Sixth birthday round-up: Adèle Geras, Celia Rees and Linda Newbery

Adèle, Celia and Linda share the books that have impressed them so far this year.

Adèle:

Tansy Devoy by Anne Fine.  A disclaimer: Anne is a friend, but alas, many of my closest friend are excellent writers (cf Linda Newbery and Celia Rees of this parish). This tale is of a social worker trying to find out whether the young girl she's investigating is sad or bad. Is the way she's behaved seemingly since the day she was born the result of nature or nurture?  We don't find out till quite late in the story what Tansy has done and along the way, we meet teachers, family and see what effect Tansy has had on everyone she's met. Fine grabs your attention with her first person narrative and you can't stop reading. I loved it.

Bad Actors by Mick Herron: I've been a passionate Herron fan since the appearance of the first novel in his Slough House series, Slow Horses. This has now been turned into a wonderful TV series on Apple TV. I'm so glad that this has catapulted the denizens of Slough House to the top of the spy genre pile. I adore these books, because not only are they exciting and hilarious, but they're also some of the best-written books I've come across in a long while. The beginning of Slow Horse is knowingly  Dickensian. I'm delighted at Herron's success. It's very well-deserved.

Left on Tenth: a second chance at life by Delia Ephron. Readers of this blog will know how much I love Delia Ephron. I reviewed her novel Siracusa and I do still recommend that, especially if you're  going on  holiday any time soon. This book is non-fiction and it's just as brilliant. It begins with the death of Delia's beloved husband. After becoming a widow, Delia finds love again and it's this late love that gets her through the terrible disease that strikes her. The writing of this book tells us at the outset that cancer was overcome, but the oonclusion is: love helps enormously. Delia's sister, Nora Ephron, died of cancer and that haunts Delia as she lies on her sickbed. It's a warm, heartfelt, funny and terribly sad story but most of all it proves the truth of Larkin's words: "What will survive of us is love."

Linda: 

Regenesis: how to feed the world without devouring the planet by George Monbiot. Like many readers, I know and admire George Monbiot as environment writer for The Guardian and as an eloquent speaker and campaigner. This being a subject close to my heart, I bought a copy on publication. I didn't know that his background is in zoology, one of many areas in which he's tremendously knowledgeable. Regenesis looks at our farming systems and how we must urgently move away from intensive animal farming (though as I know from experience, it's an uphill struggle to convince people to change long-established eating habits) if we're to have any chance of reducing carbon emissions, and how we must understand and respect the soil and its complex ecosystems if we're to avoid exhausting its potential for growing crops to feed us. A must-read for those of us who recognise that business as usual will destroy the planet. 

Tenderness by Alison MacLeod has been reviewed here by Jane Rogers and it was on her recommendation that I read it. What a tour de force! Daring, original and wide-ranging, it moves from D H Lawrence's death in Italy, back to his stay in a Sussex artistic community and forward to the Lady Chatterley trial. Another thread portrays Jackie Kennedy in the months leading up to her husband's election as President, and her interest in the novel which FBI chief J Edgar Hoover tries to use as a gambit against Kennedy's campaign. Wonderful, eloquent writing throughout. I shall look out for more by this bold, accomplished author.

Derek Jarman's Garden: After seeing photographs and reading about Prospect Cottage, I at last visited in July and was captivated both by this iconic garden and by the unique landscape and atmosphere of Dungeness, with the nuclear power station looming in the background. On my return a friend lent me this book: Derek Jarman's notes, reflections and poems, the last book he wrote before his death in 1994. Weakened by illness he finds inspiration in the garden he's shaped, collecting stones, driftwood and rusted metal to make sculptures and pebble garlands. "A cold, grey day. I write the poems, and while the poems form the rain blows in. Slowly the puddles gather at the roadside. Then, as the day draws to a close, sunlight floods the Ness and the wet shingle glistens like pearls of Vermeer light." Photography by Howard Sooley lovingly captures the uniqueness of the garden and its maker.

