Quite a mixed selection, most of them sent from Primrose Hill Bookshop, where they have been waiting for the Lenten abstinence from fiction to abate. Between Silk & Cyanide bridged the gap. I mentioned it in another blog and then re-read it. If you (or your children) are interested in coding, in the old sense of the word, secret writing, then this is the book for you. Leo Marks was rejected by Bletchley and ended up working in SOE creating the coding patterns that would be used in Europe by the wireless operators working under stressful conditions in occupied Europe between 1940 to 1944.
The novels were read in a random order, just as they came to hand from the box of joy. They are all very different. The Imperfectionists is a collection of stories about a disparate group of writers working for a failing newspaper, and the history of the family that founded the paper and why, why it began and why it began to fail. Tom Rachman keeps the balls in the air and one’s interest is piqued.
The Island Swimmer is of a different magnitude altogether. The principal character, Evie is hiding in London having left The Orkneys twenty years before. She has kept in touch with only one person, Freya. But her father is dying and she is returning in trepidation. All is slowly revealed and discovery is uncomfortable, devastatingly sad. As an evocation of the sublime healing qualities of the wild, especially the Scottish islands this would be hard to beat. Lorraine Kelly has returned to Orkney time and time again and it is clear from the novel what it means to her.
Sigrid Nunez also writes about a group, this time mostly women. New York is in pandemic lockdown and so communication is via smartphone. Some families have left and the city streets are blissfully uncrowded. The narrator of The Vulnerables is loving the solitude, but circumstances lead her to flat-sit a friend’s apartment with a parrot who needs company; she is suddenly joined by a stranger, the previous parrot sitter but cannot move back into her own apartment as it is lent out to a doctor who is working in the pandemic hospital and does not want to bring infection to her own family. This is one of a number of pandemic novels which looks at the way we coped through an examination of the lives of a close knit group of friends now held apart by circumstances, who have to adjust.
What can I say about Wellness? Is was both hugely enjoyable, frustrating and sometimes plainly irritating. One chapter in particular has a bad example of mansplaining! This is Nathan Hill‘s second novel. He is exploring, through fiction, the nature of coupledom: falling in love, falling out of love, marriage and monogamy though the eyes and experience of two “city orphans”, Elizabeth and Jack. They come from extremely different backgrounds which they have voluntarily left behind, and end up in apartments in Chicago facing each other across a narrow alley. Like Evie, in The Island Swimmer, Jack has left behind a family tragedy; Elizabeth has left behind wealth and privilege and is working in a science laboratory called Wellness. The novel is both a page turner and a study in the social world of the internet. Fascinating and intriguing, but some chapters drove me to distraction!
Last but not least, What Will Survive Of Us. Although I have read a great many Howard Jacobson novels, generally I am not entirely on his wavelength. But this novel I found entrancing. Another “couple” story. A relationship that begins with a kerpow moment, becomes an affair of longstanding and then a marriage. As a study of affection, love and friendship it has everything. I cannot recommend it too highly.
deborahjs 