Love Your Library, August 2025
Thanks to Eleanor for posting about her recent library reading, including for 20 Books of Summer (here and here). Thanks also to Skai for joining in again!
Further to last month: My library system’s reclassification seems all the stranger the more I look at it, especially in the children’s section. Yellow stickers will have: one black stripe (Beginner Reads), two black stripes (Short Chapter Books), three black stripes (Picture Books for Older Readers) or a T (Teen). Okay, that last one makes sense, but taking in the number of stripes at a quick glance when organising a trolley or shelving? Seems like a recipe for misfiling.
Also, as a member of senior staff astutely observed, surely the length of a book is the one thing you can tell just by looking at it! So why make that its own designation? Especially when those double-stripe books will be mixed in with the rest of the chapter books, which from now on will not be given a very helpful label on the spine with the first letter of the author’s surname.
It’s having the two systems on the go at the same time that is most confusing. Apparently, these changes were handed down from on high, to keep us in line with other libraries, but no one consulted with the people who actually handle the books on a day-to-day basis. As in, the staff and volunteers. Ahem. We shall see how it goes.
My library use over the last month:
(links are to books not already reviewed on the blog)
I’ve been borrowing some Booker and Wainwright Prize list reads, as well as looking ahead to our mid-September trip to Berlin and Novellas in November.
READ
- Good Night, Little Bookshop by Amy Cherrix
- Bothered by Bugs by Emily Gravett
- More Katie Morag Island Stories by Mairi Hedderwick
- The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
- The Dig by John Preston
Last month we joined my in-laws for a few days at the holiday cottage they’d rented in Suffolk. We crammed in loads: Orford Ness, a former military site with a very unusual shingle landscape where hares live and the wind howls; Minsmere RSPB reserve; and Sutton Hoo, the site of a famous Anglo-Saxon ship burial, discovered there during an archaeological dig of the mounds in 1939; and Woodbridge, the nearest town to the cottage, whose museum has a project underway to build a full-size replica of the ship. I didn’t put two and two together to realize that The Dig, adapted into a 2021 Netflix film starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan (there was a big on-site exhibit about the filming), is about Sutton Hoo or I would have gotten it out of the library to take with us. Instead, I caught up afterward.
Preston focuses on the few spring and summer months of Basil Brown’s amateur excavation, which was then co-opted by museum professionals. Edith Pretty, the landowner, was a widow in her fifties, raising her plucky son Robert on her own and struggling with ill health (she had Robert at age 47, almost unheard of in those days, and would die after a stroke in 1942). The day to day of the excavation was engrossing and I enjoyed the interactions between Brown and Pretty. I didn’t need the third narrator, Peggy Piggott, wife of one of the archaeologists and excavation staff in her own right, nor the extra background about characters’ marriages and museum bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the epilogue from Robert returning to the site in the 1960s made me wish that there had been more of that retrospective viewpoint. This was enjoyable in a minor way but I wouldn’t have read it had I not been to Sutton Hoo. I wonder if the film would be, on the whole, more successful. 
SKIMMED
- I Think I Like Girls by Rosie Day – I took a desultory look but the content seemed pretty lite and the writing style iffy. (Hadn’t heard of Day but I guess she’s a celebrity?)
SKIMMING
- Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (for book club; I also skimmed it when it first came out)
CURRENTLY READING
- The Most by Jessica Anthony
- The Honesty Box by Luzy Brazier
- Bellies by Nicola Dinan
- The Wedding People by Alison Espach
- The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
- An Eye on the Hebrides by Mairi Hedderwick
- The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
- Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb
- The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
- The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson & Matt Eversmann
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
It’s nearly time for Novellas in November planning! Thus I borrowed a quartet of books from the university library (the bottom stack below), two of which were recommended by blog friends: the Barker (Blow Your House Down) by Margaret and the Hesse by Kaggsy. The Kertesz is on my radar thanks to C’s bandmate Jo. And I’ve enjoyed the two Sagan novellas I’ve read so far so thought I’d source another.
ON HOLD, TO BE COLLECTED
- Sojourn by Amit Chaudhuri
- The Names by Florence Knapp
- Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien
- Red Pockets: An Offering by Alice Mah
- Birding by Rose Ruane
- Opt Out by Carolina Setterwall
- Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth
- Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- The Two Roberts by Damian Barr
- All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert
- Helm by Sarah Hall
- The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading by Sam Leith
- What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
- The Eights by Joanna Miller
- Endling by Maria Reva
- Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
- Flesh by David Szalay
RETURNED UNREAD
- Fragile Minds by Bella Jackson
- Enchanted Ground: Growing Roots in a Broken World by Steven Lovatt
- Wife by Charlotte Mendelson
- The Forgotten Sense: The Nose and the Perception of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
I lost immediate interest in all of these but would be willing to try them again another time.
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.
20 Books of Summer, 11–12 (Victoriana): Edward Carey & George Grossmith
Neither of these appeared on my initial list, but I thought a middle-grade novel and a classic would be good for variety. Though I have an MA in Victorian Literature, I don’t often read from the period anymore because I’m allergic to wordy triple-deckers, so it was a delight to encounter something short and lighthearted. I’ve always been partial to a contemporary Victorian pastiche, though.
Heap House (Iremonger, #1) by Edward Carey (2013)
The Iremonger family wealth came from salvaging treasure from the rubbish heaps surrounding their London mansion. Every Iremonger has a birth object (like a daemon?) associated with them. Clodius Iremonger, adolescent descendant of the great family, has a special skill: he hears each birth object speaking its name. His own bath plug, for instance, cries out, “James Henry Hayward.” These objects house enchanted souls; people can change back into objects and vice versa. The narration alternates between Clod and plucky Lucy Pennant, who arrives from a local orphanage to work as a house servant. All staff and heap-workers are called “Iremonger,” but Lucy refuses to cede her identity and wants justice for the oppressed workers. She and Clod form a bond against the odds and there’s an upstairs–downstairs tinge to their ensuing adventures in the house and on the heaps.
