Monday 30 December 2019

CHRISTMAS ROUND-UP Part 2: What's in our sights?


More of our guests tell us what they're planning to read next - and our final round-up, or rather the first of 2020, will appear next Monday.

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Paul Magrs:  All I can think of is the fact that there's a new Anne Tyler out early next year! It still feels like a huge treat - and the fact that her last two have been so wonderful adds to the anticipation. Next year marks exactly thirty years since I read my first Anne Tyler. She had just won a big award for Breathing Lessons and I was with my first boyfriend Gene in the middle of 1990. He was in the UK for a year and started me off reading Tyler and Armistead Maupin, Margaret Atwood, Carson MacCullers and Amy Tan, among others. He gave me If Morning Ever Comes and I was hooked forever.
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Graeme Fife:  In a deluded time, as we confront an indefeasible 
tangle of misprision, misleading promise and fantasy arithmetic, exacerbated by the dumb stupidity of prime nitwits posing as keepers of wisdom, it seems a very apposite choice of reading to turn to Don Quixote. Misconceit and misadventure, tilting at windmills, forlorn escapades in a bonkers scenario? Bullseye.

The Road to Wigan Pier next, another apt read against the current backdrop of blurred reality. Orwell’s unflinching truth-telling and masterly prose. And Lara Maiklem’s Mudlarking for the stories attached to the vast gallimaufry of trouvailles washed up by the waters of old Thames.

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Linda Newbery:  Here are two enticing writers I feel ashamed to have neglected till now. In recent months I've read two novels by Jane Rogers, Conrad and Eleanor and the earlier Mr Wroe's Virgins, both of which confirm her as a writer of exceptional talent and versatility. Her new novel, Body Tourists, promises to be very different again. Ann Patchett, for some reason, I haven't read at all, but have seen such glowing reviews of her work from people whose judgement I respect that I'm going to plunge in with her latest, The Dutch House.


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Pippa Goodhart: Awaiting when I have time to snuggle by a fire and wallow in these book treats are: Mr Godley’s Phantom by Mal Peet. Mal Peet was a writer of such fresh, fun, sometimes shocking skill, who died too young. Here’s a new book, his last, glinting with gold on its cover and promising a ‘part ghost story part crime thriller’. And: a second-hand copy, bought from wonderful David’s Bookshop in Cambridge, of Daphne Du Maurier and Her Sisters by Jane Dunn. The sub-title is The Hidden Lives of Piffy, Bird and Bing. Lots of photos of posh Edwardians. Yum!

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Linda Sargent:  Fifty years ago when I was a “young adult” there were few books aimed precisely at my age group and consequently I read mostly from the adult shelves of our tiny village library. Among my favourite authors were Mary Stewart, Jean Plaidy, Mary Renault (must re-read her too), and Elizabeth Goudge. Recently I've been tentatively re-reading some of Goudge’s books, and have unearthed my battered paperback of Green Dolphin Country, first published in 1944 and set in the Channel Isles and New Zealand. At fifteen I was captivated, hoping that one day I might visit both places, but as is so often the case, travelling vicariously through strongly crafted stories can be almost as satisfying and Goudge’s vivid and detailed descriptions never fail here. And while there may be some aspects of her writing that feel a little out of step with modern sensibilities, as a friend of mine remarked, we should perhaps approach this body of work in the same way as we would that of – say – Dickens, Trollope et al, writers who, like Goudge, are products of their times. Meanwhile, I look forward to my travels in Green Dolphin Country ...


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Celia Rees:  I intend to read books I already have. If I don’t like the book, it goes to Oxfam; if I do like it, I’ll read then take to Oxfam. Slow speed de-cluttering. I’m starting with The Muse by Jessie Burton. I bought this because it had a pretty cover and sounded interesting. Next, The Raven King by Marcus Tanner. I loved the title and knew nothing about Matthias Corvinus, fifteenth century king of Hungary and his fabled lost library. Finally:Now All Roads Lead to France – The Last Years of Edward Thomas, by Matthew Hollis. I love Edward Thomas’ poetry, but I haven’t read this because I know what happened to him and it will make me sad.

