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Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm

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Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers eBook : Malcolm, Janet: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle StoreWhen I was two essays into this collection, published in 2013 but collecting pieces from across several decades before, I was certain it would be one of my best books of 2021. The first two essays are among the best non-fiction I’ve ever read.

After that, sadly, it became a bit more run-of-the-mill – but let me take you on that journey.

The title of the collection is also the title of the first essay, and it opens like this:

There are places in New York where the city’s anarchic, unaccommodating spirit, its fundamental, irrepressible aimlessness and heedlessness have found especially firm footholds. Certain transfers between subway lines, passageways of almost transcendent sordidness; certain sites of torn-down buildings where parking lots have silently sprung up like fungi; certain intersections created by illogical confluences of streets—these express with particular force the city’s penchant for the provisional and its resistance to permanence, order, closure.

Malcolm doesn’t go for sparse descriptions, so this might be off-putting to some. I think it is absolutely wonderful, and I was excited to dive in – to a piece about the artist David Salle. I’m afraid I hadn’t even heard of him. He was presumably a bigger name in 1994, when this essay was first published and before I’d reached double digits – something of an enfant terrible, disrupting art with collages and ‘quotes’ from other artwork and (or was it?) misogyny. He is a fascinating character, though I also imagine anybody that Malcolm meets and writes about is a fascinating character. She has a way of giving the details of a person that make them simultaneously extraordinary and ordinary. She will introduce someone with an unexpected comment on their handshake, or a piece of pottery they have, or how they exemplify a broader type – and they are instantly illuminated in a Malcolm-portrait that isn’t uncharitable but also is completely unsparing. She is never nasty or malicious, she is simply completely unhindered.

In ‘Forty-One False Starts’, though, we don’t just get this introduction once. As the title suggests, we get it 41 times. After a few paragraphs, Malcolm tries a different entrance to the essay. And over and over. Some are short, none are more than a page or two. Each looks at Salle and his work from a different angle – and while none paint a full picture, the composite is like the collages that they discuss. It’s such a brilliant idea for an essay and, more importantly, is brilliantly executed. (You don’t have to get a copy of the book to read it, either: it’s still on the New Yorker website.)

The second essay is almost as excellent. In it, Malcolm meets the photographer Thomas Struth and, in her conversation with him about photographing Queen Elizabeth II, gives us a vivid picture of the man. As usual, the way she conveys the conversations is odd, unexpected, and sublime. (My paperback doesn’t include any pictures, so I spent a lot of time on Google for the essays about artists, looking up the examples discussed.)

Sadly, the reason that Forty-One False Starts didn’t make my Top Books of 2021 is that it also includes a lot of essays where Malcolm doesn’t speak with her subjects. In most cases, admittedly, that is because they’re dead. There are essays on Edith Wharton, Vanessa Bell, Diane Arbus etc. She covers a range of artists and writers – the provenance of the essays isn’t always clear, but I think some must be introductions to books or intended to accompany exhibitions. And they are fine. There’s nothing wrong with her writing. But the spark is gone when Malcolm isn’t conveying conversations she has had.

There are still moments of Malcolm individuality. I loved ‘The Reef has been called Wharton’s most Jamesian novel, but it is merely her least cleverly plotted one’ and, from the Diane Arbus essay, ‘It is a measure of the power Doon wields in the Arbus world that no one dared protect her against saying something so breathtakingly silly in print.’ But they are few and far between.

I should add, there are still a couple of other essays where she is present, and those are wonderful. She is at her gossipy best while finding out the scandals and tantrums behind the magazine Artforum, and there is a great essay about meeting Rosalind Krauss that starts with a fantastic description of her apartment, including this:

But perhaps even stronger than the room’s aura of commanding originality is its sense of absences, its evocation of all the things that have been excluded, have been found wanting, have failed to capture the interest of Rosalind Krauss – which are most of the things in the world, the things of ‘good taste’ and fashion and consumerism, the things we see in stores and in one another’s houses. No one can leave this loft without feeling a little rebuked: one’s own house suddenly seems cluttered, inchoate, banal.

But the collection feels so diluted by those other pieces. The person Malcolm writes best about is herself – or, rather, she is brilliant at revealing two people in a conversation, where one of them is her. I would love a collection where she is front and centre alongside her subjects. It flies in the face of received wisdom about how to write an essay about an artist or writer, and it would be terrible in the hands of most essayists – but Malcolm was a genius, and she should be allowed to write her own rules.

As a collection, Forty-One False Starts is uneven. But I think it’s worth getting for the third or so of the essays that are truly extraordinary. Skim the rest.

The Small Room by May Sarton

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When I bought The Small Room (1961), it was because I thought it might be about a house. I’m a simple man: I love books about houses, particularly if this would end up being about a hitherto undiscovered small room in a house. If anybody knows any books like that, lemme know. Well, The Small Room isn’t that, but I found an awful lot to like in it anyway.

I bought the novel on my first trip to the United States in 2013 – more specifically, in a lovely bookshop in Charlottesville, Virginia. Sadly, since then the little town has become renowned for the appalling far-right rally that ended in a woman’s death. At the time, it was simply a day out from DC.

I don’t think I’d read any May Sarton books at the time, but it is now my third – after The Magnificent Spinster and The Education of Harriet Hatfield. While I enjoyed both of them, I found the former less memorable than I’d hoped, and the latter very patchy. The Small Room takes us to a setting that is very distinct and probably a recommendation to many of us: a women’s college in New England.

Lucy Winter – surely a coy nod to Lucy Snowe in Charlotte Bronte’s Villette? – has just started there, and it is her first teaching job. She is young, idealistic, and keen to make a good impression. More than that, she is keen to be a good teacher – in every sense of the word ‘good’.

The girls arrived, and settled like flocks of garrulous starlings, perpetual chatter and perpetual motion. Lucy, looking down from her office on the fourth floor of one of the oldest buildings, compared the campus to a stage where a complicated ballet was being rehearsed. Small groups flowed together and parted; a girl in a blue blazer ran from one building to another; five or six others arranged themselves under an elm, in unconsciously romantic attitudes, a chorus of nymphs. The effect was enhanced by the freshmen’s required red Eton caps, and by the unrequired but almost universal uniform of short pleated skirts and blazers. Looking down on all this casual, yet intimate life from above, Lucy felt lonely and a little scared.

At the centre of the novel are the actions of one student. She is exemplary and feted, and widely regarded as having a promising future that would reflect well on the college. But when Lucy is marking one of her essays, she discovers that it is plagiarised. She feels she has to inform other members of the faculty – and sets in motion a series of actions that affect everybody in the college.

