Wintering (Katherine May): I borrowed this book from Ru. The book’s cover has the additional sub-title of ‘the power of rest and retreat in difficult times’. It’s been on my bedside table for a little while and I thought I ought to read it before winter is fully behind us. Essentially, it’s a poignant meditation on those empty or bare periods of life, when we need to stop and ‘repair’ ourselves (easier said than done?) and to accept that we need to learn to revel in those dark, colourless, cold days. It clearly wasn’t written with a pandemic in mind but, in many ways, her observations about winter provide useful advice for coping with Covid (eg. “we may never choose to winter, but we can choose how”; resorting to ‘guaranteed’ comfort stuff, like re-watching films or re-reading books). As far as our own Covid lockdown is concerned, the book made me wonder if some of us (certainly me) have become aware of our thoughts and coping strategies, but perhaps not noticing others? It contained lots of ‘food for thought’, but I found the following particularly thought-provoking: “ancient folklore… offers us a cyclical metaphor for life, one in which the energies of spring can arrive again and again, nurtured by the deep retreat of winter. We are no longer accustomed to thinking in this way. We are instead in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear; a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth”. It’s a wise and comforting book (beautifully-written and frequently amusing) and a rather lovely reminder that winter can be ‘open season’ for new ideas and challenges; of the pleasures of cold weather; and slow days.
English Pastoral (James Rebanks): Rebanks’s book ‘The Shepherd’s Life’ was the first I read this year… and I immediately predicted that it would turn out to be my ‘book of the year’. Well, having just read Rebanks’s ‘English Pastoral’ (published in 2020), I now wish to modify my original prediction! I absolutely loved this book… it’s a story of an inheritance (his grandfather taught him to work the land ‘the old way’) and of how things have profoundly changed in his own lifetime and how so much has been lost (men+women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds etc). This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place and how, against the odds, it might still be possible to salvage what might have been lost. He’s hugely critical of the pitiful price farmers get paid for their products; he despises the political attitudes of the 1980s; he despairs of how corporations are now ‘in charge’ of everything. It’s an honest, frank, frequently funny, eloquent and also a passionate ‘song of hope’. It’s a beautiful, uplifting, emotional ‘read’ (but, hey, I cry at anything!). Quite brilliant.
We’ll Always Have Paris (Emma Beddington): Moira recommended this memoir to me. I’m a great lover of Beddington’s columns in The Guardian/Observer. She writes beautifully… and seems to have an effortless knack for words; she is highly intelligent (first class History degree at Oxford); she’s a qualified lawyer… and she IS very funny! As a teenager, she decided that when she grew up she was going to be French(!)… free and solitary; sitting at pavement cafés (surrounded by Gauloise cigarette smoke). She DID end up in Paris, but found life far from easy, following her mother’s untimely death. Eventually, her dream DID come true - she found herself with a French boyfriend and two half-French children… but it also brought its fair share of problems (I’ll resist filling in the details – I don’t want to spoil things for you). At times, Beddington is laugh-out loud hilarious, but she also has the wonderful ability of writing with utmost honesty and sadness. She’s frequently very hard on herself (but we’re all flawed) and there were also a fair few times when I found myself feeling that she was just being too selfish (it seemed to me that she ‘wanted it all’)… and yet, by the end of the book, she’d completely won me back. I loved the book… (and cake features very prominently!!).
The Authenticity Project (Clare Pooley): I think I first saw a write-up of this book in The Guardian (or maybe not?)… where it was described as something of a “wonderfully warm, feel-good novel”. So I thought it sounded like the book one should read in the midst of a depressing pandemic! The book’s cover blurb describes the ‘action’ thus: “Julian Jessop is tired of hiding the deep loneliness he feels. So he begins ‘The Authenticity Project’ – a small green notebook containing the truth about his life. Leaving the notebook on a table in his friendly neighbourhood café, Julian never expects Monica, the owner, to track him down after finding it. Or that she’ll be inspired to write down her own story…”. Well, I really enjoyed it (it’s a very easy read) – even if I didn’t really think that Julian would be the kind of person who might have set the book-thing in motion, as it were. In some ways, the novel reflects the author’s own life – apparently, she wrote a hugely popular blog called “Mummy Was A Secret Drinker”. It’s a lovely, encouraging book and well worth reading – it’ll make you feel happy.
A Still Life (Josie George): This is a pretty remarkable memoir. The 36 year-old author – a single mother with a 9 year-old son (and a mobility scooter!) - has struggled with a hugely-debilitating illness for 30-odd years. Doctors are mystified as to what’s wrong with her. There are times when she’s too weak to leave the house; there are times when she can’t even crawl across a room of her tiny, old terraced house (let alone climb the stairs on her knees to the loo). The book alternates between the story of her ‘past’ and a journal of the ‘present’ – complete with all the frustrations about coping; about the unhappiness; about all the restrictions and uncertainties; about government cuts and living on ‘next-to-nothing’… but also about the special people in her life; about learning to live with solitude and stillness; about noticing nature and beauty… and about the JOYS of her life. It’s an inspiring book (but also a book with which I struggled at times… the apparently endless stream of frustrations and problems can be difficult to take!). She’s an excellent writer. It’s a hugely frank and honest book that underlines the importance of “nurturing what we have”. There were times when I felt she was just incredibly naïve and impulsive (and frequently someone who ‘wanted it all’, irrespective of the practicalities)… but, as she acknowledges towards the end of the book, we “need to forgive our younger selves” (and also just to “keep on challenging”). Frequently (ie. for days on end), her ‘world’ is limited to just her tiny house; the community centre in the next street; and the 10-minute ‘walk’ to her son’s primary school. Much of the book was written from her bed (“I’ve spent the best part of 16 years here”) and over the course of a year (starting January 2018). The book was published early in 2021… one just wonders how difficult life must have been - and presumably continues to be - for her (as someone who is obviously ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’), and her son, during the past year of the pandemic – when the community centre has been closed and when travel restrictions have been in place. A very important, candid, intelligent account of what it’s like to struggle with an invisible, unforgiving illness at a time when those in power seem to find it easier to simply ‘turn a blind eye’ towards financially and practically.
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