A little reading

 

Mostly I have been doing puzzles, but also a little reading. 'The Rest of Our Lives' by Ben Markovits: strangely another book about someone possibly dying of cancer, and like Panenka he is very much in denial. Tom is planning to drive away from his marriage, but when he does it doesn't feel quite as he anticipated. It's a very 'blokey' book (if that's a word?). Liked this little bit, not the only time he mentioned a 'power dynamic', which feels like something that men are often concerned with, and cars, and the notion that women are impressed by them:

"We took his car. It's a funny thing to be driven around by your son, you feel the power dynamic shifting. He had an old Acura Legend, which he'd bought secondhand and still smelled of cigarettes. But it was a nice-looking car and I thought, Betty wouldn't mind driving around in this. The air-conditioning stank though, at least at first, so he turned it on and kept the windows open until we got to the highway. After that the road was too loud." (p.195)

Then on the next page, this lovely sentence: "All of this makes it look like we were having a conversation, but it was more like, sometimes one of us spoke." So beautifully observed, made the book worth reading.

'Man With a Seagull on his Head' by Harriet Page was requested after the others from Bluemoose Books so impressed me. Quirkiness will always win me over and this one ticks all the boxes. Raymond is hit on the head by a dying seagull, an event witnessed by Jennifer. It has a huge impact on his life, and very little on hers. A copy of the local paper plays a significant role and in the end Mira transports an entire bungalow to the Tate Modern. How's that for a teaser trailer. 

"Jennifer looked up. Here she was, in her shop. The silence was heavy; the street seemed emptied out in a way that made her wonder if she'd missed something, some catastrophe. But then a lone car drove slowly past and, as the sound of the engine receded, she caught the distant judder-judder of machinery making holes in the road somewhere, and now a woman walking past, a child running on behind, and she breathed again, relieved, and a little disappointed too, that the world was carrying on. The day she'd seen the seagull fall on the head of the man called Ray Eccles seemed impossibly remote, the memory a mist around her mind in which she flailed about for a moment trying to grab at least some recollection of his face." (p.53)

Caring for my sister leaves a lot of time for reflection and introspection. So I wrote a poem. My life has become small, focused on the happenings in the living room, but hers, swiftly and unimaginably, has become tiny.

Such a little life A little eye open A little drink A little bite A little wash A little teeth clean A little hair brush A little foot rub A little roll over A little blanket But not a little sleep A long long sleep Everything else gets smaller but not the sleep

Stay safe. Be kind.

17th Blogiversary

 

I nearly forgot my blogiversary again, was distracted making an aubergine bake.

17 years makes it one of my longest relationships.

The statistics say 1670 posts.

Page views today 1169.

All time page views 1,256,926.

That's amazing, but slightly weird that 127,000 of them were on the 9th of January 2026. 

Equally weird, most visited post 'Not Offloading Much' from August 2025, which in one fell swoop overtook Margaret Atwood Poetry from April 2010 which has consistently been the most visited.

Still in the top ten are the Lizard Cake Tutorial and our 2009 trip to Oxford for Midsummer Day with Will and Lyra. Most visited novel review is Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong from 2021.

I like to think of it like a reading diary now; it will help in my old age so I don't waste my precious time accidentally re-reading things I have already read.

Off to bake the aubergine bake now.

Stay safe. Be kind.

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.

All the stuff

It has been a troublesome time. I have found myself obsessed with the American election, compulsively watching news reports and rallies on Youtube and pouring over the politics pages in the Guardian. The end is nigh, and all the rest of the world can do is hold its breath and wait. I could pretend I have been trying to distract myself, but no, I have just wallowed. All these books have been read weeks ago.

'The Advantages of Nearly Dying' by Michael Rosen was bought ages ago. In it he recounts through poetry the experience of nearly dying of Covid. I'm so glad he didn't die. Many of them relate to his body, and the things that nearly dying did to it, they are often witty and poignant at the same time, but the one I loved at the end has nothing to do with Covid. The rhetoric of the Republican nominee and his minions makes me afraid for the world again, so much hate and fear mongering, so much reducing people to less than human. Please, if you have a vote, vote for hope.

