The Hours

by Michael Cunningham

Not sure why I had a copy of this on my TBR shelf.  But just now it appealed to me, and I read the book within a few days.

The chapters switch between three different stories, about three women.  The leitmotif is Virginia Woolf – the subject of one of the threads.  Chapters are entitles Mrs Dalloway, Mrs Woolf, Mrs Brown.  The character who is nicknamed “Mrs Dalloway” by her lifelong friend Richard, has the forename Clarissa.  Her story reads like a modern-day, New York retelling of Mrs Dalloway.  Indeed it is quite gratifying to read the Greenwich Village version of Clarissa going out to buy flowers, reflecting on her present and past relationships.  Richard (who bears the name of Clarissa Dalloway’s husband in the novel) is dying of HIV Aids.  Clarissa herself is in a long-term lesbian relationship with Sally (the name of the earlier Mrs Dalloway’s girlhood friend).  She is about to throw a party for Richard, to celebrate his receiving an award later that same evening.

Mrs Woolf’s story also takes place within a single day, when we see her waking up feeling less ill than she sometimes does, sitting down to write, having tea with her sister and children and then going out for a walk during which we see her on the brink of some irrational and possibly irreversible action.  The reader knows about Woolf’s eventual suicide, but this scene is dispatched in the prologue and does not clutter the story of the living, breathing Virginia.

Laura Brown is something of an enigma, at least at first.  She is what one may assume to be a typical LA housewife in the immediate post-WW2 years.  Pregnant, caring for a three-year-old, keeping house and preparing for her husband’s birthday dinner, it is hard to see any resemblance between this woman and the metropolitan Virginia and Clarissa characters of the other two stories.  But Laura’s inner life revolves around her reading of Mrs Dalloway, and she goes so far as to sneak out of her ordinary suburban life to snatch a couple of hours alone with the book.  This somewhat bizarre behaviour hints at the attempted suicide in her later life – though we only learn of this indirectly.  Laura’s connection modern-day Clarissa’s story is revealed in the final chapter (and I will not include any spoilers here).

Suffice to say that I found this a satisfying, well-written and taut novel.  It has made me want to re-read Mrs Dalloway, which I loved when I first read it just over six years ago, and to see the 2001 film of The Hours.

I think this could be a book group recommendation – and will add it to my list.

 

The Salt Path

by Raynor Winn

I really didn’t want to read this book.  It had been very heavily promoted – not to say hyped – in bookshops and online, and when I had glanced at a copy I thought this was not the kind of thing that would appeal to me.  Travel books used to be a genre I really enjoyed.  Walking is something I have always taken great pleasure in – and still do.  I have a certain sympathy for people who meet with hard times, even though I have been fortunate to be financially secure all my life, till now at least.  But still I resisted dipping into this book.  And then it was selected by our book group, and two weeks before we were due to discuss it I thought I had better bite the bullet and download a copy.

Well, the past few days I have not had much on my plate, and it was easy to find time to read the book in large chunks.  I suspect this is the best way to read something like this.  The descriptions of the natural environment are quite moving, but not something you need to pore over.  Ray’s and Moth’s experiences from day to day, and their encounters along the way, are more interesting.  The human element is what makes this story stand out: the physical, mental and at times spiritual ups and downs of the couple and their amazing capacity for endurance.  The people they meet are sketched in.  These are chance encounters, meaningful (or not) at the time, memorable (or not) afterwards.  The only permanent and real characters are the couple themselves.

I found some of their experiences hard to empathise with.  Yes, they were short of money from the very start.  But surely decent sleeping bags are an essential piece of equipment.  Ray complains about the skin peeling from her nose in the sun.  Didn’t they think to use sunblock?  And although the endless recounting of what they had to eat serves to illustrate their ever-present hunger, this too seems a bit self-pitying at times.  It isn’t such a big deal that they shared a sausage sandwich whilst watching others tuck into an all-day breakfast.  But maybe this is about choice; if a sausage sandwich is all you can afford, it probably is a big deal.  Again on the subject of food, I can understand their eating endless noodles and rice, because these are filling, light to carry and cheap.  But fudge bars?

Strangely enough, apart from a rogue toenail there is no mention of footwear.  Presumably they both had sturdy walking boots which served them for all 630 miles of the path.  I hope so, anyway, because inadequate, ill-fitting or just inexpertly laced boots can make walking a misery.

If I am honest, I suspect my initial reluctance to read this book stems from envy, or at least FOMO.  I love walking, have relished the one long-distance path I have walked (and learned a few things about what contributes to a good experience of hiking) but have not found an opportunity to repeat the experience.  Or rather, I have not made the opportunity.

