august-september 2021 books…

Many Different Kinds Of Love (Michael Rosen): Rosen was ‘feeling unwell’ towards the end of March 2020… struggling to breathe. He was subsequently admitted to hospital, suffering from coronavirus. He ended up spending months on the wards – 6 weeks in an induced coma and many more weeks of rehab and recovery as the NHS saved his life. This is a beautiful, often harrowing, book of Rosen’s prose poems from that time… about love, life and the NHS. It underlines the severity of the virus (which obviously accounted for many lives), captures his struggles, the support from his amazing wife and family and, perhaps most of all, the moving coronavirus diaries of his nurses and doctors written when he was in his coma… personal messages from his nurses. Here’s just a brief extract from one of them (chosen at random) to give you a flavour: “Hi Michael. My name is Lizzie and I am your helper tonight. I’m normally a physio working in outpatients but I’m currently helping out in ITU during the Covid pandemic. I looked after you on one of your first nights, so it’s so lovely to see how far you’ve come… Thank you for all the lovely books and poems you have gifted us, ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’ is one of my favourite childhood books! We have also laminated the poem you did for the NHS anniversary which is by your bed…”. I spent much of the first part of the book – which included these diary extracts – with tears in my eyes. Moving. Beautiful. A powerful celebration of the power of community and the importance of kindness in dark times.
The Old Man And The Sea (Ernest Hemingway): I read this book (first published in 1952) after watching a TV documentary about the author – I decided that I really SHOULD have read more Hemingway (this is just my third book of his). He writes beautifully. This is just a short novel (some 97 pages), but something of an acclaimed ‘masterwork’. It tells the story of an old Cuban fisherman; life has rather worn him down and yet he still dreams. Lately, the old man has endured 84 days without a catch (and much ridicule among his fellow fishermen)… but, today, will be his day. He eventually, single-handedly, catches an enormous fish (‘18ft from nose to tail’) but, in bringing home his trophy (tied to the side of his old skiff) numerous sharks attack and feast of the fish’s flesh – leaving him with just the skeleton of his ‘catch’ to bear witness to his exploits. He ends up winning the battle, but losing the prize. Poignant, powerful and profound.
All For Nothing (Walter Kempowski): This was our previous Storysmith bookgroup book. It’s set in rural East Prussia at the beginning of 1945. The Russian army is advancing and refugees are fleeing the occupied territories in their thousands – in cars and carts and on foot. It focuses (at least at the start) on life in the run-down grandeur of the manor house where the wealthy von Globig family seals itself off from the world and make no preparations to leave until a decision to harbour a stranger for the night begins their undoing. It took me a little time to get into this book (perhaps 80 pages or so?), but I then became completely captivated by the struggle for survival. People, with next to nothing, needing to ‘up sticks’ at a moment’s notice and join the endless lines of others participating in a tragic exodus. Reading the book at a time when similar events are being enacted in Afghanistan RIGHT NOW as people try to flee from the Taliban ‘takeover’ of that country made the events described in the book even more powerful and pertinent. This, Kempowski’s last novel (first published in 2006, with Anthea Bell’s excellent translation published in 2015), is a beautiful, forgiving, compassionate book which manages to look beyond the futile divisions people make between themselves (whether they be Jew, Nazi, peasant, aristocrat, Pole or foreigner) – whether they be victims or perpetrators. A brilliant book.
Dear Bill (Richard Ingram+John Wells): In the course of moving house, my bedside pile of ‘to read’ books has been secreted into one of several cardboard boxes… unfortunately, it appears that it’s going to take some time for me to track them down! In the meantime, I came across this book (first published in 1980 in ‘Private Eye’) of fictitious “collected letters of Denis Thatcher” to his golfing friend and decided to re-read them. They are very, very funny… but also a stark reminder of those depressing days when Denis’s wife ruled the land. Sadly, not a lot has changed over the past 40 plus years!
The Hare With Amber Eyes (Edmund De Waal): This is our next Storysmith bookgroup book (based on a biography theme). Essentially, it tells of master potter De Waal’s researches about how he came to inherit a collection of 264 netsuke (miniature sculptures originating in 17th century Japan in fine-grained wood or ivory to “reward touch and endure wear”) from his great-uncle Iggie. It’s a fascinating and elegant book that traces the netsuke’s journey through generations of De Waal’s remarkable family from Odessa to Paris in the 1870s, from occupied Vienna to Tokyo… and to London. The story (certainly for the early part of the book) drips outrageous wealth, privilege, influence and ‘Jewishness’ (barely does a page go by without some reference to his Jewish ancestry). But, by the end of the book, De Waal acknowledges that he no longer knew quite what the book was about – his family or memory or himself… or “still a book about small Japanese things”. It’s an absolutely fascinating and brilliantly researched book (and De Waal writes quite beautifully). Although, at times, I found myself struggling to pick my way through its complex trail - it took me nearly three weeks to read (a long time for me, these days) – there were also times when I was transfixed by the horror of what the family had to endure from the end of the 1930s, right through to beyond the end of WW2 (of course, I knew about the atrocious treatment of Jews under the German (and Austrian) Reich and yet, reading accounts of what happened to De Waal’s family, brought home the true terror of man’s potential inhumanity towards his fellow man. In the end, De Waal won me over. It’ll be interesting what my bookgroup makes of it all.