december 2025 books...

On Friendship (Andrew O’Hagan): My good friend Peter lent me this rather beautiful book of eight essays on friendship… which I read slowly to myself as part of my early morning reflections (apparently, they’re re-worked from a series recorded for Radio4). The essays include recollections about a lost childhood friend from the council estate where he grew up in North Ayrshire; about former colleagues at the London Review of Books, where O’Hagan made his name in the 1990s; and about his adult daughter’s bygone imaginary friend. For me, a particular highlight concerned his long-standing friendship with the late Irish novelist Edna O’Brien, whom he first met in London in 2009. They ended up meeting regularly together during which “we called upon each other to complete thoughts we were unable to have alone”. A really lovely book.
The Wilder Path (Deborah Tomkins): Tomkins attended one of the recent ‘Resonate’ sessions at St Stephen’s church… (just a side note: I thought the book’s cover+titles bore a ‘rather close’ resemblance to Raynor Winn’s ‘The Salt Path’ and ‘The Wild Silence’ books!). I was intrigued by the fact that this was a novel about Climate Change (as opposed to non-fiction). The action takes place over a number of years (I found the timescale somewhat confusing!). The book starts with Rosalie, the narrator, caught between Cornish cliffs in an unforgiving storm… reflecting back on the death of one of her sons several years before in sea tragedy (he was an environmental ‘activist’ volunteering with Greenpeace) – his death continued to haunt her; she and her family were hugely sceptical about their son’s climate concerns… but, after due research, Rosalie becomes evangelically convinced that her son was right… and, much to her family’s and friends’ cynicism, she becomes wholly immersed in advocating and adopting a carbon neutral lifestyle (given a mission to save the world?) (*no spoilers*). I have to say that I was hugely disappointed in the book… yes, the Rosalie character was a little eccentrically ‘crazy’ (understatement) but, frankly, she didn’t come across as a credible individual at all in my view. It’s a very readable book – and, in some ways, it reads a bit like a parable – but I have to say that I ended up feeling frustrated and somewhat annoyed with the author (I know!). Sorry!
Sympathy Tower (Rie Qudan): This was a ‘lucky dip’ gift from Storysmith’s Christmas party! The book attracted controversy for being partly written (5%?) using AI. It’s set in the near-future where the practice of a radical sympathy toward criminals has become the norm. Acclaimed Japanese architect, Sara Machina, has been commissioned to build a new tower in the heart of Tokyo (right next to Zaha Hadid’s Olympic Stadium) to house convicted criminals (now considered to be victims of circumstance) in “compassionate comfort” (no one every wanted to leave!). The architect is haunted by a crime she experienced as a young girl… which causes her to doubt the values of the project. The concept of the book is intriguing and clever (despite my distinct reservations about AI chatbot) but, for me, it really failed to hold my interest.
The Children’s Book (AS Byatt): This is our Storysmith Christmas/New Year book (an opportunity to read somewhat ‘longer’ books – this one: just 615 pages!). This novel, published in 2009, provides a particular slice of late 19th-century life – with its precariously utopian values, resolute Fabians, unstable artists, progressive humane values etc. Novelist Olive Wellwood (a ‘magical tales’ author) writes a special private book for each of her children, who play in a story-book world… but (as the book’s dustjacket puts it!) “their lives and those of their rich cousins and their friends are already inscribed with mystery”. It’s a complex, intricate, compelling story involving some five(?) families and in locations ranging from a rambling farmhouse in Kent; the South Kensington Museum; Dungeness; London; Germany; and Cambridge University; to war-torn battlefields and hospitals. From the very start, I quickly became aware of the vast number of characters involved (not to mention all the swarming children!) and realised that I’d never remember them all: eg. which of the individuals would come to play major roles in the story? who was related to who? Hilariously, I resorted to scribbling FOUR pages of notes that I kept referring to and adding various ‘details’ as I went along (complete with lots of arrows indicating obscure ‘potential links’ between characters)! The novel covers a wealth of subjects - from late Victorian banking crises; class; marriage; infidelity; poverty; pottery; puppetry; the Arts and Crafts; war; politics; duty; and the Fabian and suffrage movements… and a whole range of unexpected(?) couplings, sudden appearances/disappearances and individual histories of the characters themselves. At times, it’s a little difficult to keep up but, overall, it tells a credible story – although, for me, some of the ‘loose ends’ were perhaps tidied up a little too convincingly at the end. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it. She’s a very gifted storyteller.
Advent Readings From Iona (Brian Woodcock+Jan Sutch Pickard): I used this book as part of my early morning reflections for the Advent period (I’ve used it as various times over the past 15 years or so). Strangely(?), although I found a number of the daily musings quite thought-provoking, overall I realised that the words (especially the biblical references) no longer resonated with me in quite the same way and I rather struggled. Somewhat typical of my spiritual journeying perhaps.
Ridiculously, it turns out that I’ve read NINETY books this year!