Orkney by Amy Sackville

An aging Professor of literature marries a young ex-student with silver hair and webbed hands and feet. She asks him to take her to Orkney for their honeymoon. Orkney is the professor’s tale of their days there, the sea and weather blending earth and water and sky into a mythical, magical place of uncertainty.

Whilst the unfolding of the plot was nothing I hadn’t expected, Orkney is an absorbing read, a book that envelops you in the mists of a world out of time, a world of old stories, told with such precise language that you can’t help but long to go back to it and be lost some more.  It is a novel of Fantastical prose poetry. I thoroughly recommend it.

Next week, I’m reading The Light Between the Oceans by M. L. Stedman and the following week I’ll be reading In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield. I’m looking forward to more sea-swept tales.

Please do send in suggestions for future books you’d like me to read. I’d also love to hear your comments.

On Monday, I’m going to be taking part in the Writing Process Blog Tour. I was invited to do so by Heidi James, whose uncompromising and beautiful book Wounding I reviewed earlier this year and encourage you to buy and read if you haven’t already. You can read her responses to the Writing Process Blog Tour here. Do look back for my responses in my next blog.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged was considered by Ayn Rand to be her masterpiece, the best fictional expression of her philosophy of objectivism. Dagny Taggart, a woman of intelligence and purpose, runs the railroad built by her ancestor, Ned Taggart. She runs it regardless of private or public opinion about her right as a woman, or an individual, to run the largest railroad in America. But America is being run into the ground by a group of mindless bureaucrats who are looting the inventions and businesses of individual men for the so called good of the whole. Dagny and a series of male lovers, who seem to each outstrip the other in their heroic grandeur, stand against this destruction, ultimately by putting the thinking minds of America on strike.

As a tour de force for a heroic, righteous capitalism, the novel is both beautiful and excruciating. The idea that people can deal with each other in mutual respect, on the basis of merit, promised or earned, regardless of background, is a pleasing one. But, and there are several big buts, the novel has many flaws, for me at least: Rand is far too tempted to stray off into long monologues about her political ideals and as the novel goes on I had less and less stomach to read repetitions or rewordings of arguments already stressed many times previously (I should add that the children’s story, Denver, by David McKee, aimed at the under 5s, summarises her political argument in only a few pages with a few lines of text on each page – it leaves me equally unnerved by the simplicity of its assumptions about wealth and the lack of wealth); her capitalism and her objectivism fail to allow for humans to be anything other than heroic, which is admirable, but ridiculous, given that capitalism has always worked in practice with the looters, as she calls them – I feel that she sweeps aside the moral confusions that others have tried to explore in, say Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw; whilst I applaud Dagny’s sexuality as something that best expresses our mind and body as the whole that it is, it irritates me that the language of conquest and subjugation is the one Rand chooses to use and that Dagny’s intellectual rise is met in her choice of lovers – yes, I suppose you could argue she is the ultimate conquest, that gaining her favour is the best reward for a life lived in truth, but what about other women? Why would their intellect not excite sexual passion? She endures the struggle against a failing world the longest, but why should that make her desirable as anything other than an ally?

Ultimately, I wish I had read The Fountainhead instead: it’s shorter. That sounds cynical. Atlas Shrugged is a challenging novel that asks us to expect the best in ourselves, to love ourselves and to expect that of others. That is a beautiful idea. I’m just not sure that all the rest of it is as easy as Rand makes out or as beautiful. I understand how the world she depicts is destroyed, but I can’t decide if I have more or less faith in the expectations and hopes of most people on the planet. I’m also not sure that all of her ideas are consistent, but then again did I read the novel to be convinced of a political argument? Is that what novel writing is about? I would suggest not. I would suggest it should be about raising questions and Atlas Shrugged does just that. I would be interested to see how differently her arguments are expressed in her purely philosophical works. The fact that she chose to move away from fiction after Atlas Shrugged suggests to me that she realised that literature can’t really do the work of a philosophical tract; I think it should do more. Whether Atlas Shrugged does more, I remain unsure. Simply reading this book in a week felt like a challenge. I would probably do better to climb the summit of reviewing it in another week’s time, but that’s the nature of this blog. Reflection isn’t always an option.

Next week I’ll be reading Orkney by Amy Sackville. Suggestions for future reading and comments on the blog are always welcome.

