Late Summer Novels (Bamford, Ellis, Hornak, King) & Poetry Collections for the Transition into Autumn (Hurst, McNish, Plath)
It’s been feeling autumnal for a few weeks now with the drizzle, chilly mornings and evenings, honking of geese overhead, and harvesting our last garden apples – though it remains warm and summer only officially ended on Monday. I’ve recently finished off a summer-titled trilogy and the second entry in a seasonal quartet. I’m also throwing in a couple fun novels I bought earlier in the year.
Before and after Tuesday’s autumn equinox, a few poetry collections have been my fitting companions for the start of a new season.
Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford (2025)
“The following is an account of an afternoon in June in which we sallied forth, and then, for the most part, back.” I was drawn in by the mock-heroic first-person plural voice of a gaggle of cousins at a New England family get-together. It’s 1989 and they’re here for one of the adults’ birthdays, but that’s of no concern to the kids, who are a world unto themselves. In the first chapter, three-year-old Abi goes missing and the rest set out on a quest to rescue her. The shed, the woods, a driveway full of cars, the river: every setting seems to offer adventure, but maybe also danger. And then the oldest boy cousin, Travis, vanishes too. “Intermezzo” chapters offer snippets of family lore – about their grandmother Beezy’s awful novel, The Lilac Swing, and so on – that don’t add much of interest to this meandering novella. To deliver on the promise of the narrative voice, Bamford needed to give her debut a little more: more intrigue, more pivotal scenes, more closeness to a few characters rather than surface descriptions of a bunch, maybe more pages to make something of the not-so-momentous family secrets. As it is, I had to agree with this tongue-in-cheek line on p. 136: “in our depleted state, we thought the very thought you’re thinking now, which is enough already.” (New purchase with voucher – Hungerford Bookshop) 
Book 3 of The Summerhouse Trilogy
The Fly in the Ointment by Alice Thomas Ellis (1989)
{BEWARE SPOILERS!}
Following The Clothes in the Wardrobe (1987) and The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1988), this novella revisits the run-up to Margaret and Syl’s wedding from Lili’s perspective. It’s the shortest of the three books and adds no new plot details or real character insight, but Lili’s voice is alluring all the same. She’s an incorrigible flirt, or perhaps what we would now call a love (not necessarily sex) addict: “Sometimes I felt I would disappear if I couldn’t see the person opposite falling in love with me. I just wouldn’t be there.” Lili is pivotal to the narrative because of her well-meaning interventions: first, she falsely portrays the coming union as blessed by creating a fake (tissue paper) bloom for the cactus in the summerhouse; then, in agreement with other characters such as Mrs Monro that there shouldn’t be a wedding after all, she decides to sabotage it by ensuring that she and Syl be caught in flagrante in the summerhouse. While this was an interesting project for Ellis to undertake, the first volume was by far my favourite and I didn’t think the second and third wholly necessary. (Secondhand – Regent Books, Wantage) 
So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak (2025)
Daniel, Rosie and Serge were good friends at Oxford but since their graduation in 2004 they’ve drifted into indifference and resentment. Daniel is a Hollywood star but still can’t forgive filmmaker Serge for stealing his idea for a biopic of a working-class lad. Serge is on a break from his relationship with Isla, a younger movie makeup artist with whom he has twins. Rosie regrets that her on-again, off-again relationship with Serge meant she wasted prime years. In August 2019, they’re all brought together for Serge’s cousin Caspar’s big gay wedding in Provence. The Campbell cousins come from inherited wealth, but no one knows Serge’s production company is heavily in debt. As best man and “best woman,” Serge and Rosie have to write a joint speech; Daniel has to hide his dependency on alcohol and drugs.
