Miscellaneous for #ReadIndies: Grenville & Holman-Hunt, Trans History & Travel Poetry, Kathleen Jamie & Kristen Zory King
Squeaking in some more reviews on the last day of a challenge, as is my wont. Today I have mini-responses to a wide selection: a graphic novel companion to LGBTQ history, an exposé that will have you checking the ingredients lists on all your toiletries and other household cleaning products, a memoir of an eccentric Edwardian childhood, poems about modes of travel and the states of mind they produce, superb nature essays blending personal and environmental writing, and a mini collection of flash fiction about young women.
Trans History: From Ancient Times to the Present Day by Alex L. Combs and Andrew Eakett (2025)
Queer people of all varieties have always been with us; they just might have understood their experience or talked about it in different terms. So while Combs and Eakett are careful not to apply labels retrospectively, they feature a plethora of people who lived as a different gender to that assigned at birth. Apart from a few familiar names like Lili Elbe and Marsha P. Johnson, most were new to me. For every heartening story of an emperor, monk or explorer who managed to live out their true identity in peace, there are three distressing ones of those forced to conform. Many Indigenous cultures held a special place for gender-nonconforming individuals; colonizers would have seen this as evidence of desperate need of civilizing. Even doctors who were willing to help with early medical transitions retained primitive ideas about gender and its connection to genitals. The structure is chronological, with a single colour per chapter. Panes reenact scenes and feature talking heads explaining historical developments and critical theory. A final section is devoted to modern-day heroes campaigning for trans rights and seeking to preserve an archive of queer history. This was a little didactic, but ideal for teens, I think, and certainly not just one for gender studies students.
Readalike: Meg-John Barker’s Sexuality: A Graphic Guide
(Read via Edelweiss) [Candlewick Press]
The Case Against Fragrance by Kate Grenville (2017)
File this with other surprising nonfiction books by well-known novelists. In 2015, Grenville started struggling while on a book tour: everything from a taxi’s air freshener and a hotel’s cleaning products to a fellow passenger’s perfume was giving her headaches. She felt like a diva for stipulating she couldn’t be around fragrances, but as she started looking into it she realized she wasn’t alone. I thought this was just going to be about perfume, but it covers all fragranced products, which can list “parfum” on their ingredients without specifying what that is – trade secrets. The problem is, fragrances contain any of thousands of synthetic chemicals, most of which have never been tested and thus are unregulated. Even those found to be carcinogens or endocrine disruptors in rodent studies might be approved for humans because it’s not taken into account how these products are actually used. Prolonged or repeat contact has cumulative effects. The synthetic musks in toiletries and laundry detergents are particularly bad, acting as estrogen mimics and likely associated with prostate and breast cancer. I tend to buy whatever’s on offer in Boots, but as soon as my Herbal Essences bottle is empty I’m going back to Faith in Nature (look for plant extracts). The science at the core of the book is a little repetitive, but eased by the social chapters to either side, and you can tell from the footnotes that Grenville really did her research.
Readalike: Chris van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People
(Secondhand – gift from my wish list) [Text Publishing]
My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt (1960)
The author was the granddaughter of Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt (The Light of the World et al.). While her father was away in India, she was shunted between two homes: Grandmother and Grandfather Freeman’s Sussex estate, and the mausoleum-cum-gallery her paternal grandmother, “Grand,” maintained in Kensington. The grandparents have very different ideas about the sorts of foodstuffs and activities that are suitable for little girls. Both households have servants, but Grand only has the one helper, Helen. Grand probably has a lot of money tied up in property and paintings but lives like a penniless widow. Grand encourages abstemious habits – “Don’t be ruled by Brother Ass, he’s only your body and a nuisance” – and believes in boiled milk and margarine. The single egg she has Helen serve Diana in the morning often smells off. “Food is only important as fuel; whether we like it or not is quite immaterial,” Grand insists. Diana might more naturally gravitate to the pleasures of the Freeman residence, but when it comes time to give a tour of the Holman Hunt oeuvre, she does so with pride. There are some funny moments, such as Diana asking where babies come from after one of the Freemans’ maids gives birth, but this felt so exaggerated and fictionalized – how could she possibly remember details and conversations at the distance of several decades? – that I lost interest by the midpoint.
