Boy Parts is Eliza Clark’s first novel. It was published in 2020. I thought I’d give it a go after it was mentioned in passing on the radio.

The novel, largely set in Newcastle, is narrated by a Royal College of Art graduate, Irina, who is also working in a bar to make enough money to survive. Early in the novel, she is offered the opportunity to exhibit at a fashionable London gallery, which leads her to look through an archive of her work to date, as well as throwing herself into production of new work. Her art involves taking explicit photographs of average-looking men she scouts in everyday life.

This is one of those novels that hits the reader full-square in the face from the first page, and doesn’t slow down. Some have described it as a horror and some as a thriller, but I think it defies straightforward categorisation. It explores questions about the connection between art and mental illness, about gender norms in contemporary Britain, about the nature of consent, and about the attitudes of cluelessly disconnected people based in London to those in “the North”. I note that Clark is a Newcastle-born novelist living in London, and the last of these elements is so hilariously / depressingly pitch-perfect that it must surely be drawing on her own experience. (Irina’s “Is your dad a miner?” query recalled my own ”I’ve never met a doctor from one of the Northern medical schools!” moment when working in London.)

There are some moments of quite graphic violence in this novel, which would often put me off, but here they are integral to the character-building, and so didn’t seem unnecessary or gratuitous. There is some mention of Newcastle-specific details, including a paragraph riffing on the possible routes that a character could take when driving between two locations, but this seemed to parody assumptions about geographical familiarity made in books set in the capital—which I found hilarious.

All things considered, I thought this novel was exceptional, and I look forward to Clark’s future work.

I’m grateful to Newcastle City Library for lending me a copy of this book.

This 2021 novel by Jasper Gibson has been on my “to read” list since publication. I have been nervous to start it because I thought I would have a strong reaction to it, one way or another. And I was right: I thought it was brilliant.

The novel is a first-person account of living with schizophrenia, set in present day leafy East Sussex. Our narrator, Tom, has a first-class degree in law, and also hears the distinctive voice of the “Octopus God,” Malamock. Malamock also has the power to cause Tom to feel sensations, sometimes painful and sometimes pleasurable.

The central portion of the novel concerns Tom’s admission to a mental health ward. A doctor attempts to recruit him to a drug trial, possibly convincing or possibly coercing him to take part. There is a lot to reflect on the challenges of consenting to research, and also the complex decisions psychiatric patients must make about their treatments. Not everyone wants the voices to go away.

And what are the side effects? I don’t want any more side effects. They’re not usually on the side, are they? More in the middle. Slap bang.

There was also quite a bit in this novel about the fine line between religion and mental illness—always fertile ground—as well as reflecting the paucity of social and financial support for those with psychiatric illnesses.

Doubt is an article of faith and not its opposite.

I had expected this to be a fairly reflective novel, ruminating on mental illness—but actually, it is plot-driven with lively writing and plenty of humour. It was much the better for this.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, and Tom and Malamock will live long in my memory.

Thanks to Newcastle University Library for lending me a copy.

Published in 2022, this is a brief history of sixteen cathedrals. I decided to read it after seeing a review in The Spectator. As I’ve previously reflected, one of the major things the book made me consider was that—at least traditionally—cathedrals have had functions which span way beyond the sacred. As Wells puts it,

Between them, the cathedrals featured tell a narrative faith, intellectual culture, art, politics and economy.

In her introduction, Wells drew a comparison between buildings and books:

We can argue, quite plausibly, then, that buildings are books without words—and through their stones the dead may speak.

What I failed to realise before embarking on this tome is that while buildings may be books without words, I’m not necessarily all that interested in what they have to say. Most of this book was detailed histories of buildings with which I have no particular relationship. Therefore, while I’m sure these histories represent years of detailed research, if I’m honest, I found it all a bit dull. However, it did still give me some tangetial food for thought. This was, in part, because this isn’t normally the sort of thing I read.

Wells has a short section about the devastating fire at Norte-Dame de Paris in 2019. In the context of the histories of these 16 cathedrals, a devastating fire does not stand out at all: nearly all of them have suffered over the years. However, the response to the fire—to replicate and rebuild as closely as possible to what went before—is truly exceptional. In the history of these grand historic buildings, fires have generally been followed by modifications befitting the social and architectural mores of the time. This trend is also true of the York Minster fire of 1984, also briefly covered in the Wells’s book.

