March round up

This has felt like a long grey month. You’ll spot a theme in the reading – unintended to start with but which has been quietly absorbing.

Lila – Marilynne Robinson

Lila is the third book in Robinson’s Gilead series, which began with Gilead, the story an old man, John Ames, writes for his son about his life. Lila is the old man’s wife, and this is her story. It focuses on how you can tell your story when you have limited means, limited schooling, limited trust for others and an understanding that others may have limited views on your life. Lila was snatched as a child by Doll, who regards herself as having done Lila a favour as her family were bad, and brings her up while they are in transit, sending her to school but keeping both of them below the radar in case Lila’s family return to take her back. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she stays in a shack and takes odd jobs around the town and the story of what has happened with her and Doll eventually comes to light. But in between that, you find how she has to adjust to being married to John Ames, the priest of Gilead and she has to work out how she feels. I wept my way through Gilead which is a beautiful book and meditation on life and love, and while this is well written and fascinating, it’s a different beast altogether, complementary but different. I love Robinson’s work. A reread of Gilead may soon be on the cards.

The Full English – Stuart Maconie

Maconie recreates JB Priestley’s book, An English Journey, which Priestey took in the 1930s. It’s a meandering and sometimes odd journey, eschewing the south east and south west altogether, but the idea is to get a sense of how we may have changed, especially in light of Brexit and Covid. Maconie is a light travelling companion, ready to walk in even the dodgiest of areas, chatting to locals and eating their food. As such, he makes even the most surprising of places sound interesting and worth a visit – finding the best in Stockton on Tees, for example, is something not everyone can do. It’s an examination of the country in an honest light, from someone who wants to think the best of it but who is also up front about the challenges in some of the places he travels to. One of the things he points out is the huge discrepancy between cities and towns, with towns very much lacking in investment to match the ambition and pride found in each – for all the talk of levelling up, the reality is still very far away. Much of the book examines the divides we still have here, not quite north-south, not quite urban-country, but some hangover of haves and have nots – inequality and failed promises. The book finishes on this emotional note, with Maconie talking about the death of both his parents during the lockdown era, their struggles taking place while parties took place in Number 10. Maconie’s interest and love for the country and its people is evident and you feel he would like it all to be even a little bit better.

Fun Home – Alison Bechdel

I’d picked this up on a whim, having been aware of Bechdel from her test, and I knew she wrote all sorts of things. Fun Home is a graphic creative non-fiction tale of Bechdel’s family life – her father took his own life, or so they think – and was also a half-closeted gay man, and so the difficulties of Bechdel coming to terms with that loss but also trying to reconcile her father’s sexuality with his behaviour to her, as she also comes out. I confess, although there’s a lot of emotional material to deal with here, while I started out enjoying it, I did start to tire of it and felt it was a bit self-indulgent.

Gilead – Marilynne Robinson

Yeah, I did pick this up for a reread. It’s such a quiet, interior book. The story of Rev John Ames as he writes to his son, explaining his life and the older family members who shaped his outlook on life, Gilead is a reflective look at faith and community and family and love. This is set after Lila, when Ames and everyone around him realises he is so old and starts to get sick, when he knows he doesn’t have much time left. The first half is very slow, being built around stories of his history and an examination of faith, but there comes more plot in the second half, when his friend’s son comes home and causes tensions in the small community. Robinson is interested in ideas of faith and treats it in what feels like a very old fashioned but grown up, respectful way – choosing to explore personal experiences of faith and how it can provide strength and comfort to people who believe, which chimes with how I see my Christian friends live their lives. The main tension in the book is between the preacher and his friend’s son, and the ending is almost unbearably moving. I loved it – again.

