April

Libraries use the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress method of categorising (and therefore shelving) books. Bookshops are a little more relaxed but generally you know what you’re getting on a shelf marked “Local Interest” or “Literary Fiction.” What about the libraries in our own homes? Things might be colour co-ordinated or alphabetised on the bookshelf, but what about the teetering pile by the bed? And then there are the books you don’t actually own, but which take up space in your mental reading list. This first book is one of those, in my list.

I resisted Don DeLillo for a long time, put off maybe by the fact that at one time everyone I knew was reading him. I thought of DeLillo as a modern-day Hemingway – a bit blokey and macho. I was finally drawn to this in the library by the slightly misconceived idea it was a “campus” novel – one of my favourite things to read. It was a droll surprise. Funny, moving, and very timely. The only unbelievable plot device is that a professor with multiple ex-wives, children and step-children could support a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. I’d recommend it if you are musing on mortality, environmental disaster and the loss of a loved one.

If you know Trevor Noah from his live act or television show you already know this is going to be funny. I wasn’t prepared for how warm, how loving and humane this would be. The towering figure at the centre of the teeming, gritty world is Trevor’s mother. She’s very strict, loving, and vulnerable. Her love for Trevor’s stepfather puts them all in danger. Trevor sticks to his early years, by the end of the book he’s making money and building a career, but we get little detail about that, though he’s unsparing about his own brushes with the law. His early life was a crime (in apartheid-era South Africa) but his current presence is a joyous celebration of much more than survival. He paints a picture of tight communities, children with nothing making something, and through it all, deep love – as a child and a grown man – for his remarkable mother.

Sometimes I pick a book because I’m interested in the central story, or because a character sounds appealing. Sometimes a writer I’ve liked before publishes something new I want to read. I did not pick this book. In fact, I was set against it and it took a stern talking-to by an old friend to show me the error of my ways. The old friend even put the book in the post to me, so I had no excuse. I’m writing here to say old friend was 100% correct and I was wrong to resist this for so long. The device which I’d thought would be tricksy is carried off with simplicity and charm and the story rolls along with laughs and plenty of tears. The central character tries out a number of lives incluidng one which would change the world. The closing chapters tie almost all the strands, leaving enough unsaid to haunt and provoke me for days after. Lots of people (including old friend) talked about the scenes in wartime London, and I’d go further and say this book added to my understanding of women’s lives in the first half of the last century. I’ve discovered there is another novel featuring characters from this book, so I have to thank old friend RR sincerely for intervening.

Akala and his famous sister (Lady Dynamite) look blessed and successful now, but it wasn’t always so. This is a story of poverty and hope. The poverty lies in the expectations of the young Akala and his contemporaries expressed by the state education system. Akala debunks received wisdom, challenges assumptions and demands the reader follow him through knife crime, racist teachers and police, and much more. There’s so much interesting and challenging history here. Slave rebellions in the Caribbean, the role of Cuba in ending apartheid and some quick debunking of blinding obvious cliches. I’m not ashamed to say I was forced to confront my own assumptions and unpick some things I’d taken as facts, when they might be described as conveniences for the ruling class in this country and others. Akala should be angry, but this isn’t an angry book.

What is an emotion? As hard to describe in a blog post as it obviously was in years of scientific research distilled in this book. Why are some emotions – fear, anger, disgust – instant and experienced by babies and full-grown humans, while others develop over time and change with age. I discovered that emotions experienced at the time of an event have an impact on the way memories are created and stored. This is the explanation for how you can remember in horrific detail a minor humiliation from decades ago, but can’t remember how you drove to the supermarket this morning. The book assumes no scientific knowledge, but you do need to be paying attention to the technical language. It could have been a bit dry, but it was a real tear-jerker because the writer lost a parent (during the pandemic) while he was working on the book. So he had a home laboratory of frequently uncontrollable and inexplicable emotions – his own – which he examines honestly and with compassion. Highly recommend this for a readable guide to a scientific subject, and also a handy guide to recognising and accepting the maelstrom within.

Do you love The Great British Sewing Bee? No? How sad. The BBC show is a delight; charming and gentle, full of colour and texture. The judges are exacting and Esme is one of them. Television likes to convince us that it “discovers” people but Esme points out, with her basilisk judge gaze, that she existed before she was on television. She worked, she loved, she designed, she dressed as she wished, and lived her authentic and defiant life. This is a conventional autobiography of an unconventional woman. She takes us with good humour and honesty from a childhood shaped by her father’s heroism to a major part of the London fashion scene in the 1970s. You’ve seen her designs, though you might think you haven’t. If you’re even slightly interested in where having a point of view and a taste for adventure can take you, this is one for you.

If you’ve been reading my blog since January you’ll know I’m in a bit of an Ali Smith feeding frenzy. I chose this because it is a follow-up or maybe full stop to her Four Seasons and because it was short. It roves over some familiar territory: pandemic, poverty, misfits, loss, love. It moves with the same momentum as those longer novels and you have to just gulp it down. Very moving, faintly optimistic.

Last year I read The Book of Delights by Ross Gay which I adored. Images from the lush gardens of that book still dance in my mind. The idea of delight is what appealed to me. “Delightful” is a word I already overuse, along with “vexing” and “tiresome.” I’m aware I’m sounding like a Wodehouseian Dowager (and why not?) but the idea of finding things delightful (rather than awesome, or unbelievable) is surely more useful? Gay’s book, like Priestley’s before it, reminds us that delight can be found everywhere. The delight lies in the noticing, not in the creation of a special moment, a memorable occasion. Priestley’s essays cover everything from Tobacco to Shakespeare – he’s obviously very funny on the subject of actors and theatre – and all expressed in his good plain prose (the subject of an essay itself.) Essay 39 will find you out if you are one of Tolstoy’s happy families. Essay 3 begins “reading detective novels in bed…” how can you not share his delight at that? He’s not sweet, though, or twee. He sets his current delights against past discomforts and he can be pleasantly waspish. From a good night’s sleep to a hot bath, a tinkling fountain and a walk in nature, Priestley’s delights – like his writing – are simple and universal.

I end my April reading with this from Essay 93: “We complain and complain but we have seen the blossom – apple, pear, cherry, plum, almond blossom – in the sun; and the best among us cannot pretend they deserve – or could contrive – anything better.”