Looking Back and Forth

So we have rolled around to another year. There seems to be some consensus on good riddance to 2025. Routine life has plodded on with the highlight being my trip to Japan, but it now seems so long ago that I am barely sure it happened. Monkey is visiting in July this year so I can count down to the next time I see her. We chat on WhatsApp but it's not the same. I have restarted (for the third time) learning Japanese, but deliberately started before the new year so that it was definitely not a resolution. I need to go back to exercising but am going to consider my brain health first. And then financial health, which will involve not taking on anything else that will cost money; paying down the mortgage is going to be a priority.

So, books? I don't feel like I have read very much, and certainly far too many that were a bit meh. Having started well I have often not really liked the book club books, but I love the talking so have persevered with it and will continue to do so. Here is this year's list:

• On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
• The North Light by Hideo Yokoyama
• Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
• The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
• The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
• The Gentleman From Peru by André Aciman
• Enter Ghost by Isabella Hamad
• Orbital by Samantha Harvey
• Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
• Bird Life by Anna Smaile
• When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson
• There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
• The Beekeeper of Sunjar by Dunya Mikhail
• The Echoes by Evie Wyld
• The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
• Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
• Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
• The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
• Your Neighbour's Table by Gu Byeyong-Mo
• Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire
• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
• When Will There be Good News by Kate Atkinson
• The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
• Spoiled Creatures by Amy Twigg
• The World According to Garp by John Irving
• Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper by Harriet Scott Chessman
• Should We Stay or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver
• Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
• The Anechoic Chamber by Will Wiles
• Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo
• The Witches of El Paso by Luis Jaramillo
• Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
• Take Nothing With You by Patrick Gale
• The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
• The Ghost Orchid by Michael Longley
• Recursion by Blake Crouch (not worth a review, though I did read it all)

37 reviewed last year, though several abandoned part way and two to come from before Christmas, both wonderful (see one below). Highlight of the year has to the Emperor of Gladness, but also Orbital and Safekeep (below). More than I remembered that I did enjoy, maybe I was just being negative, it wasn't bad reading just neglectful reviewing.

'The Safekeep' by Yael Van Der Wouden was shortlisted for the Booker and won the Women's Fiction Prize in 2025, so was definitely on my radar. It starts a bit slow, with Isabel who lives a very small life in her childhood home, after her mother's death. Lots of snippets to come because it was so beautiful; coming back from dinner with her brother Hendrik :

"Home, when she arrived, welcomes her with relief. There you are, said the dim light in the kitchen, left on for comfort. I've waited up for you, said the rattle of the key in the door." (p.18)

After another family dinner her other brother Louis announces he is sending his current girlfriend Eva to stay with Isabel while he has to be away working. She resents the intrusion in her life but is so meek and submissive she just accepts it. The days, then weeks go past, the two young women tiptoeing around each other, Isabel resentful, Eva desperate to ingratiate herself. Isabel is obsessed with her possessions and the fear of someone stealing them, she goes around the house making an inventory, rechecking the spoons and ornaments. But Eva pushes back against her reserve until a tension exists between them. It starts really slow and builds:

"Up in her room Isabel sat at her dresser. There was a cloud of bugs by the open window, catching there setting sun, dancing up, down. In the mirror Isabel tried to see what Eva had seen. She pulled the strand from behind her ear, arranged it over her eye again. Pushed it back, hand slow, smoothing it back. She touched her cheek, the corner of her wide mouth.. Her fingers to her lips: she pushed two inside, over her tongue, the ridge of her teeth, and then a door slammed shut downstairs and Isabel got up and dried her fingers off on her skirt and swallowed three times. She could still taste her own skin. She rearranged herself, looked from the window to the wall to the bed." (p.58)

The next day Louis phones:

"Isabel put her forehead to the papered wall, looked in through the gap of the door hinge. Eva sat on the arm of the couch, phone to her ear. She had her hair up. Her dye job had missed the patch at the nape of her neck, and there was soft brown hair there, a few curls. The top buckle of her spine jutted pout above the collar of her blouse. Of her face, Isabel could only see the curve of her cheek, the shape of her smile." (p.63)

On the surface there is a formal awkward atmosphere between them, and then a horrible interlude where a local man who is basically harassing Isabel takes her on a date, because she is incapable of refusing him (and I became convinced he was going to rape her). Hendrik and his boyfriend Sebastian come and visit for a few days, and it breaks the tension between them, diverting their attention, but then Eva kisses her, and all hell lets loose.