This is a light, Taylor Jenkins Reid-esque soap opera that I swallowed in big gulps. I’d enjoyed Hornak’s Christmas-set debut, Seven Days of Us (2017), but when I looked back at it I realised how identikit the two are: set mostly over a matter of days, with each chapter marked by a precise place and time stamp. I guess she hit on a winning formula and decided to repeat it, but I was disappointed to notice the similarity. In this case, zooming in slows the action and makes the book feel overlong, though it’s perceptive about class, privilege, disappointment, the longing for parenthood, and loyalty among family and friends. (Her previous novel now seems almost prescient with its depiction of a Christmas in quarantine! Perhaps I’ll reread it.) (New purchase with voucher – Hungerford Bookshop) 
Apt Pupil by Stephen King (1982)
(Novella published in Different Seasons under the heading “Summer of Corruption”)
{BEWARE SPOILERS!}
Thirteen-year-old Todd Bowden becomes obsessed with his elderly neighbour, whom he has identified as German concentration camp officer Kurt Dussander, in the summer of 1974. His parents think that he goes over to read to “Mr. Denker,” but in fact he’s extorting sordid war stories out of the old man. When Todd’s grades nosedive, Dussander agrees to impersonate his grandfather at a conference with the school counsellor so his parents remain oblivious. Now each has dirt on the other; blackmail goes both ways. The book suggests Dussander’s ongoing sadism sparks something inexorable in the young man, and both engage in further senseless carnage. I wasn’t sure if it was respectful of King to treat the Holocaust like a contagious sin. As Todd’s (real) grandfather says, “Sometimes the past don’t rest so easy. Why else do people study history?” I don’t think an editor would have let the story stand today. This is not as full-on horror as others I’ve read by King (Misery and Pet Sematary), but still gruesome and – for an animal lover like me – Dussander’s torture of cats and dogs was harder to read about than the murders of unhoused people. A neat connection back to Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which I read back in the spring: Dussander mentions that “The banker who bought [the stocks] for me went to jail for murdering his wife a year” later in Maine. (Little Free Library) 
Three on a Theme: Autumnal Poetry
Keats described autumn as the season of “mellow fruitfulness,” as I was reminded by Kate Mosse’s Autumn. Fruit and feminism are themes that link these three collections. All:
The Fox’s Wedding by Rebecca Hurst (2022)
I’ve read Hurst’s debut full-length collection, The Iron Bridge, and jumped at the chance to catch up on her previous chapbook. Its hint of fairy tale menace feels appropriate for early spooky season. A witch turns into a hare and flees in “Familiar.” The girl who will win the hand of “The Frog Prince” spends her evenings “squashing worms and slugs and snails beneath / the crêpe soles of her black school shoes.” Needlecraft recurs: “Once there was a child/ who woke alone in the forest. … S/he took the path of needles / to ask needle-sharp questions.” There are folktale rhythms to “Brothers,” which also mentions gingerbread men. The woods morph with the advance of the year (“let the seasons pleat / folding one year to the next”) and hide creatures real and imagined. “Now it is Michaelmas: the land sun-warm, / fields shorn, blackberries ripe to bursting.” The atmosphere of this pamphlet – defiant, magical, mischievous – casts a spell. (New purchase from The Emma Press)
Plum by Hollie McNish (2017)
A late tree-shaped poem captures a treasured ritual with her daughter. But if I tell you that “plum” is also the last in a long string of euphemisms for female genitalia in “Voldemort,” that will give a better sense of McNish’s tone, which is often cheeky and snarky. She includes poems she wrote as a child and teenager but also remembers her adolescence from adulthood, pinpointing moments of peer pressure and misogyny that she experienced. She wishes she and her friends had been less obsessed with what boys thought of them and hopes to teach her daughter to stand firm in her own identity. McNish has local roots and is known for her conversational memoirs and her spoken word poetry. Like Harry Baker, Jay Bernard and Kae Tempest’s works, it’s probably not best encountered in print. In performance, fairly simple and repetitive phrasing can come to life. (Secondhand – Library book sale)
I spend the summer months watching like a hawk for when wild and waste-ground plums ripen and fall so I can scurry around gathering them to eat or freeze for autumn and winter desserts. Our cherry plum tree produced its first fruits this year, too (below).
Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath (1971)
I got less out of this posthumous collection than I did from Ariel and Winter Trees, but there are still striking turns of phrase: “The future is a grey seagull / Tattling in its cat-voice of departure, departure” (from “A Life”) and “At our feet, the weed-moustachioed sea / Exhibits its glaucous silks” (from “Whitsun”). Canada, age, sleep, surgery: the imagery feels a little all over the place. The stand-out poems for me were “Small Hours,” in which marble statues metaphorically watch over the speaker’s troubled insomnia, and “Mirror,” which reflects the unstoppable advance of age and contrasts true self with appearances. Most redolent of autumn were a poem about pheasant hunting and “Blackberrying”:
Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, …
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb
The Devon lanes aren’t so empty these days, I can attest! A line from “Last Words” ties in perfectly and is a good resolution for us all: “I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit!” (University library)
I started my preserving late and will not do as much as I have in other years. So far I’ve made apple and tomato chutney and set some rosehip cordial steeping. This afternoon I’m going to attempt rosehip curd – we found a jar of “hagebutten” in a Berlin supermarket this time last year and it was so delicious that we’re going to try to recreate it, though it requires laborious deseeding and mincing plus two boiling stages. More Vitamin C than orange juice, apparently!
Rosehips ready for preserving!
Summer Reads, Part II: Ellis, Faulkner (Reread), Groskop, Ruskovich
Thankfully, since I last wrote about summer, we’ve had abundant rainfall – a cosy wet weekend after nearly two months of drought. Our pond is looking full again and our apple tree is perking up, but it will take much more to fill the country’s coffers. I’ve spent significantly less time outdoors than usual this summer, taking refuge indoors from the unremitting heat and sun. Luckily, there have been plenty of books to keep me company.
Book 2 of The Summerhouse Trilogy
The Skeleton in the Cupboard by Alice Thomas Ellis (1988)
Summer was a dull season. In spring things were growing; in autumn they were harvested; in winter they were waiting. Summer was pointless, designed for idleness. An inbred Yorkshire Puritanism led me to despise it.
{SPOILERS IN THIS ONE}
After The Clothes in the Wardrobe (1987), this novella felt conventional and superfluous. Repeating the run-up to Margaret and Syl’s wedding from the perspective of Margaret’s mother-in-law-to-be, Mrs Monro, is only worthwhile in that it allows for two key revelations: one, that Margaret was molested by her father, which goes some way toward explaining her flat affect and inability to love Syl; and two, that Lili also slept with Syl’s father in the summerhouse, long before she bedded Syl himself there on the morning of the wedding. Otherwise, this is a collection of sad and somewhat clichéd meditations on the loneliness of alcoholism-prone older age and widowhood. Provided it doesn’t simply reproduce stereotypes of the seductress, I’m hoping the third volume, from Lili’s perspective, will end up being the most interesting; the middle book of a trilogy always kinda sucks, right? I’ll read Book 3 for one last seasonal instalment before the autumn equinox. (Secondhand – Regent Books, Wantage)
Light in August by William Faulkner (1932)
Memory believes before knowing remembers.
In my second year as a college English major, I took a senior elective on Faulkner & Morrison. Ever since, I’ve remembered this and Song of Solomon as my favourite from each author – the books I’d read again even without them being assigned. For several of the last few Augusts I’ve meant to pick this up, but when I finally did I found Faulkner’s style oppressive and only succeeded in a quick skim. The one thing I’d remembered beforehand is that there is a mixed-race character named Joe Christmas. But the first character we’re introduced to is the indomitable Lena Grove, who’s heavily pregnant and has hitchhiked from Alabama to Mississippi to find her baby daddy. She still believes he’ll do right by her and their child, but the fact that he’s living under an assumed name is our clue that he has no intention of taking responsibility. The plot is set in motion by a misunderstanding: she’s looking for Lucas Burch, but others know there’s a Byron Bunch nearby, and he takes a shine to Lena.