Carey’s trademark twisted combination of Dickensian charm and Gothic gloom is certainly on display here. All the other names are slightly off-kilter: Rosamud, Moorcus, Aliver, Pinalippy and so on. I laughed out loud at a passage about the dubious purpose of doilies. Little truly won me over, but all my experiences with Carey’s work since then (also including The Swallowed Man, B: A Year in Plagues and Pencils, and Edith Holler) have been a slight letdown. This was highly readable and I galloped through the midsection, but I found the whole thing overlong; I’m undecided about reading the other books, though they do have higher average ratings on Goodreads. I got the second, Foulsham, from the Little Free Library and it’s significantly shorter. Shall I continue? (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com) 
The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith; illus. Weedon Grossmith (1892)
It must be rare for a fictional character to be memorialized in the dictionary. I was vaguely aware of the word “Pooterism” but thought it referred to small-minded, pompous, fussy individuals, so my preconception of City clerk Charles Pooter was probably more negative than is warranted. (In fact, “Pooterish” means taking oneself too seriously.) He’s actually a lovable, hapless Everyman who tries desperately to keep up with middle-class society but often gets it wrong. He can’t handle his champagne; and he wants so much to be funny – his are definite dad jokes avant la lettre – but only sometimes pulls it off. He regularly offends tradesmen, servants and neighbours alike, and tries but fails to ingratiate himself with his betters. Luckily, his mistakes are mild and just leave him out of favour – or pocket.
Charles and Lupin Pooter, as depicted by
Weedon Grossmith. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Originally serialized in Punch, the book is in short entries of one paragraph to a few pages, recounting the Pooters’ first 15 months in their new home. Events range from the mundane – home repairs and decoration – to the great excitement of being invited to the mayor’s ball. Charles and Carrie’s young adult son, Lupin (surely a partial inspiration for Roger Mortimer’s Dear Lupin and its sequels?), who comes back to live with them partway through, is a feckless bounder always being taken in by new money-making schemes and unsuitable ladies. Charles hopes to find Lupin steady employment and steer him away from his infatuation with Daisy Mutlar.
It’s well worth reading for its own sake, but also for the window onto daily Victorian life, including things that aren’t always recorded, such as fashion and slang. And it’s clever how Pooter’s pretensions get punctured by the others around him: longsuffering Carrie (“He tells me his stupid dreams every morning nearly”), insolent Lupin (“Look here, Guv.; excuse me saying so, but you’re a bit out of date”), and testy Gowing – that’s right, the neighbours are named Cummings and Gowing (“I would add, you’re a bigger fool than you look, only that’s absolutely impossible”). All very amusing. (Free from mall bookshop c. 2020)
Never fear, I’m still on track to finish the challenge by the 31st!
#WITMonth, Part I: Susanna Bissoli, Jente Posthuma and More
I’m starting off my Women in Translation month coverage with two short novels: one Italian and one Dutch; both about women navigating loss, family relationships, physical or mental illness, and the desire to be a writer.
Struck by Susanna Bissoli (2024; 2025)
[Translated from Italian by Georgia Wall]
Vera has been diagnosed a second time with breast cancer – the same disease that felled her mother a decade ago. “I’m fed up with feeling like a problem to be taken care of,” she thinks. Even as her treatment continues, she determines to find routes to a bigger life not defined by her illness. Writing is the solution. When she moves in with her grouchy octogenarian father, Zeno Benin, she discovers he’s secretly written a novel, A Lucky Man. The almost entirely unpunctuated document is handwritten across 51 notebooks Vera undertakes to type up and edit alongside her father as his health declines.
At the same time, she becomes possessed by the legend of local living ‘saint’ Annamaria Bigani, who has been visited multiple times by the Virgin Mary and learned her date of death. Wondering if there is a story here that she needs to tell, Vera interviews Bigani, then escapes to Greece for time and creative space. “Do they save us, stories? Or is it our job to save them? I believe writing that story, day in and day out for years, saved my father’s life. But I’m sorry, I don’t have time to save his story: I need to write my own. The saint, or so I thought.” In the end, we learn, Struck – the very novel we are reading – is Vera’s book.
The title comes from a scientific study conducted on people struck by lightning at a country festival in France. How did they survive, and what were the lasting effects? The same questions apply to Vera, who avoids talking about her cancer but whose relationship with her sister Nora is still affected by choices made while their mother was alive. There are many delightful small conversations and incidents here, often involving Vera’s niece Alice. Vera’s relationship with Franco, a doctor who works with asylum seekers, is a steady part of the background. A translator’s afterword helped me understand the thought that went into how to reproduce Vera and others’ use of dialect (La Bassa Veronese vs. standard Italian) through English vernacular – so Vera and her sister say “Mam” and her father uses colourful idioms.
Though I know nothing of Bissoli’s biography, this second novel has the feeling of autofiction. Despite its wrenching themes of illness and the inevitability of death, it’s a lighthearted family story with free-flowing prose that I can enthusiastically recommend to readers of Elizabeth Berg and Catherine Newman.
This was my introduction to new (est. 2023) independent publisher Linden Editions, which primarily publishes literature in translation. I have two more of their books underway for another WIT Month post later this month. And a nice connection is that I corresponded with translator Georgia Wall when she was the publishing manager for The Emma Press.
With thanks to Linden Editions for the free copy for review.
