'Waiting' by Ha Jin

This post is about a book that I nearly didn't read. A spring clean had created a pile of books to donate to charity, some I'd read, but also ones I'd bought but thought I'd never get round to. Then I did that thing bookish people do; decided to try reading one or two, just to be sure. The first one I've finished is 'Waiting' by Ha Jin. 

'The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey' by Rachel Joyce

I can't believe it's ten years since I read Rachel Joyce's debut novel, 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry'.  This was the unexpected hit that launched many imitations; for a while it felt like every book I was offered was mooted as 'the next Harold Fry'.  Regardless, this original novel had such an effect on me that it was only this year - a mere eight since publication - that I final felt able to tackle it's successor, 'The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey'.

Silly but it's Fun

'Come Again' by Robert Webb

Well, what a year!  One thing that many of us have found ourselves doing during lockdown is reflecting, thinking 'What if...' and seeing where it takes us.  What if I'd said 'Yes'?  What if I'd gone back to college?  What if I travelled back in time and relived my teenage years?  Well, maybe not the last one... unless you're the lead character in Robert Webb's debut novel, 'Come Again'.

Love Fools (Nearly)

'The Love Delusion' by Nicola Mostyn

Last year, I thoroughly enjoyed Nicola Mostyn's chick-lit-adventure-comedy-fantasy mash up 'The Gods of Love', so you can imagine how excited I was when a follow up was announced.  So, did 'The Love Delusion' leave me smitten all over again?

Frida McKenzie is the most cynical of all divorce lawyers, independent, self-assured and, above all, really great at her job.  So great in fact that she's rapidly rising through the ranks of 'The Love Delusion', a movement determined to rid the world of it's illogical obsession with love.  Frida's even become the lawyer of choice for new converts and been given the chance to meet the movement's founder, the elusive R. A. Stone. Everything looks rosy, until a chance meeting with a strange yet familiar protestor plants a seed of doubt in her mind. Where did the Love Delusion come from, and why can't she remember her life before it?  Who is this strange man and why is there a photo of them together hidden in her home?  Could it be there's something important that she's somehow forgotten?

Broken Hearts, Broken Minds

'When I Had a Little Sister' by Catherine Simpson (4th Estate, 2019)

Well, it's going to be a bit of a challenge to write this post, but nowhere near as tough as it must've been for Catherine Simpson and her family to decide to share 'When I Had a Little Sister', a powerful story of family, grief and mental illness.

The 'Little Sister' of the title is Tricia, who, following a lifetime dogged by mental health issues and depression, killed herself in December 2013 at the age of 46.  Beginning with this terrible event, Simpson describes the feelings and formalities of the immediate aftermath, then reflects on her family's past and how the tough, stoic attitude of generations ultimately led to tragedy.  Tricia, Catherine and their eldest sister Elizabeth grew up together on the ancestral Lancashire farm, living in the farmhouse where Tricia's life would eventually end.  The apparently idyllic surroundings belied a childhood dominated by tough and eccentric personalities, whose influence would echo down the generations.  Eventually, having exhausted their shared experiences, Simpson cautiously turns to her sister's journals, filling in the gaps and discovering a whole life that no-one knew her sister had.  The book ends where it began, with Tricia's death, and the effect of the tragedy on the family closest to her.

Undeliverable Male

'The Lost Letters of William Woolf' by Helen Cullen

There's a growing trend in publishing for charming and uplifting tales of ordinary people experiencing extraordinary things.  These stories are becoming bestsellers, so it's not surprising that publishers are on the lookout for the next 'Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' or 'Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine'.  One such hopeful is the debut novel of Helen Cullen, 'The Lost Letters of William Woolf'.

William Woolf is one of 30 'letter detectives' at the Royal Mail 'Dead Letters' depot in East London.  Every day, sackfuls of lost letters find their way to the depot thanks to smudged ink, missing labels and illegible handwriting.  The detectives try to solve their mysteries and get them back on their way, but too often the search proves fruitless and the only place the letters can go is the industrial shredder.  As William worries about his failing marriage and stalled writing ambitions, he becomes obsessed with a series of letters sent to 'My Great Love'.  Written by a young woman to the soulmate she has yet to meet, William is struck by the hope and yearning of her words and dares to wonder if they were meant for him all along...

The Rising Son

As you've probably worked out by now, I'm quite a slow (but determined!) reader.  So it tells you something about 'Not My Father's Son' by the actor Alan Cumming that I read it in less than three days.