I couldn't possibly leave out Mother's Boy by Patrick Gale (I think we all loved this, but I got here first). It's based on the life of Cornish poet Charles Causley, relating his childhood, adolescence and naval experience, Charles's viewpoint alternating with that of his devoted mother Laura. Patrick Gale has described this as ‘a story of someone becoming a writer’, and although Charles was musically talented too, we see his early efforts at drama win him popularity in service life, where he became a coder first at sea (difficult, as he was hopelessly seasick), then in Gibraltar. He lived an uneventful life post-war, living with his mother until her death in a small Cornish town, but Gale draws on the poetry to enlarge on his inner life and sexuality, while Laura, in his depiction, has her own story. A poignant, absorbing read, as readers of Patrick Gale will expect. Read our Q&A with Patrick here.

Celia:

The Wrath To Come: Gone With The Wind and The Lies America Tells by Sarah Churchwell: I have long admired Professor Sarah Churchwell for her fearless writing and journalism; her powerful and distinguished work as historian and academic. The Wrath To Come examines the American Civil War and its legacy through the lens of Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With The Wind and David O. Selsnick's subsequent film adaptation. Margaret Mitchell, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, from an antebellum plantation and thus slave owning family, published Gone With The Wind in 1938. The novel sold a million copies in the first six months of publication and remains one of the best selling novels of all time. The film was similarly successful. It won a slew of Oscars, including Vivian Leigh for her Scarlett O'Hara and is one of the highest grossing films ever. This huge success has promoted both film and book to 'cultural phenomenon'. Everyone has seen it, read it, or at least heard of it. Rhett Butler's 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn' tops the list of the most famous movie lines. The trouble, as Sarah Churchill sees it, is the whole novel is based on romantic myths and lies about the Confederacy, the Old South, the Lost Cause. It deliberately ignores the realities of slavery, of a slave owning society with its implicit assumption of White Supremacy and its legacy of routine violence, judicial and actual, against African Americans. It is all there in the novel, but it is mediated by Mitchell. Sarah Churchwell looks with different eyes. She teases myth from reality and forensically demonstrates how the extraordinary success of Gone With The Wind, book and film, amplified these myths down through the years, becoming one of the defining stories  America tells itself and making it possible for a Confederate flag to be unfurled in an insurrectionist storming of the Capitol, a place where it had never flown before. Some things cannot be consigned to History. Some myths have to be debunked.     

Dead Lions by Mick Herron. Like my fellow Writers Reviewer, Adèle Geras, I am a huge Mick Herron fan, and I would have been reviewing Bad Actors, if she hadn't got there first. I'm re-reading his second book, Dead Lions and I may re-read the others. I rarely re-visit anything but I have to confess to gobbling his books too quickly the first time round.  The novels are extremely funny and hugely entertaining, the closest we've got to a satire of modern politics, politicians, apparatchiks and Whitehall obfuscation and general incompetence. As he says, 'In the past couple of years, no matter how far you push [the story], something stupider and even worse is going on in the real world.' Herron's novels are the opposite of the conventional spy novel, although he acknowledges a debt to Le Carré: 'John Le Carré gave me permission to become a writer - he showed me you could invent an entire world, invent its language, too.' Like Adèle, I am mighty pleased to see Mick Herron enjoying such well deserved success and thoroughly enjoyed the Apple TV series and Gary Oldman's playing of the appalling Jackson Lamb, the boss of the Slow Horses. Not exactly an overnight success, Dead Lions was turned down by his first publisher. Herron jumped ship, found a publisher who could see the potential and who was willing to give the books another chance. He describes himself as a 'rescue author'. I like that. 

