20 Books of Summer, 2019 Edition

I’m playing again! Cathy at 746 Books hosts this (extremely chill) reading challenge; you’re allowed to do a 15-book or a 10-book version, swap out books as you go, etc. I’ve decided to aim for the 20-book goal. Most of the books on my list will come from my proof TBR; as the challenge runs from 3 June to 3 September, I’ve decided to try reading five proofs being released in each month (June, July, and August), plus a final five which are drawn from my stacks at home. With any luck, I’ll read many more than twenty books this summer, but these are the first priority!

1. Rough Magic, by Lara Prior-Palmer [June, nonfiction]: The world’s youngest, and first female, winner of the Mongol Derby, on the mental and physical discipline of horse racing. She’s also the sister of a former colleague of mine. (review)
2. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World, by Elif Shafak [June, fiction]: An Istanbul sex worker is killed; in the ten minutes after her death, a series of flashbacks reveals her childhood and early life. (review)
3. The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective by Susannah Stapleton [June, nonfiction]: The life and times of Maud West, who opened her private investigation agency in London in 1905. (review)
4. Dressed: the Secret Life of Clothes, by Shahida Bari [June, nonfiction]: I’m an absolute sucker for fashion/style analysis, particularly as it relates to material culture. (DNF’d)
5. Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson [June, fiction]: The next in the Jackson Brodie series, and long-awaited too. I need to read Case Histories first.
6. Patsy, by Nicole Dennis-Benn [July, fiction]: An undocumented Jamaican woman in New York, and her daughter growing up without her on the island. Looks magnificent.
7. Supper Club, by Lara Williams [July, fiction]: I know very little about this, except that it’s about female rage, and must involve food at some point. Sign me upppp.
8. Three Women, by Lisa Taddeo [July, fiction]: Taddeo basically embedded, like a war reporter, into the lives of three women over eight years. These are the stories of their love lives over that time. Modern New Journalism + exploration of contemporary female sexuality = 100% my jam. (review)
9. Exhalation: Stories, by Ted Chiang [July, fiction]: Chiang wrote “Story of Your Life”, which the movie “Arrival” is based on. I’m told he’s excellent, and this is his first collection in a decade.
10. Rose, Interrupted, by Patrice Lawrence [July, YA]: Lawrence’s earlier YA novel, Orangeboy, really impressed me. Rose, Interrupted is about a girl who escapes a cult with her brother and has to learn to be a Normal Teenager while also Following Her Path. Sounds good. Cover’s adorable.
11. Life For Sale, by Yukio Mishima [August, fiction]: According to the jacket copy: “When Hanio Yamada realizes the future holds nothing of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits. A world of revenge, murderous mobsters, hidden cameras, a vampire woman, poisonous carrots, espionage and code-breaking, a junkie heiress, home-made explosives and decoys reveals itself.” Need I say more?
12. The Truants, by Kate Weinberg [August, fiction]: Sort of The Secret History, but on a campus in East Anglia instead of the woods of New England, and minus the classical references. Worth a punt.
13. The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware [August, fiction]: Ware’s brand of contemporary Gothic thriller is eminently suited to a rewrite of The Turn of the Screw.
14. Girl. Boy. Sea., by Chris Vick [August, YA]: A British boy and a Berber girl, both shipwrecked, must help each other to survive. This looks wonderful.
15. The Offing, by Benjamin Myers [August, fiction]: Post-WWII, following an unlikely friendship between a sixteen-year-old miner’s son and an older woman in Robin Hood’s Bay. Myers has loads of critical acclaim and I’ve never read any of his work before; this seems like a good time to start, though his other stuff appears to be much darker than this sounds.

The final five are subject to change, but may look something like this:

1. Pericles, by William Shakespeare (review)
2. Daemon Voices: Essays On Storytelling, by Philip Pullman
3. Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell
4. A Place of Greater Safety, by Hilary Mantel
5. The Blazing World, by Siri Hustvedt

Other possibilities for the final five include: The Summer Without Men, also by Siri Hustvedt; The Brotherhood of Book Hunters by Raphael Jerusalmy; Breathe by Dominick Donald; Lowborn by Kerry Hudson; Happy Fat by Sofie Hagen; If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson.

