january 2023 books…

Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan): Moira gave me a batch of books shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and this is the first one I’ve read. The novel is a mere 114 pages long but is simply stunning… haunting and yet hopeful. It’s set in 1985, just before Christmas, in an Irish town in County Wexford. The story’s main character is Bill Furlong, a coal merchant with a wife and five daughters. As an infant, Furlong and his mother were taken in by a wealthy Protestant woman living just beyond the town. I’m loathe to say too much, but there is a convent at the edge of town and, attached to it, a training school and laundry where young women live and work. There are all kinds of rumours about those in attendance. It’s a beautiful, breath-taking and tender book that will remain with me for a long time. You need to read it.
Treacle Walker (Alan Garner): Another from the Booker Prize 2022 shortlist. I read Garner’s memoir “Where Shall We Run To?” a couple of years ago, but can also recall reading (or at least starting to read) his novel ‘The Moon of Gomrath’ to our daughters when they were young (a long time ago!)… but I don’t think I was ever captivated by his world of myth and magic. ‘Treacle Walker’ is a strange, mystifying, clever book (of just 150 pages). Joe is a child living a somewhat strange existence; his parents are not in evidence. He wears a patch to correct a lazy eye. One day a rag-and-bone man, named Treacle Walker, appears and offers Joe a cup and a stone in exchange for an old pair of pyjamas and a lamb’s shoulder bone. The cup has Joe’s name written upon it. Joe later comes across Thin Amren, a naked, ‘bog-man’ who informs him that his lazy eye is the result of “the glamourie” – a gift that enables him to see time collapsed, to perceive the eternal in the now – and is drawn into the mirror-world of a comic book battles (aided by the visits of the genial Treacle Walker). For me, it felt like a cross between Max Porter’s book ‘Lanny’, Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and Roald Dahl’s ‘The BFG’! I subsequently read a review by Alex Preston (in The Guardian) in which he described the novel as “seeking to ask how we would experience the world if we were able to step out of the straitjacket of time” and that it was “about quantum physics as well as ancient lore” – which might explain why, at times, I struggled to make sense of it all! Fascinating nevertheless.
The Bullet That Missed (Richard Osman): Osman is one those highly intelligent people who are capable of being simply brilliant at anything they choose to do. This is the third of his ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ mysteries - set in a peaceful retirement village, where “four unlikely friends investigate unsolved murders”. The plot is very clever (even if I did find myself saying “oh, really!” a couple of times out loud) and Osman just has a knack for writing – completely engaging, humorous and with characters who you genuinely get to love (each one of them!)… and the book is ridiculously readable (400 pages, but easily finished within 3 days). Can’t wait for the next one… you just hope the elderly characters can go on living for a fair few more years yet!
Plainsong (Kent Haruf): I’ve selected this as our next Blokes’ Books book. It’s a bit of a cheat really because it’s only 3 months ago that I first read it… but I just felt it would be an excellent book for us to discuss (we’ll see!). It’s set in a small town, Holt in Colarado, and recounts the lives of individuals who share little else than belonging to fractured families – including a schoolteacher struggling to bring up his 8+10 year-old sons alone; a pregnant, homeless schoolgirl and two old bachelor rancher brothers who take her in. Colarado life can be cruel at times. Some people’s actions are appalling but, at the same time, there are some wonderfully gentle, decent individuals. The writing is magical - graceful and almost poetic – with a quiet, understated way I found absolutely captivating. I loved it… and loved re-reading it.
Oh William! (Elizabeth Strout): This novel is another book shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and features successful writer Lucy Barton (apparently Strout has written two previous novels about Lucy Barton) and her relationship with her ex-husband, William. They are both at a late-life crossroads (Lucy is 63 when the book opens). Lucy’s beloved second husband has died a few weeks earlier, and William’s third wife has left him. William asks Lucy to join him on a trip to Maine in search of a long lost half-sister. The book isn’t so much a tale of this search, but about the nature of Lucy and William’s relationship. Indeed, it’s a novel about relationships but also about class; about memories; about feelings and emotions; about ageing; about tolerance and intolerance; and, sometimes, about the quiet forces that hold families together. I very much enjoyed Strout’s writing – intimate, wise… and managing to capture empathy without sentimentality.