june-july 2025 books…

Hostages To Fortune (Elizabeth Cambridge): I simply loved this book (another from Persephone, published in 2003, but first published by Jonathan Cape in 1933)… so BIG thanks to Moira for choosing it when we shopped in Bath last month! This autobiographical novel follows the life of a young woman, Catherine, from 1915 until the early 1930s. Her husband, invalided out of the army in 1917, buys a doctor's practice in an Oxfordshire village where they bring up their three children and become involved in village life. I found the novel both unusual and compelling… there is no plot as such, but I nevertheless found myself absorbed in family’s life – which one reviewer described thus: “a surprisingly hard life, full of difficulties and disillusions, but a satisfying one nevertheless”. It’s a book about the realities of parenthood and its attendant joys and frustrations – which, even as a grandfather (observing my own children and their children), I can recognise. Although the book describes life from a century or more ago, it didn’t feel all that different from the lives we live today. Having said that, it deals with the time during and immediately following WW1 and, at the end of the book (set in the early 1930s), it felt strange/sad reading about lives that, unknown to the author, were soon to be affected by a second World War.
A Place Called Winter (Patrick Gale): This is our next Blokes’ bookgroup book (which I first read 10 years ago). I think my views on the book from 10 years ago still stand: ‘This novel, set in the early years of the 20th century, tells the story of a gay Englishman who was ostracised by his family after an illicit affair and forced to make a new life for himself on the harsh Canadian prairies. It’s actually loosely based on the life of Gale’s own great-grandfather and compiled after he’d read a huge hoard of letters+papers inherited from his maternal grandmother. In the notes that accompanied my copy of his book, Gale readily accepts that, while he respected the “known facts, keeping real names, and houses and dates”, his story “inevitably… moved further and further away from reality”. I found the mix of fact and storytelling a little difficult to take at times. Nevertheless, it’s a tender, compelling and beautifully-written book and one that I enjoyed reading’.
Sentenced To Life (Clive James): I’ve been re-reading this book (published in 2015) for my daily, early morning reflections. It’s an honest, unflinching collection of poems looking back on his extraordinarily rich life as he approached his death (he died in 2019). I again found his words/reflections/regrets/joys/guilt/memories really quite poignant and insightful – albeit sometimes overly self-pitying perhaps.
Goodnight Tokyo (Atsuhiro Yoshida): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup choice (theme: books in translation)(translated by Haydn Trowell). Taxi driver Matsui is one of the book’s key characters (although there’s a whole host of characters!). Every night between 1am and 4.30am he drives around Tokyo’s streets collecting his passengers and their stories. The book’s story is told over a number of nights: confessions of intimacy, loneliness and the surreal… and punctuated by Matsui’s dawn arrival at his favourite canteen for a plate of their famous ham and eggs. Initially, I felt somewhat confused by the relationships of the several characters and so, after perhaps 30 pages, ended up scribbling out something of a ‘flow chart’ to remind myself who was who and how their lives were connected (which, I have to say, helped enormously)! In the novel’s ‘Afterword’, the author describes the book as “the intersection of… ten fantastic tales” and that these “only exist in his mind, at least for time being” (“intimately and compellingly connected” – as described on the book’s cover). I’ve read quite a few novels by Japanese authors over the years and many of them seem have a similar quirkiness or style to them. I have to admit that it took me a little time to ‘get into’ the novel and appreciate fully the fact that the characters’ interwoven stories… but once I did so, I really enjoyed it.
Little Boy Lost (Marghanita Laski): This novel (originally published in 1949 (but this Persephone edition 2001) tells the journey of an English poet/writer, Hilary, who returns after the war (WW2) to a blasted and impoverished France in order to trace a child lost 5 years before. Hilary’s wife had died at the end of the war, but had vowed to get their son to a place of safety. A French friend had contacted Hilary believing that he may have tracked down the lost little boy to an orphanage… and Hilary sets out to find answers. Is the child really his? And does he want him? It’s a hugely compelling story about love, generosity, goodness and uncertainty. I found Laski’s writing incredibly impressive – always assured and understated – and with the tension and suspense maintained until the very last line. Quite brilliant.