50 Book Challenge 2021 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 2021, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read. Could everyone embolden their titles and/or authors as well, please, as it makes the books talked about easier to track?

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, just to get it out before tomorrow (I'm nothing if not a last-minuter!), here's my Women's Prize shortlist. Needless to say choices are subjective and based on the books I myself personally liked best and would go back to.

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke. This was my favourite. Haunting and elegant, well-suited to our Covid times as it’s about isolation and the variety of possible responses to it. My 16-year-old DS liked it too . It evokes complex themes like selfhood and memory, but in a very light-touch kind of way. Basically, though, I just felt transported to another world when I read it.

Summer, Ali Smith. I loved all of Smith’s seasonal quartet and this one was no exception. Timely in its evocation of a British WW2 internment camp, with obvious parallels to the detention of asylum seekers today, it’s still a story about hope. Smith already won the Women’s Prize in 2015 though for How To Be Both, so maybe better to share the wealth rather than letting her win twice?

Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers. I just found this a beautifully effortless read, that evoked its 1950s setting so well. I would nominate it despite the rather jarring and perhaps superfluous ending.

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett. A plot reminiscent of Harlem Renaissance woman writer Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), where a Black woman passes as white. A great story about sibling relationships and changing identities. There’s also a sympathetically depicted trans character.

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi. A Black American woman scientist explores addiction, depression, science and faith. Thoughtful and wise.

No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood. Weird and inventive. How all of life seems to be encompassed by the internet, until a special needs baby is born and life clearly isn’t entirely encompassed by the internet!

Wow, Viking and mackerella, what gorgeous reviews of Spring. They really capture the difficult-to-describe experience of what reading an Ali Smith book is like.

Your review of Ghost Wall is also super interesting, mackerella. I agree (even though I hadn't quite realised it before) that the 'experiment' the characters are doing is more like cosplay than proper academic enquiry! I liked the way Moss suggested that both the family environment AND the academic environment (or the purportedly academic environment) were deeply patriarchal and deeply toxic. The way Molly doesn't take the men's rules seriously and sneaks junk food on the side is a sign that she's a saner, healthier character! Even though academics normally don't try to re-enact the cultural practices they're studying, there can still be a kind of self-importance in male academia, a kind of blindness to the practical labour that keeps everything going, and I think Moss captured this well.

That's a fascinating glimpse into the Italian curriculum, Sol. I can't believe the poor kids are doing extracts from Finnegan's Wake! Madness.

I have three more reviews below, including my last two Women's Prize longlist reads, and now I am finally caught up. (mops brow) After the amazing feat of reading the WP longlist, I will probably slow down on leisure reading for awhile and go back to work and marking. I've read more books this year than I've read in ages; I blame this thread!

31. Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman. 5/5
    A classic book about trauma (first published in 1992) recommended to me by a therapist friend. I found this an extraordinary read. It makes the argument (taken for granted now) that trauma can result not just from war but also from situations of domestic abuse. At first I thought Herman was too simplistic in her critique of Freud; she declares that Freud at first listened to the stories of incest recounted by his female patients, then dismissed them as fantasy and stopped listening to them. In fact, however, Herman’s account of trauma builds on Freud’s ideas and reworks them from a feminist perspective. She also distinguishes between one-off traumatic episodes and cases where someone remains for a long time in a traumatic environment, as can occur within families and sexual relationships. The emphasis on recovery is very empowering; she argues that people can and do recover from trauma; and she consistently uses the term ‘survivor’ instead of the term ‘victim’. She insists on the necessity of forging healthy human connections as the way out of trauma (since trauma disrupts human connections as well as damaging one’s sense of self). A very intelligent, compassionate, practical book.

32. Unsettled Ground, Claire Fuller. 4/5
    An intriguing book, but some of the reviews I had read were so glowing that I didn’t admire it quite as much as I had hoped. 51-year-old twins live a rural, off-the-grid existence which is thrown into turmoil when their elderly mother suddenly dies. The struggles of the heroine, Jeannie, to adapt to modern life and survive on her own are vividly recounted, as well as her profound connection to the land and cottage where she has spent her entire life. However, the characters felt a little flat to me, and the motivations of the mother (who pulls off some fairly outrageous acts of deceit) seemed underexplained.

33. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, Cherie Jones. 4/5
    A story set in Barbados, mostly in the 1980s, that depicts a colourful tropical landscape where women (and men too, but especially women) struggle to survive poverty and sexual and physical violence. I found the book very engaging, but harder to stomach as the story went on and the episodes of violence escalated. The character of the young mother Lola is well done, but this makes the account of her losses even more painful. A difficult read (in terms of theme not language), but worthwhile.

Lala not Lola, oops

Dusty Answer by Rosamund Lemann Mentioned in The Years so I pulled out my old copy from the bookshelves for a long overdue reread and was so glad I did as I loved it. It is the story of Judith Earle as she grows up, from her solitary childhood to her time studying English at Cambridge and later her travels abroad with her elegant but distant mother. Throughout her experiences runs the thread of her passionate relationships with the family of cousins who visit their Grandmother's house next door. Dusty Answer was first published in 1927 and Judith's childhood is set just before the First World War. It beautifully and subtly captures her emotions and the constraints and repression imposed by society, not just on girls and women, at that time. Recommended.

The Door by Magda Szabo Reviewed a few times upthread so just a brief recap that it is the story of Emrence, a servant, and her relationship with a young writer who employs her and more widely with the community. It took me a while to get into this as it was so different from Dusty Answer and at times I found the relationships and emotions described rather overwrought. I was interested in the backdrop of Hungarian politics and as I read on I found the relationships more intriguing, and I thought the ending was really good, but overall a book I liked rather than loved.

Boiledegg, I read Dusty Answer as a teenager and have thought for a while I should re-read it. Then I heard the Backlisted team talking about her, and it made it off my shelf and into the TBR pile. You've pushed it up my list, now, so I will put it to the top.

Pepe I last read it as teenager too (an awfully long time ago now!). I had only vague recollections of the story, but I found it a very nostalgic read - I'm not sure whether that's for my youth or the times it describes. I hope you enjoy it.

Just to add to The Door, I should have said that it was a book I liked and admired rather than loved.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie

Huck Finn is boring too. I do like Tom Sawyer though.

I much preferred Tom Sawyer to Huck Finn when I read them both as a (presumably) teenager, I doubt I'd enjoy either now with the racism.

I have recently read Save my daughter which was an acceptable psychological fiction book after a demanding n/f text for work and the enjoyable Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris which I think somebody else on here has read/was going to read.

After that the comfort read of The school at the top of the dale by Gerveas Phinn and the unexpectedly excellent Around the world in 80 trains which I thought might turn out to be a damp squib but actually was damn good and very nearly got 5 stars. The author and her boyfriend who are of Indian, Scottish, Lithuanian and Malaysian descent (this is relevant) travel the world and go to countries including Russia, China, the DPRK, Canada, Japan and the US and write about their experiences. Well worth reading.

My memories of Tom Sawyer are hazy - it must be over 15 years since I last read it. I remember a fence, some caves and not much else.

Currently reading a book about punks in East Germany. So far, so good.

My late mum knew Gervaise Phinn through work and said he was a bit of a twat. Well, she would never have said twat, but she said he was one of those people who was really up himself and very "I'm a published author dontcha know".

@SOLINVICTUS

My late mum knew Gervaise Phinn through work and said he was a bit of a twat. Well, she would never have said twat, but she said he was one of those people who was really up himself and very "I'm a published author dontcha know".

Oh :-(

Well I also read Jeffrey Archer books so I suppose one more twat won't hurt.

@cassandre

Wow, Viking and mackerella, what gorgeous reviews of Spring. They really capture the difficult-to-describe experience of what reading an Ali Smith book is like.

Your review of Ghost Wall is also super interesting, mackerella. I agree (even though I hadn't quite realised it before) that the 'experiment' the characters are doing is more like cosplay than proper academic enquiry! I liked the way Moss suggested that both the family environment AND the academic environment (or the purportedly academic environment) were deeply patriarchal and deeply toxic. The way Molly doesn't take the men's rules seriously and sneaks junk food on the side is a sign that she's a saner, healthier character! Even though academics normally don't try to re-enact the cultural practices they're studying, there can still be a kind of self-importance in male academia, a kind of blindness to the practical labour that keeps everything going, and I think Moss captured this well.

