Savidge Reads’ Books of 2015 Part Two…

And so we arrive at the last day of 2015 and my last selection of books of the year. Yesterday I gave you the books that I loved the most this year that were actually published originally before 2015 (yes, even the ones that came out in paperback in 2015 but were in hardback before then) and today I am sharing the books that I loved the most that came out this year. You can probably all hazard a guess at the winner. Without further waffle or ado, here are the twelve books I really, really, really loved that came out in 2015; you can click on the titles to go to my full reviews, with one exception…

11.

Starting off my list is a book by my favourite author which made does something incredible with a single paragraph that changes the whole meaning of book. Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins charmed me, entertained me, thrilled me, beguiled me and then in the simplest, smallest and most understated of moments completely broke me when I never expected it to. It is also a wonderful insight into what it is that makes us human, what can make anyone of us become a hero and the highs and lows that might follow such an act. Kate Atkinson is a master of storytelling, character and celebrating those simple day to day moments (and people) we often overlook.

10.

A Place Called Winter is a blooming marvellous story. Gale is brilliant at placing you into the heads and hearts of his characters, mainly because his prose calls for us to empathise with them, even if we might not want to. We have all been in love, we have all done things we regret, we have all fallen for a rogue (or two or three), we have all felt bullied and the outsider at some point, we have all had an indiscretion and left the country to become a farmer in a foreign land… Oh, maybe not that. Yet even when our protagonist goes through things we haven’t Gale’s depiction and storytelling make us feel we are alongside Harry. We live Harry’s life with him; the highs and the lows, the characters and situations good or bad.

9.

Grief is still something that we modern human folk are pretty rubbish at. It is something that we don’t like to talk about along with its frequent bedfellow death. I have often felt that in The West and particularly in Britain we are told to keep a stiff upper lip and get on with it. In reality this doesn’t help. If we are going through it we bottle it inside, isolate ourselves and tend to make it look like we are fine. When people are grieving we tend to find ourselves unsure what to do and either go one of two ways by being over helpful (and accidentally overbearing in some cases) or by distancing ourselves from people thinking they probably don’t want our help or need us in their faces – or maybe that is just me. Yet until we talk about it more, in all its forms, we won’t deal with it better individually or as a society, so thank goodness for people like Cathy Rentzenbrink who have the bravery, for it is a very brave act, to share their real life experiences with grief in a book like The Last Act of Love.

8.

Physical is a stunning, raw and direct look at what it is to be male. It celebrates the male physique in all its forms as much as it celebrates the foibles of the male species. It is a collection that asks a lot of questions, primarily ones such as in the poem Strongman, which asks ‘What is masculinity if not taking the weight?’ Be you male or female you need to read this collection. Books, poems and stories are all about experiencing the world of others and walking in their shoes, Physical excels at this and from an unusual and original view point.

7.

If I told you that you should really read a book set during the Troubles in Ireland which throws in poverty, religion, sexuality and violence, both domestic and political, you would probably look at me in horror, which is why The Good Son is such a brilliant book. It has all of those elements in their unflinching rawness and yet with Mickey’s voice and cheeky sense of humour McVeigh gives us an image of an incredibly difficult and fractured time in some sort of rainbow technicolor whilst with a very black and white viewpoint. It is something I have not experienced before and I thought it was marvellous. It also gives us hope.

6.

I loved, and hugged, Mobile Library which is frankly some of the highest praise that I can give it. It is a book that reminds you of the magic of books, friendship, family and love without any magic having actually occurred. It is also an adventure story, possibly the most quintessentially British road trip novel you could encounter. It is also a book that despite being marketed for adults, I think many a ‘youth’ should read as I think it will remind them of the brilliance of reading and the fun it can be, as much as it reminds we adults of all ages, of just the same thing. I’m a massive fan of books, Mobile Library reminded me why whilst making me even more of a fan.

5.

Faber and Faber, 2015, hardback, fiction, 128 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

It is no surprise that from the title of a novel such as Grief is the Thing with Feathers the subject is going to be, you guessed it, grief. Whilst the idea of members of a family coming to terms with the passing of a loved one and the effect this has on them might not be the newest of subjects, I think it is safe to say that I have never read a book that describes the varying emotions of grief in such an honest and fractured way. We see grief through the eyes of the three people in the house, a father and two sons, as they try to come to a way of understanding the loss that now surrounds them and the blank unknown of what lies ahead. Into this space appears Crow an unwelcome guest who is both helpful and hindering and who will stay put until these three no longer need him.

4.

As the Yorkshire Ripper began his several years of killing women, Una herself was the victim of sexual abuse. Una looks back on this period in hindsight and looks at how the situation around the Yorkshire Ripper and the attitude towards predatory men and their victims not only caused the murder of many innocent women and the pain and loss to their families and loved ones, but how the ‘victim blaming’ culture of the time also affected people like Una who were the victims of crimes that went undetected/unsolved or people feared reporting. Becoming Unbecoming is a very brave, important and thought provoking book. I urge you all to add it to your reading stacks and talk about it once you have.

3 (=).

So here is the thing my next choice, Joanna Cannon’s The Trouble With Goats and Sheep, it is not actually out until the end of next month, however I had the delight of reading it in advance early this year and fell completely in love with the writing, the characters, everything. So really I couldn’t save it until my best of 2016 list even though I know I will read it again in the new year! My review is set to go live around release but for now I will tease you with this – England 1976. Mrs Creasy is missing and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands. And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find much more than they imagined…

3 (=).

The Natural Way of Things is a book that will shock many of its readers for all the right reasons. By the end you will be enraged as to why women are still subjected to ‘slut shaming’ and victim blaming if they speak out about something bad? That is the dark root at the heart of this novel from which everything else spirals, only not out of control as scarily you could imagine this happening. That is where the book really bites, its reality and its all too apparent possibility. Shocking all the more because what seems extreme isn’t the more you think about it. This is a fantastically written horrifying, whilst utterly compelling, story that creates a potent set of questions within its readers head and asks you to debate and seek out the answers yourself. I cannot recommend reading it enough. (It is out in the UK in June but already available in Australia, I suggest trying to get it early!)

2.

I do love it when a book takes me by surprise, even more so when one takes me out of my comfort zone. What makes this all the better is when this comes at the least expected time. This happened with All Involved by Ryan Gattis which when I was first emailed about, being told it was the tale of the 1992 LA Riots from a spectrum of seventeen witnesses and participants, I instantly thought ‘that isn’t my cup of tea’. Thank goodness then for several people raving about it and saying I must read it because one I started I couldn’t stop reading, even when I sometimes wanted to. It is a book that has stayed with me ever since I read it and lingers in my brain, when it is out in paperback everyone I know is getting a copy.

1.

So my book of the year will not surprise many of you. I think A Little Life is just incredible, it is a novel that looks at love, friendship, loss, pleasure, pain, hope, survival, failure and success. It is a book about class, disability, sexuality and race. Overall it is a book about what it means to be a human. It’s amazing, it is also brutal. Saying that you read a book like A Little Life I actually think does it a disservice as it is one of those all encompassing books that you live through. It is rare that a book as it ends leaves you feeling a somewhat changed person to the one who started it, that is what happened to me and is probably why this will be one of my all time reads. (Yes, I stick to that claim and you can hear me on Hear Read This defending that statement in a special that went live recently!)

*********************************************************************************

So there we are the first half of my books for the year. I do feel like I should give some honourable mentions to A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass, Everything is Teeth by Evie Wyld & Joe Sumner, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and two corking crime novels Little Black Lies by Sharon Bolton and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, I don’t care if this is deemed as cheating. Let me know your thoughts on those in my first list you have read. Oh and fancy ending the year/starting the new by winning some books then head here. What have been some of your books of 2015?

Double Delights (And End of Year Thank You Giveaway)

As it is unusual that anyone buys me books as Christmas presents, because understandably they think that I have probably read it or have it within reach, and so to make up for this I treat myself to a book or four two to compensate. Well imagine my surprise when after I ordered myself the treat of Anthony Marra’s collection of short stories The Tsar of Love and Techno (which has been out in the US for a few months but isn’t out until August 2016 and I couldn’t wait after loving A Constellation of Vital Phenomena so much) and then a parcel from America turned up in the post, which I had no idea was coming, and I opened it to discover… A signed copy of that very book, which then was followed by the one I ordered on Tuesday!

