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.
#ReadingtheMeow2025, Part II: Books by Mayo, Reinhold, Taylor and More
This year’s Reading the Meow challenge is drawing to a close. I’m adding to my first set of reviews with these selections: a novelty book about women and cats, an autobiographical sequel about an animal-lover’s menagerie in Provence, and a travel book about Scottish wildcats – plus a one-off essay that drew me in for its title and one more children’s book.
Behind Every Great Woman Is a Great Cat (2019)
The only name on the cover is Lulu Mayo, who does the illustrations. That’s your clue that the text (by Justine Solomons-Moat) is pretty much incidental; this is basically a YA mini coffee table book. I found it pleasant enough to read bits of at bedtime but it’s not about to win any prizes. (I mean, it prints “prolificate” twice; that ain’t a word. Proliferate is.) Among the famous cat ladies given one-page profiles are Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacinda Ardern, Vivien Leigh, and Anne Frank. I hadn’t heard of the Scottish Fold cat breed, but now I know that they’ve become popular thanks Taylor Swift. The few informational interludes are pretty silly, though I did actually learn that a cat heads straight for the non-cat person in the room (like our friend Steve) because they find eye contact with strangers challenging so find the person who’s ignoring them the least threatening. I liked the end of the piece on Judith Kerr: “To her, cats were symbols of home, sources of inspiration and constant companions. It’s no wonder that she once observed, ‘they’re very interesting people, cats.’” (Christmas gift, secondhand)
Watchers in the Sun: Life at Mas des Chats by Margaret Reinhold (1994)
Last year I read the previous book, Sanctuary in the South (also titled Watchers by the Pool) on holiday. This is more of the same: pleasant stories about the personalities and interactions of a rotating cast of cats, some of whom she’d brought with her from England to Provence, others who transformed from strays she fed outdoors to part of the indoor hierarchy. Lily is the grande dame with private quarters upstairs; Monsieur le Gris is the top cat, bullying several younger cats but forming strong bonds with others. Most of the time Reinhold seems to hit a natural limit of nine, but that’s with several dying and being replaced by cats who wandered in or kittens people brought her. She also has two dogs and at one point rescues an old, deaf spaniel from drowning. Her French neighbours seem (to her, and probably us readers) strangely unsentimental about their pets by comparison. I enjoyed this a bit less than the first book because it was so similar – again with the Doreen Tovey-like anecdotes about the local humans – and because with the former I had the benefit of reading it on location in the South of France. The photographs by William Gooddy are a quaint reminder of the days when you shot a roll of film and had no idea how your photos had turned out until you got it developed. Even if some were blurry or underexposed, you used them because that was the best you had! (Secondhand purchase – Awesomebooks.com)
Tracking the Highland Tiger: In Search of Scottish Wildcats by Marianne Taylor (2019)
A perfect segue from Reading the Meow to our Scotland holiday coming up on Friday. I’d not heard of Taylor although she’s a prolific natural history writer. Such species quest narratives have become very common. The contextual information about the world’s cat species and the difference between Scottish wildcats and domestic cats, including the example of a half-feral cat she adopted, is fairly interesting, but the way she separates it from her trips to Speyside and Ardnamurchan to look for wildcats in 2013–18, which are each given their own chapter, feels odd. A similar book being published today would have blended the travel, research, and autobiographical information better. There’s plenty of habitat in the Scottish mountains for wildcats; the problem they face is hybridization with domestic cats. There’s no such thing as a purebred anymore. Captive breeding and reintroductions are the only way the species is likely to survive. “Timing a trip to look for Scottish wildcats is difficult in a way, but in another way it’s not: no matter what time you go, you’re almost guaranteed not to see one.” (At least she’s self-deprecating about it.) For most of the way through, you’re convinced the author will never find one. But you’ve got to keep hoping…
[I got this from a Little Free Library on Lewis, probably the most remote one I’ve ever frequented. Alas, it’s the only one in the Outer Hebrides and there aren’t any others that we’ll pass by on our travels in the Highlands.]
And a couple of bonus books:
The Mousehole Cat by Antonia Barber; illus. Nicola Bayley (1990) – The town of Mousehole in Cornwall (the far southwest of England) relies on fishing. Old Tom brings some of his catch home every day for his cat Mowzer; they have a household menu with a different fishy dish for each day of the week. One winter a storm prevents the fishing boats from leaving the cove and the people – and kitties – start to starve. Tom decides he’ll go out in his boat anyway, and Mowzer goes along to sing and tame the Great Storm-Cat. This story of bravery was ever so cute, words and pictures both, and I especially liked how Mowzer considers Tom her pet. (Free from a neighbour)
“A Conversation with a Cat” from A Conversation with a Cat and Others by Hilaire Belloc (1931) – I have no idea how I came across this but I had to borrow it for the title. Alas, only the six-page opening story is actually about a cat; the rest is, I suspect, light essays in the vein of Jerome K. Jerome. In the title piece, a man stops for a beer at a railway station bar and a beautiful long-haired cat jumps up onto his lap. “If it be true that nations have the cats they deserve, then the English people deserve well in cats, for there are none so prosperous or friendly in the world,” he thinks. He considers himself chosen and names the cat “Amathea.” He monologues to her about how comforting her presence is (“there is not a man living who knows better than I that the four charms of a cat lie in its closed eyes, its long and lovely hair, its silence, and even its affected love”) and how wonderful it is that she knows nothing of mortality. “You will never leave me. I will respect your sleep and we will sit here together through all uncounted time,” he vows. At which point she, of course, hops down and promptly approaches another patron for attention. Just like a cat. (University library)
I also enjoyed this page from Awkward Family Photos by Mike Bender and Doug Chernack, which I perused from the Little Free Library:
I’ve had such fun with Reading the Meow this year! Thanks again to Mallika for hosting it. My favourite read of the challenge was Poets Square, followed by Mornings without Mii. The Mousehole Cat was great, too. (All are pictured below apart from Mii, which I read on Kindle.)
#ReadingtheMeow2025, Part I: Books by Gustafson, Inaba, Tomlinson and More
It’s the start of the third annual week-long Reading the Meow challenge, hosted by Mallika of Literary Potpourri! For my first set of reviews, I have two lovely memoirs of life with cats, and a few cute children’s books.
Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courtney Gustafson (2025)
This was on my Most Anticipated list and surpassed my expectations. Because I’m a snob and knew only that the author was a young influencer, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the prose and the depth of the social analysis. After Gustafson left academia, she became trapped in a cycle of dead-end jobs and rising rents. Working for a food bank, she saw firsthand how broken systems and poverty wear people down. She’d recently started feeding and getting veterinary care for the 30 feral cats of a colony in her Poets Square neighbourhood in Tucson, Arizona. They all have unique personalities and interactions, such as Sad Boy and Lola, a loyal bonded pair; and MK, who made Georgie her surrogate baby. Gustafson doled out quirky names and made the cats Instagram stars (@PoetsSquareCats). Soon she also became involved in other local trap, neuter and release initiatives.
