bwl 94 - Autumn 2019
Fiction
| William Boyd - Love is Blind
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| Another joy from William Boyd. Similar in style to Any Human Heart and Sweet Caress in as much as it follows lives, loves and losses across the continents. The characters come vividly to life while the storyline is full of suspense. An engrossing read. (Sue Pratt)
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| Anna Castagnoli and Carl Cneut - The Golden Cage
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| Yes, this is a picture book, but . . . forget cosy bedtime stories, happy endings and comforting images. This is very different. A fairy tale drawn from the darker recesses of Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen and illustrated by one of the most notable Belgian illustrators in a style that is both outstanding and uncomfortable. Find out what happens when Princess Valentina sets her heart on a bird that can talk . . . (Ferelith Hordon)
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| Jonathan Coe - Middle England
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| Following in the footsteps of The Rotters' Club (bwl 34), this is a novel for our disturbing times. Coe writes beautifully about the intertwined lives of Benjamin Trotter, his family and friends, but everywhere, as in real life, there is despair, disillusion, bewilderment and barely suppressed anger. Closer acquaintance with his characters through reading earlier books might have made me more sympathetic towards some of them. Alas, based on this one alone, I was not very engaged. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Rachel Cusk - Outline
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| You could sum up this book as people speaking for themselves. The narrator - teaching creative writing for a week in Athens - encourages the people she meets to recount themselves in almost uninterrupted monologues, punctuated by occasional needle-sharp observations on life and human behaviour. Almost nothing happens. The result is a sort of compendium of widely varying accounts of facing life, relating to each other, surviving failed relationships. It's a book to loath or love. I loved it. (Annabel Bedini)
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| Elizabeth Day - The Party
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| Although I must be in the minority of one, with all the publicity and praise Elisabeth Day is receiving from booksellers and press, I thought it such a bad book, rather vulgar and I didn't think it had any suspense at all, very predictable, you could see the clues coming from miles away, elephantine, I thought and her construction was very weak, Robert Galbraith, Rowlings pseudonym, also a thriller bestseller now, is streets and streets ahead of her. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)
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| Elizabeth Day - The Party
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| Such a good read, I found her book extremely cleverly constructed. The way in which she shows the layers and the roles they inhabit in modern day society by her portrayal of the characters and the situations in which they interact. And of course, the way she goes about it, managing at the same time to achieve a level of suspense that keeps you intrigued to the very last page - just why was Martin in the police station? (Geraldine Pretty)
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| Akwaeke Emezi - Pet
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| A powerful, disturbing novel for teens. What does a monster look like? Or indeed, what about an angel? Suppose the angel looks like a monster? And what happens when the monster is found? Set in Luville, an idealised community that has experienced a "revolution" in which monsters were eradicated; now the community is lead by the human angels. This is a thought provoking read presented in a contemporary voice. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| Romain Gary - The Kites
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| Translated from the French, this haunting novel begins in 1932 Normandy with 10-year old Ludo - nephew of an eccentric kite-maker - falling in love with the little daughter of a Polish aristocrat. During WW II their paths cross again, he in the resistance, she sleeping with the enemy. As a kite flies free, yet is tethered by its string, so they are caught. Poetic and suffused with existential meaning and the darkness of war, yet too there is humour and heart-warming characters like the village restauranteur and a resistance-fighter Madame. (Jenny Baker)
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| Vasily Grossman - Stalingrad
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| A very big book. nearly 1,000 pages which I found difficult to get through with its vivid descriptions of the suffering and hand-to-hand battles fought by Russian soldiers against Hitler's ruthless onslaught. So harrowing were the horrors, I did the unforgivable and skipped large sections only to find at the end that the siege of Stalingrad was to be continued in Grossman's second book Life and Fate. You need strong nerves to tackle them. (Jenny Baker)
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| Tessa Hadley - The Past
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| Three sisters and their brother gather to spend the summer holidays in their old family home, the brother with teenage daughter and new wife, one sister bringing a Pakistani youth, another with two children. Can Hadley possibly juggle this assorted bunch? The answer is a resounding yes! The family dynamics ring absolutely true, every character perceptively imagined, and the three-tier structure - present, past and back to the present - works admirably. I found it a real delight. (Annabel Bedini)
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| Paula Hawkins - Into the Water