People with No Charisma by Jente Posthuma (2016; 2025)
[Translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey]
Dutch writer Jente Posthuma’s quirky, bittersweet first novel traces the ripples that grief and mental ill health send through a young woman’s life. The narrator’s mother was an aspiring actress; her father runs a mental hospital. A dozen episodic short chapters present snapshots from a neurotic existence as she grows from a child to a thirtysomething starting a family of her own. Some highlights include her moving to Paris to write a novel, and her father – a terrible driver – taking her on a road trip through France. Despite the deadpan humor, there’s heartfelt emotion here and the prose and incidents are idiosyncratic. (Full review forthcoming for Shelf Awareness)
& Reviewed for Foreword Reviews a couple of years ago:
What I Don’t Want to Talk About by Jente Posthuma (2020; 2023)
[Translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey]
A young woman bereft after her twin brother’s suicide searches for the seeds of his mental illness. The past resurges, alternating with the present in the book’s few-page vignettes. Their father leaving when they were 11 was a significant early trauma. Her brother came out at 16, but she’d intuited his sexuality when they were eight. With no speech marks, conversations blend into cogitation and memories here. A wry tone tempers the bleakness. (Shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature and the International Booker Prize.)
Both featured an unnamed narrator and a similar sense of humor. I concluded that Posthuma excels at exploring family dynamics and the aftermath of bereavement.
I got caught out when I reviewed The Appointment, too: Volckmer doesn’t technically count towards this challenge because she writes in English (and lives in London), but as she’s German, I’m adding in a teaser of my review as a bonus. Oddly, this novella did first appear in another language, French, in 2024, under the title Wonderf*ck. [The full title below was given to the UK edition.]
Calls May Be Recorded [for Training and Monitoring Purposes] by Katharina Volckmer (2025)
Volckmer’s outrageous, uproarious second novel features a sex-obsessed call center employee who negotiates body and mommy issues alongside customer complaints. “Thank you for waiting. My name is Jimmie. How can I help you today?” each call opens. The overweight, homosexual former actor still lives with his mother. His customers’ situations are bizarre and his replies wildly inappropriate; it’s only a matter of time until he faces disciplinary action. As in her debut, Volckmer fearlessly probes the psychological origins of gender dysphoria and sexual behavior. Think of it as an X-rated version of The Office. (Full review forthcoming for Shelf Awareness)
20 Books of Summer, 9–10: Leave the World Behind & Leaving Atlanta
Halfway there! And I’m doing better than it might appear in that I’m in the middle of another 7 books and just have to decide what the final 3 will be. This was a sobering but satisfying pair of novels in which race and class play a part but the characters are ultimately helpless in the face of disasters and violence. Both:
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (2020)
The title heralds a perfect holiday read, right? A New York City couple, Amanda and Clay, have rented a secluded vacation home in Long Island with their teenagers, Archie and Rose, and plan on a week of great beach weather and mild hedonism: food, drink, secret cigarettes, a hot tub, maybe some sex. But late on the first night there’s a knock on the door from the owners, sixtysomething Black couple Ruth and G. H. Something is going on; although the house still has power, all phone and Internet services have gone down. Rather than return to a potentially chaotic city, the older couple set course for their country retreat to hunker down. George is in finance and believes money solves everything, so he offers Amanda and Clay $1000 cash for the inconvenience of having their holiday interrupted.
From an amassing herd of deer to Archie’s sudden mystery illness, everything quickly turns odd. Glimpses of what’s happening in the wider world are surrounded by a menacing haziness, but the events seem to embody modern anxieties about being cut off from information and wondering who to trust. Given the blurbs and initial foreshadowing, I expected racial tension to be a main driver of an incendiary household climax. Instead, the threat is external and largely unexplained, and the couples are forced to rely on each other as tribalism sets in. (It’s uncanny that this was written before Covid, published during.)
This was a book club read and one of the most divisive I can remember. I was among the few who thought it gripping, intriguing, and even genuinely frightening. Others found the characters unlikable, the plot implausible or silly, and the writing heavy-handed. Alam is definitely poking fun at privileged bougie families. He draws attention to the author as puppet-master, inserting shrewd hints of what is occurring elsewhere or will soon befall certain characters. Some passages skirt pomposity with their anaphora and rhetorical questioning. Alliteration, repetition, and stark pronouncements make the prose almost baroque in places. Alam’s style is theatrical, even arch, but it suits the premonitory tone. I admired how he constantly upends genre expectations, moving from literary fiction to domestic drama to dystopia to magic realism to horror. The stuff of nightmares – being naked in front of strangers, one’s teeth falling out – becomes real, or at least real in the world of the book. The reminder is that we are never as in control as we think we are; always, disasters are unfolding. What will we do, and who will we be, as the inevitable unfolds?
You demanded answers, but the universe refused. Comfort and safety were just an illusion. Money meant nothing. All that meant anything was this—people, in the same place, together. This was what was left to them.
Absorbing, timely, controversial: read it! (Free from a neighbour)
Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones (2002)
Jones’s debut novel is about the Atlanta Child Murders, a real-life serial killer spree that targeted 29 African American children between 1979 and 1982. (Two of the victims attended her elementary school.) Rather than addressing the gruesome reality, however, she takes a sideways look by considering the effect that fear has on students whose classmates start disappearing. Three sections rather like linked novellas take on the perspective of three different Oglethorpe Elementary fifth graders: LaTasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison. The POV moves from third to second to first person, a creative writing experiment that succeeds at pulling readers closer in. The AAVE-inflected dialogue and interactions feel genuine in each, and I liked the playful addition of “Tayari Jones” as a fringe character.