That the German translation is titled “Cats and Capitalism” gives an idea of how the themes are linked here: cat colonies tend to crop up where deprivation prevails. Stray cats, who live short and difficult lives, more reliably receive compassion than struggling people for whom the same is true. TNR work takes Gustafson to places where residents are only just clinging on to solvency or where hoarding situations have gotten out of control. I also appreciated a chapter that draws a parallel between how she has been perceived as a young woman and how female cats are deemed “slutty.” (Having a cat spayed so she does not undergo constant pregnancies is a kindness.) She also interrogates the “cat mom” stereotype through an account of her relationship with her mother and her own decision not to have children.
Gustafson knows how lucky she is to have escaped a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. Fame came seemingly out of nowhere when a TikTok video she posted about preparing a mini Thanksgiving dinner for the cats went viral. Social media and cat rescue work helped a shy, often ill person be less lonely, giving her “a community, a sense of rootedness, a purpose outside myself.” (Moreover, her Internet following literally ensured she had a place to live: when her rental house was being sold out from under her, a crowdfunding campaign allowed her to buy the house and save the cats.) However, they have also made her aware of a “constant undercurrent of suffering.” There are multiple cat deaths in the book, as you might expect. The author has become inured over time; she allows herself five minutes to cry, then moves on to help other cats. It’s easy to be overwhelmed or succumb to despair, but she chooses to focus on the “small acts of care by people trying hard” that can reduce suffering.
With its radiant portraits of individual cats and its realistic perspective on personal and collective problems, this is both a cathartic memoir and a probing study of how we build communities of care in times of hardship.
With thanks to Fig Tree (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.
Mornings without Mii by Mayumi Inaba (1999; 2024)
[Translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori]
Inaba (1950–2014) was an award-winning novelist and poet. I can’t think why it took 25 years for this to be translated into English but assume it was considered a minor work of hers and was brought out to capitalize on the continuing success of cat-themed Japanese literature from The Guest Cat onward. Interestingly, it’s titled Mornings with Mii in the UK, which shifts the focus and is truer to the contents. Yes, by the end, Inaba is without Mii and dreading the days ahead, but before that she got 20 years of companionship. One day in the summer of 1977, Inaba heard a kitten’s cries on the breeze and finally located it, stuck so high in a school fence that someone must have left her there deliberately. The little fleabitten calico was named after the sound of her cry and ever after was afraid of heights.
Inaba traces the turning of the seasons and the passing of the years through the changes they brought for her and for Mii. When she separated, moved to a new part of Tokyo, and started devoting her evenings to writing in addition to her full-time job, Mii was her closest friend. The new apartment didn’t have any green space, so instead of wandering in the woods Mii had to get used to exercising in the corridors. There were some scares: a surprise pregnancy nearly killed her, and once she went missing. And then there was the inevitable decline. Mii’s intestinal issues led to incontinence. For four years, Inaba endured her home reeking of urine. Many readers may, like me, be taken aback by how long Inaba kept Mii alive. She manually assisted the cat with elimination for years; 20 days passed between when Mii stopped eating and when she died. On the plus side, she got a “natural” death at home, but her quality of life in these years is somewhat alarming. I cried buckets through these later chapters, thinking of the friendship and intimate communion I had with Alfie. I can understand why Inaba couldn’t bear to say goodbye to Mii any earlier, especially because she’d lived alone since her divorce.
This memoir really captures the mixture of joy and heartache that comes with loving a pet. It’s an emotional connection that can take over your life in a good way but leave you bereft when it’s gone. There is nostalgia for the good days with Mii, but also regret and a heavy sense of responsibility. A number of the chapters end with a poem about Mii, but the prose, too, has haiku-like elegance and simplicity. It’s a beautiful book I can strongly recommend. (Read via Edelweiss)
let’s sleep
So as not to hear your departing footsteps
She won’t be here next year I know
I know we won’t have this time again
On this bright afternoon overcome with an unfathomable sadness
The greenery shines in my cat’s gentle eyes
I didn’t have any particular faith, but the one thing I did believe in was light. Just being in warm light, I could be with the people and the cat I had lost from my life. My mornings without Mii would start tomorrow. … Mii had returned to the light, and I would still be able to meet her there hundreds, thousands of times again.
The Cat Who Wanted to Go Home by Jill Tomlinson (1972)
Suzy the cat lives in a French seaside village with a fisherman and his family of four sons. One day, she curls up to sleep in a basket only to wake up airborne – it’s a hot air balloon, taking her to England! Here the RSPCA place her with old Auntie Jo, who feeds her well, but Suzy longs to get back home. “Chez-moi” is her constant cry, which everyone thinks is an awfully funny way to say miaow (“She purred in French, [too,] but purring sounds the same all over the world”). Each day she hops into the basket of Auntie Jo’s bike for a ride to town to try a new route over the sea: in a kayak, on a surfboard, paddling alongside a Channel swimmer, and so on. Each attempt fails and she returns to her temporary lodgings: shared with a parrot named Biff and comfortable, yet not quite right. Until one day… This is a sweet little story (a 77-page paperback) for new readers to experience along with a parent, with just enough repetition to be soothing and a reassuring message about the benevolence of strangers. Susan Hellard’s illustrations are charming. (Secondhand – local library book sale)
And a couple of other children’s books:
Mittens for Kittens and Other Rhymes about Cats, ed. Lenore Blegvad; illus. Erik Blegvad (1974) – A selection of traditional English and Scottish nursery rhymes, a few of them true to the nature of cats but most of them just nonsensical. You’ve got to love the drawings, though. (Secondhand – Hay Castle honesty shelves)
Scaredy Cat by Stuart Trotter (2007) – Rhyming couplets about everyday childhood fears and what makes them better. I thought it unfortunate that the young cat is afraid of other creatures; to be afraid of dogs is understandable, but three pages about not liking invertebrates is the wrong message to be sending. (Little Free Library)
Hay-on-Wye Trip & Book Haul (Plus a Little Life Complication)
Last week was our ninth time visiting Hay-on-Wye. Our previous trip was in October 2023 for my 40th birthday. Prompted by my overhaul post last month, I managed to finish a couple more of the 16 books I’d bought that time, taking me to 4 read and 1 skimmed; I’ve also read the first quarter of So Happy for You by Celia Laskey. Considering it was less than 18 months between visits, I’m going to call that an adequate showing. However, I will endeavour to be better about reading this latest book haul (below) in a timely fashion!
Because we were staying four nights, there was no need to rush through all the bookshops in a day or two, though that would be possible; instead, we parcelled them out and mixed up our shopping with walks, short outings in the car, and relaxing in the comfy cottage just over the English border in Cusop. I had work deadlines to meet within the first few days, but on another evening we took advantage of the place having Netflix to watch My Neighbor Totoro.
I’ve gotten secondhand book shopping in Hay down to a science over the years. Check on opening days and hours carefully or you can miss out. Thursday to Saturday is the best window to go: the Thursday market is excellent for local produce and crafts, and it’s nice to see the town bustling. (Though I’ve never seen it at Festival time, and wouldn’t want to!)