In The Light Of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman

In the Light of What We Know opens when an old friend of the narrator’s, Zafar, turns up on his South Kensington doorstep with nothing but a small bag and a story to tell. The narrator proceeds to tell that story in a first person narrative whose referent floats between the narrator and Zafar, using style as well as substance to question the nature of identity. Zafar was born in Bangladesh of a girl raped in the war with Pakistan and was adopted by relatives who brought him to England. His thirst for learning took him away from his life as the son of waiter, into the life of the intellectual elite. In what literary and cultural history does Zafar’s story find a home? Zafar may try to find a home in the world of the ideas, but it leaves him no less troubled. His is a voice of learning cut free from a sense of belonging. His is a story with multiple tongues.

In The Light Of What We Know suggests that all we can learn, any new experience or knowledge, can only be interpreted by what we already know, so that all perception is filtered by who we have been and what we have learned so far. What is beyond our horizon is viewed in the context of what rises to meet that horizon. Two people may learn the same things, but perceived from different angles that learning will be interpreted very differently. The main characters in the novel, the unnamed narrator, and his friend Zafar, may have originated from a similar part of the world – the narrator from Pakistan and Zafar from Bangladesh – but the narrator was born into an elite, well-educated Pakistani family and Zafar was born into poverty. They met at Oxford studying mathematics, but the way they choose to wield the power of their knowledge is very different. Class as well as race are shown to play a large role in both how we access and use knowledge.

Early in the novel, Zafar’s ex-girlfriend, Emily, an upper class English woman, asks him to go to Afghanistan.

“You could make such a difference to the lives of twenty-five million people.

Did she think that Afghanistan was the only place that mattered? And did she think that I might be flattered into coming? Worse still, did she think that anyone could make such a difference? She did. They all did, this invading force of new missionaries. They were an army in all but name, not the army carrying guns that cleared their path, nor one carrying food or medicine. But they came bearing advice and with the arrogance to believe that they could make all the difference. Yes, they mean well, but the only good that an absence of malice guarantees is a clear conscience. I knew Emily believed in their creed, and when I saw that she did, suddenly, as if a wire had been cut inside, I had in me a thought, not yet an intention, but a question, one set out in the languages of my childhood and in the perfectly clean lines of mathematics. I had a thought as powerful as an idea born in oppression: Who will stop these people?” (p34)

 In The Light Of What We Know is full situations in which we are made to question how people earn the right to make decisions about and for others, often without having asked those others what they know or what they think. We follow events in Afghanistan and we are privy to discussions on the finance behind the banking crisis, but the novel is also about the relationship between the narrator and Zafar, and their relationships with their families and with women.

Despite its syntactical and linguistic elegance – written to be quoted alongside the many works the novel itself quotes freely from – and its playful stretching of narrative form, there are things about the book that I found frustrating. The novel is as much a love story as a novel of modern times; yet love, in particular romantic love, is one of the few things the novel truly struggles to express. Perhaps the lessons of subterfuge learnt from the international stage of finance and war sabotage any hopes for meaningful relationships. Even the relationship between Zafar and the narrator is fraught with misconception and deception.

Either way, Meena, the narrator’s wife, and Emily, are central figures in the novel and yet we barely hear a word from either of them. Important moments of emotional crisis are gestured towards but ultimately left seething in an uncomfortable silence. It has not escaped me that this may be intentional – what is not said or written is as powerful as what is and perhaps the potential replaying of the circumstances of Zafar’s own conception are best left unvoiced – but it leaves me frustrated.

The one chapter that does try to write about love is the story of Alessandro Moisi Iacoboni, Chapter 13, and its sentimental tone would, had I been the book’s editor, have made me mark it for deletion. It does however, highlight the importance of lost mothers who seem to be the true vehicles for love in Zafar’s life, but as they are lost they can only cast shadows over romantic affairs that are anything but sentimental or romantic. If anything love affairs between men and women are charged with frustration and self-loathing. There are women in the novel who are viewed in a favourable light, but the main thrust of the story is mostly concerned with the male milieu. It depresses me how easily a novel of international affairs can dismiss women, though the blame for that does not lie entirely with the author, and it makes we wonder about why so much of what we consider to be literary has such a dominantly male tone.