Lucy is a well-drawn and interesting character, partly because Sarton uses her to show that there are not simple choices between wrong and right, and that people might do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and vice versa. The girl who plagiarises is also written really interestingly, and reacts in a way that is both believable and unexpected. What stopped me wholeheartedly loving The Small Room is that these two, and perhaps one or two others, are the only nuanced characters in the novel. It’s not that the others are stereotypes, it’s just that Sarton doesn’t spend enough time delineating them and they all (particularly the other teachers and board members) blur into one amorphous mass.

Sarton does make up for this with beautiful, unpredictable writing. Here is one bit I noted down:

Lucy opened the window and knelt beside it, tasting the cool freshness, the stately, suspended, hypnotic fall, drank in the silence, and finally fell onto her bed as if she had been drugged, to sleep a dreamless sleep.

At the heart of The Small Room is a fascinating dilemma, done well and interestingly – with only a few flaws in the way the cast is put together. I don’t think I’ve yet found my perfect Sarton novel, but I think this is my favourite of the three I’ve read so far.

2021: Some Reading Stats

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I’ve posted my Top Books of 2021, and now it’s time to turn my attention to some reading stats – the sort of blog post that so many of us love reading. And as I get older, increasingly a test of memory… I also think I’ve referred to 2020 as ‘last year’ quite a lot, but hopefully you can work out what’s going on.

Number of books read
I read 182 books in 2021, which is comfortably the most I have ever read in a year. In the previous year the total was 147, and the total has hovered around the 150 mark ever since I started living on my own.

Why was it bigger this year? Well, I did do A Novella A Day In November, but I also got more into audiobooks – and let’s not forget that three-month lockdown at the beginning of the year, where I didn’t have much to do.

Male/female writers
126 of those books were written by women, 55 by men, and one book was by a husband and wife team. That means 70% of the books I read were written by women, which has been steadily and unintentionally going up every year. Again, it’s partly because of reading for possible British Library Women Writers titles… but mostly just because those are the books I’m drawn to, I suppose.

Fiction/non-fiction
I read 135 works of fiction – 101 by women – and 47 works of non-fiction. That is a much higher percentage of fiction than usual. Over the past few years, about a third of the books I’ve read are non-fiction, but for some reason I really needed to step out of the real world more in 2021…

Books in translation
Partly because of reading some EUPL prizewinners, I matched my all-time high for books in translation – albeit it’s still only 11 books. There were four from Finnish, including three by Tove Jansson, and the others were from Polish, Slovenian, Serbian, Russian, Danish, French, and German.

Re-reads
I re-read 13 books in 2021, and I think every single one of them was either for a podcast, book group, or writing British Library afterwords. I still don’t really re-read just because I want to experience the book again.

Number of audiobooks
This is where things really amped up. In 2020 I listened to eight audiobooks and that was my most ever – and I trounced that with 21 in 2021.

New-to-me authors
Counting these was a bit of a revelation. I only read 64 new-to-me authors this year, meaning that only 35% of the books I read were experiments on new names. It used to be about half, and has been getting lower. Apparently there is some need for dependability in the pandemic, but I do want to think outside the box more in 2022.

Most disappointing book
There were a few disappointments with books by authors I love turning out not to be my cuppa tea. I’d saved Sun City by Tove Jansson for years, but it was definitely her worst book. Even my love for Michael Cunningham couldn’t overrule my distaste for sci-fi in Specimen Days. Oh, and Heritage by Vita SackvilleWest was appalling and showed that she got the zeitgeisty rural novel out of her system early in her writing career, thankfully.

Worst book I read this year
I guess it was also a disappointment, but James Acaster’s Perfect Sound Whatever – an audiobook – was bizarrely bad. It’s about getting obsessed with music from 2016, when Acaster went through an extremely difficult year in 2017. When he was writing about his own life it was funny and insightful and honest. But almost the entire book is descriptions of albums that seem to be unquestioningly copied and pasted from earnest press releases.

Happiest discovery
On the other hand, I have been meaning to read Georgette Heyer for many years, and was always a little nervous that I’d dislike her – given how beloved she is. But thankfully my first experience, with April Lady, was a total delight. Phew!

Favourite book-related moment
It’s not a reading stat, but my happiest book moment of the year was being asked to be a guest on the Backlisted podcast, discussing the brilliant Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker, which was just as brilliant on a re-read. A close second is, of course, seeing more British Library Women Writers books come back into print, and watching as people discover them.

Persephones
I’ve had a fairly non-rigorous goal to read more of the Persephones on my shelves. In 2020 I only managed one, but in 2021 I read One Woman’s Year by Stella Martin Currey, The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby, Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell, and Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Mosley.

Most failed challenge
I decided I’d read all of Angela Thirkell’s novels in order. Not all this year, of course, but I’d make a good start. Maybe one a month?? Well… I read one.

Most expensive book
While I got Infused by Henrietta Lovell as a gift from my friend Lorna, I have a feeling it’ll end up being my most expensive read – because this non-fic book about tea has persuaded me to ditch the teabags and get into loose leaf tea. At least for a bit.

Names in book titles
Ever since doing Project Names, I’ve been intrigued to see how often names turn up in book titles if I’m not deliberately seeking them out. In 2020 it was 20 – in 2021, it was 35. They pop up a lot.

Animals in book titles
I always forget to keep an eye out for this during the year… but they appear whether I’m looking or not. The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender, The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams, Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić, Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins, Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyemi, Bear by Marian Engel, A Wild Swan and other stories by Michael Cunningham, The Birds of the Innocent Wood by Deirdre Madden, Particularly Cats by Doris Lessing, and The Elephants in My Backyard by Rajeev Surandra. I think that must be a record – though only a handful of them actually had prominent animals.

Food in book titles
The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkley, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai, One Apple Tasted by Josa Young – and, at the other end of the spectrum, Thank Heaven Fasting by E.M. Delafield.

Numbers in book titles
In ascending order, One Apple Tasted by Josa Young, One Year’s Time by Angela Milne, One Woman’s Year by Stella Martin Currey, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee, Two-Part Invention by Madeleine L’Engle, Three To See The King by Magnus Mills, I Ordered A Table For Six by Noel Streatfeild, Thirteen Guests by J Jefferson Farjeon, Twenty-Five by Beverley Nichols, Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm.

