Category: Reviews

Bout of Books 33 reading round-up

In all the excitement of the new year and my birthday, I almost didn’t realise there was a Bout of Books readathon last week. Thankfully, I spotted some Tweets on Tuesday morning and decided to join in, albeit a day late. It seemed like odd timing to me initially, but on reflection it was the perfect way to start the year.

Bout of Books is a week-long readathon held three times a year. It was started in 2011 by Amanda Shofner, who still co-hosts, and has a wide community, from those who consider themselves bookstagrammers, booktubers or book bloggers, to people who just like to chat about books on Twitter and other social media. It really feels like you’re part of an event when you’re seeing lots of updates on the #BoutOfBooks hashtag and having live conversations with fellow book lovers.

As well as encouraging us to carve out time to read every day, Bout of Books is distinguished by half-hour reading sprints three times a day. As it’s US-based and I was working full time Tuesday to Friday, these didn’t fall at super helpful times for me in the UK but I did like that there was a sprint every day at 11 p.m. GMT, encouraging me to switch off the TV (if it had been on) and read for my last half hour before bed. It slotted perfectly into my routine, and I think I slept unusually well last week so I’ve tried to maintain the habit even after the readathon ended.

2022 has so far been mostly wet and grey, and going back to work after all the excitement of Christmas is always a little sad, so it would have been very tempting to just stare at the TV every night last week. I am so glad that instead I curled up with a book (and usually the dog). I tore through books from the TBR and I felt a bit more positive about myself. Plus reading itself is a good time, which you wouldn’t think I’d need reminding of, but that TV is such an easy temptation.

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Book review: Fire: the Unexpurgated Diaries 1934–1937 by Anaïs Nin

Fire by Anais NinI spent six months reading Fire: the Unexpurgated Diaries 1934–1937 by Anaïs Nin, which is just one volume of Nin’s massive collection of diaries. I kept the chunky tome on my bedside table, reading a few pages at a time. It took me a while (clearly) to get into the flow of it and I am still torn as to whether I want to hunt down the several other books that would complete the story.

This is not volume one (it’s books 48–52 of the hundreds of handwritten diaries Nin left behind). It’s not even the first part of the most famous trilogy of Nin’s diaries, known as A Journal of Love. But a loose note in the front of my smart hardback copy confirms that I ordered this from a secondhand book dealer in 2011, so I clearly wanted this specific volume and can only speculate that I had read a recommendation somewhere. I had read a few collections of Nin’s short stories and one of her novels, so I knew that I liked her writing. And her life is certainly a fascinating one to me.

Nin wrote diaries from a young age and edited her adult diaries for print during her own lifetime. Initially published from 1966 onwards, the first public versions of these books were cut heavily, removing all mention of her husband Hugh Guiler and several other of her more prominent lovers; changing names and details of other characters in her life. After the deaths of both Guiler and Nin, her long-term partner Rupert Pole took on the mammoth task of editing a new set of “unexpurgated” diaries, restoring those deleted details. His preface states “nothing of importance has been deleted”.

Obviously, this being Nin, this book is very sexually explicit (though I suspect that’s not what was cut first time round). It’s also probably worth knowing before you read this that she struggles with depression at times. Her mood swings wildly, and she acknowledges this. She is also unpredictable beyond her state of mental health. At times Nin will do everything she can to keep everyone she loves happy, pushing herself so hard it seems inevitable she will snap. But at other times she seems wilfully cold and cruel, refusing to acknowledge how her actions must affect her beloveds.

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Contemporary African fiction – reviews in brief

Since starting this blog, I have been on a journey to expand my reading horizons. These days, I read very few dead white men – if anything I read a majority of living women. But they’re still mostly white, mostly writing in English. I’ve been gradually increasing the translations in my reading mix, especially contemporary translation, but in the last couple of years I became aware of a glaring gap in my bookshelves: African fiction.

I’ve read some of the big hitters – Chinua Achebe, Ahdaf Soueif – but I have almost certainly read more books by white Europeans about Africa than books by African authors. Which is not great. So I looked up some lists of recommended books and authors. Here are mini reviews of three recent novels by African women that I have enjoyed.

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Book review: Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith

Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith is such a lovely book. Using that word, I fear undersells or even undermines it, but it’s precisely how I feel about it.

Sisters Anthea and Imogen live together in what was their grandparents’ home in Inverness. Their relationship is strained, fractious, as they see the world very differently. Imogen enjoys her job in marketing at Pure, a large corporation that is looking to bottle and sell the local water. She even got Anthea a job there too, but Anthea is less keen. Corporate isn’t really her.

Through the sisters, their lives and love lives, Smith explores Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a modern setting, in particular the story of Iphis and Ianthe. It isn’t hidden away in the subtext; one character explains this story to another, but Smith makes that feel entirely natural. (There are also Shakespeare references that are a little more hidden, but I don’t think the reader who doesn’t spot them will miss anything. No doubt there are allusions I didn’t see too.)

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K-drama review: Squid Game

squid game poster
Seong Gi-hun (centre) is our hapless hero.

This is not the light, fluffy fare I usually review but it was still very much up my street. Squid Game (Netflix 2021) is a brutal, violent horror story that satirises capitalism, in particular how the rich prey on the desperation of the poor.

Usually when I write a K-drama review I can reveal the plot of the first two or three episodes – in fact, it’s often necessary to explain the concept of the show. And they’re not usually the type of shows that can be spoiled by knowing the storyline going in. But Squid Game is both shorter than most K-dramas and, as is common in the horror genre, contains many reveals and plot shenanigans from early on that it would be a shame to know before having watched any of it.