Sonnet for Anne Frank

Since you took us into that attic space

no room under the eaves has been the same.

Wherever we go - our homes or others

whenever we dip and duck under beams

you are in the shadows, writing pages

laughing, crying, eating, daring to love

imagining a better world than yours

How you wrote leads us to think we know you.

You compressed so much life into that loft

which we pore over and love you for it

yet the real world - not the one you imagined

didn't allow you to live and write anymore.

Each time we read, we struggle to enjoy

your love of life while knowing how it ended.

'We All Want Impossible Things' by Catherine Newman was a lovely story of friendship, put to the ultimate test as Edi is dying, and Ash focusses her life in on caring for her. We watch their day to day struggles and learn the history of their lives. It was warm and full of love, even with the inevitable ending. 

"I want to stay in the deep thrum of the profound, but I don't. Instead, I notice that Edi's nail polish is peeling - should I remove it? - and that Honey's wearing a sky-blue sweater I've never seen before, and that it looks great on him. The toasts are over, and Belle is laughing with Jonah, flashing the perfect gap between her front teeth. Jules is leaning against me, so grown-up in her tights and boots, and her hair smells like apples. Everyone is so beautiful. I'm seeing all of us surrounding Eli in this room, her bed in the middle like a raft. I'm seeing Shapeley on the grid of the town's streets and buildings, seeing the town in the state, the state in the country, the country in the globe, the earth in the boundless, endless universe, surrounded by infinity, spinning pointlessly. I slip outside into the hallway to catch my breath, and Honey follows, squats down by me. 'You okay?'

'Yeah. I think I'm having vertigo. Or, like, an existential crisis.'

Or apeirophobia, which, Jules has explained to me, is fear of eternity, which I'm definitely having. Where will Edi be? And for how long? Nowhere and forever. No." (p.155-156)

'The Garden Against Time' by Olivia Laing was bought at a Literature Festival event back in September (or maybe it was August). She tells the story of a Suffolk garden that she restores, and the history of the people who have over time impacted on its development. The whole book was so very readable, engaging, alternating between describing her own struggles with stories from the garden's past. Random quotes because she had so much thought provoking stuff to say, often at a complete tangent to gardening.

"Morris was not simply being nostalgic here. In fact, the accusation of nostalgia can be seen as part of the same Whig mindset, the belief that humanity is moving perpetually upward in its attainments, and that to pause or reverse is automatically a negative and regressive act, with correspondingly devastating social and economic consequences. What Morris believed instead was that many of the decisions around progress had been wrong, that good and simple ways of doing things had been replaces by cheaper, quicker ones, which impoverished and made ugly the lives of many while making millionaires of a very few. He didn't hesitate to inculpate himself in this dynamic, as purveyor, employer or consumer, asking in one of his lecture the still unanswerable, still troubling and turbulent question: 'how can we bear to use, how can we enjoy something that has been a pain and grief for the maker to make?'" (p.171)

"The first I came to was St Bartholomew the Great, the oldest surviving church in London. I lit a candle and went on by way of West Smithfield, pausing to look at my favourite memorial. It marks the site where King Richard II met with Wat Tyler and other representatives of the Great Revolt of 1381, to agree the political reforms that he later reneged on, killing Tyler in the process and later John Ball too; the events that inspired William Morris to write his time-travelling fantasy A Dream of John Ball. The plaque is carved with John Ball's famous words, still unfulfilled, still yearning: 'THINGS CAN NOT GO ON WELL IN ENGLAND NOR EVER WILL UNTIL EVERYTHING SHALL BE IN COMMON WHEN THERE SHALL BE NEITHER VASSAL NOR LORD AND ALL DISTINCTIONS LEVELLED.'" (P.228)

