50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Three

I agree with everyone that the first few pages of To Calais are hard going - but I am a bit of a language nerd and tend to like novels with invented versions of English, either faux-historical or futuristic (Riddley Walker; Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake; A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess - obviously I need to read A Clockwork Orange too).

To Calais isn’t perfect and a review along the lines of ‘It ne liked me, it was a pile of pretentious wankery’ would be perfectly valid. I didn’t really understand the story thread about what the leader of the archers’ band was up to, and didn’t care enough to go back and work it out. But Will, Berna and Cess’ stories will definitely stay with me.

I finished 44. Nesting by Roisin O'Donnell earlier. Wow. The 'laid bare' aspect of this story really got to me. It'll stay with me for a long time. I could think of friends with partners who are controlling in some of the ways described in the book. Absolutely heartbreaking.

I'm starting an international Booker longlist novel next - Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

My list so far:

1) The Trials of Marjorie Crowe by CS Robertson
2) Bad Fruit by Ella King
3) Unruly by David Mitchell
4) Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent
5) Butter by Asako Yuzuki
6) North Woods by Daniel Mason
7) Nothing Left to Fear From Hell by Alan Warner
8) How to Solve your own Murder by Kristen Perrin
9) The Palace by Gareth Russell
10) Strange Pictures by Uketsu
11) Night Swimmers by Roisin Maguire
12) The List of Suspicious Things by Jenny Godfrey
13) The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell

So half are books I would recommend. My favourites were Bad Fruit, Night Swimmers and The Palace (Hampton Court). The Whispering Muse was also great fun if you like an easy gothic thriller.

Happy Friday 50 Bookers, I've knocked off another 2 this week, finding it hard to keep up with the chat.

19. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van pelt
    This is the story of Tova who cleans for a local aquarium and develops a friendship with Marcello the giant octopus, whose voice one of the narrators.
    Tova's son disappeared years ago and her husband is recently deceased and she is now alone. She doesn't need to work, but does so to combat the loneliness. Marcello is also lonely and yearning to return to the sea.
    A nice easy read about friendships and families. I was initially put off by the idea of a talking octopus, but it is done well.

20. 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds In This Strange World by Elif Shafak
    This was chosen as a bookclub choice, and would never have picked it up ordinarily. The Booker shortlisted status made me think it was going to be heavy going (I have experience of this!) which I just wasn't in the mood for.
    That said, it wasn't a difficult read, though harrowing in places. It is a book of two parts really - the first part is the consciousness of a newly murdered prostitute in Istanbul, Leila, know as Tequila Leila to her friends and clients. Over the 10 mins and 38 seconds, while her heat has stopped beating but she is still aware and waiting for her body to be found, the story goes back over her life in the form of memories as her consciousness diminishes, eg the moment of her birth, early childhood memories, sexual abuse at the hands of an uncle, running away from her family etc.
    The second part is her five friends, each of which also have a backstory, trying to find her and once they know she dead, trying to claim her body and give her a decent funeral.
    It all sounds very bleak (and it is in places), but the latter part does descend into somewhat of a farce with her friends driving round Istanbul with a body in the boot being chased by the police.
    An odd story, not entirely sure what I feel about it really. Not a bold, but not what I was expecting either.

38. Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life - Helen Czerski (NF)

From the frontlog (acquired in 2018). I read her more recent book about thje oceans (a Xmas present) in Dec 2024. This was an earlier and more general wander through physics with "everyday" examples like why your toaster pops up. I like her TV work and she is a good communicator, so this was an interesting pop-sci read.

10.My Friends by Hisham Mater. Khaled is Libyan, and moves to the UK for university studies in literature the 1980s. He connects with a number of other young Libyan expats. They remain strongly connected to their home country and are directly affected by the political turmoil there from Gaddafi's regime to the Arab Spring.

Beautifully written, this drew heavily real events and figures including the Libyan embassy shooting in London and the killing of Gadaffi, and weaved complex fictional relationships around them. Focusing on trauma and vulnerability, authoritarianism, national culture and the experience of exile, it was very sad and wistful, although Khaled finds a degree of solace in the novels and poetry he studies.

@cassandre yes, I believe her view was more of the ‘why didn’t those women just give him a bloody good wallop in the nuts instead of going legal on him’ variety (I paraphrase very loosely!!) - which is kind of what I was thinking when I described her as ‘bracingly unsentimental’ 😂

Her novel The Spare Room is fantastic.

Actually I've now just read the Times and Guardian articles (thanks @Terpsichore and @Boiledeggandtoast !) and they discuss The First Stone controversy, so my post was a bit redundant.

Terpsichore, I've just seen your comment. Yes, she's definitely a feminist! She did say in the book itself I believe that she regretted her impulsive writing of the letter of support. I think she was kind of an old-school feminist (or was at the time) and believed that feminists should focus on broader issues of gender inequality rather than on the odd grope. Whereas a lot of other feminists (me included) didn't see the two kinds of struggle as mutually exclusive.