Start with the bargain options: the Little Free Library shelves by the river, where I scored Electricity by Victoria Glendinning; the sale area outside Hay Cinema Bookshop, the dedicated honesty shop beside Richard Booth’s Bookshop (new this trip), and the Book Passage beside Addyman Books – all £1/book; and the honesty shelves on the castle grounds, where it’s £2/book. Most of my purchases came from these areas. Just call me thrifty!
Next, the mid-priced options: Cinema, Broad Street Book Centre, Hay-on-Wye Booksellers, Clock Tower Books, and the new British Red Cross bookshop, which is not cheap for a charity shop but has a good selection of relatively recent stuff. (Oxfam, however, has moved away from books and primarily sells clothes, new products and bric-a-brac.) Cap it off with Addymans + Addyman Annexe, Cinema, Booth’s, the Poetry Bookshop and Green Ink Booksellers.
I had the best luck in Cinema this time, where I found two remainder books, three bargain books (one not pictured because it will be a gift) and the Howard Norman short stories – a particular thrill as his work is not often seen in the UK. Cinema and Booth’s are the greatest pleasure to browse. At Booth’s I bought my priciest book of the trip – Fountainville by Tishani Doshi, a retelling of stories from the Mabinogion – and indulged in a bookish tote bag (as if I needed another!). It was especially pleasing to find the Doshi and the Lewis in Hay as they are Welsh authors so will cover me for Reading Wales Month next year.
I wasn’t in the market for new books this time, not having any vouchers at my disposal, but those who are will also enjoy perusing Gay on Wye, North Books, and the large selection of new stock mixed in thematically at Booth’s. All told, that’s 15 places to shop for books.
Alas, The Bean Box, where you could get the best coffee in town, has now closed. We returned to Hay Distillery for delicious gin drinks and had Shepherd’s ice cream (a must) twice. New to us on this trip were nearby Talgarth and its excellent Mill café, the Burger Me (oh dear) restaurant at The Globe, a drink at Kilverts Inn, and an evening walk down the river to a nice shingle spit.
The weather was improbably warm and sunny – as in, I packed an umbrella and raincoat but never used them. I did need my woolly hat, scarf and gloves, but only on the first morning when we climbed up a hill. The rest of the time, it was blue skies and blossom, lambs in the fields, and 20 degrees C, for which, in early April, we could only be grateful – but also, as the lady on the till at Cinema rightly observed, it’s mildly disturbing.
This was our first major trip with our secondhand electric car, which needs rather frequent charging. En route we broke the journey at Gloucester and toured its cathedral; on the way back, we plumped for usefulness over aesthetics by stopping at carparks in Ross-on-Wye and Cirencester. We now choose routes that avoid motorways, which makes for more leisurely and scenic touring.
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- Pwll y grach waterfall
Two days after we bought the car from a local acquaintance, this creature entered our lives. I certainly didn’t intend to adopt another cat a shade under six weeks after Alfie’s death. (I haven’t even finished reading Grieving the Death of a Pet on my Kindle; I still haven’t brought myself to read your kind comments on my post about losing Alfie.) But we were deeply lonely in a way we hadn’t been expecting. I would object to the use of the word “replace” – there is no replacing Alfie; we still miss him for his predictability and dignity as well as all his own funny ways. I’ve come to realize that grief is ongoing, and all of a piece: mourning Alfie took me back to the same place of grief I inhabit for my mother, and missing them and others lost in recent years is tied into my helpless sadness over natural disasters, humanitarian crises, the state of affairs in my home country, the trajectory of the planet, and on and on.
Any road, the adoption moved very quickly: from expressing interest on a Thursday to getting a call back on a Saturday to meeting and taking him home on a Sunday afternoon. Benny (“Tubbs” as was) is only a year old and full of energy. He came home with a tapeworm but got over it within a week after a targeted worming treatment. It’s been a big adjustment for us to have a cat who doesn’t sleep most of the day and can jump up onto any counter or piece of furniture. Benny considers every waking moment a chance for playtime and mischief. But he is also so sweet and affectionate. And we haven’t laughed this much in a long, long time.
We had booked the Hay trip long before we knew about Benny and were concerned it would be too soon to leave him. But we needn’t have worried; he was settled in here from Day One. Our regular cat sitter visited twice a day and he was absolutely fine. She sent us WhatsApp updates on him and cute photos, in most of which he is a blur chasing his toy snake!
So that’s what’s been going on with me. And of course, I’ve been frantically reading there in the background (36 books on the go at the moment): pre-release e-books for paid reviews, review copies I’ve been sent for the blog, new releases from the library, and the rest of the McKitterick Prize longlist – my shortlist choices are due on the 23rd, eek! I still hope to read a couple of novels from the Carol Shields Prize longlist before the winner is announced, too.
Hope everyone is having a happy spring!
Making Plans for a Return to Hay-on-Wye & A Book “Overhaul”
I was last in Hay-on-Wye for my 40th birthday (write-up here). We’ve decided 18 months is a decent length between visits such that we can go back and find enough turnover in the bookshops and changes around the town. The plan is to spend four nights there in early April, in a holiday cottage we’ve not stayed in before. It’s in Cusop, just back over the border into England, which means a pleasant (if not pouring with rain) walk over the fields into the town. Normally we go for just a night or two, so this longer ninth trip to Hay will allow us time to do more local exploring besides thoroughly trawling all the bookshops and rediscovering the best eateries on offer.
An Overhaul of Last Trip’s Book Purchases
Simon of Stuck in a Book has a regular blog feature he calls “The Overhaul,” where he revisits a book haul from some time ago and takes stock of what he’s read, what he still owns, etc. (here’s the most recent one). With his permission, I occasionally borrow the title and format to look back at what I’ve bought. Previous overhaul posts have covered pre-2020 Hay-on-Wye purchases, birthdays, the much-lamented Bookbarn International, and Northumberland. It’s been a good way of holding myself accountable for what I’ve purchased and reminding myself to read more from my shelves.
So, earlier this week I took a look back at the 16 new and secondhand books I acquired in Hay in October 2023. I was quickly dismayed: 18 months might seem like a long time, but as far as my shelves go it is more like the blink of an eye.
Read: Only 1 – Uh oh…
- Learning to Drive by Katha Pollitt
But also:
Partially read: 4
- A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi – Doshi is awesome. This is only my second of her poetry collections. I’ll finish it this month for Dewithon.
- Looking in the Distance by Richard Holloway – The problem with Holloway is that all of his books of recent decades are about the same – a mixture of mediations and long quotations from poetry – and I have one from last year on the review catch-up pile already. But I’m sure I’ll finish this at some point.
- The Ghost Orchid by Michael Longley – No idea why I set this one aside, but I’ve put it back on a current stack.
- The Enduring Melody by Michael Mayne – I have this journal of his approaching death as one of my bedside books and read a tiny bit of it at a time. (Memento mori?)
Skimmed: 1
- Love, Remember: 40 Poems of Loss, Lament and Hope by Malcolm Guite – I enjoyed the poetry selection well enough but didn’t find that the author’s essays added value, so I’m donating this to my church’s theological library.
