Big attempt here to catch up on reviews even though I'm about to finish another book so will be behind again shortly. I'm also completely in the grip of The Running Grave on Audible at the moment, so am finding all sorts of excuses to go for walks with my headphones on. Apart from the standard eye roll every time she mentions Pat's gravelly voice or uses many words where one would do (example from today - instead of starting to narrate the conversation, a whole lot of "he handed her the brandy and they sat on the sofas on either side of the glass coffee table while Robin had a drink and then put the small glass full of amber liquid on the horizontal surface of the glass topped rectangular coffee table that was between them because they were sitting on the blue sofas facing each other with the coffee table in between them where they were sitting". I am exaggerating but only slightly) it's very good.
98 Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer
I don’t typically get on with experimental fiction. I like a story about people, told well. But this was that while also being playful, ambitious and putting form and language on the same level as the story. Lia is dying slowly and her daughter is growing up and away from her, even while Lia struggles with her relationship with her mother and her past relationships. Meanwhile, Lia’s cancer cells (at least, this was my interpretation – they certainly have a lot to say for a bunch of cancer cells, not all of it physiological) tell their story through poetry, word pictures and prose. It sounds as if it shouldn’t work but it really does.
99 Penance by Eliza Clark
I am sure this was recommended on these threads, but recall it being controversial. I loved it and found it completely absorbing, although it was a tough read. In a grim seaside town, a girl has been horribly murdered on the night of the Brexit referendum. Her attackers are in prison and a journalist arrives to explore the story and find out what happened and to find a way to boost his own career as a true-crime writer. I was deterred initially by the online chat and message boards (I think I’m still traumatised by The Ink Black Heart) but this was handled much more adeptly. And it’s a fascinating exercise in unreliable narrators on several levels and complicity and voyeurism. Would strongly recommend.
100 Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett
I’ve never read any Bennett though on the strength of this I would go back for more. It’s a peculiar tale of middle aged love set just after the end of WW1, which had a real viciousness to it that I wasn’t expecting. A second hand bookseller lives a frugal and self-contained life running his bookshop in Clerkenwell and dreams of the woman running the shop opposite. They share a daily maid whose domestic dramas bring them together, and they get married, unhappily and ultimately disastrously. It’s a lesson in the perils of going along with a partner’s whims to keep them happy and not living for the moment. I loved the sense of place – the poverty of the surrounding area, the coming of electricity and modern conveniences (there’s a fabulous scene where Violet commissions someone to come and vacuum the entire shop with a massive industrial vacuum cleaner) and the book shop itself.
101 Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth
Spooky goings on at a girls’ school for young ladies result in deaths and disaster. Decades later, a writer’s account of the events is turned into a movie and the writer and two actors experience their own terrors while filming, and the narrative goes back and forth between the two timelines. I listened to this as an audiobook and slightly regretted it as the print version has pictures and footnotes that would have added to the reading experience.
I don’t know whether this is meant to be YA fiction, and it doesn’t particularly matter as it was a terrific gothic romp set in modern Hollywood and Edwardian-era Rhode Island. Amazon calls it a meta-gothic sapphic romp which is probably fair; I liked the fact that the lesbian elements were treated entirely un-sensationally in both timelines. The ending was a touch underwhelming but it was an enjoyable journey to get to that point. I think DD would really enjoy it, so have got a copy on order for her for Christmas.
102 When The Dust Settles by Lucy Easthope
I know some of you have read this – I heard Lucy speak at an event last year and was struck by her compassion and humanity which must have been thoroughly tested over her career in disaster recovery. She has a lot to say about planning, preparedness and the way in which disasters should be managed to best support victims, all of which made for a fascinating read.
103 Attack Warning Red by Julie McDowall
Felt like an appropriate follow up to the Easthope though this was actually terrifying. Again, recommended on here recently when it was in the Daily Deals, this is an account of civil preparedness (or lack thereof) between WW2 and the 1980s when the threat of nuclear war was ever present. I am so glad most of this was not something I knew about as a small child. I was terrified beyond measure of the threat of nuclear war and spent a lot of time imagining gruesome scenarios that it turns out were only a fraction as gruesome as the reality would have been. I was long puzzled by the fact that the Protect and Survive leaflets were never in fact widely distributed because I had vivid memories of a pamphlet that came through the door telling us how to prepare (basically, whitewash your windows and hide under the stairs for a week). I learned from this that many local authorities took it upon themselves to issue their own versions of guidance to populations and this must have been what we were sent. Why my parents didn’t remove it from a nervous eight year old I can’t imagine and how anyone involved in civil defence planning didn’t go mad from terror, I can’t imagine either.
104 The Full English by Stuart Maconie
I liked Maconie’s journalism when he was at the NME and he’s become a slightly less irritating Bill Bryson since then, it would appear. I like his optimism and his enthusiasm for the places he visits as he follows in the footsteps of JB Priestley’s tour of English towns and cities. He’s awakened a burning desire in me to visit Coventry, so I have persuaded a friend to accompany me there for a couple of nights away next weekend to see the cathedral and stay in the hotel he fell in love with. That’s quite a testament to a book, all things considered.
105 The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly
The vast majority of my recent reading has been recommendations from this thread and this was another so thank you to @BoldFearlessGirl for the recommendation.
When Ceres’s daughter Phoebe is hit by a car, she is moved to a long term care facility with little hope of recovery. Lonely and grieving, Ceres finds herself in a fairy tale world populated with friends and foe, through which she must navigate as danger draws ever closer to make it home to Phoebe. This was a proper grown-up fantasy, and reminded me in many ways of Fairy Tale by Stephen King which I also loved.
I haven’t read The Book of Lost Things and while I can see it isn’t essential in any way, I’d have liked to have the context for the characters that reappeared but it didn’t take away in any sense from the story. I shall be seeking out more by Connolly, who I’ve never read, starting with that.
106 Spike: The Virus vs The People by Jeremy Farrar and Anjana Ahuja
Farrar headed the Wellcome Trust throughout the pandemic and this is his account of his efforts to rally the public health community and government to “follow the science” in ways that scientists would recognise. His frustration particularly with the government and Cabinet in particular is palpable, and it’s a candid, depressing, timely read as the inquiry gears up. It was written while we were still in the grip of Covid and I’d have liked a touch more distance to allow him to reflect more fully on what happened, but it does have the advantage of being written with the anxiety and frustration of that period still front and centre in his mind.