Even as their school is making news headlines, the children’s concerns are perennial adolescent ones: how to avoid bullying, who to sit with at lunch, how to be friendly yet not falsely encourage members of the opposite sex. And at home, all three struggle with an absent or overbearing father. At age 11, these kids are just starting to realize that their parents aren’t perfect and might not be able to keep them safe. I especially warmed to Octavia’s voice, even as her story made my heart ache: “cussing at myself for being too stupid to see that nothing lasts. That people get away from you like a handful of sweet smoke.” I preferred this offbeat, tender coming-of-age novel to Silver Sparrow and would place it on a par with An American Marriage. (Birthday gift from my wish list)
20 Books of Summer, 8: Au Revoir, Tristesse by Viv Groskop
This is a substitute I picked out as a potential (now belated) #ParisinJuly2025 contribution. There’s been little time for writing over the past week while we’ve been hosting my sister and brother-in-law. Their whirlwind trip was shortened by a day due to a cancelled flight from the States, but we managed to pack in a lot, including a two-night mini-break down in Devon.
Reminiscent of Something to Declare by Julian Barnes and How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton, this is a lighthearted tour through a dozen great works of French literature and the lessons they might offer modern readers on how to live well. Ever since her school days of studying French and spending every family holiday in France, Groskop has been obsessed with the language and culture. In most of the chapters, she undertakes a rereading of a novel she first read as a teenager or Cambridge student, marveling at how much more she gets out of it with greater life experience.
Although her choices are indisputable classics, she acknowledges they can only ever be an incomplete and biased selection, unfortunately all white and largely male, though she opens with Bonjour Tristesse and also includes Colette and Duras novels. I’d only read three of her dozen, in translation: along with the Sagan, Dangerous Liaisons and Madame Bovary (as well as other books by two of the additional authors), but it didn’t make much difference whether I was familiar with a plot or not. So long as one is not allergic to spoilers, it’s possible to enjoy these miniature essays’ witty combination of literary criticism, biographical information, self-help messaging, and a bit of autobiographical context.
The male writers tended to be syphilitic workaholics – Balzac is reputed to have drunk 50 cups of coffee per day to sustain his output – while the women flouted social conventions by drinking, taking much younger (and/or female) lovers and driving recklessly. While the subtitle promises “Lessons in Happiness,” from Hugo to Camus these are in fact pretty miserable narratives in which, as was especially common in the 19th century, protagonists are punished for ambition or transgressions, or never reach contentment because of self-delusion.
In boiling down each plot to one line of advice for a chapter title, Groskop’s tone alternates between earnest (“Our greatest weaknesses conceal our greatest strengths” = Cyrano de Bergerac) and tongue in cheek (“Social climbing rarely pays off, but you’ll probably want to do it anyway” = Le Rouge et le Noir). She describes the works with genuine affection and clearly believes they are still worth reading, yet isn’t afraid to question those aspects that have aged less well. Controversially, she suggests being selective with Proust’s mammoth oeuvre: “skim-read, rereading the passages you fall in love with and discarding the rest.” She also surveys how the stories live on through adaptations. Of the new-to-me, I’m most drawn to Bel-Ami but also fancy La Cousine Bette. This was a delight I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to fellow Francophiles. (New purchase – remainder from Hay Cinema Bookshop) 
Love Your Library, July 2025
Thank you to Eleanor (here and here) and Skai for posting about their recent library reading.
On a brief trip to Tilehurst last week for a podiatry consultation, I popped into its library (part of Reading Borough, where I’ve lived at various points) and liked how they designated subgenres with 3D paper letter names above the bays along with a suitable spine sticker on the books themselves. Action is to the right of romance here; they also give Family Sagas and Historical Fiction their own sections.
My library system recently made a slight change to our classifications. Now, instead of a monolithic Crime designation (red circular sticker on spine) there will be a white square spine label with either a magnifying glass and CRI or a gun target with THR for thriller; both will be shelved in the Crime section. Likewise, the SFF section (previously, green circular sticker) will have two subdivisions, FAN with a unicorn and SCI with a ringed planet. I can see why the new subgenres were perceived to be more helpful for readers, but I predict that the shelving, which is almost exclusively done by volunteers, will go haywire. Even with the very clear coloured stickers, books are frequently mis-shelved. (During each of my sessions, I probably reshelve 10 to 15 books.) Now there will be a mixture of coloured and white labels, the latter of which must be read carefully to not end up on the wrong trolley or shelf…
My library use over the last month:
(links are to books not already reviewed on the blog)
READ
- Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion by Lamorna Ash
- To the Edge of the Sea: Schooldays of a Crofter’s Child by Christina Hall
- Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
- Ripeness by Sarah Moss
- Three Weeks in July: 7/7, The Aftermath, and the Deadly Manhunt by Adam Wishart & James Nally
CURRENTLY READING
- The Most by Jessica Anthony
- The Interpretation of Cats: And Their Owners by Claude Béata; translated by David Watson
- The Honesty Box by Luzy Brazier
- Bellies by Nicola Dinan
- The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
- The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
- The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson & Matt Eversmann
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- I Think I Like Girls by Rosie Day
- Fragile Minds by Bella Jackson
- Enchanted Ground: Growing Roots in a Broken World by Steven Lovatt
- Wife by Charlotte Mendelson
- The Forgotten Sense: The Nose and the Perception of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
+ various children’s books
(the other books pictured are for my husband’s stack)
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Helm by Sarah Hall
- An Eye on the Hebrides by Mairi Hedderwick
- Albion by Anna Hope
- The Names by Florence Knapp
- The Eights by Joanna Miller
- The Dig by John Preston
- Birding by Rose Ruane
- Opt Out by Carolina Setterwall
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- The Husbands by Holly Gramazio – I read the first 28 pages or so. A fun premise, but I felt I’d gotten the gist already and couldn’t imagine another 300 pages of the same.
