The plot of The Glass Hotel centers on a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme built and operated by a conman called Jonathan Alkaitis, a shamelessly criminal enterprise that upends and in some cases destroys the lives of those it touches. The novelist’s interests, however, are far more extensive than a simple exposure of the commonplace greed that has gripped the financial sector for decades. Mandel’s preoccupation here is with the various worlds that exist side-by-side, the porousness of the boundaries between them, and the compromises and excuses individuals make to preserve their status in the more privileged strata.

The novel, though set over several decades, anticipates our current crisis, and asks searching questions about how people react to disasters. The atmosphere is nervy and febrile, with characters teetering on the edge between reality and fantasy, wholly isolated from one another, and absorbed in delusion.

Emily St. John Mandel’s last novel, Station Eleven, was, I’m told, a bestseller. That was news to me. One positive consequence of my ignorance on this point was that I was able to pick up The Glass Hotel with no preconceptions whatsoever and with none of those distracting questions – will it be as good as her last book? Mandel is a very accomplished writer and I’m now looking forward to exploring her earlier novels.

Some books are so good and so important you feel fortunate that you were ever made aware of them and privileged to have read them. Underland is one such book. I remember very clearly the first time I picked up a book by Robert Macfarlane. I was visiting friends who live in England’s Midlands and woke one morning (thanks to jet lag) much earlier than my hosts. Not wanting to disturb them by clattering around in the kitchen, I settled into their living room before dawn to study the bookshelves. There I found several titles by Macfarlane and started to dip into them somewhat randomly. I was captivated right away and remain so to this day.

Underland tells the story of Macfarlane’s adventures in the subterranean worlds; the caves, root systems, mines, and catacombs, and of the rich (and endangered) lives lived in these hidden places by humans, flora, and fauna. His travels take him from the caves of Somerset and abandoned phosphate mines of Yorkshire to hidden passageways below Paris and to the Norwegian fjords and seas of Greenland. But this isn’t some travelog from the underground. Underland is an extended plea to all of us to listen to the signals that the Earth is sending us from its deepest regions, from the Arctic ice flows to the fungal networks in our forests. These signals speak of deep distress in the hidden places on our planet, distress caused by the often irreparable damage we are doing, not just to natural habitats but on the cultures and communities that depend on the survival of those habitats.

Macfarlane writes about the natural world with the sensitivity and precision of a poet. Every word is chosen with meticulous care, and not simply in service of descriptive accuracy. Macfarlane wants to move, inspire, and confound his readers as much as he wants to inform them. His love and deep knowledge of language can be found on every page. Underland stretches the vocabulary of even the most avid word lover. Katabatic, gneiss, flensing, mycelia – Macfarlane is as much an explorer of the English language as he is of the worlds beneath our feet.

Underland is a passionate book, filled with curiosities and with extraordinary people, and it’s a total delight. It shifted my perspective about the world I move through every day, made me think for the first time about the realms beneath my feet, and the connections between sub-surface and surface.

The world appears to have shrunk for everyone in recent months. Underland is a vital and timely reminder that this is a temporary and dangerous illusion. The world, in fact, is far larger than we can comprehend and far more vulnerable than we appreciate. Those are the messages the underworld is giving us. Macfarlane wants us to listen, reflect, and act.

Ibram X. Kendi’s bestselling book was published before the recent wave of protests that erupted following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but it has found a new audience as a result of that particular tragedy. It’s a deeply-felt, powerful, and sophisticated book that weaves Kendi’s life experiences with his thoughts on how we might arrive at “an antiracist world in all its imperfect beauty”.

I don’t want to over-simplify a book that is nuanced and subtle, but it’s heart can be found in these sentences in the opening pages. “The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist”. It is “antiracist” …. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist …There is no in-between safe space of “not racist”. Starting from this observation, Kendi builds a transformative concept, pulling into its construction insights from history, law, ethics, and science. But this is no dry, academic thesis. This is a call to action, an appeal to personal transformation that grows into activism and ultimately institutional change. If that activism and change don’t materialize, it won’t be the author’s fault, but the responsibility of all those who read this remarkable book and fail to act urgently.

Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body. Isn’t that a great opening to a novel? Direct, but oblique. Clear, but puzzling and tantalizing. The words appear on a neat handwritten note that Vesta Gul finds when she’s on her daily walk in the woods near her home. Vesta, recently widowed, lives in a modest lakeside cabin with only her dog, Charlie, for company. Here is her dead body, the note says, but there’s no corpse, leaving Vesta to speculate about the victim, perpetrator, motive, and so much more. With almost nothing to work with, Vesta has the freedom to create a wildly elaborate narrative to explain the cryptic note, making Death in Her Hands a story about creating stories and the functions those stories perform in our lives.

Listen to anyone telling a story and you’ll learn much about the storyteller. That’s certainly true of Vesta Gul. As her imagination takes flight, we hear things about Vesta that she might not want us to know, about her snobbishness, her controlling husband, and her horrible marriage. Ottessa Moshfegh has written an intriguing, cryptic novel about the purpose and power of storytelling and the myths and memories we intertwine and confuse every day.

I’ve never longed to own a classic or vintage car. Sure, I’ve often admired them from afar (with particular fondness for the Aston Martin DB4 and Mercedes 300SL) and silently congratulated those who put so much time and money into preserving them. But owning one? No thanks. Too complicated, too risky, too expensive, and too time-consuming. So how did I end up with a 1972 Triumph TR6 in British racing green? Happenstance. Chance. Luck (good or bad, it remains to be seen). And, of course, never having wanted such a car, I’m now a zealous convert, speeding around with the top down and generally behaving like a careless teenager or, even worse, like an aging and disreputable “petrol head”.

This phase of innocent enthusiasm will pass and might be replaced by a new phase marked by remorse and incredulity. Who knows? For now, I’m smitten by a beautiful example of British design and engineering from a bygone age. The previous owner, a friend of mine, cared for the vehicle for many years. It’s now my turn to be its custodian – perhaps the most unlikely in its history – as it approaches its 50th birthday.

A friend gave me recently a book published in 1922 by a publishing company called Orchard Hill Press that operated just a few miles from where I live today. At first sight the book seemed unexceptional. A faded, slightly tatty hardcover with an inscription from 1923, Blossomed Hours is what publishers used to call a miscellany: a collection of essays, poems, and reflections by Edward Howard Griggs. Griggs (1868-1951) was a university teacher who, according to the little information I could find on the web, delivered more than 13,000 lectures to more than 8 million people during his lifetime, mostly on subjects such as philosophy, history and culture.

I dipped into the book expecting to put it aside quickly, but found myself drawn in, initially by what The New York Times in 1903 called Griggs’s “easy flowing style, rich in imagery”. But the deeper I read, the more resonances I heard with today’s world. How about this?

Men need today, as every yesterday/To be called back from the senseless rush for gold/And fashion, dissipation – all the way/That dulls the heart of life and makes it cold/Back to love, work and simple, joyous play/Of those emotions that can ne’er grow old.

And this reflection on traveling seemed especially poignant in the lock-down imposed on us all by the pandemic:

To the man of thought, already cosmopolitan, the chief value of travel is in tremendously stimulating the flow of ideas and in contributing a wealth of illustrations. One may travel also through books and reflections. If the stimulation is less acute than that through the outer senses, it is wider in range and more fully at one’s command, without the waste and strain of movement from place to place. There are advantages to the stay-at-home, as well as for the traveller. If one opportunity is denied, use the other more sacredly.

Never judge a book by its (faded) cover.

Mieko Kawakami is something of a celebrity in Japan’s literary community. She originally published Breasts and Eggs as a short novella in 2008. It was well received by critics and fellow writers and won an award. She then took the unusual step of expanding the original work and in its new form it’s her first novel to be published in English.

The narrator of Breasts and Eggs, Natsuko Natsume, has published one novel and is struggling to complete her second. A native of Osaka, but living alone in a small apartment in Tokyo, Natsuko dreams of having a child. With no partner and with a profound distaste for sex, she explores the world of donor insemination. Her sister, Makiko, comes to Tokyo determined to have breast enlargement surgery, accompanied by her teenage daughter, Midoriko, who refuses to speak and who communicates with her mother and aunt only through messages written in notebooks.

Breasts and Eggs is an unusual and powerful novel. Its theme is identity and its determination for a modern, Japanese woman by mores defined by men and tradition. The power of the book comes less from its theme than from the striking and unique voice of its narrator. As I read it, I felt, as I often do, that it should have been edited more aggressively. At 400+ pages it’s too long and its pace drags sometimes as a result, but this is an arresting and unusual novel. Kawakami is a special storyteller and it’s going to be interesting to follow what she does next.