I remember feeling a tinge of disappointment when President Macron announced the plan to rebuild exactly what was destroyed. The announcement came after fevered speculation about possible new additions, and it felt a little dull. It wasn’t until I read this book that I also reflected on how historically anomalous it was.

I was reading earlier this year about an inspired campaign to introduce a new Grade III listing for buildings on ecological grounds: “The status would apply automatically to every building and it would come with just one rule: the property may only be demolished if it is structurally unsafe, or is given special dispensation by the local planning authority.”

It strikes me that preserving old building often means modernising them, not dunking them in aspic. And I think that’s what Wells made me reflect on most. Cathedrals were once ever-changing hubs of both religious and secular activity, adapting to serve society as the world changed. These days, they typically feel frozen in time, suspended in antiquity, serving more as curiosities than as community hubs.

Given the opportunity to redefine one of the world’s greatest Cathedrals for the 21st century, with a dash of modern relevant architectural flair, society shrugged its shoulders and said, “put it back like it was before.”

And maybe that means Cathedrals are over.

Thank you to the London Library for letting me borrow this book.

Published in 2015, this was Suzanne O’Sullivan’s first book, and it’s the first of her books that I’ve read. I was motivated to seek a copy after seeing excellent reviews of all of her books.

O’Sullivan is a neurologist, and in this book she discusses patients she has seen with psychosomatic neurological presentations, such as seizures, paralysis, and—in one particularly memorable case—blindness. Based on my experience, O’Sullivan is right to say that psychosomatic illness is not discussed in any great length during medical training. I took a lot away from this book as a result. In particular, it is always useful to be reminded that psychosomatic illnesses are no more under the patient’s control than those with organic causes.

The book is beautifully written, and I found O’Sullivan’s deep reflections on her practice and her uncertainties especially valuable.

Some quotes that I particularly liked:

Modern society likes the idea that we can think ourselves better. When we are unwell, we tell ourselves that if we adopt a positive mental attitude, we will have a better chance of recovery. I am sure that is correct. But society has not fully woken up to the frequency with which people do the opposite – unconsciously think themselves ill.

If you take one hundred healthy people and subject them to the exact same injury you will get a hundred different responses. That is why medicine is an art.

Anger has a purpose. It tells others we are not alright. It also has a lot in common with psychosomatic symptoms. It can be misleading because often it is something else in disguise – hurt or fear repackaged. It is easily misinterpreted, both by those who feel the anger and those at the receiving end. And its effect may be detrimental. It is frightening. The person at whom the anger is directed may well be compelled to flee, possibly just when they are most needed. Anger can destroy the relationship between patient and doctor. The doctor escapes or avoids or ends up treating the anger and not the patient.

There is a terribly delicate balance in the investigation of benign-sounding symptoms. One must investigate to rule out a physical cause if it seems necessary, but the line where investigations should be stopped is drawn very faintly. Primum non nocere. First, do no harm. If you investigate and find something incidental, what do you do? And when do you say no more tests?

Laughter is the ultimate psychosomatic symptom. It is such a normal part of the human experience that all its facets are universally accepted. Now all we have to do is take the few short steps to a new realisation. If we can collapse with laughter, is it not just as possible that the body can do even more extraordinary things when faced with even more extraordinary triggers?

I look forward to reading more of O’Sullivan’s books—especially her most recent one, The Sleeping Beauties, about mass hysteria events, as this crosses neatly with my professional interest in public health.

Thanks to Newcastle University Library for lending me a copy.

This is the much-lauded 2019 memoir. It follows Al-Kadhi’s journey from being a child of a conservative Iraqi Muslim family, growing up in an enormous economic privilege in Britain, attending Eton and Cambridge, and ultimately finding solace in an identity as Glamrou, a exuberant gay drag queen.

Their story is unique and provides interesting insight into multiple facets of society. It is told with humour and warmth, though the tone is a little too informally conversational for my preference.

There were bits of the book that I didn’t really follow. This may well be due to my own ignorance of the modern understanding of personal identity. For example, I don’t really know what is meant in practice by “working tirelessly to make my identity political”—which is not to dismiss its importance.

