Four for #NonfictionNovember and #NovNov25: Hanff, Humphrey, Kimmerer & Steinbeck
I’ll be doubling up posts most days for the rest of this month to cram everything in!
Today I have a cosy companion story to a beloved bibliophiles’ classic, a comprehensive account of my favourite beverage, a refreshing Indigenous approach to economics, and a journalistic exposé that feels nearly as relevant now as it did 90 years ago.
Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff (1985)
Of course we all know and love 84, Charing Cross Road, about Hanff’s epistolary friendship with the staff of Marks & Co. Antiquarian Booksellers in London in the 1950s. This gives a bit of background to the writing and publication of that book, responds to its unexpected success, and follows up on a couple of later trips to England for the TV and stage adaptations. Hanff lived in a tiny New York City apartment and worked behind the scenes in theatre and television. Even authoring a cult classic didn’t change the facts of being a creative in one of the world’s most expensive cities: paying the bills between royalty checks was a scramble. The title is a little odd and refers to Hanff’s self-directed education after she had to leave Temple University after a year. When she stumbled on Cambridge professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s books of lectures at the library, she decided to make them the basis of her classical education. I most liked the diary from a 1970s trip to London on which she stayed in her UK publisher André Deutsch’s mother’s apartment! This is pleasant and I appreciated Hanff’s humble delight in her unexpected later-life accomplishments, but it does feel rather like a collection of scraps. I also have to wonder to what extent this repeats content from the 84 sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. But if you’ve liked her other books, you may as well read this one, too. (Free – The Book Thing of Baltimore) [177 pages] 
Gin by Shonna Milliken Humphrey (2020)
Picking up something from the Bloomsbury Object Lessons series (or any of these other series of nonfiction books) is a splendid way to combine two challenges. Humphrey was introduced to gin at 16 when the manager of the movie theater where she worked gave her Pepsi cups of gin and grapefruit juice. Luckily, that didn’t precede any kind of misconduct and she’s been fond of gin ever since. She takes readers through the etymology of gin (from the Dutch genever; I startled the bartender by ordering a glass of neat vieux ginèvre at a bar in Brussels in September), the single necessary ingredient (juniper), the distillation process, the varieties (single- or double-distilled; Old Tom with sugar added), the different neutral spirits or grain bases that can be used (at a recent tasting I had gins made from apples and potatoes), and appearances in popular culture from William Hogarth’s preachy prints through The African Queen and James Bond to rap music. I found plenty of interesting tidbits – Samuel Pepys mentions gin (well, “strong water made of juniper,” anyway) in his diary as a constipation cure – but the writing is nothing special, I knew a lot of technical details from distillery tours, and I would have liked more exploration of the modern gin craze. “Gin is, in many ways, how I see myself: comfortable, but evolving,” Humphrey writes. “Gin has always interested a younger generation of drinker, as well as commitment from the older crowd, while maintaining a reputation among the middle aged. It is unique that way.” That checks out from my experience of tastings and the fact that it’s my mother-in-law’s tipple of choice as well. (Birthday gift from my Bookshop wish list) [134 pages]
The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2024)
Serviceberries (aka saskatoons or juneberries) are Kimmerer’s chosen example of nature’s bounty, freely offered and reliable. When her farmer neighbours invite people to come and pick pails of them for nothing, they’re straying from the prevailing economic reasoning that commodifies food. Instead of focusing on the “transactional,” they’re “banking goodwill, so-called social capital.” Kimmerer would disdain the term “ecosystem services,” arguing that turning nature into a commodity has diminished people’s sense of responsibility and made them feel more justified in taking whatever they want and hoarding it. Capitalism’s reliance on scarcity (sometimes false or forced) is anathema to her; in an Indigenous gift-based economy, there is sufficient for all to share: “You can store meat in your own pantry or in the belly of your brother.” I love that she refers to Little Free Libraries and other community initiatives such as farm stands of free produce, swap shops, and online giveaway forums. I volunteer with our local Repair Café, I curate my neighbourhood Little Free Library, and I’m lucky to live in a community where people are always giving away quality items. These are all win-win situations where unwanted or broken items get a new lease on life. Save landfill space, resources, and money at the same time! Compared to Braiding Sweetgrass, this is thin (but targeted) and sometimes feels overly optimistic about human nature. I was glad I didn’t buy the bite-sized hardback with gift money last year, but I was happy to have a chance to read the book anyway. (New purchase – Kindle 99p deal) [124 pages] 