Despite these quibbles, In The Light Of What We Know is a profoundly engaging novel, full of provocation and intrigue. I admire the writing and the conception of the novel immensely. Sometimes I was unsure of how knowing the author was in his use of quotation. Whilst it is ostensibly the narrator who chooses to ground his story in multiple quotations from great writers and thinkers, Zia Haider Rahman is having his cake and eating it. He is asking us to question how knowledge is accrued and delivered, he is asking us to question intellectual posturing, and yet he is also able to wear his very great learning upon his sleeve. This confliction is very typical of the kinds of knots the novel presents. There is something delightful about this kind of provocation, but In the Light of What We Know, never lets you forget that the pleasure comes at a cost.

In The Light of What We Know is a novel full of the pain of wanting to belong. A novel of and for our time, this is book that everyone should read.

Next week I’ll be reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Please do send in suggestions for future weeks.

The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

In The Language of Dying an unnamed narrator talks through the last days of her father’s life. She speaks to him of events unfolding around him, of the past, of how she experienced the past. She is generous about his alcohol addiction and his bouts of ambitious enthusiasm for new life experiences. She reassures him, that through the waste of cancer, she can still see him.

All of this is beautifully written. The way that families adhere to their own well-rehearsed patterns and, but for the occasional surprise, act predictably albeit understandably. Like all families, this family has its secrets, its dysfunctions, but it is still a family and regardless of old wounds they cling to each other in the strange intensity of their father’s dying hold over them. The narrator’s observations of her family and their relationships are depicted with the clarity and bias of truth.

Alongside the life of the family, is the story of the narrator herself. At times of extreme stress, beginning with the night her mother abandons her, all of her unexpressed emotion manifests in a creature of darkness, a magical beast both fierce and forlorn, calling to her to lead some different wild life alongside its gnarled, mystical, muscular being. Whether it springs from the fiery bubblings of her own molten emotion, whether it is a psychotic vision, or whether it exists alongside our reality flitting among the shadows of our lives, we never know, but it breathes down through the narrative with nostrils flared.

Whilst I’m sure that the author does not see these narratives as two halves, it is quite easy to view the book in that way. On the one hand, the precise and painful tale of a father’s passing; on the other, the fantasy of a dark Arcadian alternative to contemporary life. It almost forces a debate about genre fiction. Should there be such clear divisions between what we consider to be literary fiction and what we consider to be fantasy? The living pulse of story will always have routes in the miraculous. But I think I would have liked more room for uncertainty in the ending. I won’t tell you why though, because I think this is a book that deserves a wider readership.

Sarah Pinborough’s prose feels almost effortless. She is very well known in the world of horror, fantasy, sci-fi, but she should have wider recognition. There are resonances with Angela Carter amongst others. I would be quite happy to offer The Language of Dying as an alternative candidate for the 2014 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for fiction. What makes Eimear McBride’s novel more prize-worthy? Read them both and let’s start a debate!

Next week I’m reading In The Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahmen. Please do send in suggestions for the following weeks.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch is a first person account of Theo Decker’s relationship with the Fabritius painting of the same name. Theo walks unharmed from the bombing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the goldfinch painting in a canvas bag. His mother is killed in the bombing and what begins as the salvage of a masterpiece that belongs to everyone, becomes the invisible anchor of Theo’s new and painfully unfettered life.

The novel is undoubtedly well written, full of poignant moments and beautiful descriptions, but there was almost too much. Sometimes I felt as if the narrative was sucking me into Theo’s numb, often drugged, world in a way that left me unable to account for paragraphs of text. Intentional or not, it left me unsympathetic towards Theo. I wouldn’t have been distressed by a suicide endnote. I was remarkably uninterested in his survival, but I was engaged in and frustrated by his behaviour.