- The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han – This was requested off me before I could get halfway. So annoying! I’ve placed a hold but don’t know if it will come back into my hands in time to actually finish it during the summer. Harrumph.
- Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid – I read about 18 pages. I always like the idea of her novels, but since Daisy Jones haven’t gotten far in one.
- Boiled Owls by Azad Ashim Sharma – This poetry collection was not for me.
RETURNED UNREAD
- Fulfillment by Lee Cole – Requested off me before I could start it. I’m back in the queue.
- Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo – This poetry collection was not for me.
- The Artist by Lucy Steeds – Requested off me before I could start it. I’m back in the queue.
- The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas – Ditto!
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.
Three Days in June vs. Three Weeks in July
Two very good 2025 releases that I read from the library. While they could hardly be more different in tone and particulars, I couldn’t resist linking them via their titles.
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
(From my Most Anticipated list.) A delightful little book that I loved more than I expected to, for several reasons: the effective use of a wedding weekend as a way of examining what goes wrong in marriages and what we choose to live with versus what we can’t forgive; Gail’s first-person narration, a rarity for Tyler* and a decision that adds depth to what might otherwise have been a two-dimensional depiction of a woman whose people skills leave something to be desired; and the unexpected presence of a cat who brings warmth and caprice back into her home. (I read this soon after losing my old cat, and it was comforting to be reminded that cats and their funny ways are the same the world over.)
From Tyler’s oeuvre, this reminded me most of The Amateur Marriage and has a surprise Larry’s Party-esque ending. The discussion of the outmoded practice of tapping one’s watch is a neat tie-in to her recurring theme of the nature of time. And through the lunch out at a chic crab restaurant, she succeeds at making the Baltimore setting essential rather than incidental, more so than in much of her other work.
Gail is in the sandwich generation with a daughter just married and an old mother who’s just about independent. I appreciated that she’s 61 and contemplating retirement, but still feels as if she hasn’t a clue: “What was I supposed to do with the rest of my life? I’m too young for this, I thought. Not too old, as you might expect, but too young, too inept, too uninformed. How come there weren’t any grownups around? Why did everyone just assume I knew what I was doing?”
My only misgiving is that Tyler doesn’t quite get it right about the younger generation: women who are in their early thirties in 2023 (so born about 1990) wouldn’t be called Debbie and Bitsy. To some degree, Tyler’s still stuck back in the 1970s, but her observations about married couples and family dynamics are as shrewd as ever. Especially because of the novella length, I can recommend this to readers wanting to try Tyler for the first time.
*I’ve noted it in Earthly Possessions. Anywhere else?
Three Weeks in July: 7/7, The Aftermath, and the Deadly Manhunt by Adam Wishart and James Nally
July 7th is my wedding anniversary but before that, and ever since, it’s been known as the date of the UK’s worst terrorist attack, a sort of lesser 9/11 – and while reading this I felt the same way that I’ve felt reading books about 9/11: a sort of awed horror. Suicide bombers who were born in the UK but radicalized on trips to Islamic training camps in Pakistan set off explosions on three Underground trains and one London bus. I didn’t think my memories of 7/7 were strong, yet some names were incredibly familiar to me (chiefly Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the attacks; Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian electrician shot dead on a Tube train when confused with a suspect in the 21/7 copycat plot – police were operating under a new shoot-to-kill policy and this was the tragic result).
Fifty-two people were killed that day, ranging in age from 20 to 60; 20 were not UK citizens, hailing from everywhere from Grenada to Mauritius. But a total of 770 people were injured. I found the authors’ recreation of events very gripping, though do be warned that there is a lot of gruesome medical and forensic detail about fatalities and injuries. They humanize the scale of events and make things personal by focusing on four individuals who were injured, even losing multiple limbs in some cases, but survived and now work in motivational speaking, disability services or survivor advocacy.
What really got to me was thinking about all the hundreds of people who, 20 years on, still live with permanent pain, disability or grief because of the randomness of them or their loved ones getting caught up in a few misguided zealots’ plot. One detail that particularly struck me: with the Tube tunnels closed off at both ends while searchers recovered bodies, the temperature rose to 50 degrees C (122 degrees F), only exacerbating the stench. The book mostly avoids cliches and overwriting, though I did find myself skimming in places. It is based on the research done for a BBC documentary series and synthesizes a lot of material in an engaging way that does justice to the victims.
Have you read one or both of these?
Could you see yourself picking one of them up?
20 Books of Summer, 6–7: Helen Dunmore and Stephen King
At least, I managed a pretty terrific pair, and completed half of my intended 4-in-a-row (the second row) on the Bingo card.
(Book featuring ice cream or summer foods)
Ice Cream by Helen Dunmore (2000)
These 18 pieces are quite varied: a few have historical settings, two are written in the second person, and several return to the life of Ulli (a recurring character from Love of Fat Men), a Finnish teenager who faces an unexpected pregnancy. Even the slight-seeming ones are satisfying slices of fiction. The title story and its follow-up, “Be Vigilant, Rejoice, Eat Plenty” advocate sensual indulgence, which I guess is the reason for the cover image – which I couldn’t decide whether to hide or flaunt as I was reading it in public.
Often, there is a hint of menace, whether the topic is salmon fishing, raspberry picking or the history of a lost ring. “The Clear and Rolling Water” has the atmosphere of a Scottish folk ballad, which made it perfect reading for our recent holiday to Scotland. “Leonardo, Michelangelo, SuperStork” and “Mason’s Mini-break” stand out for their dystopian and magic realist touches, respectively. In the former, couples are only allowed to conceive via state- sanctioned services; in the latter, an arrogant Booker Prize-winning author is patronizing when he meets a would-be writer while on holiday in Yorkshire.
