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.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

A holiday is an unusual, if not unheard of, thing for Stevens, the butler at Darlington Hall, but his new American employer is back in the US for a few weeks, and Stevens is off on a trip to the West Country, to see the sights and visit a former colleague. Miss Kenton, now Mrs Benn, was formerly housekeeper at Darlington and Stevens hopes to be able to persuade her to return. His reasons are solid and practical, citing the unavailability of staff in the modern post-war world of the 50s, but hidden away he holds more personal, sentimental ones.

As he travels the quiet roads of 1950s England, Stevens reminiscences about the inter-war glory years, when Lord Darlington was heavily involved in European affairs, and the house filled with people of power and influence, ponders on what makes a 'great' butler and the meaning of dignity, and just occasionally lets his imperturbable butler's mask slip enough to let us glimpse the man behind - the emotions he's bottled away, the life and love he could have had if not for his belief that duty overrides all.

I first read The Remains of the Day sometime in the early 90s shortly after it won the Booker prize; I loved it then, and it was a pleasure to revisit it, though I think my feeling about Stevens have changed. Then I felt his life had been totally wasted, and that it was his own fault - his loyalty given to a man who never deserved it, the love of his life lost through his stubborn pride and 'dignity'. Now I'm inclined to judge Stevens less harshly; even feel sorry for him. Born and bred into the profession of butler, he follows his father's footsteps, and I feel there's little else he could have done. He copies the example set for him - believing that a butler should be ever-present, constantly at his employers beck and call, putting their needs above his own, never breathing a word of his own personal troubles. His aim is to be a perfect cog in a machine - in another life I could imagine him as the perfect Soviet factory worker putting tractor production and state quotas above personal feelings. 

And like that factory worker, Stevens has put total faith in his employer. His sole aim in life was to be the best butler possible. He didn't consider himself informed enough to have an opinion on anything outside this, particularly on the wider poltical issues of the day, but unquestioningly left that to his 'betters', such as Lord Darlington. Such loyalty has turned out to be misplaced (in the light of later events Lord Darlington is labelled as a Nazi sympathiser), and Stevens now finds himself adrift, unsure of how he should have behaved, and uncertain of what life now holds for him.

The Remains of the Day is a quietly moving story of a life spent in serving others, often at the loss of personal happiness, but ultimately I feel it's one of hopefulness as we leave Stevens with his professional brave face on, looking forward to to the future. 

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

 

Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were all students at the rather 'select' Hailsham school. Raised there from early childhood, their lives were free from outside influences and stress; in many ways it was an idyllic time. Now in her early thirties, Kathy reminisces about their years together, at Hailsham and afterwards, and the gradual realisation that their lives, and deaths, have been planned out for them.

This must be the fourth or fifth time I've read Never Let Me Go and it never fails to pull me in, to enfold me in its parallel world; one which seems so normal on the surface but is dark and dystopian underneath. 

At different times, it strikes me in different ways. Sometimes it's a coming of age tale, A fairly normal one of childhood tiffs and squabbles, of 'queen bee' Ruth who must be humoured else she'll make everyone's lives a misery, of the obvious differences of being brought up in an institution, even if it's one as supportive as Hailsham, Sometimes, it's far more sinister - a chilling tale of  human clones being bred to become organ donors. Or it can be nostalgic for the past, in which Hailsham represents a more caring world which no longer exists.

However it strikes me, Kathy's narrative plays out carefully, hinting at, but never outright declaring, the fate which awaits her, Ruth, Tommy and their classmates. Expressions such as 'donations' or 'completion' are bandied about as if both the children and the reader know what they fully entail; then the full enormity is revealed, and it's not quite a surprise, just a dreadful acknowledgement of what we'd suspected, but ignored, all along. That implicit acceptance leads to a far more chilling ending than if Kathy had raged against her circumstances throughout.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

An Absorbing, Disturbing Read

review by Maryom

An unforgettable story of love, friendship and the fragility of life.

Kathy, Ruth and Tommy grew up together at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic school deep in the English countryside with a dreadful secret at its heart. Now thirty-one, Kathy attempts to come to terms with her childhood at Hailsham and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world.

Unusually, I'm quoting the synopsis from the back of the book as I'm not sure how to write about this book without giving away all of the plot.

Warning - plot spoilers

The story is told from the point of view of Kathy, a carer for donors, helping them in their recovery and preparing them for the next one. It slowly becomes apparent that these people are not donors by choice but were bred ( via cloning) with this specific aim in view. Never Let Me Go is a moving all-too-human love triangle set against a backdrop of scientific manipulation and the chilling inevitability of what will happen when these young people have outlived their usefulness.

Set in an alternative England where cloning of people for harvesting bodyparts seems to have become a norm, it raises questions about what exactly makes us human, about the extremes that medical science can go to and where it should stop, what happens when cloning experiments move from the lab to the real world. With the cloning of sheep and the deliberate choosing of a child's sex for medical donation being high in the news these days, this book is a chilling warning of where such concepts could lead.

It seems rather a leap for the author probably best known for Remains Of The Day to take on something rather 'sci-fi' but it works. It reminded me very much, in my geeky way, of Blade Runner and the plight of the replicants, trying to achieve a 'human' status and outlive their termination dates. With the difference that replicants were brought to life fully grown with implanted memories but here embryos have been cloned and grown up 'normally' as children, maturing into teens and young adults - till their function of donating catches up with them.

An absorbing, disturbing read about what the future may hold.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Faber and Faber
Genre - Adult fiction, science fiction

Buy Never Let Me Go from Amazon