It struck me while reading that there is a similar feel to all of Tartt’s fiction: a sense of lost childhood and of the adolescent’s yearning to unravel the mystery of that loss and the mystery of the human condition, which must face the red in nature’s tooth and claw. Freud, Jung, Kristeva, Neitzche, Dionysus, always hover at the edges of her work. Whilst there is a charm and intensity to this exploration and unending reinterpretation of memory and people, there can occasionally be a lurch into the sentimental or, even worse, intellectually postured musings on the meaning of life. Much of the last chapter I would happily have excised. Do we need the protagonist to explain the first person narrative? Somehow, setting down the reasons for writing, at the end of the novel, felt like an after note for any readers who may not have understood what Tartt was trying to say through the story itself. I felt saddened by it, partly because Theo summarises his love of the painting as a love of whispered provocation rather than hackneyed message:

‘The bird looks out at us. It’s not idealized or humanized. It’s very much a bird. Watchful, resigned. There’s no moral or story. There’s no resolution. There’s only a double abyss: between the painter and imprisoned bird; between the record he left of the bird and our experience of it, centuries later.’

He goes on to say,

‘As much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic. / And – I would argue as well – all love.’

Though it seems to me that life is all about that middle zone where perception meets and indeed filters reality, the idea of truth as an illusion speaks to me. This is why I consider literature to be a more useful exploration of the world than philosophy: life isn’t just about thought, the subtler edge of perception should be a fundamentally accepted premis and accompaniment to thought. The chaos of coinciding event and experience feels, for me, too much for cold reason. Art, narrative in particular, can provide the muddied mess of that meeting point, whether it be considered beautiful or not. I’m not sure, however, that laying these ideas out as a kind of postscript to the events of the novel (it’s an irony that both of these quotes come from the last chapter), is the best way to provoke readers into questioning the value of art. Did we need a helpful summary of the pull and sway of art as it affected the characters in the novel? I’d be interested to hear other people’s opinions about this.

The nature of these criticisms, however, could only really arise from something that lives and breathes enough to allow the reader to grapple with it. I’m not sure that I would have given The Goldfinch the Pulitzer (though perhaps the idea of awarding prizes itself feels strangely arbitrary), but it is certainly a novel I would recommend, a novel that more than earns its literary status. Whilst I suspect other novels surrounded by less fuss may have moments that stay with me longer than any in The Goldfinch, I’ve deliberately left out much of a plot summary to allow more readers to read it unspoilt.

Next week I’ll be reading The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough, followed by In The Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman. As ever, please do send in suggestions for books you’d like me to read in future weeks.

Feral Youth by Polly Courtney

I’ve been meaning to read a book by Polly Courtney for some time and rather arbitrarily picked Feral Youth as the first one I wanted to try. Set around the time of the London riots of 2011, the novel follows the life of one young, mixed race girl from Peckham, Alesha. Alesha’s father has never been around and her mother is an alcoholic. Her only family, her fam, is JJ, and he isn’t her real family at all, but more like the brother – possible lover – she never had. As they become more and more reliant on the estate and the local gang to keep them off the streets, we learn how rage against the police and the authorities in general create an explosive climate.

As much as I would like to say that I’m not sure about issue-based literature, and that all that matters is a good tale, it wouldn’t be entirely representative of my own interests and practice. However, when approaching an overtly issue-based novel there is the worry that the story will get buried under the issue: characters can seem two-dimensional, storylines forced. But if a novel that sets out to explore some reasons behind the London riots of 2011 gives us a live character with whom we can sympathise or even empathise, then the issue should be subsumed in the story.

I was concerned that I would find Feral Youth issue heavy, rather than character heavy and I’m pleased to say that in general I did not. Whilst I can’t in any way account for the veracity of Alesha’s experience growing up in an estate in Peckham, I can honestly say that I cared about what happened to her and felt that I could understand at least some of the reasons why she behaved in the way she did. I’m not sure if the connection with her old piano teacher, Miss Merfield, who is white and privileged, certainly in relative terms to Alesha, quite worked for me. Miss Merfield becomes a possible ticket out of the estate and whilst I certainly believe in their connection, is it too neat that Alesha has a talent for music or that the middle classes, namely Miss Merfield, can have problems too? I don’t know. I wanted to feel attached to this novel in the way that I’m attached to Of Mice and Men, which is mentioned in the opening pages. I wanted the voices of the characters to strike chords whose echoes would continue to reverberate years later, but Feral Youth isn’t that kind of novel. It’s pertinent, it’s interesting, it’s provocative, it’s well crafted, but it doesn’t transport me. Again, as with Little Egypt, I hanker for raw edges, for emotions that escape careful plotting.

