50 Books Challenge 2022 Part six

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth thread of the 50 Books Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2022, 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.

What are you reading?

The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly
I loved The Masquerade when I was a child and recently found what I think is a first edition for 50p in a charity shop, so obviously I had to give this a go when it was in a Kindle deal.

It was okay. I thought it was at least 30% too long and the middle aged narrator seemed like a teenager, which was irritating. Some of the twists and turns got increasingly daft. Having said all that, I finished it, so it definitely helped my interest enough.

91 The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
A group of prosperous Londoners - most friends since Oxford days - take a New Years trip to an isolated Highlands hunting lodge. Snow cuts off all access, everyone talks in cliches, and everyone has dark secrets, so inevitably murder follows. All the characters were so implausible I didn't care at all who was murdered, nor whodunnit, but it was perfect reading for a slightly hung over rainy Saturday.

DuPain

BoiledEgg and EineReise thank you…it’s nothing different from the usual parenting and daughtering (not a word, I know 😂) issues which everyone goes through from time to time, it’s just been getting me down a bit more than usual recently. Distraction in the form of books always helps!

49. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

An English nurse accepts a short position in Ireland. Initially believing it to be a real nursing role, she is horrified to discover that she has been called upon to help prove or disprove a possible miracle.

An 11 year old girl has stopped eating but remains apparently healthy, so what's really going on.

So, three things,

The sneery behaviour towards the Irish and the Catholics at the beginning by Nurse Wright, whilst accurate, is a tad overdone, making her less sympathetic.

I saw the reveal a mile off.

The end is a bit unbelievable

Besides that, I read this in one sitting, it's not long and it rattled along. It was a good way to pass a few hours. I mainly read it because it's in the cinema this week and coming on Netflix starring Florence Pugh and I always try and read the source first.

Good.

249 The Diary Of A Provincial Lady by E M Delafield

I’ve had this hanging around for a while and the discussion upthread inspired me to pick it up. Sorry Remus and Eine but I loved it! Funny and engaging, will definitely become a comfort reread for me.

250 French Braid by Anne Tyler

I think this is the second Tyler I’ve read and I wasn’t blown away by either of them, although certainly didn’t hate them either. Here we follow the Garrett family from 1959 to the present day and as you would expect during that time there are marriages, divorces, arguments etc. I would have liked a bit more explanation about some things (such as why the youngest son grew so distant from his family) and the ending just sort of fizzled out. I won’t be rushing to try another Tyler but won’t completely rule her out.

251 The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins

I’ll save my thoughts on this for the readalong thread (although I’ll have to try and remember them as I’ve been naughty and finished a month early) but will just say here that I really enjoyed it and thought it had some fantastic characters.

252 The Girls Who Disappeared by Claire Douglas

Twenty years ago Olivia was driving three friends home when there was an accident, and when Olivia came round her friends had all disappeared. Now, a journalist is making a podcast and other things start coming to light. Putting aside the overused trope that a journalist is able to help solve cases that the police haven’t managed to do in twenty years and that conveniently people from the past start reappearing just at the time the journalist is investigating, this wasn’t bad although I don’t think the ending really lived up to the rest of the book.

The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán. Translated by Paul O'Prey and Lucia Graves

In this Spanish classic we follow Father Julián Alvarez to a remote country estate where we meet the Marquis, his lover and their illegitimate son. The estate is run by the corrupt father of the maid. Julián attempts to bring the estate back from financial and moral ruin but fails. This was published in 1886 and is both more earthy and more concerned with religion than a British novel of the same period. It is set at the end of the 1860s when there was a short lived 'glorious revolution', the novel covers a corrupt local election and various characters represent the different viewpoints about the revolution. This was interesting as an insight into a period of Spanish history I knew nothing about but while there were sections I enjoyed a lot (there was lots of humour and satire) I didn't particularly spending time with the useless Julián and very much viewed his actions with modern eyes. That's probably me rather than the book though.

@ChessieFL No need to apologise. We like what we like!

@ChessieFL I think those of us who like The Provincial Lady are in the majority so agreeing with you.

Just because you’re a majority doesn’t mean you’re right. 😂😜

Just finished Stuart Turton's The Devil and The Dark Water. I thought it was bilge. Pun intended.

Careful, Piggy. You'll start another fight. I thought it was pretty crappy but others loved it. My biggest gripe with it was that the villain became increasingly cartoonish and silly.

Do you know, I was just thinking 'bet Remus would hate this book.'
I ave amused myself by reading the one star reviews on Amazon which are way more entertaining than the book!

