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. 

Micro Review 39

 

The Long Field by Pamela Petro (Little Toller Books)

Review copy supplied by the publisher

The Long Field of Petro's title isn't a literal field, rather is is the literal translation of the Welsh term hiraeth and the book is a meditation on how a place or country can worm its way into your life and leave you 'homesick' for this location.

Unlike true homesickness hiraeth isn't necessarily about your physical home but is more about the idea of place, and while I've not spent any amount of time in Wales to experience the same feelings as Petro there were definitely parts of her feelings that I understood instantly.

Being in lock down in the spring of 2020 and then the winter of 2021 I realised just how important watery landscapes are to me, and until we found local walks that encompassed river scenes I was definitely pining for water in a way that I'd not really experienced before.

Equally in 2017 (and to a lesser extent in 2014) when I got to spend time in the Rocky Mountains I instantly felt a connection and love of the landscape that I'd not experienced before. Since returning to the flatlands of East Anglia I've felt the pull of the mountains in a way that hiraeth as used by Petro can explain.

I very much enjoyed this exploration of Petro's life and hiraeth and pass on many thanks to Little Toller for supplying me with a reading copy.

Pretty Post

 

Presentation is everything

At the weekend I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of A Single Rose by Muriel Barbery, trans. Alison Anderson. (Gallic Books)

This book isn't out for a while and I will review it closer to publication date but I thought I had to talk about it now just to spread the love for the way this proof was packaged.

Everyone likes getting a present and while I was really keen to read the book it has to be said that the care and love that went into the parcel definitely bumped the book up the to be read pile.

It isn't just this parcel that has been so beautifully presented lately. Bex from Ninja Books always makes her parcels a delight to open and the new publishers Fox and Windmill added some lovely touches to my recent Twitter prize. It isn't all about the packaging for proofs & prizes though,  I also received a lovely handwritten & personalised card with my order from Salt Publishing.

Throughout this year I have been trying to use independent publishers and independent bookshops to feed my book habit and it is the care they take with every parcel really does make this a pleasure. I do use bigger, online, book retailers too - especially for ordering books from out of the UK - but where ever possible I am supporting the independent businesses and I think that this has been the easiest resolution I've ever stuck to!

Micro Review 30

 

The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, trans. Philip Boehm. (Pushkin Press)

How to talk about this book? Set in November 1938 in the few days after Kristallnacht it follows Otto Silbermann as he travels around Germany looking for peace and an escape route.

The tension mounts with each journey Otto takes as he frantically tries to stay a free man despite being Jewish. At times it feels more of a roller coaster than a succession of train journeys made by Otto as he crisscrosses Germany.

What is so interesting about this book is that Boschwitz wrote the book in the weeks just after Kristallnacnt and it is an immediate response to the events that saw German Jews villified, arrested and finally imprisoned in concentration camps.

To say I enjoyed the book is impossible - mainly because of the subject - but it was utterly compelling and I had my heart in my mouth repeatedly. It doesn't have a neat ending, and many story threads are left dangling but that is how it has to be - it is a contemporary response to the events of 1938. Otto won't know how his story ends and thus it is right that we don't - that we have to use our imaginations.

The tight focus on Otto took some getting used to as I started the book, I wanted to know more about the supporting characters that we meet. By the end however this tunnel vision worked for me as it conveyed the fear, paranoia and claustrophobia of what life in Germany must have been like for a Jew in 1938.

Boschwitiz's own story is no less compelling and shocking than Otto's and I do urge you to give this book a go if you come across it, so very different than other novels I've read set around this time.

Many thanks to Norfolk Libraries for buying the book after I mentioned it.

Tea Break Reading

 

Short Stories and Essays

Working from home for the last umpteen months has had a surprisingly good effect on my work/life balance. When I was in the office I would rarely take a tea break (or a lunch break) away from my desk and would just work straight through my hours. I would take the recommended VDU breaks each hour but not a full break of any description.

Mr Norfolkbookworm has always been better at this than me and now I make sure to try for a proper tea break each morning (I finish my working day at lunch time so lunches are definitely away from the computer). I've been using this break to read and I've found that essay collections and short stories are fantastic for this time.

I've mentioned before that I've been reading nature journals and almanacs at tea time but now I am really enjoying a new set of short story collections...

These books are published the independent publisher, Comma Press, and pull together short stories set in cities around the world. Unlike other books like this that I've read in the past these books are actually translations of stories from writers who actually live the city/country and so are a real peek into other lives and cultures.

Each book comes with a fascinating introduction and all of the translators are named - two things I really love in a book!

So far I've treated myself to 3 books from the series:

• Tehran - because I read a book set in Iran during the 1970s as part of one of my reading projects and it left me wanting to know more about the country, then and now.
• Tokyo - because I've fallen in love with so many novels from Japanese writers (or set in Japan) over the past year.
• Venice - because after a year of not travelling I'm looking hard at my wish list's of places I want to visit. This is a city I've bumped much higher up my list as it is at such risk from sea level rise/climate change.

