Thank you SO much for all your kind words and support recently. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m going to make a gradual return to book blogging. And I wanted to clear the decks on the books that have been waiting to be reviewed, some of them for many months.
And, you know me. I love to rank things. So I put 14 books in order, from least liked to most liked. In fact, I only disliked one of them, but I also didn’t fall in love with many of them either. Let’s start at the bottom of the pile.
14. Nice Work by David Lodge
This is my first novel by Lodge, and it’s sort of an updating of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, where an academic type starts shadowing someone at a factory. Everyone in it is annoying, and Lodge is obSESSed with writing scenes of people going to the toilet. There are more in the first third of this novel than in all the other novels I’ve read, combined. Also, his satire (?) of academic speak isn’t heightened or exaggerated, and thus is the sort of conversation I’m so familiar with that it didn’t seem funny at all.
13. Kind Hearts and Coronets by Roy Horniman
This 1908 novel is actually called Israel Rank, but this reprint has changed the title to match the famous film it inspired. In the novel, Israel Rank realises he can inherit a title and great wealth if he bumps off all the people in between. His motivation is the antisemitism he has faced – though the novel decries antisemitism in quite an antisemitic way. It’s described as a dark comedy but I couldn’t really see where it was funny. It’s just rather horrible, and pretty methodical so not especially pacey.
12. She and I by Pamela Frankau
I’d love to suggest a Frankau for the British Library Women Writers series, but this one won’t be it. It’s about a love triangle – and then a later love triangle with the same two men and a different woman, who may or may not be a reincarnation of sorts of the first. An interesting idea, but all very abstract and hard to pin down. And, sign, antisemitic.
11. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
This is a novel about Shostakovitch, about whom I know nothing. I think it would be better for people who do – though perhaps then it would be too predictable. As with my other Barnes experience, I found it readable but not more than ‘quite good’.
10. Slowness by Milan Kundera
I love Kundera and I enjoyed reading this, so it’s only placed here because I don’t remember a single thing about it.
9. A field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
When I picked this up, I didn’t know that Solnit is a widely-known and loved essayist. And I loved the more personal essays here. She lost me a bit when she got too historical – and I found the register slightly difficult to grab hold of at time. Maybe a little too academic for my liking. But an undeniably good prose stylist.
8. The Glory and the Dream by Viola Larkins
A preacher falls in love with an adventurous, frivolous woman (despite her being more or less engaged to another man). Passion overwhelms them – but after they are married, they realise how unsuitable they are for each other. Enjoyable 1930s stuff, but misses that vital spark to make it something wonderful.
7. Shelf Life by Suzanne Strempek Shea
A memoir about working in a bookshop – fun! It also covers a range of other things, including Shea’s time touring as a writer and her experience of cancer. I mainly came away with the intrigue that she hates when people pronounce her surname She-ah, but doesn’t tell us how it is actually pronounced.
6. The Wildings by Richmal Crompton
Crompton obviously liked this novel, because she wrote a couple of sequels. It starts a bit unpromisingly, with every paragraph ending in intriguing ellipses, but I liked it more as it went on – seeing how David Wilding copes with leaving the family firm, and manages his attachments to his jealous wife and his overlooked sister.
5. Thornyhold by Mary Stewart
This is my first Stewart and it was good fun – a woman inherits her aunt’s enormous house, and becomes part of a secretive community. And… could she be a witch? I think I’d love this more if the writing had been a bit better. She does pace rip-roaringly but, sentence by sentence, it’s a little workmanlike. Maybe (and I so seldom say this) it needed to be a bit longer?
4. Across the Common by Elizabeth Berridge
My read of this kicked off a few people buying Berridge, largely because of Reg Cartwright’s wonderful covers – see tweet – but it’s worth a read on its own merits too. It is not the Angela Carteresque surreal novel that the blurb suggests, but a tale of memory, regret, forgiveness that comes out when the heroine leaves her husband and moves in with three elderly aunts.
3. The Game by A.S. Byatt
My goodness, Byatt writes good sentences. I haven’t read her for ages, but this novel about sister rivalry between an academic and a novelist – thrown to the surface when a childhood friend re-emerges – was startling good, sentence by sentence. The reason it didn’t top my list is because I didn’t quite know what was going on in some flashbacks, and felt the whole was not quite the sum of its parts. But I think it would reward a re-read one day.
2. A Village in a Valley by Beverley Nichols
The last of Nichols’ Down the Garden Path trilogy, it’s still not in the same league as the Merry Hall trilogy but it’s good fun – particularly all the sweet stuff about helping a local woman open up a shop, despite the likelihood of it all going wrong.
1. Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
The only book from the list that I really, REALLY loved is one that took me about six months to finish – because Trollope certainly isn’t concise. The plot is about secret inheritances and couples who might not be able to marry because of poverty, but the plot is dragged out and (especially in the second half) very predictable. What makes this wonderful is Trollope’s delightful turn of sentence, and the leisurely and assured way he takes us through each conversation, reflection, and narrative flourish. A protracted joy.
