bookswelike

bwl 114 - Autumn 2024

Fiction

William Boyd - Gabriel's Moon

It's had good reviews and as a Boyd fan I couldn't wait to read it. Set in the sixties, it ticks all the boxes for a spy thriller: troubled hero - drawn unwillingly into the world of espionage - a beautiful, enigmatic handler, exotic locations. What a treat, I thought, as I began to read but I never felt engaged, there are just too many coincidences, too many sketchy characters and my, do they knock back the booze. Or perhaps it's just me. (Jenny Baker)

Ann Brontë - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey

I decided after all these years - prompted by a programme on radio 4 where they talked about Ann Brontë being the least read of all the sisters - to read her two books. Full of the lives and routines of people in those days sharing the gossip of the everyday and the tight knit routines of communities, I found both books a refreshing glimpse of the past and thoroughly enjoyed reading them. Such a change from our now world full of noise and rushing here there and everywhere. (Aletha Anne Bloor)

Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac

Single, thirty-nine year old Edith Hope has disgraced herself in the eyes of everyone she knows by not showing up for her own wedding. On the run, she flees to Switzerland and to the quiet luxury of the Hotel du Lac, where she hopes to regain her composure before returning home. This is a well-written novel, witheringly funny and keenly observant. I loved it . . . as did the judges who awarded it the Booker Prize. (Sharron Calkins)

Becky Chambers - A Closed and Common Orbit

The second book in the sci-fi series my daughter chose for me. It remains full of high-tech, interesting characters and various alien species. It is essentially a book about deep friendship, especially that between Pepper, whose childhood was spent as a slave in a recycling plant, and Sidra, now in a humanoid robot body but once was the AI on a spaceship. It downplays any difficulties with species diversity and has a certain charm. (Christine Miller)

Rachel Cusk - Second Place

A writer, living in a remote landscape with her enigmatic husband and adult daughter, invites a celebrated painter to base himself in their annex for a while. She hopes he will translate the marsh views and her feelings to canvas, but the visit brings unexpected challenges. It’s a literary but very readable and at times drily funny short novel, mostly conveyed via M’s thoughts, but with dramatic moments that reminded me of Iris Murdoch. (Victoria Grey-Edwards)

Jenny Erpenbeck - Kairos

An award-winning translation from the German, which interrogates through the experiences of a young woman, an unexpected insight into what it meant to be East-German at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. What on the surface appears to be a fairly straightforward coming of age tale is revealed to contain layers of manipulation and intrigue. Ultimately, the protagonist wonders, and the reader is cleverly asked to consider, who exactly was freed from the constraints imposed by the communist State, its citizens, or the proprietors in the West, doubling the size of their potential market. (Margaret Teh)

Louise Hare - Miss Aldridge Regrets

Set on board the Queen Mary en route for New York. It is 1936. We meet Lena Aldridge aspiring musical star – this is her chance to escape the sleazy Soho clubs but leaving a murder behind she finds herself involved in a stream of further deaths. And there are plenty – there is also romance, glamour, drink, drugs – and (note the name) race. Not great literature but an enjoyable (teasing) beach – or should that be cruise read! (Ferelith Hordon)

Natalie Haynes - A Thousand Ships

In this fine retelling of the Trojan War and its aftermath, it is the women - Trojan, Spartan, Amazon - who take centre-stage as we see through their eyes the men who fought it on both sides. It all rings true and brings to life and makes so accessible this seminal classic - no need for Latin and Greek here to get to the nitty gritty of this story of stories. A moving, intelligent and witty book! (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)

Chetna Maroo - Western Lane

A family devastated by grief. A father with three teenage daughters to bring up. This sounds as if it might be a cliché, but this slim novel (almost a novella) avoids any such criticism. This is a novel about grief, that instead of talking directly about grief, finds ways of avoiding it. Instead there is the game of squash. While it may not appeal to all this is clever writing, nuanced and subtle and could catch you unawares. (Ferelith Hordon)

Madeleine Martin - The Keeper of Hidden Books

Secret libraries, clandestine book clubs and banned books are the themes which run through the story of 2 young girls and their deep friendship. Their love of literature provides hope and solace as Warsaw and its people are annihilated by the Nazis. Death and destruction are given a light touch as the girls try to fight against the horrors of the occupation so the story seems a bit of a fairy tale but a good holiday read. (Rebecca Howell)

Hisham Matar - My Friends

Matar gently and affectionately examines the friendship of three young Libyan men who, as students in the UK, met at the time of the disastrous anti-Gaddafi demonstrations outside the Libyan Embassy there. The narrator Khaled, in a reflective walk through the neighbourhood they shared as young men, details poignantly the complexities of the eventual choices made by the 3 individuals at the time and in the decades following their displacement. (Margaret Teh)

