My first book of 2019 proved to be a good one.  No big surprise. I’m a great admirer of Murakami and I found this long and sprawling novel to be one of his most engrossing. As is always the case, what captivates is the unique world he creates and that singular voice. No one sounds like Murakami.

When his wife announces that she wishes to end their marriage, the novel’s narrator, a largely unknown portrait painter in his mid-thirties, leaves Tokyo and ends up living in a remote mountainside house previously occupied by a much more celebrated artist, Tomohiko Amada. Settled into the new house and studio, the narrator agrees to paint the portrait of a neighbor, a mysterious, white-haired man who lives nearby in a grand mansion for no other reason, it seems, than to be close to a teenage girl who may or may not be his daughter.  This being a Murakami novel, the natural and supernatural worlds co-exist quite comfortably.  The narrator is woken in the middle of the night by the tolling of a bell traced to a deep, uninhabited pit in the woods nearby. A painting by Amada is found in the loft and one of the figures in the painting, the Commendatore, takes human shape, appearing from time to time to dispense gnomic wisdom to the narrator.  Amada himself appears in the dead of night, revisiting his old studio and staring at the painting.

Those puzzled by Murakami’s popularity often voice their frustration about the rambling, unfocused quality of his most recent long-form fiction.  There’s some truth in the criticism.  His newest novels are getting longer and longer and they certainly lack the beautiful precision and polish of his short stories and early novels.  Having said that, at no point did I find myself wanting the 700 pages of Killing Commendatore to end.  For sure it’s bulky.  Murakami can’t resist telling you in detail what every character is wearing and what they’re eating.  Some obviously find that irksome.  I don’t.  That layering of detail seems to me an intrinsic part of his later work.

It’s worth saying also that Killing Commendatore is a handsomely produced book.  The UK edition published by Harvill Secker, the one I read, is more beautifully designed than its US counterpart and properly reflects Murakami’s position and popularity as a novelist.

Lists announcing “the best books of the year” are always fun to read, sometimes unintentionally so.  You can rely on the critics who recommend that obscure Croatian novel, their friend’s poetry collection, or that exhaustive and unmissable study of postwar sculpture in Mongolia; perfect reading for the holiday season.  Advice on what to read is tough to avoid at this time of the year, as are the previews of what to look out for in the months ahead.  A relatively new sub-genre in this world of “book counseling” is the piece that advises you how to read or at least how to approach your reading in a world of abundance.  Like much unsolicited and therefore irritating advice, it’s usually well-meaning.  It seeks to solve a serious problem.  How should you choose the twenty, fifty, hundred books you’ll read in the year ahead when there are millions to choose between?  Read only women authors.  Devote the year to no one but Dickens or Tolstoy.  Tackle that intimidating monster you’ve been avoiding, Moby Dick or À la recherche du temps perdu.  Read only the unread books you’ve bought in previous years, the ones reproaching you from your bookshelves. Choose non-fiction exclusively, etcetera and ad nauseam.  Hey, if it gets people reading more, who cares that the advice is often smug, patronizing, and impractical?

I’ve tried taking this kind of advice.  I really have.  I once spent a year reading nothing but the works of Turgenev.  I enjoyed the experience but not enough to want to repeat it with a different author or by following some different rule or constraint. I’m simply too enthusiastic and promiscuous a reader.  I’m too interested in too many things to go that route.  Nevertheless, some criteria and resolutions seem to be required.  There are so many great authors whose work I don’t know well.  Saul Bellow, Javier Marias, Roberto Bolano, Italo Calvino – I could go on an on.  Perhaps I should devote something like half my reading year to making inroads on this list and devote the rest to serendipitous reading?  One thing is for sure.  I need to raise my game and simply read more.  That’s my one reading resolution for 2019.  Watch this space.

I read twenty-six books in 2018, one more than in the previous year.  So much for my resolution to fit more reading and more books into my life.  Ho hum.  Sixteen of the books were written by men, ten by women.  Seventeen were novels and nine were non-fiction.  Somewhat surprisingly, sixteen of the books were written by authors I’d never read before.  I’m quite proud of that because I had promised myself that I’d root out new and interesting voices.

Two amazing books stand out on the longish shelf of titles read in 2018, both by long-established masters of their craft.  Last Stories by the late William Trevor was simply perfect, a reminder that he had no peer in the dying art of short story telling.  Julian Barnes, still very much with us I’m pleased to say, delivered The Only Story, a wonderful reflection on what and how we remember.  No review of the reading year is complete without calling out two stinkers.  Mario Vargas Llosa, nearing the end of a glittering career that has included a Nobel Prize, should have been ashamed to put his name to something as poor as The Neighborhood, while The Wife Between Us was simply utter trash.

