Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
“Today I read Annie Ernaux’s I Remain in Darkness, translated by Tanya Leslie,” says JayZed:
It’s her memoir of the final two dementia-ridden years of her mother’s life. Actually, memoir is not the right word: it’s her jottings and diary entries at the time, published many years later, so the pain is raw and unfiltered.
It’s a very short book, but not an easy read. I found it particularly hard as I’m going through this with my father at the moment. Even so, I was surprised by how much the feelings she articulates resonated with me. She captures the pain of seeing someone you love and have known as a strong, capable parent reduced to helplessness and dependance: “Yet the woman who stands before me today is the same one I knew in the past. That’s what is so terrible.”
An honest and moving account of how we react to ageing, dementia and death.
Extinctions by Josephine Wilson has impressed SydneyH:
Wilson’s prose is very attractive at times. For example, when the protagonist is drinking a champagne cocktail, he “watched thousands of industrious gold and silver bubbles scramble up the tunnel of his glass”. The occasional black and white photographs give the novel a similar texture to WG Sebald’s work, though I was also reminded of Wallace Stegner, especially his novel The Spectator Bird. A retired engineering professor, tormented by regrets, shuts himself away from the world in his home. Meanwhile, his adopted daughter, an Indigenous Australian woman from the Stolen Generation, studies extinct creatures, for whom she feels a certain kinship. I would encourage fans of Sebald or Stegner to scope it out and see if it tempts them.
Transcription by Kate Atkinson has entertained Maggie B:
It’s described as “A spy novel that dismantles the whole genre” – not really, but it was very entertaining and meticulously researched.There was a surprise ending which I really didn’t see coming and it has a very useful bibliography. A really good read.
Women Talking by Miriam Toews is “wonderful” says safereturndoubtful:
Between 2005 to 2009, a remote Mennonite community in Bolivia was haunted by a supposed demon that was raping the colony’s women. Eventually, two men were caught trying to break into a neighbour’s house in the night, and they revealed the truth, that the women had been drugged and raped. In 2011, eight men would be brought to trial and found guilty. Officially, there are 130 victims, most likely more.
In some places of our world it seems the evil Faulkner wrote about all those years ago isn’t much different today. The fact that Toews can write an entertaining novel about this is remarkable in itself … an astonishing piece of work.
“A friend, saying with ironic understatement ‘if nothing else, I thought you’d like the title’, gave me Gilliam’s Freeman’s The Leather Boys,” writes LeatherCol:
I’m grateful to her for introducing me to Freeman (who died this year). I was impressed, and moved, by her ability to write about gay men and our expressions of queer masculinity (underlining that we gay men don’t own these themes as our sole territory, and that we should welcome anyone using our experiences positively in literature) and love in the book. I then found her Alabaster Egg and my admiration for her talent deepened, the way she moved between periods (Ludwig’s Bavaria, Nazi Germany, and a present) and stories and, perhaps more than anything, her beautiful use of English makes her a wonderful writer. If you haven’t read her, I recommend seeking her out. It will be worth the effort.
“I finished Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead last night,” says captainlego:
As most reviewers have said, it is a novel that is near impossible to categorise. The best description I can attempt is that it reads like a philosophical whodunit; which takes in animal rights and welfare, provincial politics, the role of authority in society, the role of community and how we live and relate to each other. It has a very likeable central character in Janina; a retired engineer and eccentric older lady given to serious contemplation of the animal and human worlds. It is by turns funny and deadly serious and is one of my favourite reads of the year.
CCCubbon has just finished The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman:
It’s not a long book but one which tumbles from one fantasy situation to another, from Fae folk to dragons to articulated alligators, library books to alternative worlds. This is the introductory novel and I would hope the next calmed down a little, less frantic, more developed. A little light relief and fun that needed only a modicum of concentration.
Might be just the thing to read over the holiday.
Interesting links about books and reading
The most expensive sales of the year on Abebooks. (Who came top? Honest Abe…)
I am delighted to tell you that there is a book called A Christmas With Carol: An Erotic Scrooge Variation.
Lithub’s pick of the most scathing reviews of 2019.
And here is that review: “On the Road is a major novel.”
A beautiful book about the Earth at night from NASA. (This tip comes courtesy of Ron Charles’ excellent Washington Post book club newsletter.)
If you’re on Instagram, now you can share your reads with us: simply tag your posts with the hashtag #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection in this blog. Happy reading!
