Summer is such a con isn’t it? All that promise of joy and relaxation and holidays and it never quite works out like that does it? August has been good actually, but my sister and I have decided that all parents need a week’s holiday at the end of the summer for us to get over the emotional burdens and togetherness that the holidays bring on. I’m all for it. Here’s what I read this month:
The Dolphin – Susan Clegg
This is published by indie publisher Linen Press and I can’t remember why I bought it but am glad I did. If the major publishers are putting out stuff like the next two books on this list, we definitely need more indies like Linen Press who are publishing more interesting things. This is the story of one family’s quest for happiness. Larry Lambert has a vision one day gazing over a piece of land, and on that land he builds an extravagant glorious pub The Dolphin. But his family, especially his dreadful bitter wife, sees it as a folly, and Larry is a lonely man with a secret he must keep repressed. The book has three timelines, also focusing on Larry’s daughter Joanie’s quest for freedom and his granddaughter Lottie. Clegg is excellent at painting strong pictures with simple scenes and this is deftly written with a range of good characters. The three main characters are well portrayed but the supporting cast are also nicely drawn and not just furniture. Do seek this out if you can, it’s worthy of a wider audience.
Summer Sisters – Judy Blume
I don’t want to diss Judy Blume, who helped keep me sane in teenage years, but this is the second adult book of hers I’ve read and I don’t think I liked that one either. This is about two girls, Victoria and Caitlin, growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Perhaps its my age but I’m not interested in reading about teenagers and their growing pains, but I thought the Blume might make a wider better point about adulthood or something. She doesn’t. Victoria feels pleased to be singled out by rich girl Caitlin and they become summer sisters, spending their summers at Caitlin’s father’s holiday home by the coast. They grow up and go their separate ways, as it’s clear early on that Caitlin is a dreadful spoiled woman and I cannot imagine why Victoria remains friends with her. I’ll try to forget this and focus on remembering Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret instead.
Reasons to go Outside – Esme King
A holiday read, I guess, and quite light. It tells the story of Pearl, who lives alone in a cottage on Dartmoor and who hasn’t stepped outside in forty years. When she finally hires a gardener, a teenager called Connor who has recently lost his mother, Connor helps her to take her first steps outside and to look at re-entering the world. Despite a number of health professionals suggesting this would be difficult, Pearl seems to overcome her engrained agoraphobia very easily – and in a jolly way, with a bunch of strangers who soon become her friends. There was a subplot about someone being made redundant and becoming a volunteer at an animal shelter with no money worries at all so I think we can safely assume reality is not King’s strong suit. One of the good things about Twitter going tits up is that I no longer see recommendations for books that other people are raving about, tempting me to get them and then be disappointed.
Nobody’s Fool/ Everybody’s Fool/ Somebody’s Fool – Richard Russo
I re-read Nobody’s Fool – one of very favourites of all time – and then Everybody’s Fool, the sequel, in preparation for the publication of Somebody’s Fool this month. Russo may have won the Pulitzer for another book (Empire Falls) but it’s this series that has my heart. Featuring Donald “Sully” Sullivan and a band of ne’er do wells in a very down at heel New York state town called North Bath, these books are funny with a dark streak of black humour running all the way through them. Perhaps reflective of the times, they seem to get darker and less silly as you go on, like North Bath itself which, in the latest book, is about to be subsumed by its more glamorous neighbouring city, Schuyler Springs. Russo is interested in people with no future, places that are neglected and forgotten, and how anyone can get on without any burst of hope. Across the three books, very little happens except life and luck – mostly bad. But the characters are so well drawn, you like spending time with them. At the end of the latest book, Russo mentions that the series has had three editors which may account for a couple of plot discrepancies I noticed when reading them back to back, and you also have to forgive the recounting of old stories in the pages of each, for first time readers doing the series out of order. But these are minor quibbles. Small town America at its worst, and somehow also its best.
The Cazalet Chronicles – Elizabeth Jane Howard
Another re-read, because the first book was the reading group choice this month, and I didn’t need to re-read them really but I did. And once you’ve read one, you have to read them all. And by all, I mean I’m discounting the fifth one, published later because I didn’t like it. But the original four are excellent. This time around I noticed a lot of her descriptions, which can be delightfully catty, and the depth of the characterisation. Always good.
Girl in Translation – Jean Kwok
I picked this up in a random browse and rather enjoyed it. It’s the story of Hong Kong immigrants Kimberley Chang and her mother who are brought to New York by Ma’s sister, to work in her clothing factory. Of course, reality of being in New York, despite being legally in the country, is pretty harsh and the aunt puts them in a dreadful filthy condemned building and they have very little money. Their saving grace is Kimberley’s ability at school and willingness to try and fit in. The book is about transition, about integration (or how much we should integrate) and it’s also about how we want to treat people. It has an odd narrative style and I’m not totally sure that there’s any character development at all but it’s still an interesting look at the immigrant experience.
Moments of Pleasure
Days out this month – Chartwell, which I rather enjoyed, and didn’t find at all ‘woke’ as suggested by the ranting loons who complain about the National Trust. The best thing there was a glorious display of gifts given to Churchill by global types, and in a display next to something from the Sultan of Brunei was a tiny golden shell – a golden winkle that indicated Churchill was an honorary member of the Hastings Winkle Club, a charity for fishermen and underprivileged families. I am also completely envious of the Chartwell dining terrace room.
I also took E to the Yorkshire coast for a few days where we had an apartment over looking the sea and some sun, as well as the mysterious Yorkshire fog. We went on a brief sailing boat trip, played many games of crazy golf and won huge numbers of tickets in the arcades to be redeemed for a load of worthless tat. British seaside holidays at their best.
On our way home, the railways served up their latest helping of incompetence and break downs – a massive power failure which left us stranded in Hull station for a time until I could hire a car. It’s full of historical plaques and statues – to Larkin, the Spiders from Mars, seafarers who accompanied Scott to the Antarctic and an alternative history plaque for Queen Victoria who looked through rose tinted glass there. All of human life…
Susan E Barsby 