Feral Youth is an interesting read, but perhaps in my naivety, I wanted to see more. I wanted to know more about JJ. I wanted to see what lies behind his street face. Perhaps I wanted more voices. Perhaps in the end the issues do overwhelm the narrative, whether simply because they are predominant in my mind or because the writer has been unable to push beyond them, I remain unsure of. I suppose ultimately I’m unconvinced and again it has something to do with the novel’s neatness and clarity. But perhaps you won’t be unconvinced. If you have read it, or read it in the future, let me know what you think.

Next week I’m reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, followed by The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough. Do get in touch if there’s a novel you would like me to read and review.

The Wrath of Napolo by Steve Chimombo

In many ways, The Wrath of Napolo reminded me of The Luminaries: it’s an epic unravelling of a tragedy that involves a re-evaluation of nationhood. Though set in the fictional country Mandania, this is a very obvious veil for Malawi, and the tragedy of the novel, the sinking of the Maravi, is a representation of the historical sinking of the M. V. Vipya off Florence (now Chitimba) Bay, Lake Malawi, in 1946.  This national disaster was buried by the politics of several governments, colonial, independent dictatorship and newly democratic. Ignored for 50 years, freedom of speech and a need to expose historical truths encourage the protagonist, Nkhoma, a journalist from the South, to investigate what really happened in 1946 and to uncover who could be considered responsible for the deaths of so many Mandanians. Nkhoma’s interest in discovering the truth comes at a time when other events of previous administrations are under scrutiny, and other leaders see the Maravi as a political tool for gaining power. The search for truth is rarely unmotivated by personal gain and this struggle with the past becomes a personal as well as a national journey.

The whole novel is about unravelling Malawi’s identity. How do you uncover the past and forge the future of a country using colonial tools and with previous administrations’ influence, both colonial and independent dictatorship, still at work? What does it mean to take responsibility for your own and your country’s actions? Heroism, racism, sexism, slavery, tribalism, religion, infidelity, AIDS – all of these are explored through Nkhoma’s search for the truth about the sinking of the Maravi. In the end Nkhoma recognises that redressing the past of his country requires redressing his own past, and the novel ends with him intending to start a truth commission into his own life.

There were things in the novel that worked less well for me. I felt the dialogue sometimes ran away with itself and there is a tendency to speechify. My main issue, however, is with Chimombo’s invention of a country, Mandania, to talk about his own Malawi. It felt disingenuous, especially when the acknowledgements and dedications make it more than clear where the novel is really set. Although being ‘accidentalised’ (murdered if you were thought to speak or act against Banda’s Life Presidency) must still feel fresh to Malawians, the fictionalisation was so overt I wasn’t sure what the point was. I’d be keen to hear other people’s views on this, though of course the likelihood of anyone getting hold of copies of this novel is very slim. I read The Wrath of Napolo sitting in the British Library.

Whatever minor quibbles I might have with character or style, The Wrath of Napolo is an impressive novel of substantial weight that tackles the rebirth of a nation. There is intrigue, danger, beauty and myth. Napolo is a creature of Malawian folk law, an underground serpent, a conflation of ancestral spirits, that causes earthquakes, tornadoes, destruction and death wherever he goes. Why is he angry? Who is he angry with? The Wrath of Napolo suggests that whatever answers you give, his destruction forces the land to be reforged. This is a novel that deserves a wider readership. It saddens me that literature from the developing world, unless published first in America or the UK, is so hard to access. If any English publishers read this, please consider adding Steve Chimombo to your list.

Next week I will be reading Feral Youth by Polly Courtney, followed by The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough. As always, please do suggest ideas for future reading.

Beauty by Sarah Pinborough

There is a lack of pretention to the writing of Beauty that is very enticing. This is storytelling in its richest, oldest form, and as new twists to old fairytales unwound I was taken right back to a period in my childhood when all I did was read Anderson, Grimm and various other fairytale collections. Such stories are dark, full of the metaphoric transformations that mirror the divisions of what it means to be human. Sarah Pinborough’s Beauty brings all of these mesmeric myths to life.

A story about royalty, beauty and beastliness, wolves, spindles, girls with hoods, shining slippers, promised children and witches, what is not to love? Beauty is a reworking of all those familiar tales that weaves new life into their telling, hinting at the impossibility of escaping the recurrence of stories that speak from the foundations of human sensibility. It is not a reworking into the modern day, however, rather a retelling that works for the modern day. If you enjoy fairytales, you will love Beauty.

