Micro Review 50 (Holocaust Memorial Day)

 

Maman, What Are We Called Now? by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar, trans. Francine Yorke (Persephone Books)

This volume from Persephone Press has been sitting on my shelf for a while but it has been worth the wait.

The titles of the book comes from the author's daughter as the family were French Jewish and in hiding during WW2, although unlike so many they were hiding more or less in plain sight and together for a lot of the war. The first part of the book covers the last 5 weeks of the German occupation of France and comes in the form of Mesnil-Amar's diary from these weeks - starting when her husband is arrested and put on the last transport from France to the East, and the Concentration/Death camps.

The excitement (and fear) caused by the approach of the Allied Armies on Paris is heightened by fear for Andre and this is all pored out into the diary entries, along with some reflection on the past decade. It was very interesting to get an eye witness account from inside Paris as the German's left, and also a reminder that whatever the victors would like you to believe not everyone suffered under the occupation and that although there were plenty of brave people not everyone was in the Resistance...

The diary is a breathless read, but for me the book becomes even more interesting in the final part where Mesnil-Amar's reflections on what came next for the displaced Jews of Europe, and the children who had been successfully hidden but now had no surviving family. Her meditations on how deluded French Jews had become before 1940 are also fascinating. 

I've read many books set in WW2, and many books with the Shoah as the main theme, but I think this is an excellent addition to my personal canon. I don't think I've read a book, by a survivor, that covers the before, during, and after in such a clear sighted way.

Micro Review 49

 

Jane's Country Year by Malcolm Saville (Handheld Press)

This book was on my extensive book wish list and seeing a friend talking about it on Facebook nudged me into placing an order straight away. The book isn't officially published until 18th Jan but Kate at Handheld Press dispatched it pretty much as soon as I clicked on the buy button.

Bex said she thought I'd love the book and (spoiler alert) she wasn't wrong.

Jane's Country Year is a little like a novel version of the wonderful What to Look for in... series from Ladybird that I fell in love with last year.

The book is set in 1947 and Jane is sent to live with her aunt and uncle on a farm to recuperate from a serious illness, the book then is split in to 12 chapters - one for each month of her stay.

Unlike many books set in this era with a similar theme Jane settles into country life well, she isn't a snobbish 'town mouse' disparaging everything rural. She is keen to learn, and make friends with everyone but every so often small plots (upset at killing pests, fear of shadows etc.) reminds the reader that she isn't a local. Her homesickness is also sensitively handled which was a nice change from usual tropes.

At times the plot is a little didactic and occasionally Saville does fall foul of the country yokel stereotype but on the whole I loved this book, especially with the fascinating introduction. I wish I'd had the resolve to read along just one chapter a month but it was soooooo good I couldn't help myself and just had to read it all in one go!

Saville was a prolific author but this is only the second of his books I've read and I will be looking for more by him - especially if they are set in locations I know (like Redshanks' Warning) or have a natural history theme like this one.

This is the 3rd book I've read from The Handheld Press and I am already looking at their beautiful catalogue and website working out what to try next...

Micro Review 48

 

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury Publishing)

A very dear friend recommended this book to me and I was more nervous than usual in starting it. While we are old friends and share lots in common our taste in books/plays doesn't always correspond. In general if I love a play she is ambivalent (or really didn't like it) and vice versa so a lot was riding on this read.

I'm pleased to say that I was drawn in from the start and begrudged all the time I had to spend at work and not reading it.

I'm at a loss to explain the book, it starts with a man getting off a train and losing all his memories, a lighthouse, alternative histories and even time travel...

The publisher's blurb also doesn't give too much away: 

Come home, if you remember. The postcard has been held at the sorting office for ninety-one years, waiting to be delivered to Joe Tournier. On the front is a lighthouse - Eilean Mor, in the Outer Hebrides. 

Joe has never left England, never even left London. He is a British slave, one of thousands throughout the French Empire. He has a job, a wife, a baby daughter. But he also has flashes of a life he cannot remember and of a world that never existed - a world where English is spoken in England, and not French. And now he has a postcard of a lighthouse built just six months ago, that was first written nearly one hundred years ago, by a stranger who seems to know him very well. 

Joe's journey to unravel the truth will take him from French-occupied London to a remote Scottish island, and back through time itself as he battles for his life - and for a very different future.

All of this vagueness works in the books favour, and the confusion I experienced while reading the book definitely mirrored Joe's which made for an unexpectedly immersive read. 

I was lucky enough to get another Natasha Pulley book as a 'Secret Santa' present and I am looking forward to diving into her back catalogue. There is some incredible violence in this book, and at times it is shocking but at no point did I want to stop reading. 

Review of the year part 3

 

Top Kidlit & YA books read in 2021

Despite everything that was thrown at us all in 2021 Kentishbookboy and I have continued to share books with each other and there's nothing more I like than getting a message from him (or his mum) saying how much they love a book, and although only a couple of shared reads have made my final top 10 all of the books he suggested were great and I think that we are living in another golden age of children's literature.

The books that made my list in alphabetical order are:

• Medusa by Jessie Burton
• Darwin's Dragons by Lindsay Galvin
• Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargreve & Tom de Freston
• How to Be Brave by Daisy May Johnson
• Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Melinda Lo
• The Swallows' Flight by Hilary McKay
• Wishyouwas by Alexandra Page
• Arctic Star by Tom Palmer
• Swarm Rising by Tim Peake & Steve Cole
• Amarantha by Elena Traina

Review of the year part 2

 

Top Non-Fiction read in 2021

As the New Year Bank Holiday is three days long this year I feel fully justified in spreading my 'best of the year' lists over three days too!

Today non-fiction books take centre stage, I wasn't always in the mood for fiction during 2021 and thanks to the great non-fiction out there I never quite lost the reading mo-jo. In a year that was so strange, and with so little travel possible, I definitely roamed the world via the written word.

In alphabetical order my top reads were:

• Come Fly the World by Julia Cooke
• One Woman's Year by Stella Martin Currey
• The Stubborn Light of the Things by Melissa Harrison
• Minarets in the Mountains by Tharik Hussain
• Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden
• Light Rain Sometimes Falls by Lev Parikian
• Slow Road to San Francisco by David Reynolds
• The Lost Cafe Schindler by Meriel Schindler
• Hidden Hands by Mary Wellesley
• Freedom by Lea Ypi

Review of the year part 1

 

Top 10 fiction novels read in 2021

Looking back on my reading diary for 2021 I had a better year of books than I first thought, and indeed I couldn't narrow it down to just 10 books so I am creating 3 lists this year - one for fiction, one for non-fiction and one for children's/YA books.

I did completed two of my own challenges, reading all of the 2021 World Book Night titles and then reading all of the books long listed for the 2021 Wainwright Prize. I also got better at abandoning books - actually abandoning them rather than kidding myself that I'd come back to them!

I was also pleased to see that 60% of the books read were by women and that I read more than 2 translated titles a month.

Anyhow, in alphabetical order, here are my top 10 fiction reads from this year:

• Civilisations by Laurent Binet (translated from the French by Sam Taylor)
• Which Way? by Theodora Benson
• The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
• The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante (translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein)
• The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
• The Island of Trees by Elif Shafak
• Kololo Hill by Neema Shah
• O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
• Still Life by Sarah Winman