One last thing: Winn writes eloquently and, one must assume, accurately about the statistics of homelessness in the UK as well as about her personal experience of it.  This rings true for me, having observed my own and other adult children on the brink of it.  She apparently campaigns on this issue, and if this book has given her and her husband some financial stability, I hope that it has also helped others and will continue to do so.

A Registry of my Passage upon the Earth

by Daniel Mason

I was inspired to buy this collection of short stories after reading The Winter Soldier.

Daniel Mason writes intelligently and in an approachable style, even when looking at the past and at medical detail.  The stories in this book are not ultra-short, so you can get into them and I didn’t feel that any of them ended too soon.  They are all set in the past, but draw on the author’s experience as a psychiatrist in examining (though not necessarily explaining) aspects of human behaviour, especially ‘abnormal’ behaviours.

These are haunting and intelligent stories, bizarre in places and yet depicting a wide range of human behaviours with great compassion.

I don’t feel able to write more just now. Perhaps I need to let the stories sink in – and perhaps I just need to re-read them at some point.

Queenie

by Candice Carty-Williams

Another audiobook, narrated (awesomely) by Tamara Lawrence, whose accents and intonation totally match the diverse characters she is portraying.  The introduction says “performed by” and I think this is indeed a more accurate term than “narrated”, even though this is an audiobook and not a dramatisation.

I had come across this book once or twice in reviews, but sat up and took note when the author appeared in a TV retrospective on the ‘Bridget Jones phenomenon’.  I don’t mind admitting that I am a fan of the Bridget Jones films, which my husband and I watch together on a regular basis.  We are romcom junkies.  I’ve never been tempted to read Helen Fielding’s books, and admit to finding the original newspaper column uninspiring.  I think the reason for this has more to do with me than the author or content of the column.  Fielding and I are contemporaries, but our lives have taken different paths.  She was a 30-something ‘singleton’, hanging out with her friends, looking for the right man and feeling at times threatened by her married, childrearing contemporaries.  I was a mother of four young children, who had married young and started a family straight after completing my university education.  True, by the mid-eighties I was also pursuing a career.  You could say I “had it all”.  But a part of me was jealous of the freedom of the fictional Bridget.  And also exasperated with her – if she wanted a man so badly, she could just pick one and get on with it!

But I digress.  Candice Carty-Williams spoke intelligently and with humour in her few, brief contributions to the TV documentary about Helen Fielding’s work.  It made me want to read Queenie, and I was delighted to see that BBC Radio 4 had produced an audiobook of this title.

I can’t say much about the book itself without giving away the story.  Comparisons with Bridget Jones are rife, but this book is more than just a remake.  It is funny at times, but with real values and experience at its core.  Race features in all kinds of ways,  At the start of the novel Queenie, the granddaughter of migrant from the Caribbean, is on a ‘break’ from her white partner Tom after her enraged reaction to a racist comment made by his uncle at a family celebration.  Queenie’s grandparents and especially her fervently religious aunt feature heavily, and are real-life characters, not just caricatures.  Her difficult relationship with her mother is a backdrop to the story, which becomes more and more prominent as we learn how Queenie’s own relationships with men are shaped by her mother’s experiences.  Indeed these relationships are the most shocking part of the story, even if there is still humour here.  Queenie has the knack of entering into the most unsuitable relationships – or dalliances – and abuse is sometimes explicit, sometimes under the surface.

This is a thoughtful and, I think, important debut novel, and I look forward to reading more by this author.

Silas Marner

by George Eliot

Should I include this as a “book I have read” when much of it I listened to as an audiobook?  I have recently discovered several of these, read in their entirety and not abridged or dramatised, on BBC Sounds.  I started listening to Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, when trying to get to sleep.  It worked well, but I don’t feel I can include a post on that novel as I slept through many of the episodes!  This book, on the other hand, held my attention and I listened to much of it during the day rather than at night.  I also read some of the chapters in the book itself.

I have loved this novel ever since, staying away on a business trip to Southampton about 20 years ago, I happened upon a screening of the 1985 BBC TV dramatisation of the story starring Ben Kingsley in the title role.  I think it was the recent Boxing Day weekend spent with my son and his daughter that brought to mind this production.  My three-year-old granddaughter, with her 40-something father, reminded me of Eppie and Silas in the story, delightfully and tenderly acted in the TV production.  I felt the need not only to re-acquaint myself with the story, but also re remind my son of the film which, though it doesn’t seem to be available to stream in the UK, might be available on DVD or YouTube.

A quick but satisfying listen/read.  Yes, I think audiobooks do qualify, when they are read in their entirety.