Next week I’m reading The Wrath of Napolo by Steve Chimombo, followed by Feral Youth by Poly Courtney and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Any suggestions for future reading would be very welcome.

Little Egypt by Lesley Glaister

Little Egypt is a manor house in decline. It is all that remains of an estate sold piecemeal first to fund exploration and excavation in Egypt and then to fund the excavation fall-out. Set in the brief gap between the world wars, and in modern day England, Little Egypt follows the life of Isis, or Sisi as she later calls herself, as she lives under the burden of her parents’ obsession with Ancient Egypt. Hers is a childhood of parental and peer absence, but for her twin brother Osiris who is just as obsessed with Egypt as his parents. Despite frequent visits from their mother’s shell-shocked twin brother, their only real carer is Mary, the housekeeper. When Mary too falls foul of ancient obsessions, Little Egypt and all its secrets become Isis’ responsibility.

I wanted to really like this novel. My parents lived in Egypt for five years when I was in my early teens and I have a hugely sentimental love of the country. I did really enjoy the passages set in Egypt and felt the heat, the sandy, dusty grittiness of everything, and the young person’s confusion over poverty and stray dogs, mixed with the strange faith that adults know better and will navigate you through a world you do not understand. It came as no surprise that an awakening to adult sexuality and responsibility began in Egypt.

Set in beautiful contrast to ancient Egyptian glamour was the older Sisi’s love of consumer gaudiness. Part of the estate was sold to a supermarket chain and for Sisi it becomes a lifeline to the modern world.

However, I wasn’t always happy with the divisions between the past and present. It was almost too neat to wipe away the quiet uneventfulness of the years in-between childhood and old age. It also made the older woman’s forgetfulness divisive, given that we could fill in her memory losses for her. It gave question to Sisi’s reliability in a way that was not supported by the rest of the novel.

I did enjoy reading Little Egypt, but felt frustrated by it because I felt the author had more to give. I wanted to breathe the characters and their experiences, I wanted to feel my gut wrench alongside theirs, but I was somehow distanced from them. Perhaps it is the ease of arranging a novel in a way that avoids all but the most salient of moments? I know any creative writing or literature teacher would tell you that choosing the salient moments is what good writing is all about, and it is true that structure is half of the business, but there is more to it than that and in the end the heart of the novel didn’t beat loudly enough in my ears. What really did happen to Isis in that tomb? My response to the novel is undoubtedly personal and it wouldn’t put me off reading another of Lesley Glaister’s novels, I just have a longing for raw edges, and I would have liked a few more in Little Egypt. Perhaps I like my dark secrets to be darker?! If you don’t, then Little Egypt is probably the well-crafted, compelling novel for you.

Next week I’m reading Beauty by Sarah Pinborough followed by The Wrath of Napolo by Steve Chimombo, Feral Youth by Poly Courtney and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

 

Reflections on the blog so far

I began the blog as a way of encouraging myself to read more and here I am over six months later and over half way through the challenge. At first, a book a week seemed daunting. But, as the weeks have gone on, I have to admit that I’ve not only thoroughly enjoyed myself, I’ve also snuck in a few extra books that I haven’t written about on the blog. I feel like I’m breathing words again and I feel refreshed.

The blog has allowed me to discover new authors to get excited about and some of those authors came from suggestions made by readers of the blog – thank you. The blog has helped me to think further about what I like to read and why. And, unexpectedly, doing the blog put me in contact with Red Button Publishing who published my novel, Home, this March. What a great six months.

I’m going to list my favourite books so far, but I want to be clear that every book, even if I didn’t particularly like it, lived with me for a while. Certain turns of phrase or paths of thought were woven into my everyday life. I can see a giant face with myriad eyes, I can picture a café at which a young woman watches a couple soon to be overcome by tragedy, I can imagine what it feels like to wish for a connection with a future world that doesn’t feel your own, I hear the soft squeak of boots sinking into thick fresh snow. It has not been easy to decide which books I liked best, but here goes:

Some of these books fit into more than one of my made-up categories, but I think you’ll get the picture. These are the books I would recommend you read if you haven’t.

It’s been a great six months of reading and I’m already enjoying reading more. If you have any suggestions for my reading list, please do get in touch.