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A quiet morning in the garden before the bank holiday fun kicks off ☀️ This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann is a story that spans over half a decade in New York, beginning with the so-called sandhogs at the turn of the 20th century, the labourers who dug the tunnel linking Manhattan to Brooklyn, and ending with a homeless man called Treefrog who lives in the same tunnel decades later. McCann draws a thread between these two storylines, moving back and forth in time, introducing us to characters who have known love and tragedy, grief and shame, racial discrimination, violence and compassion, destitution and humanity. Five Little Indians by Michelle Good tells the stories of Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie, taken from their families as young children to be placed in a church-run residential school. Eventually discharged at different times and sent away on the cusp of an adulthood they are in no way prepared for, their journeys converge in the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver where they each struggle in different ways to settle and fit in; some more visibly, some behind closed doors. The repercussions of the abuse and trauma suffered during the formative years of adolescence ripple through these characters’ lives for years after, shaping the decisions they make and impacting their abilities to have healthy relationships. Good beautifully captures the pull between the past and the present as, each in their different ways, the characters try to move forward with their lives but remain torn at relentlessly by their past; some move forward more successfully, while others don’t fare so well. She also beautifully develops the dynamics between them, showing the different ways these people with a shared history try to support each other; while some are softer, kinder and more gentle with each other, others are more abrupt, more insistent that this is behind them and it's time to move on; a universal and very human meditation on the way different people will deal with the same experience and trauma in very different ways. Cocktail Bar by Norah Hoult is a collection of short stories first published in 1950 and, while the language, and social and historical references, sometimes clearly place this in times gone by, there are aspects of the social commentary, and meditations on young love and community dynamics, that could be much more recent. And this is something touched on in author Sinéad Gleeson’s introduction, that Hoult was in fact well ahead of her time; writing about issues that, while perhaps quite normal literary material today, would have been alarming back in the day. Gleeson’s introduction paints a picture of a woman who was independent and not afraid of writing her mind, with some of her books even being banned by the Irish censorship board for dealing with contentious subjects (contentious being for example religion, sexuality, the economy, and the cultural experience of being a woman in 20th century Britain and Ireland). This morning’s pre-work coffee is in the sun and I’m loving it. Is summer finally on the way? ☀️ Another two books passed on to me unexpectedly today, the bookshelves are growing. Don’t you love when unplanned reads work out great? This book was passed on to me unexpectedly, so I decided to bump it up the TBR pile and I’m so glad I did. Tracking the life of Margaret and Wallace, Unitarian by birth and republican by conviction, and their children, in Ireland and India in the early 20th century, this is an absolutely gorgeously written fictionalised account of a time, place and movement inspired by the author’s own family history. The characters are so vividly brought to life that we can’t help but be completely drawn back in time and into their tumultuous lives. Based on historical facts, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent is the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland in 1830. Condemned to death for her part in the murder of two men, with no prisons in Iceland at the time, Agnes is sent to await her execution on the farm of the District Officer. We know how this ends so what makes this a slow-building but compulsive story is the psychological, emotional and spiritual journey we are brought on as we learn more about Agnes’ past. The story is told in alternating passages, moving between third person narrative, showing a broader picture, and Agnes’ own voice, showing the torment, the fear, the superstition, the desire, the longing, the jealousy, and the betrayal that have plagued her. Florida by Lauren Groff is a strange, atmospheric, unsettling and absolutely captivating collection of short stories. While the book blurb says it’s the landscape, climate, history and state of mind of the titular American State that binds these stories, the overarching element permeating most of this collection is Florida’s extreme weather, terrain and wildlife, used to great effect; whether it’s the oppressive heat, ferocious wind or rain whipping, the murky swamp just beyond the household threshold, or the threatening animals lurking in the shadows. These are strange stories of loneliness, abandonment and betrayal, of strained child/parent relationships, of women unfulfilled and relationships marred by lack of communication, all brimming with atmosphere and filled with tension; some of them are even fable-like. The boy abandoned by his mother to live with his father in a house teeming with reptiles; the young girls abandoned by their parents on an island. And yet in many of these stories, at some point the protagonist is looking back at these dark times from some future point, evoking this sense of pushing through, of emerging from a waking nightmare. The stories are not all set in Florida but even when we move away, similar tensions and threats linger.
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