Tag: books

The Windfall by Diksha Basu

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Comedy of wealth: The Windfall by Diksha Basu

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The Windfall is a funny and often sweet novel set in Delhi and America about money, social pressure, and what really makes someone happy. Anil Jha has made his fortune selling his website to an American start-up and he and his wife Bindu are moving to a more expensive area of Delhi. From their small flat where the neighbours are at close quarters to their new bungalow with its own gate, it is a big jump, especially when their new neighbours are so engrained in the world of money and privilege. Mr Jha finds himself unable to do anything but compete with these neighbours in increasingly ridiculous ways, and all the while he and his wife worry about their son Rupak, who is at college in America and not doing as well as they believe.

Basu’s novel is a classic comedy of manners, with the excesses of the rich mocked whilst gently poking fun at those who attempt to imitate it. Mr Jha’s obsession with appearing to fit in with and one-up the rich people he can now compete with is both ridiculous and endearing, with the narrative never quite laughing at him too much. Mrs Jha is the novel’s heart and possibly its best character, a woman who is uncertain about their move and about the American world her beloved son now lives in, but who ultimately wants the best for her husband and son, as well as supporting her widowed friend Reema as she tries to give her life a fresh start. It is the kind of comedy that revolves around the characters and their idiosyncrasies as it depicts the ridiculousness of wealth and the way that cultures blend and change in the modern world.

This is a comic novel not to be missed, a book with endearing and amusingly relatable characters that pokes light fun at money and rivalry whilst showing what it might be that actually makes people happy. It is a classic comedy of manners with a modern, globalised edge.

The Supremes Sing The Happy Heartache Blues by Edward Kelsey Moore

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Lifelong blues: The Supremes Sing The Happy Heartache Blues by Edward Kelsey Moore

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The Supremes Sing The Happy Heartache Blues is an uplifting and musical novel about a community in Plainview, Indiana, and how the arrival of an old blues singer to perform at an unexpected wedding sets off a range of consequences for those in the area. The Supremes are a group of old friends, Clarice, Barbara Jean, and Odette, who have lived in Plainview all their lives and are still dealing with issues in the past and present when aging blues guitarist El Walker ends up staying in town longer than expected. The novel follows the varied cast of characters as they deal with old bitterness, new opportunity, and local fiery spirited individuals.

The combination of personal drama in the lives of the three women and the turbulent past of Walker makes for a narrative with plenty of excitement and a few twists and turns. The characters are vibrant and individually drawn, with the three friends in particular given interesting personalities that are separate from their various husbands, children, and grandchildren. The novel is a follow-up to Moore’s previous book The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, but there is no requirement to have read that one to enjoy his new work, a book which celebrates the varied lives of three older women, one even older blues guitarist, and a wealth of supporting characters. Despite the large cast, it isn’t difficult to quickly get acquainted with who is who, and Moore moves between first and third person narration without confusion, leading the reader into the centre of events.

The novel is ideal for readers who enjoy vivid characters learning to deal with their lives in the past and present, with a background of music and small town gossip and past scandal. It is a light and enjoyable read, with a happy tone and characters who aren’t afraid to be themselves.

Watling Street by John Higgs

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History and anecdote along a Roman road: Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and its Ever-Present Past by John Higgs

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Watling Street is a charming and readable history book that combines British history, popular culture, and observations on modern society, all centred around the ancient road from Dover to Anglesey. Chapters follow the road up along the A2, the A5, and the M6 toll to pinpoint specific locations and match them with historical fact and anecdote. Higgs links in his own travels on and around Watling Street, from a family trip to Bletchley Park to stories about his childhood. What results is an eclectic book that blends older and modern history, references pop culture from classic literature to recent music, and remarks upon the state of the nation in the post-EU referendum time.

The introduction about Milton Keynes will immediately draw in anyone who has ever visited or lived in that infamously grid-shaped concrete hub. Indeed, the book’s particular audience is likely to be anyone who lives or regularly visits places along the road, as there is a certain excitement on finding familiar locations and their history told in Higgs’ warm and interesting style. Some of the historical stories and figures will probably be well-known to many readers, but the way that Higgs connects these with physical location and with modern references and ideals adds a different twist. He explores and questions ideas and definitions of Britain, turning what could sound from its summary like an uncomfortably nationalistic book into one that priorities the variation in the country and wonders how Brexit will affect visions of Britain like Higgs’ own.

Watling Street is part popular history and part light-hearted state of the nation book, with personal anecdotes from Alan Moore sitting alongside information on how Romans built their roads.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is the eagerly-awaited follow up to The God of Small Things, a moving novel that spans decades and goes across the Indian subcontinent to show a cast of interconnected characters and how their lives are shaped by conflict, joy, and circumstance. Depicting the stories of a variety of characters, it does not have a main narrative as much as it puts pieces of different individuals together to form a woven novel showing a modern world and its battles.