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Paul Dowswell:  Having greatly enjoyed Craig Brown’s Princess Margaret hatchet job Ma’am Darling, I think I might have developed a taste for royal biogs. Edith Sitwell’s Victoria of England is sitting in a pile by my bed and a cursory glance through the pages suggests it will be a fascinating read.

As a long-time writer of non-fiction I have a deep admiration for Bill Bryson – his History of Nearly Everything was excellent. So his recently published The Body looks unmissable.

Finally, I have just spent a week touring Italian schools and the people I was with have been working with the YA author Melvin Burgess and tell me he is brilliant. So I must give one of his a read.

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Michael Lawrence: Ever keen to read about photographers and painters, having been both in my time, one of my 2019 reads was Francoise Gilot’s Life with Picasso. She was with him for ten years and in the book details his working methods along with some descriptions of him that did not please him, for it’s said that he never spoke to her again after its publication in 1964.

I also re-read, for the first time in about 40 years, Emile Zola’s novel The Masterpiece, published in 1886, which is full of information about the lives and difficulties of the Impressionists, and in particular Zola’s friend from childhood Paul Cézanne who (guess what) ceased to speak to Zola after its publication.

The book that I’m most looking forward to is a debut novel, The Age of Light  by Whitney Scharer, given to me by my friend Julia Wills. I’ve only read the opening paragraphs of the prologue so far (I’m saving this book for just the right mood – mine, that is), which are so beautifully written that I might have wanted to read on even if it hadn’t been about the youth of American photographer Lee Miller, whose work I’ve always admired.

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Adele Geras:  Like millions of other readers all over the world, the book I’m most looking forward to next year is The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. That’s coming in March and I have pre-ordered it.

Other than that, I am excited about Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (recently reviewed here as the choice of Orb's Bookshop of Aberdeen) by Olga Tokarczuk, the Polish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. I was attracted to it for its title, which is a quotation from William Blake and I downloaded a sample of the book on to my Kindle. I liked what I read very much and bought the book. This feature, which isn’t much talked about, is one of the things I love about reading on Kindle. It prevents a lot of terrible mistakes. I have sampled quite a few dreadful books and saved myself a lot of money! Merry Christmas to all our readers and hoping for lot of wonderful books in the New Year.

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Monday 23 December 2019

CHRISTMAS ROUND-UP Part 1: What's on our to-read piles?



What's on our reading piles? Some of our contributors look ahead - to new publications, books they plan to re-read, authors they've neglected. We hope you'll find some great suggestions here. Thanks, as always, to all our guest reviewers for sharing their favourites - WRITERS REVIEW wouldn't exist without them! Come back next week for Part 2, and the first Monday in January for Part 3.

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Piers Torday:  I am saving Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker Prize winning Girl, Woman, Other for the holidays, as following the election result, I need something urgently contemporary and modern that takes the novel forward to hopefully move me forward too. I am hugely looking forward to Salley Vickers’ latest, Grandmothers, as The Librarian was one of my favourite titles of the last year or so. For the New Year, I am anticipating a subterranean wander with Robert Macfarlane’s Underland, as the weather and political climate look set to make overground distinctly unappealing…

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Yvonne Coppard:  Like many others, I eagerly await Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, concluding the journey that started with the wonderful Wolf Hall. For non-fiction, I will re-read my old fave, Carlo Ravelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, and will eagerly move on to the new Unlocking the Universe, by Lucy and (the late) Stephen Hawking. Billed as ’the ultimate children’s guide to space, time and everything in between’, it sounds just about the right level for me in my quest to understand the basics of our extraordinary planet before I die.

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Ann Turnbull:  I'll be reading Girl by Edna O’Brien – because I feel so inspired that at the age of 88 she has not only written another novel but chosen such a bold theme. Also The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje – because I loved the film, always meant to read the book, and recently read the first few pages and didn’t want to stop.