So I thought as a lovely person has done such a lovely thing and I like to think I am a lovely person (most of the time) I would give one of you a copy as a thank you for being lovely folk who pop by, leave comments, have a chat on Twitter etc. Then I thought why not go one step further. You see after the shelve sorting I not only discovered all the books I meant to read this year, I also discovered all the books that I had doubled up copies of, so I thought I would give those away too. So joining a copy of Anthony’s The Tsar of Love and Techno are the following…

• Nora Webster – Colm Toibin
• Stammered Songbook – Erwin Mortier
• The Well – Catherine Chanter
• How To Be Both – Ali Smith
• The Room – Jonas Karlsson

Yes, I think that is a decent thank you for popping by, commenting or lurking and lingering, ha! Oh and it is open worldwide as you lovely lot visit from all over the place! So what do you have to do to win these treats? Well as The Tsar of Love and Techno is a book that was out in 2015 and will be out in 2016 (which sounds bonkers doesn’t it?) I would like to know which book was your favourite read of 2015 AND which book you are most looking forward to in 2016? You have until the clock strikes midnight  in the UK and 2016 officially begins, then I will announce the winner in this post (which will be updated, so keep your eyes peeled) sometime on the 1st of January 2016! Good luck, and thank you again for being a lovely bookish bunch.

Update: Very belatedly, because of being a bit busy, I have finally pulled a draw for the winner from the 47 eligable responses and the winner is…

Who is Frances Evangelista (@nonsuchbook), congratulations! I have dropped you an email and will be winging that pile of books out to you next week, hoorah! Commiserations to everyone else, though there will be many more giveaways in 2016 I am sure.

Savidge Reads’ Books of 2015 Part One…

So we have hit the penultimate day of 2015, where does the time go? Back by popular demand (well David kindly asked me) is the first of my two lists of the books that I loved most in 2015. Today’s selection for your delectation are the books that I have loved the most this year that were actually published originally before 2015 (yes, even the ones that came out in paperback in 2015 but were in hardback before then) which means some classics have given way to more modern books but this really reflects my tastes in general. More on that another time though. Without further waffle or ado, here are the first twelve books I really, really, really loved in 2015; you can click on the titles to go to my full reviews, with one exception…

11.

2015 has been a year that has seen me devour and enjoy more graphic novels and memoirs than ever before and I have loved it. Undoubtedly that love was started this year with The Encyclopaedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg which combines history, myths and fairytales (with a slightly wonky twist) to create a wonderful visual world of Vikings, giants, gods, eskimo’s and more and celebrates the marvels of great stories and wonderful storytelling. A delight from start to finish.

10 (=).

If you’d told me back at the start of 2015 that one of my books of the year would involve giant mutant preying grasshoppers /praying mantises then I would have laughed in your face. This would have been a) cruel and b) completely wrong. Grasshopper Jungle is a thrilling, gripping and entertaining rollercoaster of a read that looks at love, sexuality, friendship and how to survive if mutant killer insects who only want to breed and eat take over the world. What more could you ask for?

10 (=).

From the off, and indeed throughout, the world in Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours is, to be frank, pretty f***ed up. (I honestly tried quite hard to not use ‘the f bomb’ but it is the only word that seems apt.) Girls are now bred, yes bred, for three reasons. They can become a companion to the men in society who can afford it and have babies, which will only be boys as these girls have been bred to be breeders of the male line; they can become a concubine, and have sex (with no babies) with all the men in society who can afford it; or they can become chastity’s and shave their heads, wear black gowns and raise more manufactured young girls to keep the cycle ticking along. See, I told you, f***ed up, and that is only the beginning. I have a feeling Louise O’Neill is one of those authors whose careers we are just going to watch grow and grow and grow. Atwood, watch out, ha!

9.

Before I read it, I had some really odd preconceived ideas about H. G. Well’s The Invisible Man. First up I thought that it was a tome of some several hundred pages, wrong, it is a novella. Secondly I thought that it was set in the 1970’s (impossible as it was written in 1897) and involved some old man in a mackintosh who smoked, wrong, that is just something I naively surmised from an old 70’s edition of the book my mother had on her shelves. Thirdly I didn’t think I would enjoy it in any way shape or form, so wrong. What I got was an incredibly dark and sinister novel that suddenly becomes both incredibly moving and incredibly disturbing as you read on. Naturally with that in mind, I absolutely loved this book.

8.

Imagine if Thomas Hardy and Cormac McCarthy had a bastard lovechild… He would be Benjamin Myers in my humble opinion and I think Beastings testifies that notion. I almost don’t feel I need tos say more, but I will. We know it is raining, we know that a young woman has fled the house she was living in with a baby that isn’t hers, we also have the sense that both her and the baby were in danger. We soon learn that she is being followed, although hounded/stalked sounds more sinisterly appropriate, and is heading for a secret island somewhere off the coast. Because on an island in the ocean no-one can sneak up on you. The question is if she can get through the forests and mountains of Cumbria and head to the ocean without being caught and without hardly any supplies. And with that, we are off…

7.

I only recently devoured Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None yet it shot straight into my top ten without hesitation. Ten strangers are sent to an island under false pretenses, they are soon all accused of murder or implicated in a death, then they start to die one by one following the pattern of an old nursery rhyme. The premise is impossible, yet as Agatha Christie’s fantastic novel unfolds we soon come to learn that anything is possible, no matter how chilling or unbelievable it might first appear. An utterly stupendous thriller, once you have read it you understand why it is the biggest selling murder mystery in the world, ever.

6.

Sometimes all I want as a reader is a bloody good story. I want a twisting plot, characters that walk of the page and that you love, hate or preferably a bit of both. I want mystery and intrigue. I want to be taken to a world I know nothing about and get lost in it and its entire atmosphere. I can be a right demanding so and so however Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist delivered all this to me in abundance as it took me on a gothic journey with Nella as she walked onto the threshold of Brant house in Amsterdam 1686.

5.

2015 has also been a year where memoirs have been a hit, in several cases centring around grief and this is one of those. H is for Hawk is an incredibly special kind of read, which all the above culminates towards, simply put it is a generously open, honest and brutal yet beautiful book. Helen Macdonald takes us completely into her life and her world at a time when she was at her most broken and vulnerable and shares that with us in all its technicolour splendour of emotions. You will laugh, you will cry and you will have felt incredibly privileged to have spent time in the company of Helen, Mabel the Goshawk and the writer T.H. White.

4.

Until this year I had never read a word of Patricia Highsmith’s, well don’t I feel a fool after reading this. Deep Water is one of the most entertaining, snarky, camply dark, vicious and twisted psychological thrillers I have read. It is also one of the most unusual as the reader watches a sociopath come to the fore from their normally meek mild mannered self… and we egg him on and like him, even understanding him oddly, the whole time. It is a fascinating insight into the mind of a killer, if this is a prime example of what Highsmith fondly described as “my psychopath heroes”, I can’t wait to meet the rest.

3.

It seems that 2015 was the year of insects in fiction for me, this time with bees and heaven forefend ones that talk. From this alone I should have had some kind of anaphylactic shock to this book (see what I did there) however I was completely won over by the story of Flora as she works her way through and up the hive in Laline Paull’s wondrous debut The Bees. I have been talking about this book ever since and also been boring as many people as possible with the fascinating facts I learnt about these winged beings as I read. A book which for me had it all; brilliant writing, fantastic pace, fantastic facts and a real heart looking at class, religion and women’s rights.

2.

Now then, this is the book I have yet to review and yet is a book which took over my life as I was enravelled in the whole life of another man, Logan Mountstuart. A man which I am still struggling to believe isn’t real as his diaries from 1923 – 1998, which make up William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, take us through school romps, to wild affairs, marriages, more affairs, wars and gossip with famous people through the decades and give us not only a vivid encounter with the recent history of Britain and its endeavours (which take us all over the world) but celebrate the lives of us strange folk and the power of the pen and the written word. Ruddy marvellous and a complete and utter nightmare to review hence why I haven’t managed as yet. You can hear me talking about it here though.