Looking back on those writers I encountered for the first time this year, a few – Andrew Miller, Robert Macfarlane, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – produced memorable and special books.  So, how would I sum up my reading year overall?  A few gems, very few duds, and a small handful of pleasant surprises.

Swinbrook, described in one guide book as “just about the prettiest place you can imagine”, is one of those quintessential English villages found in and around the Cotswolds.  I knew of it as the birthplace of the infamous Mitford sisters but had never visited until recently.  At the center of the village stands the 12th century church of St. Mary, famous for the Fettiplace memorial and as the final resting place of four of the Mitford sisters: Unity, Diana, Pamela, and Nancy.

I arrived at St. Mary’s just as the service was about to begin.  If the Anglican church is in trouble, the message hasn’t reached the villagers of Swinbrook.  The place was packed.  It’s easy to poke fun at the gentle, safe Anglicanism of the English upper middle classes (the Tory Party at prayer, as someone once said) and I just about suppressed a snigger when the vicar asked the congregation to pray for the Prime Minister and her husband as they faced the Brexit vote in Parliament in the week ahead.  Is God a Remainer or a Brexiteer?

From tiny Swinbrook I drove to Burford, “the gateway to the Cotswolds”, famous for the sweeping High Street with its almost unbroken line of beautiful ancient buildings.  Although unmissable, Burford suffers slightly because of its beauty and popularity, attracting too many visitors at the height of the season.  That wasn’t a problem on a cold December morning and I was very grateful for the town’s many cafés.  Before leaving Burford I made a visit to its large, opulent medieval church, one of the finest of the region’s “wool churches” started in the 12th century.  A few parishioners were rehearsing for the Christmas carol service later in the day.  A perfect English scene to end a very English day.

The essays in Colm Toibin’s latest book comprise three miniature biographies of the fathers of famous sons.  When I started Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know, I expected it to add up to a prolonged reflection on fatherhood or at least on how the fathers influenced their more celebrated sons, but on completing the book I doubted whether that was ever Toibin’s intention.

On the evidence presented here, Sir William had little impact on Oscar Wilde, though their remarkably similar legal difficulties illustrated how alike they were in their conviction that their social standing and abilities gave them license to flout convention with impunity.  How wrong they were.  Sir William’s hubris led to some minor social embarrassment and financial damage, while Oscar’s led to tragedy, disgrace, and early death.  John B. Yeats, a charming but impecunious and indecisive painter, could not have been more different, working hard to influence the poetry and philosophy of his celebrated son, William, from his self-imposed exile in New York.  John Joyce, in spite of being a feckless drunkard, appears to have been a lifelong presence in James’s mind and imagination and is commemorated in Ulysses and elsewhere.

I wrote here recently about how history makes itself felt so intensely in some cities.  That’s something I always sense strongly in London.  Colm Toibin, in his introduction to Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know, writes beautifully – as he does about everything – of how the buildings and streets of Dublin speak to him of celebrated Irish writers long past.

I planned it as a hit and run.  Arrive early before the tourists and Christmas shoppers and enjoy the winter sunshine before the rain clouds slipped in.  My plans were modest: buy a few books in Blackwell’s on Broad Street, coffee and cake at my favorite café, (Opera in Jericho), and a quick peek at the Bodleian.  Mission accomplished with a few nice surprises along the way.  The great library had a small display dedicated to Wilfrid Owen, presumably to mark the 100th anniversary of the armistice.  I’d never seen any of his manuscripts, so it was a thrill to see Anthem For Doomed Youth and Dulce Et Decorum Est in his neat handwriting.  In Blackwell’s, one of the world’s great bookshops, I chatted with two delightful young booksellers working to pay their way through their graduate publishing course.  I even got a table at Opera without waiting.  So far, so good.

But the sky started to darken as I headed up St. Giles’ and so did my mood.  Perhaps it was the sight of the Martyrs’ Memorial, that reminder of ancient intolerance and cruelty, or Owen’s sad and beautiful verse in his boyish hand:

What candles may be held to speed them all?/Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes/Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes./The pallor of girls brows shall be their pall;/Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,/And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Or, more likely, it was the previous day’s experience, that sudden alertness to the presence of death.  Time to leave before the rain started to fall.

Certain novels seem to take hold in the popular imagination and sell in huge numbers, their success propelled as much by word of mouth as by reviews.  Think of Gone, Girl or The Girl on The Train.  It’s difficult to explain the appeal of such books.  Intricate, suspenseful plots?  Yes, but thousands of other novels have such plots and never get close to that kind of success.  Clever marketing?  Maybe.

