Reading horizons WWW Wednesday, July 2019
Time for another episode of WWWWednesday in which I talk about the books that are on my radar.
What I’m reading now
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny is book number 5 on my 15booksofsummer list which is a virtual ‘holiday’ around the world. So far I’ve visited Wales (well that wasn’t hard!); Austria, Croatia and the United States.
Penny’s novel gives me a reason to visit Canada.
The Cruelest Month is number three in the series of novels featuring Inspector Armand Gamache from the Sûreté du Québec. There are 14 novels in the series; the 15th – A Better Man – is due to be published in August 2019. I’ve read seven of these but not in publication order.
The Cruelest Month is set in spring in the tiny, picture-postcard village of Three Pines. Buds are on the trees and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth. For some bizarre reason, some of the villagers decide this is a good time to hold a séance at the Old Hadley House, a dilapidated property where nasty things happened years earlier. They are hoping their actions will rid the village its dark past. Of course it all goes wrong and one of the group dies. Was she murdered or did she die of fright. It’s up to Gamache to find the truth.
WWWWednesday is also about…..
What I just finished reading
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote was another from my summer reading list. It’s also on my ClassicsClub reading list.
It’s one of those books that I’d been intending to read for a long, long time. It’s a delightfully atmospheric novella with an unforgettable character whose name Holly Golightly is forever synonymous with Audrey Hepburn who played the starring role in the film version.
I made a temporary deviation from my 15booksofsummer itinerary when my library request came through for Kate Atkinson’s latest novel Big Sky.
It was worth the change of plan as you can see from my very enthusiastic review.
Of course, now I have been re-introduced to her private eye Jackson Brodie, I ‘m getting an itch to re-read all the earlier books in this series.
What I’ll read next
This is always the hardest question for me because I really dislike planning my reading.
If I continue on the summer reading list, I’m due to visit Jamaica via The Long Song by Andrea Levy.
Levy takes us to her native country in the nineteenth century, a time of slavery and sugar plantations. Her tale relates the experiences of a young slave girl, July, who lives through through the 1831 Great Jamaican Slave Revolt, and the beginning of freedom. The Long Song won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction and was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010.
The reason I’m hesitant is that there are some new acquisitions which are calling to me, including the book that arrived today.
Those are my plans – what’s on your reading horizon for the next few weeks?
This post is for WWW Wednesday hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.
Dazzling return of Atkinson’s gruff private eye in Big Sky [Review]
Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
I’ve fallen in love again.
My admiration for Kate Atkinson collapsed in the last few years when she began to experiment with time-shifting novels like Life after Life. Her latest novel, Transcription, was also a huge disappointment.
Where was the energetic prose, the intricate plots and witty characterisations that had made reading her work such a pleasure in the past? I feared she’d gone completely off the boil.
But my fears were unfounded.
For “my” beloved Kate Atkinson is back. And with a vengeance.
Big Sky is the first novel in nine years to feature her gruff-but-loveable private investigator Jackson Brodie. It’s a triumphant return.
Brodie is older (of course) and still rather world-weary. But he hasn’t lost his natural inclination to help or rescue other people. If he can prevent them suffering, as he did in his own life, he will, even if that means diving into the sea or jumping off a cliff.
Big Sky sees him living in Yorkshire in the occasional company of an ageing Labrador and a taciturn teenage son (both on loan from his ex-partner Julia.
Evil lurks in seaside towns
It’s a picturesque location but one that has a sinister side.
The seaside towns of Whitby, Scarborough and Bridlington were once the hunting grounds for a paedophile ring. Though the organisers were jailed, two young female detectives have started to investigate other suspected participants, including high profile members of the establishment.
What police don’t realise is that the area’s sordid past lives on through three men who’ve made a lucrative business from human trafficking.
There were only so many washing-machines you could sell, but there was no limit on the trade in girls.
Their prey are young women from Eastern Europe who are duped into believing hotel jobs and a better life await them in England. Instead they become sex slaves.
Tightly woven web of plot lines
Past and present come together in an artfully constructed plot with multiple strands that initially appear unconnected. Slowly the threads are drawn together with the help of a few coincidences and red herrings. By the end, everything is explained clearly for those readers who had a hard time keeping up.
Big Sky is a novel that begins slowly. Atkinson is clearly in 
playful mode, introducing one set of characters only to abandon them for many pages while she brings another cast to the stage. We get to know three golfing buddies; their wives; a pair of super-organised, keen as mustard female detectives, and – fleetingly– some of the trafficked girls. Figures from previous novels flit in and out like Tatiana, the Russian girl Brodie knew from “another lifetime when she had been a dominatrix and he had been fancy-free.”
Having set all the balls in motion, Atkinson cranks up the pace in the final quarter with chapters chock full of kidnapped children, suspicious vehicles, rescued girls and shootings.
Blue Sky is a fabulously entertaining book that is a significantly superior beast to most crime novels.
Humour amid the darkness
That’s because of its beautifully drawn characters and a waspishly witty element of humour. Just take a look at Vince, a “middle-aged, middle-of-the-road, middle-class man” who’s been kicked out of his job and his marital bed.
He was grinding towards fifty and for the last three months had been living in a one-bedroom flat behind a fish-and-chip shop, ever since Wendy turned to him one morning over his breakfast muesli – he’d been on a short-lived health kick – and said, ‘Enough’s enough, don’t you think, Vince?’ leaving him slack-mouthed with astonishment over his Tesco Finest Berry and Cherry.
It’s that detail of the Tesco brand cereal that makes all the difference in this sentence. There are plenty of other examples that demonstrate Kate Atkinson’s knack of nailing a character in just a phrase or a few sentences.
One wife gets put down like this:
She shopped from the Boden catalogue and was proud of having grown a horrible stunted little tree.
Ouch!
Another woman (one of the most complex in the book) is every inch the trophy wife:
Crystal was hovering around thirty-nine years old and it took a lot of work to stay in this holding pattern. She was a construction made from artificial materials – the acrylic nails, the silicone breasts, the polymer eyelashes. A continually renewed fake tan and a hairpiece fixed into her bleached-blonde hair completed the synthetic that was Crystal.
Expectations overturned
But having framed her as the archetypal arm candy blond, ex model, and manicurist; Atkinson then proceeds to confound our expectations. Crystal turns out to be a shrewd and determined woman who refuses to allow the evils of her past get in her way. Women, in this novel, do ultimately get their revenge on those who treat them as disposable goods.