'Not My Father's Son'
by Alan Cumming
(2015, Canongate)

Alan Cumming may be a star of stage and screen, but this is not your average celebrity memoir.  'Not My Father's Son' is a book about family, physical abuse and the need to understand.  Mr Cumming and his brother, Tom, grew up in fear of their violent father, their childhoods overshadowed by his explosive rages, their adulthoods hastened by a desire to get away as quickly as possible.  Eventually, Alan was able to accept the reality of his traumatic past, through therapy and the support of friends and loved ones, but one day his long-estranged father contacts his sons with news that threatens everything.  This is the story of a defining period in Mr Cumming's life, during which he not only confronts the horrors and mysteries of his own past, but coincidentally those of his maternal grandfather too.

This is a beautifully written book.  Instead of being melodramatic, self-indulgent or a 'misery memoir', it reads more like a subtle suspense-thriller as Mr Cumming searches for the truth behind his ancestor's death (with the help of the BBC's 'Who Do You Think You Are?' programme) in parallel with trying to understand his father's behaviour and its affect on his own character.  By moving between the past and the present, he drip feeds information and builds a tension that makes this a real page-turner.  

The key theme is understanding.  It's not about vengeance, it's not about pity or 'poor me', it's not about abuse voyeurism, although it could so easily have become so in the hands of another writer.  I admire Mr Cumming for managing to stay focussed on the story he wanted to tell rather than slipping into sensationalism.  The plain English used keeps the book simple and factual and it works.  'Not My Father's Son' is heartbreaking, thought provoking, analytical and hopeful.  It also acknowledges that there were good times too, although they were often overshadowed by the fear of abuse yet to come.

Overall, I would recommend this book.  Mr Cumming is brave to tell this story and to do it in this calm and honest way, especially as many fans would want a more glamorous tale littered with celebrity names and showbiz anecdotes.  Instead, Mr Cumming uses the voice his success has given him to talk about something that happens at all levels of society and show us all that victims shouldn't be ashamed.

Now, back to the books.

Talking in the Library

Earlier this week, I finished 'The Library of Unrequited Love' by Sophie Divry, translated from the original French by Sian Reynolds. It's a short book and, with a bit of effort, I managed to read it in 24 hours. Seemed the least I could do bearing in mind it wasn't on my original list... Ahem.

'The Library of Unrequited Love' is one side of a conversation.  One morning, a provincial librarian

'The Library of Unrequited Love'
By Sophie Divry
(MacLehose Press, 2014)

comes into work to find a reader sleeping among her basement shelves. At first surprised, then defensive, then loquacious, she begins to share her opinions on everything from the Dewey Decimal System to customer service, literary snobbery to her admiration for a regular visitor. Intelligent yet confused, passionate but trapped, she finally has a captive audience for her thoughts and observations.

I liked this book because it was unusual. It is, as it's cover says, a diversion, a little novelty that gets you thinking about the nature of narrative and story structure. The first person monologue made getting sucked into the librarian's story very easy. By the end, I didn't want to leave her as she felt like a real person in need of friendship and support. Soppy but true.

Throughout I found myself imagining the whole novella as a play and I really think it would work very well on stage.  Hopefully someone somewhere has plans for a production.

Overall, this book would be of interest to writers because of the narrative style used and librarians.  After all, how could anyone working in such a strongly stereotyped profession not be interested in this latest portrayal?  I think this would also be a good choice for a book group as, even though it's a short work, it leaves much to discuss about how easy it is to loose sight of the people we see everyday, isolation and the purpose of public libraries.

Now, back to Dr. Crystal!

Hitting the Right Note

There's nothing worse for writer's block than staring at an empty page.  So I'm going to try and fill this one with a review of 'When I Met You' by Jemma Forte, which was sent to me by the lovely people at New Books Magazine.

'When I Met You' is the story of a turning point in the life of Marianne Baker.  She says she's happy, but the thirty-something still lives with her parents, has no love life to speak of and has been in the same job since leaving college.  Her one true joy is playing the violin, but that's just a hobby.  Rather than a building any sort of career, she works until she can afford to jet off to a far flung part of the globe, travelling until her cash runs out and she's forced back home to earn more.  Then one dark and stormy night during a sojourn home, her estranged father turns up without warning.  From that moment on, life for Marianne and her family is never going to be the same again.

The size of this book came as a bit of a surprised to me.  It's nearly 450 pages long in the paperback and blimey there's a lot going on!  At times it felt sprawling, with subplots shooting off in every direction and an extended cast of characters that was a little hard to keep track of at first.  It was as though the author had a whole bundle of ideas that had made her laugh, so she'd just shoehorned in as many as she could.  It shouldn't work, but to be honest I found I could forgive most of this book's eccentricities because they made me laugh too and, disparate as some of the ideas seemed, the author knitted them together well.  Sometimes it's just best to go with it and see what happens.

