Novel Ideas

I wasn't at all surprised to hear recently that reading has increased in popularity over the last year. Books not only fill time in a pleasant way but have the ability to whisk us away into other worlds (many of which would be a lot less comfortable than our present existence if we experienced them in reality), and they also allow us insight into the lives of others in a much deeper way than a Zoom call. 

Last time I wrote about books, I'd been reading biographies and didn't include any novels, so we'll remedy that this time - though in reality I rarely read two books of the same genre in succession.                       

A Whole Life - Robert Seethaler

A while ago Mary (at A Breath Of Fresh Air) recommended Robert Seethaler's novel A Whole Life which I ordered and read that very evening (Aha! You can do that with a Kindle!). From that you may be able to reach two conclusions: firstly that it's a short book, but also that it's one that's not easy to put down.

It is, as it says, the account of a man's whole life. Apart from the war years he never strays far from his mountain home, nor from the morals and truths of the hard life into which he was born. But such lives are important nevertheless, more important than is generally acknowledged in this age.

So we follow his progress through the unkindness inflicted by others, through the loss inflicted by an avalanche, surviving a war which he doesn't fully understand and wrestling with the changes brought about by the modern age....."Scars are like years, he said: one follows another and it’s all of them together that make a person who they are."

But more than that it's the light which shines through the troubles and afflictions that really define a "whole life".

Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier

Here's another book which describes a whole life and one which starts off in similar poverty but goes on to attain a measure of fame - though, because the subject is a woman, it's never the level of recognition that she deserves.

I'm usually uncomfortable with books about real people which include the kind of speculation and invention which are presented here in addition to the true facts, especially when it's about a person that I already know something about - it gets difficult to know where truth ends and fantasy begins. This book about the fossil-hunter Mary Anning is however an exception.

If you've never heard of her, she was a young girl from a poor family who scraped together a meagre existence by searching for fossils in the cliffs along what became known as the Jurassic coast of southern England. She seemed to have an instinctive understanding of fossils as well as an uncanny knack of finding them. Many of the great men of science owe much of their reputation to Mary's finds but until recently she had received little credit.

She did have one person who helped her and fought for her, a rather odd spinster called Elizabeth Philpott, herself a self-taught geologist and equally shunned by the male establishment.

Most of what appears in the book is true, all that has been added is is a little romance, and that is largely based on rumours which circulated at the time. There is one event which occurs in the book which seems preposterously far-fetched, involving an incredibly generous gesture by someone acting entirely out of character - it is however completely factual!

How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup - J L Carr

For those from foreign lands I should explain that the FA Cup is (or at least was; it's lost some of its glamour in recent years) England's premier football knock-out cup. It's charm lies in the fact that almost any football (soccer) club is able to enter it, including teams made up of milkmen, teachers, bricklayers and the like who play the game just for the fun of it. 

Every year a few of these part-time hopefuls manage to progress to the stage where the footballing millionaires of the biggest teams in the land join in. And most years there are one or two "Cup upsets" where bigger teams get beaten by those who should really have no chance.

But what if one of these little teams were to manage to get to the Final itself? And what if they won it?

The whole idea is ridiculous and the football-loving J L Carr knows it, but that doesn't prevent him having a great deal of fun with the idea along the way, as well as drawing some conclusions about "the beautiful game" and life in general.

Incidentally this is the same J L Carr who wrote "A Month In The Country" which I recommended some time ago, though you'd probably never guess they were both by the same author.

A Change Of Climate - Hilary Mantel

I keep reading excellent books by this author, but so far have avoided immersing myself in her best-known works, the double Man Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall trilogy. It's just their sheer size that keeps putting me off, but it'll happen.....one day.

A Change Of Climate is a modern-day family saga mostly taking place in rural Norfolk. Now rural Norfolk is not so far from rural Cambridgeshire, where I live, and I've known families very like those in the story - well-educated, very liberal, sort-of-Christian folks. And every twist and nuance of the tale rings true.

It concerns long-buried secrets and unfollowed dreams and how they re-surface and affect those living years afterwards. Apart from that I don't want to say anything about the plot which might spoil it. 

It's a complex and multi-layered story with a multitude of characters but such is Hilary Mantel's skill as a story-teller that it's never confusing. It's a book I shall definitely be re-reading for the sheer pleasure of it.

This Is Happiness - Niall Williams

Here we are on the west coast of Ireland in the little village of Faha when something remarkable happens - it stops raining!

Young Noel Crowe is living here with his grand-parents, having recently left the seminary and turned his back on religion. Into all their lives comes Christy, a wandering labourer with a rich and colourful past, who is here to help with "the coming of the electricity", for progress is about to encroach on this rural backwater.

The story is told by Noel Crowe as he looks back on his life from the perspective of old age. He takes his time relating what happened, as he remembers it, and the language is often reminiscent of the poetic style of old ballads. 

Here we find Noel and Christy reeling home from the pub after an evening of music. Now they're whitewashing an forgetful old lady's walls for reasons which Noel doesn't understand. Here come the doctor's three beautiful daughters. Grandfather is now deliberately wrecking old bicycles so he has an excuse to visit the old German who is able to fix them. Then there's the man from the electric company trying to sell the new-fangled gadgets to the disbelieving old folks of the village. Next Christy's singing loudly outside the bedroom window of the chemist's wife.

So it goes on with its own beautiful but crazy logic, weaving an intricate mythology of Ireland's past and its charismatic inhabitants.

Take care.