Meanwhile, Burch is going by Joe Brown and rooming with the sadistic Joe Christmas, who gets caught up in bootlegging and murder and goes on the run. The language about his “black blood” driving him to do things, and what happens to him, is awful, but true to its time as well as to Faulkner’s vision of tragic inevitability. I only got the bare bones from a skim, but did love how the novel feels epic yet only spans about a month; it completes a full circle as Lena and her baby move on again, this time to Tennessee. I also liked the neologism in the description of a town’s “garland of Augusttremulous lights.” All told, I’m unlikely to read Faulkner again; he’s like a darker version of Steinbeck, who I’d recommend instead. (Secondhand – Wonder Book and Video)
My original rating: 
My rating now:
One Ukrainian Summer: A memoir about falling in love and coming of age in the former USSR by Viv Groskop (2024)
As part of her Russian degree course at Cambridge, Groskop spent a year abroad in St Petersburg, where she also conducted English lessons for adults. She arrived in September 1993 and the next month, in a nightclub, met Bogdan Bogdanovich (“God’s Gift, Son of God’s Gift”), a young man whose rock band called itself “Ukraine answer to Red Hot Chili Pepper.” She would be the solitary groupie on their tour the following summer, but first she had to get through a freezing winter of too much alcohol, too many cigarettes, and turbulent living situations. Her pen portraits of friends and acquaintances are quite amusing. There’s an appealing blend of self-deprecation and nostalgia to her outlook: “I was a clueless, lovesick, pedantic linguist. But I held the future of Ukrainian rock ’n’ roll in my hands.” I never got a particular sense of any of the cities she visits, but the long train ride from Moscow to Kiev is evocative. Each chapter is headed by a vocabulary word, given in Russian and then in the (very similar) Ukrainian. There are lots of Slavic phrases in the text, too, rendered in Roman script. I enjoyed reading them to myself in my head, but none of them has stuck. Let’s see if I can commit this one to memory: “Babine leto” (Ukr.) = “grandmother’s summer,” the equivalent of an Indian summer. Kudos to Groskop and her agents, all of whom donated their proceeds/fees to PEN International, which supports writers at risk. (Public library)
Nightjar: Stories by Emily Ruskovich (2026)
I abandoned Ruskovich’s 2018 debut novel, Idaho, early on, but will absolutely go back to it now because these stories are phenomenal. There are only five, so they tread the border between short story and novella at ~50 pages each and reminded me in their intricacy and depth of short fiction by Lauren Groff and Alice Munro. All are set in the American West and circle themes of loss and remembrance, and they often feature animals prominently. “Victor’s Room” sees a young wife become obsessed with exposing her husband’s false memory of the Oregon house where his brother died in childhood. In “Owl,” the only first-person, historical story, the narrator’s wife is accidentally shot by boys who mistake her for an owl in the night; as she convalesces, her old life lures her back. “Round Lake,” probably my favourite, finds violinist Jade adrift in Tokyo, where she agreed to meet a love interest. There’s water in her ears from an Idaho lake, which she only learned after her swim was where her mother drowned. “Petty Creek Road,” about middle-aged brothers, introduces a subtle note of magic realism (through Will’s premonitions of danger) that is echoed in the final, title story in the tangible reflections that Tess finds each morning in a bucket of water. Jade keeps orphaned hedgehogs, Jane feeds stray cats in “Owl,” and Tess communes with a goat named Panic Boy. The writing and character development are extraordinary, and the question of how memories become stories, or take on physical weight, truly resonated with me.
I’ve included this in my summer round-up because, for me, nightjars are synonymous with warm evenings on Newtown Common, where we go once a year to catch up with nightjars (not the same species as Tess encounters in Montana). This small scrubby nature reserve never fails to turn up several nightjars: unearthly with their gaping mouths, alternating churring and yipping, and jerky flaps against the gathering dusk. We made our annual pilgrimage on 15 July and it didn’t disappoint. (Edelweiss) 
I have a few more summery reads lined up to take me through what I sincerely hope is this season’s last gasp. I’m looking forward to getting out my corduroy coat, wearing hoodies and lap blankets around the house, and eating autumnal goodies based around squash and apples.
Summer Reads, Part I: Buti, Ellis, C. Foster (Reread), Itami, Thomson
The less said about the summer of 2026, the better. It feels like the heat wave will never end. We’ve had 4 mm of rain the whole month. Drought imperils so much. But it’s not right to complain when wildfires rage not so far away. One glance at the news headlines and there’s no avoiding the signs of climate breakdown everywhere. I can’t bear it. I just keep reading.
Year of the Drought by Roland Buti (2015; 2017)
[Translated from French by Charlotte Mandell]
How exhausting was that summer of 1976, always beating down on our heads!
