Category: Books and reading

Six Degrees of Separation: from Life of M to Raising Hare

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s Starter -for-Six is Rachel Cusk‘s Life of M. I haven’t read it, it’s not on the TBR, but apparently an unnamed writer proposes writing the autobiography of M, a globally famous film star who has lived in the public eye since childhood. M casually tells her to ‘just make it up’. And that, apparently, is exactly what happens.

I bet I’m not alone in making my first link RF Kuang‘s Yellowface. Here’s a book I raced through: a book which dissects the publishing world. Or that part of the world ruled by social media in any case: books likely to seize the popular imagination with a theme that chimes in with the current zeitgeist. Our heroine, June, is a young and rather unsuccessful young author, who has a sort-of friendship with another young, but wildly successful author. Who dies unexpectedly. Our heroine seizes a chance, purloins the manuscript of the deceased: spends time researching and re-working it, and then presents it as her own. It has a Chinese WWI theme, and when it’s accepted for publication, her publishers find ways of Chinese-ifying her name (Juniper Song).  Sales become stratospherically huge. Throughout, the ground keeps shifting. Juniper’s self justification for her plagiarism is often convincing, as is the sheer nastiness of some of the social media battles she faces. It’s a melodrama. It’s a thriller. It’s a window on racial diversity as seen through the eyes of a social media and publishing world totally lacking in nuance. It’s a comic novel. It’s clever, leaving you with lots to think about as you flip-flop from ‘getting’ Juniper’s take on her theft , and finding her morally indefensible. It’s entertaining too. Shall I read more by Kuang? Much as I raced through this book, eager to find how the story ends – probably not. I was exhausted.

From a yellow face to a yellow sun: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A richly evocative book telling the story of the creation, rise and fall of Biafra, through the eyes of three separate yet connected groups of people. There’s Ugwu, from a traditional village, houseboy to Odenigbo, an Igbo academic. There are Olanna, Odenigbo’s partner and her twin sister Kainene, and her English partner Richard. Their structured lives fall apart as Nigeria itself does, as Biafra emerges as a nation and civil war threatens to destroy them. I’m ashamed at how little I knew of this conflict, remembering it only because of the famine caused by war. Now, an interplay of characters dealing with loyalties, often conflicting, moral responsibility, colonialism and its aftermath brings this piece of history vividly to life, the more so because the author’s family lived through this devastating time. A marvellous and involving read.

Let’s stay in Nigeria and read My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. What did I think of this book? Well, it was a quick read, an easy read, and at no point did I think of not finishing reading this story. But – and perhaps I’m not entering into the spirit of things here – a story in which the writer’s sister gets into a routine of killing her boyfriends, while the writer colludes with her deception just left me cold. The short sharp chapters, and the action which jumped hither and thither kept my interest, as did the back story of a controlling, brutal father. But in the end, it was a slightly distasteful read as far as I was concerned.

My next book is a story in which a murder of an – allegedly – loved one does not actually take place. Amy Dunne disappears on her 5th wedding anniversary, then fakes her own murder to implicate her husband Nick. She eventually returns home and … things can obviously only get worse. This is Gillian Flynn‘s Gone Girl. I’m actually not sure why I decided to read this book. After all, I’d seen, and been thoroughly disturbed by the film. Why put myself through it twice? Perhaps because I’d been assured that both book and film (Flynn wrote the screenplay) were equally well done. Early on I wondered whether I was right to bother. But then, those details which no film can really get to grips with – tiny vignettes, and thoughts from the innermost workings of those two messed-up heads – started to enrich the narrative. How could I go on willing the ending to be different when I knew perfectly well what it would be? A creepy read, with a thoroughly disturbing ending.

Another, and very different book which prompted a film, which I was disappointed to miss when it was doing the rounds: H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald. Back in the day, I had resisted reading the book simply because it had become, according to the critics, a ‘must-read’. But …read it. It’s part nature writing – sumptuous, evocative, richly descriptive, each word carefully chosen: part autobiography of a woman overturned by grief at the death of her father; part biography of TH White, author of Sword in the Stone and The Goshawk, and so much more; part manual on learning to fly a goshawk – I now now for sure this is something way beyond my capabilities and my patience. This is a splendid book for the richness of its prose, and the chance it offers to see two wholly unknown worlds: that of the falconer, and that of TH White.

And finally, another book in which a woman becomes intimately involved in te life of a wild creature – Chloe Dalton‘s Raising Hare. Confined to her country retreat during lockdown, Dalton, a high-powered political adviser finds a small, apparently abandoned leveret.This is her story. Of how she treads a difficult path of wishing to help it survive to adulthood, while respecting its wildness. While it is her house-guest, she never treats the creature as her pet, or even names it. Against the odds, it survives to maturity, and continues to include her house, inside and out, as its territory.But the creature has a profound effect on Dalton. She is sensitive and observant, and describes beautifully its changing appearance as it matures through the seasons; their ‘language’ together. Just as the hare is not quite living a normal life, she too is changed. She re-evaluates her career. It’s still important, but no longer so all-consuming. The hare makes her infinitely more connected to and aware of the natural world where her home is situated. This book strives to restore a sense of the sacred and to meet an animal on its own terms.

Well, the chain links book-to-book I hope, but is there an over-arching theme? Not a chance. Let’s see what next month brings. Kate suggests we start things off with a novella of our choice, to celebrate the popular Novellas in November, hosted by Becky of Bookish Beck and Cathy of 746 Books.