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Have you read any of my choices? Do you particularly recommend (or dis-recommend) any of them?

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My Mama Said, #1: The Brutal Telling, by Louise Penny

This is the first in an occasional series of posts reviewing books that my mum challenges me to read. She’s a huge reader and I so rarely get recommendations from other people. Technically, she wants me to read all of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache books, but of the ones on the shelves in my grandparents’ house, this is the earliest number in the series, so I’ve started here.

The premise: In Three Pines, a sleepy Québecois village, a man is found bludgeoned to death inside Olivier’s Bistro. No one recognises him, and the murder weapon is nowhere to be found. As Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté investigates, the neighbourly veneer of Three Pines is stripped away to reveal deep-rooted deceit.

Plot stuff: The Brutal Telling is a slow burn to start with. There are multiple false leads, the investigation takes time to work out that the body has been moved not once but twice, and the discovery of the murder scene at the victim’s home–which contains the most significant evidence–comes only halfway through the book. Once the investigation knows which direction to go, though, there are some really excellent clues: a spider’s web that appears to have the word “WOE” woven into its design; two beautiful and terrifying wood-carvings; the legend of the Mountain King; and a linguistic cipher known as Caesar’s Shift. My ma likes these books for their propagation of a grace and forgiveness ethos, and although that ethos caused me to question several moments in the book (what self-respecting Chief Inspector would blithely attend dinner parties hosted by potential suspects?), that’s what gives The Brutal Telling emotional heft. The final unraveling is quite complicated, but the ultimate story–of betrayal, vengeance, shame, and greed–is recognizably human. Gamache’s response to crime is always deeply compassionate; it is an unusual choice in this genre to write a chief inspector who, although he has no illusions about human nature, seems devoid of cynicism.

Technical stuff: I struggle with what appears to be widespread reader consensus that Penny is an exceptional prose stylist. There are certainly passages where she hooks emotion out of the reader; usually they’re the ones that involve characters responding to a work of art, whether it’s a painting, a wood carving, or an old Celtic dance tune played on a Bergonzi violin. On a sentence-by-sentence basis, though, I can’t see where the stylistic skill is meant to be, though I can see a lot of authorial tics. Most frustrating among these: rhythmic repetitiveness, overstatement, and the commencement of sentences with a conjunction. Here’s an example of all three:

As he followed the Chief’s car back to Three Pines Beauvoir thought about that, and agreed that Olivier had saved the precious antiques, and spent time with the crabby old woman. But he could have done it and still given the old woman a fair price.

But he hadn’t.

“Precious” and “crabby” have no place in that sentence; neither tells us anything we don’t already know, and the latter in particular strikes an oddly prim tone in a book that is also quite content to allow two of its positively regarded characters to use words like “fag” and “whore” in apparent jest. (The tonal disjunctions are chronic, and I’ll talk about them in a moment.) To start two consecutive sentences with “but” is unconscionable, and the one-sentence paragraph is a literary tool that needs immediate retirement. In this case, it also functions the way “precious” and “crabby” do, which is to say, it tells us something we already know. If an author does this too much, the reader begins to assume that the author thinks we’re stupid.

Genre stuff: The Brutal Telling exists at a kind of generic crossroads. On the one hand, it has all of the trappings of a “cosy”: small and apparently friendly rural settlement with a disproportionately high and frequent murder rate, eccentric locals for both comic effect and pearls of wisdom, an unflappable Lawful Good figure, and a propensity to center intense emotion upon activities or institutions that, in a larger community, would be able to remain marginal. Three Pines is a literary relation of St Mary Mead, by way of the county of Midsomer, and quite possibly the North Carolina village of Mitford. And yet (and this is present in the Mitford novels too, but Jan Karon gives herself an easier time by not raising the stakes to include deliberate taking of lives) there’s a distinct metaphysical seriousness to this novel, and presumably the rest of Penny’s work too. The reveal of the murderer here is so devastating because they have betrayed trust–not just that of their neighbours and loved ones, but that of the readers, who have (no spoilers) known this character for five books. The seriousness of betrayal is vividly portrayed in the story of the Mountain King, which reappears throughout the book: the King is robbed by a young man who first befriends him, and who is pursued forever by the forces of Chaos, Sorrow, and something “worse than Death”. This turns out to be Conscience, and I think Penny’s aim with the surprisingly compassionate Gamache and the explicit references to allegorical spiritual figures is to situate the horrors of crime in a basis more profound than the integrity of the law; we are meant to understand that murder is a crime of, and against, not just the body but the soul. That combination–cosy atmosphere, extremely serious core–is the source of Penny’s tonal dissonance, but also of her ambition.