The Power of The Dog by Thomas Savage. During lockdown, I joined a book club run by my friend Julia in South Wales by the magic of Zoom, I'd never been in a book club before and it was a new experience to read books I would not necessarily have chosen. One of these titles was The Power of The Dog. I had seen and enjoyed the Jane Campion film, as had the rest of the group (there was some discussion as to whether Benedict Cumberbatch has the legs for a cowboy) and I welcomed the chance to read the book that had inspired the adaptation. My first surprise was to discover that the book was written in 1967. The author was Montana born and ranched raised so the novel, set in 1924, is his lived and remembered experience. It casts an unusual and authentic light on another of America's myths about itself, 'The American West'. As a Western novel, it is out of time. There are motor cars and wirelesses. It contained none of the tropes of the traditional Western. This is a real world and it's  changing. The two brothers, George and Phil, reflect this. George is a prosperous, modern rancher, he has a wife, a house, meetings with the bank manager. Phil hankers for a romanticised past that may never have really existed. He is full of contradictions: classically educated, he won't even wash before eating. His overt, über masculinity is an elaborate cloak for his homosexuality which is ultimately his nemesis. A clever book and an impressive movie. Thank you Book Club for making me read it.  

Don't miss our special birthday guest post by Michael Arditti!

FOURTH ANNIVERSARY round-up: our Books of the Year (so far), by Adèle Geras, Celia Rees and Linda Newbery

Now we are four! That's four years' worth of great reviews and recommendations, all by authors or independent booksellers. Huge thanks to all those who contribute - we couldn't do it without you. Here Adele Geras, Celia Rees and Linda Newbery choose their favourite reads of the year so far (not necessarily newly-published).  

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All three of us could have chosen The Mirror and the Light, but Adèle bagged it first ...

Adèle: The timing of this novel's publication was fortunate. It came out in March, just before lockdown and it's been keeping thousands of readers happy for a very long time. I thought I was going to race through it, because I'd loved both Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies but it took me weeks because I was so bound up in following the pandemic as it unrolled that I only read it at night, in short sessions. Everything you've read about it is true: it's a wonderfully exciting story written in the most dazzling prose by a writer at the height of her powers. The word that kept coming into my mind was 'richness.'  There's an abundance of everything and I do think it ought to have been shorter, but overall it's a marvel. I compare it to Christmas pudding, which is one of my favourite desserts. I adore it, especially with brandy butter, but can only ever eat one helping at a time. It's very rich, just like this book.

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Linda: The Garden of Vegan, by top garden designer Cleve West, could have been written specially for me. Increasingly, alongside his high-profile design career, Cleve puts his energies into campaigning for animals. His book covers so much of importance: green gardening, animal welfare, sustainability, veganism, simple appreciation of wildlife and our environment. I hope it'll find its way into the RHS shops and be recommended in gardening magazines.

Diary of a Young Naturalist  by Dara McAnulty is another delight. Dara is an autistic teenager from Northern Ireland whose blogging about wildlife and the threats it faces has attracted support from Chris Packham and Robert Macfarlane. He records his fifteenth year in close and eloquent observations of the natural world in which he finds both intense joy and escape from his social difficulties, which include being badly bullied at school. A wildlife presenter and campaigner for the future? “This churning in me, it’s got to go somewhere."

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Adèle:  Magpie Lane has been one of the Books of the Lockdown and I take some of the credit for its success because I've been Tweeting about it like mad, and retweeting every word of praise of it I find. I raced through it, (yes...it's a frying onions book...one you hold in one hand as you cook!) and have subsequently read Lucy Atkins' previous novel, The Night Visitor, which is also very good indeed. I was attracted to Magpie Lane because it's set in Oxford in the house of a Master of a College and it involves elements of the Gothic and a narrator who may or may not be unreliable but is certainly spellbinding. It's also a love story and a mystery. I adored it and can't wait to read Atkins' next novel.

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Celia: I have to confess to not having read much during lockdown. A lot of my reading was taken up by The Mirror and The Light which Adèle snaffled. Pre-Covid, most of my reading time was spent gobbling up Mick Herron's Slough House Series. Mick Herron makes John Le Carré's spies and spymasters look like James Bond and Q.  The novels have their own argot with Suits and Stoats, Dogs and Achievers and the eponymous Slow Horses who are are stabled at Slough House in a grimy, grungy area of London far from their Secret Services' HQ in Regent's Park. They are a bunch of cock up merchants and misfits with drug, alcohol and anger issues, working under the jaundiced eye of Jackson Lamb who supervises them toiling over a never ending stream of totally pointless tasks that have been set in the hope that they will give up, resign and therefore not qualify for redundancy. They are there because they do not follow orders and in each book it is this that saves the day. 