Six Degrees of Separation: from A Family Matter to The Master

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month, Kate invites us to start our chain with our latest book group choice. As our group has just read (and highly rated) Virginia Evans‘ The Correspondent, which began our chain in April, I looked a little further back, and am beginning instead with A Family Matter, by Clare Lynch. A short novel, which packs a lot in, and powerfully. There’s a dual timeline: which invoves a 1980s lesbian affair, and a present day timeline which reveals the story of Maggie, whom the ‘outed’ lesbian mother Dawn is forced to abandon, and Dawn herself. An engagingly written and well-developed story throwing a spotlight on those many people who were victims of the prejudice of ‘different times’, and about whose injustices I knew little at the time.

More ‘different times’ in Alice Winn‘s In Memoriam. Here is a book with a varied cast of characters, chief among whom are Stanley Ellwood and Henry Gaunt, both of whom have been exploring their homosexuality whilst still at school. They exchange their privileged lives for the grim reality of battle, and Winn uses telling detail to underpin how truly frightening and beastly in every sense this is, both for the men themselves, and in different ways, for the wider community. A moving and deeply affecting book. I’m quite well-versed in WWI literature, but this has perhaps brought the full horror of that war, and its long-reaching effects before me in a way that few other books have done.

Next? Frieda: The Original Lady Chatterley by Annabel Abbs. This is an engaging – and fictionalised – account of the marriages of Frieda von Richthofen, a German aristrocrat by birth who first married an English academic, Ernest Weekley, with whom she had three children, before unleashing her sexual potential during a visit to Germany. Frieda was encouraged by her sister to have an affair with the radical Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Gross, who deeply influenced her views on sexual freedom. Ernest’s sexual repression then became increasingly unsatisfactory to her. When she met Ernest’s pupil, DH Lawrence, she embarked on a torrid affair in which he increasily came to control her the more she mourned the loss of her children, whom the terms of her divorce from Ernest prevented her from seeing (she was an adulteress after all…). All this is recounted in Abb’s sympathetic portrait of a lonely woman who discovers her joy in abandoned sexual experimentation, as much as in her profound love of her children. A highly readable account.

Now to another book in which DH Lawrence plays a secondary but crucial role: Rachel Cusk‘s Second Place. M, living out in a remote country landscape with her second husband Tony, invites celebrated painter L to stay in the second cottage they own: she is powerfully attracted to his work. Daughter and daughter’s boyfriend are already staying for a while. L arrives with his not-girlfriend Brett, and M’s inner monologue continues, as she worries about her relationship with her daughter, her husband, L’s antipathy towards her in a way, manifesting itself in calculated rudeness. M could be thought obsessive, over-analytical, though much of what she thinks is beautifully expressed, But I found it hard to distinguish between insightful and pretentious. Cusk acknowledges the book as a re-write of Mieko Kawakami‘s memoir of DH Lawrence, Lorenzo in Taos, but I haven’t read this. Perhaps I should, and return to the Cusk again, as I’m clearly not appreciating what so many other readers have found in this book.

Another book about a practising painter. Venus, Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell. Hannah, our narrator, and a seamstress like her mother, is a young Jew raised in Berlin during the days of the Weimar Republic. She runs away to escape an arranged marriage, and slowly but surely develops her talents as an artist, alongside her seamstress-ing. She also takes two lovers: Saul, a museum curator, and Charlotte, a dancer at a lesbian bar where Hannah likes to sketch. As the Great Depression starts to bite, Hannah comes to the attention of a wealthy older woman, Elke Grese, who sees Hannah’s art and makes an offer of patronage. But it turns out that Elke wants Hannah to use her skills in ways that are increasingly distasteful. How can Hannah refuse? Birrell, an art historian, brings Hannah vividly to life as an artist by weaving allusions to the work of other painters alive and dead vividly into the narrative. We don’t get to know the other main characters anything like so well. It doesn’t matter all that much, but it would have enriched the story even further had we come to know them better. The final section of the book ups the action considerably … let’s stop there. An involving and immersive story, bringing to life an important yet distasteful period of Germany’s recent history.

And so to more painters, more sitters in Katie Ward‘s Girl Reading. This book self-describes as ‘a novel’. It isn’t. It’s seven chapters, each focussed on a different period of history and telling the story of a real or imagined woman who is part of the story of someone who has made the pages of history. The first scene for instance tells about orphan Laura Agnelli, being instructed to pose for the artist Simone Martini for his altarpiece panel commissioned for Siena Cathedral. 14th century ecclesiastical and temporal intrigue are deftly explored, and the tale ends enigmatically when we learn that Martini and his wife are unable to conceive, whereas the fifteen year old Laura is hiding an unwanted pregnancy…. Each fresh chapter brings a new painter, new sitters. An interesting look at the precarious position of women throughout European history, in which the voice of each period is brought convincingly to life. Yet for all that, this is a book of largely unrelated episodes – well researched, well told, but with no thread that brings them all together. In the end, despite its strengths, it didn’t satisfy me and I struggled to finish it.

I’ll stay with fictionalised accounts of creative types: a writer again this time. My last is a book that’s on my TBR, but so far unread: The Master by Colm Tóibín. I have a copy on my bookshelves. Here’s what the Guardian says ‘Tóibín’s novel covers just five years of Henry James’s expatriate life – from the disastrous debut of his play Guy Domville in London in January 1895 to January 1900, when his brother William leaves Henry’s home in Rye. Henry writes, he travels, he recalls various losses. Asked on the cusp of the new century what he intends to write next, Henry says, ‘I am a poor storyteller … a romancer, interested in dramatic niceties … Once I wrote about youth and America and now I am left with exile and middle age and stories of disappointment …’

Well, this chain took on a life of its own. Starting with sexuality in some of its many guises, we move on to creative people, both writers and artists, real and fictional. Can I link back to the starter book? Almost certainly not. And next month? The chain will start with Rachel Cusk‘s latest novel, Life of M. Why not join in?