Strange things that happened in books this year
A woman’s life keeps restarting, a door is a portal between countries, a murderous doppelgänger turns up, a boat rolls through a town, a railway runs underneath a country, an iceberg falls from the sky, a man gets struck by lightning multiple times, a man and a boy swap bodies, a collection of Victoriana magically appears in a front garden, butterflies fly from a patterned lampshade, a carpenter is swallowed by a whale, a cult starts in a quarry, lichen promises prolonged youth, an invisible wall entraps a woman, a man moves into a tree, a baby is left in a box, a woman falls in love with a bear, a robot quotes Whitman, a dance hall disappears from a city and reappears on a Scottish island, and the main characters turn out to have been dead the whole time.

Top Books of 2021

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I always wait until New Year’s Eve to compile my best reads of the year, because you never know when something brilliant will sneak in, do you? As it happens, this year has had lots of Very Good Reads, and even some Very, Very Good Reads, but nothing that is likely to enter my all-time favourites pantheon. So I love all twelve of the books on the list, and a good many that didn’t quite make it, but I didn’t have a life-changing book this year.

But, as I say, these 12 books are all wonderful! As usual, I have excluded re-reads and can only include an author once. The links take you back to the original reviews…

12. The Familiar Faces by David Garnett (1962)

I haven’t read the first two volumes of Garnett’s autobiography – I went straight for the one where he becomes an author, because that is the stage of his life I am most interested in. As it happens, and as the title perhaps implies, this is more about portraits of people he knew, often very gossipy, including Dorothy Edwards, T.E. Lawrence, and George Moore.

11. The Painful Truth by Monty Lyman (2021)

When my friends publish books, I try to read them – or at least buy them. But it’s no hardship when they are as brilliant as my friend Monty’s. His previous book was about the skin; this one, on pain, is even better. Which four-letter word ending in ‘in’ will be next?? Vein? Shin?? Anyway, Monty writes about a wide range of issues to do with pain that are fascinating and, above all, compassionate. I don’t read much popular science, but if more of it was like this then I would.

10. Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell (1928)

Rachel and I read a couple of Persephones for an episode of Tea or Books?, and it helped me get Brook Evans off the shelf where it’s been for many years. I love Glaspell’s spare, insightful prose, and the way she shows us a moral dilemma that works it’s way through three generations of a passionate, unhappy family.

9. Ignorance by Milan Kundera (2002)

The first of several Top Books that I read during A Novella A Day in November – I wrote ‘Like most of Kundera’s novels, the plot is a simple thread through the centre of the book – but what makes the book so wonderful are the tangents, the reflections, the aleatory connections between fictional characters and moments in time.’ Translated by Linda Asher, this is another Kundera success for me.

8. Murder Included by Joanna Cannan (1950)

It was great fun to race through a murder mystery in a single day. This is on here partly because it was fun and pacy, with an enjoyable irritating detective, but also because it has a beautifully simple and clever twist in its solution.

7. Three To See The King by Magnus Mills (2001)

You never quite know where you are with Mills, and never more so than with this parable(?) about a man living in a tin house in a desert, miles from his nearest neighbour. His life starts to change when a friend of a friend turns up and moves in – and then rumours come of a charismatic man changing lives in the distance. Mills is so brilliant at making something eerie without being at all evident why it feels that way.

6. Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley (1939)

This autobiographical novel tells of a man and his partner who have left Yorkshire for Cornwall, escaping some sort of ignominy. They have almost no money and craft a makeshift life in a rickety house in a cove. Walmsley writes about this corner of Cornwall with such tender love and clarity, and the novel is a slow-paced, winding joy.

5. The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning (1930)

A reprint from Dean Street Press that is getting a lot of love, The Invisible Host is curiously close to the premise of Agatha Christie’s later And Then There Were None. A group of strangers have been beckoned to a penthouse, each believing that a party is being thrown in their honour – whereas, in fact, they are going to be killed off, one-by-one, while a gramophone gives them instructions and warnings. The mechanics can be a little graceless, especially compared to Christie’s book, but it is still a brilliant read.

4. The Wreckage of My Presence by Casey Wilson (2021)

I didn’t get around to blogging about this one, which I listened to as an audiobook, but I do encourage people to seek it out. Casey Wilson is one of the funniest people alive, and stars in my favourite ever sitcom, Happy Endings. I’ve followed her work ever since, and was so delighted when she came out with a collection of essays – they are enormously funny, about bizarre moments in her life to date, but also very poignant: the loss of her mother, and Wilson’s grief, are front and centre.

3. Things That Fall From the Sky by Selja Ahava (2015)

Ahava’s novel won the EUPL prize a few years ago, and I read a translation by Emily and Fleur Jeremiah. It’s about people who experience extraordinary events – whether an ice berg falling from the sky, winning the lottery multiple times, or being struck repeatedly by lightning. I wrote, in my review: ‘the prose and characters that Ahava has created seem both dreamlike and vividly real – I don’t really understand how that combination is achieved, but it is done with astonishing consistency and assurance. I loved spending time in this world, and the way Ahava balances genuine pathos with a fairytalesque surreality is truly wonderful.’

2. Miss Linsey and Pa by Stella Gibbons (1936)

The beginning of my year had a lot of books but not all that many brilliant ones, which is perhaps one of the reasons I was so blown away by Gibbons’ novel, which I read for the 1936 Club. Miss Linsey and her father move to be nearer relations – rather reluctant relations – but the short novel encompasses enormous amounts more, with my favourite bit being a satire on Bloomsbury parents. There’s also a lot of heart, particularly in one character’s memories of a wartime romance.

1. The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson (2006)

Finally, here is an ode to keeping books on the shelf for years – and then discovering how wonderful they are. I bought this well over a decade ago, and its moment came in 2021. This novel of a farming community in Ontario in the 1930s and 1950s is beautifully immersive, and deserves comparison to Marilynne Robinson’s work. Lucky me, there are still a couple of her books I haven’t read – and I predict at least one of them will be a contender for next year’s best books list.

Enbury Heath by Stella Gibbons

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I usually get at least a few books for Christmas, and I like to start one of them immediately – there is something lovely about starting a brand new book on Christmas Day. Particularly if it is as good as Enbury Heath (1935) by Stella Gibbons, which my parents got for me.

Yes, there are quite a few Gibbons novels waiting on my shelves, but a few Gibbons aficionados had said that this one was particularly good – so I was, of course, keen to read it. This is the seventh of her novels that I’ve read, and follows the pattern of her earliest books being the ones I most like – because this is wonderful. Just as wonderful as that cover illustration, by Kerry Hyndman, would have you hoping.

Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis Garden aren’t much upset when their father dies. He has been angry, unpredictable, alcoholic, and unkind. Only six months earlier, their much-loved and much-suffering mother had died, and Sophia had chosen not to see her father in that time. But there is a wide cast of aunts and uncles who want to see the right thing done. The Garden trio aren’t fond of many of these relatives, and openly loathe some of them, but get bustled through decorum and keeping up appearances – while secreting away anecdotes and quotes to share and laugh at together later. They have the casual unkindness of people in their late teens and early 20s when considering nuisance relatives, though it isn’t really cruel because the relatives are completely unmoved by it.

While there isn’t much money left, the inheritance that the three get is enough to rent a tiny cottage on ‘Enbury Heath’ – a stand in for Hampstead Heath. The descriptions seem to vary a little – at one point it seems to be a two-up-two-down squeezed in between larger buildings, but it also has a dining table big enough for a dozen or so, and seating for large parties, so perhaps Gibbons’ definition of tiny isn’t the same as mine (I have to limit dinner parties to three guests, especially since I put in another bookcase that means I can no longer use the leaf to extend my dining room table.)

Gibbons’ pacing is often a little erratic, and nearly a third of the book is over before the three move into the cottage. This was my favourite part of Enbury Heath – as they set up home together, and deal with arranging domestic help, embryonic careers, visiting dogs etc. Gibbons is particularly funny about dogs, actually, and I only wish she’d turned her attention to cats at similar length. It’s almost ninety years old, but some things about running a home haven’t changed. We might not get coal and laundry deliveries, but these sorts of messages are not uncommon…

The coal, for example. The firm which sold the coal simply could not be brought to believe that there existed a cottage in the Vale where no one was at home from a quarter to nine in the morning to half past six at night. It was nonsense; it was a try-on; whoever it was doing it on purpose, and the coal firm knew better than to give way to such caprices.

So they sent coal (it was only two hundredweight, to add insult to injury, for this was all that the cottage’s cellar would hold), for three days running at eleven in the morning, disregarding Sophia’s frantic telephone messages, and the would send it no more.

The same difficulty occurred with the laundry, which, like some puckish sprite, some coy elf of the dells, could never say exactly at what time it would call, but preferred to pop in winsomely whenever ‘the boy was down that way,’ which might be at any time during the day.

In the final third of the novel, Gibbons throws in a host of other characters – a girl called Mae who catches Francis’s eye, and an old school rival called Juan who gets involved with the family. It breaks all sorts of novelistic rules to have the cast disrupted at this late stage, and I don’t think they were particularly needed – but somehow it works. I was nervous when Mae arrived on the scene, because I recall Bassett and how brilliantly funny the first half of that novel was, and how tedious once it became about a love triangle. It’s certainly not that bad in Enbury Heath, though I confess I would have loved the novel more if Gibbons had stuck to the siblings in their cottage.

Apparently Enbury Heath is semi-autobiographical. For the sake of Gibbons’ actual aunts and uncles, I hope that it is very semi, but knowing that there is some basis in fact explains why the novel never feels like a fairy tale, even with a fairy tale opening. There is a grounding of reality throughout that tethers the narrative. It’s a wonderful novel, and another perfect Christmassy read.

What I Read At Christmas

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Happy Christmas! I hope you had a lovely time – hopefully better than last year. I went to my parents’ house, as did my brother, so it felt like a lovely family Christmas. Very relaxed, if you don’t count the fiendish board games and quizzes. And plenty of reading, of course. In fact, the two books I finished have rather beautifully pairing covers.

A Snowfall of Silver by Laura Wood

A Snowfall of Silver by Laura Wood | WaterstonesLast year, on the recommendation of Sarra Manning on Instagram, I bought Laura Wood’s A Snowfall of Silver – and I was saving it for a special occasion, because it felt like it would be the perfect book to read at Christmas. And, goodness me, it was.

Wood’s novel was published last year, but is set in 1931. The briefest synopsis sold me: 18-year-old Freya runs away from Cornwall to London, because she is desperate to become an actor. Her sister Lou lives there – probably with her boyfriend Robert, Freya suspects, though outwardly he lives elsewhere. And so Freya turns up on her doorstep, having taken the train and feeling very dramatic about the whole thing. As Lou points out, she could equally have arranged to stay with their parents’ permission, but to Freya’s mind that wouldn’t have set the tone.

On the train, she meets a tall young man called Kit – he is reading a book, has broad shoulders and freckles, and it is instantly obvious to the reader that they are destined to be together. He also works with a theatrical company, though not as an actor, and is able to get Freya introduced to the director – who is a bit past his heyday, but is still deeply famous in Freya’s corner of Cornwall.

One thing leads to another and Freya goes off on a six-week tour, as an assistant to the woman in charge of costumes. The attractive, volatile cast, the grande dame, the wide-eyed ingenue – all the puzzle pieces are in place for a rollicking, delightful journey.

It’s published as young adult fiction, but I think any adult would find it great fun too. We might not fall for the central love story with quite as much naïve joy, not least because Kit is never fully fleshed-out and is more a place for a younger reader to superimpose their own fantasy, but it’s still a really lovely book. My main quibble was that Lou and Robert seemed too fun to get so few pages – so I was pleased to discover that Wood has written an earlier book where they are the main characters. I suppose it spoils that they end up together, but in this sort of book that is never in doubt.

Infused by Henrietta Lovell

Infused: Adventures in Tea: Amazon.co.uk: Lovell, Henrietta: 9780571324392: BooksThe other book I started and finished was Infused by Henrietta Lovell, published in 2019 – a non-fiction book with the subtitle ‘Adventures in Tea’, given to me for my birthday by my friend Lorna.

Lovell is the owner of Rare Teas, a tea brand that sells leaf tea and which I have now ordered a little pile from. In Infused, Lovell takes us all over the world with her as she goes in search of the finest teas – and her ways of describing the adventures, the tastes, and the quiet but passionate joy of sampling nuances between different infusions is all very, very infectious. The humble teabag is dismissed throughout Infused, including some industry secrets on why even the fancy brands aren’t giving you great stuff – and while I doubt I’ll become a leaf tea drinker exclusively, I do want to try some Rare Tea and see how differently I can experience my favourite drink.

But even if you hate tea, there is a lot to enjoy in the way Lovell writes, and the way she approaches the adventures she’s experienced – from crafting a tea for the RAF to exploring Malawi to climbing mountainsides in search of the rarest teas. While she is clearly an expert, she writes with a fervour that is accessible – and admits her own incapability when it comes to certain aspects, like hand-rolling tea leaves.