"In 1945 Hodgkin wrote to Kenneth Clark begging to be allowed to produce an official record of the plants that had established amidst the ruins of the City. Clark was chair of the War Artists Advisory Committee, established in the autumn of 1939 to commission artists to produce a documentary record of Britain at war. The best known images in the collection are those made by Henry Moore and Edward Ardizzone of people sleeping in the impromptu air-raid shelters of the Underground, mouths hanging open, bodies spectral, worn to a revelling by fear and exhaustion. But there are thousands more, by over four hundred artists, known and unknown, recording bombing raids and burning churches, first-aid posts and operating theatres; even a house in the act of collapsing. Convalescent Nurses Making Camouflage Nets; An Emergent Bridge over the River Thames; Fire in a Paper Warehouse; Escape of the Zebra from the Zoo during an Air Raid Fire: the titles attest to the uncanny and often terrible sights that were witnessed and logged for the nation." (p235-236)

'The Life of a Banana' by P.P. Wong came from Monkey's shelf and is the story of a young Chinese girl living in the UK and her experience of trying to be both, British and Chinese. It was sometimes a hard book to read alongside all the other political stuff as there are descriptions of unpleasant racist bullying. It starts with the death of her mother and goes downhill from there, with her unloving grandmother, weird uncle and wayward aunt becoming her new family. She finds little niches of support, from her brother and a kindred spirit at school but her adolescence becomes a struggle without her mother's support and guidance. 

"Mama said London is a cosmo-politican country and 'cos of that it's okay to be an 'ethnic minority' 'cos there are quite a few of us. But then it gets weird 'cos I'm neither here nor there. Like I'm not totally white and I'm not Singaporean either. I love Sunday roasts and Chinese food too, but I can't speak fluent Chinese, and the only Chinese word I can write is my name. None of my friends have ever been Chinese apart from when I met Jay, but he's half. Kilburn was where I grew up - whereas Singapore is a strange land where people sound and act different. They use words like wah lay, kena and meh. But most of the people here look like me and my name is just normal, not strange. Also, I blur into the crowds of black haired people and, if I wanted to, I could be like Where's Wally. I could disappear and people would struggle to find me. Mama said I should be proud to be a BBC - British Born Chinese (when I was little I thought it meant that Chinese people were owned by the BBC). Mama said being BBC makes me special. But I don't feel special. Most of the time I feel strange." (p.121)

Also I stopped going to the gym. That didn't help in several ways. I became one of those people who paid for a gym membership but did not go. I kept paying because I thought if I stopped then I would definitely never go again. So I finally had a late shift on Friday and I went with Tish. This lovely, huge patch of wildflowers in the park has remained unmowed all summer and still looks lovely. My body hurts now as I am back to square one, but I have been three times and will try and establish a new routine for myself.

Stay safe. Be kind. Don't beat yourself up.

A History Lesson

For National Poetry Day, which I would have missed had Bookshop not emailed to try and sell me poetry books, I give you Miroslav Holub (from the Czech):

A History Lesson

Kings
like golden gleams
made with a mirror on the wall.

A non-alcoholic pope,
knights without arms,
arms without knights.

The dead like so many strained noodles,
a pound of those fallen in battle,
two ounces of those who were executed,

several heads
like so many potatoes
shaken into a cap - 

Geniuses conceived
by the mating of dates
are soaked up by the ceiling into infinity

to the sound of tinny thunder,
the rumble of bellies,
shouts of hurrah,

empire rise and fall
at a wave of the pointer,
the blood is blotted out - 

And only one small boy,
who was not paying the least attention,
will ask
between two victorious wars:

and did it hurt in those days too?

(Taken from 'The Rattle Bag' edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney)

Peregrinations

I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to get a grip on my house: books to the charity shop, lots of stuff in the bin, and quite a few things sold on Vinted. All it seems to have achieved is a few gaps on the bookcase. I will plod on with it.

'Four Seasons in Japan' by Nick Bradley was a graduation gift for Monkey sensei, that I don't think she read. It is a story within a story, of Flo, working as a translator in Japan, who finds a book on the subway and decides to make it her next project, and has to track down the somewhat elusive author for permission. It is also the book she is translating, a quiet tale of the relationship between a young man and his grandmother, both struggling to make sense of the death of his father. Lovely book, read it for some peace of mind.