The Wife Between Us is the latest bestseller in this category, the most recent succès du jour.  Having finished it recently, I’m as mystified by its success as I am by the plaudits printed on its cover.  Fiendishly smart.  No.  Deliciously clever. No.  Masterful.  No. In fact it’s overlong, over written, trite throughout, and filled with mostly loathsome characters. I’ve no doubt the film rights have been sold and the authors are fending off publishers offering multi-book deals.  Good luck to them.  There are far too many impecunious writers to resent those who succeed.  That changes nothing. The Wife Between Us is schlock.

I spent time in sixteen countries in 2018: Japan (twice), Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, India, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Iceland, Netherlands (twice), Greece, Germany (twice), Belgium, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K (six times). Many miles, many airports, many forgettable hotels for sure, and more than a few days woozy with jet lag.  But if that’s the price of some unforgettable experiences, it’s a tiny one and I’m happy to keep paying.  A few days of solitary wandering in the Far North of New Zealand, the empty spaces of Kis and Snaefellsjokull in Iceland, an afternoon exploring Lamma Island, dinner overlooking the floodlit Parthenon, canal-side strolls in Amsterdam with my oldest son, quad biking in Sharjah, Petra, distillery hopping in Scotland, and a lot more besides; not a bad haul in a single year.

Seeing the world, even after all these years and all the minor inconveniences that get gathered along the way, continues to be the most extraordinary privilege.  It still surprises me when I hear equally fortunate colleagues and friends complain about their experiences.  Days will come when I’ll see less of the world and the world will see less of me.  Those will be sad days made tolerable by a store of lovely memories.

Having said all that, I don’t want to paint a picture of uninterrupted bliss.  Just in case the powers-that-be are reading this (I know they’re not), I’d like to whine just a little and make a few recommendations on behalf of the regular traveler.  If airport terminals must be shopping malls (why?), can you please squeeze in a decent bookshop now and then among the luxury clothing stores?  Can we have in every airport somewhere that sells good quality, affordable food that we can take on board, thereby avoiding inedible plane meals? Can those who supervise security screening at JFK please travel to other airports overseas and discover what the rest of us have known for years, that it can be done without long queues and without rudeness?  Can hotels that provide safes in the rooms (thank you!) please make them large enough to accommodate a laptop and replace all the Nespresso machines with complimentary bottled water?

And for my fellow airline travelers, if I ask very nicely will you please always wear socks, never clip your toenails, control your flatulence, be nice to the cabin crew, and never, ever talk to me?  It would be much appreciated.  Looking forward to 2019.

Why would one bother reading a collection of old book reviews, books one had never read or never intend to read? In the case of Human Relations And Other Difficulties, because Mary-Kay Wilmers, the editor of the London Review of Books, writes so wisely and so wittily about people and their relationships.  At first sight the reviews seem to cover a wide range of topics – the life of Alice James, menopause, Patty Hearst, Pears’ Cyclopedia, and much more – but Wilmers has something she turns to time and time again: the relationship between the sexes. Looking at the lives of Jean Rhys, Ann Fleming, Barbara Skelton, and Vita Sackville-West is the springboard for serious reflection on how men have constrained and limited women’s lives.  When I imagined Wilmers writing these pieces, the image of a skilled surgeon came into my mind: someone cool, meticulous, and appropriately removed, completely at ease with her tools and very clear about what she intended to do with them.  A witty surgeon admittedly, and one you might like to have dinner with, but someone engaged in a serious business.

England’s ancient cathedrals have always been special places for me.  Salisbury, Ely, Winchester, Wells, Lincoln – each so distinctive but all suffused with the same ineffable spirit.  Places of worship and prayer for those who worship and pray.  Objects of wonder for the more secular-minded who love these soaring spaces and the art and music that fills them.

Stepping through the west door and into the nave of the cathedral at Canterbury is an overwhelming experience.  So much sheer beauty and so much more besides held within the giant and ancient stone space – ingenuity, aspiration, devotion, longing, humility, hubris, creativity.  Centuries of human feeling of every kind held in place by the arches, pillars, and walls of this glorious building and absorbed into its stone, wood, and plaster. And centuries of action, from coronations to murders.

Seeing Canterbury Cathedral for the first time through the eyes of one of my sons was unforgettable.  Its recumbent statues marking the resting places of long-dead kings, queens, princes, and archbishops; stone steps polished by the feet of centuries of pilgrims; brilliant stained glass; the 12th century wall paintings of St. Gabriel’s chapel, the music from the giant organ.  Don’t let anyone tell you that the young can’t be awestruck or that these beautiful buildings have lost their power.