Choose good tea, tea sourced directly from a farmer rather than faceless brokers. The knock-on effect of that choice will be manifold. You’ll be supporting communities around the world, people trying to work their way out of poverty into a sustainable future. You’ll help maintain great skills and keep craftmanship from disappearing under mechanisation. You might even force the giant conglomerates to change the way they do things.

This is a call to arms, comrades.

And there is no hardship in this calling. In choosing to drink good tea, we might change the world and give ourselves the greatest pleasure.

Others on the go…

I got about halfway through Stella Gibbons’ Enbury Heath, a delightful novel about three siblings inheriting a legacy and buying a small cottage together. I also started Ian Hamilton’s The Keepers of the Flame, about the history of literary estates and biography through major figures of literature, from Donne to Plath. All my Christmas reads have turned out to be good in one way or another, and were carefully chosen. And, of course, there were a pile among my Christmas presents…

The Beatles: Get Back

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I was offered a review copy of The Beatles: Get Back to accompany the TV documentary about them. I absolutely don’t like The Beatles, but my brother Colin is a big fan… so I got it sent to him instead. And here are his thoughts – over to you, Col!

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The Beatles: Get Back: Amazon.co.uk: The Beatles, Harris, John, Jackson, Peter, Kureishi, Hanif, Russell, Ethan A., McCartney, Linda: 9780935112962: Books
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

For over 50 years, it has not been enough for Beatles fans to know the songs: we have to know about the songs, and what was happening when the songs were written, and where, and why, and how they changed along the way. Hey Jude? Originally conceived as Hey Jules, written by Paul about John’s son Julian while his parents were going through a divorce, but John thought it was about him, and Paul said it was actually about himself, too. Yesterday? The melody came to Paul in a dream, he asked everyone if they recognised it, and when no one did he started writing it as ‘Scrambled eggs / Oh my baby how I love your legs’. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite? Transcribed almost word for word by John from a circus poster. You get the picture.

These, and many more, have passed into Beatles lore, and while some are contested – was Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds about LSD, or just about a picture Julian Lennon painted of his classmate? Was Blackbird really a subtle reference to the civil rights movement? – there is no doubting that the Beatles are the most talked-about band in history. And it’s not just the songs: almost every moment of their turbulent domination of the 1960s has produced its own legend, from Ringo learning how to play chess during the recording of Sgt. Pepper, to his rotating of his cymbals ninety degrees in case he was shot at in America, to his tendency when attempting to write tunes to inadvertently play whatever was in the charts at the time, to his suitcase full of baked beans, to his tonsillitis, to… well, again, you get the picture. And that’s just Ringo.

A huge part of the Beatles legend is, of course, their break-up. Every Beatles fan knows that Ringo left the band briefly during the recording of The Beatles (aka the White Album), returning to find his drum kit covered in flowers with a message saying he was the best drummer in the world (the line from John about him not even being the best drummer in the Beatles was – of course – never said by John; it was a Jasper Carrott joke). We know that George briefly departed during the Let It Be sessions; that John later broke up the band, calling it a ‘divorce’; and that Paul set the seal in the press release accompanying his album McCartney. And we all know that the recording of Let It Be was an acrimonious affair, filled with bitterness and backbiting (and Yoko), leading inevitably to the end of the Fab Four. That, at least, is the legend.

The Beatles, against the advice of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, have not printed the legend. Instead, with Peter Jackson’s 468 minute docuseries The Beatles: Get Back and this accompanying book – almost entirely a transcript of the series and credited as being ‘by the Beatles’ – the legend has been challenged. It is not the first time – the 2003 re-edit Let It Be… Naked included 22 bonus minutes of audio clips from the sessions, painting them in a more harmonious light – but it is by far the most comprehensive. Acrimony – what acrimony?

The docuseries comprises footage filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for what was originally intended to be part of a TV special, but became the feature film Let It Be. That film was released in 1970 and is not currently officially available (about 15 years ago I watched a version that I thought I’d obtained legitimately); it was responsible for many of the legends that built up about the Beatles’ breakdown, perhaps the most famous of which being George telling Paul: “I’ll play whatever you want me to play, or I won’t play at all if you don’t want me to play.” That scene remains in place, and is there on p46 of the book, but even there a bit more context is given to show that, though clearly frustrated, both Paul and George were trying to do what they thought was best for each other and for the group.

In some quarters, the documentary has been criticised as concealing the true extent of the Beatle’s animosity, and it’s true that some elements either weren’t caught on camera or were deliberately omitted (John’s heroin addiction at the time is not properly covered, for example), but some of the criticism seems to stem from jealousy that the baton of the Beatles legend has been passed on. Philip Norman, biographer of the Beatles and previous keeper of the flame, complains that George and John’s fist fight is not included; this, though, is because it didn’t happen: the docuseries shows them laughing over fallacious reports of it at the time, and even talking about suing the reporter.

If the intention here was to show that everything was happiness and smiles, though, it has failed. The cavernous Twickenham studio where the Beatles were initially huddled seems to have been just as unhappy a setting as always imagined, with minimal productivity – lots of time is spent playing through old tunes and discussing the many and various plans for a concert that may be on a boat, or in Tripoli, or in the Houses of Parliament, but in fact will never actually materialise – and plenty of rancour. The Beatles: Get Back shows (which Let It Be didn’t) George quitting the Beatles, with the beautifully casual “I think I’ll be leaving the band now” (his famous “See you round the clubs” parting line was not caught by the microphones); it also makes clear why he was driven to that point, facing lectures from Paul and seeing his compositions disregarded while vast amounts of time were spent on other, lesser, songs. One particular scene shows him playing a rough version of I Me Mine, one of the standouts of the album, to almost no interest from John – who was offering the likes of Dig a Pony: a fun song, but not in the same league. Paul, of course, was producing all-time classics like Get Back, Let It Be and The Long and Winding Road, as well as trying to keep the band together.

The documentary does succeed, though, in showing that things weren’t as bad as the legend says. There is almost no fighting between John and Paul – one of the more surprising segments is a lengthy defence of Yoko’s permanent presence by the latter (“Let the young lovers stay together […] they just want to be near each other”) – and there is plenty of laughing and joking, even after Georg’s departure, and (following several crisis talks that were not recorded) after his return. It’s a cliché, but they really were like a family: they may have fought, and fought badly, but underneath it all they did love each other. Once they relocated to Abbey Road alongside keyboardist Billy Preston (there are some surprisingly serious conversations about inviting him to become the fifth Beatle), the atmosphere is palpably warmer. As, indeed, the legend has always said it was.