There were more bits which made me long for a little more empathy from the author, and reflection on how their views and actions may make others feel. This particularly stood out to me when Al-Khadi described a relationship as making them “feel like I’d won a piece of the institution, by getting him to desire me”, within pages of disparaging broadly similar prejudices in the sexual preferences of others.

Maybe I’m being unfair in that expectation, but the narrative felt one-sided and Al-Khadi doesn’t seem to take responsibility for much. I suppose that’s the prerogative of an autobiographer.

I don’t mean to sound too hard on this book: I’m glad I read it and it gave me plenty of food for thought. However, I wonder if some of the rave reviews are perhaps more reflective of the remarkable bravery and force of will that Al-Khadi has shown in life than of the book itself.

Thanks to Newcastle University Library for lending me a copy.

I know it’s a cheap shot, but this 1993 novel brought me neither comfort nor joy nor glad tidings thereof. I found it a bit of a slog.

The main characters are a rich young doctor and less wealthy hospital administrator. They fall in love, but their relationship is strained by their own and others’ expectations. It’s unremarkably quotidian. Grimsley repeatedly telegraphs that the theme he wants to consider is why couples stay together—but his consideration seems to consist mostly of repeating the question.

I can’t help but think that, when this was published, having two male characters in a normal, everyday relationship was daring on its own terms, but it feels inconsequential thirty years on. That’s progress, and Grimsley and others probably deserve credit and respect for contributing to that progress, but this novel just seemed terribly dull to me.

I was inspired to read this short memoir, published last April, after seeing a positive review in The TLS. It is a short account, mostly extracted from Freddy’s journal, of his experience as the 21-year-old son of a man diagnosed with, and ultimately dying from, glioblastoma.

While Freddy’s experience is singular and recounted with both wit and tenderness, I found that it didn’t really resonate with me. It struck me that Freddy seemed a very “young” 21-year-old, and it made me reflect on our very different paths in life. At the same age as he was struggling to deal with awful news, I was being trained to deliver it. Death was unfamiliar to him at 21, while I’d spent years with cadavers. Some of the conversations that struck Freddy as beautifully expressed struck me as medical cliché.

There was just, somehow, too much medicine in here for me to really separate off that part of my brain and allow myself to feel the humanity. I think that’s more my failing than Freddy’s.

This will be the last of these posts, at least for a little while. In 2023, I’m going to go back to posting about books individually, rather than in a compiled end-of-the-month post.

But for now, I’ve five books to tell you about.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

This Booker-shortlisted 2015 novel is one of those books that has been recommended to me by many people over the last few years, but that I’ve never quite found time for. This is partly because it is long, and starting a long book always feels a bit like taking on a big commitment. But mostly, it’s because the premise didn’t attract me.

This is often described as a story about four male college classmates, following them and their ever-changing relationships over the course of their lives. And yes, that is a part of this book, but it’s not how I’d describe it. I would call it a fictional biography of a brilliant lawyer with a traumatic childhood.

In my premise, this is a book which looks at the lifelong effects of trauma on both the person who suffers it and those around them. There’s a second thread about fatherhood, and the father-son relationship in particular, explored through an adult adoption process. The stuff about modern male friendship is interesting and under-explored in modern fiction, but I didn’t think it was really the focus of the book.

One thing those who recommended this book didn’t get wrong: it is very moving, harrowing even. It was a little over-written, and it took a while to find its focus and get going, but all of that is outweighed—for me, at least—by the complex layers of emotion that the book explores. This is definitely one of my favourite books of 2022.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris

This latest collection of funny observational essays covers the COVID-19 pandemic and, movingly, the death of Sedaris’s father.

As documented in his previous books, Sedaris had always had a strained relationship with his father. In this book. Sedaris describes how his father’s late-in-life cognitive decline brought them closer together. He also talks about the complex emotional reaction to his death, given the history between the two of them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, as I have Sedaris’s previous books… but if you’re new to his essays, you’re probably better off starting with the earlier volumes.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

Emergency State by Adam Wagner

I was a bit reluctant to dive into this newly published book reviewing the legal framework governing the COVID-19 pandemic in England. I wasn’t convinced that I was ready to relive earlier parts of the pandemic we’re living through, especially considering the impact it had on my professional life.

