50 Book Challenge 2020 Part Five

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fifth thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2020, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it's not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third one here and the fourth one here.

How're you getting on so far?

Ok bold didn't seem to work there. Copied it over from a word document, maybe that's why

32. After the Party by Cressida Connolly

I wasn't expecting huge things from this but actually, I thought it was great. It tells the story of Phyllis, an upper middle class woman, flipping between 1938 and 1979, by which point we know she has spent some years in prison. The reason why emerges slowly, along with other events in Phyllis's life about which she feels much more guilty than the actions which led to her imprisonment. I loved the examination of Phyllis's almost accidental journey to incarceration and the glimpses into her later psyche that kind of show she did deserve it after all. But Connolly's main achievement is to create a hugely flawed character with whom I never quite lost all sympathy. I found the end of the novel, by which point Phyllis has lost everything, very moving.

Welshwabbit that sounds right up my street. I've added it to my wish list.

21. The Wedding by Dorothy West (1995) – I’ve been wanting to read this classic novel for a while. It’s by one of the original Harlem Renaissance authors Dorothy West, who’d retired from writing when she met Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Onassis first encouraged West to finish her last manuscript, and later edited it during her stint at Doubleday. West’s story’s set in the 1950s on the East Coast at the Oval. The Ovalites are a black, bourgeois community – based on West’s former home in Oak Bluffs – headed by the Coles, whose mansion dominates the surrounding houses; and it’s there that, despite her numerous, material advantages and the community’s total bewilderment, their daughter Shelby’s preparing to marry a struggling, white, jazz musician. Meanwhile notorious, abusive, womaniser Lute McNeil rents a nearby house, determined to prevent the wedding and finally bag his latest target Shelby.

Thought this was a wonderfully melodramatic, family saga – at times it reminded me of Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place - with its cast of characters stretching back into the Coles’s family history, its past secrets, its heroes and villains, alongside an exploration of more serious themes of class, colourism and heritage.

61. Untangled, by Lisa Damour
Guide to parenting teenage girls. I have a 12-year old so looking ahead. Really liked her calm good sense and the affection and respect she shows for the girls she works with. Heartening.

30. Dependency: The Copenhagen Trilogy 3 – Tove Ditlevsen

The final instalment and the darkest of all three books. This made me feel incredibly sad in a way the other books did not. The book starts hopefully, with Tove’s career as a writer beginning to finally take off. However, the lack of self-belief and uncertainty explored in the earlier books is coming home to roost. It feels as if her impoverished background and toxic relationship with her Mother catch her up as her life unravels.

Tove is now a talented and well known writer, but she lacks any self-confidence or belief in her own abilities. She pursues a series of unfulfilling relationships with various inadequate men, and one of these relationships leads to the most destructive relationship of all, addiction first to Demerol and then Methadone.

As with the first two books in this series, the beautifully simple prose is a pleasure to read. I gulped this down in two days, reading it at every possible opportunity. This trilogy has been the highlight of my reading year so far.

Indigosalt great review of the trilogy. Penguin's bringing out a one-volume edition later in the year which I pre-ordered a while ago - too tight to spring for the separate volumes. Your review's making me wish they'd bring it out sooner!

Welshwabbit I bought the hardback of After the Party in a charity shop based purely on its beautiful cover! Glad to hear it’s a good read too - I think I will start it next.

YounghillKang thank you. Yes, spotted the one volume edition and plan to get it for my DM. I read somewhere that some of her fiction may be published in English next year too.

Yes did you see this one?

www.penguin.co.uk/books/313/313528/the-faces/9780241391914.html

Yes! That was the one. Will have to wait until next year, sadly.

The new Lionel Shriver is 99p today if anyone is a fan.

Indigosalt I have added the trilogy to my TBR list. Your review was great. Thank you

Book 53 (maybe, I can’t find the list) is Frost in May by Antonia White. I picked this up after a recent Backlisted edition which intrigued me. It is a school story but as far from Malory Towers as it is possible to imagine. I can see I would have loved it as a teenager but wonder if I would have fully appreciated it.

Nanda and her father are recent converts to Catholicism, and her father (slowly revealed as a somewhat terrible human being) sends Nanda to the Convent of the Five Wounds where she can receive a Catholic education along with European aristocracy. It’s the 1930s and the threat of war is looming but Nanda is absorbed into convent life despite her misgivings about some elements of Catholic doctrine. The atmosphere is menacing and the nuns rule by fear, with threats of hell and damnation and subtle mental torture. This is a book about friendship and belonging and is beautifully observed as the tension subtly ratchets up. This is a gem of a book and well worth seeking out. I suspect a Catholic education would add a whole other layer of interest as a reader but one of the many wonderful aspects is the way that the doctrine is set out for the non Catholic readers without feeling heavy handed or overdone.

