Each post will cover about three books until the stack is done
and then I will push on to talking about the books I read in December and the
start of January (I read often and fast so the list is growing at an alarming rate).
So, children. Let us begin.
1. ‘The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox’ by
Maggie O’Farrell
Now my first two are picks from very early last year and my memories
of the ins and outs are hazy but I will try to give you an idea of why they’ve
made it here.
‘The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox’ is a narrative full of oppression, madness,
injustice and love. It focuses on Iris Lockhart’s reluctant discovery of a
great aunt she never knew she had- Esme, a patient of a psychiatric unit who is
about to be released. The text moves seamlessly between the present day and,
through Esme’s recollections, the 1930s. Esme recalls her early childhood in
India with her ayha and mimosa trees. Forced after a traumatic experience to
return to England, Esme becomes, through the eyes of her parents, an ‘impossible’
child; she refuses education, loathes dances and has no interest in finding a
husband. Eventually, through a series of injustices, hallucinations and violent
incidents, Esme’s parents have ‘no choice’ but to place her into an
institution, where she is disowned and forgotten for decades.
The novel made me furious and frustrated for Esme- her life
was stolen from her because she did not and could not conform to the
expectations placed on women. I so desperately wanted to visit Esme in the
institution, years before her eventual release, and rescue her, comfort her,
help her reclaim her life. A really touching book.
Page 99 Snapshot:
Esme has abandoned the
seatbelt and has pressed the hazard light button on the dashboard. The car is
filled with a noise like crickets. This seems to delight Esme, who smiles,
presses it again, switching it off, waits a moment, then switches it on again.
‘Really?’ Iris says. ‘Well,
could you try just “hospital”?... No, not any hospital. I need this one,
specifically. Yes.’ Iris feels incredibly hot. She is regretting the jumper
under her coat. She reaches out and covers the hazard button with one hand. ‘Could
you please not do that?’ she says to Esme, then has to say, ‘No, no, I didn’t
mean you,’ to the Directory Enquiries woman who, magically, has managed to
locate the whereabouts of Cauldstone on her system and is asking Iris if she
wants Admissions, Outpatients, General Enquiries or Daycare.
2. ‘The
Light Between Oceans’ by M.L. Stedman.
For the book ‘The Light Between Oceans’, I will just give
you the blurb that enticed me. It is cheesy. It is clearly melodramatic. But
every time I entered Waterstones over the course of a few weeks (I stroll in
there remarkably often- bookshops are soothing!), I felt myself coming back to
this book again and again, against my better judgement. The blurb is as
follows:
A boat washes up on
the shore of a remote lighthouse keeper’s island.
It holds a dead man
and a crying baby.
The only two
islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to make a devastating decision.
They break the rules
and follow their hearts.
What happens next
will break yours.
I am even cringing as I write that, it’s so so so awful. The
last two lines make me want to die a bit inside. And the comment ‘Heartbreaking’
from Good Housekeeping was off
putting too- it literally says in the blurb that the novel will break the
reader’s heart so this review is hardly mind blowing. And also, Good Housekeeping?! But I swallowed my
literary snobbery and bought it. The setting sounded quaint and mysterious and
I just had to know whether it would, in fact, break my heart. It pains me to say
this but I actually cried at the end. *hangs head in shame* It was surprisingly
well written, tender and complicated, full of moral questions and I was gripped
from start to finish.
Page 99 Snapshot:
Tom checked the
pencilled scrawl on the paper. Yes, the right room number. He scanned his
memory again for the lullaby-gentle sound of his mother: ‘Ups-a-daisy, my young
Thomas. Shall we put a bandage on that scrape?’
His knock went
unanswered, and he tried again. Eventually, he turned the handle tentatively,
and the door gave no resistance. The unmistakable scent rushed to meet him, but
it was a split second before he recognised it as tainted- with cheap alcohol
and cigarettes. In the closed-in-gloom he saw an unmade bed and a tatty
armchair, in shades of brown. There was a crack in the window, and a single
rose in a vase had long ago shrivelled.
(***Ahh even the obvious connotations of the single
shrivelled rose pain me a little bit! But it is good- I swear.)
3. ‘Small Pleasures To Save Your Life’ by
Maeve Haran
Okay, so this isn’t a novel but a collection of the small,
simple, everyday things that Maeve Haran finds comforting and wholesome. I was
drawn to this book during a time when I was feeling particularly bleak and
desperately sad about life. I was actually searching for a birthday present for
a friend of mine when I discovered it. Enticed by the line ‘Good bread, warm towels,
crisp mornings, eating the froth on the cappuccino: these are the ordinary
pleasures that make life worth living’, I bought two copies, one for my friend
and one for myself. I almost, stupidly, felt like I could read this and it
would make me feel much more at peace with myself. It did make me feel all ‘warm
and fuzzy’ inside for a time and, despite good ol’ Maeve being a tad irritating
at times, it did push me to try and take pleasure in the ordinary to get you through
the day when it all just seems a bit hopeless. (Another darling much loved friend
of mine and I devised our own simple pleasure to cheer us up- during the summer
term, as a Friday treat and a ‘well done for surviving the week’ gift to
ourselves, we would get iced lattes from Costa on the way to work. This small,
insignificant, tiny indulgence literally made my day.)
Page 99 Snapshot:
An old-fashioned dressing table
Dressing tables were
highly unfashionable when I was growing up. We were reacting against suburban 1950s
kidney-shaped version, draped in brightly coloured fabrics with frills on. The
price we pay for our disapproval was a decade of putting our make-up on in the
bathroom with nowhere to balance our foundation or mascara and having to lean uncomfortably
over a sink to see into the mirror.
Recently there’s been
a romantic revival in the fortunes of dressing tables and I love it. Mine is
curvy and capacious, covered in photos of friends and family in petite photo
frames. Jewellery is draped everywhere, as well as perfume, some of it in old
cut glass bottles. I haven’t gone as far as feathers, but almost.
(*** I swear this one is just me. Throw some sequins and fur
on that bad boy and you’re good to go.)
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