However, the reviews seemed strong, and I couldn’t resist at least making a start—and then ended up racing through the whole thing.

I was struck by the extensive similarities in the ‘chat’ Wagner reports among legal professionals and the ‘chat’ I participated in as a public health professional. Like Wagner, I was surprised that the Government chose to underpin so much of its guidance with law, in a way that is most unusual for public health practice, rather than concentrating on outlawing only the most egregious behaviour. Like Wagner, I was frustrated that the law and guidance rarely aligned. And, like Wagner, I was confounded by late publication of crucial documents, which often came hours or even days after Government announcements, leaving us all guessing in the meantime.

Wagner’s central argument is that the ‘emergency state’ needs clearer boundaries within the English constitution. His argument won me round.

With thanks to Newcastle University’s library for lending me a copy.

Intimations by Zadie Smith

Written in the early part of the pandemic, this is Smith’s short collect of short essays which reflect on her experiences and her relationship with Marcus Aurelius. The final essay is a version of the opening section of Aurelius’s Meditations.

Despite its short length, I describe this as “patchy” and “uneven”. There were sentences that produced that vertiginous effect of totally changing my perspective on something:

Writing is routinely described as ‘creative’ – this has never struck me as the correct word. Planting tulips is creative. To plant a bulb (I imagine, I’ve never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation. Writing is control.

but also passages which seemed inconsequential. I suppose, to some degree, that was the pandemic experience for many—so perhaps the form is more considered than I took it to be.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

I was inspired to read this bestselling 1984 French classic translated by Barbara Bray after seeing a short piece about it in The Atlantic. It is an autobiographical novel set in what is now Vietnam in 1929, and concerns the poor 15-year-old narrator falling into an affair with a rich 27-year-old man. Duras wrote this when she was 70 years old, so had considerable distance and perspective on the events it describes.

The novel is short, a little over 100 pages, and is written in a fragmentary style which is not always strictly linear. I found it difficult to get into, and didn’t take much from it. It’s possibly a book that would close study more than my casual read, though I’m aware that Duras herself described it as “a load of shit” that was written “when I was drunk”.

Basically, this just wasn’t up my street.

With thanks to Northumbria University’s library for lending me a copy.

I’ve nine books to tell you about for November, some of which were better than others.

Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan

Before picking up this book, I’d never heard of Richard Brautigan, the American author who died the year before I was born. I decided to read this 1976 novel of his after an acquaintance told me that this was the book they used to judge the quality of a bookshop: only shops stocking Sombrero Fallout were worth visiting. I’ve since learned that this is something Jarvis Cocker says in the introduction to the recent Canongate edition, so not quite as quirky and original as I’d imagined.

Yet quirky and original this short novel certainly is, one of the most singular and enjoyable books I’ve read this year. The eccentric plot concerns an American humorist who has recently split up from his Japanese girlfriend. He starts a new absurd story about a sombrero falling from the sky in a small American town, but discards it after a few paragraphs. However, the story takes on an increasingly preposterous life of its own within the waste paper basket. The book interleaves this developing story with chapters about the humorist and chapters about the Japanese girlfriend. The chapters are rarely longer than a couple of pages, and frequently much shorter.

The writing is surreal and very funny. Brautigan makes some quotable and yet delicate observations about the nature of life, love, longing, and loss. The overall effect is utterly beguiling.

There is something about Brautigan’s writing in this book that reminds me of Italo Calvino, whose worked I loved. I’ll be seeking more.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

My sole reason for picking this up was the Booker prize long-listing. Being nominated for a Booker doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll enjoy a book. But, with a book as short as this, and one with themes of ‘compassion’ and a ‘stern rebuke of sins committed in the name of religion’—the sort of thing that’s right up my street—it seemed worth giving it a go. I’m glad I did.

This short book was brilliant. It’s about morality, and in particular the contrast between the morality of the ordinary person contrasted with the morality of the Catholic Church. It excoriates the latter for its treatment of unmarried women.

The novel is mostly set at Christmas, in 1986, in Ireland. The central character is a coal merchant with a wife and five daughters. He knows that he could have expected much less as the son of an unmarried servant, especially one whose mother died young. His own experiences and moral attitudes are brought into sharp contrast with those of the local convent and Magdalen laundry after an experience while making a coal delivery.