1.

I talked about book tingles earlier in the year, that wonderful feeling you get when you read a book and the words just wash over you and you know everything in this book in front of you is going to encapsulate everything you love about reading. Carys Davies’ The Redemption of Galen Pike had that for me within paragraphs of it’s very first story. In this collection we are taken to places all over the world, to all walks of life and never given the story we expect in the beginning but something so much more; be it funny, dark or magical. It was a book that arrived completely new to me, no hype or anything and completely bowled me over. I adore this book with all my heart, it brought joy to my beardy face for the whole time I read it.

*********************************************************************************

So there we are the first half of my books for the year. I do feel like I should give some honourable mentions to Susan Barker’s The Incarnations, Susan Hill’s I’m The King of the Castle and Kirsty Logan’s The Rental Heart, but that will be deemed as cheating. Let me know your thoughts on those in my first list you have read and do pop and see my next list tomorrow. What have been some of your books of 2015?

Should Have, Would Have, Could Have Read/s 2015

I thought I would sneak in a quick post before my final book review of the year and my posts on my top reads of the year go live over the next few days before a shiny new year opens before us. (I love a new year, have I mentioned this before, it is like the epic version of a night of new bed linen.) Anyway, I have been having a small sorting out of the shelves before the new year begins and discovered, to my slight horror, that I there have been lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of books that have come out this year that I have meant to read, haven’t and have that slight ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ feeling about them all. There were about 50 – just a small amount – but I whittled it down to 22 (I am rubbish at whittling down, very good at whittling on) and here they are in no particular order…

I Saw a Man – Owen Sheers
Girl at War – Sara Novic
Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff
Delicious Foods – James Hannaham
The Year of the Runaways – Sunjeev Sahota
The Heart Goes Last – Margaret Atwood
The Shore – Sara Taylor
The Fisherman – Chigozie Obioma
Devotion – Ros Barber
Daydreams of Angels – Heather O’Neill
Did You Ever Have a Family – Bill Clegg
Before the Feast – Sasa Stanisic
Beatlebone – Kevin Barry
Public Library – Ali Smith
Music for Wartime – Rebecca Makkai
Trans: A Memoir – Juliet Jacques
An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It – Jessie Greengrass
I’m Jack – Mark Blacklock
The Loney – Andrew Micheal Hurley
The Not Dead and The Saved – Kate Clanchy
Mislaid & The Wallcreeper – Nell Zink

I am not a believer in regrets or of ‘what if’s’ so I have simply decided to be excited about the fact that a) books don’t go anywhere unless you remove them from your life yourself b) these will all be out in paperback over the next year so I can talk to you about them all then. Plus I am 95% sure I am going to love these as people I know who read them really, really did.  Are these going to be my first reads of 2016? No. I have decided I am going right off on reading tangents next year, more on that in the next few days. I just thought I would share these ones with you in the interim. We all love a selection of books and a bookshelf to nosey at don’t we?

Have any of you read any of these and what did you make of them? Which are the books you should have, would have, could have read?

The Vegetarian – Han Kang

It seems apt to be posting a review (which I meant to post last week) about this novel at a time when the idea of eating anymore meat makes me feel slightly queasy post Christmas dining like a loon. The Vegetarian by Han Kang is a book I have had on my shelves since this time last year, however the buzz and word of mouth praise around it had been building and building. Then when a copy of her next novel to be translated (again by Deborah Smith) Human Acts landed through my letter box I was reminded that I needed to get a wriggle on and read the first, erm, first.

Portobello Books, 2015, paperback, fiction, 186 pages, translated by Deborah Smith kindly sent by the publisher

When The Vegetarian opens we are taken into the rather contented, safe and traditional world (as he sees it) of Mr Cheong. He describes how he met his wife, Yeong-hye, and fell for her not because of love but because she was basically very average, quite unremarkable and wouldn’t threaten his life or lifestyle. Okay, so she didn’t wear a bra which was rather shocking but nothing too radical, she would be a good ‘wife’ to him. That is until a few nights ago when he is awakened to his wife getting all the meat out the fridge and freezer, throwing it away and declaring that from now on she is a vegetarian. Her reason? All she will say to him is that she has had a dream and from there the novel starts to spiral, first with Mr Cheong (with a small detour to his shocked and appalled colleagues) and then Yeong-hye’s immediate family reacting badly, a reaction – when her father tried to force feed her pork – which is the start of a real change in Yeong-hye’s life and those close to her.

People turn vegetarian for all sorts of reasons: to try and alter their genetic predispositions towards certain allergies, for example, or else because it’s seen as more environmentally friendly not to eat meat. Of course, Buddhist priests who have taken certain vows are morally obliged not to participate in the destruction of life, but surely not even impressionable young girls take it quite that far. As far as I was concerned, the only reasonable grounds for altering one’s eating habits were the desire to lose weight, an attempt to alleviate certain physical ailments, being possessed by an evil spirit, or having your sleep disturbed by indigestion. In any other case, it was nothing but sheer obstinacy for a wife to go against her husband’s wishes as mine had done.

I don’t want to give too much away, I never do, yet I will need to give a few additional teasers to really get into the heart of why I loved the book and also the way it was written, structured and stunningly translated by Deborah Smith. The Vegetarian is a book in three parts, which were originally three separate novellas about several stages in Yeong-hye’s life. What is really interesting is that none of them are told by Yeong-hye herself. Firstly we have the story told by her husband from the lead up to the announcement of her vegetarianism and to the family dinner where it all unravels. In the second section we switch to the viewpoint of her brother in law as he becomes erotically obsessed with his sister in law and believes she will be part of his next great art work. The third is told through her sister as she visits Yeong-hye who is residing in an institution after a breakdown.

There was much I loved about the way in which this works for a reader. As we read on we gain insights and glimpses into the society in Korea, what it finds acceptable and inacceptable and what your role within that society is deemed to be. Yeong-hye is meant to be the perfect wife, the perfect sister, the perfect daughter, the perfect muse. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian, I say that flippantly because here in the UK it is a simple act, conspires to a full breakdown not only of Yeong-hye herself but of those close to her and even those who have only met her a few times and/or have to interact with her.

It is not just people and their roles or their expectations that Kang is looking at either. In the first part Mr Cheong looks at his career, the corporate world and the traditional roles of marriage and the expectation of each spouse. In the second part we look at the art world, the creative, the erotic and the role of desire (in good and bad ways) and society’s views on sex in and outside of a marriage. Thirdly we see society’s attitudes to mental health, and the health care system as it stands, which of course by its very nature defies ‘the norm’ or what is deemed acceptable behaviour. This last section I found incredibly powerful. Pressure and judgement is everywhere, one act can have major reverberations and one small fracture in a family can cause complete wreckage, whereupon who is left to pick up the pieces, if anyone wants to.

 ‘Ah, you’re visiting today?’
The woman is Hee-joo, how is receiving treatment for alcoholism and hypomania. Her body is stout but her round eyes give her a sweet look, and her voice is always somewhat hoarse. In this hospital, the patients who are in good control of their faculties look after those with more acute psychological problems, and receive a little pocket money in return; when Yeong-hye had grown difficult to manage, refusing point blank to eat, she had come under the care of Hee-joo.

It actually turns out that Yeong-hye is not the small act that lead to this, in a way is a case of her using some form of control to deal with another act from her past, which I don’t want to spoil for anyone who hasn’t read it because it is incredibly powerful, from a single line, when the penny drops. I was left feeling very numb for sometime afterwards. I will say no more on this part of the book, other than it is superbly, superbly done showing the power of Han Kang’s writing and Deborah Smith’s marvellous translation from the original Korean.

Speaking more of the writing, to avoid any spoilers, not a line is wasted in this book; it is precise, beautiful and quite searing. Kang manages to create scenes, landscapes and sections of society and the culture around it effortlessly – let us not forget this is a slim volume even made up of three novellas. Her triumph in The Vegetarian though is the creation of Yeong-hye and her story. Yeong-hye is at once a complete individual and also a symbol of many, many women and the pressure and expectation that is put on them. She speaks for no one and yet everyone, and yet she also never speaks. Her family, society and everyone else does the talking for her and yet somehow Kang makes these characters see her from only their viewpoint yet the reader is given her fully formed. The only things we ever hear from her are a few small sections from her dreams/nightmares and I think we all know what Kang is trying to say with this.

