April ‘23 roundup!

Late I know, but I was ill and I’ve been busy. I’m no longer ill, though still pretty busy. Even so, the ever-growing TBR pile won’t read itself.

April had lots of enjoyable reading, dominated by a book that’ll actually be in my May roundup. My year of long books project continues and some of those books are long enough they straddle months…

More on that soon. In the meantime, here’s the books I did finish in April.

The Fell, Sarah Moss

Sarah Moss has been on a bit of a roll recently with short and highly topical novels. She’s mastered a neat trick of books that are very rewarding as narratives in their own right, but that also have deeper contemporary resonances. Ghost Wall deals in issues of resurgent nationalism; Summerwater speaks to Brexit and xenophobia.

The Fell explores our recent collective experience of lockdown. Kate is in her 40s with a teenage son and going stir crazy. One night she decides to go out for a run on the local fells. It’s a breach of lockdown rules and if she’s caught there’s potentially serious fines. While out, she slips, falls, and needs rescuing.

It’s a brilliant scenario. We get her perspective, her son’s wondering whether to call for help as it gets later and later, her next door neighbour and a volunteer rescue worker. It’s tense, Kate will die if she’s not found in time, but more than that it captures something elusive about a time that already seems to be being almost wilfully forgotten. That sense of everyday dread, eroded trust, but also of the extraordinary efforts some made to keep others safe.

I loved Ghost Wall, liked Summerwater (though I remember it very clearly which speaks well of it). Here I think Moss is on top form and if you can bear to revisit 2020 I’d strongly recommend this.

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen

I adored this. It’s easily the funniest book I’ve read in a while. It’s a satire on the gothic novel featuring Catherine, who being a young woman of no particular distinction is an unlikely heroine. The novel largely consists of her staying a while in Bath, visiting a country house with a very welcoming family, and taking some carriage rides out with a young man who is perhaps fonder of himself than he is of her.

What makes it so fun? Because everything is written in the most portentous and dramatic style, but then nothing much really happens. The author’s voice will warn that Catherine little knows what dire consequence may soon befall her, then next chapter she’s fine because actually nothing has happened. What is the dark secret of Northanger Abbey? There isn’t one, it’s a perfectly pleasant place.

It’s probably fair that this isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Emma or P&P, but it’s still masses of fun. Also, it’s quite short. I’m not sure it’s best as first Austen, but it’s certainly not just one for completists.

Territory of Light, Yuko Tsushima (translated by Geraldine Harcourt)

A young mother moves into a top floor apartment with her toddler daughter. She’s separated from the father and making a new life. The apartment has massive windows and is flooded with light, hence the title.

This is one of those novels where in a sense not much happens. The woman struggles to adapt to being a single parent, has to juggle work and childcare, suffers from isolation and perhaps depression. That’s life though sometimes isn’t it? It’s a situation as worthy of exploring as any other. Most importantly though it’s beautifully, superbly written.

This is a clear candidate for my end of year list. Jacqui wrote about it here and captures it well. Very, very highly recommended.

The Hunter, Richard Stark

Slight change of style and pace. This is the first of the Parker novels, there’s over twenty of them. Parker is a career criminal left for dead by one of his crew. He wants his money and he wants revenge, and he doesn’t care that the guy who betrayed him is now a somebody in ‘the ‘The Outfit’.

What follows is a brutal and propulsive thriller. Parker is essentially an animal, amoral and savage. He takes what he wants and god help anyone who gets in his way. It’s very much a man’s world, women aren’t treated well or given much agency. Then again anybody who’s not a criminal is basically an extra. I wouldn’t call it literature, but it’s great pulp (as you’d expect, given Richard Stark is really Donald E. Westlake).

Shards of Earth, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Space opera! I can’t recall why I picked this up next but I enjoyed it. It’s over 500 pages and the first of a trilogy which is a bit daunting, but Tchaikovsky is very good at big-screen SF.

In the far future, much of human space including Earth itself has been destroyed by massive planetary sized alien craft of unknown origin. The war ended leaving a shattered humanity, but is the enemy now returning? Of course they are or there wouldn’t be a trilogy. If this is the sort of thing you like then you will definitely like this. If you’re SF-curious this probably isn’t the place to start.

Hotel, Joanna Walsh

This is an interesting one. On its surface it’s a book about hotels, mostly high end ones. In fact it’s more a mix of memoir and reflection about the narrator’s failing/failed marriage. The book consists of vignettes, postcards even, featuring at times Freud and his patient Dora and other famous hotel-guests.

If you were to read any of it as an excerpt it might be amusing. Collectively it becomes terribly sad. What is home after a major break-up? Whatever it may become in future, in the immediate aftermath you’re in a non-place surrounded by seemingly familiar objects robbed of comfort.

Suspicion, Friedrich Dürrenmatt (translated by Joel Agee)

There are two Inspector Barlach novels and I was something of an outlier in not enjoying the first, which I found contrived. No such concerns with the second.

Inspector Barlach discovers evidence that a prominent doctor may in fact be a Nazi war criminal and determines to bring him to justice. He does this by the arguably imprudent tactic of submitting himself to the doctor’s care as a patient in his clinic. What could go wrong?

I’ll leave you to find that out for yourself if you’ve not already read it. As with the first novel, but for me much more successfully, it becomes an examination of moral choice and of moral purpose versus nihilism. It’s also a very tense read as Barlach becomes perilously aware quite how vulnerable a position he’s put himself in.

And that’s it! I’ll try not to leave it too long before writing up May.