It was clever of Faber & Faber to re-publish Maurice Gorham’s delightful book on London’s pubs. Back to the Local was first published in 1949 (with its illustrations by Edward Ardizzone) and even then had a whiff of nostalgia about it. Gorham mourned the destruction of some of his favorite pubs in World War Two and complained about the changing habits that had led to the modernization and gentrification of others, all the while celebrating what he loved and wanted to see preserved. It’s fun to wonder what he would make of things seventy-five years on.
Londoners love their pubs and tend to be sentimental about them. Every generation discovers them and bemoans the changes they see. For myself, I celebrate the survival of the true neighborhood local. Even today there are more of them than one might think. Of course, like everyone, I deplore the trends that some others might cherish – the sports bars, the themed pubs, the fake “historical” pubs, and so on. Gorham’s little book is a fun reminder that preferences and prejudices are what being a London pub lover is all about. If one pub is not to your liking, move on to one of the other 3,500 that London has to offer.
Looking backwards is one of the pleasures of maintaining this blog. It has become a habit of mine at the end of each year to take a look at my reading choices in the previous twelve months. What have my reading habits been? Have any new trends or influences crept in or are the old preferences still firmly in place? Do the choices I made in the past year reveal commendable experimentation or deplorable predictability?
It’s clear, especially as far as fiction is concerned, that I tend to go back to favorite authors and that I’m quick to pick up the new books they publish. Tessa Hadley, Niall Williams, and John Banville were examples of that in 2024. I’m not searching out new novelists (new to me, that is) as often as I think I should. I read for the first time this year only Jose Saramago, Paul Lynch, and Samantha Harvey. I was glad I did in every case. I’m not showing much interest in classic fiction or indeed anything written before the 21st or 20th centuries. Turgenev’s First Love was the exception in 2024, and what a delight that was! I am reading too much second-rate mystery fiction. That needs to change. Two novels stand out from the herd: Time of the Child by Niall Williams and The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey. Both were outstanding and I have recommended them far and wide.
My non-fiction reading was more varied, but my interests are visible clearly nonetheless. Literary memoirs (Werner Herzog, Iain Sinclair, and John McPhee), travel writing inspired by spiritual quests, architecture, and some politics. I think I chose well in 2024, and there were few, if any, regrets. All the non-fiction I read this year was uniformly excellent and engaging.
I am already thinking of 2025. Every time I go into a bookshop, I leave with a different resolution. Read more classics. Read some of the great American novels. Read books from different cultures. Will I follow through on any of these high-minded ambitions? I guess I’ll see soon enough.
The arrival of a new installment in John Banville’s highly successful Quirke/Strafford series gladdens my heart. The latest, The Drowned, which I think is the tenth, continues and extends a very popular franchise. Continuity matters to devotees of such series. Familiar characters (Quirke, the pathologist, and Strafford, the Inspector), a familiar setting (Dublin in the 1950s), and most of all a familiar atmosphere or ambiance, a world of looming menace, the immanence of illness and death, and the strategies we all deploy to make sense of it all while searching for happiness.
It is clear Banville understands very well how the success of such series depends on a balance of the familiar with the new. The Drowned sees one established character depart while the stage is set for the entrance of new ones. Established relationships shift into a different gear, all against the background of a fairly straightforward plot.
Banville is a wonderfully sensitive and skilled storyteller. The Drowned, like its predecessors in the series, is the sort of novel one wants to devour in a single sitting, perhaps sitting by the fire on a winter’s day, or on a long, comfortable train journey.
Kate Atkinson’s latest novel is the sixth to feature Jackson Brodie, the sour and sweet private investigator. We find him back in the north of England, Yorkshire specifically, hired to investigate the disappearance of a valuable painting. The missing painting leads to another missing painting which in turn leads to a shadowy woman who may (or may not) have stolen them both. Brodie’s sleuthing takes him to a country house hotel in a snow storm. Not just any country house hotel, but one hosting a Murder Mystery Night for its guests ….
If this all sounds a little like Agatha Christie, that’s exactly what Kate Atkinson intends. In the hands of a less accomplished writer, not to mention one with a less sure comic touch, it might all seem more than a little self-conscious or twee. That is not the case here. Atkinson is having fun adapting a well-worn genre to her popular Brodie series and the fun is infectious. Having said that, the build-up to the gathering of the characters at the hotel (roughly the first two thirds of the novel) was what I enjoyed the most. The denouement was a bit too contrived for my tastes.
Death at the Sign of the Rook is a light and frothy tale and a great addition to the series. Perfect holiday reading.
At some point it would be good to take my time and wander around the Yucatan peninsula at my own pace, exploring the many Mayan archaeological sites for which it is famous. On a recent and very brief visit to the region I had to restrict myself to a single nearby treasure, Chichen Itza, the complex of Mayan ruins dominated by the massive step pyramid known as El Castillo. The city prospered between 600 and 1200 A.D. and even in today’s much diminished site it is obvious that it was built by a thriving civilization.
Chichen Itza’s proximity to the coastal resorts means it is often choked with tourists, so it is wise to pick the time of one’s visit carefully. It is also worth noting the large number of vendors surrounding the site that sell all sorts of tourist tat. Once inside the main site it is easy enough to ignore them, but prepare to be hassled on the way in and out.
I enjoyed the visit immensely. It provoked a determination to visit the region for a longer period and to learn more about Mayan civilization before I make my next trip.
Niall Williams’ latest novel is one of the finest I have read in a very long time. I rarely use the word, but I think it’s a masterpiece. The novel is beautifully crafted and practically every sentence is a joy to read. It is written with a lyricism that is so rare in contemporary fiction and with a sensitivity for language and for its nuances that feels like a skill from a bygone age. Who else writes like this today? Marilynne Robinson comes to mind, but few others.