Do you need to have read all previous Jackson Brodie novels to enjoy this one?
I’d never want to dissuade someone from reading all of this series but you don’t have to in order to appreciate Big Sky. Atkinson provides enough of the back story about Brodie and his tangled love life that you can read this as a stand alone novel.
I’m certain once you’ve read this one however, you’ll be ultra keen to start right at the beginning of the series. Yes, Big Sky really is that good.
Footnotes
- Kate Atkinson was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh.
- Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museumwon the Costa (formerly the Whitbread) Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.
- She won the Costa Novel Award in 2013 with Life after Life (see my review here) and again in 2015 with A God in Ruins.
- Her first novel to feature Jackson Brodie was Case Histories, published in 2005. Stephen King called it “The best mystery of the decade.”
- Big Sky was published in June 2019 by Doubleday
Want to know more?
The Penguin website has an extract from Big Sky which is taken from the first scene involving Jackson Brodie.
In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Kate Atkinson talks about the impetus to write Big Sky.
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9 Strategies To Slay The TBR Monster
Is this a familiar picture?
Every shelf in every bookcase in your home is stuffed with unread books.
There are books on tables and on the floor.
Every conceivable space is occupied by books you have not yet read. They’re becoming a source of much grumbling by your nearest and dearest.
And yet each week you end up buying more. That TBR list is becoming a monster.
You’ve tried hiding the books, pretending that if you can’t see them, that they don’t exist. But when you trip over them at every turn, you know no can no longer stay in denial.
You occasionally talk about tackling this ogre. But you don’t really know how.
If this does sound familiar, then you are certainly not alone. Virtually every book blogger I follow has – at some point- grumbled about the overwhelming size of their TBR.
The good news? You can do something about this.
9 strategies to help you slay that TBR monster
1 Reframe the issue
My TBR currently stands at 314. I occasionally moan about this on the blog. But if I’m being completely honest with myself – and with you – that’s just for show.
Because deep down I count that stack as a blessing not a curse. It means I have a personalised library at my fingertips, always open 24/7, 365 days a year.
Only thing I don’t like? Tripping over the piles around the house ….
So, as much as I love my library, I do want to scale it back to a more manageable number. I’m not going to get stressed out about it. I’m just going to be more pragmatic.
To reframe the issue, challenge yourself to answer this question:
Is your TBR is a source of tribulation or a source of delight?
Switching to a more positive mindset could help you approach the next steps with more optimism.
2. Measure the beast
You can’t tackle the TBR issue until you know exactly the scale of your task.
That means you have to do a count of every unread book you have in your house/apartment/caravan/yurt. You’ll be using this number later.
Pull out every unread book in your home. Pile them all up on the floor or the table.
Count them all.
You might be surprised the total isn’t higher. (I doubt it since books seem to have a habit of lurking in dark corners, hiding down the back of the sofa. ) But you might also be horrified because never in your wildest dreams did you realise you had THAT many.
It doesn’t matter what your total is; what does matter is that you’ve done the tally.
Before you put them all back in their original homes you must:
A. Make a note of this number and the date you did the count. This is now your baseline
B. Take a photo of this stack. It’s a physical reminder of the scale of your challenge
3 Time to stocktake
Think of yourself as the owner of a bookshop. As a good business person you know it’s important to have a realistic view of four elements.
- What items are in your shop.
- What is ‘selling’ well.
- Which items are slow moving.
- What items are unsuitable for sale because they’re damaged goods.
All of these pieces of knowledge are just as valuable for you as they are for the owner of a bookstore.
When you have a clear picture of what you have in your TBR ‘library’ you’ll be in a stronger position to:
- discover over-stocking ( ie duplicate or triplicate copies of the same book) and
- find ‘lost’ items: books you thought had disappeared entirely and
- unearth damaged books; those with loose pages or broken spines and
- avoid waste (how many times in the past have you bought a book only to discover you already had a copy at home).
Stocktaking your TBR library means you need to make a record all of your books. As a minimum you should document:
- book title and
- author name and
- date purchased/acquired.
You can use a spreadsheet or use a platform like Goodreads or Library Thing. The choice is yours.
I prefer to have my list in spreadsheet format because I want to record more than just the basics.
These are my additional columns.
- Genre.
- Date of publication.
- Nationality of the author.
- Date I read the book.
- Whether I finished it
- Category (for example crime, classic, book in translation).
- Notes about how I obtained this book (for example, was it a book club choice, a birthday gift, a review copy).
4. Set a goal
If you want to be successful at reducing your TBR, you need to set a goal. Without a goal you lack focus and direction. Goal setting not only allows you to take control of the project, it also gives you a way to determine if you are actually succeeding.
Your goal must be clear and well defined. Vague or generalised goals are unhelpful because they don’t provide sufficient direction. So include precise amounts, dates, and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is stated only as “Reduce my TBR” how will you know when you have been successful?
The actual goal is your choice. Only you know what you can realistically achieve.
How do you decide on a realistic goal?
Think about it this way:
How many books do you read on average each year?
If your answer is 50 and you have 500 + plus books in your TBR that means you have 10 year’s worth of reading sitting in your home. And that’s without buying or acquiring a single new book. Maybe you’d be more comfortable with 5 year’s worth of books – so your goal is a 50% reduction.
Your goal could be framed as a percentage or as an absolute number reduction from the total you identified earlier.
For example
Reduce my TBR by 10% by end of [year]
Or
Reduce my TBR to [xx] books by end [year]
If you have a very ambitious target, you might find it more satisfying to think of your goal in multiple stages.
For example:
Reduce my TBR by 20% by [end 2022] – reach 5% reduction by [end 2021]
How do you achieve your goal?
By taking one step at a time.
individually, these strategies are not designed to get you to your ultimate goal. But collectively they will ensure you can make significant progress.
5. Remove your ‘slow moving goods’
Slow moving goods is how I describe books that you’ve had for a very long time. You keep promising yourself you will read them. But you never get around to it – there’s always something new catching your eye.
Now is the time to get real. If you haven’t read it in the last five years are you realistically going to read it within the next five years? I doubt it.
Here’s what you do.
Make a pile of all the unread books you’ve owned for longer than 5 years.
Examine them one by one. For each book, challenge yourself whether you will really read it in the next 5 years. You have be firm here. Try not to sit on the fence.