That said, it’s going to be difficult to review it without at least talking about some details from after the middle of episode one. I will try to keep it vague but I may have to write a second spoilery post.

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K-drama review: Crash Landing On You

Ri Jeong-hyeok, Yoon Se-ri, Gu Seung-jun and Seo Dan are the lead characters in Crash Landing On You.

I know, it’s months since I last wrote a K-drama review and I choose now to come back but it’s not about Squid Game? Rest assured, I am watching Squid Game and a write-up will follow soon. But when that dropped I was halfway through this previous smash hit show. Crash Landing On You (TvN/Netflix 2019–2020) could not be more different. And I loved it.

Crash Landing On You has all the classic K-drama ingredients: a lead couple who are clearly destined to fall in love but whose circumstances make it impossible; a huge disparity in wealth; complicated power dynamics including a chaebol family where the father is retiring and choosing which child to name as his heir; nefarious villains who kill and kidnap at will; some really beautiful friendships that withstand tests of their strength; very cheesy romance and slapstick humour that are sometimes at odds with the rest of the plot.

So what makes Crash Landing On You different from other K-dramas? The obvious thing is that much of it is set in North Korea, and many of the lead characters are North Korean (though obviously the actors are South Korean and no filming took place in North Korea). I have never seen North Korea depicted in a K-drama before (possibly because South Korea has very strict rules about depicting North Korea in its media) but this felt like it was treading a fine line where it showed the infrastructure and political system in negative light but the people as for the most part good and generous.

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The years slip by, stealthily, on tiptoes; they whisper behind our back, making fun of us

The Sum of Our Days book coverThe Sum of Our Days
by Isabel Allende
translated from Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

This is the third volume of memoir that Allende wrote, which is perhaps an odd place to jump into someone’s life. When I bought this I was attracted purely by her name, after having read and loved House of the Spirits. But it was made extra odd by the circumstances in which this book was written. Allende’s daughter Paula died in 1992. The following year she published her second memoir Paula, mostly written while Paula lay in a coma that they knew she probably wouldn’t wake up from. She started writing this third memoir after Paula’s death and addresses it directly to her daughter, updating her on the extended family as if she had moved away rather than died.

Allende talks candidly about her writing process, her relationships, her hopes and fears, along with all the details of her life. And Allende’s life is surprisingly eventful. Admittedly, this book covers 13 years but the big stuff all happens in the first couple of years following Paula’s death.

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Piece by piece, we put the shells back together, reencasing ourselves

Siracusa book coverSiracusa
by Delia Ephron

I never used to care about liking the characters in the books I read, but I must admit that I spent the first quarter or so of this novel wondering if it was worth persevering with four irritatingly self-involved narrators. I’m glad I did, because I enjoyed it overall.

I’m pretty sure the self-absorption of the four main characters is the point, and the extremity of their smug egotism is by turns funny and tragic. They all narrate the same events from their different viewpoints – which if they were less self-absorbed would mean they actually noticed the same things at least some of time, rather than these wildly different accounts.

The story is simple: a small group of Americans travelling abroad don’t get on very well. Two married couples, Michael and Lizzie, and Finn and Taylor – plus Finn and Taylor’s 10-year-old daughter Snow – travel to Rome and then Siracusa in Sicily for a week’s holiday together. Lizzie and Finn are old friends – former lovers, in fact – but otherwise the group aren’t close at all. The holiday was suggested on a whim while having dinner together, the kind of suggestion that usually wouldn’t be followed up on by mere acquaintances.

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Becky’s heart punches itself out of her chest and runs screaming through the room

The Bricks That Built the HousesThe Bricks That Built the Houses
by Kae Tempest

I am a big fan of Kae Tempest. Everything they create is brilliant: music, poetry, rap, books and plays. I’ve seen Kae perform live three times and they were fantastic every time.

This novel takes characters Tempest created in their solo album Everybody Down and their epic poem Brand New Ancients, and gives them a full story. Storytelling and character creation have always been Tempest’s strengths so I knew this would be great and I was right.

In the opening chapter young Londoners Becky, Harry and Leon are escaping the city with a suitcase full of stolen money. The narrative takes us back to when they all met each other and how that situation came about.

At a glitzy promo party for the launch of a Cool New Band’s music video, Becky is trying to look like she’s happy to be there, but in truth this isn’t her scene and she isn’t especially proud to be a dancer in the video. It’s dance work, which she’s glad to get, but she worries the longer she keeps taking these jobs, the worse her chances of joining a “real” dance company. Then across the room she spots Harry, and her night picks up.

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It was the climax of the accumulated impressions

The Proof book coverThe Proof
by César Aira
translated by Nick Caistor

I didn’t exactly love this book, but the second I finished it, I felt an urge to write about it. And that doesn’t happen so often lately (as you might have guessed from the declining frequency of reviews on this website). So it clearly had an effect on me.

This slim novella manages to be both thoughtfully philosophical and explosive with action – it just does one then the other. There is a sense of menace from the start, when 16-year-old schoolgirl Marcia is out for a walk in Buenos Aires and realises that as it is starting to get dark, big groups of young people are beginning to gather outside cafes and record shops. Out of the blue she is propositioned “Wannafuck?” – which is actually the first word of the story.

The shout has come from two girls around Marcia’s age who are dressed as punks (the novel was written in 1989) and follow her as she tries to hurry away and ignore them. When that tack doesn’t work, she strikes up a conversation and finds herself both appalled and fascinated by their crude antagonism. The girls – who call themselves Mao and Lenin – agree to go with Marcia to a cafe to talk and this is where the bulk of the story takes place.

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