Letters To A Friend (Diana Athill): I’ve loved reading Athill’s books (she died earlier this year, age 91). For nearly five decades, she acted as editor for some of the most celebrated writers in the English language. This is a book of letters (1981-2007!) belonging to Athill’s dear friend Edward Field, an American poet, to whom they were written. They started the correspondence when he’d asked for her help in reviving the reputation of his friend, Alfred Chester, who had died in 1971. Athill is wonderfully eloquent, self-deprecating, funny and delightfully crude! It’s almost as if you can hear her talking when reading her books. During the course of her eighties, she refers to her absolute dependency on her car to get herself from A to B while, at the same time, makes endless references to her poor eyesight (she refused cataract operations for years). Somewhat alarming that, following eye surgery, she suddenly exclaimed that she could actually SEE to drive! She was clearly an absolute liability on the road and would never have passed the sight test! Again through her eighties, there are regular references to her having receiving court summonses for failing to pay parking fines (because she’d forgotten) and for driving for a year without having renewed her road tax! For years, quite understandably, she refused to be tempted by computers and emails (handwriting everything)… but the last quarter of the book is dominated (setting aside health issues) by hilarious references to her battles with technology (when she did finally decide to change her ways). For example: ”For the last three days when I’ve tried to see what e-mails have come in, it has said that it is about to access seven new ones, and that little arrow which starts pouring into a box has got to work, but nothing has appeared, and when it reaches four of seven it has just gone on and on and on saying that it is doing that one, for as much as twenty minutes, and still nothing appears!”. Hugely entertaining. A rather extraordinary lady.
Normal People (Sally Rooney): This is Rooney’s second novel; I haven’t read the first, but I will. Rooney is in her mid-twenties and, it seems, is a born writer who has the apparently effortless ability to write sparse, mesmerising dialogue that is uplifting, tense, tender and insightful all at the same time. I absolutely loved her writing style. The book is set in the student world of Dublin and focuses on two friends – both brilliant students, coming from different social classes – who see the world through similar eyes (with one or two exceptions), but who frequently fail to communicate with each other effectively… which, of course, is often the way it is with young love (although I’m probably too old to remember!). I read it in a day and a half and really enjoyed it.
We Have Always Lived In The Castle (Shirley Jackson): This short novel, first published in 1962, is a strange, haunting, menacing story (it almost gives a sense of being a fairy tale?) told through the eyes of an eighteen year-old female, Merricat. She lives in a large, isolated family house with her older sister Constance and her ill, wheelchair-bound uncle (and her cat) in an unspecified village. According to Merricat, people in the village had always hated them and the family’s interaction is limited to stubborn, twice-weekly shopping trips undertaken by Merricat herself. Six years before, their entire family was poisoned. One of the sisters must surely have been responsible for their deaths, but Constance was duly acquitted and, of course, Merricat was just a child. Merricat is ‘domesticated’ by only person, Constance; we learn of several household tasks that the younger sister isn’t allowed to do (food preparation and handling knives, for example); there’s a sense of ritualistic, poetic ‘madness’ and a quiet, rather scary, sense of horror. It’s a chilling, disturbing and unsettling story – and quite brilliantly written.
Where Shall We Run To? (Alan Garner): I can recall reading (or at least starting to read) Garner’s “The Moon of Gomrath” to our daughters when they were young… but I don’t think I was ever captivated by his world of myth and magic. Garner was born in 1934 and his childhood was spent in Alderley Edge, Cheshire and this book is about his wartime childhood. Written in the first person, in the past tense, it is a charming, funny, gentle recollection of his rural, working class childhood encounters (despite having suffered several life-threatening illnesses which left him bed-ridden for much of the time). People sometimes refer to how childhood memories become vivid again in old age and, certainly, Garner is a bewildering example of such a phenomena (I, on the other hand, seem to have gone through my entire childhood with only a vague recall of events… and very little detail!). Garner is able to remember events, people and words in ridiculous detail (something to do with being a born story-teller perhaps?)… describing all his teachers and his individual classrooms with enormous precision; detailing every house, every carved stone, mysterious well and perilously steep cliff-edge; recalling precise phrases uttered by individuals; and even remembering the names of all his father’s work colleagues(!). At times, I felt Garner was just making things up and showing off – but, deep down, I suspect everything was utterly true… and that I’m just feeling jealous that he has such an amazing memory! A gentle, enjoyable, evocative memoir.
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