Six Degrees of Separation: From Land to The French Intifada

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

I am currently 108th in the queue at the library to borrow Maggie O’Farrell‘s Land, this month’s starter book, so obviously I haven’t read it yet. Here’s a hint of the earlier part of the story, disclosed by Google’s little AI pal. ‘Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. ‘

Maps then. I love a map within a book, and one of my favourites is that of the Hundred Acre Wood, included in AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. Drawn by Christopher Robin himself, the map includes a number of spelling and grammatical errors, such as – ‘Rabbits frends and raletions’ all of which only serve to endear Christopher Robin and his woodland pals to us even more.

Christopher Robin’s best ‘frend’ is Winnie the Pooh. So let’s go for Beartown by Frederick Backman, set in Sweden, my new obsession. But it took me fully 200 pages to get into this book. I was uninterested in this shabby little town out in the wilds of northern Sweden, and its love of hockey  And then, just under half way through, I became more involved. I began to understand how the town’s position on the ice-hockey stage could make or break this community. And a drama takes place which splits, and nearly sinks it. This is an engaging  story embracing the tribe mentality, and others who are outsiders not only in the hockey world, but life generally. Because life is ice-hockey in Beartown, and a single incident has the power to change the fortunes of an entire community.

Another Frederick Backman: A Man called Ove. I took against this book in the first few pages. It was obvious that the story line was going to be ‘curmudgeonly old man, widely disliked, is revealed to have a heart of gold, and after about 250 pages, everyone lives happily ever after‘. This is exactly what happened. I turned the pages readily enough, but was unconvinced by almost everyone but the cat. I didn’t believe in the friendly new neighbour. I didn’t quite believe in Ove’s wife Sonja. I wasn’t sure about his on-off (mainly off) relationship with his neighbour Rune either. But most of all, I didn’t believe that Ove would turn from irritable and irritating to everyone’s favourite grandfather in only three weeks. A decent enough beach read, but this whimsical tale was far too fey to appeal to me. 

We’ll stay in Sweden. And why not? When the Cranes Fly South: Lisa Ridzén (translated by Alice Menzies) is far better value than my previous choice, though it too has as its main protagonist an elderly man. This quiet book is the story of the latter days of Bo, who sees out his days in a small village in northern Sweden. His only visitors are his four-times-a-day calls from care-workers who sum up their visits in short notes that intersperse each chapter. His busy son Hans calls sometimes too, substituting stuffing his fridge with unwanted food for time spent sitting chatting. Beyond that he has telephone contact with his only friend Ture. And contact, through conversations in his head, with his much-loved wife who is now in a care home suffering from dementia. Though his best friend of all is his elkhound Sixten, whom he can no longer take on long energetic walks. And Hans, for the dog’s wellbeing, wants Sixten re-homed. This book is about Bo’s battle, after a lifetime of sitting on feelings and never talking about them, to make himself and his own wishes known. It’s an extraordinarily moving book, bringing up feelings about our own mortality, and that of people for whom we care.

Another story about loss, a very different one is Alice Zeniter’s The Art of Losing (Translated by Frank Wynne). I was engaged in this book from start to finish. It’s the 70 year story of a family, and begins in a village in Algeria, where Ali has made good and become a figure of some importance in his family and community. The Algerian War of Independence changes all that, and forced to flee to France, they become harkis (French Algerians), despised alike by the French and Algerians who remained in the home country who remained. A life of camps and sub-standard accommodation and work awaits them. It falls to university educated Naima, Ali’s granddaughter finally to visit Algeria again. This is a story about colonisation, immigration, and how to carry on in the face of the loss of your country and cultural identity, and is both a powerful history lesson and a meditation on the difficult questions posed by the cultural upheaval of being forced to leave your home country.

Reading Zeniter’s book prompted me to read The French Intifada by Andrew Hussey. It takes a long look at the inhabitants of France who come from the former French territories of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Much of the book is devoted to France’s possession of these nations, and to the troubles leading to their final independence. It’s a horrifying and illuminating story, and one that does much to explain the disaffection of many of the Maghrebin population in France. Hussey touches on the history of those North Africans who chose to emigrate to France, and examines the very recent past, looking at recent riots and at Muslims in the French prison system. Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, this is a book that is easy to read and complex issues are dealt with clearly. A compelling and disturbing read. 

Goodness. That’s ending on a serious note. But perhaps it was our starting point too? The first: the aftermath of the Great Famine. The last: the aftermath of war. Next month (September 5, 2026), we’re invited to start with our book group’s current selection, or if not in a book group, to start with the book that we’re currently reading. Well, I AM in a book group, so let’s see where I’ll start. Why not join in too?





Six Degrees of Separation: from Yesteryear to Prophet Song.

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s starter book, Yesteryear, by  Caro Claire Burke attracts me not at all. Here’s what Google’s AI Overview has to say about it: ‘Yesteryear is a darkly satirical thriller about Natalie Heller Mills, a high-profile ‘tradwife’ influencer who glorifies a romanticised, 19th century farm life. Behind her curated, cottagecore Instagram feed lie hidden modern appliances, paid nannies, and a crumbling, fame-obsessed marriage.’ 

I thought I’d run away immediately to a group of women whose young lives could hardly be more different from our own Instagram-able days. The Eights, by Joanna Miller, follows the fortunes of 4 young women admitted to Oxford University in the very year – 1920 – in which they would be able to study towards a degree, a possibility until then denied to female students. They face petty and strict rules about their day-to-day lives, prejudice and family difficulties. This is their story.

Two women , in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave show how women’s possibilities change during the twentieth century. English (bi-sexual) Erica comes across French (lesbian) Laure one summer morning in 1978, on the steps of Sacré Coeur when Erica smiles at Laure after spotting they’re reading the same book. They become lovers then part – often. Erica is in her mid 30s as the story reaches its climax, and the social change that characterises both French and British society between the 70s and the very early 2000s is subtly yet vividly made a living part of the narrative.