Kate Mosse - The Joubert Family trilogy: The Burning Chambers; City of Tears; The Ghost Ship

If you want to escape from this world's horrors then bag yourself this trilogy - set in 16th century Languedoc with its Cathars and Huguenots, it begins with a letter Minou receives SHE KNOWS THAT YOU LIVE - from then on it is all love, intrigues, betrayals, conspiracies - pure fantasy. And now there's a fourth book! (Jenny Baker)

Lawrence Osborne - On Java Road

Hong Kong in the troubled time between the handover and the clampdown triggered by student demonstrations. An English reporter's old friendship with a member of the wealthy Chinese elite is challenged by the latter's affair with a student protestor. In an increasingly violent society, the affair goes wrong but how? Brilliantly atmospheric, this story evokes the island itself and the menace and mutual suspicion that go with a historic turning point. A farewell to a friendship mirrors the goodbye to a way of life. (Tony Pratt)

Lawrence Osborne - Burning Angel

These stories cover a wide variety of situations, mostly in exotic locations, convincingly portrayed as if he's lived in each himself. Usually there's a sense of menace, a twist, a moral dilemma, often an encounter with a stranger. Deliciously (or maybe disturbingly) menacing. I found it compulsive reading and more enjoyable than some of his novels. (Victoria Grey-Edwards)

Miriam Toews - Women Talking

Based on a true story of drugged rape by the men of a Mennonite colony, Toews imagines two families of victims planning how to respond without losing their faith: do nothing, stay and fight or leave. With 48 hours to decide before their menfolk return from bailing out their arrested companions they meet secretly in a hayloft and argue back and forth, discovering for the first time in their lives they can make their own decisions. Spellbinding. (Annabel Bedini)

Mark Twain - Tom Sawyer

Kick off your shoes, sit back and enjoy the world of orphaned Tom and his disreputable friend, Huckleberry Finn. Tom with his tricks and dreams of gangs and pirates, vagabond Huck fleeing a drunken father. No internet, video games or mobile phones in their world but real adventures with murder and a hidden chest of stolen gold. A wonderful funny and moving evocation of boyhood long ago. (Jenny Baker)

Abraham Verghese - The Covenant of Water

A vivid family saga set in Kerala that begins with the marriage of a young girl and follows her to old age. She marries into a family with a deep fear of drowning. However the book encompasses so much more – British colonisation, the fight for independence and the progress of medicine. The isolation of leprosy also features. Verghese is a doctor and his knowledge, compassion and humanity shine through in his characters. An utterly engrossing read. (Christine Miller)

Rachel Wesson - A Song of Courage

Who would have thought that two middle-class sisters - one a civil servant the other a Mills & Boon writer - would be instrumental in saving the lives of Jewish families from Nazi prosecution in the thirties? But this work of fiction is based on the lives of Ida and Louise Cook who, using opera-going as their cover, did just that. The writing is a bit overblown perhaps but it is a real page-turner. (Jenny Baker)

Non-Fiction

Anne Applebaum - Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

In this masterful tour d’horizon of the world’s political woes and the villains behind them, the author paints a chilling picture of the links between dubious regimes and the international criminal community. The tide of democracy has turned, elections have become shams and government corruption has become a growing worldwide industry. She offers no antidotes except to exhort democracies, if they are to survive, to reframe our world view and learn how to fight back. (Jeremy Miller)

Sarah Bakewell - At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

A nice mix of biography, anecdotes, and thinking by the principal personalities who gave us the crazy quilt we call Existentialism. They are an odd assortment, and their ideas do not always cohere, nor do they stay fixed over time. However, they changed our viewpoint. Bakewell's research is prodigious, and her prose is very approachable. (Herb Roselle)

Ariane Bankes - The Quality of Love

Orphaned Identical twins Mamaine and Celia Paget by chance found themselves at the heart of the cultural life of London during the middle of the last century. Based on the classic collection of papers in a trunk Celia's daughter Ariane expertly tracks their chaotically rich lives and loves – George Orwell, Arthur Koestler (Mamaine married him), Albert Camus, and more, they are all there and utterly alive. Absolutely enthralling. (Annabel Bedini)

Maureen Callahan - Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women they Destroyed

If there was a palpable ‘Kennedy Curse’, it was the generations of Kennedy men who used glamour, power, and wealth to lure beautiful and bright women into their beds, only to abuse them both psychologically and physically. In this bold and carefully researched book the material is disturbing, often chilling, but never prurient. Read it for its wit and wisdom, and as a cautionary note to any woman believing herself strong enough to marry into wealth and power. It is a riveting read. (Sharron Calkins)

