Blue Lightning (Ann Cleeves): If you read my book posts reasonably
regularly, you’ll just know how much I absolutely love the Shetland books. This
is the fourth I’ve read and I’ll be ordered number five very soon! Detective
Perez returns home to Fair Isle with his wife-to-be, but with the autumn storms
raging, the island is completely cut off (no boats or planes can get through).
A body is discovered and so Perez, as the only police representative on the
tiny isle, is compelled to investigate. I found this ‘thriller’ hugely
satisfying in terms of plot, intrigue, characters and location (but no
spoilers!). Beautifully crafted and written… probably my favourite book of the
series so far – and that’s saying something!
The Beautiful Summer (Cesare Pavese):
Pavese (1908-1950) sets
this short novel in Turin in the 1930s, during the rise of Mussolini and
fascism. It tells the story of a sixteen-year-old young woman who is desperate
for a life of adventure. She begins a friendship with an artist’s model (who,
in her early 20s, she sees as someone with style and sophistication) who
introduces her to a new world of bohemian artists and intoxicating freedom. She
starts a desperate love affair with an enigmatic young painter. It’s a story of
lost innocence and you just KNOW that the affair is destined to be short-lived
(in fact, no longer than the course of a summer). In her introduction to the
book, Elizabeth Strout provides this interesting background: “In his real life,
Pavese had trouble with women; he felt the betrayal of them deeply. In this
book, he uses those feelings and gives the portrait of an innocent, on the
verge of discovering the cruelties of love”. Ten years after writing this book,
he committed suicide following a brief affair with an American actress.
The Marches (Rory Stewart): This is a truly wonderful book by
Tory MP Rory Stewart. It’s about
walking along ‘the Marches’ (the frontier that divides Scotland and England).
Two walks feature in the book – one along the length of Hadrian’s Wall, the
other from Stewart’s home in Cumbria to his father’s house in Perthshire on the
Scottish Borders. Stewart and his aged father, Brian, used to undertake lots of
walks together in years gone by. These walks essentially just feature Rory –
with his father ‘ambushing by car’ from time to time. The book was published
2016, a year after his father’s death, aged 93. Despite the privileged nature
of the family (not to mention their political leanings!), their respective
military careers and their shared affection for the Black Watch and all its military
associations (not to mention Brian’s rather bombastic, hectoring, old-fashioned
and interfering nature), I grew to really admire the author. He seems like a
very decent man – highly intelligent, incredibly knowledgeable about history (especially
battle sites), but also passionate and conversant about nature… and with a keen
interest in people (of all classes and backgrounds), social history and
traditions. It’s also a very moving, beguiling and honest book – and frequently
funny and gently self-mocking. Rory clearly sought to speak to his father about
a whole raft of things in his final years… and the book is a fitting tribute to
his father’s extraordinary life (no.2 in the Intelligence Service; proficient
in Chinese, Cantonese, Malay and Hokkien; author; lover of Scottish dancing
etc), but I also got a strong sense of Rory Stewart’s own humanity and commonsense.
The book reminded me (despite trying very hard) of my own frustrated attempts to
have meaningful conversations with my father (and to re-visit special places)
in the final months of his life (he died in 1992). I REALLY enjoyed this book…
and suspect it will be one of my ‘books of the year’.
Becoming (Michelle Obama): I took the opportunity to read my
lovely friend Gail’s copy of this book while staying at her apartment in
Plymouth. It makes fascinating reading about her ‘working-class’(?) childhood
and family life in Chicago and her subsequent experiences that saw her getting
to Harvard, working as a high-powered corporate lawyer, meeting and marrying
Barak Obama and their subsequent lives within the political arena. It’s an
honest, bold book (at times a bit too ‘American’ for me but, hey, she IS
American and she’s writing about her life in the US!). She clearly feels
passionately about encouraging young people (especially black females) to ‘become
the best they can become’. In some ways, it paints a very depressing picture of
US politics (perhaps not just American politics?) – the sacrifices, the
complete dedication required, the fact that you and your family can’t go
anywhere without security service personnel in tow (and with them checking your
itineraries in advance), living lives completely under a spotlight and the
utterly obscene (in my view) financial costs involved. Take this quote from the
book, for example: “The cost was huge. (Barack and Mitt Romney, the former
Massachusetts governor who would eventually become a Republican nominee, would
each raise over a billion dollars in the end to keep their campaigns
competitive)”. She certainly doesn’t hold back in her distain for Donald Trump
and all he stands for. The book’s epilogue includes the following words: “I’ve
never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last ten years has
done little to change that. I continue to be put off by the nastiness – the tribal
segregation of red and blue, this idea that we’re supposed to choose one side
and stick to it, unable to listen and compromise, or even to be civil”. My
thoughts exactly! An impressive book.
The Silence Of The Girls (Pat
Barker): I’ve just
joined one of our local StorySmith bookshop’s book group and this is our next
book. It’s a powerful, illuminating, sobering ‘take’ on Homer’s Iliad – but from
a female perspective. I have to say that my ‘Iliad knowledge’ was somewhat limited,
but I was certainly aware that, at its heart, it featured the
terrible destruction caused by male aggression. Barker’s novel is brilliant
re-telling of the story focussing on the experiences of the women on the periphery
of the battles, whose bodies and ‘pretty faces’ are the objects through which
men struggle with each other for status. The women grieve for their dead sons,
dead fathers, dead husbands and dead protectors. Very early on in the book, I
remember feeling shocked and sickened by this stark comment made by one of the
women, Briseis (much of the story is told through her eyes and experiences –
although apparently Homer only mentions her 10 times in his poem): “And then
they turned their attention to us”. Briseis is ‘awarded’ to Achilles, the great
Greek fighter, after his army sacks one of Troy’s neighbouring towns – the same
Achilles who had killed her husband, her parents and her brothers. I frequently
found myself struggling with the ‘accepted fates’ of the raped, enslaved, and
widowed women, such as this description: “I lay there, hating him, though of
course he wasn’t doing anything he didn’t have a perfect right to do”. Each
day, the soldiers battled with their enemy before returning to camp for food, alcohol
(to excess) and sex with their slaves (the ‘trophies of war’). Gods are ever
present in the story’s background (including Achilles’ mother, who was a sea
goddess). Sickening tales of human sacrifices (frequently children) made to the
Gods in order to receive their blessing or avoid their wrath. Barker’s message
is clearly a feminist one, but a very important one that endeavours to ensure
that the ‘defeated’ are not forgotten. I have a feeling this is almost a
masterpiece of a book. I look forward to re-reading huge chunks of it before
our book group next meets… and hearing what the others think about it.
