August reading round up

First, a quick apology – I have only just found the comments on this blog as WordPress notifications appear to have passed me by for month so, for anyone leaving comments in recent times, thank you, I have now read them and I’m sorry for not replying. Will absolutely be paying more attention from now on especially as the WordPress dashboard format has changed again and hopefully they are easier to find…

And so to August. I think on the whole this was a little disappointing as a reading month, mainly as I’d saved a couple of things for a holiday read which were a let down. However, a couple of gems still. Here you go:

House of Glass – Susan Fletcher

This had an intriguing premise and was a gothic little story that never entirely convinced as a ghost story. I think I always knew there was going to be a prosaic explanation. However I quite liked the heroine and the representation of her disability and her feminism – however out of historical context her attitudes seemed to be. House of Glass is about Klara, a young woman whose bold mother has recently died, and how she is summoned to a country house in Gloucestershire just before the outbreak of the First World War, to fill its glasshouse. The owner is mysterious and often away. Klara has a disability of very frail bones and is often stared at but she becomes a part of the household for a while, until there are mysterious goings-on, which are supposed to be the resident ghost. The book is all about women’s agency – or not – and although it relies on a ludicrous plot device at the end, I decided it was entertaining enough.

Openings – Lucy Caldwell

This is a book of short stories and some of them were very low key, without that tendency towards irritating twists that seem to dominate many short stories these days. Some of them – whisper it – are even cheerful and a snapshot of a scene, leaving the ending ambiguous but not unfinished. I guess this is where the title came from. I really liked these, and have been trying to read more short stories so it was good to have a new author to look out for.

A Place of Greater Safety – Hilary Mantel

Full disclosure – I didn’t finish it, ok? It’s a long book, nearly 900 pages, all about the French Revolution, about which I know nothing. But I’ve wanted to read it for ages and feel positively towards Mantel and long books, so I saved it for when we were on holiday. The problem was that although I could just about keep track of the three main characters, I couldn’t keep up with who everyone else was. There are eight pages of characters listed at the beginning but what I needed was ‘this character was this and you last saw them here when they did this’. So I got 200 pages in and had no idea who most people were or what was going on. I thought I could have quite liked Robespierre as a character, as is Mantel’s wont to get us to care about bad people, but I was flummoxed for much of it. Sorry.

Last Chance in Paris – Lynda Marron

A further disclosure – this is the reading group choice for August and they wanted something light but this is not the kind of thing I usually read and so my review will not be kind. I read it in an evening and it’s the story of a couple who have a weekend in Paris to try and save their marriage after a tragedy. There is no tension here, of course you know the marriage will be fine. There are other characters who are also travelling to Paris for a variety of reasons and who intersect somehow with the couple, but within the first three chapters, any inner life of any of these people seem to be preoccupied with their appearance. So it was difficult to find any depth in this, although the tragedy part is well covered. If you like light women’s lit, you will find this an easy enough read. It’s competently written.

The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields

This is the entire life of one woman, Daisy Goodwill, told ostensibly by her daughter but Shields played about with form in a light way so there are other tricks in use here and ways of telling the story. It’s a great start, the birth of Daisy Goodwill to a woman who was unaware she was pregnant until she gave birth on the kitchen floor, and then dies of enclampsia. This is pretty much how it goes for women in the book, they are mostly disappointed or frustrated, although the men in the book are also quirky and disappointed and don’t get it all their way. There is a slightly uncomfortable section about Daisy’s second husband and his attraction to Daisy when she’s still a child but fortunately this isn’t acted on until she is well into adulthood. I liked the scope of the book and Shields was a great writer, one who I feel like I’m now of the right age to appreciate.

