Sometimes your reading all comes together in a theme and that’s what happened at the beginning of the month, with several books on the theme of place and belonging. Then it all got a bit random.
Map Addict – Mike Parker
I confess I bought this because a couple of years ago we went to a book event with Stuart Maconie and this chap was there with him. He was entertaining enough but not everyone was going to buy his book because he was less known than Maconie and I felt bad buying one book but not the other. It’s a book about the history of map developments and designers and areas of quirkiness. In short, if you’re a map nerd, this is for you. I’m not a map nerd, though I like finding silly place names when we go on holiday. There’s a few chapters about the politics behind maps, but only a little about borders – a whole book by itself. A few years ago, the comedian Mark Thomas appeared at an event at the bookshop I worked at and he was outraged that military sites weren’t mapped, that they were just blank. He wanted me to be outraged too but it seemed really quite obvious to me that these weren’t on a map and I couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm. These days, of course, they are mapped simply because drones and digital online whatnot mean they can’t be kept as secret as before. Anyway, the early chapters are quite in depth for the lay person but the later chapters about gender differences in reading maps, digital changes and so on were more enjoyable. I’m mildly embarrassed to say the chapter about rude place names was my favourite. This was a bit too nerdy for me but on the whole I enjoyed it.
Happiness – Amanitta Forna
I had a real book hangover after finishing this, nothing seemed to give me the same interest to carry on reading. This is a story of two people who meet by chance in London, both of them visitors to the city, both of them with personal challenges in their lives. Jean is an American animal behaviourist, studying urban foxes, recently separated from her husband and feeling distant from their son. She meets Dr Attila Asare, a trauma psychologist who is giving a lecture at a conference, as well as checking on the health of an old lover who he is now the legal guardian of as her dementia takes hold. When Attila’s nephew goes missing, following a immigration misunderstanding, the two of them join forces with the network of workers across the city. This is a book really relevant for these turbulent days. It brings the streets of London to life, with the energy of a diverse population and those tiny moments of kindness and connection that are so important. There’s a lot to say about who belongs and who doesn’t and the analogy of urban foxes (“foxes belong in the countryside, we should cull these ones”) is well handled, Forna doesn’t hit you over the head with the point she’s trying to make.
The City of Today is a Dying Thing – Des Fitzgerald
I picked this up somewhere as it looked interesting – the cover and cover blurbist did a cracking job – but how wrong I was. Actually a clarification, it’s not boring; it’s that the author wants so much to be a controversialist, to have people talking about his crazy ideas but then stop and say, “well actually, he has a point about that.” Fitzgerald (I have no idea who he is) starts by saying that he dislikes green cities, that people who plant trees and greenery in cities are trying to cover over problems that come from issues with the essential city design. He argues that parks in cities are problematic because so many of the great ones were built as a sop trying to keep the unwashed masses happy and docile, and are a tribute to ideas of white supremacy. He says that if we regard anthills as ‘nature’ then we should regard concrete blocks of flats as nature too. He then went on to explore an example of what he called ‘greening a city’: the Marble Arch mound. My impression of this mound from Nottingham was that it was a corporate money making enterprise rather than an actual environmental project. It didn’t feel like he had a genuine reason for his thinking, there was no depth here only a whinge. There are problems with city design, and we do have an uncomfortable fetish for the countryside which is arguably as manmade a landscape as a city centre, but he didn’t explore this. He also barely mentioned the threat of climate change and how greening a city will help with lowering temperatures and preventing flooding, as Paris has proved by planting 150 thousand trees and creating more city parks in the last decade. Finally, he came nowhere close to talking about how a huge problem with city living is the amount of space and energy devoted to cars and how that prevents more greenery projects working. In the end I got really cross with this and didn’t bother finishing it. I doubt he came up with any solutions. Once in a while he’d mention a city he disliked and thought were dull: Paris, New York and Copenhagen. I mean…? If a man’s tired of Copenhagen, so the saying almost goes, he’s tired of life. Perhaps he didn’t try the fruit crumble tarts they have there. Don’t bother with this.
The Garden Against Time – Olivia Laing
Thank goodness then, for Olivia Laing and this lovely book. A few years ago Laing and their husband bought a house in Suffolk which had a garden, once well known and well planted but now somewhat neglected. This book is the story of their restoration efforts, combined with Laing’s trademark exploration of gardens in literature and history. These include more research about the garden they’re looking after, but also local big estates, Derek Jarman’s garden at Dungeness and others. The only thing missing from the book is some photos of the garden but luckily I know Laing puts regular pics on their Instagram account so was able to look at those. It is a lovely garden.
This May Surprise You – Hayley Gullen
And now for something completely different. This is a graphic biography of Hayley Gullen’s experience of breast cancer treatment. It’s really honest and covers the depth of emotions she experienced but remains a positive story. I have no need for this book but would absolutely recommend it for anyone you know who might be going through breast cancer treatment, simply as it feels like you’ve got a friend with you who spares nothing but is there for the biggest support.
