Guest review by Yvonne Coppard: FOUND IN A BOOKSHOP by Stephanie Butland

 

"A diverse collection of characters ... running the gamut of emotions and experiences as each faces up to the epic challenges of a stricken world."

Yvonne Coppard is a Writing Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and writer of fiction for children and adults. See more on her website.

When Covid lockdown is imposed, the owner of the Lost for Words bookshop in York faces up to the possibility that she and her staff may lose their livelihoods. Then an old customer asks for help in locating a book, which sparks the idea for remote selling with a twist. As well as ordering specific books, customers can call or email to ask staff to browse and select books for them. Connections are made between a community of people from different walks of life who take comfort and inspiration from books. This is the basic conceit that allows Butland to introduce a diverse collection of characters, weaving their back stories together and running the gamut of emotions and experiences as each character faces up to the epic challenges of a stricken world. There are some heartrending moments but the book is, at heart, a joyous story.

For many of us, those long years of pandemic became a dark tunnel of loss and grief, lit by occasional beacons of hope as ordinary people stepped up to do extraordinary things for strangers they would never meet. The characters in Found in a Bookshop draw the reader into many of the experiences we recognise, in our own lives or the lives of those around us. New relationships begin, old ones strengthen or crumble. There is violence, and loss, and misunderstanding. But there is also humour, heroism and, above all, good old-fashioned kindness.

This is the only book I have read where Lockdown is part of the story. I found any creative attempt to analyse or absorb the events going on around me impossible. Found in a Bookshop is a book I will keep, as a story-snapshot album and aide-memoire of extraordinary times I hope never to see again.

Found in a Bookshop is published by Headline.

Guest review by Stephanie Butland: THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON by Sara Collins

"A clever and complex book that reads simply and engagingly, and demands the reader’s whole heart and mind."

Stephanie Butland is the author of four published novels, most recently  Lost for Words and The Curious Heart Of Ailsa Rae.  The Woman In The Photograph will be published by Zaffre in July. Stephanie lives in the north-east of England, near the sea; when she’s not writing she walks, knits, bakes, and, of course, reads. She also runs writing retreats. The best place to find her is on Twitter @under_blue_sky

April is early to make the call for Favourite Book Of the Year but I’ve committed myself, with The Confessions of Frannie Langton. And this from the woman who knows herself to be the one who will finally heal the heart of Jackson Brodie. (Big Sky is going to be equal first at best. This is unheard of in my world, where Jackson reigns supreme.) 

I was lucky enough to read an early proof of this book. (By ‘lucky’, I mean: I publicly begged the editor for one, on Twitter, and she took pity on me.) It arrived: I started reading it that afternoon, then into the night, got up the next morning, made tea, went back to bed, and kept turning the pages until I was finished. There just didn’t seem to be anything more important in my day than reading on. It’s been a long time since a book took hold of me like that.

One of the disadvantages of being a novelist is that it’s difficult to get really immersed in a book; almost impossible to be transported in the way you are when you’re ‘only’ that most important of things, a reader. I read amazing books and think, ‘Wow! - I see what you did there’ or ‘How cleverly you have picked up those threads’. Sara Collins’ writing reconnected me with the sheer pleasure of being carried along by a story; she’s written a clever and complex book that reads simply and engagingly, and demands the reader’s whole heart and mind.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton is the eponymous heroine’s account of her life, from growing up on a plantation in Jamaica to working as a maid in a grand house in London. Frannie is on trial for the murder of her master and mistress, and not even she knows whether she has committed the crimes of which she is accused. We follow Frannie’s life story, from learning to read to standing in the dock, in a tale that is part Gothic mystery, part character study, and part reflection on what we need to do, or be, in the world to make ourselves heard. It’s a history which is vivid and bold, and in our heroine we have a woman with a heartbreaking awareness of exactly how free she can ever hope to be. I felt for Frannie every step of the way.

If you’ve ever stayed up late with a Sarah Waters novel, if Jane Eyre is a book that you never tire of, if you’re a Margaret Atwood fan, then this book is definitely one for you. But I’d like to see it being read more widely than that.