This Swiss novella takes place during the infamous European heat wave that people still talk about half a century later. It’s a perfect febrile setting for 13-year-old Gus’s coming-of-age, which includes a sexual awakening and the dawning realisation that his parents aren’t perfect; that in fact his family is falling apart. The Sutters’ operations embody the move from family smallholding to an industrial model. They keep a small number of cattle but are also experimenting with large-scale henhouses holding thousands of birds. In contrast with that vast flock, about whose welfare the characters seem indifferent, is an injured white dove that Gus finds and keeps as a pet. (A wise choice by Buti: it’s easier to feel compassion for an individual, such as the dove or the old farm horse, Bagatelle, than for a faceless mass.) Helping Gus and his father on the farm is distant cousin Rudy, who has Down’s syndrome; disrupting their routines is Cécile, Gus’s mother’s friend, who has come to stay with them.
Because of the drought, our minds were full of dreams of coolness and moisture
Dreams of rain, dreams of love, dreams of preserving some mythical family happiness that maybe never existed. Like the weather, everything goes wrong – in tragic ways. It’s all so awful I recoiled. Buti jumps ahead several decades to offer a longer view of the land, but I couldn’t ignore how casually the teenage Gus adopted his father’s violent, misogynistic ways. None of what happens bodes well for the future. The one laugh I got out of the experience was the charity shop accidentally labelling the book “Romance fiction.” (Secondhand – BHF, Newbury)
Book 1 of The Summerhouse Trilogy
The Clothes in the Wardrobe by Alice Thomas Ellis (1987)
I hadn’t had great luck with Ellis, fiction and nonfiction, before, but I’m so glad I was tempted by this omnibus edition and tried her again. This melancholy, introspective novella was right up my street. Margaret’s yearning for her Egyptian upbringing isn’t the only reason I reached for Moon Tiger as a readalike; Ellis’s tone reminded me of Barbara Comyns and Penelope Lively for its mix of cynicism and nostalgia. Margaret is soon to marry Sylvester, though she doesn’t love him at all and he’s closer to her mother’s age as well as a known womanizer. Perhaps the engagement was her mother’s idea more than her own? The title is an apt symbol for living to someone else’s expectations: “my life fitted me as ill as a garment designed for somebody else,” Margaret thinks. It’s no coincidence that she’s to be married in her mother’s old wedding dress. There are also sartorial metaphors around memory (“Did the elderly have minds like old wardrobes stuffed to overflowing…”) and resistance to ageing. I marked out so many shrewd observations and witty conversations. I empathized with Margaret’s feeling of being trapped in a life she hasn’t chosen.
It seems like one of those books where nothing will happen, but there’s actually a surprise ending that looks set to move Margaret onto a different track. As I understand it, the other two volumes repeat the weeks leading up to the wedding from other perspectives: Margaret’s staid mother-in-law-to-be; and her mother’s bohemian friend Lili, who was her bridesmaid back in Egypt and arrives in time to shake things up. I love that premise. The omnibus cover seems random, but the question of whether the cactus in the summerhouse will flower as good luck for the wedding becomes an important plot point. I’ll jump right into Book 2. (Secondhand – Regent Books, Wantage)
The Screaming Sky by Charles Foster (2021)
The only thing that has redeemed these dry, scorching days is the swifts screeching across the sky. How can it be that I was once unaware of them? How is it possible for people not to look up for these noisy acrobats whenever they’re outdoors? Somehow, I was oblivious until maybe 10–15 years ago. Now, I always have at least one eye on the sky during these crucial few months. And although this year swifts have been with me since early April (first in Portugal and then in our neighbourhood), I’m already dreading their departure for Africa in a few weeks. They’re still here! I trill to myself each morning. But soon that won’t be true. And with populations in freefall, there may come a day when they don’t return to the UK at all.