If the answer is clearly “NO”, then put the book in an OUT pile. You’re going to give these away to friends, relatives, charity shops, hospitals etc. Anyone who will take them. You could try to sell them (for example via eBay, or services like ziffit.com)
If the answer is “MAYBE” set the book aside for now. If you find you have a tower of books in the “maybe” category then I’d question whether you’re being rigorous enough. You probably the exercise again…..
You could easily adapt this to a different time frame. If you have a particularly large target you may need to be more ruthless and choose books older than 3 years for example.
6. Get off the fence
You’ve ended up with a pile of books you ‘maybe’ want to read. Tackling this pile should be your next step.
First pick a book. Read about 30 pages. Then decide whether it’s interested you enough to want to continue reading.
If no, then add it to your OUT pile
If YES then you can put it back on your sheIf.
Make a note of when you last assessed this book. If it’s still unread one year after that date, then it’s clearly not for you. Out it should go.
7. Dealing with new stock
You love reading. But you also love buying books. Unless you control the number of new items coming into your library you’re never going to slay the TBR monster.
Some bloggers take the drastic step of implementing a purchasing ban. No new books until their TBR is down to a manageable level.
I know that would never work for me. Maybe it won’t for you either.
But you could use a variation on that theme. As an example: for every five books you read from your TBR you allow yourself to buy one new book..
For those of a nervous disposition, yes you’re allowed a few treats to mark birthdays and other special occasions.
Remember though, that every new book that comes in needs to be added to your TBR spreadsheet or Goodreads list, noting the date purchased etc.
8. Read the books
Yes it really is that simple.
Books are meant to be read. They’re not ornaments. But then you knew that didn’t you?
So all you have to do is read the ones you haven’t read until now.
If you find it difficult to decide what to read next, there are multiple challenges in the blogosphere that can help you overcome indecision:
You’ll find a few of them here:
https://www.bookish.com/articles/2019-reading-challenge/
https://www.girlxoxo.com/the-master-list-of-2019-reading-challenges/
https://roofbeamreader.com/2018/12/19/announcing-the-2019-tbr-pile-challenge-tbr2019rbr/
The start of a new year is always heralded by announcements of new challenges, so keep your eyes peeled. But of course you don’t have to wait for a new year before you start tackling that TBR monster.
If you’re not into challenges, you might enjoy using a TBR jar to select your next read. This is where you can unleash your creativity if that’s what rocks your boat. For an explanation of this take a look at the post on The Chic Site.
9. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Congratulations on working your way through all these strategies, But this is no time to rest on your laurels. You need to exercise constant vigilance if you don’t want to end up in the same mess again.
My suggestion:
Set a date to do at least an annual ‘stocktake’
Keep challenging yourself with those books you labelled as ‘maybe’s’
What are you waiting for?
Time to get started
These are strategies I’m intending to use to reduce my TBR mountain.
What strategies have you used that you found successful?
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No snowflakes in the torture chamber
‘We don’t want to hear it’ is a cry shared by
over-sensitive souls and despots
In these days of hurt feelings, so-called snowflakes, the perpetually offended and those who see a slight or an infringement of their rights at every turn, it is sobering to reflect on the experiences of lives in less tolerant societies where issues such as freedom of expression or no-platforming are entirely in the hands of a government or military regime rather than a disgruntled student body or an online petition.
As the pressure group PEN International points out, writers and journalists around the world are targeted – and in some cases hounded and murdered – for their peaceful pursuit of free expression.
“Authoritarian governments are becoming increasingly emboldened and are targeting writers and journalists in ever greater numbers. Some are paying a heavy price for merely carrying out their work,” said Salients Tripathi, Chair of PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee.
I’ve been researching this topic after reading about the experiences of a Kenyan who was incarcerated, tortured and jailed on a trumped up charge fundamentally because his attitude didn’t tally with that of the authorities.
Wahome Mutahi’s Three Days on the Cross, published in October 1991, is presented as a fictional account of everyday brutality by the security forces in Moi regime Kenya. But the scenes of torture at the hands of members of the notorious Special Branch are drawn directly from the author’s own experience following his arrest in October 1986.
Mutahi (1954 – 2003), a journalist and novelist widely read in East Africa, was known to be opposed to the brutal regime of his country. In 1986, during a clampdown on 
intellectual activities he was arrested and jailed. He was charged with neglecting to report a felony thus being guilty of sedition.
His captors said he knew people who were publishing seditious material – material critical of the government. The allegations were false; he didn’t know anyone engaged in such activities – he was a journalist on The Nation, just writing.
Special Branch officers went to his Nairobi office one Sunday morning and took him to the city’s Nyayo House, a respectable-looking office building for the police. But in its basement were interrogation rooms, cells and barbaric torture chambers. He was held there for 30 days accused of being involved in an organised movement.
In conversation with Paul Theroux (recounted in Dark Star Safari), Mutahi recalled telling his accusers: “If you have evidence against me, take me to court. That made them very angry. They stopped talking to me. They stripped me naked and beat me – three men with pieces of wood. They demanded that I confess.
“Then they stood me in my cell and sprayed me with water. My cell was about the size of a mattress. They soaked me – water was everywhere. Then they locked the door and left me.”
In the windowless cell Mutahi could not tell if it was day or night. “I was still naked and really cold, standing in the water, in the darkness. I don’t know how much time passed – maybe 12 or 15 hours.”
Then the door suddenly opened and he was brusquely asked if he had anything to say. He said no and was left again for a long time before the door opened once more and the same question was fired at him, eliciting the same response.
“I came to a situation where I was living in a nightmare. I hallucinated. I saw food in patches on the floor.” Waking from a fitful, troubled sleep, Mutahi was desolated to find himself ankle deep in water and shivering, not able to stand or sit. “My feet were rotting. I was on the point of a breakdown. I thought of suicide. When a week passed they must have thought I was dying because they put me in a dry cell.”
But the interrogation continued. He was blindfolded and taken to another room. After many sessions, Mutahi realised he was weakening and that he would rather serve a specific sentence than suffer not knowing when his confinement would end. And so he signed a ‘confession’. “I was given 15 months. It was something definite – not torture any more.”
Everyone who found themselves in such situations, said Mutahi, eventually pleaded guilty under interrogation, “provided they didn’t go insane first.”
The term ‘snowflake’ is pejorative and unhelpful especially when applied generally to students and millennials (though some of the more extreme proponents of safe spaces and no-platforming perhaps deserve a little ribbing).