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Marianne Kavanaugh:  I’m looking forward to Amanda Craig’s The Golden Rule, which comes out in June. It has a deliciously Patricia Highsmith-type premise – two women meet on a train and agree to murder each other’s husbands. Otherwise, as usual, I will be disappearing into books I should have read but somehow missed, like Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding (with the added bonus of an introduction by Ali Smith). Also waiting for me is Leila Slimani’s first novel Adèle (Dans le jardin de l’ogre). I loved her best-selling Lullaby (Chanson Douce) – a taut, claustrophobic story told in dark, plain language.

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Cindy Jefferies:  On my teetering to read pile is Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende. As more books get added , this novel is about half way down the pile now, but I have just teased it out and put it back to the top. Her work always cheers me if I need cheering. Reading her feels to me rather like meeting a friend after a long time and spending a few hours catching up.

Over Christmas, children and grandchildren will be in and out, giving little time for me to get immersed in anything other than board games, slices of cake and general frivolity. Making an Elephant by Graham Swift is one I keep for those snatched moments. It’s a collection of essays, interviews and memories along with some poetry. Swift tells us about reading aloud at Cheltenham and elsewhere, spending Christmas with Salman Rushdie in hiding, buying a guitar with Kazuo Ishiguro, the death of his father. I find every essay absorbing. Swift writes modestly, and isn’t afraid of laughing at himself. It’s always a pleasure to pick up the book and discover something else, and along the way some of his thoughts on writing slip in, to be mulled over. Perfect!

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Gwen Grant:  Poems that make Grown Men Cry - Great poems. Great choices. Irish Colin McCann chooses American Wendell Berry’s moving dream of a dead friend. Malawi-born Jack Mapanje cried all right but with laughter at Bertold Brecht’s ‘The Book Burnings, as a furious poet learns his work is not going to be burnt.

Crime writer John Sandford’s latest book, Neon Prey, is lined up, too, his spare, laconic, writing married to high octane stories of murder and mayhem that make the hero, Lucas Davenport, very likable. The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh reveal the vulnerability, goodness and perseverance of a man slowly finding his way in life. Good writing draws you in; love has you walking alongside.

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Jon Appleton: Spanning 40s America to 70s Ireland, Anne Enright’s new novel, Actress (Cape, February) promises to cast her unflinching gaze on the scars of childhood but will no doubt be just as vibrant and stimulating as I’ve found her other novels to be. Second, full disclosure: I was lucky to work, in a small way, on Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End (Zaffre, March) but I’ll be reading my finished copy afresh and recommending it widely. It’s going to be one of THE big books of 2020 – a powerfully realised, panoramic crime novel that offers every kind of readerly pleasure.

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Judith Allnatt: I’m going to start 2020 with the delight of reading new novels by favourite authors, both of which are set in the years leading up to WW2. Sue Gee’s new novel Trio has settings that intrigue me straightaway “the isolated moors of Northumberland, a hill-town school and a graceful old country house”. Here, a grieving widower is awakened to both music and love.

A Single Thread by Tracey Chevalier on the other hand, concerns a ‘surplus woman’, unlikely to marry, seeking company in a group of embroiderers and becoming privy to their secrets. One can be sure that both writers will explore grief and desire with all their customary subtlety and insight.

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Mary Hoffman: For me the big event of 2020 will be the March publication of The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel’s third novel in the “Cromwell trilogy.” We pre-ordered it the minute it was announced. And there’s plenty of time to re-read Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies before then. (It will be the third time for me).

Mantel is the only fiction writer I buy in hardback, so I am waiting for paperbacks of Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (also March), Big Sky by Kate Atkinson (late January) and possibly Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (that’s not till July but I am in no hurry.

And a little bird told me that Celia Rees’s first adult novel, Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook, is coming from HarperCollins in May. I might have to break my no hardback fiction rule for that one!