april 2020 books…

In My Mind’s Eye (Jan Morris): Published in 2018, this is a ‘Thought Diary’; a set of daily meditations on her long life of writing and the rituals of her existence in north Wales. The result is a mixture of her memories and musings, her tastes and prejudices… and her observations on life (ranging from funny, blunt, touching and kind). I love Morris’s writing and this is a rather lovely, gentle book. As perhaps one might expect from a 91 year-old, she ‘bangs on’ about somewhat repetitive themes, including her dear old Honda Civic Type R car; her dislike of zoos; her republican tendencies; her agnosticism; her daily thousand paces walk up and down the lane by her house (always whistling); her despair of today’s world; the decline of the Royal Navy; robots; marmalade; the arts; her partner Elizabeth; the great American songbook; her library (of several thousand books)… and, of course, the key to EVERYTHING in her eyes: kindness. I think my favourite sentence in the book was: “Alas, I never met Leonard Cohen… but I did once meet his mother”! She’s an institution… and I love her.
Scoop (Evelyn Waugh): First published in 1938, I first read this book ten years ago and decided to re-read it as ‘light relief’ from all the current depressing coronavirus matters. It’s an irreverent satire of Fleet Street and tells the story of a young man, William Boot, who lives in genteel poverty in the West Country and who contributes nature notes to Lord Copper's Daily Beast, a national daily newspaper. He is bullied into becoming a foreign correspondent, when the editors mistake him for John Courtney Boot, a fashionable novelist, and is sent to Ishmaelia, a fictional state in East Africa, to report on the crisis there. The novel has been described as one of Waugh’s “most exuberant comedies” but, frankly, this time around – although there are several very funny passages – my overriding reaction to the book was a sense of disgust at Waugh’s several awful ‘stereotypical’, distasteful descriptions of many of the African characters (‘darky’, ‘coon’, ‘nigger’, ‘blacks’ etc). Yes, I appreciate that it’s “of its time” and perhaps rather reflected Waugh’s reactionary character and his negative image as “intolerant, snobbish and sadistic, with pronounced fascist leanings”, but I don’t think I’ll be re-reading the book again.
Tissues For Men (Alan Coren): I re-re-read this almost 40 years since I first read it… in an attempt to gain some emotional relief from all the current coronavirus reports. Even the book’s cover acknowledges a similar sentiment: “At last, the complete cure for gloom and misery!”. Coren, former editor of Punch magazine was an incredibly funny and hugely gifted writer… with an imaginative talent for seeing humour in even apparently mundane subjects. Laugh out loud humour at its brilliant best.
Paul Takes The Form Of A Mortal Girl (Andrea Lawlor): This is my StorySmith bookgroup's latest book and this time we chose ‘LGBT’ as a basic theme. Elisa Gabbert in her review for ‘London Review for Books’ summarised the novel thus: “For a cishet reader like me, (the book) offers an education in gay experience in the 1990s – full of lore, zines and raves – but it’s not preachy or didactic; there are no sneaky lessons, or if there are, they’re so sneaky I barely noticed them” (note: I had to look up what cishet meant: “a person is cishet if he or she is cisgender, meaning identifying with his or her assigned-at-birth gender, as well as heterosexual, or attracted exclusively to people of the opposite sex). Well, it certainly provided ME with an education into gay life! The book’s protagonist, 23 year-old Paul/Polly Polydoris, is able to change sex whenever he/she wants, with no magic wands required… and, believe me, the book is FULL of graphic descriptions of Paul’s/Polly’s NUMEROUS sexual experiences (and these frequently seem to occur on a whim – as a result of a chance glimpse, a casual gesture or a calculated pursuit). He/she is constantly looking for new sexual experiences and opportunities… and sees such encounters as novelties as he/she moves from Iowa to San Francisco (and all this against the backdrop of Aids). I loved Lawlor’s detailed and lengthy descriptions of lots of the key music from the time and of the various elaborate clothes combinations. It’s a love story (admittedly quite unlike any love story I’ve previously read!); it’s very well-written and it’s frequently outrageous and often very funny. I have to admit that I didn’t find the book ‘an easy read’ (not because I was shocked by all the sex, but perhaps a little by the seemingly never-ending number of sexual encounters?) and it took me longer to read than I might have anticipated. Nevertheless, I think the book has received widespread critical acclaim and so I’ll be absolutely fascinated to discover what my lovely bookgroup makes of it.
Mrs Fox (Sarah Hall): This is one of a series of short stories celebrating Faber+Faber’s 90^th birthday (it won the BBC National Short Story Award 2013). It’s a somewhat haunting tale that focuses on the relationship between a husband and wife… about the outward appearance of perfection their relationship portrays to the outside world and yet something is perhaps not quite right… the couple’s situation changes in an instant… how do they react? The book cover puts it like this: “In language harvested from nature, Sarah Hall tells a story of metamorphosis, of wildness and fecundity, and of a man reaching for reason, who cannot let go of the creature he loves”. Beautifully-written and a bit magical.