In Vaseem Khan‘s Edge of Darkness, another female is treading new paths for women. We’re in just-post-partition India, and Persis Wadia is India’s first female detective. She faces the same kind of prejudice and condescension faced by the Oxford students. Persis is determined, principled and awkward. She thinks outside the box, but has very little support, with the possible exception of her new second-in-command. Solving the murder of a prominent politican isn’t something you should leave in the hands of a mere woman. Or is it? This is the sixth book In which Persis is Our Heroine, and I’ve loved every single one of them.

We’ll stay on the Indian sub-continent, but change the mood completely, and look at a real door-stopper: High: A Journey across the Himalayas, through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China: by Erika Fatland (translated by Kari Dickson). Erika Fatland is a Norwegian anthropologist. She’s undertaken here quite a journey: the one outlined in the title of her book. She observes the sights and sounds of – often very remote -cities, towns and villages on her travels, describing her meetings with locals. These can be the inhabitants of these communities, or religious leaders, nuns, bureaucrats, countryside rangers – even a king: even the dispossessed. In particular, women’s lives are still on the whole greatly impacted by tradition and custom. A big chunk of a book, this is nevertheless highly readable and accessible, and engagingly translated.

Travel in unfamiliar places always brings challenges of one kind or another. None more so than when you are deliberately abandoned on a deserted and inhospitable island in the South Pacific. This was the fate, in the early 18th century, of Alexander Selkirk. His misadvenures have already been imagined by Daniel Defoe, in Robinson Crusoe. Now Francesca de Tores has done it again, in Castaway. I’m reading it now. And it’s no swashbuckling adventure, I can tell you. Think rats, mosquitos, and not a single mod con, 18th century style, to help you along. (For ‘mod con’, read eating or drinking vessel, knife, axe, change of clothing, blanket ….).  Over time, Selkirk’s back story is trickled into the story. Our task as readers is to observe this man reveal himself as he comes to understand himself better.

Paul Lynch greatly enjoyed Francesca de Tores‘ previous book, Saltblood, and as I got a lot from reading his Prophet Song, I’ll end my chain with it. It was one of my winning reads of 2024.  It’s set in Ireland in the near future, after a fascist government has been elected to power. Long breathless paragraphs, light on punctuation, drive the story on as everyday wife, mother and daughter Eilish ‘s decision making and relationship with her children and family gradually becomes increasingly erratic, as the government increases its stranglehold on everyday life, as violence and the impossibility of everyday living increases. It’s a deeply uncomfortable read. Perhaps even more so now than when I first read it.

One way or another, I’ve wandered pretty far from the starting point this month. What will happen next month, I wonder, when our starting point is a book already on my TBR list:  Maggie O’Farrell‘s Land?



Six Degrees of Separation: from The Post Office Girl to The King’s Mother

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s chain begins with Stefan Zweig – The Post Office Girl. Which I haven’t read. I’m going to hunt for six books with the names of jobs and occupations in the title.

This gives me an easy way to begin my own chain – with The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault .This is a bittersweet, poetic tale about Bilodo, a lonely postman in Quebec who escapes his somewhat empty  reality by secretly reading the letters inside open envelopes. When he comes across a mysterious haiku, he becomes deeply entangled in a long-distance romance. 

There’s many a children’s book featuring postmen. many of them written by Janet & Allan Ahlberg. But the Ahlbergs covered other – er – occupations in their very many books, of which a family favourite was – Burglar Bill. The book follows an entirely amiable burglar as he goes out nightly to steal – well, a toothbrush and the like, and whose life changes when he accidentally steals a baby, and then meets a soul mate – Burglar Betty, leading them to abandon their criminal ways, marry, and presumably live happily ever after.

Returning to more public-service professions, there’s The Light House Keeper’s Lunch by Ronda and David Armitage which follows the story of Mr. Grinling, a lighthouse keeper, and his clever wife Mrs. Grinling, who daily sends his lunch along to him from home to lighthouse via a complicated pulley system. When scavenging seagulls repeatedly steal Mr. Grinling’s delicious lunches, it’s up to Mrs. G to upset their nefarious schemes by making sandwiches generously filled with …. mustard.  That soon sorts the thieves out.

Perhaps a more useful occupation for a landlubber is that of the milkman.  And Milkman is a book by Anna Burns.This convoluted, stream-of-consciousness narrative is no easy read, but it rewards the effort made to get under its skin. An eighteen year old woman living somewhere in (it has to be, though never said) in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, attempts escape from the convoluted realities of loyalties, honour, family, tribalism, rumour by reading 19th century novels, attending French classes. There is no escape from the attentions of The Milkman, a married man who all-but stalks her. There’s her maybe-boyfriend, her wee sisters, her mother’s attempts to marry her off, her family to contend with, and all this is described in multi-layers of language, which simultaneously illuminate and confuse. The inability simply to be, to get on with life without meaning being imposed by others on the simplest routines is described in all its confusing power by Burns’ use of language – adjective piled on adjective, metaphor on metaphor. It’s suffocatingly powerful, and quite honestly, I was glad to finish it. Though very glad to have read it. 

Luckily, The Memory Police are not part of the job-offering here in the UK – yet. I’m not normally a fan of dystopian fiction, but I found this a powerful and unsettling read, by Yōko Ogawa . Simply yet lyrically written , the writer – this is told in the first person – lives on an island in thrall to the Memory Police. Things comprehensively disappear, and the inhabitants soon lose any memories of the things that have vanished. Those unfortunate people who find they do not forget simply are removed by the Memory Police and never seen again. The ‘writer’ of this book is herself a novelist and she hides her editor in her house, because his memories do not fade, and he is therefore in danger… We never find out more about the Memory Police, or know to whom they are answerable. But we are left with a lot to think about – totalitarian regimes, life, death and the process of letting go and of dying. 