I read about Kathleen Jamie a few weeks ago when she was featured on the 'Poem of the Week' in the Guardian and the library had 'Findings', which I have hugely enjoyed. It is a selection of writings about her observations and experiences of the natural world, all happening as part of her everyday life of caring for her family and ill husband. I particularly liked the one concerning Skara Brae on Orkney, having visited it myself about 40 years ago, but here is a little bit about peregrine falcons:

"By Easter Sunday, the run of hot weather had broken. A bitter east wind blew from the sea. As is the custom, we hard-boiled some eggs and the youngsters painted them and we went to the park to roll the eggs downhill. Few people were there, though, and we soon dispersed. I saw the male peregrine in the afternoon being pursued around the cliff by a single crow. The crow veered off and went to sit in a tree, but it must have left the peregrine piqued, because he circled alone two or three times more, stooping as though in scorn at whatever happened to be flying beneath him. A jackdaw jinked away with its life. Then the peregrine flew up and away over the hill, and was silhouetted for a long moment against the misty sunlight. An hour later he was back. On another ledge, six feet below, was what looked like a burst cushion pigeon-pink-grey." (p.37)

'The Authority Gap' by Mary Ann Sieghart was another of those books that is so depressing because you get laid out for you the systematically misogynistic structures and attitudes that exist within society that we are literally just scratching the surface of. I sometimes wonder if the suffragettes had any idea what they started by simply asking for the vote, and if they knew how long the road was going to be. Here we are 100 years later ... and the fight goes on. I skim read some of it, both because it was depressing, but also because it got a bit repetitive; seemingly endless examples of women being demeaned, belittled and ignored, even when occupying the most senior positions in business and government. Plucked at random, the experience of Laura Bates (Everyday Sexism Project):

"Bates was once invited to give a presentation to a group of MPs, who were meeting specifically to deal with gender equality, and therefore, you might assume would all take the issue seriously. 'I'd been invited to give evidence to them because of the fact that I had curated the largest dataset of its kind that had ever existed of women's experiences of gender inequality. I spoke at length about various forms of harassment, of abuse and sexual violence. And at the end of this meeting, an MP in a very important position came up to me and quietly told me that he felt that I was very "glass half empty", that I had a very negative approach. And that if I really wanted to make change, I should think carefully about ways to make my message more appealing to men. And he felt I sounded quite haranguing.'" (p.56-7)

We all so enjoyed 'Convenience Store Woman' (my goodness, six years ago!) so I found 'Earthlings' by Sayaka Murata ... and kind of wish I hadn't. Monkey Sensei did warn me that it was going to be weird. That was quite an understatement. I am not sure if I would even recommend it. Natsuke, a seemingly ordinary girl,  comes to believe she is an alien, but that was not the worrying part. The horrible treatment by her family and abuse by a teacher was much more distressing. The close bond she forms with her cousin on the annual family trip to her grandparents turns her life upside down, and even the means by which she copes with societies demands of her can't save her. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion.

"My town is a factory for the production of human babies. People live in nests packed closely together. It's just like the silkworm room at Granny's house. The nests are lined up neatly in rows, and each contains a breeding pair of male and female humans and their babies. I live in one of these nests too." (p.35)

Let me end with a poem by Kathleen Jamie (taken from 'Other Ways to Leave the Room', a small collection containing poems by Kathleen, Don Patterson and Nick Laird)

The Green Woman

Until we're restored to ourselves

by weaning, the skin jade

only where it's hidden

under jewellery, the areoles still tinged,

- there's a word for women like us

It's suggestive of the lush

ditch, or even an ordeal,

- as though we'd risen,

tied to a ducking-stool,

gasping, weed-smeared, proven.

Stay safe. Be kind. Take your overdue books back to the library.

World Poetry Day

 Its the season I often mistake

birds for leaves, and leaves for birds.

The tawny yellow mulberry leaves

are always goldfinches tumbling

across the lawn like extreme elation.

