Author: sarahwp

A WREATH FOR THE ENEMY by Pamela Frankau

Here is a highly mysterious book told with four different voices. What it is about is hard to say: it’s I guess partly about losing your virginity, about about betraying your parents, and about a cow that is saved from drowning. In short, it all goes on. The best voice is the first one, where a thirteen year old girl is working on her book, the Anthology of Hates, which is all about all the people and things she hates. Brilliant.

Best of all was that this was an old library book, which has not been checked out since 1985. These kinds of old smelly books that have passed through many hands are my favourite.

WHO WAS CHANGED AND WHO WAS DEAD by Barbara Comyns

Here is another book by wonderful Barbara Comyns, whose biography is a total inspiration.  It is all selling puppies and moving to Spain and renting flats and being a painter, and being a novelist is just by-the-by.  

WHO WAS CHANGED AND WHO WAS DEAD is quirky even by the standards of her other books, which are pretty damn quirky.  It begins mid-flood, with ducks paddling around the living room, “quacking their approval.”  Then one by one the townspeople start to go mad.  It is all down to some poisoned flour, but this is not the point. The point is the madness, and especially the freedom that is found in it.  It was deeply and weirdly enjoyable. 

AKENFIELD by Ronald Blythe

A  brilliantly weird effort to capture the entire life, top to bottom, of an English village.  Written from interviews made in the twentieth century, and lightly fictionalized, it focuses on their memory of life in the nineteenth, and captures the collapse of a certain rural way of being.

That collapse was no bad thing, because let me tell you, these people WORKED. Here we learn that it was not the Industrial Revolution that created exploitation.  Agricultural laborers had four hours off a week, 10-2 on Sunday (i.e., just enough time to go to church).  As one man, the grandson of a laborer puts it:

They bought their life’s strength for as little as they could.  They wore use out without a thought because, with the big families, there was a continuous supply of labour

There is a kind of tragic over-emphasis on the quality of work, with people taking what seems to us now a really bizarre amount of pride in their work, because as another worker says:

A straight furrow was all that a man was left with

Apparently it was a very silent world, though  “Television is now breaking down their silences.  They are getting accustomed to the idea of dialogue”

It is perhaps no surprise that given half a chance, lots of people fled. I was stunned to learn that from from 1871, 700,000 British left for the colonies, and  “It was the not the idlest and wastrels who sailed,” leaving lots of land effectively empty.  As a child of the former colonies I am very familiar   with what it was like for those who left, but I never thought about what it was for those who stayed.

It captures a world so small it can only boggle the mind:

Pub men stayed loyal to one pub for maybe the whole of their lives. . . now they will drive down to Southend or Clacton and let off steam

I also learnt more than I ever wanted to about agriculture in Suffolk. For example, East Anglia had 17 different types of apples (WHY?), all harvested at different times.  And that sheep used to be managed by  having their tails cut off with a hot iron and “the balls nicked out with the shepherd’s teeth.  He ate well that day.” 

I enjoyed all this interesting-slash-disgusting agricultural information, but even more I enjoyed a window into many individuals lives.  One guy goes to London briefly and works in the railway:

There is a place in Broad Street Station where you can stare through the arches and see the stars, an and they were the only things I can remember seeing in London.  That is the truth. 

Ronald Blythe left school at 14 and taught himself from public libraries and it shows. It’s a wildly ambitious, beautiful book. I could go on and on, and be grateful you were not with me while I was reading it, because I did go on and on. I’d love to read it for lots of different communities.  I can only imagine how interesting it would be if you took a single street of vendors in Harare, for example, or a Convent in HoChiMinh City. 

SARAH THORNHILL by Kate Greville

I enjoyed Kate Greville’s THE SECRET RIVER so much that I had to go almost instantly to its sequel, SARAH THORNHILL.  The first one covered the life of a English convict transported to Australia, and the terrible things he did to build himself a life there.  The second one tells the story of his daughter, who has to deal with these terrible things.  

Sarah, the daughter, falls in love with a man, Jack, who is mixed race.  All is going well until her parents find out, and then they reveal SPOILER ALERT their part in the killing of ten Aborigines some twenty years before. Horrified, he leaves her.  Then she does a lot of suffering, both over being left and over guilt about what her parents did.  

I wanted to buy it, but I just didn’t.  The author seems to live in a moral universe where people are naturally going to be tortured over stuff done before they are born.  I would like to live in this moral universe, but the challenge is I just don’t think it exists.  I don’t think it exists today, and I definitely don’t think it existed for the Victorians, especially not in that context.  

That said, Greville is a banging writer and it’s a great book.  Perhaps it is a failure of my own cynicism that I was not able to enjoy it more.  

I’M A FAN by Sheena Patel

Here’s hair-rising story of a romantic obsession that includes such hilarious chapter headings as:

first of all i didn’t miss the red flags i looked at them and thought yeah that’s sexy

Here she is stalking someone:

(The woman) doesn’t pull her phone out of her pocket as she’s probably one of those technologically ethical mothers, but I bet she’s dying to scroll.