Is being The King’s Mother a job?  Read Annie Garthwaite’s book about Cecily, Duchess of York, and you’ll discover that it is indeed a job for life. This narrative, a successor to Garthwaite’s first book, is about the troubled reigns of Cecily’s sons Edward (IV) and Richard (III), who are brought to life in the story told from the perspective of their redoubtable mother. It offers a rounded perspective of life as it must have been at that time. Being rich, powerful and influential was no passport to an easy life, with allies becoming sworn enemies, and enemies friends, for a whole variety of reasons both good and bad. Richard in particular is sensitively portrayed, and is a different one from his image in popular mythology.  An involving and powerful story from a troubled period of history. 

So. Job done. A chain all about jobs. Next month’s looks to be about Woman’s Work. It’s Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear. I’ve just read the Guardian’s review, which hasn’t tempted me to read it. But it’ll make for am intriguing chain, I hope.

Yesterday, I informed you that you’d seen the back of me for a while. I’d forgotten about my Six Degrees post lurking in drafts. Now I really AM off … though I’ll try to respond to any comments on this post.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Wild Dark Shore to Island Dreams

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s chain starts with Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.  I’m fourth in a queue of readers at the library waiting to borrow this book.  Here’s the first sentence of the book’s resume. ‘Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank.’ 


So I’m going with the sea for all the books in my chain this month.  I’m going to try to dodge books I’ve showcased before, and that I know many of you have also recommended.  So no Clear by Carys Davies, no Seascraper by Benjamin Wood.  Or James Rebanks’ The Place of Tides, which Kate has just reviewed.

In fact, let’s not start with a novel at all.  Let’s celebrate the fish that so often feed us – specifically here, the fish round the British coast, in Silver Shoals by Charles Rangeley- Wilson. I was entirely and unexpectedly engaged by this book, an exploration of our nation’s iconic fish: cod, carp, eels, salmon and herring. This is a story of the fish themselves; of fishermen; of the consequences of greed and the way back from it; of geology; meteorology; our nation’s social history as it relates to food and farming; of corruption and political will. It combines serious discussion of issues with good yarns about the fishermen who took Rangeley -Wilson fishing with them, whether on week-long voyages on trawlers, or half day sorties to the local river bank. He travelled north south east and west in quest of fish and their stories, and produced an absorbing account which I read in record time because I was so enthralled by all the threads of the story Charles Rangeley-Wilson told. 

Those Silver Shoals don’t include tuna.  Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas by Karen Pinchin talks of little else. This is quite a story. It details the history of man’s love of eating tuna, from way before Roman times, to the present day, when the Japanese have cornered much of the market, while teaching the world to enjoy their own particular obsession with the freshest, choicest tuna flesh. The book details a history of overfishing, of trying to understand the tuna’s migration patterns, of political interests and manoeuvres and focusses on particular individuals who have been prominent in the story, such as tuna-tagging supremo Al Anderson. An engaging book, reeling in this non-scientist who has no prior knowledge of the industry: and who doesn’t even eat tuna (even less likely to now). 

So now to a novel about fishing.  About whaling to be exact. The North Water by Ian McGuire.  This is a gritty story set largely in a 19th century whaling ship. There’s violence, brutality, bad language, bowel movements a-plenty, but it doesn’t feel gratuitous. Patrick Sumner has – we eventually discover – left the British Army in disgrace and his options are few. He becomes a ship’s surgeon on the whaling ship, and finds that a hard and desperate life becomes even worse as the ship and its crew battle against an arctic winter and a particularly brutal and amoral member of the crew. An involving and gripping story that recreates a world I can only be grateful not to be a part of. I saw a good and faithful  TV adaptation of this book some years ago.  Recommended.

Audrey Magee’s The Colony might have been a good choice to begin my chain. We’re in Ireland in 1979, on a small, sparsely populated and isolated island, whose inhabitants have only recently started to learn and use English. Two visitors come to spend their summers there. Mr. Lloyd is a painter who wants to explore the landscape. He’s rude and entitled, but interesting to young islander James who has ambitions to go to art school. Masson, known as JP, is a French academic, keen to preserve and promote the Irish language, whether the inhabitants want it or not. Each chapter is interspersed with a terse newspaper-like account of a sectarian murder on the mainland, whether of a Catholic or a Protestant. At first these almost seem an irrelevance. Gradually, the penny drops that these incidents are deeply rooted in the history of the English towards their Irish ‘colony’, and do much to explain the largely hostile feelings both of the islanders and its two visitors. The book paints a picture of an island in many ways left behind, whose characters still struggle to find their place in the world, as indeed do the two visitors. A book to provoke thought long after the last page has been turned. 

Let’s turn to another Irish island in John Boyne’s Water, part of his Elements quartet. We meet a woman in middle years who has just fled to live on a fairly remote Irish island, changed her name and as far as possible her appearance.  Why?  Only slowly do we find out.  Her husband’s crimes reflect on her: the world assumed she had enabled them – and, she believes, one even greater tragedy. She has done her best to vanish. She meets a few characters who are also uncomfortable with their lives, making relationships with some.  Slowly she regains the strength of character necessary to reject her husband and to renew her relationship with her daughter.  This book deftly charts her slow, but steady steps to recovery.