Gosh, well done on all the WP reading, cassandre! Interestingly, the ones that you've shortlisted are all ones I've either read or have bought with the aim of reading (e.g. Clare Chambers, which was a 99p deal a few weeks ago). I'm less interested in the millennial ones (and definitely not in the Torrey Peters one!), but do suspect they'll make the shortlist in place of, say, Ali Smith.

YES to all your comments on Ghost Wall - both family and academia definitely come out this badly! I also agree about the blindness about the value of practical labour - I read The Tidal Zone (also by Sarah Moss) and there's a lot in that about domestic drudgery (refracted through the experiences of a stay-at-home father), so it's obviously a preoccupation of hers.

Betty thanks for the review of Around the World in 80 Trains. I have this lurking somewhere on my kindle (along with The Trains Now Departed and Ticket To Ride - thanks to DS I've become a secret railfan), so it's good to hear that you enjoyed it .

A few more catch-up reviews:

10. Mrs P's Journey by Sarah Hartley

This had such an interesting premise – it was supposedly a biography about Phyllis Pearsall, who founded the Geographers’ A-Z Map Company and is famous for walking 23,000 streets in London to produce the first indexed A-Z of London. (As it turns out, it wasn’t the first, but that doesn’t diminish her achievement or her drive to realise her vision.) She had a very turbulent upbringing: her mother was a histrionic suffragette and groundbreaking playwright from an Irish-Italian Catholic family, and her father Sandor Gross was a spiky and self-aggrandising Hungarian refugee whose business ventures meant that his family oscillated between huge wealth and dire poverty. Phyllis spent her childhood in posh boarding schools where she never fitted in properly, having to leave at short notice when her father’s map-making business went bust and they couldn’t afford the fees. Unsurprisingly, she left home as soon as she could, went to study art at the Sorbonne (sleeping on the streets when she couldn’t afford accommodation), married a fellow art student, lived a bohemian life travelling around France and Spain, then abandoned her husband in Spain because the marriage had never been consummated and had become unhappy and abusive. She spent the rest of her life single, working as an artist-cum-cartographer-cum-entrepreneuse and spending her later years with her companion Esme Wren (the book oddly rejects the idea that Phyllis was a lesbian, but it seems a reasonable speculation, especially given her unconsummated marriage).

Unfortunately, despite the fantastic material, this book has major flaws. The biggest for me is the writing style, which is overwrought and laboured. Even worse, Hartley acknowledges that Phyllis was a hugely charismatic fantasist who made up a lot of stories about her life that aren’t necessarily founded 100% in fact – but then throws her hands up and says that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, she’s just going to take it all at face value . However, she doesn’t seem to have done any legwork to establish which of Phyllis’ stories is true (e.g. by consulting institutional records or talking to peers). But the most annoying aspect of all was that, wherever the record is lacking or where Hartley feels that a key scene should be recorded in detail, she just makes it up, giving us huge tracts of flowery description, lengthy conversations and hamfisted psychological speculation to fill the gaps. It’s a fascinating story, but the lack of biographical rigour rather took the shine off it for me.

11. The Day I Fell Into a Fairytale by Ben Miller

I read this to the DCs a couple of months ago. It’s a mildly entertaining tale about siblings Harrison and Lana who discover a portal to a fairytale world in the middle of a local supermarket (which has sinisterly sprung up overnight to lure adults in with ridiculous bargains, Amazon-style). There are some pleasing story-within-a-story parts and a twisty plot that kept the DCs entertained – and although it had a rather trite moral (you’re never too old to believe in fairytales), it was a huge improvement on David Bloody Walliams.

12. Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell

I bought this in a charity shop a couple of years ago, but have only just got round to reading it. I shouldn’t have bothered. It’s not a bad book: David Mitchell is an intelligent man, with interesting (and mostly funny) things to say, and his heart is in the right place (if you’re a slightly contrarian leftie like me). But what makes for a an attention-grabbing-but-thoughtful Observer column every Sunday becomes repetitive and irritating when read back-to-back. Mitchell’s splenetic tone stops being amusing after a couple of hours and just sounds like haranguing. You start to notice all his repeated preoccupations and lazy jokes. And you also start to feel a bit grubby about all the self-congratulation that you’re supposed to feel by being on his side and laughing at those who aren’t. This is one of those odd books that’s somehow less than the sum of its parts.

I'm very tempted by Ghost Wall after your review mackerella - I love books where the author evokes what it's like to actually inhabit a character's physical being, and I also have a background in ancient history and work in an academic environment, so it should be right up my street...

27. The Celestial Hunter - Roberto Calasso
Almost as hard to review as it was to read. This is Calasso's musings on the origins of hunting and humankind's shifting relationship to nature, explored largely through interpretations of Greek mythology and philosophy - should also be right up my street. But a lot of the time I wasn't sure whether I was being dense, or it was just a load of... emperor's new clothes. There were a few brilliant ideas in there (e.g. early hominids' role as scavengers explains our tense conceptual relationship with hyenas, who were once our role model) but overall it read as disjointed, inadequately explained notes that could possibly be worked up into a grand thesis (but hadn't been). To be fair, I think it was meant to be more poetical stream of consciousness than a precise academic work. But I don't think I will be seeking out any of his other books any time soon.

@bettybattenburgs, Jeffrey is one of my guilty pleasures. I devoured the Kane and Abel saga as a teenager and have them on the Kindle to reread at some point.

I have added the train book to my wishlist. Something so big about train travel, especially between countries. I've only done Brussels to Spain by train, and Spain to Lisbon, but they are still the two train journeys I can remember from start to finish.

@mackerella, I know exactly what you mean with the David Mitchell. I don't have his books, but I have Michael McIntyre, whose face I only have to look at to l-o-l, and his autobiography is awful. Not politicky obviously in his case, but the USP that doesn't translate to a book. I am still plodding through it on Audible every so often. He reads it himself, which, bizarrely for someone who must have the skill of timings, and pauses, down to a millisecond, just doesn't work. It's all "remind reader of why I'm interesting (his family background is amazingly interesting, first time of mentioning each interesting fact! Not so much the 64th) followed by "insert hilarious gag" followed by "pause dramatically for laughter" It's interesting as a study because if he were on stage, yes, I'd probably be wiping up the spilled tea etc, but on a page, and worse, on Audible, it's quite cringeworthy.

In other words, I am off back to real school, with my shoes on, for the second time since 9th March 2020. Don't ask, we're the region the govt forgot and have a fatcat regional govt which has done nothing to sort schools out since Covid began. We've been live online since then. We're now back in the building for the last six weeks of the year so they can say "but we did open the schools".

*in other news

That’s a shame about Gervase Phinn Sol. He comes across as a nice man in his autobiographical books, and around 10 years ago I went to a talk by him and again he came across well. Shame that it seems to all be an act.

Good wishes for the first day in shoes, Sol. I had something similar when I had to dress up for a meeting for the first time in months recently. A non-elasticated waistband was a shock.

34 The Cactus by Sarah Haywood
This was a useful read, in that it reminded me that I shouldn't be sucked in by blurb and hype - I picked it up on my first trip into a bookshop in months and was seduced by the marketing but it really wasn't as good as it claimed to be. It has strong Eleanor Oliphant vibes - Susan is single, single-minded and prickly, and goes through life without much concern for other people, until things change and she's forced to make accommodations. I thought the idea at the heart of it was a good one and in the hands of a different writer this could have been quite charming, but it was all just a bit two-dimensional and I never really believed in Susan or the relationships she had with people around her. On the other hand, if this is the worst thing I've read this year (and it is) then that isn't bad going, as it wasn't terrible by any means.

35 Family and Friends by Anita Brookner
This had a broader canvas, politically and geographically, than some of her other books and was stylistically somewhat different. Sofka is a wealthy widow, living in London before the war and watching her four children make their way in the world. None of them are entirely satisfying to her, for various reasons. I loved this, and I don't think Brookner is capable of writing a bad sentence. It's so well observed and so easy to immerse oneself in her world. I'm looking forward to more of her work over the months ahead.

