Checking in to say I'm reading Hags and Joe Country at the moment. Plan to catch up on the thread tonight and see what I have in store, after both caught my eye just now.
Despite being slightly MIA the last few weeks, I've done a fair amount of reading and am very behind on reviews as a result. But will try to get through at least a few over the next few days.
32 Mongrel by Hanako Footman
I haven't seen much about this novel, which is a very impressive debut telling the story of three women. Mei is six when she loses her mother. She tries to fit in but her half Japanese heritage and love for her best friend Fran makes her feel out of place in suburban Surrey. Yuki arrives in London to become a concert pianist but finds her dreams crumble when she falls in love with her music teacher, and Haruka is pining for the father she never knew, mourning her dead mother and working as a hostess in a Tokyo bar. This was a wonderfully satisfying and sad book; the stories linked together beautifully while dealing with loss, longing and isolation.
31 The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson
Stevenson joined Citibank in 2008 as a keen graduate just before Lehman Brothers went bust. That’s an important fact to bear in mind because arguably a lot of his success and ultimately his disillusionment with trading came about in the aftermath of that, as interest rates stayed low and dollars became a safe haven. It’s an outsider narrative – coming from working class East London, he grew up in the shadow of Canary Wharf but he never felt as if he fitted in, never felt comfortable spending the jaw dropping bonuses he was awarded, didn’t know how to use chopsticks at the expensive restaurants brokers took him to, and so on.
I have a lot to say about this book.
If you were captivated by Industry or enjoyed books like Liars Poker then you’ll find the first two thirds of this gripping. The City was a toxic environment on many fronts when I worked there two decades ago and there is no indication it has become any less toxic. It was a deeply misogynistic and bullying culture where no one cared about you as long as you made money and walking away was the best thing I ever did. Stevenson tells a really good story (and I can’t stress this enough – he’s a really entertaining writer who knows how to land a punch line and if you listen to the audiobook, which he reads, so much the better). But there’s a lot he chooses not to say. His account of how he grew up and grew out of love with the City is intriguing, but the final third – where he is seized by a sudden awareness of how what he is doing perpetuates inequality and undermines social cohesion but sits it out for month after month while he wrangles with Citi about whether or not they will pay him the equity he’s earned as a star trader – doesn’t really sit comfortably alongside his newly acquired social conscience.
I listened to this as an audiobook and he is a terrific narrator. That, for me, was what kept me hooked even as I got frustrated at times with his “I’m very clearly better than everyone else in the room” approach.
30 Why Patti Smith Matters by Caryn Rose
I think Patti Smith does matter, but I say that as a huge Patti Smith fan. She took on gender norms at a time when music really didn’t want women to step outside their lane, she’s a ferociously talented artist, photographer and musician, and she’s generally all kinds of awesome as she gets older. She is someone I’d have at my fantasy dinner party given the chance, so I am very much the target for this. And while I really enjoyed its exploration of her career and music (a lot of music biographies -which I appreciate isn’t how this book really positions itself) do very little in terms of talking about the music, I don’t think this ever really addressed why the author thought she mattered.