october/november 2024 books…

The Sunshine Corpse (Max Murray): Another of my recent Penguin Crime books from our local Oxfam Bookshop (first published in 1954). A man is found dead in a Florida fruit stall. He was an unpopular man and there are a number of people with good reasons for wishing him dead. One of the people who bore him a grudge is subsequently found dead in the river… the local Sheriff has a difficult case on his hands. The novel is cleverly conceived and yet it left me thinking that the author was just trying to be TOO clever (by half!). The story ends with a flood of conflicting confessions and accusations… which eventually sort themselves out amid much bad feeling. Ultimately disappointing.
The British Museum Is Falling Down (David Lodge): It’s been ages since I read a David Lodge book (my book blog tells me it was 14 years ago!). At the heart of this novel (first published in 1961) is the library at the British Museum where the main character (a post-graduate student working on his thesis with a young wife young children) works away – although frequently being pre-occupied or distracted by other matters. His home life seems dominated by the prospect of his wife being perpetually pregnant or of unstinting abstinence (while working through all the permitted methods of birth control allowed by the Catholic Church)… or about the need for more sex or better-quality sex! It’s typical Lodge – always entertaining and amusing but also, at times, bordering on farce (which isn’t exactly my cup of tea).
Mother Country (Jeremy Harding): I picked up this memoir from the £4 Bookshop (first published in 2006). It’s essentially a story about two mothers. Harding was born in 1952 (in London) and, when he was a child, his adoptive mother told him he’ been adopted. As he got older, he wondered about the identity of his biological parents and eventually embarked on a quest to find them… but also learn more about his adoptive parents (by this time his adoptive father had died and mother was in a home struggling with dementia) and how little he knew about them. It’s an account of his often difficult and frustrating journey into his past and the slipperiness of memory. It’s a compelling story set within the social fabric of Britain in the 1950s and 60s.
Down By The River (Edna O’Brien): O’Brien died earlier this year (aged 93). I’ve always found her a compelling, fascinating writer. This novel, published in 1996 is an unsparing story of 14 year-old girl who becomes pregnant by her father. Her mother had died a premature and painful death and the girl has nowhere to turn and is unable to tell anyone of her situation (she also tries to drown herself). A neighbour offers to help her and arranges for them to travel to England where she can get a legal abortion… but she is pressured to return before it can take place. Back home, she faces the wrath of opponents of abortion and sympathetic support from liberals. The weeks go by, amid agony and uncertainty before nature provides an answer in its own grim fashion. Apparently, the novel is loosely based on a real 1992 case of a 14-year-old Irish girl, said to have been a rape victim, whose struggles with the legal system caused a nationwide examination of conscience in Ireland. I found it a completely enthralling, albeit hard-hitting and disturbing, story… beautifully written.
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson): This book (first published in 1985) tells the story of Jeanette - adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's chosen people (her mother was a maniacal Pentecostal Christian… something of an understatement!). Keen and passionate, Jeanette seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts. At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. It’s a semi-autobiographical novel and based on Winterson's life growing up in Accrington, Lancashire. It’s beautifully-written, innovative, hard-hitting, tender and, frequently, wonderfully funny. I really enjoyed it.