36 O, Pioneers! by Willa Cather
I came across Willa Cather by chance - this was in a list of 100 great short novels, or something similar, and thought it sounded interesting, and then as often happens, her name came up in various other places. This is indeed a short novel, but it packs a lot in. Alexandra is a farmer in Nebraska at the turn of the century, in love with the land and what it has to offer even when it gives very little back. There are two love stories threaded through - one tragic and one pragmatic but ultimately very moving - but really this is a book about open spaces, and natural beauty and the relationship between humans and nature, as well as the social changes taking place over the period. It's an interesting counterpoint to the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, set as it is a couple of decades after the Little House book. Prairie Fires was helpful background ahead of reading this, though by no means essential, as Cather's writing really doesn't need any support or context.

Cassandre I'm almost in complete agreement with you on your WP shortlist only I'd put Luster in over Summer.

I don't get on with Ali Smith however I recognise she is the better author of the whole lot by a country mile. However as we've said on here for years the better authors don't always win the prizes. I can't help but feel this year they are out to make a point and the shortlist will reflect that.

I did as a raging feminist think long and hard about reading Detransition, Baby as I feel it has no place on the list whatsoever, not least because it's incredibly badly written. However I wouldn't be able to say that without at least having tried.

It's widely thought the book that missed out was Mermaid of the Black Conch which was on my TBR anyway and I do plan on getting to shortly.

I too would like to see Piranesi win as it was the most striking one.

It will be interesting to see what the judges put forward as I had a few WTF thoughts last year.

Ooh, I was hoping you would pop up to talk about the Women's Prize, Fortuna! It's gratifying that our lists are so similar.

I couldn't get into Luster personally, but I agree it's an impressive book, with a very original voice.

I've been carefully not talking much about Detransition, Baby because trans women are such a divisive topic on MN... but well, here I go. I'm a trans-inclusive feminist, so I don't have any issue with the book being nominated for the Women's Prize per se. I found the book made many interesting points, but I thought it was too preachy in places and not particularly well-written. If it does make the shortlist, I think it will be because the judges want to make a political statement. Incidentally, I know the depiction of the heroine troubled a lot of 'gender-critical' feminists for instance, the way she seems to associate being physically abused by men with being 'feminine' . I found that troubling too, but lots of cis women are also sexually aroused by BDSM practices; it's the question of consent that's paramount as far as I'm concerned. The novel also makes it pretty clear that those types of sexual relationship (trans woman + abusive cis man) are unhealthy the men in question come across as real jerks, unlike the trans characters and the cis women characters, who are represented far more sympathetically. Anyway there you have my take on a highly emotive and polemical topic. Personally I am committed to finding as much common ground as possible with other feminists, regardless of how much we may disagree on trans issues.

I'm planning to read Mermaid too; in fact it's waiting for me at the library, but I have so many other library books due soonish that I'm putting off collecting it!

And yeah, the judges' picks are pretty incomprehensible sometimes!

BoiledEggs, I never heard of Dusty Answer before, but now I definitely want to read it.

Mackerella, good point about domestic drudgery being a theme in Tidal Zone as well as Ghost Wall. I have actually read Tidal Zone but didn't see that connection between the two books, they are so different.

37. Snow, by John Banville
There's a body in the library and the detective must uncover the truth. It's 1950s Ireland, the dead man is a priest and the library is in a crumbling Anglo-Irish Big House. It's nicely atmospheric, as if Molly Keane was channelling Agatha Christie, although I didn't love the explanatory back story, which feels as is it has been done very often before.

SOL I have recently decided that funny books don't work well on Audible. I think the problem is that either the reader pauses for the laugh as you describe in your post above (cringe) or doesn't pause and ploughs on with the next sentence as if they haven't said something funny (less cringe, but a bit weird). As you say, the comic timing that works when performing live onstage is completely different to reading aloud.

I'm still working completely from home (university lecturer). Hopefully back in Sept.