That left 10 still to read. Eager to make some progress, I picked up a quick win, Comic & Curious Cats, illustrated in an instantly recognizable blocky folk art style by Martin Leman (I also have his Twelve Cats for Christmas, a stocking present I gave my husband this past year) and with words by Angela Carter. Yes, that Angela Carter! It’s picture book size but not really, or not just, for children. Each spread of this modified abecedarian includes a nonsense poem that uses the letter as much as possible: the cat’s name, where they live, what they eat, and a few choice adjectives. I had to laugh at the E cat being labelled “Elephantine.” Who knows, there might be some good future cat names in here: Basil and Clarissa? Francesca and Gordon? Wilberforce? “I love my cat with an XYZ [zed] … There is really nothing more to be said.” Charming. (Secondhand purchase – Hay-on-Wye Booksellers)
Total still unread: 9
Luckily, I’m still keen to read all of them. I’ll start with the two I purchased new, So Happy for You by Celia Laskey, a light LGBTQ thriller about a wedding (from Gay on Wye with birthday money from friends, a sweet older lesbian couple – so it felt appropriate to use their voucher there!), and Past Mortems by Carla Valentine, a memoir set at a mortuary (remainder copy from Addymans); as well as a secondhand novel, The Tie that Binds by Kent Haruf (Hay-on-Wye Booksellers) and the foodie essays of The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten (Cinema).
Then, if I still haven’t read them before the trip (who am I kidding…), I’ll pack for the car a few small volumes that will fit neatly into my handbag: Apple of My Eye by Helene Hanff, How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto, and one of the poetry collections.
There Should Be a Cat There
My world was knocked askew earlier this week. Since then I’ve been wandering around the house remarking on the sensation that something is missing. I turned around in my chair at the breakfast table one morning to gaze at the sofa corner behind me and said to my husband C, “There should be a cat there.” Alfie was a constant presence in our lives for 10 years and 8 months; my husband’s first pet ever, and my first as an independent adult. Wherever we went for a decade-plus, he was there when we got home (probably grumbling that his bowl was empty). We adopted him 10 months into my freelance career and he was a faithful work-from-home buddy. He has been with us our whole time in Newbury; I associate him inextricably with home and work life. Even if he spent most of a day sleeping or doing his own thing, just the knowledge that there was another creature in the house was all the company I needed. He was an expert at getting in the way, and just a matter of days ago I was still admonishing “Watch out for the cat” and hearing C trip over his food bowl and litter tray.
Both of our phones’ photo libraries are full of ridiculous and repetitive pictures of the cat asleep. Now I’ve been going around taking photographs of absences. Everything in our house was tailored to an older cat’s needs. His food and water bowls were raised on a fleet of Tupperware to make standing postures more comfortable for him. He used steps all through his mobility-challenged last years. We inherited a proper set of pet steps from a neighbour, but elsewhere rigged up makeshift ones from boxes, document files, crates and stools. In the final weeks, when his claws either slipped or got stuck on everything, I covered the steps in towels so he had something to grip onto and put a strip of carpet in front of his kitchen bowls.
I’ve taken away the food stations, dumped and washed the three litter trays, and laundered the blankets he used the most. It’s the steps I can’t bring myself to take away. I think it’s because I look at them and feel so proud of how he adapted to his limitations. He was by no means the sharpest crayon in the box – he regularly forgot how to use his cat flap to go outside and would ineffectually scrape at it or cry at the back door to come back in – but in the lounge he worked out how to climb the steps plus a pouffe to get to any of the seats. If he got to the top step and looked perplexed, I’d tap out a route for him and he’d follow it. While I would often accuse him of stealing my seat, I knew better. All of the seats were his.
Tuesday was the day. The next day’s sun and birdsong made it feel more like mid-autumn or early spring. The handyman came back to lay floor tiles in the bathroom. I iced my swollen eyes, went for a long walk by the canal, and then faced a day of bustle and noise. It was fine.
Since then it has been worse. Drizzle has set in, C has been away at work or networking events, and the house is too quiet. I half expect to hear, any moment, the pock-pock of the cat climbing the carpeted stairs one by one, claws catching threads on each; his final triumphant heave to the landing accompanied by a huff of effort. I’ll wheel around in my office chair to lock eyes and call, “Hi, buddy! Where you gonna go? Whatcha gonna do?” When I’m downstairs, I expect the opposite: the thump of him getting down from the bed and the steady plop of him gingerly lowering himself one stair at a time and landing at the bottom with a muffled jingle of his collar bell. I’ve found myself doing peculiar things: sniffing an empty Felix beef soup pouch (had I known it was his last meal, I’d have given him his favourite, lamb, instead) and sifting through the kitchen bin and lounge fluff for an empty claw casing to keep. No luck, alas.
I’m comfortable with the terms “cat lady” and “fur baby” despite the stereotypes surrounding them. I don’t apologize about the shape my life has taken. The combination of the unconditional love and weight of responsibility that I felt and the intimate physical care that I performed for him – especially in the few months between his seizures in late October and the day we knew a goodbye had been forced on us – is absolutely akin to what parents feel for their children or what it’s like to undertake the care of an elderly relative.
For 116 days I was a full-time kitty hospice nurse – just like my sister is a hospice nurse for humans in Frederick County, Maryland. Every day curved around his needs. My first tasks on getting up were to check his litter trays, top up kibble and water upstairs and down, add a blood pressure pill to the dry food, and set out a wet food breakfast. Twice a day, around 11, I’d prepare the other medications. The easiest way to get anti-seizure and steroid pills down him was to crush them in a ramekin and mix the powder with a yoghurt-like cat junk food and a dash of water. Then it was time to ambush him with Lick-e-Lix. I’d find him asleep in his basket or on a couch and gently wake him. Like a recalcitrant infant in a highchair, he’d turn his face this way and that, mouth firmly closed. Increasingly, I had to coax him by smearing a bit onto his nose or chin. I’d persist until he deigned to lick the spoon clean.
Early in January, a kind neighbour who could correctly be called a cat-a-holic came to check on Alfie one evening and morning so we could visit our friends in Exeter for an overnight. She brought with her a magical substance she called “cat putty” and, for a while, it was a game changer for pill-giving. Our next-door neighbour and the cat-sitter found it a cinch to get him to eat pills wrapped in putty when they looked in on him once each in early February so we could visit another set of friends in Bristol for a partial weekend. Still I kept going with the Lick-e-Lix. There was something so sweet about spoon-feeding him, regardless of the smelly goo that got all over his face and sometimes dripped on the couch.
The day of the seizures had been a dress rehearsal. We were forced to face his mortality in a more than theoretical way. Once his system adjusted to the phenobarbital, though, we all quickly found a new normal. For those 116 days he plodded along – if not quite as before, not in a significantly diminished way either. They were good days; we are grateful. But they could never be enough. We were greedy. We wanted more. I talked with the vet about the flexibility of medication timings so we could book holidays for the summer. We dreamed up a 17th birthday party for 9 May. I could have kept up this routine indefinitely. Alfie couldn’t.