Dark woods. No people. The sharp-pointed leaves on the trees, my torn feet. This place, almost remembered, but I’m lost now. Frightened. Cold. Across the frozen ravine, a red barn-like building. Straw matting flapping limp across the door. Roll it up and I’m inside, it’s inside. A long bamboo stick struck with great blood-red gashes of meat, there’s no end to the meat, and no exit. Blood in my mouth, blood-soaked clothes sucked onto my skin.

If I am making this book sound to heavy it is honestly not, which is also what is so brilliant about it. There are some very funny, magical, titillating and sexy moments in the book amongst the thought provoking and questioning layers throughout. You can also just read this as being a book about a woman who decides to stop eating meat and become a plant. Yet The Vegetarian is so, so, so much more than that. It is a book that has imprinted itself on my brain and one I will be recommending to anyone and everyone, it is certainly one of my books of the year. I cannot wait to read Human Acts which I have on my bedside table waiting for the first week of January when I will devour it. If you haven’t read The Vegetarian yet I seriously recommend you do and will be reminding you so again in a few days – yes, it is one of my books of the year!

The Santa Klaus Murder – Mavis Doriel Hay

One of the highlights of my Christmas reading, and reading in general, last year was A Mystery in White a Christmas crime classic from the wonderful British Libraries crime classics series which I have been buying throughout the year since. So I decided to follow that tradition this year with another of their Christmas crime, The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay which I have been devouring over Christmas and Boxing Day. There is nothing like a murder mystery to take you away from the Christmas stress, something observed at the start of the book.

British Library Crime Classics, 1936 (2015 edition), paperback, fiction, 284 pages, bought by myself by myself

Those days of waiting for Christmas, after the family has collected at Flaxmere, are always difficult. The children are excited and noisy and everyone is on edge, being afraid that things won’t go smoothly and that Christmas Day will not be quite the festival of good will which we have a right to expect. Of course, none of us anticipated the shocking tragedy which was to occur, but I always do feel that families which have once broken up are best kept separate.

The Melbury family have all come together for Christmas despite the fact that there are several fractures within them. Lording it, quite literally, over them all is Sir Osmond Melbury who has spent much of his life dictating his children’s life through bribery over the inheritance they will or won’t have dependent on their actions. Well, bar his son George who being the son and having extended the line is safe in the knowledge he will be left with plenty. For the daughters it is quite a different affair. Hilda married and had a daughter, Carol, with someone Sir O didn’t like and who since being widowed hasn’t been disowned yet nor has she been helped. Edith and Eleanor have been wiser marrying the men that their father deemed fit; though one was lucky marrying someone she could love, the other a man she would have to despite loving someone else. Youngest of the brood Jennifer is now in a dilemma as she loves a man, Philip her father doesn’t, in fact invited this Christmas is Oliver who Sir Osmond is clearly much the keener on, shame then when he comes to be the one, dressed up as Santa, who discovers Sir Osmond shot in the head on Christmas Day and becomes the prime suspect.

Yet it soon turns out there are many more suspects that might have wanted to do away with Sir Melbury outside his own children as Colonel Halstock, Chief Constable of Haulmshire, discovers when he is called in to investigate. There is his sister, Aunt Mildred, who feels hard done by. There is the young pretty housekeeper/secretary, Grace Portisham, who seems to want to take over everything in the household and have it just so, and who might have something going on with the new chauffeur Bingham who she hired getting rid of lifelong chauffeur Ashmore. Oh and then there is Kenneth Stour who turns up to help the Colonel out but who might also have a motive as he is connected to one of the household in a way too. So many possible murderers appear when you’ve used your money to rule and dominate. Oh and I haven’t mentioned the clever plot twist which we learn early on either…

At the end of August, as soon as Eleanor, Edith and George had news from Jennifer of their father’s illness, they, and George’s wife, all swopped down on Flaxmere like birds of prey. They hovered around, with flutterings and solicitous inquiries after his health, which thinly disguised their anxious peering and pecking after any shred of evidence to the likeliness of his sudden death and the possibility that he was reconsidering his will.
“Very nice of you all to be so fond of me!” Sir Osmond sneered. “Now you can go back to your grouse and think no more of me until Christmas.”

You see before his death Sir Oswald, not being a complete patriarchal monster – just mostly, had decided it would be fun to have someone dress as Santa to give the gifts away, who I mentioned is none other than Oliver who becomes prime suspect. Well, this all gets all the more tricky when early on it is deduced that there was not one Santa Klaus but two, but were they working together or was one working with someone else in the house, or alone, to bump off the old miser and benefit from the money left after his death. This is all within the first 80 or so pages. So Colonel Halstock has a right old job on his hands and we the reader do too as we try and figure it all out, which of course I loved.

I really enjoyed Mavis Doriel Hay’s plotting and structure with the book. As the book starts out we are taken into the accounts of Philip, Hilda, Jennifer, Mildred and Grace who all give us their view of events on the lead up to the murder when Colonel Halstock takes over. We later (not much so I am not spoiling anything) discover that these were all accounts asked for from Halstock so he can try and work out who, if any of them, are telling the truth. This makes them all unreliable narrators, one of my favourite things in fiction, as some may remember things wrong or simply be lying whether it is to cover some family/illicit secret or the crime itself. It makes the plot all the trickier whilst making the characters all the more three dimensional. Brilliant.

I was shocked at the way these young people lied or prevaricated on the slightest excuse and then came out with another tale and confidently expected to be believed.

I good mystery set in an old rambling house and I found that The Santa Klaus Murder gave me exactly what I would want in that realm of the genre. It is packed with plot twists, a whole host of unreliable and secretive suspects plus has all the domestic drama that comes in a novel where familial inheritance and gain is key, whether that is the killers motive or not. I whizzed through it and didn’t even mind that we had only one murder to solve, I quite like a few to get my little grey cells ticking (ha), I was so whipped up in just which Santa Klaus had done it, if they had been helped and who they actually were underneath the fancy dress. It was just the escapism that I needed from all the Christmas madness going on in the real world, festive British Library Crime Classics are going to have to become a new tradition for me every year. I am also thrilled I have the other two Mavis Doriel Hay novels on my shelves for future reading any season.

Hear Read This is Back… And We Would Love You To Get Involved!

I hope all your turkey and trifle are settling down. I have to say I feel ridiculously full after two Christmas dinners and I have another coming on Wednesday with my mother. I may explode. Anyway, I thought I would pop a quick post up between reviews and my forthcoming best of 2015 lists to tell you the exciting news that the podcast Hear Read This is coming back very soon. First with an A Little Life special and then a new series in 2016. Hoorah.

Now if you are wondering what on earth I am talking about, firstly shame on you though you now had a backlog of podcast listening, let me explain. Many of you will know I host The Readers with Thomas, and before with Gavin, where we talk all sorts of book based banter every fortnight. Interspersed with that I also make the podcast You Wrote The Book where I interview an author (the latest one is with Michel Faber which the recording of was one of my highlights of the year, one of my fav authors – whose books I do not seem able to review – who was wonderful to spend time with) and chat about their books and the like for 25 minutes or so. On top of that once a month I have been known to join Rob and Kate of Adventures with Words along with Gavin to record Hear Read This; a podcast where four hosts discuss two books over one episode… well we used to.

We have had a break but have decided, after recording a very fun (for us anyway) Christmas special of Adventures with Words that we will be back in January with a bit of a twist for the return. Firstly we will only talk about one book a month; warts, spoilers and all. We shall still sing a books praise (A Month in the Country) or slate it from the roof tops (The Martian) or bicker and differ if the case demands it we will just go into it all in more detail. The other change is that each month we will each suggest a book and you get to vote for which one we read. Here are this months choices…

Which could possibly be my choice?

