What a month it’s been. It seems to have flown by and the year nearly half gone already. You’ll find a theme to many of the books I read this month and despite some of the reviews below not sounding overwhelmingly positive, it’s been a good reading month.
Oh William! Elizabeth Strout
This is the next in the Amgash Lucy Barton series and it’s rather ordinary, I think. It’s perfectly readable and I read it at bedtime, so it worked well to wind the brain down but… yeah. It’s told in the first person, Lucy’s voice, and it describes a period of time following the death of her second husband. Still grieving, she is nevertheless available to support her first husband when his third wife leaves him and he discovers the existence of a half-sister he didn’t know he had. They take a trip to visit the sister and find out about his ghastly mother’s origins. Strout writes terrible parents well, I think. Especially the mums.
Lucy by the Sea – Elizabeth Strout
You may spot a theme this month. I liked this much more than the previous book. It’s a lockdown book, which is still rare enough to be interesting I think. William – of the above – invites Lucy to live with him away from New York for the duration of the pandemic. They move to Crosby, scene of Strout’s Olive Kitteridge’s books, and to where Bob Burgess (from an earlier Strout book) is also living with his second wife. As we’ve seen in previous Strout books, there isn’t a lot of plot; these are character-driven books, and Lucy is introspective and reflective so a good person to be narrating a strange time in history. There is a small plot with their daughters and their family lives, but this is about two people adjusting to different times and it covers the quality of swimming in glue which so much of the pandemic felt like, at least to me.
My Battle of Hastings – Xialou Gu
I picked this up because I’m very fond of Hastings. It’s a biographical diary of sorts, where the writer Gu moves to a small flat in Hastings to write. She covers a lot of the history of the area, particularly the famous battle itself, but she also writes of the modern times with an outsider’s eye on the British. The times are the Boris Johnson prime ministership and its end – big picture – and the hassles of trying to get someone to replace her windows and general comments on the litter and rundown situation of much of Hastings – small picture. It’s an account written by someone mildly baffled by us but critical.
Bring the Jubilee – Ward Moore
The reading group choice this month from the Sci Fi Masterwork series and oh, this should have been so much better than it was. It’s an alternative history book – what would have happened if the south won the American civil war? – and it has time travel in it, so it should be really interesting. Yet Moore has somehow managed to write a ponderous tale of a dull man and his thoughts, with just a few occasional hints about what happened in the war. The time travel part is covered in a single chapter. It was readable enough once you got used to the style but I wasn’t sure by the end, what it was for, exactly.
Sally Jones and the False Rose – Jakob Wegelius
The second book in the children’s series written and illustrated by Wegelius, featuring Sally Jones, ape and engineer, first mate and storyteller. I enjoyed this as much as the first book, another tale of dastardly ill deeds encountered by Jones and her captain. Splendid stuff.
The Latecomer – Jean Hanff Korelitz
I picked this up last year as it’s written by Helene Hanff’s niece, and as 84 Charing Cross Road is one of my favourite ever books, I wanted to see if the writing bug was in the family. (Is Jean the young relative of Hanff that she wants to buy Jane Austen books for at the end of 84? I really want her to be though I’m not sure the timeline works.) Anyway, this is adeptly written but quite peculiar nonetheless. I’m not a fan of what appears to be this modern phenomenon of finding ghastly rich people fascinating so you need something more and I’m not sure this had it. The Latecomer is about triplets that appear to have no familial bond whatsoever, born to a man who was the driver in a car accident in college that killed two people, and a woman who was friends with the victims. The ongoing trauma to their father renders him odd, shall we say, and having an affair with another person from the car accident, who he meets years later. The title refers to the narrator of the book, without giving everything away, but although everything sort of winds up neatly, it’s hard to care about. I might try something else by her, despite this, as she’s clearly a good writer.
Tell Me Everything – Elizabeth Strout
Back to Strout and this is the latest book, set in Maine and bringing together all her characters (including a brief mention for Amy and Isabelle, her first book which I immediately ordered – see below). Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge and Bob Burgess are all here. It’s also told in the third person – the Barton books are first person – and I think the third is more successful.
On the Calculation of Volume I – Solvej Balle
This is the first of what will apparently be a seven volume series, translated from the Danish, about a woman who is reliving the same day – 18 November – over and over again. The twist here is that whatever she does or wherever she goes remains when the day resets, she doesn’t have to start in the same place, unlike something like Groundhog Day. This volume is about her trying to get through a year of the day, assuming that everything will be fine once a year has passed. It’s about her adjusting to her new reality, about how she tells her husband what is happening for a few of the days and how he tries to help her, and how, after a while, this is too draining for her. It’s about noticing, and thinking, and isolation, and confusion and time. It’s a slim volume but is packed with humanity and I’m intrigued by what will happen in the next.
Amy and Isabelle – Elizabeth Strout
This was Strout’s first published novel and it’s a richly detailed story of a mother and daughter. Isabelle is a single mother working at a mill as the owner’s secretary and Amy is her daughter. Their relationship is strained when news breaks that Amy has been having an affair with her maths teacher, a well drawn portrait of a manipulative turdball exploiting teenage girls. The affair brings to the fore everything that Isabelle has been working to hide, trying to be more than she is, and in her first book you can see Strout has already mastered the small stories of lonely lives that she will make her own. I only have one more Strout to read now and have really enjoyed this immersive month.
Moments of Pleasure
I took sleeper trains this month as part of my year of doing things I’ve always wanted to do, and despite one of them breaking down, it’s quite the most civilised way to travel. You go to sleep here, you wake up there, someone brings you porridge, strong coffee and biscuits. Recommended.
The travel meant I could visit two more bookshops I’d never been to before – Daunt Books in Marylebone and The Edge of the World Bookshop in Penzance.
And I also watched The Salt Path in London, the film of the book starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. If you liked the book, you’ll like the film.
Finally, I visited the Minack Theatre in Porthcurno which is amazing. I doubt very much whether it would be created now, we appear to have moved beyond wealthy eccentric people doing fun and utterly mad things like this. But what a gift, to be able to create something astonishing, because you liked the idea of it, to put all your effort and love and grind into it, because you loved this idea and to have it looked after for the nation. I’m only sorry the performances were sold out weeks in advance, but wandering and climbing around it was an experience in itself.
Susan E Barsby 