Charles Foster is a kindred spirit who sets similar emotional store by the presence or absence of the common swift (Apus apus). I appreciated this when I first read it five years ago (my review), but all the more so now. The monograph takes us through one year with swifts. In the summer, he needs travel no further than his own street in Oxford, but the rest of the time he has to chase them down in continental Europe and central and southern Africa. It’s an old-fashioned quest, a romantic pursuit, a hopeless attempt to keep hold of creatures as fast and elusive as the wind. Foster salts his narrative with all the salient facts but acknowledges that, for all we claim to know about them, these birds retain an essential magic and mystery. “Their power, freedom and joy are the way that everything really is – though we don’t usually see it. It is just that when the swifts scream through the sky, you can’t miss it. That’s how everything, all the time, is meant to be.” (Review copy from Little Toller Books)
My original rating:
My rating now: 
Bonus content:
From Robert Macfarlane’s The Book of Birds (illus. Jackie Morris):
From the Spell Songs album Let the Light In: “Swifts”
& My current earworm, also featuring Kris Drever: a more general reassurance – or at least philosophical acceptance – that change is the one constant in life, in perfect pop song form (“Change”)
And from Ugandan poet Nick Makoha’s The New Carthaginians: “in the first part of the night, I saw the coastal villages, men arguing / about the price of oil and swifts darting into shadows.” (from “Codex© of Birds”)
Kakigori Summer by Emily Itami (2025)
Itami was shortlisted for a Costa Award for her enjoyable 2021 debut, Fault Lines. Kakigori is a flavoured shaved-ice dessert and it’s a great choice of title for this bittersweet – but mostly sweet – story of three sisters raised between Tokyo and London who reunite in Japan to spend a summer together with their prickly great-grandmother, Obaachan, who’s nearing 100. Narration alternates between Rei, the oldest, who has a high-flying finance job and keeps everyone in line; Kiki, who’s a single mother and works in a care home for the elderly; and Ai, a flighty pop star now in disgrace for her affair with a married man. Although there is much joy in their banter, little Hikaru’s antics, and the pursuit of the finest culinary treats, a shadow over it all is their mother’s unexplained death. She went for a swim one day when they were girls and never came back, nor was a body ever found; they have to suspect suicide. (“Well, that’s that, then. Nothing will be all right ever again.”) This easy-reading novel affirms the goodness of life despite the reality of death. Its typically Japanese feasts and funerary rites brought to mind Bryan Washington’s similarly well-balanced Memorial. My only note would be that I’m not sure the voices were distinctive enough to warrant three first-person narrators; third person rotating would probably have done the job. (Public library)
Saltwater: A Midsummer Ghost Story by Elaine Thomson (2026)
“The dead are closer than we think.”
I hadn’t heard of the Scottish island of Stroma, so assumed it was made up. In fact, it’s real, lying between Orkney and the north coast of Caithness on mainland Scotland, but uninhabited as of 1962. Tom Torrance travels by train and boat from Edinburgh a few days before midsummer to oversee the last steps in the construction of the island’s lighthouse and meet with Mr Stevenson (of the famous lighthouse-building clan, which included novelist Robert Louis Stevenson). With him is his brother Jamie; he’s not of much practical help, but they cling to each other because they lost their mother to tuberculosis a week ago. The travelling minister Tom meets on the train gives him a rowan-wood amulet and cautions him that midsummer is a liminal time when the spirit world is close at hand. Tom doesn’t heed the warning. He arrives to find a disaster-prone construction project that has entailed serious injuries and broken machinery. Flora Christie and her grandmother, Thrawn Jean, are local women with healing powers who are treated with suspicion: women, especially those with red hair, are considered bad luck around boats. The men want to seal a “witch bottle” into the wall for good luck. He dismisses their superstitions but at the same time keeps seeing hallucinations of the dead in the waves and on the in-construction edifice. Is it grief, Flora’s special whisky, or a real taste of the supernatural?
This was highly reminiscent of Michelle Paver’s work. The typical Victorian-pastiche ghost story bores me because it’s always just the same: the narrator is a dignified gentleman who can’t possibly be seeing such things, yet documents them and his own horror with great precision. Thomson set herself an interesting challenge, writing a quartet of Scottish ghost stories set at turning points of the year. (This is the second, after Hawthorn.) I probably won’t try the others unless my library acquires them. (Public library)
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.
Nonfiction Week of #NovNov: Short Memoirs by Lucille Clifton, Alice Thomas Ellis and Deborah Levy
It’s nonfiction week of Novellas in November, which for me usually means short memoirs (today) and nature books (coming up on Wednesday). However, as my list of 10 nonfiction favorites from last year indicates, there’s no shortage of subjects covered in nonfiction works of under 200 pages; whether you’re interested in bereavement, food, hospitality, illness, mountaineering, nature, politics, poverty or social justice, you’ll find something that suits. This week is a great excuse to combine challenges with Nonfiction November, too.
