Spectacles – Sue Perkins

Sue Perkins is one half of Mel and Sue, the female duo who co-hosted The Great British Bake- Off for many years. I’m a fan but I don’t normally read autobiographies as I’m just not that interested in how TV presenters and actors got where they are today. It’s just another job and they are usually normal people. However, my daughter is a big fan of Sue and read her autobiography this summer on holiday. She said it was funny and well worth a read, so I put it on my shelf and forgot about it until I was booking tickets for us to see Sue Perkins Live. My daughter was keen to go and hear her talk about her new book.

The evening was really good. It was in the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, Sue was interviewed by her partner of six years (Anna Richardson), she read from her new book, there was a Q and A session and a bit of stand up, which was very, very funny. Sue’s humour is typically British and self deprecating but she also told some hard hitting tales of the poverty she had seen in her latest travels. Her new book East of Croydon, is a travel memoir based on the TV documentary series The Mekong River. She also said she was flying to Japan in five days to film a new travel series. It sounded good.

To get back to her book, Spectacles is funny. It is a light hearted romp through her life. She’s just had a normal life with all the ups and downs that many other people have but she makes you smile and it feels real, apart from a couple of places I’m sure she was exaggerating for emphasis, but I’ll let her away with that. I’m going to recommend this as the perfect sitting by the pool with a cocktail book. It will make you laugh, maybe even shed a couple of tears in places but you will finish it wanting to read more of her escapades. Luckily, I have a shiny copy of her new book to do just that.

 

The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller

This book has sat on my shelf for a little while, during which time it received lots of excellent reviews and the Orange Prize for Fiction. My hopes were high when I started reading it but I’m sad to say I was really disappointed with it.

It’s not the storyline that doesn’t work, it’s tried and tested, and Miller has chosen to present it to us from Patroclus’s point of view (Achilles’s friend and lover), which works. He is a character you really feel for and identify with. He was definitely the best part of the book, however, I felt let down by the sense of place. I know it was set in Greece and Troy because that’s where the original myth tells us but I just didn’t get that from the book. This is more about the story and the characters than setting the scene. Which will work well for some but I really wanted to feel that I was there. From the text I couldn’t picture where we were.

In addition, I felt that the story telling weakened when Achilles and Patroclus went to Troy to start the long battle to get Helen back. I found myself losing interest, once again there was little sense of place and the battle was boring. It could just be me and battles, I struggled to work my way through the third part of The Lord of the Rings simply because it is one long boring fight.

Anyway, there is the possibility I am being harsher here than I would normally be, simply because of the amazing reviews I had seen/ heard previously and my expectations were too high. Would I recommend it? If you like Greek mythology, yes. If you like a well drawn narrator, yes. But if you want to feel immersed in a book, probably not.

 

The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

I first read The Haunting of Hill House in 2010, and I really can’t remember it now. My memory is that bad, but what I do always remember is my reaction to a book and whether it is one that I will want to reread in the future. It was, I kept it safe on my shelf until now.

A week or two ago I saw Netflix were advertising a new series based on The Haunting of Hill House and it looked ok. Wrong, it’s great! Properly spooky with a touch of black humour, which I love. However, the last two episodes are disappointing. The story is tied up too neatly and the narrator at the end (Steven) goes on and on and on; it’s a  bit too sentimental for me. Don’t let that put you off, the rest is really, really good.

So the obvious thing was to pick up my copy of the book and reread it. I started reading this afternoon and not surprisingly I can’t remember a thing! Even though I am only at page 20, I can see that the series has so much of this book in it and I love that. Not sure which is better yet, if either, but really looking forward to enjoying this all over again.

My Swordhand is Singing – Marcus Sedgwick

This is my second Sedgwick novel after enjoying The Monsters We Deserve so much.