If evidence is needed that it’s possible to admire the art and not the artist, look no further than the first volume of William Feaver’s biography of Lucian Freud. I’ve read over the years many accounts of Freud’s life and work by those who knew him well (for example Celia Paul, David Dawson, and Martin Gayford), and I’d long suspected he wasn’t very likable. But I was still surprised to find from Feaver’s account how consistently unpleasant he seemed to be from such an early age. Egotistical, deceitful, snobbish, and unkind – these were characteristics on full display pretty much from the time he arrived in London from Berlin as a young boy in 1933. Blessed with extraordinary talent, good looks, and that famous family name, on the evidence here Freud seems to have thought from early on that other people existed to be used, seduced, or ignored.

Feaver’s approach to biography is a traditional one, with Freud’s work interwoven carefully with the life. The style is light and slightly gossipy and that seems entirely appropriate given the extent and significance of Freud’s friendships and his apparent gregariousness. Those looking for close analysis of the paintings will be better off elsewhere, but this will be a rewarding and entertaining read for anyone wanting to understand the relationships that led to those extraordinary portraits. Freud was fortunate in his choice of biographer. Feaver is perceptive about the paintings and is very tolerant of his subject’s often horrible behavior.

The book, all 600+ pages of it, follows Freud from his childhood years in Berlin, his arrival in London in 1933, his education and early days as a painter, and ends in the late 1960s at a time when he was an established figure in the London art scene. A second volume is underway.

The Rockefeller State Park Preserve was a popular spot for dog walkers and runners long before the pandemic gripped the Hudson Valley and almost everywhere else, but the crowds really started to arrive, especially at weekends, when strict limits were imposed on New Yorkers and others in the wake of the public health crisis. On Saturdays and Sundays, long lines of cars can be seen parked close to the entrances to the Preserve as people discover and explore the beauty spot on their doorstep.

If, like me, you crave a little solitude when you walk, it’s easy enough to avoid the crowds, not least because most visitors seem unaware of the prettiest spot of all just a mile or two away: Rockwood Hall. It’s a beautiful park, a place that offers a number of undemanding trails, some of which offer lovely views of the Hudson River. It’s also something of a palimpsest and walkers who pay attention to such things will see signs of what Rockwood Hall used to be. From the mid-1880s it was the site of one of the largest private homes in the United States, a 204-room mansion built by William Rockefeller with grounds landscaped by Olmsted. Nothing of the house remains today except a section of the foundations and some of the brick carriageways. The Rockefeller family donated the site to New York State in 1999, an act of generosity that allows people like me to enjoy some of the loveliest walks in the Hudson Valley.

“One can travel this world and see nothing. To achieve understanding it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.” Giorgio Morandi.

How are you coping without traveling? That’s the question I have been asked most often since Covid-19 forced almost everyone to stay close to home. I returned on February 28th after three weeks in Tokyo, London, and Paris and, apart from one or two short trips to Manhattan, haven’t wandered more than ten miles from home since that day thirteen weeks ago. That’s not likely to change much until the end of August at the earliest. If that proves to be the case, it will be the longest period in more than thirty years that I haven’t stepped on board an airplane.

Do I miss it? In some ways, no. Who could possibly miss long lines at airport security, airline food, weather delays, lost baggage, and 16 hour flights? There’s a lot to be said for discovering or re-discovering the wonderful places just beyond my doorstep. But much is lost in a lock-down. What I miss is that particular and unique type of engagement with family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances that Zoom and other tools can’t hope to replace or emulate. I miss the sensations: the sights, smells, and sounds of places that I had planned to visit in these months – Lilongwe, Beijing, Oslo, or wherever. And I miss the thoughts and feelings that those sights, smells, and sounds would have evoked. That’s what Giorgio Morandi (and others like him who rarely travel) don’t understand. Traveling isn’t about seeing things and places. It’s about the engagement of all the senses and the personal transformations, small and large, that come with that engagement.

Those of us who love to travel will do so again. We might do it differently, but we’ll do it. We’ll most likely do it more carefully and thoughtfully. The pandemic has taught us or reminded us what’s truly valuable and what’s expendable. And what’s top of my travel list when conditions allow me to wander again? London and West Cork. After that let’s take it one precious step at a time.