The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1936; 1988)
This lucky find is part of the “California Legacy” collection published by Heyday and Santa Clara University. In October 1936, Steinbeck produced a series of seven articles for The San Francisco News about the plight of Dust Bowl-era migrant workers. His star was just starting to rise but he wouldn’t achieve true fame until 1939 with the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath, which was borne out of his travels as a journalist. Some 150,000 transient workers traveled the length of California looking for temporary employment in the orchards and vegetable fields. Squatters’ camps were places of poor food and hygiene where young children often died of disease or malnutrition. Women in their thirties were worn out by annual childbirth and frequent miscarriage and baby loss. Dignity was hard to maintain without proper toilet facilities. Because workers moved around, they could not establish state residency and so had no access to healthcare or unemployment benefits. This distressing material is captured through dispassionate case studies. Steinbeck gives particular attention to the state’s poor track record for the treatment of foreign workers – Chinese, Japanese and Filipino as well as Mexican. He recounts disproportionate police brutality in response to workers’ attempts to organize. (Has anything really changed?!) In the final article, he offers solutions: the right to unionize, and blocks of subsistence farms on federal land. Charles Wollenberg’s introduction about Steinbeck and his tour guide, camp manager Tom Collins, is illuminating and Dorothea Lange’s photographs are the perfect accompaniment. Now I’m hankering to reread The Grapes of Wrath. (Secondhand – Gifted by a friend as part of a trip to Community Furniture Project, Newbury last year) [62 pages] 
Check out Kris Drever’s folk song “Harvest Gypsies” (written by Boo Hewerdine) here.
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?
Reviews: de Jongh, Eipe, Parker and Scull
Today’s roundup includes a graphic novel set during the U.S. Dust Bowl, a Dylan Thomas Prize-shortlisted poetry collection infused with Islamic imagery, a book about adaptive technologies for the disabled, and a set of testimonies from the elderly and terminally ill.
Days of Sand by Aimée de Jongh (2021; 2022)
[Translated from the Dutch by Christopher Bradley]
Dust can drive people mad.
This terrific Great Depression-era story was inspired by the real-life work of photographers such as Dorothea Lange who were sent by the Farm Security Administration, a new U.S. federal agency, to document the privations of the Dust Bowl in the Midwest. John Clark, 22, is following in his father’s footsteps as a photographer, leaving New York City to travel to the Oklahoma panhandle. He quickly discovers that struggling farmers are believed to have brought the drought on themselves through unsustainable practices. Many are fleeing to California. The locals are suspicious of John as an outsider, especially when they learn that he is working to a checklist (“Orphaned children”, “Family packing car to leave”).
“The best photos have an instant impact. Right away, they grab our attention. They tell a story, or deliver a message. The question is: how do you make that happen?” one of his employers had asked. John grows increasingly uncomfortable with being part of what is essentially a propaganda campaign when he develops a personal fondness for Cliff, a little boy who offers to be his assistant, and Betty, a pregnant widow whose runaway horse he finds. The deprivation and death he sees at close hand bring back memories of his father’s funeral four years ago.
Whether a cityscape or the midst of a dust storm, de Jongh’s scenes are stark and evocative. Each chapter opens with a genuine photograph from the period (de Jongh travelled to the USA for archival and on-the-ground research thanks to a grant from the Dutch Foundation for Literature), and some panes mimic B&W photos the FSA team took. It’s rare for me to find the story and images equally powerful in a graphic novel, but that’s definitely the case here.
With thanks to SelfMadeHero for the free copy for review.
Auguries of a Minor God by Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe (2021)
This debut poetry collection is on the Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist. I’ve noted that recent winners – such as Lot by Bryan Washington and Luster by Raven Leilani – have in common a distinctive voice and use of language, which chimes with what Thomas was known for (see my recent review of Under Milk Wood) and clarifies what the judges are looking for.