Readalike: Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece
(Secondhand – Community Furniture Project) [Slightly Foxed]
In Transit: Poems of Travel, ed. Sarah Jackson and Tim Youngs (2018)
Some methods of transport are just more romantic than others. The editors’ introduction notes that “Trains were by far the most popular … followed by aeroplanes and then boats.” Walks and car journeys were surprisingly scarce, they observed, though there are a couple of poems about wandering in New York City. Often, the language is of maps, airports, passports and long flights; of trading one place for another as exile, expatriate or returnee. The collection circuits the globe: China, the Middle East, Greece, Scandinavia, the bayous of the American South. France and Berlin show up more than once. The Emma Press anthologies vary and this one had fewer standout entries than average. However, a few favourites were Nancy Campbell’s “Reading the Water,” about a boy launching out to sea in a kayak; Simon Williams’s “Aboard the Grey Ghost,” about watching for dolphins on a wartime voyage from England to the USA; and Vicky Sparrow’s “Dual Gauge,” which follows a train of thought – about humans as objects moving, perhaps towards death – during a train ride.
(New purchase from publisher) [The Emma Press]
Findings by Kathleen Jamie (2005)
As I found when I reread Sightlines in 2022, Jamie’s topics couldn’t be better suited to my interests: Scottish islands, seabirds, medical history, and the meaning we derive from mortality. She visits the Orkney Islands just before the winter solstice, which draws a faithful few to the tomb of Maes Howe. From her attic room in Fife, she watches peregrine falcons on a cliff face. A gannet’s skull is her prized souvenir from a boat tour to an uninhabited Hebridean island. Vigilance pays off when she hears, then sees, corncrake on the Isle of Coll. Although she has a penchant for empty places, she also writes about cityscapes and hospitals. “Skylines” looks out over Edinburgh, also the setting for “Surgeons’ Hall,” about the pathology museum on the Royal College of Surgeons campus (my 2018 visit). In “Fever” her husband has a scary bout of pneumonia. Jamie is one of our wisest writers on nature and human culture. She asks whether any creatures are truly wild given the pervasiveness of human influence. Even as she seeks out the ancient, she knows we are all ephemeral. “Sabbath” is the best single essay, combining a visit to Lewis with her worry for her mother, who’s had a stroke, and her grandmother, who is to move into a care home. She explores the island “relishing the movement of my body, its own small continuing strength. It wouldn’t last forever – that was the truth of it – but today I could cycle along a road, to see where it led.”
(University library) [Sort Of Books]
My rating in 2012:
My rating now: 
Ladies, Ladies, Ladies by Kristen Zory King (2025)
I’d never encountered “chapbook” being used for prose rather than poetry, but it’s an apt term for this 61-page paperback containing 18 stories. It’s remarkable how much King can pack into just a few pages: a voice, a character, a setting and situation, an incident, a salient backstory, and some kind of epiphany or resolution. Fifteen of the pieces focus on one named character, with another three featuring a set (“Ladies,” hence the title). Laura-Jean wonders whether it was a mistake to tell her ex’s mother what she really thinks about him in a Christmas card. A love of ice cream connects Margot’s past and present. A painting in a museum convinces Paige to reconnect with her estranged sister. Alice is sure she sees her double wandering around, and Mary contemplates stealing other people’s cats. The women are moved by rage or lust; stymied by loneliness or nostalgia. Is salvation to be found in scripture or poetry? Each story is distinctive, with no words wasted. I’ll look out for future work by King.
(Duplicate copy passed on by Marcie – thank you!) [Stanchion Books]
Which of these do you fancy reading?
Six more indie publishers spotlighted, for a total of 19 books and 18 publishers this month – job done!
Also covered:
Ansell, Farrier, Febos, Hoffman, Orlean, Stacey
Chevillard, Hopkins & Bateman, McGrath, Richardson
Victorian-Themed Novels by Annie Elliot and Livi Michael
There are plenty more indie books that I’m in the middle of, or picked out but didn’t get to in February. As much as possible, I’ll continue reading (indie) books from my shelves this year.
Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery (1937) #ReadingLanternHill
I’m grateful to Canadian bloggers Naomi (Consumed by Ink) and Sarah for hosting the readalong: It’s been a pure pleasure to discover this lesser-known work by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
{SOME SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING}
Like Anne of Green Gables, this is a cosy novel about finding a home and a family. Fairytale-like in its ultimate optimism, it nevertheless does not avoid negative feelings. It also seemed to me ahead of its time in how it depicts parental separation.
Jane Victoria Stuart lives with her beautiful, flibbertigibbet mother and strict grandmother in a “shabby genteel” mansion on the ironically named Gay Street in Toronto. Grandmother calls her Victoria and makes her read the Bible to the family every night, a ritual Jane hates. Jane is an indifferent student, though she loves writing, and her best friend is Jody, an orphan who is in service next door. Her mother is a socialite breezing out each evening, but she doesn’t seem jolly despite all the parties. Jane has always assumed her father is dead, so it is a shock when a girl at school shares the rumour that her father is alive and living on Prince Edward Island. Apparently, divorce was difficult in Canada at that time and would have required a trip to the USA, so for nearly a decade the couple have been estranged.
It’s not just Jane who feels imprisoned on Gay Street: her mother and Jody are both suffering in their own ways, and long to live unencumbered by others’ strictures. For Jane, freedom comes when her father requests custody of her for the summer. Grandmother is of a mind to ignore the summons, but the wider family advise her to heed it. Initially apprehensive, Jane falls in love with PEI and feels like she’s known her father, a jocular writer, all the time. They’re both romantics and go hunting for a house that will feel like theirs right away. Lantern Hill fits the bill, and Jane delights in playing the housekeeper and teaching herself to cook and garden. Returning to Toronto in the autumn is a wrench, but she knows she’ll be back every summer. It’s an idyll precisely because it’s only part time; it’s a retreat.
Jane is an appealing heroine with her can-do attitude. Her everyday adventures are sweet – sheltering in a barn when the car breaks down, getting a reward and her photo in the paper for containing an escaped circus lion – but I was less enamoured with the depiction of the quirky locals. The names alone point to country bumpkin stereotypes: Shingle Snowbeam, Ding-dong, the Jimmy Johns. I did love Little Aunt Em, however, with her “I smack my lips over life” outlook. Meddlesome Aunt Irene could have been less one-dimensional; Jody’s adoption by the Titus sisters is contrived (and closest in plot to Anne); and Jane’s late illness felt unnecessary. While frequent ellipses threatened to drive me mad, Montgomery has sprightly turns of phrase: “A dog of her acquaintance stopped to speak to her, but Jane ignored him.”
Could this have been one of the earliest stories of a child who shuttles back and forth between separated or divorced parents? I wondered if it was considered edgy subject matter for Montgomery. There is, however, an indulging of the stereotypical broken-home-child fantasy of the parents still being in love and reuniting. If this is a fairytale setup, Grandmother is the evil ogre who keeps the princess(es) locked up in a gloomy castle until the noble prince’s rescue. I’m sure both Toronto and PEI are lovely in their own way – alas, I’ve never been to Canada – and by the end Montgomery offers Jane a bright future in both.
Small qualms aside, I loved reading Jane of Lantern Hill and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the Anne books. It’s full of the magic of childhood. What struck me most, and will stick with me, is the exploration of how the feeling of being at home (not just having a house to live in) is essential to happiness. (University library) 
#ReadingLanternHill
Buy Jane of Lantern Hill from Bookshop.org [affiliate link]
Kinds of Love: Three Books for Valentine’s Day
At about this time of year I try to read a handful of books with “love” in the title. I’m currently reading Iris Murdoch’s The Sacred and Profane Love Machine for the #IMReadalong, and I have one more “love” title towards the end of this post, but it turns out that my focus this year has been more on the kinds of love that tend to get ignored around Valentine’s Day – familial love for one’s ageing parents and grandparents.