The style of writing is beautifully concise and precise, and the novel as a whole packs a punch far beyond that which its page-count would suggest.

I will definitely be seeking more of Keegan’s work.

With thanks to Newcastle Libraries for lending me a copy.

Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn

This much-recommended book by the Scottish investigative journalist, published in 2021, examines areas of the world which have been abandoned by humans for a wide variety of reasons. From this, she tries to imagine the future of Earth post-humanity (or as Flyn sometimes proposes, after the ‘mammalian era’), and also tries to understand how the end of humanity might arrive.

This sounds terribly depressing, but this is actually a book rooted in hope and beauty, celebrating the power of nature to rebound and adapt. There’s also a fair about of interesting public health stuff in Flyn’s discussion: I was particularly struck by her understanding that after the Chernobyl disaster,

Overall, poverty-linked ‘lifestyle diseases’ and poor mental health pose a far greater threat to affected communities than radiation exposure.

I also especially liked this line from her conclusion, which crystallised many vague thoughts I’d had while reading:

Faith, in the end, is what environmentalism boils down to. Faith in the possibility of change, the prospect of a better future – for green shoots from the rubble, fresh water in the desert. And our faith is often tested.

This was beautifully written, hopeful, and taught me a lot that I didn’t previously know on a whole gamut of topics, from supervolcanoes to how feral cows behave. It was superb.

Foster by Claire Keegan

I picked this up as a result of enjoying Small Things Like These by the same author. It’s another very slim, single-sitting novel set in Ireland which explores societal themes. In this case, the main theme is family.

A young girl is sent from her large, struggling family to stay with foster parents for a few months. We see, through the eyes of the child, the differences between the two family settings, and watch as—over the course of a few short months—she grows and matures.

Like the other novel, this is beautifully written with precise language, the author clearly having weighed every word. The plot here is simple and unremarkable, but Keegan’s eye for detail and realism turn it into something extraordinary.

I think I enjoyed Small Things Like These a dash more, but perhaps that’s only because I read it first and so Keegan’s remarkable style was new to me. Foster is definitely to be recommended, too.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

Under Pressure by Richard Humphreys

This 2019 memoir of serving onboard a Polaris nuclear submarine has been on my ‘to read’ list since it was published. It was pure prejudice that meant that it languished on the list: I imagined it was going to be an interesting account of an unusual occupation, but probably written from the exhausting point of view of a navy-lifer with a proselytising view of military service. I was wrong.

Humphreys’s account of his training and subsequent service was illuminating and insightful. His reflections on his mental health, and that of fellow servicemen, particularly in the context of unacceptable bullying and humiliating behaviour from those higher up the chain of command are arresting.

Humphreys also writes elegantly about the philosophical aspects of serving on a nuclear submarine, and the duty to carry out actions which would almost certainly lead to the end of humanity. These are fascinating debates in the abstract, but Humphreys personal experience offers a unique, novel perspective.

I never imagined I’d race through any memoir of military service, but this had me hooked.

With thanks to Newcastle Libraries for lending me a copy.

Summerwater by Sarah Moss

I chose to read this short novel, published in 2020, because I previously enjoyed Moss’s Ghost Wall. Summerwater is a similarly atmospheric novel, and I think perhaps I enjoyed it slightly more.

The novel is set on a single rainy day on a Scottish caravan park, near a loch. Each chapter follows a different character staying on the park. While each narrative occasionally mentions the other characters and groups, the whole ‘population’ doesn’t come together until the final section. Between each of the chapters is a short section of writing about the surrounding natural world.

Moss’s crisp writing evokes a claustrophobic, oppressive, tense atmosphere, that somehow also felt entirely relatable.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the final five words, as ordinary as they are, sent chills down my spine and will stay with me for a long time.

With thanks to Newcastle Libraries for lending me a copy.

The Prison Doctor by Amanda Brown and Ruth Kelly

This memoir of a GP’s decision to leave her village surgery and pursue a career in prison medicine has been on my ‘to read’ list since it was published. I put off reading it for a few years because too much of my health protection day job had come to involve prison outbreaks, so I thought it might be too close to home. Two sequels have been published in the meantime, which gives some idea of the book’s commercial success.

