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Havergey by John Burnside
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.
Havergey used to appear on maps but has long since disappeared from them. Even though most don’t know it exists, it is home to the wanderers and dreamers from a shattered world seeking a new life in an ancient land still formed by its exposure to the elements. They rarely have visitors though, so when a guy appears the small community is naturally curious. He is slightly bewildered, claiming to have come from the past. They ask him to stay in a building near the shore as a form of Quarantine, and he is assigned Ben, the Watcher, to look after him and help him settle.
John is not going to be allowed out but will be fed and sheltered. In the same building is the community archive, a collection of documents and letters and other texts. As he sits and reads them during the day, John starts to get a feel for the way that the community has evolved to its present state. He is joined every meal time by Ben, who tells of the Collapse and the state of the world now from the one that he left and who asks his guest what he makes of their island and if he would be able to make his home here.
Reading this is a strange and almost surreal experience. It is full of subtle nuances as Burnside explores the concepts of utopia on an island that is a refuge in a dystopian world. He also uses it as way of making us the reader think just what we are doing to this world that we live on, not only in the obvious harm, but to consider the misguided good that some think is appropriate. There is not a huge amount of character development as the themes are the prominent way of getting us to think about the current state of the world. I did like it, in particular, the sparse but eloquent prose, but at times it was a bit too fleeting. The main points it is trying to convey dovetail in quite well with the Confessions of a Reluctant Environmentalist that I read recently. It is a book that I will read again and mull over with a glass of something. 3.5 Stars
Bit late getting to this for March, had a manic two weeks, then underwent an operation and two weeks off of work. Back now and it has been insane this week… Anyway, reading wise, March was pretty productive. The two weeks at home meant that I could speak to the contractors that we need to quote for our kitchen revamp over the summer and I managed to make some inroads into my backlog of review copies. In all I read 21 books. It could have been higher, but social media does get in the way. And they were these:
Quite a varied collection this month. One of the best was The Art of Neil Gaiman, a behind the scenes look at the way that he creates his masterful works. Walking the Americas was really good too; will be watching the TV series soon, now I have finished the book. I bought the Wildlife Trust Series after I had some book tokens last year, and I am making point of starting each one of the first day of that season. This month was Spring, which I started on the 20th March. Harrison has a knack of finding some absolute classic texts as well as some promising new authors.
I was vaguely aware of Anne Dillard, but have never read any of her work. Canongate had kindly arranged for me to get to of her book that were being re-printed for their Canons series. Teaching a Stone to talk was the first of Dillard’s book that I had read, well worth it, and I have the Abundance to read soon. How to Survive a Plague was worth reading, though it is an immense book full of detail and people with the fight that the gay community had to go through to get AIDS research on the agenda. Kapp to Cape was enjoyable too, an attempt at setting a record cycling from the very north of Norway to South Africa. Read (more inhaled) one graphic novel, but it was Gaiman so it had to be done and was partially mesmerised by Falling Awake.
Read more fiction this month that I would normally do, there was the disturbing Roanoke Girls, the creepy Behind Her Eyes and the out of this world Stars are Legion. Sealskin was a worthy retelling of the ancient legend of the selkies, Sleeping Giants was a sci fi book set on our planet and the new fantasy world that Terry Goodkind had created. The no fiction I had read was interesting too, from the quirky Adventures in Stationary, the future thinking Homo Deus, a lovely book on the fox and learnt how to make a hit. Paul Kingsnorth’s new book on his thoughts on how the green agenda is losing its focus was interesting too.
I have been asked by Rebecca at Bookish Beck to be a member of the shadow panel of readers who will make our way through the six titles shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. We will be choosing our own winner shortly before the official prize announcement on Monday, April 24th. We are also joined on the panel by Amy Pirt who blogs at This Little Bag of Dreams. I will also be on the Wellcome Prize blog tour on the 19th April. Never participated in one of these before so slightly nervous!
This coming month I will be ploughing through the backlog of review copies that I have.
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Lydia is the apple of her parent’s eyes. She has her mother’s vivid blue eyes and her father’s jet black hair. For James, he hopes that she will become the person he never could be at school; popular, liked and the life and soul of any party. For Marilyn, she wants Lydia to be the doctor that she never became, rather than a mother and homemaker. As if these pressures are not enough, she has to contend with the spectre of race in her community. With a Chinese father and an American mother she had inherited the oriental looks along with her brother and sister. Nath, Hannah and Lydia suffer from the external pressures of race and the exclusions that 1970’s American society judged them on.
