book review - fiction

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine – Gail Honeyman 

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There’s a famous quote about people not remembering what you said but only what you made them feel. I’ve always felt this is equally applicable to books. It is not the structure or the grammar but the voice of a book, the story it tells and how it connects to you personally.

Eleanor Oliphant is awkward and judgemental and even unpleasant at times, but her flaws, her feelings and her (occasionally very dark) humour feel so real. Honeyman writes about extreme experiences and situations in a way that make them relatable – who hasn’t felt lost or isolated or out of place at some point? Who hasn’t had a moment where they needed someone else to remind them that they deserve to be happy too? She also makes you laugh, which is a massive achievement given the subject matter. And  Eleanor loves books, especially ones with dogs in…so I’m completely sold!

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book review - fiction

Oranges are not the only fruit – Jeanette Winterson

by mugginshere4 Comments on Oranges are not the only fruit – Jeanette Winterson

Winterson describes this book as a work of fiction based on her childhood. It is beautifully written and funny and moving. A young girl who’s upbringing by an Evangelist mother makes it difficult for her to accept her sexuality, It is about feeling that you don’t quite fit in, not being sure of yourself and at the same time being sure you are not fully able to be yourself. I love the way chapters wander into fairytales just as children do when they want to escape. There are also fantastic reminders of growing up in Britain in the 60s/70s (which is a nice nostalgia trip for those of us who grew up then or grew up hearing about it).

My copy is full of sweet wrappers (orange Clubs and Penguins) where there were quotations I wanted to remember.

Here are some favourites:

On books:

In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn’t change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.

On whelks:

Whelks are strange and comforting. They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly. But they have a strong sense of personal dignity. Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar there is something noble about a whelk.

And my favourite:

Happiness is not a potato

(Although I’d say this is debatable as potatoes can definitely make you happy.)

From: That bookshop raid in Nailsworth (don’t worry, I paid for my plunder!)

Read: While on a mini-break with friends in the Cotswolds (cos I’m sociable like that) and finished the evening I got home.

Felt: drawn in, entertained, amused, heartbroken. All the things. And so very grateful that people are much more accepting, or openly able to be themselves in glorious technicolour now.

Would recommend: to everyone.

book review - fiction

Good Behaviour – Molly Keane

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The bookshop owner said she’d just finished this and kept accidentally referring to it as ‘Bad Behaviour’ which I think says it all. Everyone here functions on their own terms and for their own ends. The art of Keane’s writing is that she has created characters that do awful things but seem not to be completely awful themselves. People do things mistakenly, out of misjudged love or hope or impulse. There is a lot of love but it is often either miscommunicated or misunderstood. There are also a lot of caricatures and absurdities but they hardly stand out in the bizarre world we are thrown into.

We see it all through the eyes of Aroon, the daughter of an aristocratic Irish family in the early part of the 1900s. Aroon doesn’t always quite understand what is going on around her, initially because she is a child and later perhaps because she continues to be treated like a child. This does mean that you are never entirely sure what is actually going on which just adds to the oddness. There is something so basic and understandable in Aroon’s yearning to be loved that you struggle to judge her too harshly.

No-one in this is wholly good or bad or even sane, but despite them being bonkers they are occasionally very insightful or relatable.

From: A lovely little bookshop in Nailsworth, where I went in saying ‘I’ll just fill my pockets’ and left with armfuls of books for our walk home

Read: while ‘snowed in’ and therefore forced to sit on the sofa, read and eat biscuits – it’s a hard life.

Felt: so bombarded by absurdities so that by half way through I was startled every time anyone seemed to have any sense or do anything normal.

Would recommend: this is a quick and interesting read. Because the narrator doesn’t always understand what is going on you have to do a bit of guesswork which actually makes it quite an engaging read.

 

book review - fiction

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

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This book is one of my favourites. I’ve read it repeatedly since first being introduced to it at school. It is beautifully written and Plath’s prose is as poetic as her poems. She has a knack for capturing the essence of anything in just a few lyrical words; from a thought or feeling to a whole situation or personality. It is one of the few books I have read that  portrays someone with serious mental health issues and manages to emphasise the severity of their experience alongside their humanity, or ‘normality’ if you will. Esther Greenwood may be increasingly detached, depressed, delusional and struggling to engage with the world around her, but she is still just a girl who loves a bath.

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure but I don’t know many of them.

I never feel so much myself as when I’m in a hot bath

And just try to tell me you have never stood somewhere beautiful, looked around and felt this..