Through the series, Mick Herron explores and uncovers the devious, back stabbing duplicity, chicanery, cover-ups and mendacious ruthlessness of modern British political life. From a boy hunted because of something he should not have seen involving a  Royal, to Brexit and the underhand doings of a ruthless senior politician who hides his true nature behind blustering, boyish bonhomie, this is the nearest thing we have to a satire of our times. The books are constantly unsettling: achingly funny scenes become shockingly violent and visa versa. There are many reversals of fortune for the Slow Horses and Mick Herron is as casually violent with his characters as they are as spies. There is also a reverse morality. Jackson Lamb who appears to have no moral sense is true to his Joes - his agents. Those above them are exposed as having no moral compass at all. I must confess to feeling rather bereft when I finished Joe Country, which I thought was the last in the series but a quick look on Amazon shows me he's published another one, Slough House. I missed that in all this Covid business  - I'm off to order it now.

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Linda: The Golden Rule, Amanda Craig's new novel, kept me hooked with its twistiness, its likeable, brave central character, Hannah, and its mainly Cornish setting. Gothic overtones of Jane Eyre and Beauty and the Beast combine with a plot that owes something to Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train. As always, Amanda Craig is sharp on details of rural poverty and class inequality. Equally gripping was Celia Rees' impressive first adult novel, Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook - more next week, in a special Q&A with Celia to mark publication.

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Adèle:  This is not the done thing at all: reviewing a book by a friend of yours, but I've done it for years and I will defend my right to put before readers books that I enjoy, whether I happen to know the writer or not. Mostly, the same few books get into everyone's hands so when I can recommend a book I know many, many people will love, I do so whether I know the writer or not. The Secrets Between Us, by Judith Lennox, shares with Judith's other novels a wonderful sense of time and place and a story about relationships which all of us can understand and appreciate. She's also very good at houses and clothes and details of every kind, which I really appreciate. In this book, a woman discovers after his death that her husband had a second, entirely other family....I'm not saying any more than that, for fear of spoilers. It's set in and around the Second World War and that adds to the drama. There's love and anguish and disappointment and triumph. I think it's terrific.

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Linda: The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, had been on my wish list for ages, since I kept seeing it recommended on various people's life lists. Lockdown was the perfect time to read it - or rather listen to the audio version, read by David Horovitch (translated by Archibald.Colquhoun). Set in 1860s Sicily, it's the story of Sicilian prince Don Fabrizio, in his mid-40s and presiding over his family and wealthy estate. The rise of Garibaldi and the move towards unification threaten the luxurious way of life he's loth to change, yet he sees potential to adapt in his young soldier nephew, Tancredi. In some ways Don Fabrizio isn't an admirable character, but his reflections, self-justifications and thoughts of the future, together with sumptuous descriptions of palaces, social gatherings and the sweltering summer landscape, make for a compelling read.

Finally, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. Until I started it I'd have thought that Hilary Mantel had the Women's Prize in the bag for The Mirror and the Light, but this must surely be an equally serious contender (and I should add that there are three shortlisted titles I haven't yet read). It's a sensuous, intense imagining of the life of Shakespeare's wife, Agnes - relating her first meeting with the man only ever referred to as 'the tutor', 'the son', 'the husband', and the death of their son, Hamnet, at the age of eleven. Rich with detail of domestic life and with searing insight into love, death and grief, this is a joy from the start to its perfectly-pitched ending.

What are your best reads of the year so far? Please tell us in the comments!

See also:

Q&A with Cleve West on The Garden of Vegan

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel, reviewed by Celia Rees

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, reviewed by Anne Cassidy