Another month where I’ve not read anything from this year’s challenge – the Twentieth Century books. I will try to remedy this next month. But in the meantime, this is what I read this month.
The Plot – Jean Hanff Korelitz
I was meant to see Jean Hanff Korelitz at Foyles on Charing Cross Road last month but circumstances meant I missed it. Browsing in a different bookshop a couple of weeks later, I found The Plot and thought I’d give it a go. It’s an absorbing read and a good story, as you’d hope for something with this title. It concerns an author who, having published an acclaimed debut, has struggled with writing his follow up books and is now teaching creative writing at a small college. One of his students is an obnoxious guy who doesn’t want to learn too much because he’s currently writing a ‘sure thing’ and submits a few pages of this, as well as outlining the plot. Years later, the author finds that the student has died and, you guessed it, writes the plot of the ‘sure thing.’ It’s a massive hit and changes his life. Until he’s contacted by someone who knows he’s stolen it. This is a fun and intelligent thriller – if you can say thriller when there’s no action? A cerebral thriller.
Upon a White Horse – Peter Ross
I really like Peter Ross’s books – he writes engagingly about the history and customs of the British Isles, and his past titles have explored graveyards and churches. This is about our ancient sites – chalk figures, bog bodies, stone circles, and more – and the rites and beliefs that surround them. This is not a subject I’m hugely into but I like his writing enough to try this and learned all sorts of good stuff along the way. Well worth your time.
Writers and Lovers and Heart the Lover – Lily King
Heart the Lover is the reading group’s choice for July and is a sequel of sorts to Writers and Lovers which I’d read before and very much enjoyed. I thought I’d reread the first before tackling the second. You can read Heart the Lover as a stand alone but I found an added poignancy to having both. Both books are narrated by Casey, in the first book a struggling writer whose mother has just died and who has huge debts to pay off. We learn a little more about her family but the plot surrounds her trying to juggle writing with making enough money waitressing and a love triangle that springs up between her, Silas, a local writing student and Oscar, a local author and tutor. Oscar has two sons who Casey gets on with very well, a detail with added sweetness when you read the second book. Heart the Lover is another love triangle, set when Casey was at university and unsure about her future. She meets Sam and his housemate Yash, finds a path to becoming a writer and once her and Sam break up, she and Yash get together. The second half of the book leaps to the present day, when she and her husband (I won’t tell you who) meet up with Yash and Sam again. I like these books. I like the writing style and the ease with which she conveys some of the huge emotions being dealt with here. Are they flawed? A little. Is the character only seemingly able to talk about herself in relation to men? Yes, but I’m going to let her off.
Flashlight – Susan Choi
This was shortlisted for the Booker and the Women’s Prizes and we chose it for reading group this month, I guess on the back of these accolades. I had moments where I thought a chapter or passage was good and absorbing but this was soon lost under some extra detail. It’s incredibly dense prose – there’s little dialogue and lots of very long paragraphs. Plus it’s a years-long epic, and all the characters appear to hate each other for reasons I never quite understood. The family dynamics were all utterly infuriating. There is some interesting history in here if you’re into Korean-Japanese relations (which I confess I’m not) but the family dynamic was more interesting to me, but I did want the characters explained better. There is an interesting story buried in here but on the whole this is a bit of a slog, if I’m honest.
All the Beggars Riding – Lucy Caldwell
I like Lucy Caldwell’s short stories and wondered how so deft a writer would do with the longer form. This is a book narrated by the daughter of a Belfast surgeon whose dad dies when she is twelve and she finds out that she and her brother are his children by his mistress and that he has a wife and other family at home. She tells the story in piecemeal, at writing classes she goes to with an old man she’s looking after, which kind of explains the shift to longer form writing. I wanted to like it a bit more than I did; ironically, it would have made an excellent short story or two, but I didn’t think quite had the meat for a novel.
The Tidal Year – Freya Bromley
And just like that, I’m back to reading books about how other people handle bereavement. This is about Freya Bromley’s year of swimming in tidal pools around England and Scotland, to try and assuage the intense grief she still feels for her brother Tom who died young a couple of years before. I confess this may be one of those books where I felt a generational divide. Yes, you’re grieving but can’t you at least try to move on? Are you really moving on by having two boyfriends and not deciding between them? And why do all your friends and lovers speak in psychobabble? This was nearly interesting.
The Golden Hours – Louisa Young
Louisa Young is Elizabeth Jane Howard’s niece and has written this, the sixth book in the Cazalet Chronicles. It’s a brave thing to undertake, the continuation of a beloved and critically acclaimed series and I was a little nervous. I wasn’t very keen on the fifth book which Howard wrote later in life, and having someone else try to pick it up seemed enormously risky. But… she nearly pulls it off. The opening section has far too much exposition in it, which I guess is for people who are starting with this one (don’t do this) and also contains a highly unlikely conversation about lesbians between Clary and Archie, which I didn’t think was authentic. But then she finds her feet and it is rather nice to spend time with the familiar characters we know so well. I especially like that she has moved some of them on, having them take bold steps from the previous books but ones that are in keeping with the source. There were two other points I quibbled with. The first is that there were too many children to keep up with, and the second was that she chose to continue a plot point from the fifth book that I thought was daft then and even dafter now. No spoilers but apart from that, I largely enjoyed this. It’s out later in the year, I think.
The Lifeboat at the End of the World – Dominic Gregory
I bought this for my Mum for her birthday and she read it and lent it to me. She’s a big fan of the lifeboat service. This is an autobiography and part history of the lifeboats, from one man who volunteers for them in Dungeness. He tells you about his training, the reasons for joining and some of their missions, as well as providing some history and literary coverage of the lifeboat service. Towards the end of the book, though, something changes. Gregory details the increase in small boat crossings and how they are regularly called out to rescue some desperate people in danger in the Channel. Despite seeing this covered on the news, I never really thought about what rescue at sea would entail and Gregory goes into detail, at times telling of the appalling conditions people try to cross in, the horror of a night rescue in freezing temperatures and the awfulness of failing to rescue everyone. The penultimate chapter is hard hitting, bringing home the realities of what people will risk in order to try and find a new life here. There are no safe routes. This cannot be the only answer, risking the lives of volunteers as well as those on the dinghies, and all because of the rage of the tabloids and the far right. This is a really good book, offering insight and detail of a tragic story unfolding regularly on our shores, that no one else is covering properly.
Moments of Pleasure
I’ve not watched much that’s been new this month, though I did watch the first half of a university production of Dear Evan Hansen which I was enjoying more than I expected. We had to leave as E felt ill so I’ve no idea what happens at the end. But for a university amateur production, there was some good talent there.
Susan E Barsby 