I could not stop thinking about this book after I’d finished it, and it took me a while to work out why. It’s because it feels, to me, like something greater than a good read. It’s also an important book in these complicated times, reminding us of both how far the world has come and how little it has changed.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton is published by Viking. 

READING AHEAD part 1: what's in our sights?

What's on our reading piles? New publications, old favourites to return to, neglected classics, authors we've sampled and intend to read more fully? Here are the choices by ourselves and guests - including some new faces. A big thank you, as ever, to our many contributors - this wouldn't happen without them. We hope you'll find something to entice you here - and don't miss part 2 on New Year's Eve! 

Stephanie Butland: I was lucky enough to read an early copy of The Confessions Of Frannie Langton, by Sara Collins, which comes out in April 2019, and it was one of the highlights of my reading year. A dark and beautifully written tale of murder, slavery, sugar and opium, it’s also a historical novel that feels painfully relevant to our times. I felt as though I held my breath through most of it. Gloriously good.

Philip Womack:   I'm most looking forward to continuing my way through Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time - I've reached volume 5, and have been savouring it, coming to love its slow, perceptive movements. Ben Schott's P G Wodehouse homage, Jeeves and the King of Clubs, looks like it will prove a treat over Christmas. On the children’s side, I’m excited about Alison Moore’s Sunny and the Ghosts, about a boy whose parents buy an antiques shop full of spectral presences. And, as ever, like a warm bath I’m returning to my eternal dip in Samuel Pepys’s diaries, which I’ve been reading, on and off, for almost 15 years.

Linda Sargent: Dreams of the Good Life by Richard Mabey has been on my to-be-read pile for some time and it’s not through any lack of enthusiasm that it’s still there, quite the contrary. I’m an admirer of both Mabey’s writings and also the subject of this book, Flora Thompson. I first read her Lark Rise to Candleford in the early seventies while studying Economic History at the University of Sussex and was immediately captivated. Despite being set in the nineteenth century, the rural Oxfordshire life she describes and the stories she tells, strongly resonated with my own background as the child of a farm worker in mid twentieth century Kent, as did her ambition to be a writer (although in my case that is still a work in progress...). It’s a book I’m savouring, for me part of the pleasure of this pile.

Adele Geras: I’m going to start 2019 by reading The Wych Elm, the latest novel by Tana French. I’ve loved many of her previous Dublin-set thrillers, especially Faithful Place and Broken Harbour but have deliberately avoided finding out about this one, which is meant to be somewhat different. I’ll begin as soon as I’ve finished Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (J K Rowling) which is my Big Christmas Treat Read!

Yvonne Coppard: For 2019, I’m returning to If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino, first read some years ago. It defies categorisation: a combination of narrative sequence and a journey into the reader’s own consciousness, intellect and experience. This time I will read more slowly, and uninterrupted; maybe I’ll finally understand what’s going on.

As a fan of Khaled Hosseini, I’m also keen to read his beautiful but devastating Sea Prayer, inspired by the death of a three-year-old Syrian refugee, Alan Kurdi.

Graeme Fife: I’ve come to many authors late but, stoutly rejecting any sense of embarrassment about it, I rejoice, rather, in the discovery. James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain, the autobiographical novel about his coming to maturity in Harlem, grappling with a difficult relationship with his preacher father, introduced me to new riches in American fiction. Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt…? Essential reading, I’d say. Scalpel in one hand, tickle stick in the other and huge compassion and humanity between. I’d not be without Seamus Heaney’s 100 Poems, a posthumous collection made by his family. Ah, but doesn’t his fine-tuned observation and framing speak for us all in our searching and contradictions.

