My various ‘to be read’ piles have been consolidated into a single row which now stretches the width of four wardrobes. Each time I go to a literary festival or decent bookshop it grows. Where to start? The problem is exacerbated by friends lending books or asking me to store them because they’ve run out of room, and then gifts. Then I joined a local book group, meaning there’s another to read every month, and I’m not someone who speed-reads a novel in two days. My reading choice has become essentially random, but also more varied.
The book that provoked this blog was Drayton and Mackenzie by Alexander Starritt, a 500-page rambling novel essentially about friendship. It’s something I’d never have chosen but was gifted to me as an audiobook. For the first time in a while I was genuinely hooked by a novel and couldn’t wait until the next time I could listen. The lives of two Cambridge graduates intersect as they try to build careers and find direction in noughties Britain. James the intense over-achiever and Roland the amiable slacker become unlikely friends, then colleagues, then business partners as the plot takes unexpected yet highly believable turns. It left a warm glow of affection for the pair, and the cast of characters who revolve around them.
I’ve been sceptical of books with titles of the form ‘The Interesting Man’s wife’, and there are a lot of them about. When the book group was given The Taxidermist’s Daughter by Kate Mosse I was wary and by coincidence had to set Labyrinth aside to read it. In 1912, Connie Gifford lives with her taxidermist father in an isolated house set in marshland. The gothic atmosphere is firmly established, then enhanced by gloomy and wild weather. Dark secrets emerge, threats grow and we learn a lot about taxidermy. Another enjoyable book I wouldn’t have picked for myself.
Silas Marner – seriously? The book group was a little surprised by the librarian’s choice. It was a classic that escaped me at school and without essays to write I never came close to it afterwards. It was written in 1861 by George Elliot but as with any period novel I wanted to tease out clues over when it was set and concluded the story takes place about 50 years earlier. It contains a good deal of rural folk-history amid a fairly short tale of actions having consequences, and I was reminded of plot elements from Les Miserables and Far From the Madding Crowd. There is a great deal of rambling and barely consequential diologue which stops it being a riveting read, but an interesting experience nonetheless.
We seem to be presented with a lot of books involving twins, and here we have a pair of twins. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield was another story with a dark and twisted gothic feel and a touch of Jane Eyre. An ageing novelist recruits a young bookseller to take down her life story. It frustrated me as I couldn’t tell when it was set, vaguely early twentieth century to vaguely modern. This is important to establish voracity as real-life people constantly refer to the affairs of the day without even knowing it, so I found the construction rather false. I did get the big twist, which was pleasing, but by the end it felt more like a short story extended by delayed revelations.
Finally a treat. Piranesi was both a gift and unexpected delight. I’d enjoyed Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell and here again was a book that was completely different to any I’d ever read. A boy lives alone in a labyrinth of stone halls decorated by statues…the inexplicable strangeness just kept me reading.
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