Here's my last few reads (and just reading back to catch up on the chat)
-
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
I resisted reading this for a long time, due to the massive hype surrounding it. In the last few months, it was literally everywhere, with seemingly everyone saying it was the most amazing book you will ever read. After previous experience with over-hyped booked, which prove to be average at best and downright terrible at worst (Normal People by Sally Rooney, I am looking at you), I was stubbornly not reading it, especially as many reviews were telling me that it was the descriptions of nature and the marsh that were so detailed and amazing. I don’t normally have the patience for minute details about shades of green and the shapes of leaves, so I was doubly put off.
But, that said, I did actually enjoy it and rattle through it quite quickly. It is the story of Kya, whose parents and older siblings live a marginal life in a shack in a marsh on the edge of a small American town. He mother leaves her abusive husband and the older siblings drift away. The next youngest brother Jodie, stays just long enough to show Kya some survival skills and how to hide. Their abusive father stays away for days at a time.
Kya learns to live alone in the marsh, and gradually learns how to collect oysters to sell to make money for food and fuel for her small boat, but she finds the loneliness ever present and it makes her sad.
The story is told of two time lines, first is during the early 1960s – Kya growing up and learning how to survive alone in the marsh and then 1969-70 where the body of a local man is found in the marsh and Kya is under suspicion of murder.
I found it a bit of a page turner to be honest – very enjoyable.
-
She Wolves - The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor
This was typical of the non-fiction I like to read, about British history, and I am not entirely convinced I haven't read it before, but enjoyable nonetheless.
As it says on the cover it looks at the powerful women who tried to rule England. Helen Castor opens with the death of Edward VI, Henry VIII's sickly son, who left only women as his potential heirs- namely Lady Jane Grey, Mary Tudor or Elizabeth. For the first time in the history of the English throne, it was certain a woman would be ruling in her own right.
Castor then looks back at previous women, who attempted to rule England in their own right, and the reasons they ultimately failed.
The first was Matilda, the only surviving legitimate child of Henry I, who found and ultimately lost the right to rule England to her cousin Stephen, resulting in the bloody period now known as The Anarchy. Then it looks at Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II's queen, who plotted against him in favour of her sons, and was the defacto ruler of England (and a good deal of modern day France) for months at a time. It also looks at Isabella of France, the wife of Edward II, whose weak and unpopular rule resulted in Isabella plotting against the crown, the seize power in favour of her son, the future Edward III, and then Margaret of Anjou, the wife of the unpopular Henry VI, who was a key player in the turbulent War of the Roses, which ultimately resulted in the Tudor dynasty.
A good read about the role of women in the history of England (though with the exception of Matilda - they were all French!)
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
She also wrote Americanah which I loved a few years ago.
This one follows the true event of the late 1960s and early 1970s in Nigeria, during the civil war. This is not a period of war I am particularly familiar with, so a fair amount of googling was done while reading, so it did take me quite a long time to get through.
Even though it is a story set against a very significant period in Nigerian history, the narrative is told through three characters, university educated Olanna, Richard Churchill- A British writer who is in a relationship with Olanna's sister Kainene, and Ugwu - Olanna's family's house boy.
The story switches back and forth a little, but as the book progresses, it begins to focus on what happens to them as the war progresses, through fleeing home, working the black market, being conscripted to the army and living in refugee camps. It very harrowing in parts but it remains real, I could identify with Olanna, an educated woman with a nice home and job, who gradually loses everything as war progresses. Olanna seems very real, she switches from being strong to feeling utter despair.
Overall it was a great story, and an important one to be told, but felt it ended abruptly with lots of loose ends.
On balance, I think I preferred Americanah, but still a very good read.
32 The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
I'm on a bit of a roll with Greek myths over the last year or so, having devoured the Stephen Fry books, Mythos, Heroes and Troy, as well as Song of Achilles. This one kept on being recommended and it is indeed the same story but this time from the point of view of Briseis, the woman given to Achilles as a prize after the defeat of her city and the death of her father, husband and brothers.
The story is told by Briseis, who lives among the women of the Greek camp, many of them former noblewomen now sold in slavery, as her status as Achilles' prize becomes a point of conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon. Tis conflict becomes key in the conclusion of the long running Trojan war.
It is well written and compelling.
I'm about to start The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah - the first one I have read by her. I've also got the hardback of Shuggie Bain looking at me from my shelf and light have that as my downstairs book.