Nevertheless it’s clear that there is an increasing tendency to shy away from some of the less pleasant realities: law students excused lectures on sexual abuse for example or medical trainees allowed to opt out of witnessing distressing procedures.
Such over-sensitive souls refuse to hear an opinion contrary to their own and in this, in a horrible irony, they link to those despots around the world who find ideas with which they disagree frightening and threatening. They don’t want to hear – and for them the solution is not a safe space but a torture chamber.
Want to learn more?
- Find out more about the work of Pen International and how you can get involved, by visiting their website at https://pen-international.org
- You can also follow them on Twitter via @pen_int
- NowNovel blog has a list of 12 authors who went to prison
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Alert: An Oddball In The Office [review]
The Room by Jonas Karlsson
There’s one in every office isn’t there?
The worker who’s something of a misfit. Who few people want to engage in conversation or join at the coffee machine. The weirdo who has all the social skills of a mosquito.
In The Room by Jonas Karlsson, Björn is one such misfit.
He’s a new employer at “the Authority.” Exactly what the Authority does is never made clear. All we learn is that it’s a faceless, dull, bureaucratic Government organisation that processes claims. The more complex the claim the bigger its file number becomes and the higher up the building it gets handled.
Illusions of Grandeur
Björn arrives believing he is special, a cut above everyone else. “ He’d left his last job because “it was way below by abilities.” (reading between the lines he was ‘persuaded’ to move on). Now it’s time for him to fulfil his true potential. On his first day “The words ‘man of the future’ ran through my head.”
He plans his day and workload meticulously:
I worked out a personal strategic framework. I arrived half an hour early each morning and followed my own timetable for the day: fifty-five minutes of concentrated work, then a five-minute break. Including toilet breaks. I avoided any unnecessary socialising along the way.
He doesn’t endear himself to his colleagues.
But then Björn doesn’t rate them highly either. His nearest colleague has the irritating habit of allowing his paperwork to spill over onto Björn’s desk. Another colleague doesn’t return pencils he’s ‘borrowed’. He receives sloppily written departmental emails.
It’s all getting too much for Bjorn
Salvation arrives when he discovers “the room”. A small, perfectly equipped and furnished space that becomes his refuge. He finds he can think more clearly, work more quickly, more productively when he’s in the room. He even feels better physically.
There was a full length mirror in the room. I caught sight of myself in it and fancied, to my surprise, that I looked really good. My grey suit fitted better than I thought, and there was something about the way the fabric hung that made me think that the body beneath it was – how can I put it? – virile.
There’s just one problem with this room: Björn is the only person in the Authority who can see it.
It’s not on any layout plans.
There is no door along that wall in the corridor.
His colleagues complain that Björn is acting bizarrely, standing around in a corridor facing a wall. Doing nothing. Just standing.
As Håkan [a colleague] reluctantly explained, for the second time, what he could see in front of him, and stubbornly denied the existence of the room, I realised that I was going to have to be more obvious. I reached out my arm and pointed, so the tip of my forefinger was touching the door. “Door,” I said. He looked at me again with that foolish smile and glazed expression. “Wall,” he said. “Door,” I said. “Wall,” he said.
If you want to know how this all pans out, you’ll have to read The Room for yourself. It will spoil the enjoyment if I gave any more detail of what happens to Björn.
A Multi-Layered Novel
In part Jonas Karlsson’s The Room is a novel that can be read as a comment on today’s work culture reliant so much on protocols and procedures that individuality counts for nothing. Is this a culture where workers feel the need to find a space where they can be themselves?
Karlsson portrays the meaningless rituals and pointless activities that anyone who has worked in an office environment, will enjoy recognising. This is a world of stand-offs over personal working space, joke-cluttered noticeboards, untidy desks and frustrations because no-one replaced the photocopier paper tray or the light bulb.
However, on another level, The Room is a humorous tale of an outsider with more than a few strange behavioural traits. Bjorn’s social ineptitude is hugely funny, more so because the whole tale is told through his myopic view of the world.
Disturbing Portrait of Disintegration
And yet there is a deeply unsettling side to this novel.
Clearly Bjorn is suffering a form of delusional mental illness. When his colleagues take their concerns to the department boss, Bjorn accuses them of mounting a systematic campaign to get rid of him because they feel unsettled.
There’s nothing strange about that, creative people have always encountered resistance. It’s perfectly natural for more straightforward individuals to feel alarmed by someone of talent. …. one or more individuals have taken it upon themselves to play some sort of psychological trick on me. Instead of coming straight out and having a normal discussion.
The reaction of Bjorn’s colleagues could be viewed as a fairly typical one experienced by people who are individuals, who dare to be different. They think he’s getting preferential treatment by not being made to wear ‘slippers’ in the office instead of his outdoor shoes, or taking frequent work breaks.
They especially don’t like it when he begins to outshine them at work, producing reports (claim assessments) that are exactly the calibre the higher-up big shots want.
But as the novel progresses Bjorn’s erratic behaviour becomes more erratic and serious. He damages the office ceiling and pulls down the Christmas lights. There’s an implication he forced himself on a female receptionist. He begins acting as if he was the boss.
Reading The Room felt uncomfortable at times. In the middle of a humorous scene you suddenly realise that what you’re seeing is the disintegration of a human being.
It’s a bizarre but fascinating novel.
Footnotes
Jonas Karlsson is a prominent screen and stage actor in his native Sweden. He has published three novels and three short story collections. The Room is the first of his novels to be translated into English. My copy was published by Hogarth, part of the Random House Group, in 2015. Translation is by Neil Smith.
I have no idea how I came by this book. It’s in hardback which is unusual for me so I’m guessing I found it in a second hand shop at a low cost and was intrigued by the synopsis.
It’s on my 15booksofsummer reading list for 2019
Want to know more
- Foyles has an interview with Jonas Karlsson in which he talks about his reaction to being compared with Frank Kafka and Raymond Carver.
- Kirkus also has a video interview with the author
- Eric who blogs at Lonesome Reader has written an excellent review of Jonas Karlsson’s The Room here
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Six Stunning Must Read Books of 2019
We’ve reached the mid point of 2019. It’s a good time to take a pause and reflect.
A time to ask yourselves some questions. Have you:
- kept up with your challenges and projects?
- nailed that TBR stack?
- found any knock out, truly brilliant books?
My answers to the above are, in order, partly, no and YES.
I won’t bore you with how much I’m behind on my projects to read my classics club list or the Booker prize winners. And I’ve already confessed about the rising state of my TBR.