That, though, demonstrates one of the problems of the book, as opposed to the docuseries. It’s wonderful – for a Beatles fanatic – to see with your own eyes the intimate camaraderie of the Beatles, in beautifully remastered footage that looks like it was recorded yesterday; it is rather less wonderful to read it. Even the most dedicated Beatlemaniac will gain little joy from reading the likes of: ‘George: What sort of vegetables do you like?’ or ‘Yoko: I’m trying [the toast] without marmalade today, you know.’ Or, for example, when Peter Sellers comes to visit the set (he’s about to film The Magic Christian with Ringo), it’s incredibly awkward and he’s clearly embarrassed to be there, but none of that comes through in the text itself. And then, of course, there’s the music…

It is perhaps a little obvious to say that one of the main selling points of the docuseries is watching and hearing the Beatles make music together. While very little is created from scratch in the studio – each member of the band would start writing something at home, then bring it in to be developed – the most thrilling part of the series, musically speaking, is watching Paul putting together Get Back. He plays a few chords; it becomes recognisable; out of almost nothing comes a familiar favourite, which they will later return to over and over, perfecting it in time for their famous rooftop concert. It’s a beautiful moment that is not really fully captured by ‘Paul leads a very early version of ‘Get Back’’ (p53 of the book). This is a shortcoming that comes through time and time again in reading the book: The Beatles without the music are just four young men (all of them in their 20s) fighting a bit, laughing a bit, and climbing onto a roof.

The fascinating revelations are mostly still there – the eagerness with which the Beatles read their own press; George saying the group should ‘divorce’; Paul suggesting using strings for The Long and Winding Road long before Phil Spector was castigated for adding them – but we’ve already got them on the screen, and if I wanted them written down I could have done it myself. It’s difficult to understand what purpose the book is intended to serve: there’s no index, so it doesn’t even make it easier to track down particular conversations. It has beautiful pictures, but we’ve just had nearly eight hours of beautiful pictures, and those ones moved. We get a call sheet showing that the documentarians thought Mal Evans (the Beatles’ long-term roadie) was called Mel Evans; we get a slightly mystifying introduction from Hanif Kureishi, a playwright with no apparent connection to the project or to the Beatles, other than the fact that – like half the world – he’s a fan; we also get a foreword from Peter Jackson himself, who says: “When Apple Corps told me about this book, based on the transcribed audio conversations, I must admit was dubious […] the first time I read the book you hold in your hands, I realised how wrong I was.”

I’m afraid, Peter, that you were right the first time. The docuseries is fascinating (if overlong) and essential viewing for all Beatles fanatics; this book is, unfortunately, beautiful and unnecessary.

A couple of recent audiobooks

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I go back and forth with my Audible subscription. I’m currently back in – and have discovered the Audible Plus catalogue, where you can download free audiobooks that have been added to that collection. There are thousands of the things, with no clear criteria why they’re in – some classics, some look to be self-published with audiobook covers designed in Paint. It takes some scrolling through, but I have managed to find some books of interest. (Any recommendations?)

And here are a couple of books I’d already added to my Audible wishlist – and I was pleased to see, when I re-joined, that they were labelled as freely available to me.

The Elephants in My Backyard eBook by Rajiv Surendra | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster UKThe Elephants in My Backyard by Rajiv Surendra

If you know Rajiv Surendra’s work at all, it’s probably as the rapping mathlete Kevin G from teen classic Mean Girls. I think I read about this 2016 memoir in a Buzzfeed article – but I’m really glad I did. Perhaps against the odds of that opening description, it’s really very good.

Surendra was on the set of Mean Girls when a member of the crew recommended that he read Yann Martel’s Life of Pi – because it’s “a book about you”. Naturally intrigued, Surendra reads – and is instantly captivated. While he doesn’t live the same life as Pi, a Tamil boy in India who is shipwrecked with a tiger, there are other things the same. Surendra’s parents are Tamil and from Sri Lanka; Surendra matches the physical description of Pi. He becomes determined to play the role of Pi in a film.

At this point, there isn’t even a film in the offing. But Surendra starts planning – and even gets in touch with Martel, who proves a remarkably kind and patient correspondent over the coming years (his emails are included in the book). The determination to play the role really becomes an obsession. Over the next few years, Surendra moves for a period to India, he learns some Tamil, he learns to swim, he turns down other acting work on the off-chance that casting for Life of Pi will happen.

In the background to all of this, he naturally shares his own life. And much of that is quite desperate. An alcoholic father, prone to violent outbursts, haunts his home life. His work is mostly playing a character at an interactive historic farm. We get to know him, and he is mostly likeable and interesting – able to laugh at himself, and to convey what it’s like to be so single-minded in pursuit of a goal. (There are some regrettable body shaming moments, and some of the humour doesn’t quite land, but those are only small annoyances in the grand scheme of the book.)

Usually this sort of book is written by someone explaining how they got to where they are. But if you’ve seen Life of Pi, then you’ll know… Rajiv Surendra doesn’t get the part. In the end, despite having a good chat with the casting director, he doesn’t even get an audition. Six years of his life have been dedicated to something that didn’t work out. His lasting acting credit on iMDB is 2005. It’s fascinating to listen to a book like this from the perspective of someone who didn’t make it. There are, of course, any number of actors who commit utterly to their dream and end up not making it. Those stories are probably more valuable to hear. The ones who didn’t luck out.

And it’s a really good, interesting memoir. I’ve never read or seen Life of Pi, but I think all you need to enjoy it is an interest in people and what motivates them.

 

The Wall cover artThe Wall by Marlen Haushofer

I’ve not managed to track down who recommended this Austrian novel from 1963 (translated from German by Shaun Whiteside). I must have seen it somewhere and found the premise interesting enough to pop on my list. And that premise is: an unnamed narrator is visiting a couple friends in a remote farmhouse. They go off to a nearby town for an evening meal, leaving her behind. In the morning, they still haven’t returned.

On her wandering to see what’s happened to them, she finds something impossible. An invisible wall is stopping her going any further. Beyond it, she can see that people and animals are all frozen – clearly having died instantly.

Within the wall are acres and acres of empty land. It’s never clear quite how big it is, but she can travel for hours and find nobody and nothing – except animals. There are enough trout and deer for her to eat, and there is a dog (Lynx), a cat (Cat), and a cow (Bella). From the vantage of a couple of years on, she documents her experiences in surviving, and in developing a deep kinship with those animals.

