Nose in a book

Book review: The Memorial by Christopher Isherwood

March 28, 2022 1 Comment

I forget when I discovered Christopher Isherwood, but of course the first of his books that I read was Goodbye to Berlin and I was hooked. I have been gradually adding more of his books to my library and none of them has yet disappointed.

This is Isherwood’s second novel, published when he was just 28, which is remarkable in hindsight. It depicts a group of family and friends in the aftermath of the First World War, jumping around in time in the 1920s.

The two primary locations are London and a small Cheshire village. Sisters-in-law Lily and Mary do not get on well with each other, but having both lost their husbands in the war, their lives move closer in some ways, as do those of their children.

Each chapter is not only set in a different year, it is told from a different character’s perspective. From the large ensemble cast, we not only get to see through the eyes of Lily and Mary but also Lily’s son Eric, as well as Edward – childhood friend of Lily’s husband.

“Edward didn’t feel the cold. He started forward again, his overcoat flapping loose around him, singing to himself. He was beautifully warm all over, and the thing which kept whizzing round in his head gave him a pleasant sensation of deafness which was in itself a kind of warmth, blunting the edges of the freezing outside world.”

The book opens in London, with a fairly cosy, chatty look at Mary’s bohemian home filled with artistic and activist friends. Equally cosy is Lily getting close to a new gentleman friend, while fretting about her son who has disappointed her in some unnamed way. It’s a shock then to jump to Berlin, where a lonely Edward is struggling with survivor’s guilt and PTSD, contemplating suicide.

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February 2022 reading round-up

March 11, 2022March 31, 2022

Oh dear. I had grand plans for an LGBT+ History Month reading summary, with slightly longer than usual descriptions of what I’d read. But then for complicated reasons I didn’t have access to my laptop for a week and a half and suddenly it’s 11 March. Ah well.

I did read a lot again in February (right now it is not looking like March will be so successful) and most of the books were excellent. I think my favourite read was Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis, so I will definitely be looking out for more books by the Uruguayan author.

I seem to have watched an even greater than usual roster of films old and new, including Blade Runner, Last Night in Soho, Lady Macbeth, Aliens and Passing. And in-between the grey drizzly days there was some glorious sunshine for dog walks. We even went out for a super fancy meal at an actual indoor restaurant.

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Book review: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

February 27, 2022March 9, 2022 1 Comment

After tearing through books in the first half of January, I decided it was a good time for a big book and Rohinton Mistry’s epic A Fine Balance certainly fit that bill.

A Fine Balance is epic in scope, but the bulk of it takes place in one single year: mid-1975 to 1976. In an unnamed Indian city on the coast, four people are thrown together, their lives increasingly integrated as political unrest leads to restricted freedoms in the form of the Emergency.

Mistry does a wonderful job of giving all the characters complex backgrounds and motivations, so that time after time, someone who is introduced as an annoyance or outright villain becomes a sympathetic character, even someone to root for. He also takes the time to give thorough backgrounds for our four leads before the main narrative gets going.

First we have Dina, a Parsi woman who was widowed young and has struggled to maintain a life independent of her controlling older brother. She is brittle and judgmental, but this is often a facade to hide her fear of losing the life she has. After years of working as a seamstress to make ends meet, her eyesight is now failing and she must turn to two new sources of income: taking in a tenant and subcontracting sewing work to tailors she can supervise.

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Book review: Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh

February 13, 2022March 9, 2022

The book club at work picked Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh for our December meeting and I’m so glad I was encouraged to read it. It’s a travel memoir where (almost) all the travel is by train and was actually already on my TBR.

Rajesh has a chatty, witty, conversational writing style, coming across as very open and honest from the start, where she shares the discussions she and her fiance Jem had about the trip before deciding to travel together. This was Rajesh’s second epic train adventure, as she had previously travelled alone around India (also in 80 trains). But that was before she met Jem and in a country she knew at least a little. This time, most of the countries she was heading to would be new terrain for her, and of course it would be nice to share the adventure.

So the couple hop on the Eurostar armed with Eurail passes and a fairly detailed plan for travels through Asia and America – but for some reason almost no plan for Europe, which quickly causes them problems. Perhaps it was a simple misunderstanding, but Rajesh had failed to realise beforehand that Eurail passes only really save you money if you make a plan and stick to it. Otherwise, in most of Europe outside the UK, trains are cheap enough that you may as well pay as you go. With their attempt to be spontaneous, their journey gets off to a rocky start of fines and fees that makes her writing about Europe decidedly gloomy.