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| The 'drowning pool' of this murder mystery is the setting of long ago witch drownings; modern day suicides; and unresolved murders. It is the place where 'troublesome women' are disposed of . . . The twists and turns of the story make it a real page turner right up to the very disquieting revelation on the last page. Excellent storytelling. (Sharron Calkins)
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| Mick Herron - Joe Country
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| The latest in a series of witty comic thrillers features the jaundiced anti-heroes of Slough House, dumping ground for errant British agents. They engage not with those that seek to undermine this country from without but rather within the closed toxic world of our own secret services. The result is self-inflicted chaos and suspicion and a plot that draws with topical savagery on the current national mood. Herron is the UK's new master of spy fiction. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Elizabeth Jane Howard - The Cazelet Chronicles
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| My summer addiction but just the thing for those long, dark evenings ahead. Based loosely on Howard's own history, the five books follow the fortunes of the Cazelet family from their comfortable existence in the thirties, through the upheavals of WW II and into the uncertainties of the fifties. What happens is shown through the differing viewpoints of both the male and female protagonists allowing us, as in life, to make our own judgements. A truly wonderful read. (Jenny Baker)
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| Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Chronicles of a Death Foretold
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| In just 122 pages Marquez brings to life a small Colombian community in which everyone is complicit to a murder which is about to happen including the victim. They all know but no one does anything, all of them waiting for someone else to do something. 27 years later a man returns to try and piece together what happened and why. Read it once, straight through, then read it again. Was it really a honour killing? Are you sure? (Jenny Baker)
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| Clare McGlasson - The Rapture
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| Bedford seems an unlikely venue for the Second Coming but the novel is based on a real 1920's religious cult, largely run by middle-class ladies as much concerned with table manners as with spiritual matters. The author weaves a dramatic story, heaving with inadequately controlled sexual tension and power politics. Controversy surrounding the revelations of a prophetess brings matters to a head. The novel guarantees that the museum will be high on my list in the unlikely event that I return to Bedford. (Tony Pratt)
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| Andrew Miller - Now We Shall Be Entirely Free
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| The defeated English retreat from their disastrous Spanish campaign against Napoleon, among them Captain Lacroix haunted by memories of a village massacre; rather than rejoining his regiment he flees to the Hebrides, unaware an English corporal and a Spanish officer are in pursuit. We follow the hunted and the hunters from island to island as Lacroix finds some sort of redemption and gradually we learn the truth. Written in such vivid, luminous prose that the past becomes as immediate as the present day. (Jenny Baker)
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| Donna Tartt - The Secret History
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| Cocooned on the campus of a prestigious East Coast college a privileged set of students are free to indulge their passions for the classics, their enigmatic tutor and general excess. As the debauchery increases their lives take on an almost surreal form and perhaps inevitably the rot sets in with dire consequences. Despite literary and classical references the writing has an easy flow and it's a real page-turner. Been sitting on my shelf for about 7 years so glad I finally read it. (Rebecca Howell)
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| Harry Thompson - This Thing of Darkness
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| A substantial read - but do not let this put you off, nor that it is in that fashionable "genre" of "faction" - a fictionalised treatment of historical events. Here it is the voyage of the Beagle with Charles Darwin on board under the command of Fitzroy. My heart sank - but no, it was a riveting read not least because of the central protagonist, Fitzroy himself - someone we should know more about - an unsung hero. Read it to find out why. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| Sophia Tobin - The Widow's Confession
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| Broadstairs Kent, once a sleepy fishing village, now a bathing resort is changed in 1851by a darkly suggestive and intriguing seaside murder mystery. This happens when a sophisticated group of disparate people are thrown together, all with different reasons for escaping their normal life. Eventually the dark past of the village is involved after the first young girl is washed up on the beach. This has been a book which was difficult to put down, as the result is not apparent. (Shirley Williams)
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| William Trevor - The Collected Stories
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| A bumper treat of more than eighty short stories, each beautifully crafted and showcasing the range and breadth of the author's fertile imagination. Maybe not for reading straight through but a delight to return to from time to time to read a story or three when a "filler" is called for. (Sue Pratt)
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| Tarjei Vesaas - The Ice Palace
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| Set in a rural community in Norway, this story of an unlikely friendship between two eleven year old girls seems simple, almost a fairy tale. But there is a dark secret that cannot be shared and one girl disappears in the middle of winter with a devastating impact on the other, and the fairy tale becomes a psychological nightmare. I read it in an afternoon but it haunted me for days. Magnificent. (Denise Lewis)