Pepe great review of the Antonia White. One of my absolute favourite books, the rest of the series is also excellent and would highly recommend them. She also did a brilliant translation of Colette's Claudine books which is still in print. I haven't listened to the Backlisted episode yet but is on my list of things to get round to soon!

@Sadik

I don't know if you have access to Apple Tv + (Free Trials are available) but Robert Kolker is featured on a 1hr episode of Oprah's Book Club discussing Hidden Valley Road, I'm going to watch it later

@Indigosalt

YounghillKang thank you. Yes, spotted the one volume edition and plan to get it for my DM. I read somewhere that some of her fiction may be published in English next year too.

The Penguin trilogy of the Tove Ditlevsen can be pre-ordered on Kindle, for anyone who doesn't mind a virtual copy, for a bargainous £4.99 - it's coming out on 3rd Sept. I stuck it on my wish list a while ago after seeing just vol. 1 in an Oxfam shop for something like £7.99!

35 Flip Back Andrew Cartmel This was another rush job as the library closed so I didn't realise it was the fourth in a series of cosy style mysteries. The premise is a group of adult -but not grown up- friends searching out a very rare vinyl album and getting into all kinds of "scrapes" in the process. It had a real whiff of a Famous Five or Secret Seven story and was about as believable. Although I think the male characters were supposed to be quite young they reminded me of the young men of my youth which was a very long time ago. Entertaining enough to pass some time .
36 Love After Love Ingrid Persaud High on my list for the best book of the year. Set mainly in modern day Trinidad the story follows the lives of a young mother who has been the victim of an abusive husband, her much loved son and a man with a secret who becomes very important in both their lives. This gripping book covers some very dark themes but is also a story of survival ,coming of age and living life on your own terms in a closed community. I cried at the final scenes which felt so authentic and moving.

75. Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott

A fictionalised biography of Truman Capote, taking as its centrepiece his fallout with his "swans" - a group of high society women with whom he dramatically fell from grace after writing a piece lampooning them.

This was recommended on here by @Welshwabbit early on in this years threads and its a great recommendation.

It took longer than my average pace to read but it was very involving it didn't drag.

I knew little of Capote as a person beforehand, but he really comes across as an odious little man here. I mean, his set are shallow and possibly narcissistic, but he actively gets a twisted joy in putting people he supposedly loves in humiliating circumstances. He reminded me of a male friend at uni who was very two faced.

It flashes from his childhood, through to his faded fame, and makes use of his reputation for embellishment, to present several versions of one story, making the truth a little out of reach.

I do think its fascinating though that one small Alabama town produced two of America's most well known writers, (Harper Lee) and not only that but they were a similar age and friends.

It's a fascinating tale, if bitchiness, glamour and faded glory are your bag.

I really enjoyed Swan Song. It felt a little MA in Creative Writing in places but the world she painted was captivating, and what a complex and unpleasant and talented man he was. It is hard to believe he wrote something as...muscular, maybe, as In Cold Blood.

76. This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Two opposing agents in The Time War, Red who works for Agency, and Blue who works for Garden, begin a correspondence.

So this is 200 pages of short chapters and I had it read in about an hour.

Wanky, pretentious, verbiage and I had no idea what was going on 90% of the time.

That said, I do want some of you to read it so you can agree with me

I've got that on my wishlist, Eine, so I'm now tempted to bump it up the list and read it just for you! (I think we quite often agree about books, so I'm curious now to see whether I find it as wanky and pretentious as you did )

Have wishlisted Love After Love blackcountryexile

I was so interested in Swan Song but just found the style off-putting and couldn’t get past it.

This is How You Lose the Time War is a great title though. I take it that's the best thing about it.

43. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead A timely read of a book that's been on my physical TBR pile for 2.5 years. Cora is a slave on a southern plantation. With the help of the literal underground railroad she escapes and moves north by stages. The use of the allegorical element, allows Cora to travel more widely and have a range of experiences that illustrate the injustices of slavery and the issues of being an escaped slave in the US more widely. This was an uncomfortable read at times, as it should be given the subject matter. I'm glad I read it in the context of what is happening now, and also after reading David Olusoga's Black and British earlier this year which gives historical background to British interests in slavery in the US.

I mean, the idea is good, but the world building isn't fleshed out and I think it thinks its cleverer than it is

Majority 5 star reviews on Amazon though, could be me

22. Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson (2016) – August looks back at her childhood in 1970s Brooklyn and her friendships with Sylvia, Angela and Gigi. Finalist for the National Book Award, this short, poetic rites-of-passage novel focuses on the journey to adulthood for a particular generation of young, black girls in New York. Beautifully observed, and full of small details that bring each scene to life, all coming together to create a powerful sense of time and place – Minnie Riperton on the radio, starvation in Biafra on the news, power cuts in New York, girls playing Double Dutch on the street…