This was not a good start. I have never in my life travelled for more than three weeks at a time, but even the first time I took the train alone to the south of France, aged 18, I had done more research and enjoyed a smoother experience than this supposed travel writer. I certainly know not to go to a dry cleaner with my dirty clothes, but instead find a self-service laundry, if I want to have any money left.

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January 2022 reading round-up

January 31, 2022March 11, 2022

Well, January has been a bit grey and cold-but-not-snow-cold, but on the plus side I have torn through books this month. I finished 10 books – four of them in the first week. A lot of them were good but I think my favourite was Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram.

As has become habit now, we watched a lot of films. I’d say the best were Don’t Look Up (the recent big budget sci-fi film on Netflix) and Only Yesterday (an old Studio Ghibli film about a city woman who takes a holiday to the countryside and reminisces about her youth).

I also turned 41, went on a lot of dog walks and finally, after a few months’ break, started watching another K-drama (Cinderella and the Four Knights), which was…fine.

Maybe next month we’ll actually leave the city at some point. Who knows?

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Book review: An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

January 27, 2022March 9, 2022

A very long time ago (17/18 years, to be less vague) I used to regularly browse the sales boxes at Blackwell Bookshop in Oxford. I had recently graduated, was working in my first publishing job, and was reading everything I could. I bought books in large quantities, anything that caught my eye, and in that way discovered some amazing authors (and of course some duds). One of my discoveries was a book called I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine, the Lebanese author’s second novel. It’s an experimental novel, written in the form of a series of first chapters, and I loved it. Then I completely failed to follow up and buy any more of his books.

Skip a decade or so and I discovered Alameddine’s Twitter stream, a delightful collection of artworks and poetry curated by someone I share taste and a sense of humour with. (Seriously, these days his Twitter is one of the few good reasons to keep bothering with that particular arm of social media.) Last year I finally bought another of his books, the novel An Unnecessary Woman, and over the Christmas break I read it.

The “unnecessary woman” of the title is Aaliya. She has lived alone in her Beirut apartment since the end of her brief marriage decades ago. She is not on good terms with her family, who resent her independence (and the reasonably nice flat she was able to keep when her husband left). Every year she translates a book into Arabic, starting her new project each 1 January. Appropriately enough for when I picked this up, the book is set over the end of one year and the start of the next, as Aaliya is musing on her next project.

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Book review: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

January 17, 2022March 9, 2022

I’ve had Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi on my TBR for a few years and I had put off reading it from fear that it would be sad or tough. I shouldn’t have worried. While it deals with tough subjects and has sad moments, it is also a highly enjoyable read with a lot of joy in its pages.

Effia and Esi, born in the 1750s on the Gold Coast of Africa, are sisters but they have never met. Raised in different villages, as they reach marriageable age they are in very similar positions, with promising local matches, but fate has something rather different in store.

Effia is married off to a white trader. She loves him but can never fit in with the other wives in the British fortress. Esi is captured when war breaks out between tribes and sold into slavery. She is shipped to America from the very fortress where her sister is living.

Gyasi traces the lineages of these two women through to the 21st century, through them telling the story of Ghana and the USA. From plantation slavery to missionaries, from colonialism to Harlem slums, there’s a lot to cover here and a lot of it is serious stuff, but this book has enough light moments and warm characters to never feel heavy.

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Bout of Books 33 reading round-up

January 12, 2022

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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December 2021 reading round-up

December 31, 2021January 4, 2022

Christmas day walk with Tim, my brother Adam and the dog

Another year is over. December has been hectic but once we finally reached Christmas (which was lovely, if not quite what we’d planned) I had free time and devoured several books. Also, most of this month’s books have been really good. It’s nice to end the year on a high point.

My top book this month was in fact the last one: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. As always, I watched a lot of films – most of them Christmas-related. My top picks would probably be Single All the Way, The Long Kiss Goodnight and of course Die Hard. Still a great film no matter how many times we rewatch. Oh, and I finally watched the 2019 Little Women directed by Greta Gerwig and I loved it. TV-wise I recommend the French Christmas romcom miniseries Christmas Flow.

I got a beautiful stack of new books for Christmas, which I’ll post about soon, as well as my top reads of 2021. But for now, I hope you have a fabulous 2022. Happy reading!

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