Between Us: Three Books I've Loved, Three Books I Haven't

I’ve been ploughing through that summer reading pile I told you about (Five Books I’ll Be Reading This Summer) and I have some notes. The books I’ve enjoyed, and the books I’d probably give a miss if I happened upon a time travel machine and could select my reading pile all over again.

Mind you, if I did happen upon a time travel machine then I’d have bigger fish to fry in terms of the recent things I’d do differently; namely the Bum Procedure of Doom (post coming, context here) which I would absolutely 100% run a mile from, backless gown flapping behind me as I sprinted through the exit of the outpatients department.

I’ve just realised that the pile of books I was supposed to be ploughing through isn’t the same pile I’ve actually been ploughing through (my God, can I please stop using the words “pile” and “ploughing”, it’s far too soon): nevertheless, I have some very strong book recommendations for you. And also some book dislikes, though these are always more controversial…

Let’s start with the loves.

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John of John, Douglas Stuart

The first and only hearty recommendation so far from my summer reading list. I am yet to read Land by Maggie O’Farrell because my mum made off with it the day I bought it and I am downloading The Correspondent to my Kindle to read on holiday later this month. The others, well. You’ll see.

(I’ve just seen that my Kindle is fifteen years old. Should I give it an upgrade? I think it must be the first ever edition of the Paperwhite. It has a little dink in the screen that lets light escape, which is quite irritating, but otherwise seems to work perfectly. I’m just wondering whether a newer one would be ridiculously amazing, like going from one of those early Apple Mac computers that had the plastic see-through backs and came with 2GB of storage to, I don’t know, my current MacBook Pro? Would I see some dramatic difference, or would it be exactly the same, minus the dink?)

But John of John. I really enjoyed it, if enjoy is even precisely the right word when it comes to Douglas Stuart’s books. They really put you through the wringer. I would really advise starting with Shuggie Bain, moving onto Young Mungo and then starting John of John, because although they are all completely unrelated stories, there’s a definite kind of process you’re moved through; violent Glaswegian upbringings, poverty-stricken backgrounds, themes of forbidden love and loneliness and brutality.

AM I SELLING ALL OF THIS TO YOU FOR YOUR SUMMER SUNBED READ ALL RIGHT THEN I WILL CARRY ON.

John of John is set on the remote, wild Isle of Harris rather than Glasgow, but almost as soon as you start reading the themes feel familiar - you could absolutely tell, without ever being told the author, that this is a Douglas Stuart book. Violent father, secretly gay son, small, forbidden pleasures, relentless work, bone-tiredness and a sense from the characters of for the love of God when will this all end?

The story, in short: son (Cal) comes back from his studies to the Isle of Harris, where his Dad is a weaver and also farms his area of rocky, inhospitable land. Both are secretly gay, made more complicated by the fact that they are also (supposed to be) strict Presbyterians and completely wedded to their faith.

Some of the situations that arise are genuinely hilarious, despite the sense of impending doom and peril, but this is countered by absolute dismal heartbreak and a background of drizzle, cold winds and constantly chapped hands.

Look, I love Douglas Stuart. I don’t know another writer who can pen things so very bleak with as light a touch. It’s always an education, reading him, and John of John was no different.

John of John is in hardback here.

Ripeness, Sarah Moss

I raced through this and immediately ordered two more books by the same author and then bought tickets for her appearance at Toppings in Bath in the autumn! That’s how much I liked it.

I realised that I had read another one of Sarah Moss’s novels years ago, one called Night Waking, and I didn’t like it so much. It was about a woman who moves to a remote island with two small children and struggles to cope with their demands and all the other things that life is hurtling her way.

I do wonder whether I’d enjoy it more now, with a bit more life under my belt - I note from my records (Kindle download history) that I read it in 2011, so I was juggling modelling with blogging, was unhappy with where we were living in London and also would have been right in the midst of it with unexplained infertility and pregnancy loss. (All for another time, maybe.) Have you ever wondered whether you disliked a book simply because you read it at an inopportune time? I might give Night Waking another go this summer, seeing as though I’ll have my Kindle fired up already…

Anyway: Ripeness. Absolutely excellent. Two storylines: young Edith, who is sent to Italy to help “sort out” her older sister, a ballerina who is in the late stages of pregnancy, and present-day seventy-something Edith who lives in Ireland, alone, and is (if you ask me) just so incredibly wise and thoughtful and grounded and has mostly managed to work herself out.

I found her character very comforting; I know she’s fictional, but she has been absolutely brutally honest with herself and we get access to all of these thoughts, all of these revelations and slow realisations that she has gradually made about her own life and the people she has shared it with. I found it poignant and such a compassionate and optimistic way to write a character, especially because she is a woman in her later life - no “bitter, blunt, accidentally hilarious old woman gives memoirs from rocking chair” trope here.

I really felt as though this book gave something new and different. And the modern-day storyline was the one I liked least! Imagine how much I loved the Ballerina Troupe Sequester Themselves in Lake Como Palace storyline! With a seventeen year-old Edith, set the horrendous and completely age-inapprorpriate task of seeing her older, snippy sister through the last of her pregnancy and the giving-up of the baby. Oooph! What a read.

Ripeness is available in paperback here.

The Artist, Lucy Steeds

The Artist, currently 99p on the Kindle, by the way, is Lucy Steeds’ debut novel and I am totally bowled over by it. Finished it last night after devouring it over the course of three, long nights, and it is so exquisitely executed - not a dud moment did I skip over, not a dull passage did I skim!

Set in the South of France, in a hot hot summer (already perfect holiday read), it’s set at the crumbling old farmhouse of one of the world’s most revered painters. He’s a bloody tyrant, this bloke, but you fully get sucked into his orbit of genius alongside the other characters, magnetised by his moods and his methods and the way he snatches plates of half-eaten food from his guests so that he can take them off to his studio and paint them as they decompose.

You can smell the rotting fruits and the sardines and the out-of-season oysters as you read through the unbearably hot weeks and uncover the secrets that are stewing away beneath all of the tubes of oil paints and huge stretched canvasses and overflowing ashtrays.

In short: boy meets girl, girl has a secret, whole thing is loomed over by this borderline-psycho world-famous painter. Oh it’s so good, I almost don’t want to tell you anything else! Delicate, trembling, naive love scenes, descriptions of art and of food and of people that makes you glad to be an alive, feeling human, it’s the absolute antidote to AI dross and will make you want to spend the rest of the summer visiting old churches in France and touring art galleries.

Strong, strong recommend.

The Artist is here.

Right. That’s three books I’ve loved, here are three books I haven’t:

Thanks for reading, everyone - I’m off to make Kedgeree, which I love but have to call by a different name because it’s the only thing Rich rolls his eyes at. He just has a total mental block about eating it, says it’s something to do with the name. Anyway, he made the kids’ dinner and so it’s my turn to do ours. (We don’t all eat together, are you mad? It’s like willingly eating inside an animal enclosure at the zoo.)

Tell me which books you’ve been reading in the comments - good ones that I can add to my list, not-so-good ones I can avoid.