Lots of the cookbooks in the monthly sale look interesting TBF but am very disappointed in the lack of actual books to read. I see Into Thin Air is in there for anyone who hasn't read it. I bought The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks which I am looking forward to reading.
Thanks Satsuki for a couple of cracking reviews upthread. Which version of How to Be Both do you have? Mine started in the Renaissance which really worked for me and I loved the book - reviews that I have seen tend to agree that this way round works better than the one that starts in the present day.
89. The Sparsholt Affair, Alan Hollinghurst
This opens at in 1940s Oxford, where a group of arty, literary students notice a handsome newcomer to the college. This is David Sparsholt, and this section deals wonderfully with the atmosphere of the black-outed, wintery University town and the unspoken, unrequited love and lust bubbling away between the characters.
The rest of the sections are set later, focussing more on David's son, Johnny, from his own frustrated adolescent passions to a gently funny scene of him and a friend as the two oldest men in a trendy gay bar. I found these later chapters much less satisfying - Johnny is a bit of a nothing as a character, most of the important events happen off-stage, and for me the storytelling never matches up to the deliciousness of that first section. An interesting and subtle way, though, to reflect on how life - both public and private - changed for gay men during the 20th century.
90. Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
A similarly bitty book which jumps forward across time. The first chapters tell the stories of two half-sisters (unknown to one another) in C18th colonial west Africa - what is now Ghana. One sister, Effia, is sold by her parents as a bride to an British slave trader living in the colonial fort. The other sister, Esi, is captured by local African slavers and sold to the British - held in the dungeons in the same fort awaiting transportation. The novel then diverges to tell the story of their descendants, generation by generation, with Esi's family moving through American history and Effia's through Ghanian.
The stories are unflinching and harrowing. There is love and pride but very little joy. Terrible things happen to these people both in Africa and America. Slavery is horrific but freedom is not much better. Many of the chapters are too short and too punchy to work properly on their own but the overall effect is thought-provoking and moving. You can't read the later chapters about the more modern generations without a real consciousness of what came before, and that is what makes this book impactful and clever.
91. Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
I seem to have been reading a lot of multi-layered books about the past and identity over half term! This one has been reviewed a number of times above. I didn't like it as much as Little Fires but it was similarly readable and touches on race, gender, class and family relationships with a similarly deft touch.
92. After the Bloom, Leslie Shimotakahara
Rita's elderly mother Lily has gone missing. Lily, who is Japanese-American, has always been fragile - prone to strange moods, temper and loss of memory. She refuses to talk about her past much, and when she does the story is confused. Trying to find where Lily may have gone, Rita has to dig into her mother's past, to find out about her time in a wartime internment camp, and her strange relationship with Rita's long-dead father. This was OK - I enjoyed the writing about Japanese culture and the sections about the camps are obviously well-researched and interesting. The story, not so much - too sentimental, too over-dramatic, and too much emphasis on Rita who isn't a very interesting character in herself.
I'm quite pleased to have moved onto something very different now - my copy of The Secret Barrister arrived in the library on Tuesday and I'm glued to it with fascination and growing horror.