So which is it to be? Will it be some good old gothic with ghosts, apocalypses and more in Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial? A thrilling, dangerous and illicit love affair in Patricia Highsmith’s cult classic Carol? A collection of mythical beasts from all over the world in Gods, Memes and Monsters? Or will it be a world in where the Nazi’s won the war as envisioned by Philip K Dick with The Man in the Castle? You can choose by voting on the Hear Read This post here. And I would love, love, love you to vote – though I can’t tell you which one is my choice, though some of you may guess.

You have until the special A Little Life episode of Hear Read This with Rob and myself, where we come at the book from almost polar opposite opinions, which will go live soon. The winning title, along with how else you can be involved, will be announced on New Years Day, so you (and Rob, Kate, Gavin and I) can get spending your book vouchers asap and get reading! So which book is it to be?

And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie

I hope you have all had a marvellous Christmas? I certainly have so far. Those of you who have been kind enough to pop by over the last seven years will know that today, Boxing Day, is my very favourite day of the festive season. I love it because the stress of Christmas is gone, you generally end up seeing another set of family and so have all the grub and present delight but it is more of a slobbing day where you can wear your pyjamas for 70% of it and read, catch up on some telly or both. I am actually making the following two days additional Boxing Day’s I love it so much. Where does this link in with Agatha Christie? Well, it is the perfect day to read a classic crime and invariably there is one on the telly, tonight being the night a whole new adaptation of And Then There Were None starts, so I thought I’d better read the book before I watched it.

Harper Collins, 1939 (2011 USA edition), paperback, fiction, 247 pages, bought by myself for myself

Soldier Island! Why, there had been nothing else in the papers lately! All sorts of hints and interesting rumours. Though probably they were mostly untrue. But the house had certainly been built by a millionaire and was said to be absolutely the last word in luxury.

When eight strangers are separately invited to spend a weekend on Satin Island, they find their host missing with only the staff, Mr and Mrs Rogers, left to attend to them. After having settled in and having a pre-dinner drink they are all shocked to hear a message from an unknown voice telling them all of their complicity in various deaths. No sooner have they taken in the shock, one of their group suddenly dies and the poem ‘And Then There Were None’ hanging in their rooms along with the ten figurines in the dining room start to take on an even more sinister twist. Who is it who wants revenge on this party and why? More importantly with a murderer in their mist, who seems to be one of their own, will anyone survive?

From the very start of And Then There Were None I was hooked. As we travel with each member of the party by train, car and boat the tension is instantly racked up by the fact that we know from the off that they are being lied to. There’s also a wicked streak to it where  we know that doom is around the corner and the characters don’t, so we are ahead of them as the apprehension, tension and fear slowly dawns on the hapless guests and suspicions begins to mount. 

Mrs. Rogers had a flat monotonous voice. Vera looked at her curiously. What a white bloodless ghost of a woman! Very respectable-looking, with her hair dragged back from her face and her black dress. Queer light eyes that shifted the whole time from place to place.
Vera thought:
“She looks frightened of her own shadow.”
Yes, that was it – frightened!
She looked like a woman who walked in mortal fear.
A little shiver passed down Vera’s back. What on earth was the woman afraid of?

For me this novel is Agatha Christie at the most gothic and sinister that I have read her so far. She is also at her sharpest in terms of plotting. As I read on I had no idea who the victim might be (though thanks to the nursery rhyme I had the ability to guess how they might be bumped off) and certainly had no clue as to who the murderer was and if they were one of the group or not which is brilliantly puzzling. It seems impossible the more it goes on and then at the end I marvelled at Christie’s cleverness rather than feeling miffed I didn’t cotton on. Something only the best crime writers can achieve, especially as it does make sense (and there are some very clever clues left) by the end. She’s a genius.

It would be amiss of me not to mention this book without the history of the title which I think has somewhat unfairly labelled it as being a classic that is racist. Here me out… Firstly, language and times have changed thank goodness and the original title isn’t acceptable anymore, rightly so. I admit initially when one of the characters started saying some pretty anti-Semitic things I had a wobble until it clicked, Agatha Christie is pointing out how stupid and backward these attitudes and thoughts are. You are meant to flinch at the casual racism and sexism throughout.

“Ah, I understand you now. Well, there is that Mr. Lombard. He admits to having abandoned twenty men to their deaths.”
Vera said: “They were only natives…”
Emily Brent said sharply: “Black or white, they are our brothers.”
Vera thought: “Our black brothers – our black brothers. Oh, I’m going to laugh. I’m hysterical. I’m not myself…”

I actually think characters prejudices are all part of the plot, they certainly add to the flaws of all the characters and their unreliable nature. You might think ‘good on Emily Brent’  (above) one minute, before she launches a tirade about single mothers and women having children out of wedlock. None of these characters a lacking in prejudice, often it is this that has lead someone to the island and to their deaths. Christie is using a page turning novel to make a point and possibly educate a few people along the way about the ridiculous nature of some views, she does it without bashing them over the head (well, with the exception of some of the fates of her characters – is this symbolic?) or taking a moral high ground which turns any reader off frankly. We don’t want to be preached to and Agatha doesn’t, she just makes a point, with murder.

So there you have it, I can completely understand why And Then There Were None has gone on to become not only Agatha Christie’s best selling novel, but one of the bestselling thrillers/crime novels of all time. It certainly ties with Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (which is totally different but if you haven’t read you simply must) as my favourite of Christie’s novel and shows what an incredible master of plot she was. Highly recommended, if you aren’t one of the 100+ million people who have already read it!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I just wanted to wish you all a very, very, very, very Merry Christmas. I hope you have a wonderful day with loved ones! Eat, read, drink, love and be Merry…

And may all your Christmas wishes come true.

Lots of love and festive cheer,

Simon x

Becoming Unbecoming – Una

I am trying to remember when it was that I became convinced that Becoming Unbecoming was essential as part of my reading year. I think Emma Jane Unsworth might have mentioned it when I saw her last, which would make sense as she is quoted on the cover of my edition. I know I heard the author on BBC Woman’s Hour, of which I am one of the 40% of male listeners. Why it became an internal insistence in my brain that I must buy it and read it though I am not sure. Maybe it was just a hunch? If so, I must follow them more often because Becoming Unbecoming will no doubt be one of my books of the year.

Myriad Editions, 2015, paperback, graphic novel/memoir, 224 pages, bought by myself for myself

Becoming Unbecoming is Una’s memoir of a very difficult and tumultuous time in her life. As the Yorkshire Ripper began his several years of killing women, Una herself was the victim of sexual abuse. Una looks back on this period in hindsight and looks at how the situation around the Yorkshire Ripper and the attitude towards predatory men and their victims not only caused the murder of many innocent women and the pain and loss to their families and loved ones, but how the ‘victim blaming’ culture of the time also affected people like Una who were the victims of crimes that went undetected/unsolved or people feared reporting.

As you read on six strands form in your mind. The utter loneliness of a young girl who had been taken advantage of and why she didn’t want to speak out. The fear that spread for young girls everywhere at the time. The way in which so much innocence was lost at the time, not just in the victims and Una’s case but also in something prevalent in time, as highlighted by a small appearance from Jimmy Saville. The way prostitutes were portrayed by the press, and society succumbed, as almost being asked to be killed because of what they did for money. The inept way in which the police handled the case (in part because someone called a hoax, in part because they thought he was only killing prostitutes even when a victim was not one) and why people didn’t want to report it.

And the sixth, I hadn’t miscounted, is how this is still in our society today all around the world. Una highlights how we often sit in shock at what is happening in other countries around the world to women (in Africa, Syria, I could go on) and yet how we somehow forget that it is going on in the western world too, often through the digital world but also in schools just as it did when she was younger. It is an important message about the state of misogyny which is still rife and why we need more books like this and more projects and reactionary endeavours like Everyday Sexism and the like.

I like to think of myself as quite a forward thinking man, yet Una made me check something about myself that I hadn’t thought of before. Una talks about the keen interest in true crime especially in the cases of Peter Sutcliffe, Jack The Ripper, The Wests, where women are the victims. Now she isn’t judging readers on this, she is pondering it (I think). I then had this awful niggling doubt as to if that might be why I had initially felt I needed to read this book, because of the Yorkshire Ripper and my interest in him and some true crime.

