Top Ten - and a few more - 2021

It's that time of year, for lists of the good and bad aspects of the last twelve months, so (as I love a Top Ten list) I'm joining in. My list is solely about the GOOD books of the year, though. 

As I started to put it together I realised what an eclectic sort of mix it was - literary, fantasy, sci-fi thriller, a slightly supernatural mystery, a family epic, and even one about lockdown 

Some year's it's hard to pick one book that stands out from the rest. This year it was easy for me. I totally loved Sarah Winman's  Still Life - a story which celebrates life, love, art, beauty, warmth, food, wine and all things Italian. An absolute joy to read.

 My next choice couldn't be more different. Five Minds by Guy Morpuss is a futuristic, dystopian thriller with shades of James Mangold's Identity, in which five personalities live in one body - and one by one they're being killed off. It's a gripping, original debut. 

Fantasy next.  The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec is a masterful re-imagining of Norse myths, placing a mother and her love for her three very strange children in the forefront of the story. Again, a wonderful debut.

In Lean, Fall, Stand  Jon McGregor takes his 'hero' on a roller coaster ride from the icy wastes of Antarctica, fighting for survival, to hospitals and stroke recovery centres where he faces a very different battle to regain normality and the ability to express himself. I've seen strokes from the outside - watching family members suffer - but McGregor offers a perceptive insight into how the victim themselves must feel in this strange new world

I spent a lot of the first lockdown watching 'pandemic' movies in which scientists battle to save the world from new bugs, or reading the sort of apocalyptic fiction in which a handful of survivors struggle on in isolation. The actual pandemic was very different to either scenario, and it's in that REAL world that Sarah Moss has set The Fell. Kate is an outdoors sort of person, not comfortable to be confined for long, so a fourteen day isolation period is proving tough. Then one late afternoon she decides to sneak up onto the Fell. No one will see her go. She'll meet no one up on the hill. What harm could there be in it?

Time for some humour, and escapist, improbable, action thrown in for good measure. Jonathan Pinnock's long-suffering hero Tom Winscombe is bad in Bad Day in Minsk . Kidnapped, sent under-cover into Belarus, kidnapped again (Belarusan mafia this time), getting caught in a fire fight - it's all become part of a day's work for Tom since he became in the increasingly complex affairs of dead mathematical geniuses the Vavasor twins. I love this series, and I'm glad to hear there are more books on the way.

Inspired by real-life tales of unusual happenings on British lighthouses,  The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex tells the story of three men who mysteriously disappeared from the Maiden lighthouse. The door was found locked from within, dinner laid out on the table, but no sign of the crew. Is there a better place than an isolated lighthouse to set a closed-room mystery?  A brilliant book which engrossed me from the first page.

Another brilliant debut - The Family by Naomi Krupitsky is a story of friendship, family, and Family (the American Mafia). Spanning twenty years, from 1920s to late 40s, it follows the ups and downs of the girls friendship, their lives always entwined with the fortunes of the wider Family. I loved this for its characters, its scale, the writing style which drew me in and hooked me, and the positioning of two young women centre stage in a business dominated by men.

Nick - Michael Farris Smith. Meet Nick Carraway, whose main claim to fame is being the neighbour of Jay Gatsby, and chronicling the summer in which Jay re-discovered his long lost love, Daisy, Nick's cousin. For how much he has to tell about Daisy and Gatsby, it's strange how little we actually know about Nick. This book aims to fill that gap. I'm normally a bit wary of spin-off books but this caught my imagination. 

Threaded with themes about being different, the unpredictability of love, of self-discovery, of the demands art puts on its creators, The Earthspinner  by Anuradha Roy centres around the burning desire to create something of beauty from the most basic substance - clay. As a teenager, Sara was taught pottery by an artist in her home village in India; now studying in the UK, she finds relaxation in its familiar demands and forms. The story moves between India and England, between Sara's teenage years and a period roughly 10 years later, between her story and that of Elango, the master potter. I haven't seen many other bloggers talking about this book but it's worth finding out.

