Category: Books

Blonde (1999): Joyce Carol Oates

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★★★★★

You may think I’m getting soft, seeing the second five-star rating in four days, but trust me on this. I’ve been reading this book since November and, at almost a thousand pages, it is a dazzling modern classic: a sprawling, daring, combative act of imagination. First published in 2000, it gains an even more fervent urgency when read in the light of last year’s snowballing Hollywood scandals. Hovering between fiction and non-fiction, it tells the story of the most iconic woman of the 20th century – so recognisable that you only need a wisp of platinum-blonde hair and the feathered end of a dark eyebrow to put a name to the face on the cover. Yet this is not a biography but a creative reconstruction of the life and times of the girl who started life as Norma Jeane Baker and ended up crushed beneath the glittering celebrity of her alter ego, Marilyn Monroe.

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Gentlemen of the Road (2007): Michael Chabon

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★★★★★

First of all, a very Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday and that the new year brings you all sorts of splendid things. For my own part, 2018 has arrived hand-in-hand with well-meaning resolutions, such as easing off on book-buying. I have such a treasure-trove of things to read that I could quite happily spend the entire year reading books I already own, and that’s doubly true because I received some fabulous things for Christmas. The best presents, as always, are those you don’t expect and this lovely little book ticked all the boxes: here is adventure, derring-do, disguise, intrigue, sardonic wit and rich, luscious prose, all bundled together in 200 pages of 10th-century adventure on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

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The Temptation to be Happy (2015): Lorenzo Marone

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★★★

I was tempted by this book because I thought it was going to be another heartwarming tale along the lines of The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen or My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises, but in fact it was a little harder and more cynical than I was expecting. It’s the tale of Cesare Annunziata, a grumpy old man in Naples, who has lost his wife, alienated his children and failed to make the most of his life. When a young couple move into the flat next door, Cesare plans to remain just as detached and crabby as ever. But fate has other plans, and this miserable old sod finds that, quite against his will, he’s beginning to feel an emotional investment in his new neighbour Emma.

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The Eight Mountains (2016): Paolo Cognetti

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★★★½

Mountains exert a powerful fascination on the modern mind. They offer freedom, escape, wilderness, the shrugging-off of civilisation. They promise an elemental battle between humanity and nature. And they hold out the prospect of possession: peaks to be claimed and conquered. In this restrained and elegant novel, Paolo Cognetti tells the story of Pietro, a young boy from Milan whose life will be shaped by a childhood friendship formed in the high valleys of the Italian Alps. A tale of obsession, of fathers and sons, of friendship and of belonging, this is a poignant glimpse of a fading world.

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Sprig Muslin (1956): Georgette Heyer

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★★★

With Christmas looming on the horizon like a bedizened juggernaut, it’s time for some literary self-indulgence. Fortunately, Georgette Heyer was on hand with this lightweight, farcical and extremely silly Regency novel. It all begins with a meeting in the common room of a small country inn. Sir Gareth Ludlow is a debonair gentleman on his way to propose marriage to his old friend Hester. The unworldly Amanda ‘Smith’ is a teenage runaway with a head full of romantic novels, an overactive imagination and a habit of telling terrific fibs. Now, you may have jumped to certain conclusions on reading that, but it isn’t quite what you think. It’s all jolly good fun, even if it does descend further into absurdity than most of Heyer’s novels.

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The Girl in the Tower (2017): Katherine Arden

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★★★★

Winternight: Book II

Hot on the heels of The Bear and the Nightingale comes its sequel: another compelling slice of Russian-flavoured fantasy, prickling with ice and magic. Our heroine Vasya has saved the villagers of Lesnaya Zemlya from an evil far greater than that of the Devil the priests have taught them to fear, and far older than the icons and crosses of their churches. Yet her reward is scorn, distrust and hostility: a reputation as a witch. And so her eyes turn to the horizon, to the wider world she has craved for so long. With her incomparable horse Solovey, she sets out – but not before her path leads her back to a little house in a fir-grove in the forest, where the frost-demon Morozko waits for her.

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Self Made Man (2006): Norah Vincent

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★★★

My Year Disguised as a Man

As long-term readers of this blog will know, I’m very interested in gender as a concept. How do we internalise society’s expectations of gender? How can we tackle gender imbalance in the workplace and the boardroom? Is gender itself innate or created? How can we reinvent our own gender, and with what level of success? When I heard about this book, it promised to answer another question that niggles with me a great deal and which, perhaps, I’ll never really know the answer to. Is there really that much difference between men and women? Norah Vincent, a New York journalist best described as ‘fearless’, decides to investigate this question. Rather than simply collecting information from interviews, she goes one better: she decides that, for a whole year, she will join her subjects, dressing, socialising, living and dating as a man. It’s a daring project and fascinating to read about, even if I have some misgivings about her methods.

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Jamilia (1958): Chingiz Aïtmatov

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★★★½

One thing I wanted to do this year, which I haven’t really managed, is to read more novels from other cultures. Perhaps that’s something I can pick up again in the New Year. I want to use fiction as a way to understand how people from other parts of the world think; the principles they live by; and the challenges they face. And, more than that, I hope to find further proof for my belief that we are all, fundamentally, much the same, no matter where we come from. No matter the language we speak, the faith we follow or the colour of our skin, there are certain common experiences that affect us all. Hope, ambition, fear, loss, and love above all. This novella by the celebrated Kyrgyz author Chingiz Aïtmatov, who died in 2008, focuses in on this last, for a brief but beautiful story of star-crossed lovers in the shadow of the steppes.

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The Absolutist (2011): John Boyne

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Photo: Alan Betson

★★★★

It is 1919 and Tristan Sadler arrives in Norwich to meet Marian Bancroft, the sister of his friend and comrade Will Bancroft. Tristan has come to return the letters Marian wrote to her brother, which he has kept ever since Will’s death. And yet he hasn’t made this journey solely for the sake of restoring a piece of her family history. There are things Tristan needs to say; amends he needs to make. Will Bancroft didn’t die in action, but was shot by a firing squad of his own peers, hauled up on charges of cowardice after proclaiming himself an ‘absolutist’ – the firmest kind of conscientious objector. Tristan needs to tell Marian that her brother wasn’t a coward; but he also hopes, in meeting her, to find some closure for his own traumatic experiences on the Western Front.

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A Search for the King (1950): Gore Vidal

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PARIS, FRANCE – MARCH 20. (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been shot in black and white. Color version not available.) American writer Gore Vidal poses during portrait session held on March 20, 1983 in Paris, France. (Photo by Ulf Andersen/Getty Images)

★★½

Some years ago, I read and enjoyed Gore Vidal’s Julian, which tells the story of the young pagan who becomes Emperor in a post-Constantine, Christian world. Since then, I’ve been keen to try more of his historical fiction and this book was the first to come into my hands. I had high hopes for it, as I’ve always been fascinated by Richard the Lionheart – probably due to my childhood fondness for Robin Hood stories: Richard’s own record as an indifferent King of England certainly doesn’t do him any favours. Vidal focuses on a particular episode from Richard’s life: the King’s famous capture in Austria on his return from the Crusades, and the faithful (and probably fictional) quest of Richard’s troubadour Blondel, who sets out to find his master’s prison, armed only with his viol, his voice and a good deal of faith.

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