A few more reviews and I've caught up for now! Sorry the reviews are so long. I sit down and think, I'll just write short reviews of a couple of sentences each, but it seems the more tired I am, the more longwinded I am. All my recent reads have been good though; I seem to be on a roll.
7 Remorse, Alba de Céspedes, trans. William Weaver 4/5
Another out-of-print novel by de Céspedes. This one is told alternately in epistolary and diary form, with three of the main characters exchanging letters, and a fourth keeping a journal about his frustrated attempts to become a writer. Francesca, unhappily married, wrestles with the idea of leaving her husband (a devout Catholic and former hero of the anti-fascist resistance movement) in order to join her lover. Like de Céspedes' Between Then and Now, this novel portrays characters in post-war Italy who seem to have lost a sense of purpose, and are asking themselves existentialist, Sartre-like questions about how they can invest their lives with meaning. After what seemed to me a slow start, the plot becomes increasingly gripping, as some of the characters turn out to be much more duplicitous than their letters originally indicated. We’re not quite in the world of Les Liaisons dangereuses, but we’re closer to it than I would have imagined! The ending of the novel has many surprises. Not in my top rank of de Céspedes novels, but a thought-provoking read.
8 The Spoilt Kill, Mary Kelly 4/5
As recommended by @Terpsichore! A quality detective novel set in a china factory (the Staffordshire Potteries) in Stoke. Very noir. The descriptions of china-making are insanely detailed, and the town’s industrial setting is vividly evoked. Nicholson, the detective and narrator, is a rather quiet figure compared to the distinctive characters who surround him. I especially liked Corinna, the factory’s artist (though she is forced to curb her more radical artistic tendencies) and a not-so-closeted alcoholic (she pulls her flask out at regular intervals, and gets through seven bottles of whiskey a month). Kelly’s ability to create a whole set of believably complex characters within a couple of hundred pages is impressive. The ending is also complex, but satisfying. Looking forward to reading Due to a Death soon; I've enjoyed reading all the recent reviews of it!
9 Artemisia, Letizia Treves et al 5/5
I got this in 2021 on the recommendation of a 50-Booker (was it @Boiledeggandtoast ?) and it has been sitting neglected in my TBR pile ever since. It’s the catalogue of the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition which was at the National Gallery that year (and which I never managed to get to, alas). I don’t often read an exhibition catalogue from cover to cover, but this one I did, and loved it. The illustrations are lavish and breathtaking (so many portraits of strong women), and Gentileschi led an extraordinary life. She had to invest a lot of effort into marketing her work, and cultivating rich patrons… and as a married woman she wrote sexy letters to her lover (complete with reference to masturbation). A definite bold.
10 In the Darkroom, Susan Faludi 5/5
Faludi, a journalist and feminist from the US, recounts the story of her father’s life in this tour de force of a memoir. A Holocaust survivor from Hungary, he immigrated to the US and became a celebrated photographer and suburban dad, but he had a violent side, and he and his daughter were estranged for most of her adult life. At age 76 (!), he emails Susan to announce that he (or rather she) has just transitioned to become a woman. Susan Faludi then undertakes a quest to discover her own family history. Her father has returned to live in Hungary, but is seemingly as eager to leave Jewish identity behind as she is her former masculinity (recreating yourself is easier if you’ve spent your life altering photos in darkrooms, after all). It’s hard to say which strands of this book are most compelling: the ones that explore the history of Jews in pre-and post-war Hungary, or the ones that explore trans identity. Steven/Stephanie Faludi comes across as an extremely frustrating person to have had as a father, but we slowly discover the layers of his/her life history (along with the author as she unearths them), and at the end of the book I was in tears. I think there should be more books like this about trans people: books that don't seek to further a particular pro-trans or anti-trans agenda, but just tell the story of a particular individual, and tell it with wit and integrity, as Susan Faludi has done.