My year in books – part two
Now, before we get started, I would like to state that I am well aware that it is now 2017. Really, I should be jotting down my thoughts about resolutions, change, fitness, health or some other goals, but I promised to write about my ten favourite books and I’m no flake…ahem. It was my intention to write the second half of this well before the new year but life intervened in the form of other writing commitments, illness and a little thing called Christmas, lots of people resolve to read more so think of this as a Launchpad for some reading adventures. Now, where were we?
A God in ruins – Kate Atkinson
Goodness me this book was astounding. This was a book set in the same world as Life after Life but was not a sequel, Kate Atkinson refers to it as more of a companion piece. It tells the story of Teddy Todd, younger brother of Ursula Todd from Life after Life, and his experiences as a bomber pilot in world war two and the life of him and his family in the decades following on from there.
I have read a lot of Kate Atkinson, after being entranced by Started early took my dog, it is not often that I really love a crime book, and the two books charting the Todd family and their experiences of the second world war are my absolute favourites. You can read this book without reading Life after Life, it is entirely its own story.
The writing is smart, moving, funny and written with a uniquely magical pragmatism that I adored. The set pieces of Teddy’s missions are thrilling and unputdownable but the small humdrum details are even better. You invest so heavily in these characters that as she brings it all to a finale your senses are just utterly battered. I don’t often cry at books but I would defy anyone to not shed a tear (or belly sob like a loon) at the final few pages.
The tears fell not just because of my investment in the story, but also out of delight at the very clever twist she delivers in those final few pages. It was devastating and delicious. I loved this book and it opened the floodgates for a lot of weeping at books in 2016.
Grief is the thing with feathers – Max Porter
I was in a bookshop a few days before going on holiday this summer and had just spent a lot of money on a big pile of books to take with me, just as I was waiting for my husband to buy some books for himself I spotted this book and started reading, by the end of the first page I was a goner, pulling out my bank card and joining the queue again.
It is a hard book to describe, prose, in a poetic kind of way, fiction, yet with a hint of memoirs, desperately sad and massively hilarious and all about dishonesty and lies but brimming with emotional truth. In fact, it was one of the most honest books I read all year.
It is told from the perspectives of a Dad, who has just lost his wife, his sons and the Crow, who is a macabre, chilling intruder but also an almost Mary Poppins type figure for the boys and a counsellor and confidant for Dad. It is a beautiful, odd little masterpiece. Hopeful, beautiful and very uplifting. If you have loved and lost, read this book.
A monster calls – Patrick Ness
Continuing the theme of death and grief I naturally have to mention this book. It had been on my ‘must read’ list for a good few years but after my sister died in 2014 I decided I wasn’t up for it and retreated into a world of comfort reading. By the time I felt better I had started my own novel about family grief and thought it would be wise not to read it until my own novel was finished and had at least one redraft.
Good grief it’s good. Utterly deserving of all accolades and prizes bestowed upon it. You’ve probably already read it but if you haven’t rectify that immediately. It is the story of Conor who wakes from an awful dream and finds that he is not alone. There is a monster and it wants something important from Conor.
Just a word of warning, don’t read this book in public because you will cry, not graceful, subtle tears but massive, ugly, red-faced, snot heavy sobs that leave you looking like a monster yourself. My very literary nine-year-old expressed a desire to read this book, but when I gave her a brief synopsis, my hard as nails girl cried for about twenty minutes – she’s going to wait until she’s eleven to read it apparently.
The writing is beautiful. The story is simple, like a modern folktale. The truth and compassion that runs all the way through it cannot be faulted. It is a masterpiece.
The last act of love – Cathy Rentzenbrink
This is the second non-fiction/memoirs book that made it into my top ten this year. It is not a genre I usually read but both this and Matt Haig’s book, mentioned in my previous post, are such powerful stories, honestly and beautifully told that my reading this year would have been much less rich without them.
Cathy was seventeen when her brother, a year younger, was knocked down by a car, eight years later he died. She tells the story of their family being lost in the place between life and death with utter vulnerability. She also writes about how to find joy and love and hope in the world even when the world is not how you envisaged it to be.
She writes so beautifully about losing a sibling that I found myself agreeing as I read, folding down corners, nodding and storing quotes away for later,
“Grief is the price we pay for love. It is, we have to believe, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I had a brother. I learned about love by loving him. He had the first bits of my heart. He died.”
And because this is my blog I’m going to put in another,
“Somewhere along the way, my grief story became a love story. I have worked out that the only way to be alive in the world is to carry out acts of love and hope for the best.”
Over the Moon – Imtiaz Dharker
My final book is another radio four book and is a poetry anthology. Last year was a year where I looked to the creative process for healing and understanding, in the fiction I wrote and the books that I read. My book choices, especially in this second half, are rather “death heavy” but that is the beauty of all art, particularly reading, it can grab you and show you that you are not alone.
These poems are beguiling and exquisite. A lot of them are written about the sickness and death of her husband and I have found, and continue to find, so much peace, wisdom and beauty in them. These poems are a celebration of love, Don’t miss out! Book right now for the journey of a lifetime, is a favourite and very celebratory in theme and tone, up at the top with my favourite love poems of all time.
If you would always discount poetry, give it a try, don’t try to read it all in one go, but keep it on the bedside table for dipping in and out of. It will not disappoint, all the big things are found in the pages of this book, written beautifully and simply, expressed in a way that celebrates all it is to be human and to love and to create.
“Stab the page. Stab it in the heart.
Find the word that is not a word.
Find the word that is a blade.
Slash the empty space
to fall into the teeming dark,
find the face.
Make one mark.”
Read, write, love, create, live.
Hope you get to enjoy some of the ten books I have highlighted in these last two blog entries. Happy reading, may 2017 be your best reading year yet.
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