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”

Plath shows you someone who is incredibly vulnerable and almost naive about life, but she is also intelligent and has had to make her own deductions about what is going on and what is expected of her. She also shows you other people’s reactions to mental health, and while some of the treatments have moved on since this was written in 1963 not all attitudes have. Continue reading “The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath” →

book review - fiction

The Island of Sheep – John Buchan

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This was a great romp of an adventure story, with a bit of falconry, a trip to Scotland and a remote island thrown in. I loved it but I know that’s mainly because it is a mix of all my favourite things so I’m not recommending you rush out and track this down!

Reading the notes on the author, John Buchan not only wrote the 39 steps but published FIVE books while at university.  This man came from a family that was not at all wealthy, attended grammar school in Glasgow and was awarded scholarships to the University of Glasgow (which is beautiful) and then to Oxford where he couldn’t even afford to dine in college – and yet he ended up Governor-general of Canada. From the way this man describes grand landscapes and being outdoors, I bet that country suited him just fine!

Found: Oxfam bookshop

Read: on the train

Felt: swept up into a good old fashioned adventure story

Would recommend: to people who like a bit of early 1900s escapism

 

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a glimpse of the University of Glasgow

 

national trust

Muggins goes to Lacock – the greenhouse

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Lacock has so much to offer, you could spend the whole day there and still want to go back the next. The quintessentially cotswold village and the striking abbey and grounds usually steal the headlines, but my favourite is the greenhouse tucked out of the way. Not too big or too grand but absolutely blooming with plants, flowers and fruit, from the veg plots to the vines.

Just look at that workspace. Absolutely green with envy this end – what a place to potter!

book review - fiction

The Plague – Albert Camus

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I’ve not even finished the book yet, and I’ve filled multiple pages with incredible, insightful quotes. I’ve found it fascinating to read about an epidemic now that so many people I know work with infectious diseases, although this book is less about a town dealing with an outbreak and much more about humans dealing with each other. Camus examines how people and their relationships respond to pressure, hardship, fear and hope. In places, the book reads almost like a sermon. There is one haunting paragraph that rings so clear and true; the writing is raw and powerful and, even in translation, it still sounds like poetry. This quote:

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.

 

book review - fiction

Mere Anarchy – Woody Allen

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In all honesty, I don’t know that much about Woody Allen other than some people find him funny. I love a funny book and so picked this up as an antidote to the excellent but sad book I was reading at the time. While I did find this book amusing, in a wry smile kind of way, it was also hard work. Allen’s writing is pretty laboured, full of long convoluted sentences that are very clever but in a ‘look at me I’m writing something wonderfully clever and wildly amusing’ style. I prefer the understated sort of humour that sneaks up on you and makes you laugh out loud.  Thank goodness this is a short story collection because I could only muster the required energy to wade through it in short stints. The stories were interesting, neat little jibes at the weird world we live in – often based on short news clippings. And they were really quite clever, I just wish they didn’t have to make such a laborious display of it.

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book review - non-fiction

A Traveller’s Life – Eric Newby

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I am ridiculously fond of this book. It reads as if a very exciting and slightly eccentric uncle has come to stay and is sat in a battered leather armchair telling tales – each story as unexpected as the last. It is the best kind of travel writing; stuffed full of character, carting you off to places that may not even exist anymore, and never being quite sure what’s around the next bend.

Newby had a fantastic life and treats all of it as an adventure. The domestic details of growing up in London in the early 1900s are spun out with as much energy and colour as his travels abroad. It is nothing short of bizarre to find the man best known for ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ spent a good few years of his life working in Ladies’ Fashion, and for John Lewis at that. As my own grandfather worked in a similar role in London in the 50s and 60s, it was rather touching to see this section of his life written with the same humour and energy as the more naturally exhilarating setting of crewing a tall ship across the ocean.

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walk then pub

West Wittering Away

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Beach huts
Sanderling takes flight
St. Peter and St. Paul’s church
‘Gone to Beach’
West Itchenor Harbour
Guineafowl at the pub

 

So this is actually walk, drive, walk a bit, drive a bit, pub – there are pubs nearer the beach but we plumped for one that was highly recommended and within stumbling distance of where we were staying. We were lucky to have sunshine but the chill wind meant this was pretty much the only outdoor activity in a winter getaway that mainly involved sitting by the fire, playing games and sipping whisky. This is less a walking guide and more of a verbal ramble about a really very beautiful part of West Sussex.

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