august 2024 books...

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.