Two months to go to get through the tbr pile and I realised I’d not read a lot of non-fiction this year, which is a lot of what’s left. So I tried non-fiction November, with some fiction thrown in because I just can’t limit myself to facts all the time.
Reading Lessons – Carol Atherton
Atherton is an experienced English teacher and this book examines books that she has taught and many of us have studied over the years. It looks at how you could teach or discuss them and examples of the kinds of debates this has spawned, and how attitudes to some have changed over the years. It also talks a lot about the benefits of English literature, about it as a study and how much has been lost now that it’s no longer a core subject children must take. As someone whose life would have been immeasurably poorer without reading books, I can only agree. The recent statistics about the huge drop in numbers of children reading for pleasure back me on this. Another Tory triumph.
A Woman’s Story – Annie Ernaux
Ernaux is a bit of a ‘thing’ now following her winning the the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022 and I hadn’t read any of her books. This is a slim volume and a biography of her mother, written in the months following her mother’s death from dementia. She doesn’t waste any sentiment or flowery language but talks about the life in dispassionate terms, though in the way that only someone who knew a person well could do. How did one thing lead her to think or act later, how did her life alter, and so on. It’s an interesting exercise to read and to consider how well do we look at another person and regard them at one step removed?
Some Body Like Me – Lucy Lapinska
This is the first adult novel from Lucy, better known to middle grade readers as LD Lapinski, and it’s an interesting one. It’s the future, nearing the end of humanity’s tenure on earth and the AI robots have gained sentience. In a week’s time, they will be released from serving humans and released to live as they please. Autumn is a robot belonging to David, who has had her built in the exact replica of his dead wife Abigail. Not at all creepy. What will they both do when Autumn is no longer obligated to stay with him? This is reminiscent of Blade Runner in many ways, but with a more modern slant (which sounds silly if you think that Blade Runner was set in the future, but I mean at the time of writing.) Anyway, with all good sci fi, the point is to show us something about ourselves and this turns from being a potential thriller into a tender and insightful love story. It’s out next February and I’d recommend getting yourself a pre-order right now.
In Memoriam – Alice Winn
In Brother of the More Famous Jack, there is the line that reads “Jacob is unshakeable in his conviction that not much goes on at public schools other than cold showers and buggery in the choir stalls.” Nothing in this book would shake Jacob’s view. But I guess every generation needs a First World War book and having had Birdsong and Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, perhaps the kids need something. It’s the story of two public school boys, Gaunt and Ellery (Henry and Sidney but being public schoolboys, they rarely use first names. This is commented on by another character who has the misfortune of being from the lower classes) who go to war. The title comes from the school’s internal magazine which publishes short pieces commemorating all the boys who have died for their country, and so the book becomes a piece about who will survive. Ellery’s character is based partly on Wilfrid Owen, I believe, who quotes and writes poetry, and in general there’s all kinds of references to Tennyson and Greek tragedy. It’s a love story too, of sorts, with the proviso about all seeming to be about sex, why are men’s love stories so one dimensional? A lot of the descriptions of the trenches were graphic and visceral but somehow not shocking, so either it was written in a way that made me feel distanced from it all and unengaged in some way, or I’ve become totally desensitised. Let’s hope it’s the former. This was absolutely lauded on publication and I thought it was good but somehow not great. To be fair, I thought that about Birdsong too.
Feminist City – Leslie Kern
From the cover, a feminist city is an ongoing experiment in living differently, living better and living more justly. In many ways, some of the proposals are similar to the 15 minute cities idea that rises up occasionally only to have paranoid Mail reading car drivers scream that no one is taking their cars away from them and then dies down a bit. I’m not sure the proposals and ideas set out here are particularly feminist. In short, this is an examination of how we could look to live a little easier – placing amenities within close distance so working carers (parents, elderly relatives etc) can access what they need easily without compromising work time too much, improving public transport and public spaces to be safe for women to travel through, and all that sort of thing. Common sense, you might say, but not something that actually happens often. This is all very interesting but the writing of the book could have been a little more engaging. The author did talk about projects worldwide that had trialled aspects of this but didn’t talk to people in those projects to get their perspective, how they did it etc. So it read a little dry when it could have been more people focused.
Why Women Read Fiction – Katherine Taylor
Why does anyone read fiction, you might ask. This book doesn’t completely explore why this is a gendered question but instead examines what looks to be an eco-system of sorts around women’s reading. We don’t just read, we have book groups, attend festivals, make literary pilgrimages and so on. All of which is quite interesting, but doesn’t answer why we do these things and also doesn’t explore from anything other than a white middle class perspective. I mean, fine, if you’re a white middle class reader, which I am, but there was no attempt to explore if this is a universal experience for women or just some of us. And, as I mentioned, it doesn’t really explore why women read fiction – the closest it comes sometimes is suggesting that real life and romance is disappointing. The parts I enjoyed the most were explorations of the most widely cited ‘favourite’ books – Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice – possibly because these are among my favourite books too. It’s a pleasant enough amble to read but perhaps not quite resolved enough.
Chorus – Rebecca Kaufmann
A bit of fiction to break up the theory. This is a broad sweep of a family saga, told in a series of non-time consecutive short chapters. Set in the US, the story examines the Shaw family, living in their home surrounded by farmland. The seven siblings have to then manage their lives having been affected by two main events, the death of their mother and a teenage pregnancy – set in the 1930s to 1950s. It doesn’t sound very much like that but it’s a quiet book looking at the intricacies of family life and is an assured read.
Moments of Pleasure
November is the worst month. So I booked us some nice things to do to make the month cheerier. First up, the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery. It explores the year or so near the end of his life where he stayed at Arles, painting a huge amount and really developing further his style. It features a lot of paintings I’d not seen before, tells a story of an artist’s development and brings together two of his sunflower paintings with a portrait that he envisaged as a triptych, hanging them together for the first time since they were painted. It was lovely. We also stopped off at The Courtauld Gallery which I’d not visited before, and visited my favourite, the South Bank bookstalls and markets.
And I also took E to watch Northern Ballet’s A Christmas Carol, which we both enjoyed very much. I loved the ghost costumes throughout and found the haunting sequences to be excellent, something that isn’t always focused on.
Susan E Barsby 