And when she visits a wealthy person’s home:

The scene is lit from one of the large windows opposite me, which lends the table this romantic Modern-meets-seventeenth century Dutch still life vibe and I think how the fuck do you know how to do this

But really it is mostly very sad. The obsession is so strong, and the object of it so undeserving, that it is basically self-harm. It then leads to a further, even worse obsession with one of his other girlfriends, and especially with her online persona. Eventually, it becomes a story that asks the question: what would it be like if Instagram finally did manage to totally take over your life? What if you actually did lose the battle against social media? It’s kind of hair-raising, because it seems all too possible

THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder

In this strange book, a bridge collapses in 18th century Peru.  The focus is on the lives of the five people who die,  which, according to the author is trying to answer the question: “Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual’s own will?”  

This is hardly a burning question, you don’t need a whole book, answer is clearly no.  

In any case it won the Pulitzer in 1929, showing people had some very different concerns back in the day.  That said, it does have some gorgeous bizarre writing. I know Thornton Wilder as the writer of the exceedingly sweet, very American, and rather wonderful play OUR TOWN.  Clearly I had no idea of the scope of his interests, because this one is a real wild ride through metaphysics, South America, twins, nuns, and smallpox ridden actresses.

THE CITY AND THE STARS by Arthur C Clarke

Here is a book set in the incredibly far future. I was not too sure on the plot, but the vision was interesting. It shows a city governed by a huge Central Computer that generates all their needs and keeps them all eternally young. This is what humans think is the only place left that humans live, but then the protagonist finds another settlement of humans, who have decided to accept mortality. This sounds like it is going to be an interesting discussion of the question of : would you like to live forever if you could? To me the answer is OF COURSE.

Anyway, that is not where the book goes, it goes into robot worms and stuff. But I still enjoyed it. And I loved learning about the life of Arthur C Clarke, who peaced out of the UK at forty to go live in Sri Lanka and scuba and be gay and write books.

IT ENDS WITH US by Colleen Hoover

I bought this book because it has a billion hashtags on TikTok. People like to be dismissive of it, because it is romance, and it is wildly popular with young women, and to be fair because main characters have names such as ‘Ryle Kincaid’ and ‘Atlas Corrigan.’

It tells the story of a woman who falls in love with a neurosurgeon (LOL). It slowly emerges he struggles to control his temper and is violent. What is interesting is that he is presented very sympathetically, so you understand how hard it could be to leave.

What I found interesting is the story of the author, Hoover, who was living in a trailer when she started to self-publish her romances which then by word-of-mouth go on to be on the NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER? I mean SRSLY anything can happen.

THE SECRET RIVER by Kate Grenville

From the first paragraph of this book I knew I was in safe hands. There is no nicer feeling than opening a book and knowing you can give up your own thoughts immediately. It’s like you give yourself over.

This was a story of a man who grew up very poor in seventeenth century London, was transported to Australia as a convict, and the battles – moral and otherwise – he fought in trying to build a new life there. One forgets how rough people had it in Europe, and how recently. At one point his wife and he discuss quite pragmatically how she can start prostituting herself. It gives me hope for the developing world. It also helps you understand in some ways the context of the terrible things these Europeans did to the Aboriginal people. This conflict with the local people is really a stomach-churningly horrible part of this book.

I am surprised there are not more books like this. This meeting of two worlds in fantastically interesting. I’m surprised I haven’t seen much of it. I can’t for example think of a single example in African lit. You wouldn’t think at this late stage there would be any white space left, but here it is, I guess.

FOR THY GREAT PAIN HAVE MERCY ON MY LITTLE PAIN by Victoria Mackenzie

Here is a novel where the backstory is better than the story. It weaves together the stories of two real women from the 14th century. One is an anchoress, Julian of Norwich. She lost her siblings and father to the plague, and then her husband and child. She decided to become an anchoress, which involves you going into a room in the church, and then them BRICKING YOU INSIDE. There is a window to the outside world, through which she gets food and can see people who come to ask her advice, but that’s it. CAN YOU IMAGINE YOUR ISSUES.

The other woman, Margery Kempe is arguably even stranger. She is the wife of a wealthy businesswoman. She has the number of children you have when you don’t have bodily autonomy, and she is suddenly overwhelmed with weeping at Christ’s suffering. She cries a lot, she preaches a lot, all the while being threatened with being burned alive for the revolutionary idea that she can have a personal relationship with Christ (ie., the basis for all contemporary Christianity). She ends up travelling the world doing all sorts.

What makes the book dull is that we have to hear a lot about their religious visions, which is as boring as hearing about people’s dreams. Actually probably more boring, because at least dreams can be new (an octopus ate my pasta) whereas Christian religious visions are not (man gives out fish, etc).

What I did find interesting was how we come to know about these women. For example, the housewife Margery Kempe is the first person to write an autobiography in English – a pretty major deal. And her wild and improbable story would have been totally lost to us, were it not for a houseguest, who in 1934 was searching in a closet for a pingpong ball, and dislodged a pile of papers which turns out to be the only surviving manuscript! It’s just wild to think how many lives are completely lost to us. Thank god we now have social media so every minute of important lives are minutely documented!