Two of my favourites were “The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife” and “Swimming into the Millennium,” which might have been written by Helen Simpson. All are of a high standard, and though they don’t fit together per se and mostly won’t stay with me, I really do rate Dunmore as a short story writer. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
(Book from a genre you rarely read)
Pet Sematary by Stephen King (1983)
I’d only ever read King’s On Writing and worried I wouldn’t be able to handle his fiction. I could never watch a horror film, but somehow the same content was okay in print. For half the length or more, it’s more of a mildly dread-laced, John Irving-esque novel about how we deal with the reality of death. Dr. Louis Creed and his family – wife Rachel, five-year-old daughter Ellie, two-year-old son Gage and cat Church (short for Winston Churchill) – have recently moved from Chicago to Maine for him to take up a post as head of University Medical Services. Their 83-year-old neighbour across the street, Judson Crandall, becomes a sort of surrogate father to Louis, warning them about the dangerous highway that separates their houses and initiating them with a tour of the pet cemetery and Micmac burial ground that happen to be on their property. Things start getting weird early on: Louis’s first day on the job sees a student killed by a car while jogging; the young man’s cryptic dying words are about the pet cemetery, and he then visits Louis in a particularly vivid dream.
The family surname is no coincidence. “I believe that we go on,” Louis says when Ellie asks him about what happens when we die. “But as to what it’s like, I have no opinion.” So King interrogates what it would be like for the dead to go on literally instead of just figuratively in the remembrance of loved ones. Would bringing the dead back be a cure for grief or a horrible mistake? This sleepy New England town harbours many cautionary tales, and the Creeds have more than their fair share of sorrow. Rachel witnessed her sister’s death from a long illness when she was just a child and has always repressed her memories of it.
Louis is a likable protagonist whose vortex of obsession and mental health (“He walked the balance-beam of rationality”) is gripping. As can be the case with genre fiction, King prioritizes readability over writing quality, though I did pick out an occasional glistening metaphor. It doesn’t get gruesome or schlocky until right towards the end. In the last quarter, which I read on the long train ride home from Edinburgh, I couldn’t get the book closer to my face or the pages turning any faster. It helped that it was a beat-up small-format paperback. When we arrived into London I was about six pages from the end and it was so frustrating to have to wait until I got on my next train to read the rest.
This also counted towards one of my low-key ongoing challenges: reading works published in my birth year. I could imagine the Eighties stylings of an adaptation, especially Rachel’s power suit and pumps when she’s on her race-against-the-clock flight and road trip. I did find the book dated in some of its Murakami-like descriptions (“The … double doors were set into a grassy rise of hill, a shape as natural and as attractive as the swell of a woman’s breast”) and cringey sex scenes, and I wondered if King would get away with using imagery of the Windigo these days. Still, on this evidence, I’ll seek out more of his classic horror – do give me your recommendations. So long as they’re this addictive (and no scarier), I’m game. Pet Sematary was sterling entertainment, but also surprisingly poignant. A message I took away: you just have to live with the pain of loss, not fight it or deny it. “When it started not to hurt, it started not to matter.” (Little Free Library)
The Single Hound by May Sarton (1938)
I spotted that the 30th anniversary of May Sarton’s death was coming up, so decided to read an unread book of hers from my shelves in time to mark the occasion. Today’s the day: she died on July 16, 1995 in York, Maine. Marcie of Buried in Print joined me for a buddy read (her review). I was drawn by the title, which comes from an Emily Dickinson quote. It’s the ninth Sarton novel I’ve read and, while in general I find her nonfiction more memorable than her fiction, this impressionistic debut novel was a solid read. It was clearly inspired by Virginia Woolf’s work and based on Sarton’s memories of her time on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group.
In Part I we are introduced to “the Little Owls,” three dear friends and winsome spinsters in their sixties – Doro, Annette and Claire – who teach and live above their schoolroom in Ghent, Belgium. (I couldn’t help but think of the Brontë sisters’ time in Belgium.) Doro, a poet, seems likely to be a stand-in for the author. I loved the gentle pace of this section; although the novel was published when she was only 26, Sarton was already displaying insight into friendship and ageing and appreciation of life’s small pleasures, elements that would recur in her later autobiographical work.
the three together made a complete world.
Was this life? This slow penetration of experience until nothing had been left untasted, unexplored, unused — until the whole of one’s life became a fabric, a tapestry with a pattern? She could not see the pattern yet.
tea was opium to them both, the time when the past became a soft pleasant country of the imagination, lost its bitterness, ceased to devour, and in some tea-inspired way nourished them.
Part II felt to me like a strange swerve into the story of Mark Taylor, an aspiring English writer who falls in love with a married painter named Georgia Manning. Their flirtation, as soon through the eyes of a young romantic like Mark, is monolithic, earth-shattering, but to readers is more of a clichéd subplot. In the meantime, Mark sticks to his vow of going on a pilgrimage to Belgium to meet Jean Latour, the poet whose work first inspired him. Part III brings the two strands together in an unexpected way, as Mark gains clarity about his hero and his potential future with Georgia, though cleverer readers than I may have been able to predict it – especially if they heeded the Brontë connection.
