Barchester Towers (Anthony
Trolloppe): Over the
years, there have been LOTS of ‘classic’ novels that I’ve avoided reading… and
I only decided to read this one after Moira’s bookgroup had recently enjoyed
(re-)reading it. I’m very pleased I did. As you probably already know,
Trollope’s book is set in the fictional cathedral town of Barchester and
recounts the tales, intrigues and ambitions (and loves) amongst that pillar of
Victorian society – the Church. I particularly enjoyed the names of some of the
characters (Tom Towers, the Quiverfuls, Sir Omicron Pie etc) and Trollope’s
observations from the perspective of the writer (eg. “We must now take leave of
Mr Slope, and of the bishop also, and of Mrs Proudie. These leave-takings in
novels are as disagreeable as they are in real life; not so sad…”). The writing
is elegant, clever and very amusing - the plot frequently reads something akin
to a ‘Whitehall farce’ (but in a good way). I think my only real criticism is
that this farce has too many acts(!) - it’s a long book, written in two
combined volumes, totalling over 550 pages. But a very enjoyable read
nonetheless.
Factfulness (Hans Rosling): You’ve probably previously come
across some of Rosling’s TED talks (that’s how I first ‘discovered’ him). This
book essentially tells readers that the world isn’t quite as horrific and they
thought… it attempts to train us all how to put ‘news’ into perspective and,
for someone (like me!) who frequently views the world as a ‘hopeless case’,
that’s got to be good news! The book is full (and I mean ‘full’) of
fascinating, frequently surprising facts and statistics. Rosling is quite
brilliant (he died in 2017) and, without doubt, I’ll continue to dip into this
book on a regular basis… and continue to be surprised by many of its findings. I
admit there were times when I found its style somewhat ‘smug’ (eg. he’d
frequently provide readers with a number of statements and ask them to identify
which one was actually true or most accurate. After the first few pages, you
became aware that the ‘true’ one will be the one you’d probably regarded as the
most unlikely… and he would be telling readers that even a bunch of chimpanzees
would be more likely to choose the correct answer than you… or a group of
nuclear scientists or whatever). But, hey, a fascinating and ‘hopeful’ book.
May Week was In June (Clive James): I first read this 29 years ago
(blimey)… I notice that, on the cover of my 1991 edition, Nigella Lawson –
writing for ‘Book Choice’ is quoted as follows: “This is a good book” (that’s the
entire quote!). On the basis of such eloquence and insight, I think I’m going
to be a book reviewer when I grow up. As you probably know, I just love James’s
writing and I’ve so enjoyed re-reading this book. His final years ‘studying’ at
Cambridge in the 1960s coinciding with my time starting at the School of
Architecture in Oxford – so, although I was never part of the ‘Oxbridge scene’
(obviously!), I was very familiar with May Week traditions/May Balls and the
like ‘by association’ (ie. by being a student in Oxford) and what else was
happening in the world at that time (student riots in Paris, Vietnam war,
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Bobby Kennedy+Martin
Luther King Jnr assassinations, swinging 60s, music, fashion etc). He’s
highly intelligent and ridiculously well-read, he’s conceited… and he’s very,
very funny. This recounts the time (living something of a hand-to-mouth
existence) when he threw himself in to Footlights, film reviewing, writing
poetry, developing a passion for the Arts, discovering the stunning beauty of
Florence, falling in love (frequently), getting married… and reading countless
works of literature (anything so long as it wasn’t on the curriculum). I’m
almost certainly going to have to re-read lots of his other books (I’ve got
LOTS of them). I loved re-reading this one.
Heimat (Nora Krug): This is a rather poignant and
beautiful book. It’s a German family album put together by a German-American
woman, now living in New York, about her family’s life in Germany as the Nazis
rose to power as she seeks to unearth their role in the Holocaust. Krug grew up
as a second-generation German after WW2, in the shadow of her country’s past…
and she decided she couldn’t know who she was without confronting where she’d
come from. The entire book is handwritten and hand-drawn (almost in the form of
a scrapbook), with additional photographs and extracts from old letters. Much
of the book relates to her grandfather’s exploits before and during the war.
She revisits her family’s ‘hometown’ in Germany; she talks to relatives of
people who might have known her family… it proves to be a difficult, but
important, journey. Highly original and powerful.
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The
Dead (Olga Tokarczuk):
I previously read this exactly a year ago but, as it’s our bookgroup’s latest
book (we chose from a range of gifted authors from the EU in a sort of
anti-Brexit solidarity!), I’ve just re-read it. This is what I wrote a year
ago: “Man Booker International Prize-winner Olga
Tokarezuk is a remarkable writer. This beautifully-written (and
beautifully-translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) noir novel is set in a remote
Polish village and is an account given by an eccentric, reclusive woman in her
sixties (who believes in the stars, prefers animals to people… and is fond of
the poetry of William Blake) following the disappearance of her two dogs. I
found its calm-but-quirky, narrative voice strangely compelling. It’s
essentially a thought-provoking, humorous crime story… and yet, it’s much more
than that: it’s also about animal rights, about injustice against marginalised
people and about what many would see as the hypocrisy of traditional religion.
I really really enjoyed it”. In re-reading the book, I realised just how much
of the detail I’d forgotten, but again found the character of the ‘madwoman’ both quirky and charming. In her Guardian review, writer Sarah Perry
says this: “The novel is almost impossible to
categorise. It is, in effect, a murder mystery: in the bleak Polish midwinter,
men in an isolated village are being murdered, and it is left to Janina
Duszejko, a kind of eastern European Miss Marple, to identify the murderer”...
From the very first page, we learn that she (Janina Duszejko)
is ‘already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my
feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an
ambulance in the Night’! I loved her narrative voice as she describes her
routines, her neighbours and her struggles to come to terms with what she sees
as a chaotic world. I suspect that not everyone in our bookgroup will admire it
as much as I do, so our discussion will be fascinating. I’d definitely
recommend it.
