The English Department, St Columba’s College, Dublin 16, Ireland
Reading Recommendations for Parents, Summer 2012
T
his is our third adult list for summer reading, based on books we’ve read during the academic year, and concentrating on recently published paperbacks, with a sprinkling of classics. This year we’re also sending out a recommended reading list for pupils, which you can see on www.sccenglish.ie. And the usual disclaimer: we can’t guarantee that you’ll like these books, just that one or more of us did. Happy reading, and enjoy the summer. Julian Girdham, Liam Canning, Evan Jameson, Kate Smith, Ronan Swift, Tom McConville (Librarian). (Dates are usually for paperback publication in Ireland/UK. *Reviewed on www.sccenglish.ie, usually at greater length)
FICTION *Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
Barry’s second short story collection is outstanding. The variety of his subject matter is impressive, but even more so his style - sharp, supple and funny. ‘Wifey Redux’ is an hilarious tale of a Celtic Tiger marriage gone wrong. ‘Ernestine and Kit’ is a truly creepy story of what two ladies in their sixties get up in County Sligo. Best of all is ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’, winner of the Sunday Times short story award, a tender story of a beer club members’ trip from Liverpool to North Wales on a sweltering July day: superb.
Foster by Claire Keegan (Faber and Faber, 2010).
This was on last year’s list too, but we’re repeating it here since parents of next year’s V form might be interested in reading it alongside their children. It is one of the choices for their Leaving Certificate comparative module. This short novella compellingly tells the tale of a girl who spends the summer with a childless couple in Co. Wexford. The characters and their surroundings are rendered with subtle power. The ending is quietly intriguing and can be viewed from a number of angles; it's difficult not to revisit the final lines a number of times.
Beastly Things by Donna Leon (Heinemann, 2012).
The latest in the Commissario Brunetti police series from Venice is very good. Brunetti is one of the most attractive detectives around, and the other great character is the beautiful city itself.
The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker (Harvill Secker, 2012)
Two years ago we recommended Bakker’s outstanding début, *The Twin. His central character in this second novel is also Dutch, but this time is a woman who has fled her country, her past and her husband on the way to Ireland. She only gets as far as Wales, and this is the story of her ‘detour’, as she sets up home in a primitive rural cottage. All the virtues of The Twin are evident here too: the calm clarity of Bakker’s prose (again beautifully translated by David Colmer), the underlying sense of unease, the narrative grip of a story in which, on the surface, not much seems to happen. The end is very powerful.
*Open City by Teju Cole (Faber and Faber, 2012).
A beautiful evocation of a city (New York), this apparently freewheeling series of vignettes and memories recalled by a Nigerian doctor is a top-class début. Open City has a broad canvas, despite its relatively modest length: ranging across New York, it also extends to Brussels and Nigeria, and - especially - reaches down into histories of many kinds. Those histories may be cultural (the suppression of 9/11, the African Burial Ground near Wall Street, Ellis Island) or personal (Julius's forgotten childhood German, boarding school in Nigeria, the after-effects of a recently failed relationship). It is also terrific on the great city itself, evoking its neighbourhoods and changing atmospheres memorably.
*Solace by Belinda McKeon (Picador, 2012)
This first novel recently won the Best Newcomer of the Year title at the 2011 Irish Book Awards. Certainly this was deserved recognition: Solace combines many virtues, including a strong narrative drive, a vivid portrait of Ireland on the cusp of the Celtic Tiger's implosion, and an impressive exploration of the varieties of parent-child relationships. Best of all, however, is McKeon's style - clean, unfussy and tender when reaching below the skin of her characters. She certainly moves over some of the ground of the late great John McGahern, but unlike some other contemporary Irish writers who have been influenced by him, she still consistently strikes her own note.
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (Vintage, 2012)
Enright won the Booker Prize for The Gathering, a novel some readers found very downbeat. This is funnier, but also brilliantly written. At its core is a love affair between two married people, but what really matters is the superbly maintained tone of the narrator, Gina, as well as the sharply-observed evocation of Ireland on the cusp of the Celtic Tiger meltdown. This is a tremendously readable novel.
Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes (Myriad, 2011)
Not to be read if you’re in the house alone … Catherine is recovering from an abusive relationship. But she is still fragile, and her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder dominates her life. Sometimes paranoia is justified... 2
A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale (Fourth Estate, 2012)
The latest novel from this consistently readable English novelist, and another story set in a vividly-evoked Cornwall. Barbaby is a parish priest; at the start of the novel he witnesses a terrible event at the home of one of his young parishioners. The rest of the novel moves skilfully back and forward in time until the full mosaic reveals the story behind that first scene. Gale’s story is rich, humane and always interesting.
Before I Go to Sleep by S.J.Watson (Black Swan, 2012)
Like Haynes’s Into the Darkest Corner, this thriller is pure narrative adrenaline. Christine loses her memory every time she goes to sleep; every morning she starts life as a blank slate. Then she starts to write a diary to try to make sense of who she is, and when she reads each entry the next day a disturbing truth about her life starts to emerge.
Wish You Were Here by Graham Swift (Picador, 2012).
Swift’s style is clear and simple, but his thematic reach is considerable. The latest novel from one of England’s best writers examines the damages inflicted on his country through the lives of Jack Luxton, once a farmer in Devon, and his wife Ellie. Jack’s brother Tom was killed in Iraq. As he and Ellie try to cope with the aftermath, the novel hurtles to a dramatic and moving conclusion.
Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart (McClelland and Stewart, 2010)
The narrator looks back to mysterious events that unfolded when she was a teenager on her family's now abandoned Canadian orchard. The novel looks at how stories, a family's, and the printed stories of others', weave themselves through people's lives. A novel for those who enjoy the poetic in prose.
Pure by Andrew Miller (Sceptre, 2011)
The story is set in 1785 in Paris. A young engineer is charged by the King to demolish the city's oldest cemetery. The narrow Parisian streets and its inhabitants are evoked convincingly, and the proximity of mortality makes this a thought-provoking read.
The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst (Picador, 2012)
This novel's wide scope pivots on a moment that inspired a poem: a poem which would become a British favourite. A young man’s interest in the poem leads to two families - the Sawles and the Valances. Their compellingly different yet interlinked stories are revealed by episodes that capture England as it changes through the twentieth century.
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NON-FICTION Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (Vintage, 2012).
The true story behind Winterson’s autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Her upbringing in working class Accrington was emotionally painful, primarily due to her relationship with her adoptive mother. But this book isn’t painful: it looks at that life, and indeed at her mother, with clarity and wise understanding. It is often as funny as it is horrifying. It is also a passionate defence of the power of literature, which in the end rescued Winterson.
*A Guest at the Feast by Colm Toibin (Penguin specials: e-book only)
This short memoir shows Tóibín ranging over his childhood in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, with great skill and affection. There are fine passages on his mother and her hunger for literature, on the memorable arrival of the Fleadh Cheoil to Enniscorthy in 1967 (the night before the author's father was hit by a fatal stroke), on discovering Dublin as a university student, on the last sad days of the composer Frederick May, and on Tóibín's peripheral brush with the child abuse scandals of the Roman Catholic Church. About all these he writes with delicacy and sympathy.
My Father’s Fortune by Michael Frayn (Faber, 2011).
Frayn is one of the most versatile writers working in English today, and one of the wittiest. This memoir about his father is certainly funny, but is also very moving and even painful at times. Along with the great farce Noises Off, the film Clockwise and the novel Headlong, this is one of Frayn’s very best works in a distinguished writing career.
*The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt (Vintage, 2011) The historian Tony Judt died last year of motor neurone disorder, aged 62. Author of the great history of post-1945 Europe, Postwar, the last years of his life saw a dramatic flowering of his writing for the general public, including this very personal collection of beautifully written autobiographical essays. They give us rare access to a mind working under the terrible conditions of his devastating and terminal disease. Don’t be put off: this is a sharp-sighted but not at all depressing book. His writing about travel (into the mind, into memories, to other countries) is particularly fine, at a time when he could hardly move, let alone travel. Consistently thought-provoking.
When the Lights Went Out by Andy Beckett (Faber, 2010)
For readers of a certain vintage, this is a particularly evocative read: a galloping narrative through Britain in the 1970s - Scargill, Heath, the Winter of Discontent and of course the Iron Lady. Now it seems another world entirely, and Beckett’s immaculatelyresearched work is a hugely enjoyable revisiting of Planet 70s.
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*Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill (Profile, 2010) This is sub-titled 'A Year of Reading from Home'. Prompted by realising that she wanted to 'repossess' her books, both read and unread, Hill has written a memoir of a year's reading. With formidable discipline for a writer and reader she restrained herself from buying new books for twelve whole months, and concentrated on discovering or re-discovering the books in her rural English home. This is also also the story of that house and indeed her past. It's a great summer read, and you're certain to find at least one or two books you will want to discover for yourself. The tone is personal, passionate, rather rambling, occasionally entertainingly cantakerous. Among her strongest enthusiasms are Frances Kilvert, W.G. Sebald and Penelope Fitzgerald. On the other hand, she's not exactly keen on Jane Austen.
Land’s Edge - A Coastal Memoir by Tim Winton (Picador, 2012)
This lovely small book has all the hallmarks of Winton’s fiction, but this time he is the central character. His love of and need to be near the sea (especially the Indian Ocean off Western Australia) is the theme.
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth (Icon Books 2011).
As long a title as a recommendation: based on his writings on ‘The Inky Fool’ blog, Forsyth’s love affair with words and their origins and links to each other is infectious.
& FINALLY, THREE CLASSICS Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
On the Leaving Certificate course for next year’s V formers. If you don’t know this most readable of love stories, then it’s time. If you’ve already read it, then it’s time to revisit. Elizabeth Bennet lives with her four sisters, her sarcastic father and a mother desperate to see her daughters married off. When she first meets the wealthy but snooty Fitzwilliam Darcy, it’s dislike at first sight...
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
James’s novella is one of literature’s great ghost stories, and has inspired many films and other books. A young governess is hired by their uncle to look after two young children, Miles and Flora, at a country house in rural Essex, with the housekeeper Mrs Grose for adult company. Then she starts to see the figures of a man and a woman in the grounds. The story of the events which follow will haunt you.
The Good Soldier: a tale of passion by Ford Madox Ford
A short novel which opens with one of the great opening sentences of fiction: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard”. Written just before the First World War, it tells the story of two couples and their distintegrating lives and relationships. Perfectly narrated, it is one of the great uses of the unreliable narrator. 5