Sea Bean – Sally Huband

This is a book of nature writing, the premise of which I enjoy but on the whole I tend to lose interest before the end. I think I need to stick to nature writing in articles, as the length is better for me. Sally Huband moves with her family to the Shetland Isles, and loves beach combing. She struggles with many things: the lack of employment for her, chronic illness that has been exacerbated by pregnancies, the occasional boredom of motherhood and the loss of identity beyond family, and so she finds solace in learning all she can about the natural life of the island. She volunteers for many things – litter picking, bird rescue, – and travels around the islands finding out more about the myths and the changes that have impacted the communities here. Much of this is to do with climate change and the huge amount of plastic that washes up on the beaches, though while documenting this she does still send out messages in bottles and hopes to find others which I found a bit odd. She also talks about sea beans, and the lucky charm powers they are meant to have. The story contains less personal details as it goes on, as she adjusts to her change of circumstances and finds ways to get through the days with interest.

Finding Endurance: Shackleton, my father and a world without end – Darrel Bristow-Bovey

I stumbled across this by chance in Tenby bookshop, on holiday and feeling depressed by bringing Mantel and the Paris book with me. Regular readers will know of my love for Shackleton and this book retells the old story but in a different way. It combines a little about the author’s family history – his father claimed to have been on the Endurance despite being far too young – and also adds in context, both about the times the expedition took place, the changing climate now, natural details no-one ever includes (there is one chapter called A Very Brief Digression about Albatrosses) and contains a lot of discussion about Scott/ Shackleton rivalry (such as it was) and playing the game in the right way. In short, Bristow-Bovey, a South African with roots in England, looks at the English culture of the time and finds it lacking. A Shackleton apologist, he nevertheless spares no details in listing his hero’s shortcomings – debts, infidelity, tough decisions – and in doing so makes us feel we can trust his judgment. He never quite goes for Scott fully, but more for the wider culture that revered his death as something truly great while shunning Shackleton for daring to bring everyone home alive. Every time I read the story I think about how utterly unsuited I would be to this and how amazing it was that they survived. It’s nice to have that fully acknowledged, and to hear someone else be thrilled at the finding of Endurance last year. My family usually tolerate me banging on about this so this was a book where I felt among friends.

The Burgess Boys – Elizabeth Strout

The blurb on the front of this book says that this is a book that shows you what it’s like to be alive and, if you’re a perpetually disappointed middle aged person, perhaps it is. I felt it could have been just a little tighter in form as parts of it dragged. The Burgess Boys, Jim and Bob, are no longer boys but middle aged men, both lawyers, and no longer living in the Maine village where they grew up. Their sister does still live there and when her son gets into trouble for committing a hate crime against the newly migrated Somali community, she calls her brothers to go and help. I don’t think I’ve read more of an unpleasant toxic character than Jim Burgess, a man whose actions are to external eyes perhaps quite normal, but his behaviour to both his brother and his wife is awful. I have rarely wished for retribution for someone as much as I did while reading this. Strout is better known now for her Olive Kitteridge books (which I love) and Lucy Barton series but this is an earlier one and while I liked it, part of me wasn’t totally convinced. I wonder how it would have turned out in the hands of someone like Richard Russo, a writer who turns out books of small town New England people with massive father issues so well.

Moments of Pleasure

We had a week in Pembrokeshire in the summer, a week of relaxation, (mostly) sun, beaches, and castles. It’s a place that allows you to make your own fun, so there aren’t many arcades or tourist trach shops in the coastal towns, just places for you to surf or chill or swim or walk or whatever you want. Which we did. I liked it very much.

We also had a cottage with Netflix, which we don’t usually subscribe to, so every night was film night and one of these was my favourite Studio Ghibli film, the lesser celebrated Whisper of the Heart. All the chat is about the more weird Ghiblis but this is a lovely sweet and absorbing film about a girl who becomes a writer. I watched it for the first time years ago, after a day of stressful pregnancy and it soothed me. I was very glad to watch it again.

I love a farm shop. Living in the city, we rarely get the chance to wander around them and although we have some excellent delis, I do like to find farm shops where we can. The highlight of our journey to Wales was the stop at Gloucester Services and their farm shop, and Pembrokeshire is blessed with some too, one where we found dinner having been soaked in heavy rain on the beach at Manorbier. And on a visit to my mum’s house, I walked up to a new farm shop down the road from her and found it full of lovely things. Simple pleasures for a simple person perhaps, but there you go.