The last of the maroon crabapple

ovates are song sparrows that tremble

all at once. And today, just when I 

could not stand myself any longer,

a group of field sparrows, which were

actually field sparrows, flew up into

the bare branches of the hackberry

and I almost collapsed: leaves

reattaching themselves to the tree

like a strong spell for reversal. What

else did I expect? What good

is accuracy amidst the perpetual

scattering that unspools the world.

Ada Limón

World Poetry Day is the perfect excuse to share a poem. I am a sucker for a poetry review that says "if you buy just one book this year, buy this one", which I think is how I came to purchase 'The Hurting Kind' by Ada Limón. It is one that has been sitting by the bed for months, just opened occasionally when I feel too tired to dive into a novel but I want to read for a few minutes before sleeping. Poetry is good for that. A book full of images of the natural world, but from an unusual perspective. If you want a gentle introduction to the world of poetry you can subscribe here to Poem-a-day, and a poem will arrive in your inbox every morning.

Stay safe. Be kind. Time for a spring clean.

Poems and Pomposity

 

I have been reading 'Books Do Furnish a Life', a selection of writings by Richard Dawkins but they were mostly introductions and reviews of other people's books, so you are not getting ideas but his opinions about people's ideas. There are lots of ideas for interesting books to read but I decided to take it back to the library.

Liked this:
"From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties
And things that go bump in the night
Good Lord deliver us.
Some say it is Scottish, not Cornish, but wherever it comes from the sentiments are shared worldwide. People are afraid off the dark. Science, as Sagan argued and personally exemplified, has the power to reduce ignorance and dispel fear. We should all read science and learn to think like scientists, not because science is useful (though it is), but because the light of knowledge is wonderful and banishes the debilitating and time-wasting fear of the dark." 

'Men Who Feed Pigeons' by Selima Hill was utterly surreal, juxtaposing the most mundane of situations with the weirdest of images, articulating random thoughts that might flit across the brain unnoticed for anyone else but that she somehow manages to pin down. 

Sometimes lovely cosy images:

Piglets
His head is like a barn full of straw
where piglets go to sleep in warm heaps.

Sometime very disturbing ones:

Everyone is Watching
Everyone is watching me and wondering
if somebody sitting on her own,
even though she's clean, and a woman,
is in fact a serial killer.

Sometimes just plain weird:

Honey
I do confide in him, but only rarely,
and when I do I always regret it:
he acts as if I'm smearing him with honey
in the dark with my bare hands.

Stay safe. Be kind. Don't be afraid of the dark.

Library books and not-library books

Like number 17 buses the library books always arrive all at once, so I will have to check out which ones have a reserve queue and read them first. I was handed a sample chapter of Naomi Alderman's new book 'The Future' when I was in Chorlton Bookshop the other week, so I ordered it along with 'The Power', that won the Women's Fiction Prize in 2017.

'Quilt' by Nicholas Royle (who is not the Nicholas Royle who has written several other novels) was bought because I thought from the ambiguous blurb that it might have something to do with quilts. It doesn't. A man coming to terms with the death of his father goes quietly crazy and builds a huge aquarium in the downstairs of the father's now empty house ... to house rays. They require a very specialist environment and he goes to a great deal of trouble and expense. Weird and disconcerting as he behaves as if it were all totally normal for the people at the wake to have to move around this huge tank in the middle of the dining room.  Not quite sure how I felt about it. Just a very unusual story.

'A Widow for a Year' by John Irving again suffered from the fact that it was not Owen Meany, which I loved so much and nothing else I have read by him has quite measured up to it. What I did like very much about it is that it is not about one person. All the characters in it seem equally significant to the story and the relationships between them and their own individual story arcs combine to create something very engaging. Eddie spends his life pining for Marion. Ruth spends her life pretending that she is not pining for Marion. Ted is an arsehole. I loved Harry and I sympathised with Marion's decision. And the whole book is somehow overshadowed by the lingering legacy of death of the two sons. The empty spaces where the photographs had been are this huge glaring symbol of the sense of loss that people struggle to cope with. A book very much about the human condition. And who the hell would publish children's stories that are so fucking scary. 