The book has three parts: the first covers Brown’s decision to leave general practice, and—in some ways—I found this the most interesting section. Although the change was different, the process and feelings Brown described reminded me of my experiences of moving from hospital medicine into public health. The second section discusses Brown’s early prison career in young offender institutes and men’s prisons, including clinical stories of some prisoners alongside her training and career development. The last section concentrates on her time working in a women’s prison, and concentrates almost exclusively on the clinical vignettes.

I was left with mixed feelings. The book had a certain ‘fictive sheen’, with events and stories feeling neatly contained and complete in a way that’s rarely true in medicine. I’m convinced this is a consequence of changing details to anonymise cases and perhaps creating compound characters, but it just felt a little false. The dialogue also felt awkwardly written, without any ring of authenticity.

On the other hand, this neatness of story and writing made this an effortless read, and Brown and Kelly still gave interesting illustrated insights into the lives of prison medics and their patients… so maybe the slightly ‘glossy’ writing is worth it.

The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain

This 2014 French novel was translated by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken, two of the three translators of Laurain’s The President’s Hat, which I previously enjoyed.

This novel is in the long tradition of blind love stories. A woman is mugged and left in a coma. A man finds her discarded handbag and, using its contents, tracks her down and falls in love with her, without ever having met her.

I found this a bit inauthentic and twee. It has the warm tome of The President’s Hat, but is a little too humdrum and unimaginative to have the same charm. The plot was too predictable to be truly engaging, and the behaviour of the central character seemed to me to cross the line into being creepy rather than romantic.

With thanks to Newcastle Libraries for lending me a copy.

Bittersweet by Susan Cain

I have long had a theory that melancholy is under-appreciated in modern British society. I feel especially strongly about this in connection with Christmas. I think Christmas is naturally a time which combines happiness and melancholy, but increasingly, the infantilisation of British society sees it treated exclusively with childlike chirpiness.

All of this led me to believe that I’d find much to enjoy in Bittersweet, Susan Cain’s recent book on the place of sorrow and longing in society, especially as I’d enjoyed her previous book, Quiet.

However, I was a bit disappointed. This felt too focused specifically on American cultural norms for me as a British reader, and it felt focused on a particularly narrow slice even of that society. It felt like there was a certain credulity in the author’s quoting of messages shared on retreats and at narrowly focused conferences.

Bittersweet felt like a memoir of a personal journey into understanding various broadly New Age concepts, presented as popular science—and as a result, it just wasn’t up my street.

With thanks to Newcastle Libraries for lending me a copy.

I’ve five books to mention for October, all by authors I’ve never read before.

Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors by Aravind Jayan

I picked this up after seeing a positive review in the TLS. It is a 200-page first novel, a comedic middle-class family drama set in the Indian city of Trivandrum. The older brother of the narrator has been covertly filmed engaging in “sex-adjacent activities” with an acquaintance / girlfriend, and the video quickly spreads online. Our narrator is left to arbitrate between his brother and his parents as their relationship essentially breaks down. At heart, the book seemed to be about the collision between the modern world and traditional social values.

I found it easy to read, but the melodramatic aspect of focusing almost entirely on the relationships within one family was a little wearing after a while. Given the grandeur of the theme, I think I would have enjoyed seeing it explored on a larger canvas. Jayan’s exploration of the personal, family effects had its impact lessened for me by the humour which ran throughout.

Yet, I still enjoyed this novel, and I found it interesting to see the similarities in family values and relationships between India and the UK.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman

I picked up this recently published novel after seeing a review in the TLS. The opening line is, “I had hundreds of nudes stored in my phone, but I’d never sent them to anyone.”

I have no nudes in my phone, and no desire whatsoever to set about changing that; I knew immediately I was in for an intriguing journey into the life and mind of a character with an entirely different outlook on life. This book is the story of an extraordinarily complex web of sexual and/or romantic relationships. Girl 1 is in a relationship with girl 2, seeks a bit on the side with girl 3, who invites her into a threesome with her boyfriend and boss, boy 1, girl 1 leaves girl 2 for boy 1 (or possibly for girl 3 or possibly for both or neither). And that’s only about the first quarter of the book.