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| Naomi Wood - The Hiding Game
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| An artist in 1980's England begins a figurative self portrait, so different from his usual abstracts. Thus he reflects on his life, particularly as a Bauhaus student in Weimar. A tight group forms in the almost cult-like atmosphere of the school, against the backdrop of rising Nazism. He remembers the love, betrayal and wilful ignorance that caused so much pain, most of all his obsession with a fellow student. A timely read for the Bauhaus centenary. (Christine Miller)
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| Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life
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| If you are homophobic, beware. If not, this beautifully written book will devastate you, while at the same time expanding your heart. It is a disturbing, unconventional love story, and one of the most remarkable and moving books I have ever read. (Sharron Calkins)
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Non-Fiction
| George Alagiah - A Home from Home: from Immigrant Boy to English Man
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| Sri Lankan Journalist and Broadcaster George Alagiah spent his early years in Ghana. Age 11 he was sent to Boarding School in England; where (with no family support system) he remained even during the holidays. Partly autobiography - he uses the culture shock of finding himself in an alien environment to explore issues such as identity and immigration. Fascinating, absorbing and thought provoking on many levels. (Lynda Johnson)
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| Tim Bouverie - Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the road to war
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| A brilliant debut by a young historian, this is a compelling account of the disastrous years of indecision and failed diplomacy that allowed the Nazis to dominate Europe. The thirties have been covered extensively elsewhere but never in such forensic detail and with such contemporary resonance. Countless times it felt as though he was talking about the baleful behaviour of today's politicians. There's a lesson for all of us. It didn't end well. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Caroline Crampton - The Way to the Sea:The forgotten histories of the Thames Estuary
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| The title promises much but sadly the author delivers little that is new or all that exciting. It is probably a mistake to spend 71 pages (nearly a quarter of the book) describing the Thames from its source to Tower Bridge whereas it is the estuary, being less well-known, that is thus potentially more interesting. But even here, she is diverted of purpose by dwelling inordinately on her parents' boating skills and her own childhood sailing exploits. Altogether, somewhat disappointing. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Peter Fiennes - Footnotes: A Journey Round Britain in the Company of Great Writers
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| From Swanage to Skye, from The Lizard to London, Fiennes traces the footsteps of a varied collection of writers including Enid Blyton, 12th C. Gerald of Wales, Dickens, Dr Johnson and Beryl Bainbridge, whose journeys were equally varied but what matters more is you are in the company of a civilised mind and likeable person, capable of both frivolity and seriousness. It would be fun to retrace his route, book in hand. Meanwhile this is excellent fireside reading. (Tony Pratt)
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| Peter Frankopan - The New Silk Roads: the Present and Future of the World
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| For Frankopan, silk roads are all East-West terrestrial connections. He is convincingly well informed on the subject. China of course is the main investor in massive infrastructure projects, railways, sea ports, with tentacles spanning continents, all in the name of 'peace and cooperation' but all too often meaning taking possession when loans can't be paid back. Meanwhile the West is too busy navel-gazing to bestow more than an occasional glance on what is creeping up. Yikes! (Annabel Bedini)
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| Alan Gernon - Retired: What happens to Footballers when the Game's Up
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| The life of a footballer may be an enviable one but with high rates of depression, divorce, addictions and bankruptcies the life of a retired footballer seems anything but. Having had most of their youth focussed on the game, and with thoughts of other interests regarded as a 'lack of commitment', case studies illustrate the trauma that follows either injury or retirement and the ease with which the sport can replace then forget about them. (Clive Yelf)
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| Duncan Hamilton - The Great Romantic: Cricket and the golden age of Neville Cardus
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| This a delightful and beautifully written book of a wonderful man. Neville Cardus wrote about cricket with poetic eloquence and a deep love of the game. He did the same for music. He wrote for the Guardian for many decades. The description National Treasure is an overworked phrase but in his case the phrase is apt and just. Anyone who reads this book is in for a treat. (David Graham)
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| Tom Lubbock - English Graphic
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| As a non-artist or art historian I have no idea whether the examples of English graphic art that Tom Lubbock selected for this book of essays are worthy of the attention, but he is an engaging and interesting writer who is able to weave a fascinating tale around all of his subjects. Stained glass, chalk carvings, cartoons, book frontispieces, illustrated manuscripts and book illustrations, it's a real feast for both the mind and the eye.