No one thought anything was wrong, until one day Lydia goes missing.
This is a really sad story really with a strong moral dimension about the perils of projecting your wishes and unrequited desires onto another individual. Ng has written eloquently about the way a family can implode and how each individual reacts to the after the loss of a child. I liked the effortless writing and certain aspects of the plot, but it just felt a little too woolly for me.
Floating: A Journey Through Roger Deakin’s Waterlog by Joe Minihane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.
For those that haven’t read Waterlog, then you should. In my opinion it has reached the point where it could be considered a classic tome now. Joe Minihane was one of those who has discovered the delights that the prose of Roger Deakin could offer. In the process of reading and re-reading this book, a germ of an idea grew. Twenty years after it was first published, Joe decided to recreate Deakin’s journey by swimming where he had before and to see how the wild swimming landscape had changed in the two decades.
A lot of the locations could be reached fairly easily, close to a tube station or at the end of a ride on a bicycle. To get to some of the others in the more remote parts of the UK would take a bit more effort though, especially as Joe can’t drive! It was time to find companions who want to join him in the cold waters of the UK and perhaps rekindle some old friendships that had faded in the busyness of modern life. However, this project was going to have a much more profound effect of Minihane’s life. He was to use the rituals of swimming to fight against the black dog depression and anxiety that he suffers from, slowly opening up to friends and seeking the professional help that he needs.
But this is more than that, not only does he describe the joys and shocks of immersing himself in the cold waters in this island, often with a sharp intake of breath, but like Deakin’s original, it is a frog’s eye view of the present state of our watery natural world. He lets his worries float away downstream and develops stronger bonds with old friends. Waterlog is a tremendous book, and this book by Minihane is a fitting tribute to Deakin and his legacy. A poignant reminder of the healing power of nature.
Britain’s Best Historic Sites: From Prehistory to the Industrial Revolution by Tom Quinn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Britain has rich deep veins of history reaching back thousands of years. There are so many different periods of interest that where to start is sometime baffling. In Britain’s Best Historic Sites, Quinn has listed the 80 most significant or important sites and buildings that show the way that we have used and changed the landscape over the past 10,000 years. There is a little bit of everything in here; Iron Age hill forts, Roman castles and villas, cathedrals, stone circles, manor houses and even relatively modern industrial architecture.
The book has a potted history of some of the most significant sites around the UK and is accompanied by some beautiful photographs of them. Sadly with all books of this type, it suffers because of what had to be left out. The text is informative, though very brief, but it does proved good details on location and so you can discover these places for yourself.
Falling Awake by Alice Oswald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I don’t read much poetry, but I had heard very good things about Falling Awake by Alice Oswald and as I had really enjoyed Dart by her I’d though that I’d give it a go. This collection is split into two parts, the first is individual poems, and the second half is titled Tithonus. Like Dart, this is deeply embedded in the natural world, and has the same haunting beauty.
This is one of those wordy days
There are a few poems and lines that stood out:
A Short Story of Falling: “It is the secret of a summer shower / to steal the light and hide it in a flower”
Fox: “My life / is laid beneath my children / like gold leaf”
Shadow: It is faint / it has been falling for a long time
Sunday Ballard: As they dressed the dust / flew white and silent through the house”
I really liked the collection in the first half of the book, but couldn’t get on with the poem that took up the second. Will still read more of her work though.
Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain by Lucy Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I am not sure just how many foxes there are where I am living, but I see them darting across the roads at night, caught by the headlights of the car. There was even one brazen fox walking up the middle of the road at midnight once. These fleeting glimpses of our largest predator left in the UK are for me quite special, but for others, this animal is considered a nasty pest and is something to be vilified.
In this interesting account of our tempestuous relationship with the fox. Consider and cunning and crafty animal by most, Lucy Jones has delved into the folklore, fiction and her own family history and met with those that love and hate these intelligent creatures. This bang up to date account of foxes goes some way to demonstrating our complex relationship with the natural world too. To get a better understanding of the different perspectives, she joins a hunt and a later with the saboteurs of a following a hunt to get a better perspective as to how people feel about this animal and explores the issues that polarised people on the heated public debate on this subject.
Jones has written this book about vulpes vulpes with a considered and measured approach. You know whose side she is on, but she is prepared to talk about with people from each perspective and hear their views as well as taking the time to look at the evidence based on the facts and not the scaremongering from the press. Worth reading for anyone interested in the most recognisable of our wild creatures.
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