In my review of Seven Cats I Have Loved by Anat Levit, I complained that too much space was given to each pet’s physical decline. “On the threshold of my cats’ demise, it prescribed the kind of suffering that seemed to have erased the sweetness of all their previous years at once,” she writes. We’re lucky that wasn’t the case. Alfie had quality of life right up until the day or two before the end. I want to remember every phase of his life, not just this final one of more docility and quietness than we’d ever have believed years ago. I would prefer not to focus on the suffering, yet I need to acknowledge that it happened and that it mattered.
I’ve always been interested in medical matters and, detective-like, have been running the sequence of events back through my mind. We never subjected him to expensive imaging or invasive procedures, so we can’t know what precisely was going on, but the vets had some educated guesses: that his weight loss was caused by lymphoma and his seizures by a brain tumour. This was in addition to early-stage kidney disease, high blood pressure and arthritis. So there were serious medical issues there. A cancer was always going to get him, but I’ve still been second-guessing how his last weeks went and whether there was more that I could have done. When did X first happen? When did we first notice Y? Why didn’t I start Z sooner? I can’t quite bear to think of it, but there were probably signs of pain that we didn’t recognize out of ignorance, assuming they were just old cat behaviours or him being weird. Towards the end, there must have been pain that went unmanaged. I will have to forgive myself.
Ultimately, I think we made the best decisions possible with the knowledge we had, as well as the guidance of vets who saw him three times in his last six days. Everything was shutting down and he had had enough. Still, guilt is clearly chasing me. I had a symbolic dream the following night set at one of my childhood homes. The back door opened onto a stairwell with a drain and concrete steps leading up to the backyard. When it rained an exceptional amount, the stairwell filled and the basement sometimes flooded. In the dream, the steps were so wide that Max – the Shetland sheepdog we had when I was ages 7 to 19, and the only other creature at whose death I have been present – and Alfie were side by side on the middle one, while Chewy, my sister’s mutt who lived with us and Max for a time, sat above them. As the water rose right up to their bellies, they remained calm and looked at me. But instead of rushing to help them, I thought that I had to go grab my phone to take pictures.
I had it after my mother’s 2022 death, too: a build-up of futile what-ifs, even though, likewise, a stroke was always going to get her. There was also an urgency to archive everything about her: every quirk, every maddening habit, every key incident. It’s different in that I treasure her own words in letters, cards, e-mails, and her 150 journals; it’s the same in that hundreds of photos can never bring back a presence. I don’t want to forget anything.
It was only Monday evening that Alfie napped on the bed while I took a Zoom call in the chair across from him. Monday night that he slurped up a little dish of gravy and spent hours on C’s lap. Tuesday morning (when he’d stopped eating and drinking) that I, in desperation, shoved an anti-seizure pill down his throat. Weak as he was, he fought me off as stubbornly as ever; I have the network of scratches on the knuckles of my left hand to prove it.
While the cuts are still fresh, while they still sting, I want to get the whole story down. I won’t think about how indulgent it is to post something this long. I won’t tell myself no one could possibly care. I’m writing mostly for myself, after all. As I narrate what happened, I seek to make sense. When I do write more personal material, I cherish the details years down the line. Have you loved another being with your whole heart and had them leave? However the circumstances differ, then, you know my pain. He was my most precious thing.
I’m in the middle of dozens of books, but my heart isn’t in any of my reading. Apart from those with deadlines for paid reviews and library due dates, I will only resume reading when I feel ready. If I miss pub. dates and challenges, so be it. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be drawn to cat books later this year (“Reading the Meow” has run the past two Junes) or whether it will hurt too much. A couple of years ago I decided that A Cat in the Window by Derek Tangye was the perfect chronicle of life with a cat. Maybe I’ll pick it up to reread and imitate.
I know from my mom’s death that, after some time and cycles of depression and anger have passed, I will be able to take joy in everyday life again. Good memories will overtake those of the last day, and lingering regrets. Meanwhile, I’ll try to be gentle with myself and not run away from the loneliness and emptiness but sit with them. I don’t feel like much of a cat lady without a cat, but I won’t let a petty identity crisis rush me into anything. We may well adopt another cat or two in the future, but not right away. No one can ever replace Alfie anyway.
Some fun stuff:
- Alfie’s nicknames spreadsheet, introduced here, has been updated and categorized. There are 250+! (Some only applied to his heavy years and others to his old age.)
- He also had four theme tunes based on snippets from “Asleep on a Sunbeam” by Belle and Sebastian, “Don’t Bother Me” & “Old Enough” (“whatcha gonna do now?”) by the Raconteurs, and “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” by the White Stripes. (Jack White has the best hooks.) The last two captured his Foster-like indecision.
- I made a bloopers album of some of the more ridiculous photos of him.
- I’ve reviewed loads of cat books over the years. He made it into this post and this one.
Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2025
As I said the other week, I sometimes wonder if designating a book as “Most Anticipated” is a curse – if the chosen books are doomed to fail to meet my expectations. Nonetheless, I can’t resist compiling such a list at least once each year.
Also on my radar: fiction by Claire Adam, Amy Bloom, Emma Donoghue, Sarah Hall, Michelle Huneven, Eowyn Ivey, Rachel Joyce, Heather Parry and Torrey Peters; nonfiction by Melissa Febos, Robert Macfarlane, Lucy Mangan, Suzanne O’Sullivan and Sophie Pavelle. (Further ahead, I’ll seek out I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays by Maris Kreizman and The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley in July, The Savage Landscape by Cal Flyn in Oct. and Tigers between Empires by Jonathan C. Slaght in Nov.)
However, below I’ve narrowed it down to the 25 books I’m most looking forward to for the first half of 2025, 15 fiction and 10 nonfiction. I’m impressed that 4 are in translation! And 22/25 are by women (all the fiction is). In release date order, with UK publication info given first if available. The blurbs are adapted from Goodreads. I’ve taken the liberty of using whichever cover is my favourite (almost always the U.S. one).
Fiction
Live Fast by Brigitte Giraud (trans. from the French by Cory Stockwell) [Feb. 11, Ecco]: I found out about this autofiction novella via an early Shelf Awareness review. It “follows one woman’s quest to comprehend the motorcycle accident that took the life of her partner Claude at age 41. The narrator … recounts the chain of events that led up to the fateful accident, tracing the tiny, maddening twists of fate that might have prevented its tragic outcome. Each chapter asks the rhetorical question, ‘what if’ … A sensitive elegy to her husband”.
The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica (trans. from the Spanish by Sarah Moses) [13 Feb., Pushkin; March 4, Scribner]: I wasn’t enamoured of the Argentinian author’s short stories, but Tender Is the Flesh was awesome. This is a short dystopian horror set in a convent. “In the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, the unworthy live in fear of the Superior Sister’s whip. … Risking her life, one of the unworthy keeps a diary in secret. Slowly, memories surface from a time before the world collapsed, before the Sacred Sisterhood became the only refuge. Then Lucía arrives.” (PDF copy for Shelf Awareness review)
Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito [13 Feb., Fourth Estate; Feb. 4, Liveright]: Feito’s debut, Mrs March, was deliciously odd, and I love the (U.S.) cover for this one. It sounds like a bonkers horror take on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, “a gruesome and gleeful new novel that probes the psyche of a bloodthirsty governess. Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children.”
