I have a stack of non-fiction that really needs tackling. I buy non-fiction with good intentions and these books look interesting, about things I would like to learn of, and then I invariably choose something else to read. But this is silly so non-fiction autumn awaits. Or, at least, more non-fiction that I normally read.
Rural Hours – Harriet Baker
This is a snapshot of three women writers who went to live in the countryside in the early twentieth century: Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann. I know much of Woolf already and this is an interesting counterpoint to her as she was also a great flaneuse and chronicler of the city, but here Baker shows how much the countryside impacted her too. I’ve read only one of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s books, the delightful Lolly Willowes (which is about a middle aged spinster who becomes a witch to avoid being a burden to her family) and I rather liked her gung ho, practical way of tackling living in the country and doing so much to her house and garden. Lehmann I’ve not yet read but found her part of the book the most tiring as she always seemed to be complaining and worrying about not having a man, or having an affair with one who wasn’t quite there, and I wonder how much better it would all have been if she’d felt able to be more obviously independent. It was less her fault, and more a reflection of the times, I think. On the whole, this is an interesting look at the country lives of these writers, a counterpoint to Square Haunting perhaps, which covered city lives at around the same time. Apologies for the double use of counterpoint but I can’t be bothered to change it.
When We Cease to Understand the World – Benjamin Labutut
I heard this discussed on A Good Read and decided to give it a try. It’s a semi-fictional, semi-biographical look at the lives of scientists and how they made discoveries or how their discoveries were linked to others. The opening chapter goes on a journey from Goering’s addiction to methamphetamine to his suicide by cyanide and how cyanide was a by-product of the search for a paint pigment and how paint was often full of terrible things like arsenic and how that could have contributed to Napoleon’s cancer and then something about the Jewish chap who invented Zyklon B, the gas that the Nazis used in the chambers, who inadvertently killed his family and so on. That chapter was the best, and it was also the one that had only one fictional paragraph in. As the book progresses, there is more fiction included, such as the dreams of Schrodinger and all sorts of other inner life stuff that it’s likely we don’t know. I understand nothing more of the science than I did when I started, especially as some of it was about quantum physics (and the people trying to debunk quantum physics – who is the lay person supposed to trust?). However, I think the point of the book was to demonstrate the impact of the application of science on our daily lives – obvious but often we see it as a lab thing when it’s everywhere – and of course how science brings great things to mankind but also creates terrible things. As it happens, I’m writing this in a coffee shop and the man at the next table is reading Frankenstein so as ever, Mary Shelley got there first.
I Who Have Never Known Men – Jacqueline Harpman
This seems to be recircling, having been published in Belgium a few years ago, and is a slim volume that hovers uncertainly in between sci-fi and literary fiction in bookshops. It’s about a group of women who have been captured and held underground for many years, and is narrated by the youngest, who was only a child when they came to the bunker. They think she had been taken by mistake. One day, there is a huge siren blare just as the guards are unlocking the gates to bring in food, the guards run off, and the women are able to escape. They never see the guards again and have to decide what to do, resulting in a journey to find out more about where they are and what has happened. If you are wanting a story where everything is resolved, then you shouldn’t read this. But otherwise, this is a strange but tender look at relationships formed under terrible intense circumstances and concepts of freedom. Enjoyed isn’t quite the word but it’s an intriguing and engaging book.
Around the World in 80 Trains – Monisha Rajesh
I like a travel book and this is a well written interesting account of train travel, and finding a place for train travel in a modern world that prioritises speed and efficiency over the joy of travelling. Rajesh is a seasoned train traveller and in this book, she and her fiance Jeremy travel from London across Asia and back, with a brief stop across Canada and some of the US. The majority of the book is focused around Asia, including China, Tibet and they make it into North Korea. The focus is on the trains, the people they meet on the trains and the culture of the trains, and then there is more from the book when they got off the trains and look around. Rajesh is an open and friendly companion, and is aware of the disparity between what she sees, what she wants to see and how things really are. What I mean by this is that there are a number of incidents where she records how the ancient ways are changing in countries, she notes the nuns using iphones and the huge building projects and realises that people cannot remain rural and undeveloped simply to fulfil the expectations of tourists. However, there is a feeling that modernisation across the world does rob each country of their essential culture and she tries not to begrudge that. There are also, obviously in N Korea, in Tibet, and again when they cross Kazakhstan, there are issues with the authorities and what the guides are allowed to say and what she is allowed to photograph. These scenes are written sensitively, and without a huge amount of judgement.
These Silent Mansions – Jean Sprackland
This is all about graveyards and memory and is rather quiet and lovely. Sprackland realises that the places she has lived in are defined in her mind by the graveyards that she visited while she lived there and decides to return to each. But she’s also a poet and so this is not a straightforward visit and description but rather a tangent each time, finding graves of significance and telling their stories, as well as reminiscing about her memories here. Some of the stories are fascinating: the graveyard that was set up to bury Catholics at a time of their persecution which was subsequently destroyed; the quarry and tunnels that became a grave when used as a store for munitions during the Second World War and a tragic explosion wiped out a farm as well as quarry workers and prisoners of war. I read this at bedtime and it’s a perfect late night book, quiet and respectful and fascinating.