Let’s talk about something far more interesting: six books I’ve read so far this year that were stunning. There’s a psychological thriller, a classic novel, two memoirs and two literary fiction titles.
Milkman by Anna Burns
After a few years when the winning novel in the Booker Prize didn’t set my world alight, in 2018 we finally got a book that absolutely deserved the prize. Milkman by Anna Burns is an intense and powerful novel about trying to survive in a city where to be different, is to be in danger. The unconventional narrative form (no character is ever named) takes a little getting used to but don’t give up. If you do you’ll miss one of the most compelling novels I’ve read in years.
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
Gaskell wasn’t alone among Victorian novelists in her anguish about the plight of workers in the newly industrialised cities. Like Dickens she wrote about their appalling living conditions, sickness and hunger. Mary Barton was her first novel and it’s a no holds barred tale about industrial strife in Manchester. This is a must-read novel for anyone interested in social issues.
The Woman in the Dark by Vanessa Savage
Vanessa Savage’s debut novel is a spectacular psychological thriller. The Woman in the Dark is a tale of a family’s descent into crisis when they move into a house whose previous occupants were murdered. Within this she spins a disturbing narrative about the legacy of child abuse. Just one warning before you begin reading this: you’ll lose lots of sleep because you won’t be able to put it down .
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Imagine you’ve lost your home and your business. You have nothing but a few hundred pounds in your savings. Your husband has just been diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition. Faced with that situation Raynor Winn decided to take a walk. Rather a long walk. Six hundred miles in fact. The Salt Path is her account of walking the coastal path, camping wild and encountering hostility because strangers thought they were untouchable homeless vagrants. This is a memoir that can make you angry but it will also make you laugh because Winn has a wonderful eye for the absurd situations in life.
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay
Adam Kay was a hospital doctor specialising in obstetrics for six years and kept a diary of his time on the front line of healthcare. This is Going to Hurt is astonishingly funny but also sobering because Kay shows how poorly junior doctors are treated. Underpaid and expected to work well beyond their contracted hours, the job puts a strain on friendships and relationships. This is an astonishingly frank novel but despite his criticisms, Kay is still a firm believer in the principles of public healthcare.
Circe by Madeline Miller
This was a book I wasn’t looking forward to reading. I did so only because it was selected by the other book club members. But this re-imagining of Circe (the Greek sorceress who gets a brief mention in Homer’s Odyssey) was a revelation. Miller’s descriptions of the world inhabited by the Titans among the Greek gods is breathtaking. A more detailed review will follow but for now, I’ll just say that if you’ve not yet read this, do yourself a huge favour and go out now and buy a copy. You won’t be sorry.
Those are my six choices for the first half of 2019. It will be interesting to see if any of them still make the cut when I come to the end of the year.
What would you choose from your own reading so far this year? Any knock out reads for you?
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Scandalous secrets of how hospital doctors are treated
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay: book review
If you’ve ever required treatment at a National Health Service hospital, you’ll know how frustrating that can be:
- Lengthy waits to see a specialist/consultant.
- Clinic appointments running hours behind schedule
- Surgery dates postponed or cancelled.
Sound familiar?
It’s easy to feel after those experiences, that the much-lauded public health service in the UK has reached a breaking point. That it’s on the point of collapse.
Adam Kay’s memoirs make it evident it’s the selfless efforts of junior doctors that prevent it from collapsing.
Equally clear however is that their dedication comes at a huge personal cost.
This is Going to Hurt is a painfully honest memoir from one junior doctor on the frontline of the NHS. Adam Kay worked in hospitals for six years. He hung up his stethoscope in 2010 after a traumatic experience with a mother and baby in his surgery.
I’ve read enough newspaper reports to know that junior hospital doctors (those below consultant level) are poorly paid and over-worked. In 2016, in a bitter dispute over employment contracts, they staged the first strike in the history of the NHS. The dispute was settled only this week.
Undermined by bureaucracy
What I hadn’t realised until reading Adam Kay’s book was how much these professionals are undervalued and their expertise undermined.
Junior doctors give up their personal time and put marriages and friendships at risk rather than walk away from patients whose lives are in danger.
Yet scandalously ….
….they get charged for parking their car at the hospital. And fined when they over-stay ( even when their delay was caused by an emergency patient);
… doctors have to find their own cover when they inconveniently fall ill and
… they are not allowed to sleep on a spare patient bed after an 18 hour shift. They have to make do with a chair.
I was astounded to discover just how relentlessly gruelling are the lives of junior doctors. The system makes it virtually impossible for them to have any kind of life outside their work.
It was not unusual for Kay to work a 100 hour week.
He describes times when he fell asleep in his car, in the hospital grounds, or at the traffic lights. Once he nodded off while sitting on an operating theatre stool waiting for his patient to be wheeled in.
On one occasion he was recalled from a long overdue holiday in Mauritius because the doctor meant to be covering his shift was ill. The hospital refused to pay for a locum. He lost count of the number of anniversaries, birthdays, weddings and theatre performances he missed “because of work.”
What kept him going was the positive feeling he would get after a shift in which he delivered multiple babies or aided infertile couples to become parents.
Comedy amid the tragedy
Although Kay doesn’t hold back from describing tense situations, when the life of his patient hung on a thread, he balances the darkness with flippancy and witty repartee.
When the doctors and nurses are not attending to patients, they’re busy swapping jokes and anecdotes about the bizarre conditions presented by some of their patients. I suspect this is the kind of black humour often used by police officers and firemen. It’s a kind of release valve for people working in the emergency services.
Adam Kay has plenty of stories.
There’s the one about the drunken woman who climbed over a fence to get away from policemen. She slipped and ended up in emergency with a metal pole thrust through her vagina. After removal she calmly asked if she could take the pole home as a souvenir.
Or the tale of another woman who secreted a Kinder egg containing an engagement ring, intending to give her boyfriend the surprise of his life. It worked, though maybe not the way she intended, when the egg got stuck…
As a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology he encountered a surprisingly large number of people who arrived at hospital with foreign objects in their rectums. The staff are so familiar with the problem they’ve even found a name for it: “Eiffel syndrome” (to understand the joke you need to say the following words aloud – “I fell, doctor! I fell!”).
Not all encounters generate humour. Medical staff are often confronted by aggressive patients and family members, or patients who make unreasonable demands. There’s a particularly yucky case he mentions in which an expectant mother wants to eat her placenta. He gets his revenge by ‘accidentally’ revealing the gender of the baby to the most aggressive of the expectant parents.