Reading Diary: May 14-May 20

This is Shakespeare, by Emma Smith: Smith is probably best known as the academic whose recorded lectures form the podcast series Approaching Shakespeare, which you can get from iTunes. (I went to them live, as an undergrad, which is saying something because no English students went to lectures after about third week.) Her book’s thesis is that we should read Shakespeare, not because he’s an immortal genius or whatever the propagandistic nonsense du jour is, but because his plays are weird: they’re gappy, ambivalent, they ask more questions than they answer. Each chapter deals with a single question arising from one of the plays (they’re not all covered here, but there’ s a good spread). Lucid, accessible, and fresh, this would be just as perfect for someone who’s slightly anxious about Shakespeare, as for someone who already loves his work.

Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo: Almost, but not quite, an interlinked collection of short stories: each of the twelve chapters here follows a different woman (mostly black and British), and one of the book’s pleasures is discovering how they’re all connected to and through one another. Evaristo has always had great skill with potentially controversial topics: the generosity she extends to her characters nullifies any charges of bandwagoning when it comes to stories about gender, race, and class. This book in particular demonstrates that black women were fighting and winning these battles many decades before “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” t-shirts and social media accounts became a thing. In her application of the tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner principle, Evaristo reminds me of no one so much as George Eliot.

The Porpoise, by Mark Haddon: This is the sort of book that the Hogarth Shakespeare project should be trying to produce (interestingly, he was apparently asked to write it for them, and ended up pulling out of the project due to creative differences). Haddon moves from present-day privilege (globally connected aristocratic businessmen certainly have power equivalent to autocratic monarchs) to the ancient Mediterranean to a Tudor London where George Wilkins–Shakespeare’s co-writer on Pericles, the obscure play that this novel engages with–is punished after death for his sins against women. I need much, much more space to write about this (it’ll probably be the focus of my next Monthly Book feature); here, I’ll say only that it’s excellent, the prose crisp, the pace thrilling, the connections between different parts of the novel resonant and moving.

The Dog Runner, by Bren MacDibble: For kids ten and up. Ella and her brother Emery are living through a global emergency: a fungus has destroyed most of the planet’s crops and caused widespread food shortages. When their dad doesn’t come back from an expedition into the city, the two kids set off for Emery’s mother’s house upcountry, along with their three huge dogs. Emery and Ella have different mothers, and Emery’s is of Aboriginal descent. MacDibble deals with blended families and racial difference subtly and well; it’s mentioned when it’s relevant to the story (for instance, Emery’s grandfather, Ba, has used indigenous land management techniques to keep ancient grains alive). Adventurous and thoughtful, with a protagonist both boys and girls can relate to.

Currently reading: About to start either Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin (but not sure I can cope with another chunkster after reading his first book so recently), or Lucasta Miller’s L.E.L., a biography of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, “the female Byron”.

Reading Diary: May 7-May 13

The Parisian, by Isabella Hammad: Tricky call, this one. It’s a beautifully written (for the most part) historical epic about the life of Midhat Kamal (who happens to be Hammad’s great-grandfather). In 1915, he is sent by his father from Nablus, in Palestine, to study medicine in France; a private humiliation changes his life and has reverberations twenty years later, as Palestine begins its struggle for independence. It’s ambitious and Hammad’s gift for imagery is often truly arresting, but it’s also far too long—as Charles Finch notes, each chapter could be half the length—and, given the multiple points of view, there’s no clear indication of the necessity of each perspective.

On Forgiveness, by Richard Holloway: Short, but brilliant. Holloway is a theologian whose radically laid-back approach to Christianity I quite like (he describes organized religion, at one point in this book, as the rocket shuttle, and the values of love, forgiveness, justice, etc., as the payload, which is bold in that it suggests the utility of organized religion is limited and possibly has come to an end). This book is written “not in the imperative, but the indicative”: he’s not telling us to forgive, but examining the concept and the mechanism of forgiveness, that radical, insane, illogical form of unconditional love. I underlined loads and will be coming back for more.

