From Pyrenees to Pennines

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

Prophet Song, this month’s starter book by Paul Lynch was one of my winning reads of 2024. Here are the final sentences of the review I wrote about this book, set in the near future, in Ireland. ‘This story brought the reality of life in Syria, in Ukraine, in Palestine frighteningly into focus. The final pages should be required reading for the anti-asylum-seeker lobby.’

Which leads me to my first book, which though not about living in a war zone, is about asylum seekers and illegal immigration: Sunjeev Sahota‘s The Year of the Runaway. Three Indian migrant workers in Sheffield, one legally married to a young Indian woman from London for the sole purpose of obtaining a visa. Once obtained, divorce and freedom for them both . This is their story. The young married man is relatively privileged. Another is here on a student visa which forbids him to work. But how otherwise can he send money back to his family? The third is low-caste and lost his entire family in political riots. In England, they are equally vulnerable to  poverty, violence, exploitation as they move from one squalid and back-breaking workplace to another, always inadequately housed and nourished, always looking over their shoulder for their illegal or precarious status to be uncovered. This is an important book, helping to uncover the lives of the would-be migrant who has few choices, whatever the level of privilege enjoyed back home. And a readable one too. No wonder it got shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize.

Now a book about other immigrants to England, in Caryl Phillips‘ Another Man in the Street. This is a book about loneliness. It’s about leaving your homeland and facing rejection and even hatred, It’s about Victor, who left Saint Kitts in the Windrush years as a young man, in order to better himself. It’s about Peter, a Jewish refugee from Central Europe. It’s about Ruth, who’s English and firstly Peter’s, then Victor’s lover: but who’s cut herself off from her South Yorkshire home and family in moving to London. And it’s about Lorna, Victor’s abandoned wife.who came with their son Leon to join him from Saint Kitts. It’s told in the first, second and third persons, and the narrative moves back and forth in time and place over a 40 year period between these characters: always lonely and largely friendless, failing to communicate even with those they live with. They are generally speaking meek, and in the shadow of their pasts. An unsettling, if thought-provoking read.

Living abroad can take many forms, as shown in Katie Kitamura‘s Intimacies. This is a novel about dislocation, in many forms. The unnamed narrator has just moved to The Hague from New York to take up a temporary job as interpreter at the international criminal court. Her father has died, her mother has returned to Singapore, and as the child of a diplomat, she has lived everywhere and anywhere. She is rootless, and wonders if she will find a home here. Her boyfriend, Adriaan turns out to be married ‘but not for much longer’. So many ‘ifs’ and uncertainties. Not one thing in her life is certain or permanent. She’s unable to plot a clear path to her future, or even decide if her current career path is for her. This book is compellingly, lucidly, yet sparely written, yet establishes an intimacy between the woman and her reader. I found this a memorable book which deserves a second reading.

What happens though, to an immigrant who returns to the place where she was born and raised? This is the story told in the sequel to Colm Tóibín‘s Brooklyn: Long Island. Eilis came from Ireland to New York to marry Italo-American Tony twenty years ago. With reservations she’s happy with her lot, but some shocking news lands as a bombshell, and she uses it as an excuse to go back to Ireland to celebrate her mother’s 80th birthday. The story continues from Eilis’ point of view, and also from that of her former best friend Nancy who is having a secret affair with Jim, the man Eilis once loved. And it’s also told from Jim’s standpoint too, All three are dealing with complicated and conflicting emotions. The plot moves slowly forward until the last 50 pages or so. Then it hurtles into a maelstrom of action and emotion, unresolved even by the last page of the book. Is a third novel in the offing?

And what happens if instead of living, however precariously, in a country that is not your own, you are instead quite literally, all at sea? That’s the story of Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhurst. This is an adventure that reads like pacey fiction. It’s actually a true story: a love story, a tale of endurance in unimaginable hardship. The core of this book is the account of the 118 days a couple, Maurice and Maralyn spent adrift in the Pacific on a life raft, bereft of – well – anything really. Certainly they had no way of communicating with the world beyond their tiny and unstable refuge. We learn the backstory of Maurice, isolated, shy, largely estranged from his family: and how he meets the more outgoing Maralyn, their relationship founded on their love of exploring the Great Outdoors. Of how they scrimp and save to build their own ship, planning to sail to New Zealand. They plan carefully, systematically, but an encounter with an injured sperm whale sinks their ship. It’s a tender portrait of an unconventional love affair, as well as a quite astonishing tale of survival against all the odds.

I’ll round off with a book I’ve yet to read: it’s our next choice for our book group. Leo Vardiashvili‘s Hard by a Great Forest. It seems to fit the theme I’ve established here, dealing as it does with Saba’s homecoming from London to Tbilisi, Georgia after more than twenty years away. Here’s what the Guardian says: ‘A compelling story about war, family separation and ambivalent homecoming … propelled by dark mysteries and offset by glorious shafts of humour.‘ I’m looking forward to this.

Perhaps it looks as if there aren’t too many laughs in my choices this month. Yet each one is leavened by lighter moments too. I wonder if next month’s starter will be too? It’s Salman Rushdie‘s memoir, Knife. I’ve reserved a copy from the library already.

The image accompanying Long Island is by Josh Miller, courtesy of Unsplash. The remaining images are my own.