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler [13 Feb., Chatto & Windus (Penguin) / Feb. 11, Knopf]: I’m not a Tyler completist, but she’s reliable and this is a novella! “It’s the day before her daughter’s wedding and things are not going well for Gail Baines. First …, she loses her job … Then her ex-husband Max turns up at her door expecting to stay for the festivities. He doesn’t even have a suit. Instead, he’s brought memories, a shared sense of humour – and a cat looking for a new home. … [And] daughter Debbie discovers her groom has been keeping a secret.” Susan vouches for this. (Edelweiss download / on order from library)
The Swell by Kat Gordon [27 Feb., Manilla Press (Bonnier Books UK)]: I got vague The Mercies (Kiran Millwood Hargrave) vibes from the blurb. “Iceland, 1910. In the middle of a severe storm two sisters, Freyja and Gudrun, rescue a mysterious, charismatic man from a shipwreck near their remote farm. Sixty-five years later, a young woman, Sigga, is spending time with her grandmother when they learn a body has been discovered on a mountainside near Reykjavik, perfectly preserved in ice.” (NetGalley download)
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [4 March, Fourth Estate/Knopf]: This is THE book I’m most looking forward to; I’ve read everything Adichie has published and Americanah was a 5-star read for me. So I did something I’ve never done before and pre-ordered the signed independent bookshop edition from my local indie, Hungerford Bookshop. “Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets.” The focus is on four Nigerian American women “and their loves, longings, and desires.” (New purchase)
Kate & Frida by Kim Fay [March 11, G.P. Putnam’s Sons]: “Frida Rodriguez arrives in Paris in 1991 … But then she writes to a bookshop in Seattle … A friendship begins that will redefine the person she wants to become. Seattle bookseller Kate Fair is transformed by Frida’s free spirit … [A] love letter to bookshops and booksellers, to the passion we bring to life in our twenties”. Sounds like a cross between The Paris Novel and 84 Charing Cross Road – could be fab; could be twee. We shall see! (Edelweiss download)
The Antidote by Karen Russell [13 March, Chatto & Windus (Penguin) / March 11, Knopf]: I love Russell’s Swamplandia! but haven’t gotten on with her other work I’ve tried, so I’m only tentatively enthusiastic about the odd Wizard of Oz-inspired blurb: “a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression … but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a ‘Prairie Witch,’ … a Polish wheat farmer …; his orphan niece, a … witch’s apprentice …; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer”. (Requested from publisher)
Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts [13 March, ONE (Pushkin) / Feb. 18, Simon & Schuster]: Watts’s debut, The Inland Sea, was a hidden gem. Given the news from L.A., this seems all the more potent: “In November 2018, Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest … [w]hile wildfires rage. … Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River … [and] beginning to suspect she might be pregnant”. (Edelweiss download)
O Sinners! by Nicole Cuffy [March 18, One World (Random House)]: Cuffy’s Dances, which was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize, was very good. The length of this sophomore novel (464 pages) gives me pause, but I do generally gravitate towards stories of cults. “Faruq Zaidi, a young journalist reeling from the recent death of his father, a devout Muslim, takes the opportunity to embed in a cult called The Nameless [b]ased in the California redwoods and shepherded by an enigmatic [Black] Vietnam War veteran.”
The Accidentals: Stories by Guadalupe Nettel (trans. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey) [10 April, Fitzcarraldo Editions / April 29, Bloomsbury]: I really enjoyed Nettel’s International Booker-shortlisted novel Still Born. “When an albatross strays too far from its home, or loses its bearings, it becomes an ‘accidental’, an unmoored wanderer. The protagonists of these eight stories each find the ordinary courses of their lives disrupted by an unexpected event. … Deft and disquieting, oscillating between the real and the fantastical”. (PDF copy for Shelf Awareness review)
Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin [24 April, Manilla Press (Bonnier Books UK)]: “Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself.” Winner of the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize Discoveries Award.
Heartwood by Amity Gaige [1 May, Fleet / April 1, Simon & Schuster]: I loved Gaige’s Sea Wife. “In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. … At the centre of the search is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who is managing the search on the ground. While Beverly is searching, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective.”
Are You Happy?: Stories by Lori Ostlund [May 6, Astra House]: Ostlund is not so well known, especially outside the USA, but I enjoyed her debut novel, After the Parade, back in 2015. “Nine masterful stories that explore class, desire, identity, and the specter of violence in America–and in American families–against women and the LGBTQ+ community. … [W]e watch Ostlund’s characters as they try—and often fail—to make peace with their pasts while navigating their present relationships and responsibilities.” (Edelweiss download)
Ripeness by Sarah Moss [22 May, Picador / Sept. 9, Farrar, Straus and Giroux]: Though I was disappointed by her last two novels, I’ll read anything Moss publishes and hope for a return to form. “It is the [19]60s and … Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy … to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will seal this baby’s fate, and his mother’s.” Promises to be “about migration and new beginnings, and about what it is to have somewhere to belong.”
Nonfiction
The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell by Jonas Olofsson [Out now! 7 Jan., William Collins / Mariner]: Part of a planned deep dive into the senses. “Smell is … one of our most sensitive and refined senses; few other mammals surpass our ability to perceive scents in the animal kingdom. Yet, as the millions of people who lost their sense of smell during the COVID-19 pandemic can attest, we too often overlook its role in our overall health. … For readers of Bill Bryson and Steven Pinker”. (On order from library)
Bread and Milk by Karolina Ramqvist (trans. from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel) [13 Feb., Bonnier Books / Feb. 11, Coach House Books]: I think I first found about this via the early Foreword review. “Bread and Milk traces a life through food, from carefully restricted low-fat margarine to a bag of tangerines devoured in one sitting to the luxury of a grandmother’s rice pudding. In this radiant memoir from one of Northern Europe’s most notable literary stylists, we follow several generations of women and their daughters as they struggle with financial and emotional vulnerability, independence, and motherhood.”
My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle by Rebe Huntman [Feb. 18, Monkfish]: I found out about this from Rebecca Moon Ruark and by the time the publisher offered it to me I’d already downloaded it. The themes of bereavement and religion are right up my street. “As she explores the memory of her own mother, interlacing it with her search for the sacred feminine, Huntman leads us into a world of séance and sacrifice, pilgrimage and sacred dance, which resurrect her mother and bring Huntman face to face with a larger version of herself.” (Edelweiss download)
Mother Animal by Helen Jukes [27 Feb., Elliott & Thompson]: This may be the 2025 release I’ve known about for the longest. I remember expressing interest the first time the author tweeted about it; it’s bound to be a good follow-up to Lucy Jones’s Matrescence. “When Helen Jukes falls pregnant, … she widens her frame of reference, looking beyond humans to ask what motherhood looks like in other species. … As she enters the sleeplessness, chaos and intimate discoveries of life with a newborn, these animal stories become … companions and guides.” (Requested from publisher)
Alive: An Alternative Anatomy by Gabriel Weston [6 March, Vintage (Penguin) / March 4, David R. Godine]: I’ve read Weston’s Direct Red and appreciate her perspective. “As she became a surgeon, a mother, and ultimately a patient herself, Weston found herself grappling with the gap between scientific knowledge and unfathomable complexity of human experience. … Focusing on our individual organs, not just under the intense spotlight of the operating theatre, but in the central role they play in the stories of our lives.”
