During the relentless doom and gloom of the past week, I’ve continued to find solace in reading but haven’t managed anything particularly challenging:
1. Why Mummy’s Sloshed- Gill Sims I almost didn’t bother with this one, the fourth book in the series, but I thought it was very funny and certainly a lot better than the third instalment. As someone else mentioned, the highlights are the Penis Beaker reference and the hilarious section in which she looks after a friend’s toddler.
2. Hungry- Grace Dent I received this memoir of restaurant critic Grace Dent by chance as a Christmas present, which was very fortuitous, as it was on my wish list. I particularly enjoyed the account of Grace’s younger years, especially the parts about her Brownie hostess badge and reading Smash Hits, both of which I could very much relate to. Towards the end of the book, when her mother and father’s health decline (due to cancer and dementia respectively), it becomes darker but just as engaging.
3. Ballet Shoes- Noel Streatfeild This was most enjoyable. I had never read it before, but would certainly have done so had I known that it is more about acting than ballet (I read The Swish of the Curtain multiple times as a child). I was annoyed with GUM (Great Uncle Matthew) for adopting three little girls then swanning off abroad for over a decade, but hey ho.
4. Notes on a Scandal- Zoë Heller An excellent, short novel about a female teacher who has a sexual relationship with a 15 year-old boy. Years ago, I had a clandestine love affair myself (although he wasn’t married or a teacher at my school, and I was 18 not 15), so this book resonated hugely with me, to the point where I felt an illicit thrill even reading it. The characters were very well drawn and I particularly liked the uneasy relationship between the two women. The ending was a little unsatisfactory, but nevertheless I would very much recommend it.
5. Stephen Fry in America- Stephen Fry In this, my first audiobook of 2021, Stephen Fry visits all 50 states of the USA. He has all sorts of adventures, such as lobster fishing in Maine, visiting the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Vermont (‘many are cold, but few are frozen’), going to the White Horse brothel in Nevada (which I recognised from a Louis Theroux documentary) and meeting famous autistic savant Temple Grandin in Colorado. As with all audiobooks read by Stephen Fry, this was very enjoyable.
I'm now reading Poverty Safari, Utopia Avenue, Nigel Slater’s Toast and I’m listening to The Well of Loneliness.