Now before you jump the gun and go thinking the worst, there are a few reasons I have wanted to read around the Yorkshire Ripper. Firstly, you know that fear I mentioned earlier that young girls had at the time, my mother was 12 when Peter Sutcliffe and despite living several hundred miles away still remembers the fear in which she, her sisters and Mum all felt at the time. This has always stayed with me, how could someone cause such fear, what really happened. This I would say is more a history pondering than a true crime one. Secondly, I started (and had to put down but will try again) to read Dan Davies In Plain Sight, which won the Gordon Burn Prize this year and is about Jimmy Savile and mentions the Yorkshire Ripper also, it is a disturbing but important book about how we might spot predators and making sure they are not covered up. Thirdly, I went to a talk about I’m Jack which is a fictional account of the hoaxer I mentioned above and how it affected the case in such a disatourous way. I am now still debating in my head reading them as being some entertainment unwittingly at the expense of the victims or if it is about acknowledging awful acts in history and learning from them? I still have a lot of mulling over to do.

Sorry I got diverted there. As you can probably see Becoming Unbecoming is a memoir that will make you ponder, question and think. It does this in almost every frame and in the most subtle of ways. The best examples of this are the speech bubble which Una walks around with on her back (sometimes switched to wings) which as the story gets on gets larger with the burden she carries as she keeps the secrets within. There is also the way in which the story is interwoven into the artwork so you have to move the page around and really read it doubling the effect of the imagery as you see more and more. There is also the heart breaking ending, which actually made me cry, when Una looks at how her life has turned out so far and then ponders how the victims of Peter Sutcliffe’s might have turned out, an illustration of possibility for each. This really hits home not only at the loss of their lives but at the loss of any murder victims life and the loss of innocence of anyone who has been sexually abused, deeply affecting reading and imagery.

So as you can see Becoming Unbecoming is quite something. Una doesn’t like people to say she is brave for writing this book yet I think it is an incredibly brave act to use your experiences to highlight uncomfortable issues or important topics which need attention and debate; by default in doing so you open yourself up to scrutiny an opinion which must be a highly vulnerable position. Una is a very brave woman and Becoming Unbecoming is a very brave, important and thought provoking book. I urge you all to add it to your reading stacks and talk about it once you have.

Physical – Andrew McMillan

I don’t really feel qualified to write anything about Andrew McMillian’s debut collection of poems Physical because as we have discussed on here before, many a time, I am not one of poetry prowess. Poems on the whole tend to scare me, as I don’t feel I understand them as I should. (I mentioned this when I was discussing Sarah Lowe’s collection Loop of Jade a few weeks ago.) However a collection like Physical is one that you simply cannot ignore and I simply have to write about because it embodies, see what I did there, everything I want from poems and poetry… a reaction that hits me right at my core, an honest voice and an experience that fiction couldn’t conjure if it tried.

Chatto and Windus, 2015, paperback, poetry, 56 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

Physical, as the title might suggest, is all about the body. However as we read on (or as you might guess from the cover) we come to learn that this is all about the male body, what it can do, what is it meant to do, what it shouldn’t do, how it comes in all shapes and sizes, how it can be desired, loved and sometimes feared. Andrew McMillian’s debut collection is all about masculinity, no scrap that, Andrew McMillan’s debut collection is a book that ponders, despairs and celebrates what masculinity is meant to mean.

If this all sounds like I have gone bonkers, let me explain with the help of the first two poems. In the opener, Jacob With The Angel, and its follow up Urination McMillan plays with our expectations and turns them on their head. What we instantly think is about one thing, is another, something which might occasionally or often shock and surprise us. When we read Jacob With The Angel we initially thing of a classic, literally, poem of a religious scene however the more we read on we start to wonder if this is not in fact the meeting of two gay male lovers.

Similarly with Urination we think it is a poem about the awkwardness of urinating at such close proximity with a stranger (which remains odd no matter how old you get, especially if it’s your CEO and they want to chat to you which has happened to me in past jobs) and then swiftly turns into those domestic moments of ritual within a relationship, the moments we should treasure. This wonderful trickery is something I have only seen once before in that famous scene in Keith Ridgway’s equally brilliant, quirky and just as original novel Hawthorn & Child. In many of these poems we are pulled through the squeamish, the uncomfortable, the thrilling, the erotic, the joyous and the heartbreaking moments of men’s lives be they heterosexual, homosexual, undecided or it doesn’t really matter.

Admittedly there is a main focus on homosexual relationships, it is not the whole story though. Not that it should or would matter if it was. We all feel love and lust, we all compare ourselves to other people of the same sex, often admiring them even if there is nothing sexual in it. Plus when McMillam does write about sex or initimate moments between two men it is done directly and visually but always with a beauty even at its most base of moments. Sex is sex. Love is love. We all go through these things whatever gender, sexuality and race. It is all about how we relate to each other, men and men relating (or not) being one of the themes here too.

Speaking of which, back to the masculine nature of the collection though… There are a whole spectrum of machinations of masculinity, from the danger of Leda To Her Daughter to the questioning and pondering How To Be A Man from the erotically charged Saturday Night to the vulnerable and open Screen, which shows you the bare insights of a lover looking at the object of his love and then at the objectification of the man in the film, albeit a porno, see there are those brilliant twists and flipping things on their head moments again.

at the beginning I asked you
to let me watch you watching porn    I think
I needed to see you existing
entirely without me     your face lost
(from Screen)

There is another interesting construct to Physical and that is that it is made of three parts; Physical, which houses 15 poems; Protest of the Physical, which flips the style of poems as we are used to them (or at least as I am) on their heads; Degredation which consists of a final nine poems. Now as I have mentioned before I am now connoisseur of poetry, though the more I read the more I enjoy it,  but I found this a really interesting shift in perspective and in gear even if I couldn’t quite understand if it had a  purpose. This is me not being au fait with the art form rather than anything McMillan does and I enjoyed it regardless. With the first and final sets of poems being slightly more conventional in terms of form, if not subject, Protest of the Physical is something quite different. It is one great big piece of poetry made up of smaller poems (well that is how I read it) some which take up a whole page, be it in length or in random places literally all over the page, or just a few lines. It is something I will need to read again and again to get more and more from, rather like a painting that holds you and gives you more and more as you stare.

I am worried I am making this sound a little too worthy or too serious and there are a lot of laughs and funny moments in Physical. Firstly from its northern nature and narrative. As you read of Manchester bedsits and poems entitled The Fact We Almost Killed A Badger Is Incidental the wonderful warm Northern tone comes through which is always has a twinkle in its eye, well tone. Elsewhere, yes there is the titillation of the writing of sex, porn, urination etc which might have you expelling a mild giggle before being lost in McMillan’s words. Amongst all this and the honest and thoughtful more serious poems there are some belly laughs. I for one still cannot read the opening of The Men Are Weeping In The Gym without laughing out loud, before the poignancy of what follows settles in.

the men are weeping in the gym
using the hand dryer to cover
their sobs    their hearts have grown too big
for their chests     their chests have grown too big
for their shirts      they are dressed like kids
who have forgotten their games kit
they are crying in the toilet

Physical is a stunning, raw and direct look at what it is to be male. It celebrates the male physique in all its forms as much as it celebrates the foibles of the male species. It is a collection that asks a lot of questions, primarily ones such as in the poem Strongman, which asks ‘What is masculinity if not taking the weight?’ Be you male or female you need to read this collection. Books, poems and stories are all about experiencing the world of others and walking in their shoes, Physical excels at this and from an unusual and original view point. I cannot wait to see what Andrew McMillan creates next.

The Natural Way of Things – Charlotte Wood

So I am going to do something a little bit mean today which is also a kind of book lovers public service announcement. I am going to tell you about Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things which is by far one of the best, if not the best, reads of my year and a book which I think every single one of you need to read as soon as you can, if you haven’t already. You see this brings me to the slightly mean part because unless you are in Australia or New Zealand (or are about to visit or have some very kinds friends there as I do) this book won’t reach international waters on this side of the pond/s (UK, US and Canada) until the middle of 2016. I know, I know, I am sorry, I am a tease however if you can get a copy before then do because seriously this is one of those books that consumes you in a rush and spits you out a slightly different person. Yes, it is that blooming marvellous.

