What I Read In My Summer Holidays

It’s odd, I reckon, that since the whole writing thing took off  for me – with Time Travelling With A Hamster,  and another one (title TBC) coming out next spring, and the zygote of a third one beginning its gestation – I have actually read less for pleasure than before.

So roll on a long summer holiday: endless hours reading by the pool, or on the beach, or – far more likely – in a sweaty departure lounge.  (Why “lounge”?  Anywhere less conducive to lounging is hard to conceive. Come to think of it, does anyone call it a “departure lounge” any more?  Holding Bay, Transit Point? The Pen Of Frustration?)

Anyway, I stacked up.  I’m not keen on E-readers, so it was a fair chunk of my luggage allowance.

Here’s what I got through:

Whisper To Me by Nick Lake.    This is, essentially, a teen romance, but it is not remotely slushy, and much more as well.  It is written as a long letter to a boy that 17 year-old Cassie has fallen in love with, an attempt to explain her strange behaviour which has driven him away.  It’s great: sad, touching, funny and totally convincing as Cassie learns to deal with the voice in her head which drives her to self-destructive behaviour.  I loved the way the author deals with swearing in a YA novel: Cassie says she feels uncomfortable writing swear-words, so she just stars them out.  There’s loads of them, but – surprisingly –  it works.  There’s a good supporting cast, too: Cassie’s grieving, protective dad, and her complex, sexy friend, Paris. (Nick Lake is my editor at Harper Collins.)

A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  Talking of swearing, someone seriously needs to do a new translation of this extended essay on the horrors of the Siberian prisons of 20th century Russia.  It’s not so much a story as a long essay and is remarkable more for its depiction of the dreadful cruelty of Communist punishment than for its narrative engagement; nonetheless the translation (by Ralph Parker) is in many places laughable, and rooted in a late-50s/early 60s slang, where prisoners call each other “twerps” and “ninnies” as if they were not in an unimaginable prison-hell but a slightly under-heated Mallory Towers.

The Truth by Michael Palin.    Amusing.  Engaging.  I still had to look up the title, though, so a bit forgettable.     Palin’s voice is unmistakable, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  (Until you start imagining him saying, “Vewy well.  I will welease Woger!” and then it all goes to hell.) It’s a good, sweet, English story and would make a cracking film.

The XXX XXXXX by XXXXXXX  XXXXXXX  I didn’t like this and abandoned it a quarter of the way in, but I don’t want to say say what it was.  If it was old, or the writer was dead I wouldn’t care, but it isn’t and it has sold millions, won loads of awards and it’s sort of YA-ish which means I might bump into the author and that would be awkward, so I’m not saying.  It’s Victorian and bossy and unconvincing and I sighed with relief every time I put it down.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.  Slow to start, but I ended up entranced by this tale of a murderer awaiting execution in 19th century Iceland.  Agnes Magnusdottir has been found guilty of the murder of her lover and – there being no prisons – is billeted with a local family while the state prepares her fate and a young clergyman tries to counsel her.  The evocation of a hard, cold existence and the warmth of the people enduring it is wonderful and the massive research that must have gone into the book is worn very lightly: you never get the impression you are being told anything but a good story.

Ones I took but didn’t get round to:

The Color Purple by Alice Walker  From the “classics I should  read” pile.  Between Homer’s Iliad and The Brothers Karamasov.

The Encounter – Amazon Beaming by Petru Popescu.  Saw the play by Simon McBirney which was mesmerising. It’s the true story of an explorer who has a profound encounter with a remote Amazonian tribe.

Goldfish Boy by Lisa Thompson.  I have LOL’d by page two at a funny simile so I’m already liking it.