Haushofer’s story is told quite slowly and gently, never flashing past an experience that she can detail. She is particularly good at the behaviour of animals – well, she’s very good at cats, and I assume she is good at dogs and cows. But over it all is a sense of looming dread – because the narrator has told us that the animals die, and that something bad has caused it.

I did find the end weirdly rushed and odd, after the gentle pacing of the rest of the story. I’m assuming it is a parable for something, or done with deliberate effect, but I am not at all convinced that it worked. Similarly unsuccessful (to my mind) were the occasional attempts to rationalise why she thought the wall was there, and who might be to blame – it worked better as something inexplicable.

These quibbles apart, it is a very impressive work. I do find that fine writing doesn’t work as well for me in audio as on the page. Maybe I’m more into story than prose when I’m listening? And the reader of the audiobook was a bit breathy and soft, which didn’t feel quite right. ANYWAY in summary perhaps I should have read this one as a book, but I still found it really interesting and would recommend. Not least because I want to talk to anyone and everyone about that ending, to try and understand why she did it.

Look, yes, I’ve been buying books

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It’s time for another haul post. But this teetering pile isn’t all from one trip – it’s from various different bookshops I’ve been to over the past month or two. That makes it ok, right??

Let’s go from the top, including a tour of the bookshops I’ve been to.

1. Regents Bookshop in Wantage, Oxfordshire

This is my nearest secondhand bookshop, about half an hour from my house, and I love it deeply. It is rammed full of stock, very affordably priced and with pretty good turnover. I’ve never come away empty-handed. Lockdown gave them a chance to neaten it out a bit, and I have my fingers crossed that it bucks the trend and manages to stay open for many years to come. And in it I bought…

The Rising Tide by Margaret Deland
I didn’t know anything about this book, but apparently it’s about New Women at the turn of the century, first published in 1916.

Women’s Weird ed. Melissa Edmundson
A collection of ‘weird’ stories by women, whatever weird means – I guess I’ll find out! I think there’s an E. Nesbit story in there, which intrigued me.

Up and Down by E.F. Benson
This was shelved in the letters section, but it is a novel in letter-form – and who doesn’t love that? Particularly from a favourite like EFB. I hadn’t heard of this one before, but always glad to add a Benson to the shelf.

The Girl from the Candle-Lit Bath by Dodie Smith
We all remember the scene of Cassandra hiding in her bath in I Capture the Castle – this is Smith’s last novel, and I wonder if it is tonally at all the same? Finding it did remind me that I have a few of her novels yet to read, and really must get onto them.

2. The Last Bookshop in Oxford

This bookshop began as The £2 Bookshop, then The £3 Bookshop, and is now The Last Bookshop – where most of the books are £3.99, but you can get 3 for a tenner. And there’s a secondhand department downstairs. As remainder bookshops go, it has really good quality stock.

The Heavenly Ladder by Compton Mackenzie
I got this from their secondhand stock. I’ve said a few times that I won’t buy more Mackenzie novels until I’ve cleared the decks a bit, but I’m a liar.

An Impossible Marriage by Pamela Hansford Johnson
Apparently this was reprinted four or five years ago – which surprised me, as I’m usually pretty up to speed with mid-century women writers getting reprinted. I’ve read three PHJ novels to varying success, but presumably whoever chose this one for reprinting was picking from her best?

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The reason I went to the bookshop – because my book group is reading this next year. I guess it’s a glaring omission to have read no Faulkner. But I’m not terribly excited about rectifying it.

Hidden Symptoms by Deirdre Madden
Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden
I was very pleased they had these in stock. Madden has been one of my favourite discoveries in the past couple of years, and certainly keen to read more.

3. The R&R Bookshop in Stroud

I had a day trip to Stroud to meet up with some friends, and obviously did some research first to see if there were any secondhand bookshops. There were TWO. This one is very cheaply priced with some interesting stuff, and I came away with so many books that I had to pop straight back to the car and leave them there.

The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw
Everyone was talking about this non-fic about a bookshop on a barge when it came out, but I (wait for it) missed the boat then.

Jenny Villiers by J.B. Priestley
One day I’ll read some of the Priestley novels I’ve been stockpiling. There’s just something so pleasing about these editions.

Stars of the Screen 1932
I really love popular culture books from this period – this is basically a series of photos of actors and short bios of them. It’s all info I could find on Wikipedia, I’m sure, but I love having a snapshot of how these people were considered in 1932.

The Cat Jumps by Elizabeth Bowen
My previous attempt at Bowen’s short stories was a bit mixed, but I’m keen to try more AND this one has ‘cat’ in the title.

A Pound of Paper by John Baxter
A book about books? Yes please.

A Smell of Burning by Margaret Lane
I think Lane is best remembered for her biography of Beatrix Potter, but she’s one of those once-popular novelists I’ve been meaning to try for a while.

4. Fireside Bookshop in Stroud

Stroud has TWO bookshops! This one is rather more expensive and had less stock that appealed to me, but looked like it would have a lot for specialists and antiquarian hunters. I came away with one book.

Beyond The Lighthouse by Margaret Crosland
The subtitle is ‘English women novelists of the 20th century’. I spent some time flicking through the book, trying to work out how academic it is. I really don’t need to read any more Eng Lit academia anymore, and this book would be much more fun as a reader’s journey – I’m not sure it’s quite that, but hopefully won’t be too dry.

5. Dean Street Press

These aren’t actually from a bookshop, but they’re in the pile and I wanted to mention that they’ve sent me review copies of Green Money and Five Windows by D.E. Stevenson.

6. Oxfam, Witney

It’s always tempting to pop into the Oxfam bookshop in Witney, the town where I work. And it’s pretty seldom I come out without at least one book in my hand.

Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
Hmm. I don’t remember why I bought this one, except that NYRB Classics are beautiful.

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
I heard about this one somewhere recently – a blog? a podcast? a book? – and wanted to try it. It’s about a baron who decides to move into a tree. The surreal nature of that story really appeals to me.

7. The Madhatter Bookshop, Wantage

This is cheating a little, as I didn’t buy these in this little independent bookshop in Wantage (a ‘new books’ bookshop), but did order it via them over email. These are some books that were on my birthday list – and so, when I got different books, I was entitled to buy a few for myself, yes? Yes?

Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm
Nobody’s Looking at You by Janet Malcolm
My unread Malcolm pile was getting dangerously – yes, dangerously – low, so I had to top it up a bit.