I’ll finish where I began, with non-fiction.  And with the subject of the starter book and two of my other choices:  islands, in Island Dreams, by Gavin Francis.This is a beautifully produced book. On heavy paper, with blue and black ink, the text is allowed generous space to breathe. As well, the text is interspersed – also generously – with maps old and new illustrating the outlines of islands he visits and discusses. These are the only illustrations. Often the subject of the map will be – for instance – the usual trade routes using the islands illustrated. So this is a book to savour and linger over, returning several times to the maps on display. Gavin Francis has often been able to combine his passion for island-hopping with his career, working in those places he has most wanted to visit. He appreciates the way that islands can offer both isolation, and yet a sense of community with those who call it home. This is a book that’s both very personal, yet also universal. It encompasses myth, psychology, philosophy, literature and straightforward travel writing. Quickly read, it demands to be looked at again and again. It will stay in my mind for a long time.

So there we have it. My sea-related chain. Our next book is Stefan Zweig‘s The Post-Office Girl. Will my next chain be post office related? Now that would be a challenge.






Six Degrees of Separation: from The Correspondent to A Little Trickerie

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

I have had a lot of trouble with this chain: It’s stumbled together, rather than gracefully evolved. And it begins with a book I haven’t read. The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans is a debut epistolary novel exploring the life of Sybil Van Antwerp, a prickly, 73-year-old retired Maryland lawyer navigating deteriorating eyesight and past grief.

I decided to go with a woman who writes – not letters, but a notebook. Forbidden Notebook, by Alba de Céspedes and translated by Ann Goldstein, is set in 1950s Rome, about Valeria Cossati, a 43-year-old wife and mother who starts a secret diary. Her dreams are humble: to have space in the house for herself, and just a little time. Writing in this forbidden journal causes her to question her restricted domestic life, her husband’s patriarchal authority, and her own identity, leading to a profound personal awakening. 

What about a woman – and a man too, in fact – who hadn’t even known they were dissatisfied, until …. ? This story is told in André Aciman’s Room on the Sea.  Paul and Catherine are two married professionals in their 60s who meet during a sultry New York City jury selection. Over a week, their initial connection deepens into a secret, intense, and philosophical romance, exploring themes of yearning, regret, and the temptation to act on missed opportunities. This novella charmed me as much as this man, this woman charmed each other. Their easy teasing relationship, their way with words, their openness with one another had me rooting for them.

Maybe Paul and Catherine have an affair.  Maybe they don’t.  My next book, Phil Harrison’s The First Day begins with an affair and its consequences.  It’s a book of two halves. exploring a destructive affair between Samuel Orr, a married Belfast preacher with a twelve year old son Philip, and Anna, a young Beckett scholar. Anna falls pregnant, they keep the baby … and everything falls apart.  Fast forward thirty years to New York  where that baby, Sam is now living. He’s our narrator – actually it turns out he always has been. Why is he there? Why is he choosing to stay under the radar? Eventually, horrified, we find out. This is a very readable book about faith, about power-imbalance, about desire, about long shadows cast by single events. 

In The First Day, Samuel Orr is never referred to as anything but ‘Orr’.  In James Meek’s Your Life Without Me, the main protagonist, an English teacher, is only ever known as Mr. Burnham.  The story centres on him as he navigates the death of his wife Ada, and his strained relationship with his truculent teenage daughter Leila.  And there’s Raf, ex-pupil with whom he maintains close contact.  Is Mr. Burnham going to be implicated when Raf is discovered in a major act of terrorim?  Despite the perhaps over-neat ending, this is a well-delivered book about four flawed and compromised people, building into a compassionate and involving story.

Leila is an awkward and motherless teenager.  Let’s go back twelve centuries and find another:  Agnes, in Emily Maguire’s Rapture. Brought up and educated by her father in a world of men, Agnes renders herself unsuitable marriage material in 9th century Mainz. When her father unexpectedly dies, she disguises herself as a man and enters a monastery. The book catalogues her life as a respected scholar and scribe in an austere Benedictine monastery, and her subsequent adventures which see her travel to Athens, to Rome, where her scholarship, her piety ensure she’s always noticed by those who matter. She lives always with the fear of being found out for who she is, with the discomfort of her tightly bound breasts, with her tussles with herself over her austere faith. We come to know Agnes/John as a child, a scholar, a woman, a lover, a teacher… and finally a pope. An absorbing, well researched, imagined and audacious story, transporting me to the reality of religious life in 9th century Europe.

We’ll stay in the past, but in early Tudor England, and meet a young vagrant, Tibb Ingleby, in Rosanna Pike’s A Little Trickerie.  Her mother dies, and Tibb has to make her way alone in a world where vagrancy is a crime.  Meeting a young lad, Ivo, makes a big difference and the two team up.  One day he disappears, and her next adventure sees her falling in with a band of strolling players.  And on the story goes, vivaciously told by uneducated Tibb, who nevertheless has a way with words. Who knew that being naked was ‘wearing a no-clothes outfit’? Through her we meet the often horrifying prejudices and superstitions of early 16th century England, The last section of the book  is inspired by the story of a real woman known as the Holy Maid of Leominster who, like Tibb herself, engaged in fraud and ‘trickeries’ . Fraudster or not, Tibb is an engaging character, doing what she can to get through life as best she can, never hurting those she holds dear. The ending disappointed, but till then, I found it an involving story.

So there we have it. Six books, six or more characters with tales to tell about their ordinary – or not so ordinary – lives. Next month, we’re to begin with Charlotte McConaghy‘s Wild Dark Shore, set on a remote small island housing the world’s largest seed bank. That should give scope for next month’s Six Degrees to scatter in many different directions. If you don’t already … why not join in?

Six Degrees of Separation: From Wuthering Heights to Back in the Day

I gave Six Degrees a miss for several months, feeling as though I’d lost my way with it. But it’s rather addictive – so I’m back.

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month starts with Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights.  Whether or not you’ve read the book, or seen any of the film adaptations, you’ll know that anti-hero Heathcliff is a vengeful misfit, and a very angry man.