The storytelling is expectedly vivid and gives detail to different episodes such as the experiences of a transgender woman, Anjum, who finds community and makes her home in a graveyard, and the complex relationships and life of Tilo, who has been loved by fighters and intelligence officers. These female characters in particular are difficult to forget, with stories that combine family, religious and ideological conflict, and love. Roy’s style suits this storytelling, leading the reader between different narratives easily and making the novel easy to follow and join up the pieces of. From the bustle of Delhi to the countryside of Kashmir, Roy’s descriptions are intricate and show a conflicted and modern world, a world with ancient conflicts in close proximity to branches of Nando’s.

The novel is unlikely to disappoint Roy’s fans who’ve been waiting for her next book. It is a fantastic story full of vivid characters whose struggles are varied and real.

Quick book picks for June

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Summer is finally here and, more importantly, a whole load of fantastic books are coming out this month. I was spoilt for choice as a number of these are some of the best of 2017 thus far. As ever, I’ve included short descriptions and links to longer reviews in the titles.

  • All The Good Things by Clare Fisher – One of my books of the year so far, this story of a young woman in prison who is trying to remember the good things that have happened in her life alongside the bad is a powerful modern tale of the system failing somebody and a moving assertion that good things can be found anywhere.
  • Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney – A biting and clever novel about a student in Dublin who performs poetry with her best friend and ex-girlfriend, and then the two meet a married couple and get entwined in their life. Witty look at being a twentysomething in great prose.
  • Phone by Will Self – The anarchic, not-for-everyone new book by Will Self, which follows the spy life and long-running affair with a high-ranking soldier of Jonathan De’Ath, aka The Butcher. It mocks espionage, plays around with language and acronyms, and is very darkly satiric.
  • Juniper Lemon’s Happiness Index by Julie Israel – An emotional YA novel that focuses on grief, positivity, and friendship, whilst being uplifting yet not cloying.
  • A History of Running Away by Paula McGrath – The novel tells the simultaneous stories of a young girl in 80s Ireland who wants to be a boxer, a gynaecologist in 2012 dealing with work pressures and her ill mother, and a girl in Maryland running away after the death of her mother. A fantastic read that depicts finding home and knowing who you are.
  • No Good Deed by John Niven (review to come) – Another darkly comic story, this time about a successful writer who helps out an old friend who is down on his luck—and then finds out the limits of his good deeds. It shows the ups and downs of friendship whilst mocking the upper-middle-classes and their views and lifestyles.

Solar Bones by Mike  McCormack

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Life in a sentence: Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

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Solar Bones is a distinctive novel that tells the highs and lows of a man’s life through his immediate thoughts and memories. Marcus Conway is an engineer with a wife and two grown up children, with his thoughts clouded with current work projects and interfering projects, his wife’s sudden illness from a tainted water supply, and the lives of his children, one a local artist trying out a new medium and the other across the globe in Australia. The novel follows him musing over all of these and more, considering the structures of civil features, marriage, and stable life in one single sentence.

McCormack’s stylistic touches—a single sentence novel, broken up by commas and line breaks—makes the book feel strangely natural, giving Marcus’ thoughts a flowing quality that might be expected from stream of consciousness writing, but also some of the feel of poetry. The detail, especially depictions of specific moments like when his wife is very ill, is vivid and real, with the ability to make the reader feel a little queasy, for example. The nature of the novel means it is focused upon the character, his thoughts, and his life rather than a particular main narrative, though the book does have a decisive ending.

Solar Bones is far more readable than the ‘single sentence novel’ selling point makes it sound, but also it is this selling point that gives it a distinctive style, a return to the modernist stream of consciousness and a way of making prose and poetry less separate. It makes for a tender look at a life, unmissable for literary fiction fans.

A History of Running Away by Paula McGrath

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Running away and finding home: A History of Running Away by Paula McGrath

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A History of Running Away is a striking and unforgettable novel with three different narratives that weave their way to show how running away can help you find homes you never knew you had. The most substantial of these is Jasmine’s attempts in the 1980s to escape her small town Irish home for a big city, which does not go as planned. The other two are set in 2012 and follow a gynaecologist dealing with the pressures of working in an Irish hospital and worrying about her ill mother and a girl in Maryland running away after the death of her mother. These stories unfold in a gripping and honest way, showing how finding out who you are can be a difficult process.

McGrath’s writing makes for a tense read. The book’s structure, cutting between the narratives but allowing for a large amount of Jasmine’s to run through the centre of the book, draws comparisons between the acts of running away whilst allowing the characters’ other connections to come through. The novel’s backdrop is the political and social events of the worlds in which the characters live, from Irish abortion laws in the present day to racism and gender restrictions in 1980s Dublin. It is a book that doesn’t shy away from the issues that the characters face, but also doesn’t define them by those issues.

Jasmine’s narrative is the most engaging, as her story is followed through her repeated running away and attempts to work out what she wants to do and whether it is even possible to achieve those goals. Her friendship with Nigerian medical student George as he teaches her to box is a particular highlight, showing how an unlikely acquaintance can have a huge influence.

A History of Running Away is a fantastic read for anybody who enjoys well-written, character-centred books, particularly those which span time periods to show common themes and social issues, and those which focus upon a variety of women.

All the men and women merely players: books about theatres

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I had a request on Twitter for books about theatres, and seeing as that is quite a wide topic, I have split some options into fiction featuring theatres in an interesting way and non-fiction talking about theatres (mostly Shakespeare, though nothing I actually read for my Shakespeare MA funnily enough).