The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street by Mike Tidwell [March 25, St. Martin’s Press]: A must-read for me because it’s set in Takoma Park, Maryland, where I was born. “A love letter to the magnificent oaks and other trees dying from record heat waves and bizarre rain, [activist] Tidwell’s story depicts the neighborhood’s battle to save the trees and combat climate change. … Tidwell chronicles people on his block sick with Lyme disease, a church struggling with floods, and young people anguishing over whether to have kids, … against the global backdrop of 2023’s record heat domes and raging wildfires and hurricanes.”
Breasts: A Relatively Brief Relationship by Jean Hannah Edelstein [3 April, Phoenix (W&N)]: I loved Edelstein’s 2018 memoir This Really Isn’t About You, and I regularly read her Substack. “As [Edelstein] comes of age, she learns that breasts are a source of both shame and power. In early motherhood, she sees her breasts transform into a source of sustenance and a locus of pain. And then, all too soon, she is faced with a diagnosis and forced to confront what it means to lose and rebuild an essential part of yourself.”
Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courtney Gustafson [8 May, Fig Tree (Penguin) / April 29, Crown]: Gustafson became an Instagram and TikTok hit with her posts about looking after a feral cat colony in Tucson, Arizona. The money she raised via social media allowed her to buy her home and continue caring for animals. “[Gustafson] had no idea about the grief and hardship of animal rescue, the staggering size of the problem in neighborhoods across the country. And she couldn’t have imagined how that struggle … would help pierce a personal darkness she’d wrestled for with much of her life.” (Proof copy from publisher)
Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece by Julian Hoffman [15 May, Elliott & Thompson]: Hoffman’s Irreplaceable was my book of 2019. “In the summer of 2000, Julian Hoffman and his wife Julia found themselves disillusioned with city life. Overwhelmed by long commutes, they stumbled upon a book about Prespa, Greece – a remote corner of Europe filled with stone villages, snow-capped mountains and wildlife. What began as curiosity soon transformed into a life-changing decision: to make Prespa their home.” I know next to nothing about Greece and this is a part of it that doesn’t fit the clichés.
Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel [22 May, Jonathan Cape (Penguin) / May 20, Mariner Books]: Bechdel’s Fun Home is an absolute classic of the graphic memoir. I’ve lost track of her career a bit but like the sound of this one. “A cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, is existentially irked by a climate-challenged world and a citizenry on the brink of civil war.” After her partner’s wood-chopping video goes viral, she decides to create her own ethical-living reality TV show. Features cameos from some characters from her Dykes to Watch Out For series.
Other lists of anticipated books:
Clare – we overlap on a couple of our picks
Kate – one pick in common, plus I’ve already read a couple of her others
Laura – we overlap on a couple of our picks
Paul (mostly science and nature)
What catches your eye here? What other 2025 titles do I need to know about?
#1970Club: Desperate Characters & I’m the King of the Castle
Simon and Karen’s classics reading weeks are always a great excuse to pick up some older books. I found on my shelves a chilly Brooklyn-set novella that has been praised to the skies by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, and then borrowed a short and unsettling novel about warring English schoolboys from the library.
Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
Other covers feature a cat, which is probably why this was on my radar. Don’t expect a cat lover’s book, though. The cat simply provides the opening incident. Sophie Bentwood is a forty-year-old underemployed translator; she doesn’t really need to work because her lawyer husband Otto keeps them in comfort. Feeding a feral cat, she is bitten savagely on the hand and over the next several days puts off seeking medical attention, wanting to stay in uncertainty rather than condemn herself to rounds of shots – and the cat to possible euthanasia. Both she and Otto live in this state of inertia. They were never able to have children but couldn’t take the step of adopting; Sophie had an affair but couldn’t leave Otto to commit elsewhere.
The cat bite seems to set off a chain of mishaps, culminating with the Bentwoods discovering that their house in the country has been vandalized. In the meantime, not a lot happens. The couple goes to a party and Sophie sneaks out for late-night drinks with her husband’s ex-partner, to whom she confides her affair. In Jonathan Franzen’s introduction, he compares to Bellow, Roth and Updike – but thinks Fox surpasses them all. The book explicitly references the Thoreau quote about people living lives of quiet desperation. I could sympathize with the midlife malaise depicted. As stagnant marriage stories go, this reminded me of what I’ve read by Richard Yates, just with a little less drinking. It would have made a good Literary Wives selection. In general, though, I can’t summon much enthusiasm. Given the cult classic status, I expected more. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill
I’m almost tempted to mark this as an R.I.P. read, because it’s very dark indeed. Like The Woman in Black, it takes place in an ominous English mansion and its environs. Other scenes take place in a creepy forest and at castle ruins, adding to the Gothic atmosphere. Edmund Hooper and his father move into Warings after his grandparents’ death. Soon his father makes an unwelcome announcement: he’s hired a housekeeper, Helena Kingshaw, who will be moving in with her son, Charles, who is the same age as Edmund. Hooper writes Kingshaw (as the boys are called throughout the book, probably to replicate how they were known at their boarding schools) a note: “I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO COME HERE.”
That initial hostility erupts into psychological, and sometimes physical, abuse. Kingshaw quickly learns not to trust Hooper. “He thought, I mustn’t let Hooper know what I truly think, never, not about anything.” He tries running away to the woods but Hooper follows him; he makes friends with a local farm boy but it’s little comfort when he’ll soon be starting at Hooper’s school and it looks as if their lonely widowed parents might marry. The boys learn each other’s weaknesses and exploit them. At climactic moments, they have the opportunity to be gracious but retreat from every potential truce.
Heavy on dialogue and description, the book moves quickly with its claustrophobic scenes of nightmares come to life. Referring to the boys by surname makes them seem much older than 10 going on 11. Their antagonism is no child’s play – as the title ironically suggests – or harmless bullying. Is it evil? The reader feels for Kingshaw, the more passive one, yet what he does in revenge is nearly as bad. I was reminded somewhat of Harriet Said… by Beryl Bainbridge. It’s a deeply uncomfortable story, not least for how nature (pecking crows, cases of dead moths) is portrayed as equally menacing. (Public library)
Another 15 books from 1970 that I’ve read:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach (in the running for worst book I’ve ever read)
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
If Only They Could Talk by James Herriot
Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith
Crow by Ted Hughes
Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson
Being There by Jerzy Kosiński
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Sing Down the Moon by Scott O’Dell
Love Story by Erich Segal
The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
(Lots of children’s books there! Clearly they were considered modern classics during my 1980s childhood.)
I’ve previously participated in the 1920 Club, 1956 Club, 1936 Club, 1976 Club, 1954 Club, 1929 Club, 1940 Club and 1937 Club.