In between these newly released books I took time out to catch up with some old favourites and some sadly neglected books from the to-be-read pile. From among these I'd like to mention a few

Re-visiting Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go was a delight. I've read both several times since they were first published and my reactions have changed over the years, my sympathies moving to lie elsewhere. Both were definitely worth catching up with again. 

Just Like You by Nick Hornby was a review book from a few years ago that had been overlooked; I'm not sure why, but I'm glad I DID read it eventually. Broadly speaking it's the story of a very mismatched couple - a young black man and older white women. Can mutual attraction form a basis for a long-term relationship, or do their many differences mean they're doomed to part? Nick Hornby's always good on the relationships but this time there's an added depth with, in various conversations scattered throughout, various characters discuss their feeling about the Brexit vote. It might be a bit dated (I wonder how many opinions would be the same now?) but it offers a rare balanced insight into why people thought and voted as they did.

Sarah Moss gets a second mention in this round up, as years after everyone else I've at last discovered Night Waking. It's a sharply observed account of a mother pulled this way and that by her children, and in fear of losing her 'self' as seen through her academic career. Add in a mystery when a child's body is discovered buried just outside the garden, and I can see why everyone rated it so highly.

Last, but by no means least, in the hiatus between rewatching the first Netflix series of The Witcher and the second one being released, I tracked down my Netgalley copies of The Sword of Destiny and The Lady of the Lake. Much as I love sword and sorcery just for the fantasy aspect, these books move beyond that. It's easy to see echoes of  the 'real' world in the treatment of elves, or the manipulation of women such to gain power. They don'y quite match up to the TV series, and The Lady of the Lake is the last in the series so carries spoilers, but if like me you're now waiting for series 3 or the Blood Origin spin off, indulge your Witcher cravings with a good read.

Lean, Fall, Stand by Jon McGregor

Robert 'Doc' Wright has years, almost a lifetime, of experience in Antarctic field work, spending months there at a time. Then one day things go horribly wrong. What should have been an easy, fun excursion, merely to take photographs, turns nasty when an unexpected storm blows up, cutting visibility and communications, and disaster strikes. One of the men dies, and Doc suffers a stroke. He is the only one who can say for certain what went wrong, but he's now in a position where he can't put even the simplest ideas into words.

This latest novel from Jon McGregor takes the reader from a situation where men are fighting for survival in Antarctic wastes to a different kind of fight for the return of normality and the ability to express oneself. 

The story is split into three parts, relating to the three words that make up the title; the incident in Antarctica, Anna's trip to South America to visit Robert in hospital and organise his return to Britain, and the beginning of Robert's recovery. I hadn't quite understood the nature of the story from the blurb, and found it a rather difficult read for personal reasons; family members have suffered strokes and some of it is a little close to home. Having said that I found this a perceptive insight into how the stroke victim themselves must find the strange new world they find themselves trapped in. 

Something that I would have liked to see explored further was the relationships between Doc and his wife, Anna. There's a hint that their marriage, while seeming fine on the surface, is not as solid as it might be, and that their relationship depended on them leading very separate lives. Now, not only are they forced together, but Anna has to abandon her work to become a carer (not really part of the story here but I felt the automatic assumption that his wife would drop everything to help was worth more consideration. Would Robert have done it if their roles were reversed? Would medical staff/social services etc even have expected it if their roles were reversed?) These thoughts are really by-the-by though. I'm not always a fan of McGregor's work but this is an intimate and moving account of  a man reduced to an almost child-like dependence and inability to express himself, and his slow recovery from that state. One of his best.

