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Redhead By The Side Of The Road (Anne
Tyler): This novel is
essentially about ‘roads not taken’… fortysomething Micah runs his own, very
modest, ‘Tech Hermit’ business - fixing computer problems for old ladies in the
neighbourhood and has a second day-job as apartment caretaker and general
odd-job man. He lives rent-free, alone, keeps himself to himself, goes for
early morning runs, maintains an unchanging cleaning regime and has a long-term
relationship with a teacher girlfriend. Two things happen: the disaffected,
fatherless teenage son of Micah’s high-school sweetheart turns up on his
doorstep (convinced that Micah might actually be his real father) and his
girlfriend is threatened with eviction. Unthinkingly, Micah jokes that she could
always sleep in her car and, unsurprisingly, she declares the relationship over…
It’s a perceptive novel about someone
who has opted out and persistently failed to engage, who’s made a habit of
walking away from almost everything. I enjoyed it.
The Summer Book (Tove Jansson): I first read this book 21 years ago
(first published in 1972; Jansson died in 2001, aged 86) and thought it was
time I revisited it… before the summer ends! An elderly artist and her
6-year-old granddaughter (Sophia) while away a summer together on a tiny island
off the gulf of Finland. What I’d forgotten was that the book is a novel (it
actually reads like a narrative/log of their time together). Jansson wrote the
book a year after her mother’s death and she drew on the things that were most
precious to her (her graphic designer/cartoonist mother, her young niece
Sophia, and the island home that she built with her brother - Sophia’ father -
where she spent so many summers of her life. Jansson spent 5 months each year
on the island from 1964-1991). It’s an account of the understated love between
an old woman and her grandchild… and it’s quite, quite beautiful, wise and
frequently funny. I loved immersing myself into their little world (their
candid, sometimes argumentative, conversations between them; the grandmother’s
infinite patience; the smart, demanding grandchild; living on a small island).
As I finished the book, I was struck by the fact that, when I first read it, I
wasn’t a grandfather (now there are 6 grandchildren!)… and just wished that I
had the wisdom, patience and humour of the novel’s grandmother! I absolutely
loved re-reading this book.
Devotions (Mary Oliver): I love Mary Oliver’s writing. This is
a collection of her poetry dating from 1963 to 2015. I first read it at the
beginning of 2023 and have spent the past few months gently re-reading it on a
daily basis. In many ways – with her beautiful, simple observations of nature
and life – I’ve found that Oliver’s poetry has become a treasured companion on
my own journey through life (Not all her poetry appeals to me, but I’ve been
particularly drawn to her reflective poems written when she was in her
mid-/late-seventies) and a constant reminder that we live a truly beautiful
world which so many often take for granted.
Ex-Wife (Ursula Parrott): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup
selection (“re-discovered gems” from the list of Faber Editions), first
published in 1929 – but never before now in the UK. It’s set in New York in
1924; Patricia (the story’s beautiful narrator in her very early 20s) and Peter
(handsome husband) live as a ‘thoroughly modern married couple’ – both drink
and smoke, both work, both believe in ‘love-outside-marriage’ (except when it
doesn’t suit Peter). He ends up pushing for a divorce and she is forced to
forge a new life for herself. At a time in the US when the stigma of divorce
was fading, the book presents a picture of a ‘new woman’ - one who pursues new
vocational, economic, and romantic freedoms. Pat spends her days chasing a
career, while her nights were a boozy cocktail of restaurants, speakeasies and
sexual encounters… but it’s also a frequently sad story about how women gained
some freedoms, but lost other things. It’s a remarkable, entertaining novel
that’s a heady mix about marriage, divorce, love affairs, beautiful clothes,
lots of alcohol and scandal in the jazz age. I very much enjoyed it (despite
its sad encounters) and found it remarkable to reconcile that the book had been
written nearly 100 years ago.
Waxwork (Peter Lovesey): A Victorian crime fiction novel I
picked up from the Oxfam Bookshop (first published in 1978). The cover
describes it as a “Sergeant Cribb Adventure” (surely they could have done
better than that!?). DS Cribb (frustratingly for him, he’d remained a sergeant
for the past 10 years while some of his contemporaries had, to his mind, ‘earned’
promotions by using the manipulating the system for their own ends) probes the
baffling case of an confessed murderess as she awaits, unflustered, the
hangman. Is she really guilty? If not, why confess? Then the Home Office is
sent a photograph that casts doubt on the confession. Cribb is called in and
his investigations produce nothing to ease the minds of the authorities. As he
plunges deeper into the relationships and history of the small group connected
with the murder, he becomes increasingly suspicious that something very
different had actually occurred. Clever
plot with cunning twists.
On Monday evening
we went to see the RSC’s production of Shakespeare’s ‘Pericles’ at the Swan Theatre,
Stratford-upon-Avon (featuring ‘our’ Felix in the roles of Antiochus and
Pander). It’s Tamara Harvey’s first production as the Royal Shakespeare
Company’s co-artistic director.
It’s a play
that isn’t performed all that frequently (it was last staged by the RSC 18
years ago) – perhaps because some believe that it’s only partly by Shakespeare?
The plot is complicated and, in somewhat typical ‘Shakespearian’ style,
includes shipwrecks, death at sea, royalty, incest, tyranny, three
father-daughter relationships, unrecognised relatives, tragedy, humour and
pirates!
I thought the
play made a rather plodding start (the early acts are generally ascribed to
George Wilkins – which might explain things - and not helped, again in my
humble opinion(!), by some rather uninspired choreography), but developed
impressively subsequently. Alfred Enoch (Pericles) is quite brilliant as
Pericles and, as you would imagine at the RSC, the rest of the cast – in their
bright pinks, purples and azures - combine to provide impressive support.