I liked Marianne and could identify with her eclectic family and friends, which made me want to spend time with them.  She could have annoyed me so easily - do I really want to hear about the self-inflicted directionlessness of someone pretty and talented? - but there was just enough humility and self doubt in there to make the reader root for Marianne without wanting to slap her.

Overall, this book asks you to suspend your disbelief and just go with the flow and I felt it was worth it.  It's silly and touching, made me laugh and made me cry, but generally left me feeling hopeful and positive.  Perhaps I'm just an irrepressible optimist.  Or maybe Ms Forte has just written a nice book about love, death and change.

Coming soon... Jon Ronson on public shaming in the internet age...

Night of the Loving Dead

Until relatively recently, I'd always wanted to write a story from a monster's perspective, like a vampire or a mummy or something like that.  Having read Isaac Marion's 'Warm Bodies', I think that the idea's been done very well already.

'Warm Bodies' is the story of R, a zombie with a difference.  While he can't remember his name, how long he's been dead or how the world ended, he's still has human curiosity.  He longs to be able to know these things and more, although he's not entirely sure why.  Trapped in his own head, he chases the same thoughts every day while instinctively following the same mindless routines.  Then while on a feeding expedition in the nearby city, he meets Julie and everything changes.  Rather than eating her, R brings Julie back to his airport home.  All he wants to do is keep her safe and this sudden and perplexing change marks the beginning of something quite extraordinary.

'Warm Bodies'
by Isaac Marion
(Vintage, 2013)

I saw a review of the film based on this novel and thought it sounded like an interesting story.  Being a bit squeamish, I decided to read the book first rather than plunging right in with the movie and I'm really glad I did.  I was a bit worried that it would be squarely aimed at the teen market and a bit twee, but it isn't that simple.  R is after all a monster, something that hunts and eats humans while bits of him gradually rot and fall off. Not the most obvious of romantic heroes!  But then neither are the manipulative and obsessive Heathcliff and bullying wife-jailer Mr Rochester.

Marion sucks the reader into R's mind from the very first line and from the moment I read it I was hooked.  This is not a book about romantic love per se, rather a story themed around the things the writer loves about humanity, the characteristics that take us beyond our animal instincts and basic desires for shelter, food and flesh. As such, it's themes are more universal and thought provoking and the fragile first love that develops between R and Julie is one of just a number of human-esque features that set you thinking about what it means to be alive.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, particularly because it doesn't answer all the questions it raises.  Although it's hinted at, we never firmly find out how the zombie plague came about or when it happened, for example.  But I think that's what sets it apart from other apocalyptic stories.  This isn't a tale about how the old world ended but how a new one began.  And surely that's far more interesting and optimistic, don't you think?

It's a Family Affair

I've just finished 'The House We Grew Up In' by Lisa Jewell, sent to me by publisher's Random House.  It's not a book I would've picked for myself, but it made a change reading something 'off list'.

'The House We Grew Up In' is the story of the Bird family; children Megan, Beth, Rory and Rhys, dad Colin and mum Lorelei.  At the epicentre of family life is the sinister eccentric Lorelei, determined that the fixtures of a perfect, rose-tinted childhood remain in place while stubbornly ignoring anything that threatens her idyll.  The pinnacle of the year is Easter Sunday in the Cotswold family home, a day of guests, egg hunts and roast lamb.  But one year the cracks give way and a shocking act rocks the family's image of itself.  As relationships are tested, is it too late for the Birds?

'The House We Grew Up In'
by Lisa Jewell
(Century, 2013)

The first thing that struck me about this book was how absorbing it was, a credit to the author Lisa Jewell.  She adeptly manages several different voices from several different times, drip feeding individual stories to keep the narrative pushing forward and the reader engaged.

Just as I felt I was on safe ground and that I had a grasp on the characters because I could relate to them, however, their behaviour started to take unexpected turns.  I suppose it makes sense in the context of the story, but everything did go a bit 'soap opera-y' and feel a bit out there.  But because of the understanding I'd gained of the characters in the first part of the book, I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt as I wanted to know what would happen to them.

Overall, I'm not sure that this is a book I'd recommend to many people as it's subject matter is actually quite dark.  It's not really a book to enjoy in the conventional sense.  I liked the writing enough to want to read more by the author, however, and intend to do so.  But I rather need read some more on the list first!