So I’m beginning my chain with another: Emily’ s own brother, who is the subject of Robert Edric‘s book Sanctuary. Bramwell is the family’s black sheep, fighting his failures, his addictions, his inability to find a way to make something of his life. He is in fact the ‘author’ of this book. He paints a sorry picture of his stumbling path, in the final year of his young life, towards illness, addiction and death. Edric has carefully constructed this book in a series of vignettes that barely constitute a narrative, but which leave us feeling bewildered sympathy for an intelligent young man who has utterly lost his way. A beautifully imagined reconstruction of a life ill-lived. 

My next choice features not just one, but two self-destructive men. The Two Roberts, by Damian Barr, re-imagines the lives of two now little remembered Scottish painters from the early years of the twentieth century, Bobby McBride and Robert Colquhoun.  These working class Glasgow lads, homosexuals at a time when it was still illegal, at first made a success of both their lives and careers with their prodigious talents.  They worked hard, but played harder, and their wild parties were awash with hard liquor.  And this eventually became a problem.  Their self-destruction tumbles them further and further into poverty.  An immersive, sympathetic imagining of two lives. The book illustrates well the blossoming of two talents, and their chaotic collapse, as well as showing what it meant to be queer in a society which both reviled and punished homosexuality.

What about a book – a true story –  about two men who might also appear to most as failures in life?  Under the Hornbeams, by Emma Tarlo .  She was a University professor (anthropology) living near Regents Park, and was introduced early in lockdown to two very unusual men. They lived, completely without shelter other than that offered by the hornbeam trees, in a little unfrequented spot in Regents Park, and had done so for some years. They didn’t identify as homeless, and considered their lifestyle a positive choice. Tarlo is intrigued, and their relationship deepens into friendship. Not that of a middle class saviour bringing food and practical gifts to the men, but one of give and take. She appreciates the increasingly deep conversations that take place, grows to love and appreciate the natural world in a different way, and to review with increasing dissatisfaction her own pressured life as a university head of department. Tarlo affords the men dignity as she writes about them, and recognises the dangers and discomfort of many aspects of their chosen life style: not least that the still-in-force 1824 Vagrancy Act still criminalises homelessness.

Here’s another unusual life, as recounted in This, My Second Life, by Patrick Charnley. This is a work of fiction. Up to a point. The story that narrator Jago Trevarno tells is his to tell, but it’s entirely informed by Patrick Charnley’s own life experience of his cardiac arrest and brain injury. This transformation from Jago’s high-achieving life lived to a large extent in the fast lane to a much simpler existence lived off-grid on his uncle’s farm is as much the subject of this story as the tale of how he and his uncle contend with a thoroughly villainous neighbour, Bill Sligo who – unaccountably – wants to buy part of Jacob’s farm. Jago’s new life – simple, measured, suits his new circumstances. Sligo’s nefarious plans force Jago into risky courses of action which could all too easily go wrong. Much of the delight of this book is in its spare. almost elegiac writing, bringing Joseph’s farm and Jago’s new circumstances gently yet vividly to life. I hope Charney can find a voice beyond this one, so effective at its sympathetic depiction of his hero’s brain injury. His writing deserves to be more than a one-book-wonder.

This month seems to be about the outcast.  So let’s have an entirely different one, in RJ Palacio’s YA novel Wonder.  This is a book about an ordinary 10 year old boy, who isn’t ordinary at all, because in his short life he’s undergone dozens of operations on his face. So abnormal, even frightening is his appearance that it’s impossible to pass him by without staring, or very obviously dropping your gaze. He’s much loved by his family – his parents and older sister Via – but he’s been home-educated till now. But this is the moment to send him out into the ‘normal’ world of school. This is the story of his first year there: a story of bullying, meanness, cruelty even, but also kindness and acceptance. Told by August himself – the boy who lives with his deformity – it’s a moving, thought-provoking roller-coaster of a story showing how even those who love him most can be tested in their acceptance of him, and even those who reject him can – eventually – learn that he is so much more than an exceptionally ugly face.

This chain has been entirely about men and boys living out their lives – with greater or lesser degrees of success – outside the mainstream.  So we’ll finish in the same way,with Back in the Day: Oliver Lovrenski (Translated with astonishing bravura by Nichola Smalley) The four protagonists have come with their families as immigrants from various parts of the world – narrator Ivor is from Croatia and Marco from Somalia for instance. Clever and ambitious, they lose interest in school when they overtake their classmates and remain unchallenged. Dreams of becoming lawyers are exchanged for knives and protecting other family members. Drug dealing leads to institutional care for one, and a slippery slope to violence, machetes and guns. Will eventual grief and remorse result in a turning point? This is a tough, intense yet rewarding read by a young Norwegian of Croatian heritage who wrote it when he was just 19. I hope there’s more from him, and from his talented translator.

However did I come to make this chain exclusively male (albeit with two female authors)? It’s International Women’s Day tomorrow after all. Ah well, next month’s book is by a woman,  Virginia Evans: her epistolary novel The Correspondent. Next month, why not join in Six Degrees … if you don’t already?

Love your Library in Premià de Dalt 

Premià de Dalt is Premià de Mar’s slightly posher sister, just up the hill from here. It has an older town centre, with a church dating from the 10th century, and tantalising views of the sea far below. And a population of only 10,000.

I went to explore by myself on Friday. Malcolm wasn’t feeling so good, and that very night, Emily and I were due to fall victim to a thoroughly nasty sickness bug. It’s been that sort of holiday. Weather (i), transport limitations (ii) and ill- health (iii) have all been conspiring against us. (i) is about to hit again, (ii) are still with us, and (iii) is still afflicting Malcolm.

One of my discoveries was the town’s library. I was impressed. It’s situated by a local park, and there’s a large balcony with tables and chairs so you can read or study there in the fresh air.