Celia Rees: I very much admired Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and A God in Ruins and I’ve been saving Transcription as a special treat for the New Year. Female spies, Second World War and the post war period, all subjects and themes close to my heart. I’ve already reserved it for a post on Writers Review. Pebbles on the Beach, by Clarence Ellis, was first published in 1954 and is now reissued with an introduction from Robert Macfarlane. I’ve collected pebbles since I was a small child, so pounced on it when I saw it in the wonderful South Kensington Books. I’m really looking forward to reading it and applying my new knowledge on beach and shore side. Another on my list of New Year Intended Reading is Deborah Robertson’s Declutter - the get real guide to creating calm from chaos. That could present something of a challenge…

Sue Purkiss: I'm looking forward to reading Elly Griffiths' new book, Stranger Diaries. I'm a big fan of her Ruth Galloway series, and this has had great reviews, so I'm sure it's a treat in store.

And I intend to revisit an author I haven't read for many, many years - A J Cronin. He wrote hard-hitting books which often dealt with poverty and inequality in the 1930s, and I'd be interested to see if I still find them as impressive as I did when I first came across them.

Sally Prue: My reading is haphazard and serendipitous, and the classics I haven't yet read are the ones I've been putting-off for half a century, so in some ways it's easier to say what I won't be reading (Proust and Anthony Powell are strong contenders, here). But Zola's Germinal was amazing, so perhaps some more of Les Rougon-Macquart if I happen to come across anything; and of course there's nothing quite as comforting as nestling down with a good old Trollope.

Caroline Pitcher: My mind keeps returning to a novel I read earlier this year, Sugar Money by Jane Harris. Based on a true story, it is told in lilting, rhythmic Creole by young Lucien from Martinique in 1765. He hero-worships his elder brother Emile and insists on joining him on a mission to smuggle back slaves from English owners on Grenada and return them to French friars. The vicious rivalry between slave-owning nations had not really occurred to me before reading this novel. Jane Harris has written a rollicking adventure with a touching sibling relationship, told in Lucian’s charming voice. All this serves to highlight the grisly cruelty and violence of the slave trade.

All my life, over and over again, the same scene, repeating in my mind.

Katherine Langrish: Among the books I'm looking forward to (re-)reading this Christmas is Ursula LeGuin's novel The Lathe of Heaven which I loved as a teenager. It doesn't seem to get the same attention as The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness (all such wonderful titles) but is just as brilliant. Quiet George Orr is too terrified to sleep because he believes his dreams change reality. When his initially sceptical shrink discovers this is true and starts manipulating George's powers for the good of humankind, things get really serious. Original, poignant, often funny, the book is a magnificent exploration of unintended consequences and the dangers of uncontrolled power.

K M Lockwood: I admit I do judge a book by its cover. When I saw Lucy Rose’s artwork for The Familiars written by Stacey Halls, I knew I coveted it. I pleaded and received a review copy. A glance reveals a noose, a fox, parchment and plumes. Inside, you find women, witchcraft and Pendle Hill. My sort of book - due out in February.

Help the Witch is a short story collection from Tom Cox published by Unbound and illustrated by Joe Mclaren. It too looks dark and imbued with foklore – but far more modern. Interesting to compare and contrast.

Paul Magrs: There are two reading projects that I must return to when 2019 begins. I am reading Blockbusters – one for each year since my birth. I began with Mario Puzo’s The Godfather from 1969 and I’ve been having an amazing, eye-opening time. I’ve been through Love Story and Jaws and I’m as far as 1977. Judith Guest’s Ordinary People is next.

My other project is tackling the Beach House Books – i.e. the accumulation of heaps of novels everywhere in our house, overspilling into the Beach House. I’m putting myself on a book-buying ban once again, and I’m hiding from the world all January.

Anne Fine: I suddenly realised that neither of my daughters was living in this country while Posy Simmonds was doing her cartoons for the Guardian. Everyone’s coming for Christmas, so I’ve bought both daughters her superb collection, Literary Life Revisited. Posy is unbelievably clever. She’s put her finger on every aspect of the writing trade. You recognise everyone in every frame, and all of the situations and dilemmas.

And the greatest joy is that these books are so (comparatively) heavy that, though both my daughters will devour them during the holiday, at least one is likely to abandon her copy before the flight home. So that’ll be me in the New Year, steeped in delicious, genius Posy. I can’t WAIT.