if you have read any of them.

Booker shortlist book review #2 – “Stone Yard Devotional” by Charlotte Wood

This is my second read from the Booker shortlist and it’s one of the shorter ones, but, quietly and unobtrusively, it plumbs the great depths of the human experience, exploring life, death, grief, the meaning of existence, forgiveness and plague. For a relatively small novel it packs a great deal in! Set in Australia in contemporary times (before, during and a little after the global Covid-19 pandemic), it is narrated in the first person by a woman, perhaps in late middle age, who has chosen to retreat from her life and live within a community of nuns. Initially, this is as a short-term guest, but her stay becomes indefinite. Whilst the narrator does not become a nun (curiously, she describes herself as an atheist and writes of the horrors of Catholicism growing up, at school, and in the world at large) she participates fully in the life of the community, eventually taking charge of the food, growing, foraging, buying and preparing it.

Our narrator initially went to the community on a form of retreat; she was separating from her husband and grieving for her mother who had died of cancer. The timing of events is not clear, echoing the timelessness, the absence of a life ruled by clocks, of living in the abbey. Amongst the nuns, the shape of the day is determined by the rising and setting of the sun, birdsong and the daily prayer rituals. There is comfort in both its order and in the absence of strict commercially-driven time structures. 

Life in the abbey provides the narrator with space to reflect, on her childhood, her family and in particular her relationship with her mother. The mother is perhaps the nearest thing to a saint that the narrator will ever worship, despite the availability of so many in the church. The pain of her loss seeps out of the pages and she describes a gentleness, a goodness and a generosity that is unmatched by any of the religious figures in the novel. 

The nature of belief and Christianity are also explored and the lifestyle chosen by the nuns in the abbey is contrasted with other nuns who go out and work with the poor and the abused. Two nuns in particular are given as examples – sisters Jenny (formerly of the abbey and known to the other nuns) and Helen, who set up a refuge for abused women in Thailand. Sister Jenny was murdered and when her body is later recovered it is returned to the abbey by her colleague, sister Helen, who, by chance, is a former school mate of the narrator. Helen was bullied because she was poor, and the narrator revisits the harms that were done to her and the part she herself played in them. 

Covid is a presence in the novel but this is not about Covid – the community is after all, largely separate from mainstream society. The plague that does permeate, however, is the infestation of mice that occurs periodically in Australia – I recall hearing about this in the news. The abbey and the local town are overrun and the author writes graphically of how the creatures invade every detail of life and what the sisters do to combat them. It conveys a sense of a world out of control, that even where a life of solitude is chosen, destructive phenomena cannot be escaped. 

This is a powerful novel. It took me a little while to get into after James because it has a totally different pace and perspective, but I found it a rich and rewarding read. Since I finished it I find myself reflecting on it often and new insights keep cropping up in my mind. It is an extremely well-crafted piece of work.

Highly recommended. 

Booker shortlist book review #1 – “James” by Percival Everett

This is my first read from the Booker shortlist. I chose it for two reasons: firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed Everett’s previous novel The Trees, which was shortlisted for the Booker in 2022 (it did not win; Shehan Karunitilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida took the honours that year); secondly, I was invited to ask the author a question on the BBC’s World Book Club radio show a few months ago. I entered into a (very small, but huge to me!) dialogue with the author and came away a bit starstruck! I suspect our brief little conversation was edited out of the final show, I haven’t listened back to it. I also read quite a few pieces about the book and the author since and he is without doubt an impressive and accomplished man. 

James has caught a lot of attention because it tampers with an American icon, Huckleberry Finn. I recall reading the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1884, on a road trip around the United States when I was 21. I spent a summer working in New Hampshire and then spent my earnings travelling round for a few weeks. I spent quite a bit of time in the south and the racial divides were still very clear to see in the late 1980s. To my shame, however, I cannot say that I was particularly aware of the racism implicit in the novel (or in its companion volume, which I also read, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck’s friend) apart from the widespread use of the n-word, which I think I probably saw simply as the vernacular of the era in which the book was written and therefore somehow being less offensive?

In Twain’s novel, Huck is an innocent, a child who runs away from home and his abusive father, and who meets the runaway slave Jim en route. The two work together, but it is clear that Jim is merely secondary, meant to highlight Huck’s naivety and essential goodness. Twain was a staunch supporter of the movement to abolish slavery but he fails to challenge racial stereotypes and Jim is merely a bit-player with neither agency or intellect. Everett turns that Great American novel on its head (which will no doubt have infuriated some), makes Jim the eponymous central character and rather than call him by the three-word handle bestowed on him by his “owner” gives him back his full and rightful title, James. 