Quite happy for you to like the Delafield @ChessieFL

I don't know, however, your feelings on say Station Eleven..

Sometimes a line must be drawn.

(Joke)

I haven’t yet read Station Eleven - I do have it on my kindle somewhere though so do plan to get to it at some point!

Just completed Bunny by Mona Awad.

Years ago a friend went to see a play andI remember he said it was brilliant but he hadn't got a clue what it was about. I felt (almost) the same way about Bunny.

I was gifted this book and I read it in two sittings over this very wet and miserable weekend. It's set in a University in New England where a group of young women are doing a Graduate programme in creative writing. Some are the 'bunnies' - that's what they call each other- and are observed by Samantha, an outsider until the Bunnies invite her into their group.
Things get a lot darker from then on.

This isn't going to be for everyone and you do wonder what is going on for most of Part Two but it is compellingly written.

81: The Past - Tessa Hadley

4 siblings spend three weeks together in the countryside, at the house where their grandparents lived, a place full of memories for all of them, knowing it'll possibly be the last time before they decide to sell it. Sisters Alice, Harriet and Fran arrive without partners, though Fran brings her two young children, Ivy and Arthur. Alice unexpectedly invites Kasim, the 20-something son of her former lover. All the sisters are half-eager, half-nervous to meet Pilar, the third wife of their brother Roland; they turn up late with Roland's teenage daughter Molly also in tow.

The stage set, Hadley writes perceptively and subtly as the very different personalities of the siblings and their guests ebb, flow and interact (and often clash). Nothing hugely dramatic happens but it’s good on the way memory works and how time speeds away. I hadn’t read any Tessa Hadley before but I’ll be looking for more, I think.

45. A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting – Sophie Irwin

Such fun! One for the Regency romance shelf. After the death of her parents, Kitty Talbot needs to find a husband to save her family home and secure her sisters’ futures. She goes to London where her Aunt Dorothy, who has an interesting past, helps introduce her into society. High jinks ensue, involving bookish sister Cecily, the aloof Lord Radcliffe and various unsuitable suitors. I absolutely loved this – pure escapist fun, but definitely recommended. There are several unmarried sisters still in Dorsetshire so I hope there is a series in the offing.

35 Pereira Maintains Antonio Tabbuchi
Pereira is a gentle, quiet, elderly man who sees himself as apolitical, he just wants to get on with his life without too much disruption to his routine. His work as editor of the culture page of a minor evening paper occupies much of his time, as does eating omelettes and drinking lemonade at his favourite bar. He converses with the photo of his deceased wife, grumbles about the caretaker of his office building and worries about his health. However, Pereira lives in a dictatorship (1930s Lisbon) and finds himself forced into reconsidering his position in this society when he employs an assistant, a young man with leftist principals and becomes entangled in the underground world of the resistance fighters.

This is a beautiful book. Its very short, and written in the third person with the refrain "Pereira maintains" recurring regularly, as though this is a testimony given by Pereira recounting the events of summer 1938. Whether he has been captured and forced to give evidence or whether this is a friendly account from later on we are left to guess. A highlight of the reading year for me!

Another good read here! Michel The Giant (An African in Greenland) by Tété-Michel Kpomassie tr. from French by James Kirkup. This is an absolute gem, first published in 1981 and reissued this year. Kpomassie grew up in 1950s Togo, a land of snakes and coconut plantations. As a boy he came across a book about icy, snakeless Greenland and was entranced, called to live there as if to a vocation.

He worked his way there, staying with various hosts as he journeyed through west Africa and Europe before eventually sailing from Denmark to Greenland in 1963, 8 years after he set off.

In Greenland, just as on the journey, Kpomassie stayed either with friends of friends or simply knocked on doors and asked for shelter, in the sure knowledge that anyone in his own village would offer such hospitality, and he was almost always welcomed.

His real interest lay north of the ‘dog-line’ beyond which the life of huskies and sleds could be found, and it is fascinating reading. The hunting - and the butchery, of which there is plenty, but never needlessly, and in the case of whales is atoned for spiritually in rituals that the author compares to customs in Togo; the gender roles; the status of the Greenlanders v the Danes - there is an equal pay campaign for the former to be paid the same as the latter for the same work; the cold, the polar winter (not pitch black for 6 months as I suppose I’d imagined, as even without direct sunlight there is some twilight glow for at least part of the day, and the moon is often bright); the cooperation - and sometimes the surprising lack of cooperation - between families.