We hope some of you will join in with our buddy read for the week, The Story of My Life by Helen Keller (free to download here from Project Gutenberg if you don’t already have access). At a mere 85 pages, it’s a quick read. I’ve been enjoying learning about her family history and how meeting her teacher was the solution to her desperate need to communicate.
My first three short nonfiction reads of the month are all in my wheelhouse of women’s life writing, with each one taking on a slightly different fragmentary form.
Generations: A Memoir by Lucille Clifton (1976)
[87 pages]
After her father’s death, Clifton, an award-winning poet, felt compelled to delve into her African American family’s history. Echoing biblical genealogies, she recites her lineage in a rhythmic way and delivers family anecdotes that had passed into legend. First came Caroline, “Mammy Ca’line”: born in Africa in 1822 and brought to America as a child slave, she walked north from New Orleans to Virginia at age eight, became a midwife, and died free. Mammy Ca’line’s sayings lived on through Clifton’s father, her grandson: she “would tell us that we was Sayle people and we didn’t have to obey nobody. You a Sayle, she would say. You from Dahomey women.” Then came Caroline’s daughter, Lucy Sale, famously the first Black woman hanged in Virginia – for shooting her white lover. And so on until we get to Clifton herself, who grew up near Buffalo, New York and attended Howard University.
The chapter epigraphs from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” call into question how much of an individual’s identity is determined by their family circumstances. While I enjoyed the sideways look at slavery and appreciated the poetic take on oral history, I thought more detail and less repetition would have produced greater intimacy. 
Reissued by NYRB Classics tomorrow, November 9th, with a new introduction by Tracy K. Smith. My thanks to the publisher for the proof copy for review.
Home Life, Book Four by Alice Thomas Ellis (1989)
[169 pages]
For four years, Ellis wrote a weekly “Home Life” column for the Spectator. Her informal pieces remind me of Caitlin Moran’s 2000s writing for the Times – what today might form the kernel of a mums’ blog. In short, we have a harried mother of five trying to get writing done while maintaining a household – but given she has homes in London and Wales AND a housekeeper, and that her biggest problems include buying new carpet and being stuck in traffic, it’s hard to work up much sympathy. These days we’d say, Check your privilege.
The sardonic complaining rubbed me the wrong way, especially when the subject was not finding anything she wanted to read even though she’d just shipped four boxes of extraneous books off to her country house, or using noxious sprays to get rid of one harmless fly, or a buildup of rubbish bags because they’d been “tidying.” These essays feel of their time for the glib attitude and complacent consumerism. It’s rather a shame they served as my introduction to Ellis, but I think I’d still give her fiction a try. (Secondhand purchase, Barter Books) 
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy (2018)
[187 pages]
In the space of a year, Levy separated from her husband and her mother fell ill with the cancer that would kill her. Living with her daughters in a less-than-desirable London flat, she longed for a room of her own. Her octogenarian neighbor, Celia, proffered her garden shed as a writing studio, and that plus an electric bike conferred the intellectual and physical freedom she needed to reinvent her life. That is the bare bones of this sparse volume, the middle one in an autobiographical trilogy, onto which Levy grafts the tissue of experience: conversations and memories; travels and quotations that have stuck with her.
It’s hard to convey just what makes this brilliant. The scenes are everyday – set at her apartment complex, during her teaching work or on a train; the dialogue might be overheard. Yet each moment feels perfectly chosen to reveal her self, or the emotional truth of a situation, or the latent sexism of modern life. “All writing is about looking and listening and paying attention to the world,” she writes, and it’s that quality of attention that sets this apart. I’ve had mixed success with Levy’s fiction (though I loved Hot Milk), but this was flawless from first line to last. I can only hope the rest of the memoir lives up to it. (New purchase) 
Keep in touch via Twitter (@bookishbeck / @cathy746books) and Instagram (@bookishbeck / @cathy_746books). We’ll add any of your review links in to our master posts. Feel free to use the terrific feature image Cathy made and don’t forget the hashtag #NovNov.
Any short nonfiction on your reading pile?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
