Book review: The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker

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The Golem and the Djinni book coverOver Christmas and New Year I had almost two weeks off work, so I thought I’d power through four or five books. I’d wrap up cosily from the world in chunky knits and soft blankets; move from bed to sofa to rocking chair; interrupted only by dog walks and meal times. Ha! I think I forgot that Christmas is also a time for trying to see all the family and friends for quality time. And that’s lovely, but does mean despite the truly terrible weather keeping the dog walks short, reading time was also short.

But I did finish one book, a 644-page saga with magical fantasy elements woven into an otherwise realist historical setting. And it was a great read that thoroughly absorbed me.

The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker is, as the title suggests, about a golem and a djinni. Though mostly set in New York City in 1899, it also has scenes in what was then Prussia and locations in the Middle East that again straddle modern country borders. Manhattan is the perfect place for characters living in a Jewish neighbourhood with strong European roots and in Little Syria, with its Arabic roots, to encounter each other and discover that they have much in common.

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Book review: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

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The novel Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is beautiful, thoughtful, original, packed with ideas that generate discussion. And yet I found it a bit too ponderous to love it.

Miri’s wife Leah has “come back different” after a deep sea research mission that overran by months. Leah seems weakened and barely eats, sleeps or speaks. She sips on salt water and soaks for long hours in the bath. Her skin takes on a strange hue, almost translucent.

Miri spends her days worrying and trying to get hold of the research centre behind the mission to find out what happened but they are proving maddeningly elusive. She reflects on earlier days of her and Leah’s relationship and who Leah truly is, or was.

Chapters alternate between Miri’s present and Leah’s journal of the mission itself. They are a tiny crew of just three and disaster strikes early, but in an odd way that is left open to the reader’s interpretation. The craft’s communications, lights and engines fail so that it sinks to the ocean floor and cannot be manoeuvred or any message sent. But somehow it still has a working shower, oxygen and water recycling plus a store of long-life food that could last them months, despite the original mission only being a couple of weeks long.

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Book review: The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

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Forty rules of love book coverI am not a big fan of the novel-within-a-novel device. Invariably I find the secondary narrative either too dull or too abstract to keep my attention, and my interest is only held by the primary story. I found it a little odd, then, that the opposite happened with The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak.

Ella Rubinstein is a very average, middle-class white American housewife. Now that her three children are almost fully grown she’s got her first job in two decades, reading manuscripts for a literary agency. Her first manuscript is Sweet Blasphemy by A Z Zahara, a historical novel about the real-life 13th century poet and scholar Rumi and the time he spent with Sufi dervish Shams of Tabriz.

The story’s setting and characters are completely alien to Ella but she finds herself getting completely sucked in. To the extent that her relationships to her children and husband change entirely and she begins a secret e-mail correspondence with Zahara that quickly becomes flirty and romantic.

I can relate (to a point) as I also found myself fully absorbed by novel-within-a-novel Sweet Blasphemy. I’ve read a little of Rumi’s poetry and I’m very interested in new historical settings. I didn’t really know anything about 13th century Iran or Sufism. But most of all I was fascinated by Shams.

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My top books of 2023 and reading goals

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Reading in bed

As I mentioned in my December reading round-up last week, 2023 was an odd year for me. I feel more in need of the arbitrary fresh start of a new year than I can remember for a very long time.

However, “odd” doesn’t mean all bad, and among my highlights were some truly great books. According to Storygraph I read 81 books and gave 5 of them the maximum rating of 5 (though the ratings are a gut reaction when I finish the book and don’t always match which books I’m still enthusing about months later). My most-read genres were literary, contemporary, LGBTQIA+ and classics – so no surprises there. My average book size was 240 pages and the mood of the books got darker over the course of the year (the mood is based on aggregate “light” or “dark” ratings from readers so isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of what I thought of a book’s mood).

But I know what you’re here for is my favourite reads of 2023. So with the usual caveat that these are chosen from books I read in 2023, not necessarily published last year, here goes…

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December 2023 reading round-up

Christmas 2023 montage

Another year is over. It’s been a strange one. This month has been wet and grey, which at least had the side effect of giving me time to read nine books (admittedly four of them were trade paperbacks of comic series).

I also watched a lot of Christmas films – most of them terrible, cheesy fare that I would not recommend at any other time of year. The best by far was The Apartment, which is Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine so really how can any other film compete?