Lack of investment
This Is Going to Hurt swings between flippancy and frustration. Some of Adam Kay’s criticism is directed at hospital administrators for their propensity to introduce ever more new rules. But he lays the greatest blame on the shoulders of politicians who had failed to invest in the NHS over several years, leading to staff demoralisation.
My over-riding impression however is that Adam Kay loved the NHS and preferred to work in the public sector even when private practice would have been more financially rewarding.
Asked to represent the medical profession at a school’s careers event he decides honesty is the best approach:
So I told them the truth: the hours are terrible, the pay is terrible, the conditions are terrible; you’re under-appreciated, unsupported, disrespected and frequently physically endangered. But there’s no better job in the world.
This was a fabulously engaging book that was a good companion to Do No Harm by the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh that I read earlier this year.
Funny, informative and poignant it ends on a note of frustration, particularly when Kay describes the agonising event that prompted his resignation. It let to the death of both baby and mother following a caesarian operation. Although Kay had followed all the correct procedures, he still blamed himself. He suffered a period of depression but was not given any therapy by the hospital or allowed time off to recover. After a few months he handed in his resignation.
This Is Going to Hurt: footnotes
This is Going to Hurt was published in 2017 by Picador.
It’s written in the form of diary entries that were maintained by Kay during his medical training and his time as a hospital doctor. The diaries were intended as a “reflective practice” in which he could log any interesting clinical experiences he experienced. He used the material, suitably anonymised to write his book.
He has since embarked on a career as a comedian and scriptwriter. His new book Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, is published in October 2019.
Read an interview with him in The Guardian newspaper.
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19 books taking the wheels off my wagon
After months of self- restraint the wheels are in danger of coming off my book wagon.
I’m now on the cusp of a freefall…
The last two months saw a splurge of book purchases and acquisitions, sending my TBR count to its highest level for three years.
It’s giving me a nudge that it’s time to do a cull of the bookshelves (more on that shortly).
But for now let me tell you about the 19 titles that have made it through the BookerTalk doors. They’re a mix of:
- birthday gifts
- advance copies from publishers
- passed on by other bloggers
- new titles from Welsh authors
- hard-to-ignore bargains at book sales
Birthday gifts
Mythos by Stephen Fry: I’ve been complaining for years about my shaky knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology. There are plenty of books around on the topic of course though lots of them are rather heavy going. Fry is an appetiser in a sense, an entertaining way to begin getting acquainted with all those gods and goddesses. This could come in very useful when I’m reading Circe by Madelaine Miller which is the book club choice this month.
Two more titles to add to my collection of books by Émile Zola”
Le rêve (The Dream) is the sixteenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series. It’s about a poor embroideress who falls in love with the son of a wealthy aristocratic family. This being Zola, it doesn’t of course end happily ever after.
La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret (The Sin of Abbe Mouret) is the fifth novel in the series. It’s anticlerical in tone and scope, focussing on the experiences of an obsessively devout priest sent to a remote Provençal backwater village whose inhabitants don’t share his enthusiasm for the church.
Review copies from publishers
I’ve been very restrained in accepting review copies and even more restrained with NetGalley. But these were titles I couldn’t resist:
The Jeweller by Caryl Lewis (that’s the one you can see in the photo with September 2019 written on the spine. It’s being published by Honno in that month. Caryl is a former winner of the Wales Book of the Year and her new novel sounds different. It’s about a woman who acquires trinkets by clearing houses after the occupiers have died. In her tiny coastal cottage she surrounds herself with photographs and letters of these complete strangers.
The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg. This is a fantasy novel for children which comes out in July. Published by Macmillan Children’s Books, it’s about a fantasy theme park here the rule is “happily ever after.” This isn’t my usual kind of book but I’ve decided its time to get out of my comfort zone periodically and I’m intrigued by the description that this story is told through court testimonies and interrogation records
The Fast Spell Breather by Julie Pike. Another fantasy novel for children. The main character is a girl who uses magic to protect her village. All works fine until the day she slips up. Published by Oxford University Press.
From other bloggers
The Innocent Wife and One More Lie by Amy Lloyd: I won both of these thrillers in a giveaway hosted by Kath who blogs at NutPress.
The Innocent Wife is Amy Lloyd’s debut novel, She won the Daily Mail Bestseller Competition with it in 2016. One More Lie is her second novel.
Kath’s enthusiastic reviews are here and here.
Are You the F**king Doctor by Dr Liam Farrell. This was passed on by Susan who blogs at Booksaremycwtches
She thought it would be a good companion read to This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay which I’ve just finished reading. Kay was a senior house doctor in an NHS hospital where he specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology. Farrell’s book which is subtitled: Stories from the Bleeding Edge of Medicine, reflects on his work as a general practitioner. So both people are the front line of care but working in different circumstances. Susan’s review is here.
New Titles from Welsh Authors
West by Carys Davies. I read Carys’ short story collection The Redemption of Galen Pike in 2015 and though I’m not generally a fan of short stories, this books was superb. West is her first venture into novels and it’s been described as ‘stunning.’
In Two Minds by Alis Hawkins. This is the second in the Harry Prober-Lloyd series of historical crime novels set in Wales. I read the first, None So Blind, earlier this year and was so engrossed in the tale of a man suffering a degenerative eye condition who becomes a coroner, that I was glad I didn’t have to wait long before the follow up was published.
Human, Being by Gareth Davies. This has been described as the male version of Bridget Jones’ Diary. That comparison would normally have me racing out of the bookshop door faster than Usain Bolt. But having heard Gareth read some extracts at the launch, I don’t think the description really does justice to this tale of a middle aged comedian who’s been abandoned by his wife and has lost his comic mo-jo.
A Song of Thyme and Willow by Carole Strachan . Published by Cinnamon Press, this is the mysterious disappearance of a successful opera singer. Two musicians facing life-changing crises of their own, decide to look for her. Although the mystery is a key aspect of the novel, this is very much a novel about character.
Riverflow by Alison Layland. This was published in the last two weeks. It’s Alison’s second novel and takes the theme of a community protest about the impact of fracking. Alison is the latest guest in my Cwtch Corner series.
Hard-to-ignore bargains at book sales
Who can resist a bargain? Not me for sure.
