Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

Sometimes you come across a piece of writing that is so subtle and understated that you almost absorb what’s going on by osmosis. This marvelous novel is like that. I loved Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women and Quartet offers more of the same quiet observation of ordinary human lives. It’s the story of four ordinary single people, two men, Norman and Edwin, and two women, Letty and Marcia, who work together in unspecified clerical jobs, live alone and struggle with a deep loneliness. They are all nearing retirement age and when the two women retire they must adjust to this new landscape. Letty has to find a new home when her plans to join an old friend in the country fall through; Marcia has to find a new way of living when her normal workday routine has disappeared. Despite the bleakness of the setting and the drabness of these people’s lives, Quartet is frequently full of black comedy. I’ve read this described as ‘tender’ comedy, and yes, Pym is both understanding and forgiving; at the same time however she is a keen and humorous observer of the ludicrousies of these mundane lives. It’s a book for reading very, very carefully, watching for the wry smile on Pym’s face as she makes some small and easily overlooked observation.

The Shepherds Life: A Tale of the Lakes District by James Rebanks

What a lovely book. It’s not what I’d call literary and it’s not a rollicking good yarn, but it is an authentic, humanly written account of the lives of farmers in England’s Lakes district who have been farming sheep on the mountains there for 600 years or more. One of the things I liked best was the connection Rebanks feels with pre-historic peoples. He talks particularly about the showing and selling of sheep, regular calendar events, and draws a comparison with the gatherings that ancient people had to trade, socialize and even find wives and husbands. We visit these places of standing stones and ancient post holes, and it’s truly satisfying to think that a remnant of social behaviour still carries through to the present. I loved his sense of connection with the seasons, also. The book is divided into the four seasons with bits of story interwoven with descriptions of the work that is done in those times. He’s a keen observer of the plant and wildlife of each season. Of course he is a farmer through and through - despite his Oxford firsts in history! – and I loved the practical farmer’s approach to difficulties, to life and death, to foxes and crows, to his relationships with other farmers and his family, with little sentiment. Having lived and worked in rural Australia I recognized it immediately and found it true. Rebanks talks about the sheep hefting to the land, getting connected to a particular place on the mountain so that they can return to it year after year and know they are home. I think he’s talking about himself as much as his sheep.

Utopia by Thomas More

So, having bailed out of a day-long meditation session that smelled remarkably like a cult brainwashing session, I came home and spent the wet and wind-blasted afternoon finishing Utopia. This is a book erudite people refer to all the time. Not being particularly erudite, I hadn’t read it but I’m about to begin an on-line literature course based on the English country house and Utopia is the first book we’re studying. It’s short, just 128 pages, and detailed and I’ve been reading it in bursts. ‘I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who on pretence of managing the public only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill acquired, and then that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please. And if they can but prevail to get these considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws.’ ‘Now if in such a court, made up of persons who envy all others, and only admire themselves, a person should but propose anything that he had either read in history or observed in his travels, the rest would think that the reputation of their wisdom would sink, and that their interest would be much depressed, if they could not run it down…’ if better things are proposed they cover themselves obstinately with this excuse of reverence to past times.’ My father used to say that the one thing humankind had never done was to learn from history. So here is someone in the 16th century describing the malaise of modern life. This book is frightening because nothing has changed.

Odd Women by George Gissing

At the Sydney Writers Festival this month there was one book whose name came up time and time again, a novel published in the mid 1800s, and revered by writers such as Vivian Gornick, Hanya Yanagihara and Drusilla Mjodeska: Odd Women. So I downloaded it - free of charge for heavens sake! - on iBooks and plunged in. I could not put this book down. What a joy to read something where the conversation was all absorbing. Indeed I'm not sure I can think of another book where I have responded in such a way; it's nearly always the plot, or the character development or sometimes simply the language that carries me through a novel. But here, it was the argument. I can't compete with a genius-woman like vivian Gornick, so here's her take on the book which absolutely sums up everything I have been thinking. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/odd-women

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

I love Jonathan Franzen, I really do. It’s his way with words, a sort of cutting to the bone in his prose that is somehow elegant in style, if not in content. His language is real. However, the premise for this book is really nothing short of ridiculous. It’s about a girl searching for her identity and through an elaborate plot, which reads like some sort of conspiracy theory, she finds her way. It is utterly unbelievable. I’ve had this sort of problem with his wacky stories before, specifically the guy who runs off to South America in the last novel of his I read. Mostly Franzen’s humour and language redeem him, but this time the book was so very long – about 800 pages or something – and with so much silliness in it that I really can’t forgive him!

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

I loved this book. It’s blessedly short because, as is always the case with this magnificent writer, every single word counts. It’s the type of book you need to savour, because it’s not about story, it’s about a psychological state. The book is about Shostakovich and his life in the Soviet Union. It is well researched and uses the facts of his life as a basis for a psychological exploration of how this famous composer dealt with strictures of living in Russia at that time. From that point of view it is fiction, almost like historical fiction I suppose, but better. I was completely fascinated with the relationship between the musicians that were living there at the time and the blind, clumsy-minded power of the officials running the union. Barnes has captured the fear that ran through everyday life like a mineral lode through rock. There was no rhyme or reason to officialdom’s decisions and there was no predicting their behaviour. What astonishes me is that any of these composers like Shostakovich or Prokofiev managed to produce what they did. This was a fascinating insight into living and working under a totalitarian regime.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

This is an incredible book. Yanagihara writes like an old, experienced woman; I find it hard to understand how someone so young can be so in touch with the inner workings of people’s minds. The story is simple: it traces the lives of four men who share rooms in college and go on to be friends for the rest of their lives in New York. They are very real. I particularly liked her rendition of JB, a character both attractive and lovable and very flawed, a completely authentic character. There were some parts that didn’t ring true, their amazing career successes for one. It’s also almost impossible to write a story chronicling four people’s lives in a book of any readable length, without skimming over bits and lapsing into that sort of shallow story telling that drives me nuts. There’s a little bit of this; there has to be I guess, because even though the book is 800 pages long the scope of the story is four lifetimes. There’s also a little bit of sentimentality, because it’s impossible to do other than sketch a secondary character and as a result their actions become almost superficial, like Harold’s relationship with Jude (though even there she manages to give us clues about why Harold is so attached to this man.) But the real focus of the book is the story of Jude and Willem, the childhoods that formed them and the men they become. Although I’ve not experienced anything like it myself, it seems to me that her exploration of Jude, a victim of horrific abuse as a child, is masterful. And her exploration of grief is so on the money that it had me in tears. That I have experienced and I’ve watched close friends experience too, and I was right there with the characters, recognising and identifying with their suffering. Her research has been astonishing. There’s a great long list of people who worked with in the areas of mathematics, law, medicine and so forth, an incredible achievement. I couldn’t put this book down.