So I’m going to be winding this blog up at the end of the year – please join me on Substack after that!
It’s not been a vintage reading month, I’ll be honest. Everything – with one obvious exception – has been average.
The White Octopus Hotel – Alexandra Bell
Picked this up at the library and, if I’m honest, I cannot tell you what happened in it. It’s a time travel love story, which also deals with grief and trauma. Our heroine, Eve, lives with the knowledge that her leaving the house gate open as a small child, caused the death of her little sister Bella who was run over. She keeps herself to herself, constantly drawing octopuses, one of which has become a tattoo on her body that moves. One day, she starts to find out more about The White Octopus Hotel, a place in Switzerland full of magic, and she tracks down how to time travel to it. There she meets a number of people including Max Everly, a composer that she loves in the modern world but who mysteriously disappeared in 1935. Max is traumatised from his First World War experiences and together, they try to piece together the mystery and magic of the hotel and look to heal their grief. It’s probably best if you don’t pay a lot of attention to this one, simply as the plot is confusing to say the least, and you’ll be best going with the general vibe rather than trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
The Benefactors – Wendy Erskine
This is ostensibly a story of a sexual assault at a party but, more than that, it gives you a picture of everyday working life in Belfast and the voices of a community. It’s a slow build up that brings you the daily life and dramas for the families of each of the protagonists and the victim. I think it would have benefited from having a list of characters at the beginning, because there were a lot of people and I couldn’t keep track of them all as we flitted from one family to the next. Plus interspersed with the chapters are monologue pieces from anonymous characters that fill in background colour but also add to confusion about who’s who. Having said all that, I really like Wendy Erskine’s writing and how she paints a wide-lens picture of Belfast life. This isn’t just about sexual assault, it’s about how to go about your life when you’re a working class kid in Belfast with a chaotic family life.
The Silver Book – Olivia Laing
This is the reading group’s choice for October and the library supplied me with a copy early. I’ve read some of Laing’s non-fiction in the past which I found enjoyable, thoughtful and engaging. This was none of the above and, if I’m honest, perhaps they should stick to non-fiction. It concerned an English boy, Nicholas, who leaves England after his lover dies and who meets Danielo, a costume and set designer for Italian cinema. The action of the book takes place around the filming of two actual films – Fellini’s Casanova and Salo by Pasolini. Now, my interest in Italian 1970s cinema is minimal. Even so, a book about it might have been interesting. This wasn’t though. Nothing seemed to happen except tantrums and it was all kept at one remove from the reader. Meh.
Across the Water – various
The latest in Daunt Books’ series of essays, a selection of writings about islands. Some of these are about holidays, some about heritage, almost all about family in some way. As ever, these are high-quality essays of the kind you used to get in decent Sunday newspapers and nicely done. It’s a good series.
The Infamous Gilberts – Angela Tomaski
Are they infamous or simply badly behaved and over indulged? This came with blurb endorsements from authors I respect enormously but they must have been reading a different book to me. This is a story about a family of rich people whose house is being taken over by a hotel chain and totally refurbished. The story of how the family deteriorated to this stage is told by a friend, I think, of the family in the style you would adopt if you were giving a tour of the house. It takes a moment to get used to and means that you don’t get a full inner picture, which may be a good thing given how awful they all were. I kept thinking something would happen but it was basically all decline and insanity. The modern age seems to expend a lot of energy looking at rich people who behave badly but I think I’m really past all this. It’s rarely interesting.
Whistler – Ann Patchett
My mum bought me the hardback for my birthday. I’d already raced through it on Netgalley but reading on screen is never the same and I loved it so much, so it was a delight to read it again on the page and remember what I’d loved the first time. Since first reading it, I’d come across a Substack which suggested an alternative interpretation of the ending and how that suggestion had made a reading group come to blows. Bearing that in mind, I hunkered down and I can understand that interpretation (no spoilers but it’s difficult to discuss). I am choosing not to interpret the book that way though. Still one of my books of the year.
Twentieth Century fiction
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
This was the reading group choice this month as we thought it was topical. I was surprised that I hadn’t read it before. So, in case you’re unfamiliar, this is set in a dystopian future where books are not just banned but burned and all information and entertainment is broadcast into homes where screens can take up entire walls. Guy Montag, a fireman whose job is to find contraband books and burn them, starts to have doubts about the rightness of his work. Your classic one good man against the machine story. It has dated in parts, I think, if only because it’s very familiar – Bradbury’s influence on other writers in books and film mean we’ve seen the pattern before without knowing who did it back in 1953. Of course, the main message of the book remains timeless, and as I said, still incredibly pertinent to today. I sat and watched the Emmy-winning documentary The Librarians (on iplayer) and watched as they used parts of the film adaptation to illustrate book banning (and in some cases burning) across the United States in the last few years. Nothing has changed. The ending also took me by surprise, in that it was ruthless and swift – although perhaps I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the threat of war in the background of the story. Anyway, a classic for a reason.
Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry
This one has been recommended by a number of people and it’s a bit of a beast at 860ish pages. I’ll confess, I didn’t finish it, I didn’t even get close. It wasn’t that I disliked it, more that I was reading and reading and reading and I wasn’t getting anywhere. It’s about a bunch of guys on a ranch doing seasonal work in the west, and I think they’re going to go off and do some more work somewhere else and presumably have something happen to them. Nothing at all had happened by the time I gave up, except some pretty backward views towards women, which I was trying to excuse as being authentic to the characters. I think it might be something I have to try again at another time, it didn’t work for me this time round but I could see it might, maybe, later on.
The Shooting Party – Isabel Colegate
This is on a similar subject to The Infamous Gilberts above and with characters equally difficult to like, but better written. Colegate lived in a club-shaped castle herself, which is a detail I rather enjoyed. This tells the story of a shooting party in a kind of upstairs/ downstairs way, taking you through the servants, the game beaters and the toffs, and is set just before the First World War. So it acts as a farewell to a way of life, in a way, though obviously shooting parties still exist.
Moments of Pleasure
E and I had two girls’ nights/ afternoons out this month* – which was good to do, even if I struggled with the content of each. We went to see the musical of Heathers which is more of a cult following than I was expecting, and lots of the audience like the Heathers which made no sense to me, seeing as they are massive bullies. Plus the musical almost makes you like JD, which also doesn’t make any sense since he’s a psycho. Still, E enjoyed it. I’ll stick to the film.
We also watched Practical Magic 2, which was even sillier than the original and which sadly wasted Stockard Channing. Next up on our list is Sense and Sensibility which I’m also nervous about.
*At some point, she’s not going to want to go with her mum to watch stuff, is she? I’ll need to find viewing companions or go alone.