Allen & Unwin, 2015, paperback, fiction, 316 pages, kindly sent by the lovely Anna who I am forever thankful for

Verla follows the girl’s gaze. The floorboards glisten like honey in the sun. She has an impulse to lick them. She understands the fear is the only thing now that could conceivably save her from what is to come. But she is cotton-headed, too slow for that. The drug has dissolved adrenaline so completely it almost seems surprising to be here, with a stranger, in a strange room, wearing this bizarre olden-day costume. She can do nothing to resist it, cannot understand or question. It is a kind of dumb relief.

When Verla and Yolanda find themselves waking up in a strange unknown room, both strangers to each other, dressed in old fashioned uniforms their first instinct is that they are dreaming, then when the realise they are not they panic. Well, as much as anyone can panic when they are groggy from clearly having been drugged. Soon they are taken to another room, where they initially think they will be raped or killed, to have their heads shaved and join a further eight women, all dressed the same and shaven, who too have become captives to a pair of men. Why and for what they do not know, yet.

The confusion and fear at the start is palpable and rather explosive. A lot of novels starting with an opener like this would burn out, that is not the case with The Natural Way of Things. As we follow these women as they are shown around the derelict old building in the vast space in the middle of nowhere surrounded by an electric fence and onto their own cells (which are like kennels) we gain small insights and clues into what it might be that links them and why they might be being subjected to such treatment. Soon it slowly dawns on the women that each of them has been part of a public sex scandal. It also becomes clear that the two men, Boncer and Teddy, are merely acting jailors and a bigger corporation is at the heart of this, the menace of their potential arrival lingers and becomes more torturous than the manual labour and gruel that the women are subjected to whilst they await their fates.

Finally, some instinct rises. She runs her tongue over her teeth, furred like her mind. She hears her own thick voice deep inside her ears when she says, ‘I need to know where I am.’
The man stands there, tall and narrow, hand still on the doorknob, surprised. He says, almost in sympathy, ‘Oh, sweetie. You need to know what you are.’

You might now be thinking that this book is one huge rant or a novel about the wonders of women and the perils of men, neither is true Wood is far too good a writer for that and as we read on more and more layers are revealed. The women are not saintly, in fact we learn there is a woman on the jailers side (the sickly and psychotically sweet ‘Nurse Nancy’ is a true deranged horror), and as we read on Charlotte Wood uses each of the women’s stories and situation before they were captives to discuss choices, responsibilities, victimisation, the abuse of power, societies slant views and much more with a deft touch of fury meeting bafflement, yet without preaching or forcing one message home. True the men centre stage don’t fare well under Wood’s gaze, but they are two pathetic bullying arseholes and in the women’s back stories there are men who are kind and loving and who don’t always do to well out of being so. Yes Charlotte Wood has a point; she is by no means blind sighted by it.

There is more at work than just the debate of misogyny and feminism here too. There is a much deeper question and subject as the novel takes another twist. It is no spoiler to say, as it is in the blurb, that it soon transpires that the women and the jailors are all in a kind of prison as no one is coming, so how will they survive together whilst the food lessens and the prisoners outnumber their captors. In a situation that sees this group of humans returning to their more feral and base levels; who will seek to rule? Who fight or struggle to survive? Who will seek revenge? How far will they go? Through Verla and Yolanda we see how things unfold, both taking very different turns as indeed all the women do (I could talk about Hetty here for ages) but I will say no more for fear of spoilers. I will say that the natural world comes into the fore here and Wood writes about this with a beautiful ruggedness that I loved. Oh and the ending is a brilliant, if unnerving should you read it as I did, question mark which I thought made the book all the more resonant.

My aunty Caroline is a psychologist and she has often said that anger is am emotion that you can, and should, embrace and harness to good use. This is what I feel Charlotte Wood has done with The Natural Way of Things. She has taken all the anger and rage that she feels about the plight of women from all over the world, and indeed the digital world, and harnessed it with precision and subtle prose to create one of the most visceral and fiercely driven novels that I have read in sometime. I read it in one day, in two sittings. She uses a real life case of women captured and imprisoned in the 1960’s and brings it up to date using some examples of  recent cases of sex scandals which combined create an incredibly powerful and thought provoking piece of fiction.

In the days to come she will learn what she is, what they all are. That they are the ministers-little-travel-tramp and that Skype-slut and the yuck-ugly-dog from the cruise ship; they are pig-on-a-spit and big-red-box, moll-number-twelve and bogan-gold-digger-gangbang-slut. They are what happens when you don’t keep your fucking fat slag’s mouth shut.

The Natural Way of Things is a book that will shock many of its readers for all the right reasons. By the end you will be enraged as to why women are still subjected to ‘slut shaming’ and victim blaming if they speak out about something bad? That is the dark root at the heart of this novel from which everything else spirals, only not out of control as scarily you could imagine this happening. That is where the book really bites, its reality and its all too apparent possibility. Shocking all the more because what seems extreme isn’t the more you think about it. This is a fantastically written horrifying, whilst utterly compelling, story that creates a potent set of questions within its readers head and asks you to debate and seek out the answers yourself. I cannot recommend reading it enough.

Christmas Wrapping Up; Reviews, Christmas Culls, Books of the Year and Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda Reads (aka Pre-Christmas Panic)

Blimey that might be one of the longest titles of a blog post in the history of Savidge Reads, it does nicely sum up the mild sense of panic I have as the festive season looms ever nearer though. In a weeks time Christmas will have been and gone (phew, Boxing Day is my favourite festive day) and in under two weeks we will have said goodbye to 2015. It is at this time of year when I start to look back, look at the present and look to the future and have a mini book breakdown. Why have I piles of books to review that I still haven’t done? Why did I not read x, y and z book this year? What are my favourite books of the year? What do I want 2016 to hold for me book and reading wise? And it goes on and on. Breathe. Let’s take stock and chat about it, I have even made an agenda that is how organised and how desperate these times are, ha!

This is not my tree, I have shamefully stolen it from the internet. The worry of needed a book at the bottom would haunt me all Christmas.

Item One: Reviews

I have piles and piles of books that I have yet to review. I am also a real stickler for trying to review all the books I read in the year, that I want to review as some you just don’t, going into the New Year with a clean slate. I like a New Year to be like a new notebook, pristine and ready for scribbling, which is why I can’t start a new year halfway through a book. I am aware this is some kind of madness. I am also making ‘break with old habits’ one of my general resolutions, and so whilst the new book for a new year stays as is, the review thing can go out the window (with a coat because it is quite chilly) to be honest. Because there has to be method in my madness I will be saving some reviews till the paperbacks come out, the rest I will either round up, bin off (because I don’t have much to say) or be up and live before the year is out. That is called ‘letting go’, albeit slowly.

Item Two: The Great Christmas Cull of 2015

I can’t pretend I have made my mind up of all my reading resolutions for 2015 BUT I am formulating some ideas in my head, loose ones. Something I think might help that is a big old book cull. I know, it is painful and really I could double stack a considerable amount more books yet I think for clarity, and possibly sanity, maybe I should be able to see all the spines and actually know what books I own and have space for more. I want to use a dreadful word, I want to ‘curate’ my shelves a little better – more on that when the shame of using the ‘c’ word has died down and I have a clearer understanding of what I mean. I think I want my shelves to be like my perfect dream bookshop stock. Maybe… I’ll know once I have done it!

Item Three: Books of the Year  

A few, I can’t say lots as it sounds bigheaded, people have kindly asked where my list of my books of the year are? The answer is that they are coming, it isn’t the end of the year yet and who knows what I might read in the next twelve days. I can confirm (David will be pleased) that there will be two lists one of the ten books published in 2015 and one of the ten books published before then, last year I did one list and David was right, it wasn’t quite, erm, right. These are being curated (I said it again!!!) now which is quite painful and will be up on the 30^th and 31^st of December.