I'm not sure where I saw these books mentioned first but I would imagine that it was thanks to Bex at Ninja Book Box and the wonderful #IndieBookNetwork - they've also helped me keep to my resolution of supporting both independent bookshops and independent publishers!

I now look forward to my tea break hugely as I can't wait to discover more about a place through its writers. Once I've finished these friends have recommended Flannery O'Connor and Shirley Jackson as writers in this genre to try - even if we get back to the office I think my short story habit will remain! 

Blog Blast

 

Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien (trans. Jamie Bulloch) Quercus Books

 (@QuercusBooks & @MacLeHosePress)

(eProof via NetGalley)

Books in translation are something I enjoy hugely and this one instantly appealed, both due to the setting (East Germany post reunification) and the translator - I've loved everything I've read in translation from Bulloch.

This book really wormed its way under my skin, in five stories (the Acts of the title) we learn about the lives of five women and how they interconnect. These women all have complicated lives and and various events in the present and past have shaped who they are.

What I most liked about this book was that the women felt real, they did feel like people you meet in daily life. They were fully rounded and you get to see all sides of them, no one is fully good or fully bad they just leap out of the page and into your life. The supporting cast weren't quite so well rounded but they definitely weren't cardboard cutouts, they had enough body to exist in their own right as well as in relation to the women.

My complaint with this book was that it ended - I wanted to spend more time with the five women and see where their lives went next.

World Book Night 2021: Book Sixteen

 

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary (Quercus publishing)

eProof

I had the chance to read this in advance format a few months before it was first published and after reading it I couldn't wait to be able to share it with other readers - in fact along with one of the other people who got an advance copy I think we tried pressing copies in to all of our colleagues' hands.

I started this thinking it was going to be another book about a woman breaking up with a long term partner and struggling to make life work in a dream job based in London.

In some ways this is what the book is about, but it turns in to so much more. Rents are expensive in London for those on a low wage so Tiffy and Leon (two strangers) have to share a flat. So far so normal...however it is a one bedroomed flat so they have to share a bed. Luckily Leon works nights and Tiffy in the daytime so they essentially flat share with an invisible person.

Through notes we learn how the two become friends and all about their back stories and this is where things get interesting as there are some incredibly powerful plot strands here and some very serious topics are covered. Unlike We Are All Made of Molecules however these are integral to the plot rather than the devices the story is hung on and (far more importantly) they are handled sensitively and realistically.

I've become a real fan of Beth O'Leary and am eagerly awaiting her third novel to come out. Don't dismiss this book as a story for Millennials or as a mindless romcom - give it a whirl...

World Book Night 2021: Book Eleven

 

Ask A Footballer by James Milner (Quercus)

Own copy (eBook)

I'll confess I nearly put this book off until last from the 2021 WBN list. I had no idea who James Milner was, and I've only watched one football match from start to finish in my entire life. I expected to skim this read and then struggle to write a review.

How wrong I was, and it was a needed lesson about not judging books before you've read them!

It didn't matter that I had no clue who Milner was, or what the rules of football are - in this book Milner answers questions that fans have asked him about life as a footballer and he (for the most part) answers them fully and honestly.

We get to see life on and off the pitch, as well as how fast sport science has changed the thinking on being a top level athlete. From chips and parties post match in 2002 through to tailored menus, superfood smoothies and early bedtimes in 2019 every aspect life seems to have changed

There were questions I glossed over, I don't know anything about football so the techincal questions on matches, positions and results I'll confess to skim reading but the rest was fascinating and really opened my mind to see past the 'celebrity' players to the hard graft that they put in. 

Don't get me wrong I do still think that they are overpaid and over represented in the media but Milner, through this book, and Rashford, through his charity campaigning, have made me think in a more rounded and less biased way about some aspects of the Premier League.

Book hangover, February 2021

 

O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith (British Library publishing)

Own copy

I've enjoyed all of the books from the British Library Women Writers series that have been published so far - some more than others of course but all of them have been engrossing. This one was something else entirely.

In many ways nothing really happens in the book, we follow about 7 years of Ruan's life at the start of the twentieth century and all the ups and downs that this comes with. Her parents are mismatched and their marriage doesn't last, there are bereavements and full life upheavals but nothing too shocking or unbelievable and the book is told from her viewpoint, although from her adult perspective.

I can't explain why this book has wormed its way under my skin in the manner it has managed but since finishing a week ago I have struggled to read any fiction at all as none of it measures up to the beauty of this book. 

I've been very glad for my WBN challenge as that has kept me reading, admittedly mostly the non fiction titles but it does mean that my mojo hasn't completely vanished. Is it too soon to re-read this one?