(Clive Yelf)
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| James Pope-Hennessy - The Quest for Queen Mary
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| What a funny, astute and delightful book, giving a hilarious portrait of the Aristocracy. It is the official biography of Queen Mary, the Queen's Grandmother, which led to the opening of the door to meetings with Royality, courtiers and retainers around Europe.The candid secrets and observations had to be kept secret for 50 years. Now fully published and brilliantly edited by Hugo Vickers, it is a delight to read, a study of a bygone age, one which will never return. (Shirley Williams)
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| Simon Reeve - Step by Step: The Life in my Journeys
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| Part travelogue, part autobiography - he was brave to write this book as he is also brave in the situations he puts himself in. From a troubled youth to award winning Journalist and TV Presenter is quite a step. He is bright, intelligent and has the ability to get people to open up and is driven to seek for the truth. However the issues and complexities of the various countries mentioned deserve a book rather than a chapter. The autobiography needs more depth and to stand alone. (Lynda Johnson)
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| Andrew Roberts - Churchill
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| It is difficult to think that a better book on the life of this great man will be written. It is long and well researched. The man was a colossus whose life spanned the Boer war and two world wars. In the latter he inspired the nation with his mighty rhetoric suffused with impish humour. He subsisted on cigars and copious drafts of alcohol. (David Graham)
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| Halie Rubenhold - The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
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| Posterity has stepped over the bodies of his victims to get to Jack the Ripper. Here are their stories, pieced together from inquest evidence and public sources including the census and workhouse records. Only one was a downright prostitute. Fascinating individually, collectively they illuminate the lives of London's underclass - stories of broken relationships, homelessness and alcoholism compounded by women's disadvantaged status. Rubenhold perhaps overstates her case - the fascination is always with the murderer - but this doesn't detract from a moving story told without a trace of prurience. (Tony Pratt)
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| Jay Sankey - Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy
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| It's not that I want to be a stand-up comedian you understand, but I was quite interested to see what the author had to say about the art of trying to make people laugh. And the answer was 'quite a lot' and all of it illustrated from experience. From characterisation, types of joke, opening lines, writing tips and what to do with a microphone the author provides fascinating insight into the minutiae of his craft. (Clive Yelf)
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| Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay and John Keay - The London Encycolpedia
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| I haven't actually read this book through. At over 1,000 pages of dense, small typeface I would be surprising if very many have, but if you are fascinated by the places, history and organisations of London (and have a strong enough bookshelf) this just might become the cornerstone of your collection. Comprehensive but concise, the entries are enough to answer any immediate query but also to point you in the direction of further research. Perfect! (Clive Yelf)
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| Betsy Whyte - The Yellow on the Broom
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| A joyous account of growing up in a 'Traveller' family in Scotland in the 1930s. As itinerant farm labourers in summer, hunkering down in winter so the children could go to school this is an eye-opener into a close-knit community with strong family ties, a fiercely ethical outlook, and a faith in life allowing freedoms unthinkable for townies. Knowing this traditional way of life ended when the Welfare State herded them all miserably into council housing is tragic. (Annabel Bedini)
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| Peter Wohlleben - The Hidden Life of Trees
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| You will be both amazed and enchanted by this carefully researched book about trees. You will discover how much you didn't know, how clueless you were. For instance, did you know that trees communicate with each other via their roots? That they can share their own nutrition with nearby, weaker trees? Read this book and enter a wonderland. (Sharron Calkins)
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| Feedback |
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| Absolutely loved the Cazalet books, (see review above and bwl 22) and read the four back to back but never got round to the fifth as it would be so difficult to pick up after all this time. (Sue Pratt)
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Is it legitimate to provide feedback on one's own contributions, as it were? I ask because I am interested to see that none of us has ever recommended books by either Rachel Cusk or Tessa Hadley, despite them both being, apparently, popular and highly acclaimed writers. Isn't this odd? However this may be, I am now a fan of both of them. (Annabel Bedini)
Yes, quite legitimate Annabel. Be interesting to think of other writers we have managed to ignore. Any suggestions? (Jenny Baker) |
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