Item Four: Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda Reads of 2015

This I hinted at earlier and in item three. I have a huge stonking selection of books that I swore I was going to read this year and haven’t. This is mainly because I am very naughty and there are far too many good books out there, let’s blame the books and not my naughtiness. I am now wondering if these books should be the first books I read in 2016 as penance for being such a silly sausage or if I wait for the paperbacks or, revolutionarily, just read them when I want in 2016 – which is more in keeping with the direction I have planned anyway. Wow, look at me, throwing caution to the wind. Ha!

Item Five: Savidge Reads in Summary

Basically I am mad is what this all means and am in some bonkers panic that Santa, who delivers millions of presents in a single night would be ho-ho-hoing at me with ridicule. If only I could review lots of books in just one night. Anyway, I guess I am saying I will be more reviews and less chatter in the festive lead up. Now as always I would like to hear from you lot… If you blog what are your thoughts on the reviewing issues? Does it matter if a review of a book was from the year before, even if really it was only a few weeks/months? Does anyone else get review meltdown? Are any of you having a cull over Christmas or are you using the festive season as a reason to stock up on as many books as you can? Do you have any books you’re kicking yourself for not reading in 2015? Have you got your favourite books of the year or any plans for 2016 yet?

Finally, any other business that needs addressing?

H is for Hawk – Helen Macdonald

As the end of 2015 beckons I start to think of all those ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ reads I was so sure, or insistent, that I would get to this year and haven’t and think ‘ooh I must read that at the beginning of next year’. I am not sure how realistic this will be as one of the books which I wanted to read the most in 2014 I only got around to in the second half of this year. That book is H is for Hawk which was one of the books of last year and became something of a sensation. I have to admit that I was slightly worried it wouldn’t live up to the praise from here there and everywhere, however it completely exceeded everything that I could imagine it would achieve.

Vintage Books, 2014, hardback, memoir, 302 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

When Helen Macdonald learns that her father has died, her world naturally implodes. Grief can affect us in so many ways that it is never the same for any of us, yet in what seems a initially rather extreme reaction to her bereavement Helen sets out to get a hawk, Mabel, to train to distract herself from the world of people and emotional pain that surround her. Yet we learn this is not such a rash decision for Helen has grown up with a huge love of birds (particularly birds of prey) and as we read on we also discover how other people have used the keeping, taming and training of birds as ways to deal with the outside world, one being the author T.H White.

Now I have to admit if I had been sold this book as being about goshawk training, grief and T.H. White, an author who I have never read, I would probably have not have read it. In fact this might have been what stopped me from reading a proof when one arrived eons ago, well how stupid was I? So, if on the off chance you are one of the few people who haven’t yet read it you might feel the same, think again because this is a book that will affect you on so many levels you will be left slightly bamboozled as to why you don’t only read books about goshawk training, grief and T.H. White. Yes, I love it that much; it hooked me in, gripped me and then broke me along the way – something I have realised I really rather like in books.

I look. There it is. I feel it. The insistent pull to the heart that the hawk brings, that very old longing of mine to possess the hawk’s eye. To live the safe and solitary life; to look down on the world from a height and keep it there. To be the watcher; invulnerable, detached, complete. My eyes fill with water. Here I am, I think. And I do not think I am safe.

I found H is for Hawk fascinating and gripping in all of its three strands. Firstly I love birds and indeed whilst I didn’t have a bird of prey as a child the neighbours did (they owned Riber Castle Zoo and when they left they took the bald eagle with them) and I did have a pet duck called Rapunzel, not quite the Red Kite I would have dreamed of but she was amazing and probably actually a bit better as she was cuddly and flew to your feet, not your arm, when you called her. So to read about the world of falconry and taming birds of prey I found fascinating. I also love the way in which Helen writes about it, there is no textbook babble here just pure enthusiasm and passion for the art and the birds.

Without sounding like a weirdo (or more of one) I find books about other people’s grief incredibly cathartic. Not because I think ‘oh phew someone is having it worse than me’ (for the record that would be weird) but because having gone through grief it is a relief/help to hear that other people have gone through all the feelings you have, albeit in a different way, plus many you haven’t but more of all that you weren’t completely batshit crazy when you went through them. I didn’t go out and get a goshawk, though I pondered a pug, I did completely cut off the people I loved from my life and wake up and cry every day. Reading a raw, brave and unflattering account of grief like Helen’s, and indeed Cathy’s earlier this year, makes you feel less alone. This is important. This will also call out to anyone whether they have been bereaved or not because we all know heartbreak, we all know love, we all know loss.

Here’s a word. Bereavement. Or, Bereaved. Bereft. It’s from the Old English bereafian, meaning ‘to deprive of, take away, seize, rob’. Robbed. Seized. It happens to everyone. But you feel it alone. Shocking loss isn’t to be shared, no matter how hard you try.

I have to admit I didn’t think that the elements of T.H. White’s story would grip me though. And they bloody well did, without me having ever read any of his books which I now want to go and read. The story of a man who feels a complete outsider because of his sexuality and all that it stands for and alludes to is quite a heartbreaking one (have a hanky at the ready with this book). As we read on the story as White gets his bird becomes as gripping as the trials and tribulations with Helen and Mabel, yet with different outcomes, though I don’t want to give anything away.

Again here I felt like the book chimed with me again having myself gone through all that questioning, fear and misunderstanding of myself as I came to terms with my sexuality. Here Helen’s writing shows utter empathy, complete understanding and an ability to conjure and channel these feelings. This book just resonated more and more with me which is always quite a magical thing when it happens with a book. I should say that all this will grip any reader regardless of whether they have owned birds, been bereaved or have come to terms with sexuality.

Many people have said that Mabel is the star of H is for Hawk and while she is indeed an incredibly captivating character, she would not be so in the hands of any old author. It is Helen’s writing that makes her so and her writing is just wonderful. Mabel (and I apologise for this) flies off the page, as does every element of this book. I felt I was almost a ghost in the room watching the two of them as Helen describes her time taming and befriending, because it is a respectful friendship, Mabel as well as feeling the joy of watching Helen using Mabel as her view of the world, as she becomes a goshawk herself mentally, and then how Mabel’s view of humans and Helen herself helps her to comes to terms with things, even if she might not credit herself for it. Writing from the heart is not easy to come by, captivating and beautiful writing from the heart even less so, the latter is how Helen Macdonald writes and I thank her for sharing it, and her story, with us.

The feathers down her front are the colour of sunned newsprint, of tea-stained paper, and each is marked darkly towards its tip with a leaf-bladed spearhead, so from her throat to her feet she is patterned with a shower of falling raindrops. Her wings are the colour of stained oak, their covert feathers edged in the palest teak, barred flight-feathers folded quietly beneath. And there’s a strange grey tint to her that is felt, rather than seen, a kind of silvery light like a rainy sky reflected from the surface of a river. She looks new. Looks as if the world cannot touch her. As if everything that exists and is observed rolls off like drops of water from her oiled and close-packed feathers. And the more I sit with her, the more I marvel at how reptilian she is. The lucency of her pale, round eyes. The waxy yellow skin about her Bakerlite-black beak. The way she snakes her small head from side to side to focus on distant objects. Half the time she seems as alien as a snake, a thing hammered of metal and scales and glass.

I could enthuse even more, I will instead round off my thoughts. H is for Hawk is an incredibly special kind of read, which all the above culminates towards, simply put it is a generously open, honest and brutal yet beautiful book. Helen Macdonald takes us completely into her life and her world at a time when she was at her most broken and vulnerable and shares that with us in all its technicolour splendour of emotions. When I finished reading it I couldn’t help feeling that Helen’s father, Mabel (if birds could read) and T.H. White would have been both deeply honoured and immensely proud to live on forever in such a wonderful book. Yes, I too think that H is for Hawk is outstandingly good; one of everyone’s books in 2014 and certainly one of mine in 2015.

She can draw ducks, there is no end to this woman’s talents!

If you would like to hear more about H is for Hawk from the authors mouth, you can listen to an episode of You Wrote The Book where Helen and I talk about the book, birds and much more in a cafe (so excuse some of the background noise) here. If you haven’t read the book already then I cannot recommend it enough, go and buy it and spend the Christmas holidays with it I beg you. If you have read H is for Hawk I would love your thoughts on it, as with any book we’ve both read.