Sandwich by Catherine Newman (Blog Tour)
Catherine Newman’s second novel for adults, Sandwich, takes place during a week on Cape Cod, a popular Massachusetts beach resort. Rachel, nicknamed “Rocky,” is a fiftysomething mother to two young adults, Jamie and Willa. She and her husband Nick have been renting the same cottage for their family’s summer vacations for 20 years. Although Rocky narrates most of the novel in the first person, in the Prologue she paints the scene for the reader in the third person: “They’ve been coming here for so many years that there’s a watercolor wash over all of it now … pleasant, pastel memories of taffy, clam strips, and beachcombing.”
Also present are Maya, Jamie’s girlfriend; Rocky’s ageing parents; and Chicken the cat (can you imagine taking your cat on holiday?!). With such close quarters, it’s impossible to keep secrets. Over the week of merry eating and drinking, much swimming, and plenty of no-holds-barred conversations, some major drama emerges via both the oldies and the youngsters. And it’s not just present crises; the past is always with Rocky. Cape Cod has developed layers of emotional memories for her. She’s simultaneously nostalgic for her kids’ babyhood and delighted with the confident, intelligent grown-ups they’ve become. She’s grateful for the family she has, but also haunted by inherited trauma and pregnancy loss.
There couldn’t be more ideal reading for women in the so-called “sandwich generation” who have children growing towards independence as well as parents starting to struggle with infirmity. (The contemporary storyline of Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered, which coincidentally is about a character named Willa, is comparable in that respect.) Newman is frank about Willa’s lesbianism and Rocky’s bisexuality, and she doesn’t hold back about the difficulties of menopause, either. Rocky is challenged to rethink her responsibilities as a daughter, wife and mother when she’s surrounded by equally strong-willed people who won’t do what she wants them to. The novel is so quirky, funny and relatable that it’s impossible not to sympathize with Rocky even if, like me, you’re in a very different life situation.
I like the U.S. cover so much more!
One observation I would make is that Rocky is virtually identical to Ash in Newman’s debut, We All Want Impossible Things, and to the author in real life (as I know from subscribing to her Substack). If you read even the most basic information about her, it’s clear that it’s all autofiction. That’s not an issue for me as I don’t think inventing is inherently superior to drawing from experience; some authors write what they know in a literal sense and that’s okay. So, for her fans, more of the same will be no problem at all. But it is a very particular voice: intense, scatty, purposely outrageous. Rocky is a protagonist who says things like, “How am I a feminist, an advocate for reproductive rights, Our Bodies, Ourselves, hear me roar, blah blah, and I am only just now learning about vaginal atrophy?” (A companion nonfiction read would be Nina Stibbe’s Went to London, Took the Dog.)
In outlook Newman reminds me a lot of Anne Lamott, who is equally forthright and whose books similarly juxtapose life’s joy and sorrows, especially in this late passage: “this may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel.”
This is a sweet, fun, chatty book that’s about a summer break – and would be perfect to read on a summer break.
With thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours and Doubleday for the free e-copy for review.
Buy Sandwich from Bookshop.org [affiliate link]
I was delighted to help close out the blog tour for Sandwich. See below for details of where the other reviews have appeared.
Reading the Meow, Part II: Books by Bernardine Bishop and Matt Haig
This is my second contribution to the Reading the Meow challenge, hosted by Mallika of Literary Potpourri, after yesterday’s review of Sleeping with Cats by Marge Piercy. One of the below novels is obviously cat-themed; the other less so, but the cover and blurb convinced me to take a chance on a new-to-me author and I discovered a hidden gem.
The Street by Bernardine Bishop (2015)
Prices are so cheap at my local charity warehouse (3/£1 paperbacks) that I recently did something I almost never do: bought a book I’d never heard of, by an author I’d never heard of, and then (something I definitely never do!) read it almost right away instead of letting it gather dust on my shelves for years. Bishop’s biography is wild. As a new Cambridge graduate, she was the youngest witness in the Lady Chatterley trial in 1960, then published two novels in her early twenties. She married twice, had two sons and a psychotherapy career, and returned to writing fiction after 50 years – prompted by a cancer diagnosis. Unexpected Lessons in Love was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award in 2013, while this and Hidden Knowledge were both published posthumously, after Bishop’s death in 2015.
So: there is a cat on the cover and the blurb mentions it, too: “a beloved cat achieves immortality.” (I should have realized that was a euphemism, but never mind.) The novel opens with news of the death at 90 of formidable Brenda Byfleet, who’d been a Greenham Common woman and taken part in peace protests right into old age. Neighbours quickly realize someone will need to care for her cat Benn (named for Tony Benn), and the duty falls to Anne and Eric, who have also taken in their grandson while his parents are in Canada.
What follows is a low-key ensemble story that moves with ease between several key residences of Palmerston Street, London, introducing us to a couple struggling with infertility, a war veteran with dementia, an underemployed actor who rescues his wife from her boss’s unwanted attentions, and so on. Most touching is the relationship between Anne and Georgia, a lesbian snail researcher who paints Anne’s portrait. Their friendship shades into quiet, middle-aged love.
There are secrets and threats and climactic moments here, but always the reassuring sense that neighbours are a kind of second family and so someone will be there for you to rely on no matter what you face. (I can think of a certain soap opera theme that expresses a similar sentiment…) Bishop’s style reminds me most of Tessa Hadley’s. She is equally skilled at drawing children and the elderly, and clearly feels love and compassion for her flawed characters: “Everything and everyone in the street was bathed in a blessed ordinariness.”
From Brenda onward, Georgia’s rhetorical question hangs over the short novel: “What is a life?” The implied partial answer is: what is remembered by those left behind. The opening paragraph is perfect –
“Sometimes it is impossible to turn even a short London street into a village. But sometimes it can be easily done. It all depends on one or two personalities.”
… and the last page has kittens. This was altogether a lovely read. Dangit, why didn’t I also buy the other Bishop novel that was on shelf at the charity warehouse?! I’ll have to hope it’s still around the next time I go there. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury) 
To Be a Cat by Matt Haig (2012)
This was a reasonably cute middle-grade fantasy and careful-what-you-wish-for cautionary tale. On his twelfth birthday, Barney Willow thinks life couldn’t get worse. His parents are divorced, his dad has recently disappeared, he’s bullied by Gavin Needle, and evil head teacher Miss Whipmire seems to have a personal vendetta against him. His only friend is Rissa Fairweather, who lives on a barge. Little does he know that an idle wish to switch places with a cat he pets on the street will set a dangerous adventure in motion. Now he’s a cat and Maurice the cat has his body. Soon Barney realizes there’s a whole subset of cats who are former humans (alongside “swipers,” proper fighting street cats; and “firesides,” who prefer to stay indoors), including Miss Whipmire, who used to be a Siamese cat and has an escape plan that involves Barney. I felt the influence of Roald Dahl and Terry Pratchett, but Haig doesn’t have their writing chops. Apart from Rissa, the characterization is too clichéd. I’m sure I would have enjoyed this at age eight, though. (Little Free Library)
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 