january-february 2020 books…

Barchester Towers (Anthony Trolloppe): Over the years, there have been LOTS of ‘classic’ novels that I’ve avoided reading… and I only decided to read this one after Moira’s bookgroup had recently enjoyed (re-)reading it. I’m very pleased I did. As you probably already know, Trollope’s book is set in the fictional cathedral town of Barchester and recounts the tales, intrigues and ambitions (and loves) amongst that pillar of Victorian society – the Church. I particularly enjoyed the names of some of the characters (Tom Towers, the Quiverfuls, Sir Omicron Pie etc) and Trollope’s observations from the perspective of the writer (eg. “We must now take leave of Mr Slope, and of the bishop also, and of Mrs Proudie. These leave-takings in novels are as disagreeable as they are in real life; not so sad…”). The writing is elegant, clever and very amusing - the plot frequently reads something akin to a ‘Whitehall farce’ (but in a good way). I think my only real criticism is that this farce has too many acts(!) - it’s a long book, written in two combined volumes, totalling over 550 pages. But a very enjoyable read nonetheless.

Factfulness (Hans Rosling): You’ve probably previously come across some of Rosling’s TED talks (that’s how I first ‘discovered’ him). This book essentially tells readers that the world isn’t quite as horrific and they thought… it attempts to train us all how to put ‘news’ into perspective and, for someone (like me!) who frequently views the world as a ‘hopeless case’, that’s got to be good news! The book is full (and I mean ‘full’) of fascinating, frequently surprising facts and statistics. Rosling is quite brilliant (he died in 2017) and, without doubt, I’ll continue to dip into this book on a regular basis… and continue to be surprised by many of its findings. I admit there were times when I found its style somewhat ‘smug’ (eg. he’d frequently provide readers with a number of statements and ask them to identify which one was actually true or most accurate. After the first few pages, you became aware that the ‘true’ one will be the one you’d probably regarded as the most unlikely… and he would be telling readers that even a bunch of chimpanzees would be more likely to choose the correct answer than you… or a group of nuclear scientists or whatever). But, hey, a fascinating and ‘hopeful’ book. 

May Week was In June (Clive James): I first read this 29 years ago (blimey)… I notice that, on the cover of my 1991 edition, Nigella Lawson – writing for ‘Book Choice’ is quoted as follows: “This is a good  book” (that’s the entire quote!). On the basis of such eloquence and insight, I think I’m going to be a book reviewer when I grow up. As you probably know, I just love James’s writing and I’ve so enjoyed re-reading this book. His final years ‘studying’ at Cambridge in the 1960s coinciding with my time starting at the School of Architecture in Oxford – so, although I was never part of the ‘Oxbridge scene’ (obviously!), I was very familiar with May Week traditions/May Balls and the like ‘by association’ (ie. by being a student in Oxford) and what else was happening in the world at that time (student riots in Paris, Vietnam war, Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Bobby Kennedy+Martin Luther King Jnr assassinations, swinging 60s, music, fashion etc). He’s highly intelligent and ridiculously well-read, he’s conceited… and he’s very, very funny. This recounts the time (living something of a hand-to-mouth existence) when he threw himself in to Footlights, film reviewing, writing poetry, developing a passion for the Arts, discovering the stunning beauty of Florence, falling in love (frequently), getting married… and reading countless works of literature (anything so long as it wasn’t on the curriculum). I’m almost certainly going to have to re-read lots of his other books (I’ve got LOTS of them). I loved re-reading this one.

Heimat (Nora Krug): This is a rather poignant and beautiful book. It’s a German family album put together by a German-American woman, now living in New York, about her family’s life in Germany as the Nazis rose to power as she seeks to unearth their role in the Holocaust. Krug grew up as a second-generation German after WW2, in the shadow of her country’s past… and she decided she couldn’t know who she was without confronting where she’d come from. The entire book is handwritten and hand-drawn (almost in the form of a scrapbook), with additional photographs and extracts from old letters. Much of the book relates to her grandfather’s exploits before and during the war. She revisits her family’s ‘hometown’ in Germany; she talks to relatives of people who might have known her family… it proves to be a difficult, but important, journey. Highly original and powerful. 

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead (Olga Tokarczuk): I previously read this exactly a year ago but, as it’s our bookgroup’s latest book (we chose from a range of gifted authors from the EU in a sort of anti-Brexit solidarity!), I’ve just re-read it. This is what I wrote a year ago: “Man Booker International Prize-winner Olga Tokarezuk is a remarkable writer. This beautifully-written (and beautifully-translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) noir novel is set in a remote Polish village and is an account given by an eccentric, reclusive woman in her sixties (who believes in the stars, prefers animals to people… and is fond of the poetry of William Blake) following the disappearance of her two dogs. I found its calm-but-quirky, narrative voice strangely compelling. It’s essentially a thought-provoking, humorous crime story… and yet, it’s much more than that: it’s also about animal rights, about injustice against marginalised people and about what many would see as the hypocrisy of traditional religion. I really really enjoyed it”. In re-reading the book, I realised just how much of the detail I’d forgotten, but again found the character of the ‘madwoman’ both quirky and charming. In her Guardian review, writer Sarah Perry says this: “The novel is almost impossible to categorise. It is, in effect, a murder mystery: in the bleak Polish midwinter, men in an isolated village are being murdered, and it is left to Janina Duszejko, a kind of eastern European Miss Marple, to identify the murderer”... 

From the very first page, we learn that she (Janina Duszejko) is ‘already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night’! I loved her narrative voice as she describes her routines, her neighbours and her struggles to come to terms with what she sees as a chaotic world. I suspect that not everyone in our bookgroup will admire it as much as I do, so our discussion will be fascinating. I’d definitely recommend it.