BOOKS & WORDS
Autumn book reviews by Mark Laurie of South Seas Books, Port Elliot.
Winn recognises that the walk and their life circumstances inexorably changed them from being participants in the ordinary run of human life, to observers. It’s this, coupled with a long-held appreciation of nature, which elevates the book above the general fray of personal narratives into a contextualisation of modern life from its ‘wild edge’. Undoubtedly uplifting, inspirational and liberating as the story is, it’s balanced by some sobering observations for the more sensitive on homelessness, our endlessly growing wants, and the society we’ve become.
The Salt Path
the world of city financier for that of smalltown bookseller. Lines and spaces appear between public duty and private morality. Gradients of duty and loyalty to the Service and to their country are laid bare by realisation that there remains no space for ideals, and that much of their efforts over the last fifty years amounted to no more than ‘a giddy late-life romp through the wild woods of colonial fantasy.’ Some adhere devoutly to the ‘superstitions of [their] tribe’ as others fade to the past, where they ‘can do no harm’ in service of something they no longer recognise. And so, sixty years of masterful storytelling has come to its end. Described as a spy genre writer of the first order, John le Carré was so much more, capturing our preoccupations and uncertainties over all those years through the finely drawn characters who were the foundation of his art. While a prolific historic backlist beckons, we shall miss his talent for eloquent understatement as humanity’s tectonic plates buckle and shear. Vale.
by Raynor Winn Published by Penguin Books ISBN 9781405937184 $22.99 Rendered homeless and penniless by an ill-advised investment with a friend, abetted by an unblinking court system, a couple in their fifties face profound economic and social upheaval. Yet these are rendered relatively minor by the terminal medical diagnosis passed upon Moth, the writer’s husband of over thirty years, who is told to expect a debilitating, painful and inevitable decline. Forced from the Welsh farm which had been their home and provided their livelihoods for decades, ‘running from the rupture’ in their lives, they decide to walk and wild camp England’s 630-mile South West Coast Path. It’s a decision borne from a paucity of options and fear of the void, a far cry from the usual selfimprovement or personal identity dross published to breathless acclaim in this social media fuelled age. Setting off illequipped, not even their health intact, the author charts the highs and lows of their journey along the salt path as they battle the elements and a chronic lack of money to survive. 92
Silverview by John le Carré Published by Viking (Penguin Books) ISBN 9780241550076 $32.99 A last novel from John le Carré (who died in December of 2020), his twenty-sixth no less, and a worthy memorial to his talent. Here, fittingly, we find him exploring the later years of a group of agents as their careers wind down and they reckon with decisions taken and lives lived under layers of secrecy and deception. Set in a small seaside town over which the titular mansion looms, objectivity is brought to bear by an outsider who has renounced
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles Published by Hutchinson Heinemann (a Penguin Random House imprint) ISBN 9781786332530 $32.99