"Isabel, too full to be teased, came to stand behind her. Wrapped her arms around her, pressed her face to Eva's neck and stayed there. Eva's laughter went quiet. She let herself be held a moment. She stroked Isabel's arms. She said, quiet, 'Who are you?' she said, 'Have you always been like this? Have you just been waiting to happen?'" (p.149)

Then, 

"'That's nice,' Eva swayed into her. Isabel turned her face this way, that. Eva let her. Isabel kept her with a hand to the small of her back. She put the wet towel to Eva's throat.

'Yeah,' Eva sighed, and shivered. Isabel held her there. A hand over coth over throat - held her there like that. Held her by the throat." (p.152)

and my mind leapt ahead anticipating huge crushing heartbreak and a terrible, terrible consequence. The intense passion of their relationship seemed to only allow for tragedy. But the story is so much more subtle than that. There is back story that emerges gradually, as we learn who Eva really is and how she came to be in Isabel's house. 

The first part of the story is tight with anticipation and the second half swamped with passion. Both women, so lost and alone, you want them to find and keep each other. 

I'll just finish with this last one, a quote from Eva's diary February 8 1961:

"She was staring at me. She stared in a way that I knew she would want to talk to me. I did not want that. She came to me just as I wanted to bike away and held my arm and said that I was Esther's girl. 'Aren't you? Aren't you Esther's girl? You are, I know it.' I couldn't say anything. It was like someone had put a stone in my mouth and now I could not speak. Who says my mother's name other than Malcha? No one says her name to me these days. She insisted on speaking to me. She wanted me to come have tea at a café at the corner. I thought, Oh, she has someone waiting there who will get me and send me to the Germans. That's what I thought! And then I thought: that can't happen anymore. Isn't that strange, how that works? You can think something that used to be true but isn't true anymore but still believe it in your bones." (p.196)

What a lovely book, intense and overwhelming. just what I needed to end the year.

Stay safe. Be kind.

It's nothing new

It was a dark and stormy day, and the rain came down in torrents; there were wolves in the mountains and bears ...

And then I decided I would actually finish the blog post I started a month ago ...

I recently found a 'reviewing round-up' post from 2018, so it seems I don't have to feel bad about my reviewing neglect because I have been doing it for years. Maybe it's my imagination that I ever wrote long thoughtful reflections on my reading choices.

I have to take Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin back to the library, it is now more than a fortnight overdue ... at least they don't issue fines any more, but that might have poked me into action sooner. Really loved this book. I have not read anything 'old' for ages, Giovanni's Room was first published in 1956. It is about a young man, struggling with his independence and his sexuality, but living a rather irresponsible life in Paris, supported by his father. He is engaged to Hella but meets Giovanni in a bar and begins what he thinks of as a summer fling with him, only to become more embroiled than he anticipated. It is quite torturous in fact, how he talks himself round in circles, unable to take responsibility for anything or make any real decisions. I did not like him much but I felt his suffering.

Here, talking about another brief entanglement:

"My father's attitude was that this was but an inevitable phase of my growing up and he affected to take it lightly. But beneath is jocular, boys-together air, he was at a loss, he was frightened. Perhaps he had supposed that my growing up would bring us closer together - whereas, now that he was trying to find out something about me, I was in full flight from him. I did not want him to know me. I did not want anyone to know me. And then, again, I was undergoing with my father what the very young inevitably undergo with their elders: I was beginning to judge him. And the very harshness of this judgement, which broke my heart, revealed, though I could not have said it then, how much I loved him, how that love, along with my innocence, was dying." (p.14)

'Our Sister Killjoy' by Ama Ata Aidoo was the book club book for October. A reissue from 1977 I wanted to like it, because it was interesting experimental fiction in it's time but it was only ok.

'The Witches of El Paso' by Luis Jaramillo was the book club book for November. I did enjoy this more; I didn't realise till I looked that the author is a man, because it was a book populated by excellent women. 

'Take Nothing With You' by Patrick Gale was a delight, because everything he writes is a delight, about a young boy playing the cello, living in an old people's home and growing up gay in a boring seaside town. 

"Death was a regular caller at the old people's home, of course, especially in the spring, when the turning-down of central heating and opening of windows seemed to make the residents' birdlike grip on their perches less tenacious. Eustace had observed that, far from upsetting the survivors, death was as much a provoker of excitement as a visit from a minor royal or the winning of a premium-bond prize. A funeral was an excursion of sorts, with all the fuss and novelty that entailed, and there was always a tea party afterwards, at which his father served sherry, which went down very swiftly and made everyone a bit noisy and even less steady on their feet." (p.98)

'The Wonder' by Emma Donoghue was unexpected. A nurse travels to Ireland to oversee a young girl who is apparently surviving without food. The church wants to declare a miracle, but she is sure the whole thing is a scam. Things take an unexpected turn as she gets to know and become fond of Anna, getting to the bottom of what is going on and finding an interesting solution.