Keeper’s of the Flame by Ian Hamilton
And I think this one was mentioned in a Janet Malcolm book. She certainly has a devastating eye for the idiosyncrasies of literary estates, and I’m hoping this non-fic book about them will be as gossipy and scandalous as some of the things Malcolm writes about in her books.

 

Ok, that’s it! As usual, would love to know your thoughts about any of these…

 

 

 

Finishing off #NovellasInNovember #NovNov

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I went a bit quiet on here, but I *did* continue reading a novella a day, and I have now completed my Novellas in November challenge! Here are the final five days and what I read – except where I am being annoyingly cagey… Because I’m covering a few days, I’m going to be even briefer than usual on these, but do ask if you’d like any more info on them.

Friday: The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey

I love Carey’s writing, and was delighted to see he garnered a bit wider attention when Little came out a year or two ago. The Swallowed Man is a much shorter work, answering the question: what would happen if you combined Jonah and Pinocchio?

There’s not a dry spot in all this house. The walls are damp, the ceiling drips, the floor is moisture-laden. How careful I must be to protect this book from the encroaching wet. How often I have slipped – this is dangerous: I am not a young man – on this floor. The air here is thin and foul. It is rancid. Sometimes a new wave of stench comes in and affronts me. Sometimes the stink is but a whisper; at others it is a roar. But it is always a shade of stink.

It’s all written from the point of view of a carpenter who has created Pinocchio – and the Pinocchio here is very much the one you’re familiar with. He is created from wood then comes alive, and his nose grows when he lies. But he also disappears and, when trying to find him, the narrator finds (instead) himself being swallowed by a particularly large whale. It’s not the first time the whale has swallowed something inappropriate: inside, he finds a full ship. And, on that ship, he discovers a captain’s log – which is what we are reading, as he reminisces about life before the swallowing and wonders when he will run out of the candles keeping his strange sphere lit and warm.

Carey is also unusual and interesting, and remains so here. I think it was wise to keep this story to novella length – it’s so strange a premise that it shouldn’t outstay its welcome. As it is, I found it marvellous in every sense of the word. He brings plenty of pathos to this world, and nobody but Carey could have written The Swallowed Man. Not least because it incorporates many of his characterful, distinctive illustrations.

Saturday: mystery book! 

And here is where I’m cagey again – because it’s another British Library Women Writers re-read. Which I shan’t mention here, but if you can find a copy of the latest catalogue then all is revealed!

Sunday: Naturally Supernatural by Wendy Mann

I’m doing a six-month course at church, learning about and from the Holy Spirit – and this book was given to us to accompany the course. It’s full of testimonies of God’s work in everyday life, and I found it encouraging, inspiring, and challenging.

Monday: The Hothouse by the East River by Muriel Spark

This isn’t one of Spark’s novellas that I hear a lot about – maybe because, even by her standards, it’s one of her weirdest. It’s set in New York of the 1970s, with Elsa and Paul the main characters – but it reaches much further back and into other places. Paul (originally from Montenegro) and Elsa (from the UK) met during the Second World War when they were working for British Intelligence. Which involved working alongside German prisoners of war – including a Helmut Kiel. He was believed to have died shortly after the war, and was unearthed as a double agent during it. But then Elsa sees him in a shoe shop in New York…

Even more bizarrely, Elsa has a distinctive characteristic: her shadow falls the wrong way.

He cannot remember exactly what day it was that, on returning to the flat at seven in the evening — or six… if he could remember the season of the year…

In the evening — he cannot exactly remember the day, the time of day, perhaps it was spring, or winter, perhaps it was five, six o’clock…

He is standing in the middle of the room. She is sitting by the window, staring out over the East River. The late sunlight from the opposite window touches her shoulders and hair, it casts the shadow of palm leaves across the carpet, over her arm. The chair she sits in casts a shadow before her.

There is another shadow, hers. It falls behind her. Behind her, and cast by what light? She is casting a shadow in the wrong direction. There’s no light shining upon her from the east window, it comes from the west window. What is she looking at?

Elsa spends much of her time looking out the window at the East River. But what is she really looking at? Why has her psychoanalyst, Garvin, moved in as their butler? And is Elsa living in reality or hallucination? The answer to these questions is weirder than you might imagine, and the best part of the novella is putting it all together at the end. Though, this being Spark, there is certainly no neat bow on it. The novella remains as ungraspable and odd as it starts, and I think maybe falls a little into the section of Spark’s writing that baffles me a little too much. It’s good, but it’s not her best by any means.

Tuesday: Trouble With Lichen by John Wyndham

I haven’t read any Wyndham before, but my reliable friends Paul and Kirsty gave it to me a couple of years ago with the promise that I’d enjoy it – despite it being science fiction. And they’re certainly right that Wyndham writes in a way that isn’t off-putting if sci-fi isn’t your comfort zone.

Diana is a brilliant girl who becomes a brilliant young woman – determined to pursue science, and particularly biochemistry. She is a mid-century woman who isn’t deterred by the pressure of mid-century values.

‘I’m not at all sure that I do want to raise a family,’ Diana told her. ‘There are so many families already.’

Mrs Brackley looked shocked.

‘But every woman wants a family, at heart,’ she said. ‘It’s only natural.’

‘Habitual,’ corrected Diana. ‘God knows what would happen to civilization if we did things just because they were natural.’

While working in a lab, she accidentally discovers that a certain variety of lichen is able to prolong life – and you can dose according to the level you want. Twice, three, or four times as long a life – or as slow a life, really, as it extends everything from the time it takes hair to grow, to how long cuts take to heal. Wyndham even makes a few cryptic references to the length of time between periods.

The story follows what happens when this secret gets out – and the life-prolonging lichen is really just a premise for a riff on capitalism, journalism, competition, and even a touch of a thriller. It was fun and interesting, if a little fragmented.

Finished!

So, there we go! I took a day off for my birthday, but otherwise read a novella a day. Well, four of them were over 200 pages so perhaps they don’t count, but none of them were more than 230 – so narrow the margins a bit and they’d have counted.

As when I’ve done my 25 Books in 25 Days, I’ve really enjoyed it – and found, again, that it’s relatively easy if I get up a bit earlier and spend less time scrolling social media. Usually an hour’s reading before work, an hour at lunch, and an hour after work were enough to finish a book.

And it has brought some of the best books I’ve read this year – I wouldn’t be surprised to find some of them on my end of the year list. I’ll just have to let them settle a bit, and hope this energetic reading schedule hasn’t blurred them in my mind.