Children of Radium – Joe Dunthorne
More non-fiction, though I got this out of the library instead of reducing my tbr pile. This is a family history, where Dunthorne tries to find evidence of the family myth – how they escaped from Nazi Germany – and instead uncovers lots of unpleasant secrets. Dunthorne’s great-grandfather Siegfried was a Jewish scientist and he created toothpaste with radium in (!) and worked at a gas mask factory before the outbreak of war. Naively, he felt his work was theoretical, that any gases tested were a ‘just in case’ scenario, until the late 1930s when he realised he and his family had to leave Germany. The story of their leaving became a myth and no-one else talked about the war until Joe Dunthorne came along. The ramifications of Siegfried’s work were awful – from the massacre at Dersim to the masks supplied to people picking apart the corpses at Auschwitz, which included friends and colleagues of the Dunthorne family – and it seems likely that the burden of this knowledge caused mental health issues and a terrible silence. This is not a cheerful book – although light relief is provided by Dunthorne’s mum – but it is compelling and easy to read. I finished it in a single day and then had nightmares. But it’s important stuff.
The Rest of Our Lives – Ben Markowitz
I like to read a few, if not all, the shortlist from either the Booker or the Women’s Prize and this is a Booker shortlist. It should be right up my street; for some reason one of my favourite tropes is where a middle aged male college professor does something nuts in small town America – think Chabon’s Wonder Boys or Richard Russo’s A Good Man. Both of those work because they’re funny. This is not. This is incredibly uptight. A whole cast of paranoid, past-dwelling anxiety-ridden-but-comfortable middle class Americans. In short, a man has got into trouble at work by saying something mildly offensive, several years previously his wife had an affair but he decided to wait until the children had left home before he too left and, having taken his daughter to college, he carries on driving across the country, pondering life, but mostly his wife’s infidelity. There is a sub plot about basketball which isn’t clear and a few mild plot points about how white men feel left out or something, which another writer might have made the point of the book. I hated all the characters. Then it ends and you’re left wondering what the point of it was. I haven’t read anything else on the shortlist, but I imagine they must all be better than this.
The Closed Door – Dorothy Whipple
I picked this up in Bath in August as I’m rather fond of Dorothy Whipple and this is a collection of short stories. These are rather fun. They’re about liberation of women, usually from tiresome domestic situations, often involving overbearing parents or dull husbands. There is nothing terribly sharp about them, the perils are boredom rather than anything sinister but I rather enjoyed them, nearly cheering for one woman when she realised how to get out of a dreadful situation. And then you get to the final two stories which have much darker endings. It’s masterfully structured. Top work, Whipple.
Noah’s Compass – Anne Tyler
I read this on two train journeys from Nottingham to Brussels, and it’s this month’s reading group choice as we decided we should try more Tyler. Sometimes I find her a bit meh but this one worked for me. Possibly because I read it all in a single day. Anyway, it’s about Liam, who is made redundant from his job teaching, who downsizes to a smaller apartment and after his first night there, wakes in a hospital having been concussed by a burglar. He tries to find out what happened to him and in doing so, examines his life, family and mistakes. If I had a criticism, it would be that his adult daughters were all awful, hectoring types and I’d really hope if anyone could write complicated interesting middle aged women, it should be Tyler. Otherwise, I quite enjoyed this.
The Story of a Heart – Rachel Clarke
Oh, how I sobbed through this. Clarke is a doctor, well known for her work with palliative care, and this is the history of heart transplants, but structured around the story of two families. Nine year old Kiera is in a car crash and seriously injured, alongside her mother and brother. Despite excellent care, her injuries are too severe and she is pronounced brain dead. Her wonderful family want her to be an organ donor, to honour her memory because she was a kind girl, and so the book tells you of how this takes place and the historical advancements that have made it possible. The other family in the story is the family of the recipient of the heart, Max, whose heart has been seriously weakened. There is a lot on both sides to weep over, which I did, but almost the worst thing was that Kiera’s mother was so injured she barely had a chance to say goodbye to her daughter. That, and Kiera’s dad standing outside as they took her organs off to be used in other patients, to recognise his daughter’s last act. Did you know that before any operation to access transplant organs, the NHS staff take a moment to honour the patient donor, to recognise them as a person in their own right? Isn’t that lovely? and correct? This is well worth reading but do have a box of tissues.
Emma – Jane Austen
My Austen reread continues and I’m so glad that Jane Austen herself said that no-one else will really like Emma as a character. It gives me permission to get very cross with her, because she’s so awful at the beginning. Self-centred while assuming she’s kind and benevolent and she makes so many mistakes and is generally just an irritant. I know it must be hard to live with her father and the general hectoring of Mr Knightley and to have to live up to a certain standard, but really. Anyway, it gets to the introduction of Mrs Elton before my feelings change, and really that’s just because Mrs Elton is even more ghastly. You can tell just how much fun the entire thing was to write, and I’m sure Austen likely put all sorts of things in there she’d observed from others so in that sense, it’s definitely an excellent book. I also actively love Miss Bates and her twittering ways, she’s so well written, she walks off the page. So I admire this, but can never love it.
Moments of Pleasure
We had a few days in Belgium because we don’t tend to do holidays where you can feel warm, and anyway I wanted to go somewhere without flying as I was feeling anti-airport. The frites were excellent. As was the hot chocolate and I managed to operate a waffle maker without too much disaster. We also took in cultural highlights – museums of art, comics, medieval life and modern daily life – and I played table football very badly every day in our hotel. The weather also broke my boots and my umbrella but on the whole we had a lovely few days, everyone was very friendly and the buildings look like biscuits.
I also went to see Level 42, touring 40 years of their World Machine album. I was a teenage fan, though not of that album, but had never seen them play live so went along and enjoyed it very much.
Finally, I caught an early screening of Hamnet, the film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s book and I will post a full review here so keep an eye out. It’ll be in the next week or so.
Susan E Barsby 