Time of the Child is set in the fictional village of Faha in the west of Ireland. The time is December 1962. Electricity, televisions, and telephones came to the village just a few years earlier, but many of Faha’s residents are stuck in earlier times. They live in houses illuminated by candles and heated by peat fires. They work mostly on the land, and the rhythms of their lives are set by the changing seasons and by religious festivals. The priests have power. The church and the pubs are where people meet. If this sounds far-fetched, it isn’t. My childhood visits to rural Connemara and West Cork started in the mid-1960s, and Williams’ depiction of the place is faithful to what I saw and experienced.
A gift arrives in this isolated and timeless place. A newborn baby is abandoned in the village churchyard and discovered by a local boy. Thinking it dead, he takes it to the local doctor. What happens next is a mystery. Whether by Dr. Troy’s skill or the power of prayer, the baby girl is revived and given the name Noelle. No more about the plot. I do not want to spoil anyone’s enjoyment of the novel.
Time of the Child is everything I want in a novel. Exquisite lyrical prose, deep insight into what it is to be human and humane, into how to live alone and in community, and what it means to be open to the possibility of transformation and redemption.
A new book from Tessa Hadley is always a treat, even a slim novella like The Party. It ought perhaps to have been called Two Parties because the story is bookended by two social events, attended by two sisters, Evelyn and Moira, both students. The first takes place in a Bristol pub shortly after the end of World War Two and the second, more of an ad hoc get-together, in a grand but faded house elsewhere in the city the following weekend.
How far can any of us really achieve the lives we want to have? What real influence do we have over the shape of our future? Can we realize the lives we want by sheer force of personality and determination, or are our futures mapped out for us by factors over which we have so little control such as class or gender constraints, real or perceived? These are the questions that interest Tessa Hadley, and she uses the sisters with their common upbringing and history as exemplars of two distinct perspectives. Not that Moira and Evelyn are simple cyphers. Not at all. Hadley is far too accomplished a writer for that, and Evelyn especially is a brilliantly realized character.
Does this all sound a little old-fashioned, like Anita Brookner or Barbara Pym for the 21st century? Perhaps, but don’t be put off. There is more inventiveness, daring, and insight in Hadley’s writing than some more experimental novelists can dream of realizing.
Only a very confident and self-assured author takes a familiar genre, in this case the spy novel, and uses it as a channel for ideas. A burden comes with that decision. Spy novels are traditionally plot-driven vehicles and readers of the genre expect pace, twists and turns, and action. So manipulating and subverting the classic espionage tale is all very well, but the ideas had better be worth the effort and at least some of the familiar features of the genre had better be respected. No one ought to buy Creation Lake expecting a conventional spy novel, and anyone who does will be disappointed. If that happens, some reviewers might be responsible. The Guardian critic talked about “a killer plot and expert pacing”. That’s downright misleading in my view.
Sadie Smith, the heroine and narrator of Rachel Kushner’s latest novel, is a spy working in the private sector and has an assignment to infiltrate a shadowy group in rural France suspected of planning acts of sabotage. Sadie is unscrupulous, a quality that might be considered an asset in her line of work. It has, however, got her into trouble in the past when, working for a spy agency in the US, she was found to have entrapped an innocent man and got fired as a result. Now in France, she has seduced an impressionable activist to gain entry to the suspected terrorist cell. This lack of a moral compass might be Sadie’s least unattractive quality. Her superficial pronouncements on everything from Europe and its culture (overrated) to Italian food (horrible), her glib philosophizing (“The truth of a person, under all the layers and guises, is a substance that is pure, and stubborn, and consistent”), her unassailable belief in the superiority of English (in other words American) culture marks her out as the worst kind of entitled, privileged, and semi-educated American who has everything, values little, and has earned nothing. Sadie hacks into the emails of Bruno Lacombe, the leader and guru of the protest group, and pokes fun at his tiresome ideas, but his silly intellectualizing about what we can learn from Neanderthals makes him look like a genius compared to Sadie and her moral vacuity.
I am surprised that Creation Lake was shortlisted for The Booker Prize. It’s a novel that’s executed with lots of confidence and it’s an enjoyable enough read, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that there’s no substance or heart in the book. Rachel Kushner’s critical reputation seems to be growing with every new novel, but on the evidence of the two I have read (The Flamethrowers and Creation Lake), I don’t understand why.
It is believed that John Webster wrote The Duchess of Malfi in 1612 or 1613. That puts the play’s creation at around the same time as Shakespeare’s The Tempest or Henry VIII. It was performed very widely when it was first written and has continued to be staged ever since. I can recall seeing it in London decades ago, but only have the faintest memories of the production. It is easy to see why it might resonate with modern audiences given its preoccupation with misogyny, power politics, and with men’s efforts throughout history to control women. It’s not short of violence and gore, so that might also partly explain its continuing appeal.
The modern adaptation I saw staged recently in London may introduce a new generation to the play, though its insistence on 21st century English gave little or no flavor of how Webster’s original text sounded. The themes survived, but the poetry of the original was lost.
There is a new Tessa Hadley novel coming at the end of the month (The Party). Hearing that news while I was browsing in Hatchard’s recently prompted me to pick up an older collection of short stories, Married Love, first published in 2013. The cover includes a gushing quote from The Times‘s review, describing the collection as “unexpected, exhilarating, life-changing”. Married Love is none of those things. It’s an uneven collection that includes masterful stories and some that miss the mark. The best of them are a reminder of what a supremely accomplished writer Hadley is. I have pre-ordered The Party and will devour it once it arrives.
Miscellaneous Musings 