What’s sitting on the bedside bookstack this month.
Water by John Boyne, Doubleday, 2023
I’ve never read anything by John Boyne before but plenty of other people obviously have because the list of books he’s published comes in at 23 (including the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas).
You learn a thing or two after writing that many books and most noticeable for me was how well he did a first-person female narration. Vanessa Carvin goes to a remote Irish island to escape her recent past and think about her role in it. Initially all you know is that her husband is in jail and that there was scandal surrounding his trial. She had two daughters but one of them is dead and the other one won’t return her messages.
This is a great read about power, the choices we make and the silence we allow.
North Woods by Daniel Mason, John Murray 2023
You know me. I love short stories, so I love a novel which can stand as it is or be seen as a collection of connected shorts and you can’t deliver four centuries of a single house deep in the woods of New England, Massachusetts without changing characters. This was a lush book. His use of language is exquisite and I always know I’m in the hands of a master when I grieve one story ending but am completely absorbed by the next one within a few pages. How to pick a favourite from the apple-obsessed ex-serviceman, the spinster twins, the fated bohemian lovers or the fake mystic who actually saw ghosts. I loved the variation of the inhabitants and the different styles used for their narratives, a mix of straight first-person, diaries, letters, third-person, newspaper articles and even an imagined speech given to a local historical society. It also includes the most intense insect sex-scene (or perhaps the only) I’ve ever read.
Tin Man by Sarah Winman, Tinder Press, 2017
I love Sarah Winman. I should say that right up front. After reading Still Life I’ve been steadily reading through her back catalogue and listening to interviews. This is great one on The First Time Podcast. Tin Man has been hailed by many people as one of her best. I liked it. A lot. But I didn’t love it as much as the others. It is a story of grief and loss and all the things which never were. Amidst that of course, is life and love and all the things which happen instead but the weight of Ellis and Michael’s recollections as they look back on their lives was too heavy for this reader at this time.
Women & Children by Tony Birch, UQ, 2023
Joe Cluny isn’t looking for trouble. The nuns just don’t appreciate his spirit. He has scars on the palm of his hands from their punishment which he hides from his mum. When Joe’s Aunt turns up at their house bloody and bruised, he sees the violence men are also capable of. His mum and sister are the strongest women he knows, but even they are powerless to stop it happening again. It’s a loss of innocence to realise that it’s it everywhere despite the silence, women and children on the other end of men’s violence.
I’m looking forward to hearing Tony Birch talk about this book at the Newcastle Writers Festival next week.
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell, Tinder Press, 2006
Yep, it’s back-to-back Maggie for me. I think I only have one or two books left on her backlist and one of them is already sitting on the bookstack for next month (The Hand That First Held Mine). If you’re looking for objectivity, don’t read any further. I just love her!
Esme Lennox is what they used to call ‘a handful’. She was an embarrassment to her colonial family in India and on moving to Edinburgh, becomes the cross her grandmother must bear. At 16, she is committed by her father to an institution and remains there for 60 years. When the facility is closed down, she’s released into the care of Iris, her sister’s granddaughter who never even know she existed. Families. Siblings. Secrets. And the dynamics are all pitch perfect. Told you she can’t do any wrong for me.
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Nina Cullen 