The Dollmaker, by Nina Allan: This came on and off my TBR three times before the number of good reviews persuaded me to give it a go, and I’m so glad I did. It is a love story between Andrew Garvie, a man with dwarfism who collects dolls, and Bramber Winters, whose personal advertisement asking for friendship and/or information on Ewa Chaplin, a post-war dollmaker and writer, catches Andrew’s eye. Some of Chaplin’s stories are scattered through the book; they’re brilliant creations, reminiscent of A.S. Byatt’s pastiche Victorian poems in Possession, and create an air of the sinister (as, frankly, do dolls in general) that keeps the reader uncertain about the novel’s ending. My only quibble is the vagueness of the explanation for Bramber’s living situation; other than that, this is a beautiful, quietly confident novel and I am an Allan convert.

Where the World Ends, by Geraldine McCaughrean: For children twelve and up (though I think younger ones with high reading levels could handle this; the darker bits would likely go over their heads). Based on the true story of a group of boys from St Kilda who go for the traditional month of bird-catching on one of the sea stacs near the island, and find themselves stranded when the boat meant to bring them back at summer’s end never appears. Quilliam, our storytelling protagonist, is believably charismatic but conflicted, and McCaughrean is funny and accurate on the group dynamics of pre-teen boys. Genuinely high-stakes peril and real psychological nuance make this the real deal.

Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky: Space spiders. I am afraid you must accept them before you read this book. Once you’ve done that: an incredibly ambitious, and often beautiful, exploration of theology, evolutionary theory, and legacy. The sections that follow the development of an intelligent, scientific civilization of Portia labiata spiders–infected with a nanovirus that boosts their intellectual development–are significantly more interesting than the rather familiar beats of the human-based plotline (generation ship, cold storage, humanity’s last hope, &c.), but for those spider sections alone, Tchaikovsky deserves the Clarke Award he won in 2016: he not only creates a sense of true alienness, but directs a reader’s sympathy towards it.

From the Wreck, by Jane Rawson: More science fiction, but a rather different tone and aesthetic. The plot of From the Wreck is based on the true story of a wreck off the coast of Australia in 1859. George Hills survives for eight days without food or water, protected by what looks like one of the female passengers–but he is convinced that she is something else, not a woman at all, and he is right. His obsession with whatever saved him eventually threatens his family and his own sanity. Chapters from the creature’s perspective–it is essentially an interdimensional refugee–are sufficiently rich and strange, but the middle section drags, and the secondary characters need more room.

Currently reading: This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith, whose lectures I loved as an undergrad and whose book is no less lucid, accessible, and fresh.

Reading Diary: Apr. 29-May 6

Things in Jars, by Jess Kidd: Easily the most enjoyable novel I’ve read for weeks, Kidd’s third book is set in a familiar Victorian Gothic London, but her elegant, witty prose invigorates the setting. (She is particularly good at the literally birds-eye view; several chapters open from the perspective of a raven, allowing some lovely atmospheric scene-setting.) Our protagonist, red-haired Irish investigator Bridie Devine, is a magnificent addition to the ranks of spiky Victorian ladies in fiction, and her tentative love affair with the ghost of a heavily tattooed boxer is conveyed delicately. The is-it-or-isn’t-it supernatural flavour of the central mystery makes this book perfect for fans of The Essex Serpent–and, as a bonus, Things in Jars has an excellently dry sense of humour.

Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli: Reading this after the Women’s Prize shortlist announcement, my frustration at the composition of that list was refreshed. Luiselli takes a Sebaldian approach to her two-pronged story. One strand follows the journey of a group of migrant children from Mexico as they ride the border freight trains, sleep rough, and–sometimes–die, trying to get to a better life. The second follows the road trip of a married couple who are both audio journalists, and their two children, ostensibly traveling towards the American Southwest in order to produce a story about the migrant children. Luiselli’s philosophical, detailed style occasionally outstays its welcome, but mostly Lost Children Archive is a heartbreaking, fiercely intelligent wonder.

Currently reading: Isabella Hammad’s debut novel, The Parisian, set in WWI-era France and a post-WWI Palestine struggling for independence.