Invitation to the Waltz – Rosamond Lehmann
Following Rural Hours, I requested a couple of Lehmanns from the library and the edition of Invitation to the Waltz they sent was published in 1980, with the original library card tucked in the front from that date. This suggests it’s been rather neglected in the Nottingham library system which is a shame. I much prefer Lehmann in her fictional writing. It’s very much of its time, the 1930s, and she writes of the social mores of that era, but through the eyes of Olivia Curtis, a young girl who has been invited to a dance, a few days after her seventeenth birthday. Very little happens in terms of plot, she has a birthday and then goes to the dance, but the writing is of the minutiae of interactions of growing up in a middle class rural household and the suffocating expectations. But there is something I can’t quite put my finger on, that keeps you reading, that gives you the insight into the deeper life of each character so that you’re not just reading about a girl going to a dance. People don’t write like this any more.
The Weather in the Streets – Rosamond Lehmann
Obviously I had to read the second Olivia Curtis book, having enjoyed the first. The action has moved on and Olivia is living and barely working in London, in that kind of existence that middle class girls could manage in those days knowing they could go home if they needed, or get married. There is a touch more plot in this one, and it caused quite a stir in 1936 when it was published, as (SPOILERS) not only does she have an affair with a married man but has a backstreet abortion also. The same quality of writing is here as the first book and having started the month not knowing much of Lehmann or liking what I first read about her, I am now quite a convert.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
What a huge amount of hype there was about this book. For months, it was all over social media and bookshops and the library had loads of copies all on ‘week only’ loans. But I had resolved to try and avoid hype and this month saw a normal library copy sat on the shelves, forgotten now the marketing frenzy has passed. Several friends have told me that they loved it. I regret to inform them that I did not. I didn’t hate it. Parts of it are entertaining and it’s (mostly) readable enough. All reviews of it appear to contain the following line: ‘I’m not really into video games but you don’t need to like them to read this’, which I’m not and you don’t, though there is a lot of techie video game chat. It’s the story of two friends, Sam and Sadie, who meet in hospital as children (he is a patient, she’s the sister of a patient) and bond over video games. The book follows their friendship through thick and thin, though it’s mostly arguing about stuff and long periods where they don’t talk to each other, and they become video game developers with their mutual friend Marx. People who say it’s a book about friendship seem never to have had a good friendship – this is dysfunctional in many ways, mostly because Sadie appears to be self-centred and delusional and sulky (none of which is a character arc) and Sam is traumatised by loss and car accidents. My biggest peeve, apart from Sadie being a bitch, was the style. The whole thing would have benefited from a strong edit to be at LEAST 50 pages shorter and Zevin, like so many authors her generation (Rooney and especially you, RF Kuang) does feel the need to tell you more than is necessary when she’s already demonstrated a point, just to REEEEEALLY get the point across. In Zevin’s defence, she tends to leave this for the end of a passage and take only a paragraph or two but it’s still irritating. There are also some shockingly poor sentences once in a while that really pull you up out of your reading because they’re so bad. So, on the whole, this was ok. And it’s clear why I don’t work in publishing marketing.
A Truce That is Not Peace – Miriam Toews
One of the most emotionally devastating books I ever read was by Toews, the fictional book All my Puny Sorrows which, having read this, is clearly based on Toews’ life. This opens with Toews being asked to contribute to a conference on the subject ‘Why do I write?’ The conference doesn’t like her answer (how rude) and asks her to try again, and essentially, she writes because it was a way to reconnect with her sister who killed herself. Her father also killed himself and this is a book about grief, about coping with trauma, about how to connect with others and it’s non-fiction thoughts. I know, I know, it sounds awful but I’m interested in this stuff and it’s not as devastating, funnily enough, as All My Puny Sorrows which is brilliant, but if you have a sister, will make you howl.
What To Do When I’m Gone – Hallie Bateman and Suzy Hopkins
Still on death. This is one of those quirky graphic non-fiction books that pop up once in a while, this one written by a mum and illustrated by her daughter. Hallie asks her mum to write her a list if instructions to follow after her mum dies, so that she can still have her wisdom and advice. We all have that thing you save up to tell your mum, right? Or a question. So this is a series of things to do once mum has gone. Recipes to make, grief to acknowledge, what not to put in the obituary, and then longer term stuff. It’s rather sweet. So far I feel the only thing I’m leaving my daughter is a copy of Nigel Slater’s cheesecake recipe but I’ll work on the wisdom.
Moments of Pleasure
I was delighted to meet Damian Barr this month at an event in Bromley House Library in Nottingham to promote his new book, The Two Roberts. I chat occasionally to Damian on social media and have done for a while so it was lovely to meet him in person and we had a chat about the time I went to his salon book event at the Savoy and took a selfie in the toilets because they were so fancy (my blog post about this event is here – cannot believe it was eight years ago….) His talk was very entertaining and the new book sounds fascinating so I’m looking forward to reading my signed copy. Review to follow, obvs.
I also watched the play Dear England at our local theatre, a modern musing on masculinity and being a man in a critical world. We seem to hear nothing but chat about the crisis of male loneliness these days, and I must say I’ve never seen so many men in the theatre before. Perhaps they all just need to get out more. God forbid they might get out to watch something that wasn’t about football. How reductive the world seems to be in many ways. Anyway, Dear England is about the stewardship of the England football team under Gareth Southgate, a man who tried to lift the game above the racism, misogyny and homophobia so rampant on the terraces, and to lift the England players to nearly win something. The men obviously, as we all know the women are double European champions. There were lots of jokes at Harry Kane’s expense and all in all, it was an interesting night.
And to cap it all, the England women won the rugby World Cup. I bloody love rugby and am absolutely thrilled to have seen this victory, and done in such style. Let’s hope rugby can get its act together, sort the funding out across countries and develop these amazing beautiful strong women worldwide to bash the crap out of each other some more.
Susan E Barsby 