It was rewarding to spot the seeds of future Sarton themes here, such as discovering the vocation of teaching (The Small Room) and young people meeting their elder role models and soliciting words of wisdom on how to live (Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing). Through Doro, Sarton also expresses trust in poetry’s serendipitous power. “This is why one is a poet, so that some day, sooner or later, one can say the right thing to the right person at the right time.” I enjoyed my time with the Little Owls but mostly viewed this as a dress rehearsal for later, more mature work. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com)
A Return to the Outer Hebrides & What I Read (Including 20 Books of Summer, 4–5)
Three summers ago, we first explored the Outer Hebrides, moving south from Lewis through Harris to North Uist and Benbecula. It took longer than expected to make it back to the Western Isles. (It’s also taken longer than expected to write up a trip we took in late June. My excuse is we’ve been having work done in the house for a couple of weeks and it’s thrown off routines, plus we’re now away again on a short break.) We kept our word and completed the southern half of the chain this year, staying on South Uist and journeying via Eriskay to Barra and Vatersay. As last time, we combined public transport and car rental. Unlike last time, we had no major transport disasters. We took the train up to Edinburgh, where we rented a car and headed first of all to the edge of the Cairngorms. The village had little to offer apart from riverside scenery, so while my husband did beetle-collecting fieldwork nearby, I spent my time reading in the idyllic B&B grounds. Here the wildlife came to me: seven stags and a red squirrel! I’ve substituted in two of my relevant trip reads to my 20 Books of Summer roster.
20 Books of Summer, #4
The Cone-Gatherers by Robin Jenkins (1955)
Rightly likened to Of Mice and Men, this is an engrossing short novel about two brothers, Neil and Calum, tasked with climbing trees and gathering the pinecones of a wealthy Scottish estate. They will be used to replant the many woodlands being cut down to fuel the war effort. Calum, the younger brother, is physically and intellectually disabled but has a deep well of compassion for living creatures. He has unwittingly made an enemy of the estate’s gamekeeper, Duror, by releasing wounded rabbits from his traps. Much of the story is taken up with Duror’s seemingly baseless feud against the brothers – though we’re meant to understand that his bedbound wife’s obesity and his subsequent sexual frustration may have something to do with it – as well as with Lady Runcie-Campbell’s class prejudice. Her son, Roderick, is an unexpected would-be hero and voice of pure empathy. I read this quickly, with grim fascination, knowing tragedy was coming but not quite how things would play out. The introduction to Canongate’s Canons Collection edition is by actor Paul Giamatti, of all people. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
Then it was a several-hour drive to Oban to take our rescheduled ferry over to Lochboisdale in South Uist for the holiday proper to begin. With a six-night Airbnb stay booked in the home of a local woman, we relaxed into an unhurried pace of life. It’s more about the landscape than any particular indoor attractions here; during rainy spells we toured the excellent museum, tasted gin and rum at the North Uist (Downpour) and Benbecula (MacMillan Spirits) distilleries, took advantage of 5 for £1 books and CDs at the Benbecula thrift shop, and tried a couple of cafes, but for the most part we just made a few short excursions per day.
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- Honesty box with cakes
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- Photos by Chris Foster
We saw acres of machair (wildflower-rich fields), sand dunes undermined by an empire of rabbits, deserted beaches, and rare patches of woodland. We successfully staked out white-tailed sea eagles, red-throated divers, and a red-necked phalarope; watched cuckoos and short-eared owls (who are active in the daytime) as much as possible; and stared at every likely sea loch but failed to find an otter. Each evening we’d heat up a simple supper – pouches of curry and rice; ravioli with tomato sauce – using the microwave and hob. In quite a contrast to the heatwave-mired south of England, we had 12–16 degrees C (54–61 degrees F) most days, with light rain and high winds. The radiators and Rayburn (a big stove like an Aga) were on most of the time.
20 Books of Summer, #5
The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis (1990)
Eric and Mabel moved from the Midlands to run a hotel on a remote Scottish island. He places an advertisement in select London periodicals to lure in some Christmas-haters for the holidays and attracts a motley group: a bereaved former soldier writing a biography of General Gordon, a pair of actors known only for commercials, a psychoanalyst, and a department store buyer looking for a novel sweater pattern. Mabel decides she’s had enough and flees the island just as the guests start arriving. One guest is stalking another; one has history on the island. And all along, there are hints that this is a site of major selkie activity. I found it jarring how the novella moved from Shena Mackay-like social comedy into magic realism and doubt I’ll read more by Ellis (I’d already read one volume of Home Life), though this was light and enjoyable enough. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com)
I was pleased that I managed to find two relevant hyperlocal reads. It was so neat to encounter the same place names out the car window and in my books:
To the Edge of the Sea: Schooldays of a Crofter’s Child by Christina Hall (1995)
Hall’s father inherited a South Uist croft and the family struggled so much financially that she was sent to live with her schoolteacher aunts on Benbecula and then Barra. Some things haven’t changed on the islands, such as the rabbits on the machair and the notoriously choppy ferry rides back to the mainland, where she attended a convent school at Fort William. There are some enjoyable pen portraits, such as of an Irish peddler. The most memorable incident was when she ran away from the aunts’ to attend a family wedding on Benbecula. The tone is pleasant, reminiscent of early Diana Athill and Doreen Tovey, but this isn’t one to pick up unless you have a particular interest in the places described. (Public library)
A Summer Like No Other by Martin MacIntyre (2018; 2025)
As World Cup fever ramps up in the summer of 1978, aimless 20-year-old Colin Quinn breaks from his university studies to shadow his uncle, Dr. Ruairidh Gillies, during his locum on South Uist. Between the home medical visits and recording folktales and songs by an eighty-something bard and several other members of the community, Colin gets to know almost everyone – but the person he knows the least well is himself. His involvement with the bard’s great-niece and her abusive husband will change the tenor of the summer for him, and have lasting consequences that only become clear decades later.
The many Gaelic phrases, defined in footnotes, help to create the atmosphere. The chapter epigraphs from the legend of Oisín (son of Fionn Mac Cumhaill) and Tír Na nÓg, the land of eternal youth, heighten the contrast between Colin’s idealism and the reality of this life-changing season. I think this is the first book I’ve read that was originally published in Gaelic and I hope it will find readers far beyond its island niche. (BookSirens)
There’s Something about Mary
My husband would like it known that he was the clever clogs who spotted a theme to our trip: Mary.