Perhaps it wasn’t the best of ideas to volunteer to help at a book sale at a National Trust property? Though I picked out plenty of books for visitors to my staff, there were also more than a few that caught my eye. I think I was remarkably restrained in buying just two.
Actually it was just one purchase initially but then I had to call into the property on day two of the sale, and saw two other books I had to have…..
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler . I read loads of her books in the past but haven’t done so for quite a few years now. This book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2015 but lost out to A History of Seven Killings (one of the books I failed to finish this year).
A Rising Man by Abir Mukerjee. If I was being disingenuous I wouldn’t count this book since I already have an e-version. But it was only 50p and I find it much easier to read in paper format. It’s the first in a series about a British policeman seconded to Calcutta.
Force of Nature by Jane Harper. A friend has been raving about Harper’s novels and promised to pass on her copy of the first The Dry. But I’m still waiting…. In the meantime this was at the book sale. I know many other bloggers have recommended Harper, so maybe one of them can tell me whether to hold off from reading Force of Nature until I’ve read the two previous novels from this Australian author???
Having bought all of these my next problem is…..
Where can I find room to store them all???? Anyone have some spare shelving I can rent??
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Author confronts fracking and environmental protest
Alison Layland probably has the most varied career of all the Welsh authors to join me in Cwtch Corner.
She’s been a quantity surveyor and a taxi driver. Alison is now a writer, translator and member of the highly esteemed Gorsedd of the Bards.
Her second novel ‘Riverflow ‘ confronts the controversial issue of fracking and its impact on a rural community.
Q. How would you describe your new novel Riverflow in one sentence.?
It’s a novel of family secrets, community tensions and environmental protest against a background of fracking and floods on the river Severn.
Q. The environmental issue is highly topical right now with the Extinction Rebellion protests and concerns about plastic. What prompted you to take on this issue in your novel ?
“I’ve always been passionate about environmental issues and try to live as “green” a life as possible. I specifically wanted to focus on these issues when I wrote Riverflow, with the intention of writing an engaging, character-driven novel, but through the characters’ own lives and passions raising readers’ awareness of these issues and the climate crisis, and hopefully giving some food for thought.
Between starting to write it and publication, I’m pleased that these issues have gained a certain amount of prominence, due to movements such as Extinction Rebellion, which emerged more or less after I’d finished writing the novel, Greta Thunberg and the school climate strikers, and the work of David Attenborough, Chris Packham and many others – though there’s still a long way to go in terms of government and corporate action.
The process of writing has also inspired me to get personally involved, and I’m now an active campaigner with Extinction Rebellion“
Q. How difficult is it when you are translating fiction, to maintain the voice/style of your writer? Does the author in you ever want to change some part of the text?
“Getting to know, and conveying, the author’s voice is an essential and enjoyable aspect of translating fiction.
It does take a few chapters for me to fully immerse myself in it, and in my subsequent redrafts and revisions, it’s the early chapters that need the most work.
I think being an author in my own right possibly makes it easier for me not to “interfere” unduly, as I have my own voice and way of writing and can keep that separate from my translation work.
Issues often arise in translating for a different culture, whether it’s German cultural references that need to be subtly explained to English-speaking readers, or differences in style that may be required in order to appeal to a different readership, and both I and my editors may make changes, in consultation with the author.”
Q. You’ve had a varied career path from taxi driver and chartered surveyor to translator and writer. What made you decide to add ‘author’ to your list of occupations?
“I’ve always told myself stories and been an avid reader, always enjoyed working with words and always wanted to do something creative so, although it wasn’t something I seriously considered when I was younger, I guess it was likely if not inevitable that I would become a writer – eventually!
I started writing fiction when we moved to Wales in 1997. I immediately set out to learn the language and our tutor happened to be a poet and creative writing tutor. After our language course came to an end, the group had achieved a lovely momentum and we carried on with creative writing classes.
I found, strangely, that writing in a second language removed my self-consciousness barriers and I was soon writing short stories and flash fiction in Welsh. My first (unpublished) novel was also written in Welsh, and it was through translating that for friends and family to read that I finally gained the confidence to begin writing in my native language, English..”
Q. As a non-native Welsh person, how has your experience as an ‘outsider’ shaped your perspective on the country?
I lived in rural mid-Wales from 1997 until about three years ago, when we moved to a house right on the border, and learning the language has given me a unique insight into the literature and culture of Wales.
Living in the kind of rural and village communities that characterise a lot of this area of Wales is also fascinating, and feeds into my writing, although the village on the banks of the Severn that forms the setting for Riverflow is fictional.
The border town of Oswestry and the surrounding area, although just in Shropshire, is a fluid one with a very Welsh feel and a Welsh-speaking community; I’ve sometimes felt that these places are just as, if not more, “Welsh” in character than certain places within Wales. Especially here, but also in the close-knit communities of rural Wales where there are a substantial number of English incomers, there’s a lot of – usually friendly – cultural banter.
As a Welsh speaker and “Cymraes fabwysiedig” (adoptive Welsh woman) I sometimes feel I have a foot in both camps, which is great for a writer and people-watcher!
Q. You recently participated in the Crime and Coffee festival organised by Cardiff library service where you and other Welsh authors got to meet readers. Do you enjoy these kind of events? What’s the most interesting question you’ve ever had from a reader?
“Despite being really nervous beforehand, I really enjoy public events.
I particularly enjoy interview and panel formats, like the one at Crime & Coffee, which was a panel discussion with fellow Honno authors Jan Newton and Gaby Koppel.
Another activity I enjoy is being asked to visit reading groups; it’s lovely to meet readers, talk about their reactions to my and others’ books, and answer questions about writing.
In terms of interesting questions, I particularly enjoy questions or comments from people who are touched by the subject-matter – when talking about Someone Else’s Conflict, that is people who have first-hand experience of the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans, and with Riverflow – although I’ve only talked about it at a couple of events so far – it’s people who are involved in environmentalism or protest.“
Q. What book is on your bedside table right now?
“I’m about to start This is Not a Drill, the recently published Extinction Rebellion handbook. It’s probably not ideal bedtime reading as thinking about the future of the planet is a decidedly scary prospect right now, but I’m sure that many of the essays and articles will be essential reading. It’s also a book I intend to pass on to people after I’ve finished reading it.“
Spotlight on Alison Layland
Alison Layland is a writer and translator. She says she has told herself stories for as long as she can remember, though she first started writing them down for others to share when she moved to Wales in 1997 and a Welsh language course led the way to creative writing classes.