Days in the Caucasus – Banine

This was the reading group choice this month, an autobiography translated from the French about a childhood in Azerbaijan around the time of the Russian Revolution and Civil war. Oh, that might be interesting, you think. And perhaps in someone else’s hands it might be. In short, it appears that rich people can act like dicks at any age and in any country. And that if you’re writing a book, you might try to remember more about a trip to the beach and being mean to your governess than when your entire family had to escape an attack on the house and take refuge in Persia for months. As such, I tried to maintain interest in this but I just got bored.

Mothering Sunday – Graham Swift

Swift is one of those authors who have hovered on the periphery of my consciousness for years without me getting round to reading them. Until now when I picked this up at the library and got stuck in. It’s essentially the story of one day in the long life of Jane Fairchild, a housemaid who has been given the day off from her duties because it’s Mothering Sunday, in 1924. Jane is a foundling and has no parent to visit on this day, which is just as well because she’s conducting an affair with the remaining son of the nearby big house, friends of the big house she works at. The other sons have all been killed in the war. The book opens with her and her lover lying naked on his bed, (he is to be married in two weeks’ time and is supposed to be meeting his fiancé for lunch) and describes much of her day in such detail, both what she does next but also covering the rest of her life afterwards and a few details from her early life too. It’s a story about storytelling, about what we hide and what others see, about love, class, freedom and privacy. It’s a masterclass in restraint and I enjoyed it very much.

Home – Marilynne Robinson

Two books in and I thought I’d continue the series. This was a reread and features the family of the other preacher in Gilead, John Boughton, who is Ames’s friend. Boughton is very old and is looked after at home by his daughter Glory, who used to be a school teacher and has come home because her marriage failed. Or so we think. And coming home too is John’s prodigal son, named for Ames, John (Jack) Ames Boughton, bringing with him an echo of some of the story in Gilead. We know from that book that Jack has a wife and son, and that his wife and child are black, and that there are troubles because of this. Jack has come home to see his father and see if there is a place in Gilead for them all to live. While he is home, he tries to reconcile his life with his father’s love, with the judgement of others and with his own feelings for Della, his wife. It’s a slow book of love, mistakes and forgiveness.

Jack – Marilynne Robinson

And so we come to the end of the series. I hadn’t planned to read them all this month but I’m glad now that I have. This one is best to leave until last simply because the first quarter is a very slow scene and conversation between Jack and Della and if you weren’t already on their side and with a little knowledge of their situation, you’d likely put the book down. It’s a difficult start. Having said that, once I got through that scene, the story moved into their love story, their immediate difficulties in falling in love in a country that will not recognise a relationship of any kind, and the way their families will react. And that was good. None of these books are fast paced, all of them are very internal focused, and I found myself liking Jack the most of all the characters, despite him being painted as such a bad apple.

Real Tigers and Spook Street – Mick Herron

For a change of pace, why not turn to the world of MI6? These are the third and fourth of the Slow Horses books and I got a pile of them all out of the library. As well as entertainment, the point of Herron’s books seems to be that the establishment, including HM spy services, are their own worst enemy and there are as many dangers lurking from your own side as from rogue states. Anyway, they’re a fun read.

Moments of Pleasure

After reading Year of Wonders last month (see review) we had a day out to Eyam this weekend, when the weather was gloriously springlike. We stopped in at the museum, walked around the village and churchyard and hiked up one of the hills near the moors, before descending for ice cream. It’s was a splendid spring outing which seemed to blow away many of the grey weathery cobwebs.

I watched Past Lives, which has had such acclaim and I did enjoy it very much, though I found it hard to like the main chap so it wasn’t as much of a wrench for me at the end as it has been for others.

I have also started listening to The Rest is History podcast, with Tom Holland Dominic Sandbrook. It’s fun in depth stuff, looking at all sorts of historical topics and informative in a good enjoyable way.

Finally, I’ve been taking part in a short story festival and attending various webinars to brush up on my short story skills, which have been lacking recently. I may *whispers* have even finished a couple of pieces that have been hanging around for yonks. So now to overcome the next hurdle – sending those off and writing something fresh. Watch this space.