Laura Cumming - Thunderclap: A Memoir of Life and Art & Sudden Death

Cumming's starting point is an enigmatic seventeenth century painting of Delft by Fabritius, who died young when a gunpowder explosion devastated the city. What follows is a beautifully written account of Dutch artistic life of the period, interspersed with an appreciation of her painter father and snippets of her own life. I much preferred the brilliant evocation of painters, including Vermeer, de Hooch and de Witte, based on a close observation of their paintings, but all in all a gripping read. (Tony Pratt)

Jane Draycott - Cleopatra's Daughter

A fascinating biography of the daughter Cleopatra bore to Marc Anthony - one of twins - who - after the suicide of her parents - was taken to Rome as a hostage where she was raised in the family of Octavia, the sister of Augustus. Although her brother Alexander Helios and half-brother Caesarion were executed as threats to the State, she was spared and later married Prince Juba II of Numidia. Together they ruled many years over the Roman province of Mauretania . . . an unexpectedly bright detail among all history's blacker moments. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)

Richard Evans - Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich

This distinguished scholar writes for the last time about the Third Reich “I want to try a more cheerful subject than the Nazis”, he explains. Essays on Hitler and other prominent Nazis strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich to discover a more realistic view of the perpetrators who were alarmingly like us. It shows just how far individuals can go when so many moral constraints disappear. (Jeremy Miller)

Charlotte Gray - Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons:The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt

This recent book offers a new and important slant on the lives and personalities of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. By bringing the two mothers, completely different personalities, to life with impeccable research and deep insight the author highlights the way they shaped not only their own destinies but those of their sons, thus setting their own mark on the world of today . . . it's also a valuable addition to works on women's history of that time. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)

Tracy Kidder - House

In 1854 H.D.Thoreau wrote ‘Walden’, an American classic that included an account of building his own one-room cabin in the woods at a cost of $28.12. Fast forward to 1983. A successful couple decide to build their dream home in Amherst, Mass. at a cost of $150,000.00. In this fascinating story equal time is given to client, architect and builders. All are three-dimensional, vivid, and not quickly forgotten. I was enthralled throughout by this lucid and compelling narrative. Truly an extraordinary book. (Sharron Calkins)

Nancy Mitford - The Sun King

This biography of Louis IV, one of the most influential monarchs in world history is, although not new, certainly worth reading again, and again. Written not by an academically-formed historian but by a cultured aristocratic socialite, with a laser-sharp, analytical brain, witty tongue and unusual writing talent. Her deep knowledge and understanding of 'things French' and wide reading give this a richness and a brilliance that more scholarly efforts cannot equal. The Sun King comes to life in all his inapproachability but his more kindly aspects are revealed as well. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)

Jan Morris - Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

If you are going to Trieste – and you might - it is no Renaissance town; its heyday (brief) was the 19th century. But Jan Morris captures a very specific atmosphere and the reader is intrigued. It is not so much a travel book as an exploration of a place with a unique relationship with Italy, Austria and Slovenia. This is a book about a place and the feelings it inspired. I was mesmerised and read it in one go. (Ferelith Hordon)

Catherine Peters - Thackeray's Universe

An amazing book, very dense in its erudition although extremely readable. It juggles with ease the continually sifting worlds of imagination and reality throughout Thackeray's works in logical sequence and their relationship to his own life. Included are 100 of his own illustrations to his novels which in addition serve to illuminate and elaborate on his work and life and also gives the reader unusual glimpses of the many authors with whom he was connected in friendship or rivalry. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)

David Wells - The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers

Can you distinguish between primes and Fibonaci numbers? What is the square root of minus one? And what is ‘e’? The answers to these questions can be found in this wonderful book that has been my companion for over 35 years. You don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy this extraordinary dictionary which is numerically rather than alphabetically indexed. It only goes to show that you can have your π but you can’t eat it! (Jeremy Miller)

Feedback

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substack.com - This might not qualify for inclusion, because it's not a book, but it's wonderful reading, often about books, and often by the geniuses who write them. It's online, and the choices are endless. I subscribe to George Saunders, Margaret Atwood, and Ted Gioia, all top authors. The historian Dan Jones has a nice substack. Jessica Butcher on day-to-day things. Their weekly essays are wonderful. Okay, I have one as well, The Daily Diamond. Poke around and choose what you like. My favorite is Saunders, who conducts a weekly workshop on how to write. (Herb Roselle)

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