I remember listening to Judge Rinder talking about Hons and Rebels on A Good Read and being surprised how totally won over I was hearing a posh boy talk about his love for a Mitford book. Have bought it!
I seem to be DNF-ing a lot at the moment - not terrible books but anything that hasn't grabbed me by the time I've read 100 pages or so. There are so, so many books on my TBR it seems foolish to waste time on books that don't grab me. The latest is A Net for Small Fishes by Lucy Jago which has had great reviews, but just didn't draw me in.
I missed the Kate Clanchy row although saw some of the aftermath. Agree that Pullman has form for unpleasant behaviour and attitudes on Twitter.
67. The First Woman, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
This year's Jhalak Prize winner and set in late 1970s Uganda, this is a coming-of-age story mixed with a family saga. Most of the book concentrates on the protagonist, Kirabo, who grows up in rural village before moving to the city with her father, then on to an elite boarding school, but a section in the middle steps back in time to investigate the roots of tensions between Kirabo's grandmother and and her frenemy, the village witch Nsuuta.
The book has a strongly feminist viewpoint, but it is one that takes in the damage that traditional and colonialist gender roles have done to men as well as to women.
There's a LOT in this book - lots of themes, lots of exploration. There's a really great interview with the author here, where she talks about how the book evolved and how she dealt with all of the competing threads and voices www.powells.com/post/interviews/powells-interview-jennifer-nansubuga-makumbi-author-of-a-girl-is-a-body-of-water. She talks interestingly about how western feminism fails to hit the mark in Ugandan society, and how she has explored this in the book.
One quotation which really struck me was where she talks about audiences, readership and reception:
I decided, OK, I'm going to write for the Ugandan audience. I'm going to have a Ugandan girl, boy, woman, man in front of me, and I'm telling the story to those people. The minute I started to write to those people, the language changed. The subject matter changed, and even the structure changed.
The only way I can explain this is… you know now that I'm talking to you, I'm talking in a particular way. But if you put a Ugandan in front of me, then I go [exuberant laugh, gestures]. I do all of that because I know that's how we speak. It's what I'm doing in my book. I'm doing all those gestures because I'm writing to a Ugandan audience.
It was so, so freeing to find out that I could write like this, the West would understand, and they would enjoy it.
Mukumbi makes rich use of Ugandan history, language and culture throughout the book, without dumbing down or stopping to explain everything to a non-Ugandan audience. This does mean that if you're not Ugandan, you need Google to hand frequently, but it makes reading this book a rich, immersive and extremely rewarding experience. Loads here to think about and I can totally understand why it is a prizewinner.
68. Jews Don't Count, David Baddiel
In this short (just over 100 pages) polemic piece, Baddiel addresses the failure progressive thinkers (particularly in the UK, although he references other countries) to take anti-Semitism seriously. He provides numerous examples from articles, interviews and (often) tweets, showing how well-intentioned people, people who would describe themselves as anti-racist, anti-sexist, against the various -isms and -phobias that exist in society, seem to have a blind spot when it comes to anti-Jewish prejudice. He's not looking at straightforward anti-Semitism, but more at the reaction to it - at the ways that people will rush to excuse or defend someone's anti-Semitic remarks. Often the language used in these defences reveal unpleasant and worrying unspoken attitudes to Jews and Judaism.
Baddiel is himself here - funny, clever, a bit smug - you know what you're getting, right? The book covers important ground and he argues it well.
69. Exit, Belinda Bauer
The cover and title led me to expect a gory thriller, but instead it's a rather gentle, twisty, murder mystery. The main protagonist, Felix, is an elderly widower who has got involved with a secretive group of volunteers who attend people who have asked for help ending their own lives because of pain or degenerative illness. On his first day working with a new partner, the outcome of their visit is not what they expect, and Felix sets out on a mission to find out what has happened. This could have strayed into quirky, "elderly person does stuff" territory, and I can't say it doesn't have a foot in the same camp as Thursday Murder Club, Harold Fry and all the rest, but it's well-written and well-plotted, and doesn't get either boring or too sickly.