There’s a lot in this book about power and consent and gender dynamics, but really, at its heart, this is a book about belonging, understanding, and the different qualities and needs that develop when we spend time with different people. Fishman has wise and interesting things to say on these subjects, which make this first novel worth reading, though I wonder if her plots might become a little less complicated over time and allow the main themes a bit more space to breathe.

With thanks to Newcastle Libraries for lending me a copy.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

This is a 2019 collection of nine essays rooted in the author’s personal experiences and loosely connected by the theme of self-delusion. Tolentino is a Canadian-born writer who lives in America. She is in her thirties and contributes to a variety of periodicals, including The New Yorker and websites such as Jezebel. I picked up this book because the Amazon algorithm pushed it at me, and because I saw it had been so widely praised in the press (as both a Times and Guardian ‘Book of the Year’).

I enjoyed most of the essays in this collection, but especially enjoyed Tolentino’s essay on marriage (“I Thee Dread”), probably because her views roughly align with my own. I was particularly struck by her observation about how traditional gender-segregated celebrations of engagement remain common in modern Western society: I’d never viewed hen/stag parties in that light.

I also especially enjoyed Tolentino’s reflections on the interaction between social media and self-delusion (“The I in the Internet”). Her account of how her own memory of participating in a reality television show differed from the filmed, documented reality (“Reality TV Me”) was a novel twenty-first century take on the much-explored difference between reality and recollection.

I think these essays are best enjoyed as standalone pieces: I’m not convinced that they coalesce into a particularly coherent whole. Some of the cultural references were also beyond me (I couldn’t pick Gwyneth Paltrow or Winona Ryder out of a line-up, let alone understand what it meant by being “a Winona in a Gwyneth world”) but that’s hardly the author’s fault.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.

Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera

Published in January 2021, this is an account of the history of the British Empire, with a particular focus on how that history continues to influence the country today. I know Sanghera best from his writing in The Times.

This book introduced me to a lot of history, and Sanghera’s reflections on how little of this is taught in schools resonated with me… though as I stopped studying history somewhere around the age of 13, my knowledge of all things historical is a bit sketchy.

Sanghera’s discussion of the ways in which Empire continues to influence our political classes echoed other books I’ve enjoyed lately, such as Richard Beard’s Sad Little Men, and there were a few references to Fintan O’Toole’s excellent Heroic Failure.

I particularly liked Sanghera’s rejection of simplistic narratives of whether the Empire was good or bad:

It is puerile to reduce imperial history to a matter of ‘good’ and ‘bad’: trying to weigh up the positive and negative in this way is like defending the morality of kicking a random old man in the shins one afternoon because you helped an old lady across the road in the morning.

Sanghera’s tone often seems to me to be one of justifiable (and justified) personal anger at our failure to reconcile or even recall the ‘bad bits’ of British history. The last section of the book, though, is surprisingly uplifting and optimistic: in this part, I particularly enjoyed the reflection that expanding history curricula to include more Imperial history is basically arguing for more complete history, not something special or siloed from everything else.

With thanks to Newcastle Libraries for lending me a copy.

The Kingdom of Sand by Andrew Holleran

This is a novel about loneliness and death. I decided to read it after seeing a positive review in the TLS.

You may know that Andrew Holleran is a much-celebrated American author, credited with several classic works of American gay literature. I haven’t read any of them, and wasn’t previously aware of the author.

The Kingdom of Sand concentrates on an American man described as being in the later part of his life, though given no specific age. He has moved from New York to Florida, and tries to come to terms with his own loneliness and mortality. He finds connections in slightly seedy locations, like pornographic video stores. He ultimately befriends another gay man, twenty years his senior, with whom he spends time watching old movies.

Holleran’s novel has been well-received, and I can understand that it is an unusual portrait of a character and situation not often discussed in literature. However, I didn’t really enjoy it. I found the narrator’s sarcastic tone a bit off-putting. The narrator has very different perceptions and preferences to my own (redolent of his very different life experience) which meant that I struggled to see the generality in some of the broader observations Holleran made, particularly around universal themes such as death and dying.

I’m glad this book exists, but I don’t think it will live long in my memory, and I wouldn’t particularly fancy re-reading it.

With thanks to The London Library for lending me a copy.