1) Our transit through Edinburgh was brief and muggy, but we made sure to leave just enough time to queue for cones at Mary’s Milk Bar, which has the most interesting flavours you’ll find anywhere. Pictured, though half eaten, are my one scoop of Earl Grey and peach sorbet and one scoop of fig and cardamom ice cream. When we returned to Edinburgh to return the car at the end of our trip, I took the train home by myself but C stayed on for a conference, during which he treated himself to another round at Mary’s.
A piper statue at the Airbnb that continually frightened us on the stairs.
2) Our South Uist host was Mary MacInnes, a major mover and shaker in the local Gaelic-speaking community. (Her Alexa even obeyed Gaelic commands.) She is a retired head teacher of one of the schools and had various grandchildren popping in and out. Thanks to her heads-up, we had a unique cultural experience: a local arts venue’s lunchtime ceilidh of live music that was being filmed for BBC Scotland. Between her and others, we heard a lot of spoken Gaelic and got further into the mood by finding Julie Fowlis’s Gaelic-language albums online and playing them in our rental car. Each morning, Mary served us breakfast. We made the mistake of answering “Yes” to the question “D’ye take porridge?” on the first morning and had to slog through a stodgy bowl for five of the next six days. However, she also produced fresh-baked scones on two days and that made up for it. Triangular and baked in a cast-iron skillet, they tasted more like soda bread and were a perfect snack with jam.
3) The final full day of our trip was spent on Barra, a quick hop from South Uist. Whereas Lewis and Harris are staunchly Protestant, the southern islands are Catholic. We’d found a roadside shrine on South Uist, and on this late June day we devoted a couple of hours to climbing up Heaval, Barra’s highest hill as far as the statue of Mary, Star of the Sea. We were taken with this round, rugged island of secluded coves and beach-lounging cows; I can imagine going back to spend more time there. (I’d also like to see a bit more of Eriskay, from which our ferry departed and where the shipwreck that inspired Whisky Galore – one to read next time – took place.) Our hostel room overlooked the harbour where our ferry for the mainland was docked, which was handy as we had to be in the queue by 6:10 the next morning.
My additional reasonably local or otherwise relevant reading:
Four Ducks on a Pond: A Highland Memory by Nicholas the Cat with Annabel Carothers (2010)
A quaint short memoir set in the 1950s on the island of Mull (which we sailed past on our way to and from the Outer Hebrides). It’s narrated in tongue-in-cheek fashion by Nicholas the Cat, who pals around with the farm’s dogs, horse and goats and comments on the doings of its human inhabitants, such as “Puddy” (Carothers), a war widow, and her daughter Fionna, who goes away to school. “We understand so much about them, yet they understand so little about us,” he opines. Indeed, the animals are all observant and can communicate with each other. Corrieshellach is a fine horse taken to compete in shows. The goats are lucky to escape with their lives after a local outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among livestock. Nicholas grows fat on rabbits and fathers several litters. He voices some traditional views (the Clearances: bad but the Empire: good; crows: bad); then again, cats would certainly be C/conservatives. A sweet Blyton-esque read for precocious children or sentimental adults, this passed the time nicely on a long drive. It could do with a better title, though; the ducks only play a tiny role. (Favourite aside: “that beverage which humans find so comforting when things aren’t right. Tea.”) (Secondhand – Benbecula thrift shop)
Katie Morag’s Island Stories by Mairi Hedderwick (1995)
I read half of this large-format paperback before our trip and the rest afterward. It collects four of Hedderwick’s picture books, which are all set on the Isle of Struay, a kind of Hebridean composite that reproduces the islands’ wildlife and scenery beautifully. Katie Morag’s parents run the shop and post office and her mother always seems to be producing another little brother. In Katie Morag Delivers the Mail, the little red-haired girl causes chaos by delivering parcels at random. Sophisticated Granma Mainland and practical Grannie Island are the stars of Katie Morag and the Two Grandmothers. Katie Morag learns to deal with her anger and with being punished, respectively, in …and the Tiresome Ted and …and the Big Boy Cousins. Cute stories with useful lessons, but the illustrations are the main attraction. I’ll get the rest of the books out from the library. (Little Free Library)
Island Calling by Francesca Segal (2025)
The sequel to Welcome to Glorious Tuga, which I reviewed for Shelf Awareness last year. Charlotte Walker is a tortoise researcher who becomes the default veterinarian on this remote South Atlantic island that combines a 1950s English ethos with a cosmopolitan heritage from sailors and settlers. In this volume, Charlotte resolves her troubled love triangle and cements her understanding of her father’s identity. But the main thing that happens is that her posh and entitled mother, Lucinda Compton-Neville, takes a break from her busy job as a QC to travel to the island and demand that Charlotte return to London with her. Motherhood is a strong theme throughout: Natalie Lindo, already a mother of four, has to decide what to do about a high-risk pregnancy; half-feral Annie Goss rejects her mother’s affection, and so on. Some of the characters are lovably quirky, but overall I find the cliché-laden series lackluster, a pointless and indulgent side-track and thus a real waste of talent by Segal (after The Innocents and Mother Ship, especially). If you enjoy romance novels or escapist beach reads, you might feel differently. But I won’t bother reading the third volume.
With thanks to Chatto & Windus (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.
I also made good progress on Storm Pegs by Jen Hadfield, a memoir of life in Shetland – different islands with their own character, but still fitting the hardy Scottish spirit.
I’d finished my first 7 Books of Summer by the end of June, so I was on track as of then. (Reviews of two more coming up on Friday.) I’m in the middle of some designated reads, but it’ll be ages before I finish any. I’ll hope to review another batch by the end of July.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 