50 Books Challenge 2023 Part Four

[Southeastdweller]

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

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2023, 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.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here and the third one here.

What are you reading?

I’ve mostly been reading the Women’s Prize longlist, but before I review those, I wanted to do some catch-up reviews about books I read earlier in the year. My teaching term is about to start again so it’s now or never, sigh!

13. The Moth Catcher, Ann Cleeves, 4/5
    As always, Cleeves’ character portraits are great. I’m still working through her Vera Stanhope detective novels. The ending of this novel relied rather a lot on crucial information being withheld from the reader, but it was an excellent read nonetheless.

14. Silver on the Tree, Susan Cooper, 4/5
    The last book in Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. I think if I had come to these books as a child, I would have loved them even more, but it’s a wonderful series regardless. Her descriptions of place and landscape are marvellously evocative, and I think I will remember the books more for that than for the plot, which I found a little too categorically split between the forces of good and evil. Brilliant ending though, which foregrounds one character’s difficult choice.

15. Just a Mother, Roy Jacobsen, trans. Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, 5/5
    The most recent (final?) instalment in Jacobsen’s series of novels about Ingrid Barroy and the small Norwegian island she calls home. I was waiting for this to be translated into English and snapped it up as soon as it came out. Ingrid remains an intriguing feminist protagonist as she ages. There is a terrible tragedy in this novel though that I wasn’t expecting, and I couldn’t quite get my head round it. Will reread it in future.

16. Winter People, Gráinne Murphy, 3/5
    I read this novel in my book group and some participants absolutely adored it, so I’m not quite sure why I didn’t warm to it as much as they did. It’s the intertwined story of three different people who have all, in some way, experienced the loss of loved ones. I think this was a book just a bit too bleak for me to cope with when I read it. The character of Sis Cotter, an elderly widow who has a complicated relationship with her children, really did come to life for me – the stories of the other two characters, a bit less so.

17. George Sand: A Woman’s Life Writ Large, Belinda Jack 4/5
    I’ve been reading this biography slowly over the Easter vac. I was curious to know more about the life of this madly prolific, cross-dressing French 19th c. novelist. Having finished it, I’m a bit in awe of how many books she wrote and how many lovers she had, ha! Jack succeeds admirably in showing the complexity of her life. I did feel I was losing track of lovers at various points, but that is probably down to the life itself rather than the bibliography. I have a much better understanding of Sand now; I think the fact she was born of a working-class mother and an illegitimate aristocratic father must have done much to shape the focus on class inequality that emerges in her novels. I would like to know more about the estrangement between Sand and her daughter Solange; I suspect Sand wouldn’t have been an easy mother to have, but Jack focuses primarily on Sand’s view of the mother-daughter relationship, rather than focussing on the daughter’s point of view (which does make sense given that Sand herself wrote SO MUCH autobiography).

Oh the George Sand bio sounds fabulous. I’ve only come across her in passing in Figes’ The Europeans and his recent play about Flaubert. Wasn’t Chopin a long term
lover. I will look out for this.

That George Sand biog does sound good, @cassandre. Have you been to the Musée de la Vie Romantique in Paris? One floor is devoted to Sand memorabilia - she and Chopin often visited the house when it was owned by the painter Ary Scheffer. It’s a lovely place to visit.

So much for my aim to get rid of books. Went to a NT place this afternoon and ended up buying two from the secondhand book shop. In fairness they were both on my wish list: The Gallows Pole and Family Secrets (much reviewed here last year I think?). I may get round to reading them before the end of the year...

I was also in an NT place with a bookshop this afternoon...

59. Children Of Paradise by Camilla Grudova

I don't think @TheTurn0fTheScrew 's review can be surpassed so I'm not going to try.

60. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

Several years ago now I admired Swimming Home by the same author and then I saw this in the deals.

Sofia takes her mother Rose to a small Spanish town in search of medical treatment.

Though not much of anything happens in this short book, I wanted to be in it and stay with it.

The overall theme is physical manifestations of psychological illness which is a subject I'm really interested in.

Quietly evocative I would say.

I may be drunk. Nothing to add except I’m reading Needles Alleywhich is wearing its Birmingham references heavily.

@RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie 😁

Just a heads up that Shadowlands: A Journey through Lost Britain is one of today’s kindle daily deals. I’ve just snapped it up after the great reviews I read on here.

Thanks @BaruFisher ! It was on my Wish List.

37. Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan

Mayflies is a novel about the friendship between Tully and Noodles during the 1980s and then 30 years later. I preferred the section set in the 1980s, maybe because it reminded me of being young when going to gigs, having drunken adventures, chatting about music, and quoting favourite films with friends formed a big part of my life. I think it captured male friendship beautifully, and reminded me a lot of my husband and his group of friends - the silly nicknames and relentless Mickey-taking masking love and affection. This had all the ingredients to be a book I’d love, and while I liked it and can appreciate how beautifully written it is, it just didn’t reach me emotionally for some reason.

17 Ordinary People by Diana Evans

I note I am now reading shortlisted Women's Prize novels from 4 years ago. Sounds about right given the length of my TBR list on Kindle! Set principally very near where I live (which is always nice in a book!), this novel follows two couples (Melissa and Michael; Stephanie and Damian) who are friends of many years. They now have young families and all are dissatisfied with their lives in one way or another. This is very much a portait of middle class black South London (although Stephanie is white) and Evans does a good job of weaving stuff you might not know in without sounding preachy or issue-led. Melissa is the heart of the book; a journalist whose career has stagnated after having a family, her slow mental deterioration seeps through the pages, so visceral at times you want to grab her out of the pages and try to sort her out. All the characters do stupid things but there is a resolution of sorts. Evans writes really well and does mid-life angst really well too. I will seek out more of her books.

Needless Alley by Natalie Marlow
A crime novel set in Birmingham, which our local Waterstones has been pushing heavily.

I liked it well enough, but didn’t love it. I thought some of the Birmingham references were rather awkward and laboured and there was more than a little of the creative writing class in some of the descriptions. I also guessed the killer relatively early, although not the motive.

The thing that really annoyed me though, was that she stole at least one line from Raymond Chandler (I’m assuming her writing name is a pseudonym) and lots of phrases from Wilfred Owen’s poems. Maybe she thought she was being clever, or offering some sort of tribute, but I call it plagiarism.

I've just bought Needless Alley - hope I like it more than you do, Remus.

Diana Evans has a new book out, or just about to come out. I still have her first book TBR - I really liked The Wonder, years ago, and was a little bit disappointed by Ordinary People but will still seek out the new book. (Sometimes I think it's timing or me rather than a book, that I won't necessarily have the same reaction to a book if I get round to a reread).

@cassandre, I've very recently read a novel by Nell Stevens, Briefly, A Delicious Life, about George Sand* *- if you have a problem with ghost narrators this may be an issue, as the main narrative point of view is that of a 14 year old girl who died in childbirth hundreds of years before. Anyway, it's about George Sand, her children and her tubercular lover, the composer/musician Frederic Chopin, and a disastrous stay in a village on Mallorca where this strange group of visitors was rather resented and feared by the locals.

@elkiedee I liked it well enough. It's very readable and I liked the central character. I'd read another by her if it featured him again.

Thanks @elkiedee , just had a look and it seems to be a sequel of sorts to Ordinary People - it's called A House For Alice and came out on 6 April.

Oh wow, thanks for the interesting comments about George Sand!

@StColumbofNavron , I didn't think this bio quite captured her somehow, but the whole enterprise of capturing her in a bio is very challenging I think, and this was a worthy stab at it.

@Terpsichore , I haven't been to that Paris museum and it sounds brilliant, thanks for the rec!

@Elkiedee, thanks for the Nell Stevens rec, I didn't know about that novel and it sounds very interesting. The interlude of the Sand/Chopin in Majorca did figure in the biography, and it sounds like they well and truly managed to alienate the locals. Hmm.

I'm quite ignorant of the 19th c in general. I became intrigued by Sand because of her early feminist novel Indiana, and the beautiful work of lit crit by Naomi Schor, George Sand and Idealism, which argues that Sand's idealism isn't just an expression of twee femininity but is rather a political choice: a way of talking back to the masculine realist genre that dominated the fiction of the period. I'd really like to read some more of her novels.