Be With: Letters to a Carer by Mike Barnes (2018)
Mike Barnes, a Toronto poet and novelist, has been a primary caregiver for his mother, Mary, in the nine years since her Alzheimer’s diagnosis disease. She grew up on a Saskatchewan farm and is now in her nineties; he’s in his sixties. A bipolar sufferer, Barnes has spent his own fair share of time in hospitals and on disability. He’s moved Mary between care homes four times as her condition has deteriorated. Though he laments her gradual loss of words and awareness of her family, he can still discern instances of her bravery and the beauty of life.
This book of fragments – memories and advice delivered via short letters – was written in between demanding caregiving tasks and is meant to be read in those same gaps. Dementia is one situation in which you should definitely throw money at a problem, Barnes counsels, to secure the best care you can, even round-the-clock nursing help. However, as the title suggests, nothing outweighs simply being there. Your presence, not chiefly to make decisions, but just to sit, listen and place a soothing hand on a forehead, is the greatest gift.
There are many excellent, pithy quotations in this book. Here are a few of my favorites:
Dementia is…
“a retreat under fire”
“a passage of exquisite vulnerability”
By your loved one’s side is “Not where things are easy, or satisfactorily achieved, or achievable, or even necessarily pleasant. But where you ought to be, have to be, and are. It brings a peace.”
The goal is “Erring humanely”.
I can imagine this being an invaluable companion for caregivers, to be tucked into a pocket or purse and pulled out for a few moments of relief. On the theme of a parent’s dementia, I’d also recommend Paulette Bates Alden’s book of linked short stories, Unforgettable.
My rating: 
Out now from Myriad Editions. My thanks for the free copy for review.
The Smallest Things: On the enduring power of family: A memoir of tiny dramas by Nick Duerden (2019)
Journalist Nick Duerden always appreciated how his maternal grandparents, Nonna and Nonno, seemed so ordinary and unchanging. Every trip to see them in the Milan suburbs was, comfortingly, the same. He’d muddle along with his meager Italian, and they’d look after him in their usual clucking way. It was only as he reached middle age and realized that his grandparents were undeniably very old – his grandmother is 99 and in a care home at the time of writing – that he realized how lucky he was to still have them in his life and how unlikely it was that they’d be around for much longer.
Duerden compares his small immediate family with his Spanish wife’s large extended one, and his uptight paternal grandparents with the more effusive set. There are also some family secrets still to uncover. I made the mistake of reading a previous nonfiction book of Duerden’s just the week before this one: Get Well Soon (2018), which has a long chapter about his grandparents that told me all I needed to know about them. That’s probably the main reason why this short book struck me as lightweight, though I did ultimately find it a touching tribute, especially to his grandmother. It could make a good Mother’s Day present.
My rating: 
Out today from Elliott & Thompson. My thanks for a proof copy for review.
Love Story by Erich Segal (1970)
This offbeat novella was a bestseller and a successful film. You surely know its most famous line: “Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry.” Oliver Barrett IV is a golden boy: his banker father and previous generations of the eminent Barrett family funded various buildings at Harvard, where Oliver is a hockey player in the late 1960s. Jenny Cavilleri, on the other hand, comes from a single-parent Italian-American family in New Jersey. She’s made it to Radcliffe as a harpsichordist, but her father is just a baker; she’d never be considered good enough for the likes of Oliver. But they meet at the Radcliffe library and, sure enough, fall for each other. She calls him “Preppie”; he calls her a bitch. They’re only partially joking. It may be true love against the odds, but it has an expiration date, as we know from the first line: “What can you say about a twenty-five-year old girl who died?”
I wanted to like this more. There’s a pleasing lightness to the style, but because the whole book is from Oliver’s perspective, I felt like Jenny got short shrift: she’s the wise-cracking gal from the block, and then she’s the innocent victim in the hospital bed. Because this is only about 120 pages, there’s not much space in between for her character to be developed. I was somewhat appalled to learn about a 1977 sequel in which Oliver finds a new love.
(Segal’s daughter Francesca is also a novelist (The Innocents).)
My rating: 
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 