It’s well-stocked.

Here are the books available if you’re studying English:

… or just reading in English. There were about 100 books to choose from – the old classics and up-to-the-minute reading choices.

I couldn’t take photos of the study area or the children’s library without expressly seeking permission from those using the spaces. So here’s a display from the chidren’s area.

The feel is very different from a British community library. When I’m ‘on duty’ in our local one, we talk about our tasks together in normal speaking voices, chat with friends who come to exchange their books, and take little notice as the children in the Junior Library enjoy a noisy morning music session or listen to stories on certain mornings of the week. Here in Spain are notices encouraging silence, in the way I remember from my childhood. I’m happy with both.

But in case it all sounds a bit serious to you. Here’s the fellow who welcomes you into the library, then shepherds you out.

Meanwhile, on her way home from work, Emily had popped into their local library to get books for the children.

Who knew that Winnie the Witch would be called Brunhilda in Catalan? Or that she would be so popular for so long? My children, all parents themselves, enjoyed her books decades ago.

I’ll hold over my own reading choices. They’ll keep.

For Rebecca’s Love your Library.

Love your Library in December

What a lightweight. A mere seven library books read in December. To be fair, I also read – and almost finished in December – another book, from The Library of a Friend. But that may not count.

But I had some Right Good Reads.

Simon Jenkins‘ A Short History of America: from Tea Party to Trump got a mini- review here and a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐rating .

I fairly raced through Roisín O’Donnell‘s Nesting which details the story of Ciara, as she attempts to escape her controlling, domineering husband Ryan with her two small daughters. When she plucks up the courage to go, even finding a bed that first night is a major achievement. This book describes her attempts to move on as she attempts to keep two children fed, clean and entertained from the bedroom of a hotel partly dedicated to the homeless. A difficult subject tackled with verve and compassion by O’Donnell. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Invisible Land: Hubert Mingarelli (Translated by Sam Taylor). An unnamed photographer has, just before the book begins, been documenting the liberation of a concentration camp. Now he wants to document ordinary German villagers. What he saw in the camps simmers away, quietly enraging him. We see, as he does, the bucolic calm of the countryside, as an impertinent and shocking contrast. A compassionate exploration of the – often unseen -consequences of war.⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Half Moon: Mary Beth Keane. Malcolm and Jess are in crisis. She’s just left the marriage for a breather and to take stock. There’s a blizzard in town. Theiy have financial worries. They’ve run through shocking amounts of money spent on unsuccessful IVF treatment – Jess can’t leave aside her dream of having a family. And Malcolm has taken on more financial commitments than he’d let Jess know about when he bought The Half Moon. The bar isn’t now doing well. The books backs and forths through their lives – Jess’s law degree, the community and families that surround them, Jess’s tentative exploration of a new relationship. This is a small town. Everyone knows everybody else’s business. How will things pan out? Only one way to find out. Read the book.⭐⭐⭐⭐

Francesca De Tores’ Saltblood follows the life story of an actual historical figure, Mary Read. Little is known of her but the barest of biographical details, but de Tores fleshes out her entire life to tell an engaging and richly atmospheric tale. Raised as a boy (that’s a story in itself) Mary/Mark first works in service. Then she joins the navy, and later the army – always concealing her female identity in these most male of environments. Read, who narrates her own story, is thoughtful and reflective, describing both humdrum days and moments of danger and adventure . There’s her marriage, her return to the sea, finally as a pirate … This is a well-written and realised drama which brought to life seafaring – and indeed day-to-day existence on land both in Europe and the Bahamas. Transatlantic trade and piracy were part of everyday life. I believe it’s historically correct, and it’s certainly a nuanced and compelling story inviting sympathy for anyone joining this remittingly tough way of life: especially if she’s a woman. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Back in the Day: Oliver Lovrenski. I want to draw attention to the quality of the translation by Nichola Smalley. Largely innocent of capital letters and full stops, this breathlessly episodic story is told in the street argot of the young immigrant who tells this tale. And Smalley has this language, and style of presentation off to a T. The four protagonists have come with their families as immigrants from various parts of the world. Clever and ambitious, they lose interest in school when they overtake their classmates and remain unchallenged. Dreams of becoming lawyers are exchanged for knives and protecting other family members. Drug dealing leads to institutional care for one, and a slippery slope to violence, machetes and guns. Will eventual grief and remorse result in a turning point? This is a tough, intense yet rewarding read by a young Norwegian of Croatian heritage who wrote it when he was just 19. I hope there’s more from him, and from his talented translator. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

And finally, Annie Proulx’s Close Range. This isn’t so much a review as a place-holder as I haven’t read every story in this collection yet. Mainly because, much as I was enjoying them, I need a break from the colloquial style in which they’re written every now and then, even though it’s precisely this that brings the stories to life and makes them vivid. They’re about insular rugged people living tough lives in an unforgiving landscape – often lonely and contending with daily hardship. This doesn’t make for a bleak read however. The tone and language of the stories brings them vividly to life. More later when I’ve read the lot!

And that other book, lent by a friend? A brilliant evocation of Jane Austen’s life and times, immaculately researched, but immensely readable, by Lucy Worsley: Jane Austen at home. It had to be read, with the airwaves full of Austen memorabilia last year, the 250th year of her birth. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Unbelievably, I only have two books on loan at the moment. The first, plucked from the shelves on a whim, is proving utterly absorbing: Craft Land – a journey through Britain’s lost arts and vanishing trades, by James Fox. And the next is a doorstopper: Erika Fatland‘s High- A journey across the Himalaya through Pakistan, Indai, Bhutan, Nepal and China. I might need a big dose of fiction after that little lot.

For Rebecca’s Love your Library