She won the short story competition at the National Eisteddfod in 2002.
She studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University, and after a brief spell as a taxi driver worked for several years as a chartered surveyor before returning to her first love – language. She translates from German, French and Welsh into English. Her published translations include a number of award-winning and best-selling novels.
She is currently teaching herself Croatian as a by-product of her research for her first novel Someone Else’s Conflict.
She was Welsh Learner of the Year in 1999, and in 2002 won first place at the National Eisteddfod with a short story written in Welsh.
Her latest novel Riverflow was published by Honno in June 2019.
Her first novel, Someone Else’s Conflict. was published by i Honno in 2014. It’s a tale about trust and betrayal, love, loyalty and honour, that moves from present-day Yorkshire to the 1990s conflict in Croatia.
You can learn more about Alison’s books at www.alayland.uk
She is also on Twitter via @AlisonLayland
Cwtch Corner: where authors from Wales get to talk about their work, what inspires their writing and their favourite authors and books.
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Why Nancy Mitford’s “genius” novel left me underwhelmed
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate is supposed to be the novel that best displays her reputed “genius” for sharp and provocative wit.
Naturally, I was expecting to encounter writing that fizzed, crackled and sparkled as Mitford pricked the bubble of complacency surrounding rich, aristocratic families.
What I got instead was a slightly funny book parading the absurdities of a bunch of people who are supremely confident in many things, but particularly their superiority above all other mortals.
I felt cheated. Much like you do when you pull the Christmas cracker but end up with nothing more than a feeble pop and an empty roll of coloured cardboard. Not even a tiny packet of playing cards or a giant paper clip to make the effort worthwhile.
An Unsuitable Match
Love In a Cold Climate brings us the tale of Polly Hampton, more properly known as Lady Leopoldina. She’s the only child of an immensely rich and very aristocratic Earl of Montdore and his wife, Sonia.
Polly shines amid the debutants who have flocked to London for the ‘season’; the annual series of glittering balls and big social occasions whose real purpose is to find a marriage partner. Much to her mother’s frustration, however, Polly shows little interest in the London season and the men she meets consider her cold and aloof.
The cause of Polly’s indifference is revealed to her shocked family: she’s been in love with her uncle, “Boy” Dougdale since she was fourteen. She’s hell bent on marriage to a man considered by all and sundry to be eminently unsuitable as a husband; he’s a serial womaniser and known for his lecherous behaviour towards young girls.
Polly is determined to have her own way. Her punishment is banishment and disinheritance.
Mitford’s characters
You won’t find a lot of humour in the plot. The wit resides instead in Mitford’s characterisation, in particular the figures of Lady Montdore and Uncle Matthew.
Matthew is great fun as a character. because he’s so over the top. He plays the role of a conventional English Lord very well, with his love of hunting, fishing, shooting and his firm belief in the importance of lineage. He has little tolerance for silly, ignorant women and even less for the business of bringing girls out into society (expensive nonsense in his eyes).
The most fascinating character is however Lady Montdore.
A portrait of egotism
She’s a woman who is so easy to dislike with her “worldly greed and snobbishness, her terrible relentless rudeness.” The forcefulness of her personality generally ensures that she gets her own way, whatever the situation though she can also exploit the social status conferred by her husband’s title and wealth.
So wrapped up in her desires to be the hostess with the mostest and to secure a brilliant marriage for her daughter, Lady Montdore has no idea how condescending she can appear. Marriages of acquaintances and relatives are dismissed as inferior and inappropriate unless they involve solid assets like “acres, coal mines, real estate, jewels, silver, pictures..” All of the things in fact that her husband has in vast quantitites.
She’s not afraid to use her influence to prevent such a social calamity. Upon discovering that her daughter’s friend Fanny has made a “quite ridiculous” engagement to a professor, she offers to call the editor of the Times on the girl’s behalf, to retract the announcement.
Masterclass in how to patronise
One of the funniest scenes in the novel is when Her Ladyship makes an unplanned afternoon visit to the – now married – Fanny. It’s a master class in how to be patronising.
I suppose your husband is a clever man , at least so Montdore tells me. Of course it’s a thousand pities he is so dreadfully poor – I hate to see you living in this horrid little hovel, so unsuitable.
And with that she wrinkles her nose at the weak tea and broken digestive biscuits served without the nicety of a plate or napkin.
But worse is to follow when Lady Montdore puts on her “we’re hard done by” act:
It’s all very well for funny little people like you to read the books the whole time, you only have yourselves to consider, whereas Montdore and I are public servants in a way, we have something to live up to, tradition and so on, duties to perform, you know, it’s a very different matter. A great deal is expected of us, I think and I hope it’s not in vain. It’s a hard life, make no mistake about that, hard and tiring but occasionally we have our reward – when people get a chance to show how they worship us, for instance when we came back from India and the dear villages pulled our motor car up the drive, Really touching!
If only all of the novel could have been as delicious as this episode.
The saga of this odd romance and its consequences are related by Fanny Wincham, a distant cousin of Polly and a frequent visitor to the family’s home.
And therein lay my biggest issue with this novel: Fanny is a very dull girl. Fanny is the sensible one, the friend who longs for a stable life (understandable perhaps when you’re mother is known as ‘The Bolter’ because she left so many men in the dust)
I suppose Fanny had to be rather ordinary, in order to make a sharp contrast with the larger than life characters of her Uncle Matthew and Polly’s mother, Lady Montdore. But I would have appreciated a narrator with a little more to her than this ‘nice’ but tepid individual. Perhaps then her observations would have helped the book live up to its much vaunted status as the work of a genius.
Footnotes
About the author
Nancy Mitford was one of six daughters of a British aristocratic family (the very class she features in her novels). The siblings achieved fame/notoriety in 1930s, three of them because of their political affiliations. A journalist for The Times, Ben Macintyre, labelled them “Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover; Nancy the Novelist; Deborah the Duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur”.
Why I read this book
I added Love in a Cold Climate to my Classics Club list having seen it described as a “masterpiece’ of witticism. I also included her earlier novel The Pursuit of Love but now I’m wondering if that will be just as disappointing.
Want to know more
- Read more about the Mitford family in this BBC article.
- Vanity Fair has a published an interesting feature exploring why the six Mitford sisters continue to fascinate people.
- Ali who blogs at HeavenAli is more of a fan of the Mitford writers, than I seem to be. Check out her reviews here.
CerianMai96
Edward Colley
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