'The Zoo of the New' has been a lovely large anthology of poems edited by Nick Laird and Don Paterson. It covers a few hundred years (so a lot of poetry) and mixes up old favourites with undiscovered gems. I stated off reading them all, as I often do and then began to flick through and pick and choose. I still managed to pick out lots that I enjoyed so now I'll have to find just one ...

Field Guide by Tony Hoagland

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,

up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-grey, curled-upwards pigeon feather

floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,

like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.

That's all.

I mention this in the same way

that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,

so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

Stay safe. Be kind. Look for the good parts.

Much poetry

 

Poetry all from the library ... it's been a delight to find so many there when I search someone's name, mostly from reviews in the Grauniad. 'So Many Rooms' by Laura Scott is one I would buy. They are interesting, pithy poems, never wishy-washy. I liked all the first few with references to Russian literature. I like poets unafraid to be clever. A smattering of memories and observations, the little things you mostly pass over. Some are 'descriptive' but mostly they ask you to pause a moment and consider something. It is ok to use the word profound? 

Pigeon

The soft thud of it

as it hit the car,

feathers floating 

up like smoke

rising into the blue

on a packet of gitanes.

I've always thought

too much of death,

let it hang around

my ankles like a child

you drag across the floor.

I never found

the right broom

to shoo it away.

'All the Men I Never Married' by Kim Moore is a fabulous feminist rant of a book, venting the poet's frustration at the state of the world and the complexity of human relationships. They cover uncomfortable moments in taxis, and on trains, unsolicited opinions, ex boyfriends, deepfake porn and rape. Sometimes harrowing, but I don't mind being harrowed by poetry, it doesn't feel manipulative because it is honest.

38.

The night I left home, walked away even though

he told me to come back, I caught the night bus

into the city. Around me were young women

wearing the clothes I used to wear,

bra-straps showing, bare-legged, lounging like cats.

Their laughter washed over me as the bus

staggered and leaved itself around corners.

I didn't move as they swayed and fell into each other.

Through the window I watched a man

skirt a puddle, his briefcase against his chest,

a strange and solitary dancer.

He looked at me, then looked away.

I wish I could say I stayed out all night,

had a life-changing encounter with someone

homeless and lonely and worse off than me,

or even that I'd sat in McDonald's,

drank cup after cup of lukewarm tea,

vowed never to go back home again.

The truth: I was too afraid to stay out all night

because everything wild within me had gone.

I went to my sister's, though I knew

he would find me. The path in darkness

the crunching of snails underfoot.

The many small deaths of that night.

His fist on the door, again and again.

Realising he would not leave, pretending to her

that it would be ok, that this was an ordinary row.

Making myself go downstairs and get into his car.

And what happened next, and what came after,

I do not remember. I see the same things you do now.

Him walking down the path in his leather jacket.

Me following after. The back of my head. His smile

as he opens the car and mock bows me in.

My sister standing in the light of the porch,

her arms crossed, angry and silent.

I love Mary Oliver, I mean what kind of self respecting poetry reader doesn't love Mary Oliver, but I was underwhelmed by 'Why I Wake Early'. They are very descriptive, unprovocative, almost sentimental. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it. Several religious references put me off. I give you, unseasonably:

November

The snow

began slowly,

a soft and easy

sprinkling

of flakes, then clouds of flakes

in the baskets of the wind

and the branches

of the trees - 

oh, so pretty.

We walked

through the growing stillness,

as the flakes

pricked the path,

then covered it,

then deepened

as it curds and drifts,

as the wind grew stronger,

shaping its work

less delicately,

taking greater steps

over the hills

and through the trees

until, finally,

we were cold,

and far from home.

We turned

and followed our long shadows back

to the house,

stamping our feet,

went inside, and shut the door.

Through the window

we could see

how far away it was to the gates of April.

Let the fire now

put on its red hat

and sing to us.

Stay safe. Be kind. Take a moment.