Coincidentally I had an old friend visiting me recently who IS a 19th c. specialist and who really doesn't like Sand at all, ha. She was talking about how messy Indiana is in terms of its plot and narrative. That's fair enough; I think I've always liked sprawling, messy narratives myself. Each to their own! My friend is actually a Baudelaire specialist and I read in the Sand bio that Baudelaire HATED Sand. Compared her work to excrement in a latrine 😂

Flaubert on the other hand was really taken with Sand apparently, and wrote his famous short story Un Coeur simple as a kind of tribute to her, because she told him that some of the most important human truths can't be expressed in words (and the heroine of Un Coeur simple is an illiterate maidservant).

My DSM bought me a teaching memoir for Christmas ..Is there a Pigeon In the Room? perhaps unaware of my jaded state and cynicism. Cameron Wyllie is the now retired head of one of the Edinburgh posh schools, having taught in private schools all his life and attended the same one at one point. So, not really much like me , dear DSM! Notwithstanding, this is generally highly readable and entertaining. A few bum notes, where he sneers a bit at some aspects of education, I'd say. Rather a lot about school trips, public speaking, drugs and sex education for my tastes. Overly long so becomes repetitive and a bit 'those were the days' ish. But bits of it were oddly moving.

I don't think he did a Clanchy at any point...

There's a load of Ishiguru books in the Kindle sale today btw, if anybody fancies being bored to death - not the boring butler or the boring people waiting to have their organs harvested though.

Lights touch paper and runs...

Remus . I loved the remains of the day, one of my top books ever I think. But still properly chuckled at your announcement

I'm contemplating treating myself to a kindle for my birthday , I havent ventured into the world of e -readers yet but depressingly have a neurological condition that sometimes means even Holding/carrying a book is too much . If I buy books on offer now will they just remain in my Amazon account or do I need to have a kindle first?

1. The Shut Eye, Belinda Bauer.

A quick read, random number generated. Was neither good nor bad, but I do seem to be attracting books with the most ridiculous parody-style police officers this year. "Marvel" was no exception. Parts of the interaction between him and his superiors and colleagues were nothing short of reminiscent of Thin Blue Line in both appallingly stereotyped behaviour and loudmouthed arrogant "bloke plod" behaviour. Lots of silly psychic stuff padding things out and I didn't like that she made the perp another stereotype. Though he hadn't meant to be the perp, Or something. Ending was rushed. Left you thinking wtf?

I think I read a BB last year, and I have another couple on the Kindle. I think she's another "done an MA in creative writing specialising in crime fiction" and given the number of books that she's churned out in a short space of time, I want to tell her (along with all the others) to stop, slow down, and go for quality not quantity.

Am now on Trespasses and it feels weird to be reading something in the same year as the rest of you! Am liking it very much. (I have never been to Northern Ireland; in the mid 80s I shared a flat with a Protestant from the north north, and a Catholic from Belfast. It was fascinating (if that's not too awful a word to use to describe those times) Another university friend's parent was one of the Peace People from the 70s. He was a journalist and one of my favourite wow moments was when after sitting talking with him half the night he said to me "do you write? you should, you know" Go me. 😍This book is making me very thoughtful and pondersome.

@SweetSakura I haven’t got a kindle at all - I read kindle books through the app on my iPad - and unfortunately that hasn’t stopped me spending far too much on virtual books! So no, I don’t think you have to own one before you start buying books.

Ahh fab @Terpsichore

38. The Good Guy by Susan Beale

A couple living the American dream realise that the dream isn't all its cracked up to be. I hated this, it's a story that's been told in many different guises, but better.

@SweetSakura i also don’t have a Kindle and downloaded the Kindle app to my phone a couple of weeks ago after realising I can get some free Kindle books via Amazon Prime. I’ve just made my first Kindle purchase, Trespasses, after reading the reviews on here.

Re Kindle, what am I going wrong? I subscribed to the daily deals email a few days ago but still haven’t received it. It’s definitely not going into my spam.