Fiction

  • Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars by Miranda Emmerson – This isn’t just about theatres, but it is a novel with its heart in the 1960s London theatre scene. It focuses on an actress who goes missing and how her dresser attempts to track down her whereabouts, plus has a big focus on social injustice of the time.
  • Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters – Waters’ novel isn’t famed just for being about the theatre, but its representation of Victorian melodrama, stage success, and gender on stage are fantastic, and it’s a very enjoyable read.
  • Evelina by Fanny Burney – Theatres (and pleasure gardens) play an important part in this fun eighteenth-century novel about an innocent girl who ends up finding out a lot about life, good and bad. There are a lot of extended descriptions of her going to the theatre and everybody’s reactions and social etiquette.

Non-fiction

  • The Genius of Jane Austen by Paula Byrne – This is a book about Jane Austen’s interest in the theatre which gives a lot of detail about the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century stage and also has a fantastic final chapter about less traditional Hollywood adaptations of Austen.
  • Hamlet: Globe to Globe by Dominic Dromgoole – This is the former artistic director of the Globe theatre’s account of their taking Hamlet to (almost) every country in the world, which gives an insight into the endeavour whilst also admitting that theatre both can and can’t change the world.
  • Shakespeare And Co by Stanley Wells – A very readable account of the other playwrights around at the same time as Shakespeare, which gives a good idea of the early modern theatre and admits that it was a collaborative affair.
  • The English Shakespeare Company by Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington – Apologies for all the Shakespeare, but I really love this book, which is written by the creators of the English Shakespeare Company about their tour of the history plays in the 1980s, with funding struggles, life issues, and attempts to make the history plays subversive and relevant.

Party Girls Die In Pearls by Plum Sykes

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80s culture, Oxford undergrad high society, and murder: Party Girls Die in Pearls by Plum Sykes

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Party Girls Die in Pearls is a fun murder mystery set amongst the parties, scandals, and scrapes of Oxford students in the 1980s. Ursula Flowerbutton is a middle-class girl from the countryside, brought up by her two grannies and looking forward to studying History and eating cucumber sandwiches when she goes to Oxford. However, her desire to get involved with the Cherwell, an Oxford student newspaper, becomes a reality when after an unexpected party invite, she comes across a dead body on her way to a tutorial. Suddenly, Ursula must spend her first week in Oxford on the trail of a murderer, assisted by her new American friend, and try to unravel all the love affairs, college jealousies, and high society secrets that she finds in her way.

Sykes’ narrative is a classic murder mystery, but the insight into the upper-class world of a certain subsection of Oxford students is what adds to the enjoyment, with witty and sometimes biting comments and descriptions giving a vivid picture of the world in which Ursula finds herself. Explanations of elements of slang amongst the rich and of Oxford traditions may seem a little odd to some, but it draws attention to the period nature of the setting whilst also holding up elements to ridicule. The characters are quite memorable, either in their poshness or eccentricity, and the style is light and straightforward, making it an easy read to devour in an afternoon.

The novel is full of references to both works involving Oxford (a footnote calls the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited the Downton Abbey of the 1980s except everyone was secretly gay) and 80s pop culture, with films and famous songs mentioned amongst the elite world. Like Starter For 10 and Stranger Things, Party Girls Die in Pearls mixes a genre story with a distinctive 1980s setting that will appeal to those who lived it and those who wish they could recreate the aesthetic of the time. Anyone who went to Oxford will also recognise details in the novel, many unchanged since the 80s.

The Songs by Charles Elton

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Protest music and show tune rhymes: The Songs by Charles Elton

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The Songs is a strangely enchanting novel about the children of an ageing protest singer and how their unusual lives converge. Rose is sixteen and cares for her dying younger brother Huddie whilst living with their eighty-year-old father Iz Herzl amidst the presence—both real and imagined—of his current and past wives. Rose and Huddie’s mother died falling out of the same window twice. Meanwhile, Iz’s much older son Joseph writes songs very much unlike his father’s political work: rhyming tunes for musicals. As things go wrong and the siblings who have never met end up with their lives coming together, it becomes clear fame, family, and truth are not always simple.

Elton’s novel is made up of a bright and distinctive cast of characters, from Rose’s first-person narration, in which her view on her beloved brother, her maths ability, and her family’s unusual history become clear, to Maurice, a schoolboy from the late 1940s fascinated by revolution who meets a Jewish outsider. The book may seem initially to be focused on music and the life of a musician’s family, but a lot of the novel is also about religion, history, and loss, as well as the darkly comic truth of estranged family and secrets. At the start of the novel, the discussion of fame, rumour, and retelling history make interesting points about celebrity life, and throughout these recur in different ways to show connectedness and also how things aren’t always as they seem.

The tone is light yet distinctive, making it an easy and enjoyable read, and the narrative does have one or two surprises. It will appeal to fans of books that contain distinctive characters with both light and deep subject matter, for example novels by Matt Haig. The real standout is the perspective of Rose and how her and her brother exist as the eccentric and often forgotten children of a famed singer and activist.