 

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

review by Maryom


Rebecca Shaw, on a New Year holiday with her parents, goes out walking on the moors one day, and disappears. The locals gather to help the police search the area, and at first the talk is of a twisted ankle, or the girl deliberately staying out, trying to frighten her parents, and expectations are high that she'll soon be found. But there are so many things that could have happened - she could have fallen into a quarry, be trapped down an abandoned mine, sucked into one of the bogs on the moor, or even hitched a lift to the nearest city, - and as the days, weeks, months pass, finding her seems unlikely. Despite their initial shock and concern, the villagers soon find that life continues, at first slowly but speeding up with the passing of the years - Spring comes with lambs and fox cubs, wild flowers blossom in the hedgerows, vegetables sprout up at the allotments; babies are born, children grow, relationships develop or falter, the elderly die, newcomers arrive, and ultimately people begin to forget about a missing girl.

I usually try to avoid spoilers when  writing reviews but I don't think that's possible here because a lot of my thoughts revolve around what the book IS, and what it ISN'T.

Although the book opens with Rebecca's disappearance, it ISN'T a crime thriller, with clues to unearth, false leads to pursue, but ultimately leading to a resolution. Over the years, various times of Rebecca's clothing are found but no real evidence of what happened or clue to her whereabouts discovered. Instead the focus is on the impact to the people living in this quiet out-of-the-way village - something devastating has happened on their doorstep, but to an outsider that most of them had never met. Naturally they're shocked, but for how long can they be expected to grieve and put their lives on hold?

Personally I found a lot of similarities with McGregor's first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. In much the same way, it encourages the reader to see and remark upon the small happenings that occur from day to day around us but which are so often missed in the rush of life; to stop for a while and watch a butterfly, listen to birdsong, or notice our children growing from infants to teenagers. It's a mesmerising, beautifully written book charting the emotional and physical changes within a small tightly-knit community over thirteen years, but this time I was left wanting something more. As the years pass, snippets of information come to light about Rebecca's disappearance, various items of her clothing are found on the moors, but no explanation of her disappearance is forthcoming. This may, in all honesty, be truer to life than a crime novel which neatly closes all leads off by the final page, and reaches some nature of resolution, even if not a happy one, but, even so, I was left unsatisfied. Somewhere I read that the mark of a literary novel is that it ends without resolution - this is certainly literary, not crime, fiction.


Maryom's review - 4 stars 
Publisher - Fourth Estate
Genre - adult literary fiction, 

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

review by Maryom

On a late summer's day the residents of a street in the north of England are going about their daily routines. Nothing special is happening - a man is painting his windows, two boys are playing cricket, a toddler rides his tricycle up and down the street, an elderly couple celebrate their anniversary - the sort of things that make up any average day...then something happens, a terrible thing which leaves its mark on all who witnessed it.
A few years later one of the young women from the street is trying to face up to some unexpected, disturbing news but her thoughts keep getting dragged back to that fateful day....

I picked this up from the library as the author is going to be appearing at a local book festival - and I was stunned! I just don't know how I haven't discovered this wonderful book, or in fact any by this author, before.
It opens with an over-view of the anonymous city, with passages that read like poetry, then zooms in one street as its inhabitants go about their daily lives, focussing on all the little things that make up a day - all rather like Under Milk Wood.
The reader's told quite early on that something dreadful occurred on this specific day - but the actual details are withheld, and I had the feeling that the author was teasing me with possibilities - would something happen to the elderly couple catching the bus? the man making a charity bungee jump? the toddler on his trike? When the tragedy occurred, it wasn't what I was expecting.
These events alternate with the (presumably) present day, as the young woman copes with another life-changing event, explores her relationship with her parents, meets a new guy - but all of these things are still marred by the past.

A curious feature is that barely anyone is named but referred to by gender and house number, underlining the fact that, like so many of us, the inhabitants of this street don't really know their neighbours. It also serves to make the characters more universal - they're all people we can identify with, maybe even like some people we know - and that's what this book celebrates; the everyday captured and turned into something special.

The good thing about discovering this book so very late, is that the author has had time to be writing more - so it's time for another trip to the library!



Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre - adult literary fiction