After Michael Longley died earlier this year I looked him up, there were several obituaries and I had not heard of him. His name on the back of an envelope sat in my backpack since then, and I finally tracked down this one, 'The Ghost Orchid". Lots of academic references and lovely imagery, making for a mixed bag of ones I loved and ones I did not understand.

Here, have the title poem;

The Ghost Orchid

Added to its few remaining sites will be the stanza

I compose about leaves like flakes of skin, a colour

Dithering between pink and yellow, and then the root

That grows like coral among the shadows and leaf-litter.

Just touching the petals bruises them into darkness.

Stay safe. Be kind. Get a flu jab.

Scary Stories

 

I read 'Care of Wooden Floors' back in 2013 (go back and read that, I used to write proper reviews😐), and it was one of my best books of the year, probably *the best*. So 'The Anechoic Chamber' by Will Wiles is new out and I was excited to read it. While the stories are excellently clever, I don't like horror/ghost stories so some of them did not float my boat ... and they were not good for bedtime reading. I don't like being frightened, and there is a very fine line between disturbing and frightening.

While I did enjoy (just disturbing enough) the title story, and 'The Acknowledgements', that I started reading thinking it was the actual acknowledgments, the one that I enjoyed most was 'Moths', about a man sorting through family photographs after his father's death, an interesting tale of family dynamics with a hint of mystery:

"After Mum died four years ago, the photography tailed off. Everything tailed off. Had it been about her, all the time? He kept a photograph Blu-Tac'd inside the little bureau he used as a desk at home: Mum, in the mid 1970s, before any of us were born, sitting on a grassy slope with her knees up, a wide unguarded smile on her face, and a strand of brown hair blowing across her eyes, which are closed. Quite an 'arty' shot, now I think about it, but it was without a doubt Dad's favourite. By the mid 1990s, this exposure had faded quite badly, and Dad was able to find the correct negative and make a new print. That was an unanswerable vindication of his photo hoarding, and afterwards there was no question of him throwing anything away." (p.106)

Stay safe. Be kind. Don't forget it's Banned Books Week ... I did!

lots of books

I seem to have neglected the blog even longer than I thought I had.

Claire's library lends out puzzles, so we had a nice couple of evenings doing some. I also borrowed the Kate Atkinson (When Will There Be Good News) from her. I read another one while I was there as well, but the title escapes me. Enjoyed them very much, excellent holiday reading.

'The World According to Garp' by John Irving, whose style is becoming familiar, was also excellent. I have seen the film but don't recall it much. Another wonderful cast of quirky characters whose eventful lives are randomly intertwined. 

'Spoilt Creatures' by Amy Twigg was the book club book for August. Holiday time reduced the group to just three of us but we still have a lively exchange of views. It takes place in a women's 'commune', a safe place for those escaping various situations. It started out idyllic but very quickly got dark and menacing, shades of Lord of the Flies. I found it unsatisfying because people behaved in unrealistic ways and the motivations of some characters was too vague. The denouement was a little predictable and aspects of it felt lazy and clichéd. (I wanted to write something longer and considered but as usual have drifted away before I found the time) Here, the early atmosphere:

"The other women ate like carrion, tearing at the food with their dirty hands, greedy and fast and indiscriminate. I watched as Molly crammed an entire roasted onion into her mouth, the pulpy excess spilling on to the floor. Insatiable, these women. Again and again they filled their plates, squabbling over the last potato, their mouths glistening with oil. It was as if they were trying to plug something inside themselves, satisfy some unknowable need. Blythe was the only one who didn't eat. I suspected she survived in some other way, was able to sustain herself on light and air: the immaterial.

Afterwards, Sarah brought out dessert. Pears stewed in syrup, the size and colour of hearts. Lemon drizzle cake cut into uneven squares, the frosting so sweet it put stones in my cheeks. Hazel and Pearl fought over a slice, their playfulness turning mean as Hazel dug her nails into Pearl's arm and licked her tongue across the top.

