Set on Edge by Bernice Rubens

This is the second Bernice Rubens novel I’ve read and although my friends highly recommend her, she’s not doing it for me. She writes as an observer, never really engaged with or absorbed by her characters. It’s like being a voyeur into their very odd, distinctly uncomfortable lives. As the raconteur, Rubens takes us through the day to day uncomfortable moments of their small existences as they resolve who they really are – in this case a middle aged lady called Gladys who has martyred herself to look after her siblings and aging mother, and is indeed, pretty much a replica of her mother. Turns out she is who she is. Some have suggested there is a black humour about her books. Black, definitely, but as for humour, well it’s not really apparent to me. I don’t believe in this writer’s characters and I don’t find their stories interesting, just small, gloomy and depressing.

N-W by Zadie Smith

I read White Teeth a very long time ago and loved it, then was disappointed in The Telegraph Man. However a bookshop person persuaded me to buy this book and I’m glad I did. This is no easy read. It’s a gritty book, a downer rather than an upper, but it has an almost anthropological ring to it, or perhaps a sociological ring might be a better word. It’s the story of four young people who have grown up and known one another on a council housing estate in northwest London. There are flashbacks to their childhood but essentially it’s about where they are now, in their thirties, and where if anywhere they are heading. It’s oddly constructed, first in chapters then in almost sound bites, and much of it written in the local street jargon. Smith makes the reader work hard to comprehend what’s going on; by that I mean she doesn’t spell things out and explain them, rather you have to be on your toes and really think about what a particular passage might be referring to. I came away from this novel feeling saddened but as if I had really experienced their lives in some small way. The blurb on the jacket described it as funny, sad and urgent – I think I’d change the order of those – but agree that it is an excellent portrait of modern city life for a particular slice of society. I found the book uncomfortable but compelling.

The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

It took me about a month to read this utterly fascinating and absorbing book. Jared Diamond writes in a very accessible style about what people term ‘popular science’. He’s a geographer and arguably an ethnographer and this book compares traditional societies, with a heavy emphasis on New Guinea where he spends part of every year, and modern developed societies. He compares approaches to warfare, religion, child rearing, the treatment of the aged linguistics, approaches to danger, and health. It’s the sort of material that you want to remember and of course can’t, because of its detail. He presents masses of supporting evidence and you get the feeling that this is all thoroughly researched and thought out, the work of a lifetime of careful observation and follow up reading. This is a book I’ll keep on my shelf. Much of the information in it is actually a little bit life changing, especially approaches to child rearing, eating and, more broadly, in the way you view other human beings and their cultural background.

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

This is a very weird book. I had seen the film years ago and of course could not get Jack Nicholson out of my mind, and I recalled he was clearly cast as the devil himself but I really didn’t pick this up strongly from the book. There were hints at it but I didn’t come away with a strong sense of it. Yes he was devilish in his behaviour, but again he could be almost any man if you want to look at this as a feminist novel. What I did come away with was a strong sense of witchcraft itself. Updike sees it totally tied up with being female, a sensual sexual powerful thing that comes with age and freedom and menstruation, almost a mantle of female power. And then when you get a couple of witches together you end up with a cone of power, a spirally energy that transports them in a way. I’ve had friends that he would have cast as witches, indeed any woman who comes into her own with maturity and strength could end up casting spells. His writing in this book is absolutely Updike, leaping off into convoluted asides and observations that take great concentration. The reader must be engaged in this book, pay attention, because if not stuff slips through and you find yourself asking, what?? So, the story… about three women living in Rhode Island, in the small inward looking town of Eastwick. Their powers have become strong with divorce and they are promiscuous, dangerous women, “bad” mothers, all trying to find their place in the world. Their work and their thinking is stuck in Eastwick. Along comes Darryl , an exotic and mysterious man from New York, who leads them into a life of personal challenges, wild orgies, everything life in small town America is not. I really don’t know what Updike is getting at with this book. Is he commenting on small town America? Is he paying tribute to the mysterious power of women? I understand the story but there’s a lot more to this book and I think it will take some thinking about.

The Silent Wife by ASA Harrison

Ha ha ha ha ha! This is an utterly evil book about a woman whose husband cheats on her. It is black and wicked and compelling and at times chortle out aloud funny. Awful people, awful situations and a great conclusion. Five minutes on the beach should do it for this one. Or when you’re wiped out in bed for a day.

The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

What a guilty pleasure to sit down and read through the entire series of seven books, one after the other. I do think Rowling has a very dark side to her but I’m thinking that’s part of the attraction. Speaking critically though, there’s not much to say about these books except that they are about story, not about wonderful writing, that they are repetitive in plot structure AND that one Hermione does not resolve the gender equality problem. Indeed Hermione is a stereotyped bossy boots know it all. The sexism, the stereotyping of family, and the patriarchal values all bother me. So while the stories were fun, I did find myself skipping large tracts of them, and I don’t think these books add anything to kidlit other than cheap thrills.

The Box Garden by Carol Shields

What a fine writer Carol Shields is. And this is a delicate book, sparingly written but with such poetry of language that you often stop and reread phrases. Usually I find that books that are beautifully written don’t have a similar strength in the plot but this one has a finely wrought plot, where the threads of the story work in with one another to a lovely resolution. Charleen is a painfully divorced mother, who doesn’t seem to be able to resolve any of the major relationships in her life – with her ex husband, with her mother, with her new boyfriend and with her career. She is marking time, waiting for something to go bang in her life. The catalyst is a trip she takes to attend her mother’s wedding on the other side of Canada. Outlined like this, it sounds a bit bald but the story is told with such delicacy that understanding comes upon you slowly, like gradual realizations as you get to know the characters. There is sympathy and warmth and humanity in this book. The characters are utterly believable and the whole thing an absolutely compelling read.