Jim/James, it matters here. The novel begins, somewhat comically, with the children in the community being taught “slave talk”; how to speak in a way that will not threaten their white masters and will therefore help to keep them safe. There is a quiet resistance here. Whilst the slaves are, yes, forced to dumb-down, privately they exercise their right to use the English language to its full extent, and to use their minds. It is almost as if they are in waiting. The theme of words, their power, and the power of speech, prevails throughout the novel.

In the first half of the novel, James spends a lot of time with Huckleberry and the author reprises many of the same scenes as characters as Twain, follows the same picaresque journey, but giving the reader, as it were, the inside track on what is really going on with ‘Jim’ and between him and Huck. Huck remains the innocent, as in Twain’s original, but we also see his internalised racism, his own victimhood, but, ultimately, his confidence in the security bestowed upon him by being white. There are no major consequences for Huck in being a runaway or getting into scrapes. Here though, it is Huck who is the secondary character, the foil to illustrate James’s character. The second half of the novel takes some darker turns and Huck is less prominent. The events in James’s life take on a certain inevitability and whereas white skinned Huck can have adventures largely without consequence, for James there will always be consequences. The author puts very much in James’s shoes and invites us to consider whether any of us would have done anything differently. 

This novel is brilliantly conceived and executed with aplomb. It is better than The Trees, more sophisticated and subtle, and so must be a strong contender for the prize. If it wins it will be richly deserved. 

A must-read. 

Book review – “The Making of the Modern Middle East” by Jeremy Bowen

It’s been the busiest of times for me and I feel very out of touch with my blogging. But as I support the youngest of my three children as they embark upon the exam season, inwardly I am exclaiming “the last time!” I know it will feel weird when we are out the other side, of course, knowing that I will not be doing the journey to school any more and shortly afterwards waving another one off to university (fingers crossed). So, as I find myself saying frequently to new parents in  my day job, this too shall pass. Much of it is self-inflicted too, I must add; I decided to do a course of academic study last autumn and that is actually what has consumed much of my time. Truly I am a glutton for punishment!

I have had little time for reading, and it’s mostly been audiobooks so far this year, which I can listen to while out walking or running. So, I haven’t exactly had too many reviews to post! I’ve really felt the absence too. Reading for me is not only about being well-read and making connections with fellow book-lovers, it is also grounding. Nothing says self-care as strongly as: “I am taking 10/15/20 minutes out of my busy day, disconnecting from the family/the dishes/the smartphone, just for me, for pure pleasure.” It has to become a habit though, and it is one that seems to have slipped out of my grasp in the last couple of months, and which I now need to squeeze back in. 

The book I want to tell you about today is one that has been on my TBR pile for some time. Coincidentally, I am currently making my arrangements to go to the Hay Festival, filling my online basket with events, and this book was one I bought there last year. The BBC’s International Editor, Jeremy Bowen, has been working in the Middle East for many years and is now a renowned journalistic expert on the region. This book arose out of a podcast he did for BBC radio a few years ago called Our Man in the Middle East. This book is an insightful and informative look at the region, setting out the historical context for many of the disputes and tensions whilst also telling stories and anecdotes of his own experiences, the relationships he has forged with people, famous and not, giving an often very intimate perspective on some of the very big issues we all know about.

The Middle East is not homogenous and the history is complex. Usually, the causes of tensions and conflicts there are far more complex than can be conveyed in a single news bulletin. The region is also a lightning rod, a proxy, for much bigger confrontations. Looking at a traditional map of the world, it is very nearly the geographical centre. Politically and culturally it is where east meets west, where north meets south, where tradition meets modernism, and religion meets secularism, quite unlike anywhere else on the planet. It is quite clear, from reading this book, that the author is captivated.

Bowen takes a thematic approach in the book, but manages also to set out the historical context of each of the major countries in the region: Israel and Palestine (obviously), Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, but drawing in also Lebanon, Yemen and Libya. I came away from this book with a powerful new understanding of the motivations and perspectives of people living in the Middle East, and also of the largely malign influence “the west”, and in particular the colonial powers have had over decades, if not centuries. 

I have visited this part of the world only once in my life, about 25 years ago when I went to Lebanon. I found it a stunning and fascinating country and am saddened that it has been brought to its knees both economically and politically in recent years. When I attended the event at Hay in which Jeremy Bowen was interviewed by his BBC colleague Frank Gardner, I remember how pessimistic he was about the Israel-Palestine situation, describing it as more dangerous than he had seen it in many years. How poignant that observation seems when just a few months later the current crisis we see so vividly every day on our television screens was set in motion. 

This is a powerful and gripping book, written with the author’s characteristic style, thoroughly researched and grounded in first-hand knowledge. Highly recommended.