I ate everything that was offered to me, eating until my stomach hurt. Ready to gorge myself on this new life I'd found." (p.74)

'Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper' by Harriet Scott Chessman was a random charity shop find and a delight. I was attracted after reading 'The Yellow House' last year; this is a novelisation about the work of Mary Cassatt and her lovely relationship with her sister Lydia. It follows a couple of years when they are living in Paris and closely involved in the Impressionist art scene. The book is actually about Lydia, her experience of watching her sister work and aware of her own impending mortality and how it felt that her only purpose in living is to contribute to her sister's work. I noted this, and wondered if this was the way it used to be to be ill, when there were so few actual treatments, you were just ill, waiting to either get better or die:

"I call to Lise, or to May if she's home. My mouth opens and my stomach pitches and heaves. Mother comes too slowly and I can't bear to ask her to clean up my messes. Lise in immature and dislikes illness; she wrinkles her nose and holds her breath, sighing and making a show of taking the basin away. May's better, because she has courage, and backbone, but she cannot disguise her distress at my condition.

Why is it that I must feel at fault for this sickness? Surely I am not at fault. In the midst of my collapse, I feel fury at my family, the way they tiptoe around me and look at me with hushed faces, as if I've already died; and yet, at the same time, they seem impatient with me. Be healthy or go, choose one or the other, I imagine them thinking, we can't bear to accompany you further into this illness." (p.65-66)

Lionel Shriver's book 'Should We Stay Or Should We Go' was a random library find on the wrong shelf. Kay and Cyril decide not to linger in mental and physical decline and agree to kill themselves at age 80. The book is a series of stories following the consequences of this decision where the event in question has different outcomes. It got a little surreal when human being end up discovering a regenerative medicine and live forever, and the story where they both get sectioned and live out a miserable existence in a mental institution is an object lesson in being careful what you plan. 

Lastly 'Beautyland' by Marie-Helene Bertino was the book club book for September. It was sold as being about an alien, but at no point did I engage with the character on that level. Adina arrives in strange circumstances and though her childhood communicates with her 'co-aliens' on the home planet via a fax machine. She experiences 'lessons' in her sleep where they teach her about stuff. I assumed the character was on the autistic spectrum and this explained her inability to fit in and understand social rules. In effect the book was very much about what it means to be a human and be accepted by other humans. Her friend Toni persuades her to publish her faxes as a book and she becomes something of a sensation as a mysterious reclusive author. I enjoyed it, it had some thoughtful observations about the human condition.

Can't promise I won't just do another one of these in six weeks time. Who knows.

Stay safe. Be kind. 

Not Offloading much (day 19)

 

Having worked the entire of July without a break I finally got the day off on Friday ... and spent it cleaning the house. I got up early, cleaned Tomoya's room (very thoroughly, even dusted the bookshelves) then hoovered my office and down the landing, bumped the tall mirror that stands against the wall and shattered it into huge lethal pointy bits and equally dangerous tiny shards. After cleaning it up very thoroughly I moved on to clean the bathroom, then hoover my room, down the stairs, the hallway, living room and kitchen. I cleaned my lovely new front door and hoovered the porch (considering repainting the blue as not sure it goes well with the red).

Then I unblocked all the drains, including removing the kitchen U-bend, ran the hot water cleaning cycle on the washing machine and cleaned the filter. I put the hall rug to soak in the bath and washed the sofa cushion covers. Finally I cleaned out the worms and gave them new 'bedding'. In between I chatted to both Monkey and my sister, handed my telly off to Curry's to fix the DVD player, went to the library and the garden centre for a washing liquid refill, then to Dunk's for afternoon cuppa. So I was pretty smug and satisfied with the result by the end of the day and am free to ignore all domestic chores for a month.

Tish came across 'The Living Sea of Waking Dreams' by Richard Flanagan (Booker prize winner, but not this novel) and recommended it to me, which is nice because it's not something she's done before, we have quite different reading tastes. More weird shit. But in a different way. I ached for Anna's mother through the whole book, and had quite a chat with Monkey about the whole 'assisted dying' thing, which is linked in with this whole notion of keeping someone alive by force rather than allowing death to come naturally, (though not the same thing of course). Anna's mother Francie has multiple health problems and one son, Tommy, (with different kinds of problems) who lives nearby and cares for her. Her other son Terzo and her daughter Anna live further afield and prefer to just throw money at 'the problem'. When the doctor tentatively suggests that keeping her 'comfortable' is the best way to go Terzo goes apeshit and uses all his money and influence to get them to keep his mother hanging on by a thread, suffering. I hated him. Anna seems to then drift in to this dreamlike existence of sitting with her dying mother, almost as an excuse to escape her stressful life. And then the weird shit starts, and bits of her body start disappearing. And people don't seem to notice. I thought at first it was her imagination, but the body parts seem to be really gone. Then other people start losing body parts, including her son, who eventually becomes just a few fingers that continue to play video games in his darkened bedroom (see what I mean ... weird shit). 