The placement of words on the page seems to be very important in this volume – spread out or bunched together, sometimes descending vertically, a few in grey. It’s unfortunate, then, that I read an e-copy, as most of the formatting was lost when I put it on my Nook. The themes of the first part include relationships, characterized by novelty or trauma; tokens of home experienced in a new land; myths; and nature. Section headings are in Malayalam.
The book culminates in a lengthy, astonishingly nimble abecedarian in which a South Asian single father shepherds his children through English schooling as best he can while mired in grief over their late mother. This bubbles over in connection with her name, Noor, followed by a series of “O” apostrophe statements, some addressed to God and others exhorting fellow believers. Each letter section gets progressively longer. I was impressed at how authentically the final 30-page section echoes scriptural rhythms and content – until I saw in the endnotes that it was reproduced from a 1997 translation of the Quran, and felt a little cheated. Still, “A is for…” feels like enough to account for this India-born poet’s shortlisting. (The Prize winner will be announced on Thursday the 12th.)
With thanks to Midas PR for the free e-copy for review.
Hybrid Humans: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Man and Machine by Harry Parker (2022)
I approached this as a companion to To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell and that is precisely what I found, with Parker’s personal insight adding a different angle to the discussion of how technology corrects and transcends flawed bodies. Parker was a captain in the British Army in Afghanistan when an IED took his legs. Now he wears prostheses that make him roughly 12% machine. “Being a hybrid human means expensive kit – you have to pay for the privilege of leading a normal life.” He revisits the moments surrounding his accident and his adjustment to prostheses, and meets fellow amputees like Jack, who was part of a British medical trial on osseointegration (where titanium implants come out of the stump for a prosthesis to attach to) that enabled him to walk much better. Other vets they know had to save up and travel to Australia to have this done because the NHS didn’t cover it.
Travelling to the REHAB trade fair in Karlsruhe, Parker learns that disability, too, can be the mother of invention. Virtual reality and smartphone technology are invaluable, with an iPhone able to replace up to 11 single-purpose devices. Yet he also encounters disabled people who are happy with their lot and don’t look to tech to improve it, such as Jamie, who’s blind and relies only on a cane. And it’s not as if tools to compensate for disability are new; the book surveys medical technologies that have been with us for decades or even centuries: from glass eyes to contact lenses; iron lungs, cochlear implants and more.
Pain management, PTSD, phantom limbs, foreign body rejection, and deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease are other topics in this wide-ranging study that is at the juncture of the personal and political. “A society that doesn’t look after the vulnerable isn’t looking after anyone – I’d learnt first-hand that we’re all just a moment from becoming vulnerable,” Parker concludes. I’ll hope to see this one on next year’s Barbellion Prize longlist.
With thanks to Profile Books/Wellcome Collection for the free copy for review.
Regrets of the Dying: Stories and Wisdom that Remind Us How to Live by Georgina Scull (2022)
A medical crisis during pregnancy that had her minutes from death was a wake-up call for Scull, leading her to rethink whether the life she was living was the one she wanted. She spent the next decade interviewing people in her New Zealand and the UK about what they learned when facing death. Some of the pieces are like oral histories (with one reprinted from a blog), while others involve more of an imagining of the protagonist’s past and current state of mind. Each is given a headline that encapsulates a threat to contentment, such as “Not Having a Good Work–Life Balance” and “Not Following Your Gut Instinct.” Most of her subjects are elderly or terminally ill. She also speaks to two chaplains, one a secular humanist working in a hospital and the other an Anglican priest based at a hospice, who recount some of the regrets they hear about through patients’ stories.
Recurring features are not spending enough time with family and staying too long in loveless or unequal relationships. Two accounts that particularly struck me were Anthea’s, about the tanning bed addiction that gave her melanoma, and Millicent’s, guilty that she never went to the police about a murder she witnessed as a teenager in the 1930s (with a NZ family situation that sounds awfully like Janet Frame’s). Scull closes with 10 things she’s learned, such as not to let others’ expectations guide your life and to appreciate the everyday. These are readable narratives, capably captured, but there isn’t much here that rises above cliché.
With thanks to publicist Claire Morrison and Welbeck for the free copy for review.
Would you be interested in reading one or more of these?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 