I do very much dislike cancel culture and the whole tendency (fuelled by Twitter and social media) to berate a person because they're deemed to have said or done one so-called Bad Thing. You have to take the whole picture of their lives and their cultural context into account.

I'm glad Garner is getting some well-deserved recognition for her many achievements.

I haven’t read The First Stone, @cassandre - I believe she’s subsequently expressed her own regrets at writing that letter of support. And I was extremely surprised to read about the whole incident because she’s not a person I would expect to be anti-feminist, very much the reverse actually.

The talk of Helen Garner is making me think I should read more of her books. She's a wonderful novelist, but I was put off by her nonfiction book The First Stone, which she wrote in the 90s about a sexual harassment case at the University of Melbourne. She expressed sympathy for the male perpetrator early on, as a result of which the women victims (understandably enough) refused to let her interview them when she decided to write the book. Her stance as I recall was that the women were making too much fuss of a trivial incident (being groped by a college Master) and that they should be robust enough just to move on from the incident, instead of seeking legal recourse.

I strongly disagreed with her take, but my Australian SIL and MIL (who live in Melbourne) agreed with Garner. Obviously that was decades before the Me Too movement, and mentalities have changed a lot since then. I think her views about feminism were quite typical of many Australian women of her generation.

Anyway, since then my view of Garner hasn't been unequivocally positive, but I need to remember that it's not necessary to be 100 percent in agreement with a writer ideologically in order to appreciate their works. People are complicated. I would certainly be interested in reading her journals.

I'm with Cornish and Fuzzy on To Calais. I didn't give it enough of a chance. I think if I'd stuck with it, I'd have liked it (which somehow reminds me of Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice: "If I had ever learnt [music], I should have been a great proficient").

I felt as you did Fuzzy about To Calais, I too only gave a library copy a few pages, but have also been thinking of giving it another go after the interesting reviews here.

@Castlerigg glad you enjoyed Educated, I thought it was excellent.

9 Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor. This is an unusual book, set in the 1930s on a fictional island somewhere off the coast of Wales. It is remote and sparsely populated. Two academics arrive from the mainland to document the island and its inhabitants. The book is told from the perspective of Manod, who lives with her father and little sister. She has recently left school and is wondering whether her future lies on the island or the mainland. I think this has been popular on the thread and I can see why - it's original, with a rather "haunting" quality to the writing.

10 Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo. This is set in Nigeria, mainly in the 1980s with another timeline in the 2000s. The protagonist is Yejide, with some chapters written from the point of view of her husband Akin. Yejide is a young married woman running a hairdressing business, dealing with issues around her husband, her mother in law and brother in law, and desperate to get pregnant. Yejide is flawed but relatable; I enjoyed reading her story.

I liked the concept of To Calais, but stopped after a few pages. I couldn't get on board with the voice and the language, specifically. It really grated with me. LadyBird's review sounded very interesting, however.

Just catching up on the thread as I've been crazy busy at work this week. I started To Calais recently but had to give up on the audiobook as the female narrator was driving me crazy with constant, loud, sharp intakes of breath - it was all I could focus on. Might just switch to the kindle version.

I finished 9: Educated, by Tara Westover. I think this is my first bold. It’s a memoir, Westover grew up in Idaho, seventh child of Mormon parents. Father was a survivalist, distrusted government, completely paranoid. Wouldn’t allow medical attention when it was needed, which it frequently was as they all worked in his scrap yard, where safety measures were casual at best. The kids were, in theory, homeschooled, but in reality they were not really schooled at all. Abusive older brother. Mother was quiet and compliant. Westover took matters into her own hands to educate herself. I’m probably not doing it justice, but none of the blurb I found online did either.

Definitely not a bold for me, but I found it weirdly compelling. I just think it probably worked better in his head than it did on the page overall. I found some of it brilliant. And some of it very silly.

Will look forward to your review in due course,@noodlezoodle. Not in my library so far but I'll keep an eye out. And thanks for those links, @Terpsichore .

@bibliomania, @Terpsichore, and @Boiledeggandtoast, I am fascinated by Helen Garner and have her collected diaries on hold at the library - it's currently on order, so who knows when it will actually appear.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie I gave The Ferryman a bold. Yes, it was weird but it was doing something different and original, I thought!

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

This began really well.

Then it got weirder.

And weirder.

Until it became really fucking bonkers.

And even more really, really fucking bonkers.

I’m not sure if I understood a word of the last 300 pages.

But I sort of enjoyed the ride.

Not sure if it was a help or a hindrance that I’ve not been sleeping and have also been ill. It certainly enhanced the feeling that I was on a weird sort of trip to an unknown location.

Just wow.

Thanks everyone.

@MegBusset assuming I have added a pic correctly this is the book on UK National Parks. My friend went to uni with the person who wrote it. I can't wait to get stuck in!

Archive link for the Helen Garner Times article

And another recent interview with her from the Guardian

Thanks @Boiledeggandtoast, that's made me long to read her diaries....