May

After visiting Gibraltar I thought I really ought to read more about what does still appear to be its defining characteristics – natural fortress, maritime haven, strategic treasure.

This book romps along with tales of derring-do, heroism, idiocy and many many deaths. Rankin doesn’t hide anything away, and he carefully puts the human at the centre of a massive martial enterprise. Although this book deals with WWII Rankin sets the scene, explaining how Italy, Spain and Germany all beset Gibraltar, and going back into the history of the Rock and its people to give context and clarity. Like all war histories there are chances taken and sometimes missed, huge colourful characters and terrible suffering. I felt I understood the world a little better after reading this, it filled some woeful gaps in my education and was engaging and thoughtful.

A gorgeous Cornish cream-tea of a Feast. This is one of the mid-century books we’re so lucky to have republished and brought blinking into the summer light to delight a new generation of readers. It is a broad allegory of the Seven Deadly Sins, but much more subtle than that suggests. The characters are beautifully drawn, it is charming and funny and it isn’t at all obvious (until a decent interval has passed) who will be saved and who will plunge to their destruction. It is set at a time when British society was changing rapidly and the cracks in the cliff aren’t the only life-changing fractures. I couldn’t put it down and neither could anyone else who read it on my recommendation.

I urge you to put this book down, at least before bedtime. So thoroughly does Barnes create the atmosphere of terror and dread that pervaded Stalin’s Russia, I found I was getting more tense and nervous with every chapter. Near the end, the external terror loosens, but by then the internal guilt and self-betrayal are worse. Each small section is filled with dread and near disaster and they add up to a sobering read in these difficult days.

When you need a break, and a book to take you away, Moriarty never lets you down. Her plots are twisty, her characters are detailed and flawed, and the time you spend with the book is engaging and satisfying. While reading I thought this possibly didn’t have the external threats of some of her other stories, but then I noticed she’d done something much darker indeed, putting the twist deep inside. Read it and see.

Everyone’s raving about Taylor’s latest novel and that prompted me to get this down from the shelf where it had been languishing unread. The character in this novel is a scientist and he experiments on nematodes, tiny transparent creatures. Like the nematodes, the characters are subjected to scrutiny, incision, excision, and sometimes destruction. There’s a brief flash of sunshine but not what anyone could call a happy ending. Very thoughtful on campus life, groups of friends and their casual cruelties, and profound weighty loneliness. The writing is lush and beautiful but the novel made me feel unsettled and sad.

A slim novel from the 1920s. An awkward young woman ages and finally – despite her brother losing her inheritance – moves away from the family she’s lived with for decades and strikes out on her own. This is full of startling thoughts on solitude, self-reliance and independence. The scenes of the long woodland walks (not always pleasant, frequently tiring and hot) are painfully honest. A later heroine might have really built a life on her own but Lolly ends up living in a village where there are strange gatherings on dark nights. There’s finally a man in her life, even if he does have cloven hooves. An entrancing curiosity. I’m haunted by Lolly Willowes.

Another book from the dusty shelf, I was so glad to end the month with this warm pastry of a memoir. I laughed out loud frequently, and was challenged and moved by Janzen’s exploration of faith, family and food. I like a book with recipes, even if I’m never going to make Warmer Kartoffelsalat. I might give Platz a go, and imagine myself in Rhoda’s mom’s kitchen, soaking up the love and warmth and watching the Mennonite in the Little Black Dress letting go of the past.