As usual, I got a lovely tall stack of new books for Christmas. Because my loved ones know me well. I did a clearout of my TBR and library before Christmas to create some space so for now I can still fit all my books on shelves. But it is my birthday next week so they may well be spilling over again soon. It’s my favourite problem to have.

I failed to finish any of the three books I’m in the middle of for a nice, neat end to the year. But that does give me a headstart on my 2024 book count! I’ll post next week with my 2023 round-up. In the meantime, happy New Year!

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Book review: Occupation Diaries by Raja Shehadeh

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Occupation Diaries

Palestinian author, lawyer and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh has won prizes for his writing and his humanitarian work. Occupation Diaries is one of several non-fiction books he has written about Palestine through the lens of his own life. Born in Ramallah, he attended law school in the UK, then moved back to Ramallah to join his father’s law practice. To the best of my knowledge he still lives in Ramallah now and certainly that’s where he was living in 2012 when he published this book.

As the title suggests, Occupation Diaries is a series of diary entries covering the period December 2009 to December 2011. Shehadeh writes about his daily life but adds in historical and political detail.

In the opening entry, Shehadeh travels with a group of friends to a countryside spot called Wadi Qelt. As they spread out their picnic on a rock next to a picturesque pool, a large family arrives and settles on a rock on the opposite side of the water. Shehadeh’s group are Christians and/or foreigners dressed in Western clothes; the family group is local and Muslim, with the women in hijabs and long black skirts. Mutual suspicion quickly grows and there is a brief shouting match, though it is quickly defused.

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November 2023 reading round-up

November ended and it got COLD. Thank goodness I now have a thoroughly well insulated home office. Definitely the season for curling up with a book.

Every so often my work book club picks a topic rather than a specific book and we all choose our own book on that topic and talk about them as a group. Which is a great way to discuss some big (and often weighty) themes and actually get people to show up for the discussion. For our December meeting we’re discussing LGBTQIA books and I found I couldn’t stop at one book. In the past month I’ve read three queer books and I have another three queued up to read next.

Happy December.

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Book review: Girlcrush by Florence Given

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Paperback book called GirlcrushEarlier this year I realised that most of the books on my TBR are serious in tone and/or topic, and I needed more fun reads to intersperse in-between. So when I had a day out with a friend in Bath and popped into Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, this paperback jumped out at me with its bright shiny red lips on the cover.

Girlcrush by Florence Given is a near-future novel about friendship, relationships, identity, social media and celebrity. And it’s very fun and easy to read while still being genuinely good.

It’s 2030 in a fictional British city and Eartha, an artist, has just realised that her long-term boyfriend is a cheating asshole and that she is bisexual. She makes a messy, drunk confessional video and posts it on Wonderland, the social app that everyone is plugged into obsessively, and it goes viral.

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October 2023 reading round-up

We spent most of October in a slightly chaotic state having some building work done on our house. I did not appreciate getting up extra early and doing extra cleaning for three and a half weeks but it is satisfying to have finally fixed some big problems. We still have a long list of redecorating tasks and Christmas is scarily close so there’s that to plan too. Adulting is hard.

Roll on November.

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Book review: Seesaw by Deborah Moggach

Seesaw book coverDeborah Moggach is one of those authors I’ve seen recommended in many places over the last 20+ years. A few of her novels have been made into films (including These Foolish Things, which became The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and she has written several screenplays as well. So when a family member was having a book clearout and offered me her novel Seesaw I jumped at it. I will not be jumping at her books in future.

It’s not that it’s a bad book. It’s easy to read, with complex characters and I was entertained. But it’s also fairly predictable, despite a structure that feels intended to surprise or even wrongfoot readers. And its commentary on class and money feels simplistic – very much the perspective of an upper middle class writer.

The story centres on the Price family – suburban middle-class folk with everyday, petty squabbles. They’re members of the rotary club. The younger children go to private school. They bought their oldest child a flat when he went to university and have promised him some very expensive film-editing equipment to kickstart his career. Both parents run their own businesses. They’re ordinary; dull, even.

Then their 17-year-old daughter Hannah goes missing. After a long, increasingly fraught day, the Prices receive a phone call claiming that Hannah has been kidnapped and demanding a very large ransom. They can afford it, but it’s going to clean them out of almost everything they have.

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