I always love going to plays at the RSC
(I adore both the Royal Shakespeare and Swan theatres) and this production was
no exception.
Alive, Alive Oh! (Diana Athill): I’m a great admirer of Athill’s writing
and have read several of her books. In this one, written in her 97th
year (first published in 2015), she recalls the moments in her life that have
sustained her… from vivid memories of her 1920s childhood; her experience of
WW2 to stories of travel; her loves; the miscarriage, aged 43, that almost
ended her life; and candid, often very funny, reflections of what it’s like to
be old.
Doppelganger (Naomi Klein): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup
book (theme: non-fiction female authors). Klein began writing this book
(several years ago) after people were constantly mistaking her for the
conspiracist, Naomi Wolf, but she ends up weaving her way (in the words of book
reviewer Paula Lacey) through the world of “anti-vaxxers, wellness influencers
and alt-right demagogues, attempting to make sense of the conspiratorial turn
in contemporary politics”.Much of what Klein describes was entirely foreign to
me (no surprises there!). So much stuff was that initially over my head… QR
codes, Gettr, Rumble, Mirror World, diagonalists, Shadow Lands, personal
branding?? She clearly regards Steve Bannon and Trump as major ‘concerns’ (HER
descriptions are somewhat stronger as she delves into the ecosystem of Wolf,
Bannon and Trump!). Things have become far more complicated than in the days of
my youth. How the internet has fostered misinformation. The problem in this age
of big corporations, climate crisis, Covid lockdowns, online influencers and
collapsed trust in mainstream politics and media is that everybody has their
suspicions that they are being lied to and manipulated (and, of course, they’re
right!). It’s a long book (some 350 pages of small font) and I wonder how many
of my bookgroup will have finished it in the month between our gatherings - some
of us, (ie. me!) don’t have jobs to go to? It’s wide-ranging in the subjects
covered; it’s insightful, academic and complex in content… and, frankly, pretty
scary as far as the measures that are already ‘available’ to distort our
knowledge, understanding of the world and, ultimately, our politics. Towards
the end of the book, she talks about how we might find our way back from the
current despair – but I wasn’t altogether convinced! It’s an impressive,
compelling, disturbing book.
The Island Of Missing Trees (Elif
Shafak): This is our
next Blokes’ bookgroup book. Published in 2021, it’s tale of love and division
set between postcolonial Cyprus and London, exploring themes of generational
trauma and belonging… through different timelines. The story relates to the
divided island (the Turkish-controlled north of the island and the
Greek-controlled south) and the conflicts of the 1950/60s (I can recall a
handful of Greek Cypriot children moved to my junior school in the late 1950s),
which eventually resulted in the Turkish invasion of 1974. Kostas and Defne
Kazantzakis are young lovers in a painfully divided Cyprus – one Greek and
Christian, the other Turkish and Muslim. They subsequently move to England, but
continue to pay the emotional legacy of the past. The story continues partly
through the eyes of their 16 year-old daughter Ada (who has never been to
Cyprus)… and also features a fig tree as one of the book’s main narrators! It’s
a love story set against the anger, divisions, hate and brutality of conflict.
It’s about immigration, lost lives, memories and coping with the aftermath of
history. It reminded me of the awful happenings in the ongoing, present-day
Israel-Palestine – with all of its similar brutal legacies. In his review of
the book, Robert Macfarlane describes the novel “that rings with… compassion
for the overlooked and the under-loved, for those whom history has exiled,
excluded or separated”… which I think is a far description. It’s an important,
compelling book about generational trauma and I enjoyed reading it. Did I love
it? Well, not quite… I found its magical-realist style somewhat off-putting and
over-sentimental at times for my taste (and I’m someone who is easily
‘moved’!).
The Universal Christ (Richard Rohr): Many of my ‘religious’ friends regard
Rohr as something of a champion when it comes to ‘unlocking’ faith issues.
Personally, despite having read a few books of his over the years, he’s never
quite ‘done it’ for me. In my ongoing spiritual wilderness (and having listened
in to a recent Proost podcast), I decided to give Rohr ‘another go’ and bought
this book (second-hand and full of underlined texts from a previous reader!).
In it, he explores the following: “We may feel we know who Jesus was, but who
was Christ?”. Rohr is a decent, wise, intelligent, articulate man and I
actually found sections of the book quite helpful (and I loved that he
FREQUENTLY used the words “in my opinion” when making comment - I SO often feel
that I’m being preached at in the ‘spiritual’ books I read… or by things that
many people say to me). Inevitably, I suppose (well, for me, in my spiritual
wilderness), the book is written from the perspective of a Christian ‘believer’
and I frequently found myself shaking my head and saying: “but, hang on, that
assumes X or Y…”. But, hey, I was re-reading Mary Oliver’s beautiful poetry
book “Devotions” at the same time as this Rohr book… and found that they
frequently seemed to be expressing similar things… which, as a huge lover of
Oliver’s writing, must say something positive about my attitude towards Rohr’s
work.
Call For The Dead (John Le Carré): First published in 1961, this was Le
Carré’s first published novel and, obviously therefore, the first to feature
secret agent George Smiley. I still find it odd that he was allowed to publish
this book while he was still working in British Intelligence (but what do I
know?). A Foreign Office civil servant has killed himself and Smiley realises
that the powers that be will set him up to take the blame. This is a tense,
clever spy novel… which gives a hint of the rather wonderful espionage thrillers
Le Carré will go on to write.