The novel is about the relationship between a father and son who have moved to a village where strange things start to happen after they bury a dead woodcutter. The book goes back in time to the oldest vampire myths of undead corpses and the folklore surrounding them. The details of superstitions and rituals surrounding undead corpses are fascinating and I reckon Sedgwick spent many, many hours researching this book. Don’t be put off if you are not keen on vampires as this is not the traditional, Victorian, melodramatic, pale man in a dinner suit. These characters feel real and take us back in time to a more superstitious period of Eastern European history – early 17th Century to be exact.

Although I have never been to early 17th Century Eastern Europe, Sedgwick captures it exactly how I would imagine it would have been. It’s not a book to read in the middle of summer though – there is a lot of snow!

I really enjoyed this book not just for the storyline of vampires and gypsies but mostly for the research Sedgwick has included. The details about undead corpses and the historical facts are what I enjoyed most. I am definitely becoming a big fan of Sedgwick and will read more of his books. However, I don’t think I want to read any more in this particular series (there is at least a sequel). I think the book stands well on its own and I have no desire to know what the characters get up to in the future.

Would I recommend it? Yes, it’s a fairly fast read, the atmosphere is perfect, the details draw you in and it is Hallowe’en soon.

The Lady and the Little Fox Fur – Violette Leduc

What a sad little story. The novella is only 80 pages long but in that length of time we learn all about the life of a destitute old woman living in Paris in the 1960’s. She can barely afford to feed herself and resorts to walking the streets to keep hunger at bay. Although she could be forgiven for crying on street corners or throwing herself under a train, she doesn’t. She rallies herself repeatedly and proves that some people are hard to break.

The other side of this is that she is probably a bit mad; she talks to the furniture! Leaving that aside, the language of the book is perfect, and just as in Orlando (my last review) the sense of place is excellent. We are in her shabby apartment, counting coffee beans, or walking the streets of Paris. The details in this book are exquisite.

Just as the book is short, so is my review. I would recommend you give this book a read and let it tug at your heartstrings. It has recently been republished by Penguin as part of their European Writers series, I think I may look at the others in the series.

Orlando – Virginia Woolf

What a fantastic book, it completely transported me through time. I loved Virginia Woolf’s sense of place; the frozen lake, the gypsy camp, London through the ages –  all were very vivid and moved smoothly from one to another, keeping Orlando’s house as a constant through the centuries. Whether Orlando herself/himself changes many times, or whether not, I shall let you decide for yourself.

The book is romantic, not romantic love but it portrays a romantic view of the past. Within the first chapter we skate along a frozen river with a Russian princess in furs. I was there, it was freezing, it was exciting and it was beautiful. Then we live in a gypsy camp and towards the end of the novel we experience a day in the new post WWI department stores and busy streets of London.

Orlando has a lot to say about clothes, gender and identity. It is interesting that she considers that how she dresses influences her behaviour, thoughts and who she is; she does not dress to reflect who/ what she is. In fact, dress is often used in the novel to disguise gender and identity.

This is definitely going to be a reread for me as I know there is so much more to get from this book.

Would I recommend this book? YES! I have held Mrs Dalloway on a pedestal. To me, she was the perfect Virginia Woolf novel. However, it looks as if she might need to make some space for Orlando up there.

Don’t call us Dead – Danez Smith

My first module of the academic year is US Cultures and #BlackLivesMatter. There are some fantastic books on this course e.g. The Underground Railroad, Sing, Unburied, Sing and Homegoing. However, this week was poetry and I read Don’t call us Dead by Danez Smith. He is a Black, queer man who is HIV positive and explores all these parts of himself through his work.

Smith’s poems have some very hard hitting messages to impart with regards to the issues Black men in America face today and it is fair to say that as a result they will not be for everyone.  I wasn’t keen on his more frank poems about his sex life but it was interesting to read his emotions on discovering he was HIV positive and how he has dealt with this.

There are several videos on YouTube of Smith reading his poems and I reckon they are better listened to than read. His delivery is often angry but he can also be very funny. Watching him made me appreciate the poems more.

My two favourite poems of his are ‘dinosaurs in the hood‘ and ‘oooooh, you look like‘ (at 0.53) (word of warning there is bad language in these videos so please don’t watch if you are easily offended).