A wonderful glimpse into a very different way of life in the company of an unassuming writer with an inspirational sense of vocation and adventure, with fascinating points of comparison and contrast with Togo. I must admit I didn’t fly through it, especially the first quarter before he reaches Greenland, but it was richly rewarding and I highly recommend it.

@Piggywaspushed I'd expected to like it, but just didn't think it was very well written.

All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

Recommended in The Guardian.

Anybody who liked Dark Matter or Thin Air by Michelle Paver or The Terror by Dan Simmons might be interested in this. Jo/Jonathon is a boy in a girl's body and has shared the excitement of his older brothers as they've followed news of polar explorations and wished to join one themselves. When the First World War ends those hopes, Jonathon persuades his brothers' best friend, Harry, who served alongside them, to help him stowaway on a ship under the leadership of the famous explorer, James Randall. However, it soon becomes clear that there is danger on the ice and someone, or something, wants to divide the men. As more men die or disappear, Jonathon endeavours to stop the rot, but will the ghosts of his brothers let him?

This was...not bad. I liked it more as a study of the Antarctic/shiplife/life on the ice than I did as a ghost/horror story. It could've used some editing and, as with many horror stories, sometimes the descriptions of the thing being scary didn't quite hold up enough, but it held my attention and I really liked some of the interactions between characters.

@Terpsichore I like Tessa Hadley a lot, I reviewed her latest Free Love earlier on here. I think Clever Girl and The London Train are excellent too.

57. Eight Days in June by Tia Williams. Fun but unremarkable romance between a serious literary author and a writer of erotic vampire fiction, high school lovers who are thrown together again years later.

58. People Person by Candice Carty-Williams. Absent father Cyril Pennington has 5 children by 4 different women, none of whom know each other well until a tragi-comic event brings them together. Dealing with the aftermath brings the siblings closer as they come to understand more about their family.

There was some good stuff here but I didn't feel it ever got off the ground, and it wasn't sure whether to be a full on comedy or a more serious book about family relationships. A bit too sincere for the former but too funny for the latter. Still, I liked Queenie and I'll read whatever she does next.

And Number 50 is....recommended by Remus

50. Madhouse At The End Of The Earth by Julian Sancton

Belgium is in its infancy, and the 19th Century is ending when Adrien de Gerlache mounts an expedition to be the first to the South Pole. Things go wrong from the start as he struggles to both fund and man his mission and things never really recover.
Driven by both national and personal pride and a corresponding fear of failure, Gerlache finds himself deliberately risking the safety of his crew.

This is a non fiction, but it reads like a good fiction. I struggled maybe a little to get "in" but once that happened, I was loving it. The photos of the boat show it as tiny, and in that light the circumstances described would have been horrific and claustrophobic.

We now live in a world where there is little to discover now except space. Our advances in technology today, just make the achievements of those old explorers all the more impressive, the willingness to sail somewhere without any idea of what awaits and no backup should anything go wrong...I mean most people don't go to the corner shop without a device that pinpoints their location. The bravery involved in this sort of endeavour cannot be overstated.

Yet also, I thought of the poor sailor crewing the boat for meagre pay, and literally putting their lives in the hands of their "betters" - it all seems so unthinkable now.

I was also shocked at the brazen disregard for both the wildlife and the environment, but of course these were lesser educated times, in that sense.

Above all this was so atmospheric that I could only feel how absolutely terrified I would feel in the same circumstances.

Nice one @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie this is a bold, and probably still £1.99 for anyone that wants it.

Trying to decide on which of my long reads gets the greenlight for the rest of the year, 50 seemed so unthinkable when I was so ill the first six months, I'm quite pleased.

It really annoys me when you can't edit your post

58. The Anarchists' Club - Alex Reeves

Second in the series featuring Leo Stanhope, the accidental detective living a secret life in Victorian London. A better sense of place than the previous novel, building up to a dramatic conclusion. It'll be interesting to see how the next book opens considering how this was left, so at some point I'll definitely be reading it.

59. Toto Among the Murderers - Sally J Morgan

Set in 1973, this is the story of a group of friends who have graduated art school and are in teacher training and on the dole, with the narrative switching between wild child Toto and her best friend Nel. A vivid depiction of life at that time for young people on the edge of society. Freedom, drugs, sex and alcohol, but also the threats of violence within relationships and from outsiders. With hindsight there is one particularly chilling scene when Toto has a close encounter while hitchhiking that will stay with me.