And ... then there's the social media addiction and the horror of the destruction of the natural world, wildfires and ... and ...

The chat with Monkey also veered into the value of human life. How all human life is equal, but not. Valuable but also cheap and disposable. People are dying all the time. Huge amounts of money might be spent to save one person, like a child fallen into a well, or millionaires in a submarine that might or might not have exploded, but people drowning in the Channel or dying of starvation in Gaza are somehow not saveable. This book raised all those questions as the reader watches this rich man demand that his mother is kept alive at all costs. 

One of several quotes that often read more like someone's brain racing through thoughts, loved the word, Solastalgia:

"She googled vanishings. Nothing. She posted a penguin meme she couldn't hold her thoughts she couldn't read she clicked through smoke sending people crazy it triggers anxiety a professor said it's like war the enemy is attacking the city we don't know where the enemy is. The planet's life support system may collapse flat earth believers now number millions new words for a new age, reads a meme. Pyro-cumuloniumbus giant fire-generating clouds sixteen kilometres high creating more fire through lightening, ember attacks, wind, fire tornadoes. Omnicide. Solastalgia emotion induced by the loss of everything. What is the image for nothing? Where is a language she thought she didn't she tried Insta again it loaded. So much joy! Instagram, blessed Novocaine of the soul! Foodholidayssmilinggroupsshopping. She had to get off. She knew it. She had to get off." (p.103)

A very 21st century book, all the world's modern day problems encapsulated here. Sometimes I find the stories of tiny, tiny wins against the massive destruction more depressing than uplifting. But like the anti nuclear movement previously said, Protest and Survive.

Stay safe. Be kind. Don't be a fascist.

Hiroshima Day

 

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In excess of 200,000 people were killed, in the immediate blasts, in the aftermath and of longer term radiation sickness and cancers. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remember, and so should the rest of the world.

Stay safe. Be kind. Never again.

Books

So 'The Coin' by Yasmin Zaher is due back at the library, and I am really struggling to get anything done so this is a whizz through a few books from July. This was some weird shit. Another Palestinian character (after Enter Ghost a couple of months ago), but living in New York and obsessed with cleanliness and designer labels. Note to self : try writing a note to yourself about when and why you request a book from the library; I have no idea why I ordered this. I reiterate, it was weird shit. Loved the flip book on the edges of the pages though, of a coin spinning: I tried to make a film of it but couldn't get the pages to run smoothly. 

'Your Neighbour's Table' by Gu Byeong-mo was the book club book for July. Interesting discussion was had as usual but I did not like this book. Originally in Korean, it is a strange tale of 'communal living', arranged by the government in subsidised accommodation to 'encourage' young couples to have more children. It didn't really tackle the issue of why people are not having children, nor what countries might do about low birth rates; maybe treat women with more respect springs to mind. A bunch of useless husbands and stressed wives share a block of flats and struggle to get to know each other, let alone like each other. 

'Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil' by Oliver Darkshire (who has no website) was bought for my granddaughter Aisla. A brilliant disturbing plot with magic and goblins (who appear to be a fungal based lifeform) and layabout husbands (I see a theme developing) and a pot of basil. Isabella is a heroine for our times indeed. Aspects of the humour are very Terry Pratchett but in no way a steal of his style. Particularly liked the footnotes. Totally loved it ... and hope she does too.

'Case Histories' by Kate Atkinson is my second foray into Jackson Brodie. I was rather snooty about him last time, back to 2009 but I loved this one. Engaging characters, convoluted plot that all pulled together believably. 

Little quote here:

"Julia embarked own a second cup of tea. It was too hot for tea; Jackson longed for an ice-cold beer. Julia's white teacup bore the imprint of her mouth in lipstick and Jackson experienced a sudden memory of his sister. she had worn a less strident colour, a pastel pink, and on every cup and glass she ever drank from she left behind the ghostly transfer of her lips. The thought of Niamh made his heart feel heavy in his chest, literally, not metaphorically." (p.157)

But the moment that caught my eye was this one, after a particularly grisly murder:

"If she could have one wish - if her fairy godmother (noticeably absent from her life so far) were to suddenly appear in the cold living room of the cottage and offer to grant her whatever she wanted - Michelle knew exactly what she would ask for. She would ask to go back to the beginning of her life and start all over again." (p.68)

Because this is the exact plot of 'Life After Life' that she published in 2013.

Stay safe. Be kind.