I didn’t find out until after I read this book that Alejandro Varela is a specialist in public health. That explains the focus of many of the short stories in this collection, and also why they intersected with many of my own interests.

Verela is based in New York, which serves as the setting for these interconnected stories. The focus is on people who are at the margins of society, either as a result of being quietly introverted or due to more structural issues. The main themes in the book are around romantic relationships (particularly among men), parenting, and everyday racism.

The ‘book is also very funny. ‘Carlitos in Charge,’ a comedic piece about the absurdity of the United Nations (and the sexual encounters between the staff) stood out to me as riotously good fun, not least because the satire had the sting of underlying truth to it.

As in any collection, some stories were more successful than others. Short stories are not my favourite medium, but I enjoyed this book, and will add Varela’s much praised first book, The Town of Babylon, to my list.

Some quotations I noted down:

That doesn’t matter, Dear. My grandmother said this in response to almost everything: marital spats, earthquakes, authoritarianism, late-stage cancer. Whether it was the tone or the pith that made her words so persuasive was unclear. But whomever heard her say them understood that she knew well the distinction between problems and pain.

The transportation app on my phone flashes a warning about the F train: it’s been rerouted and delayed. In other words, one can be late for a place they never intended to visit.

In a short period of time, I learned that the United States was immune to easily interpretable, common-sense data on everything -pollution, tuberculosis, birth control, abortion, breastfeeding, war, rape, white phosphorous, blue phosphorous, red phosphorous, lithium, PTSD, GMOs, slavery, winged migration, lions, tigers, polar bears, grizzly bears, panda bears, capital punishment, corporal punishment, spanking, poverty, drug decriminalization, incarceration, labor unions, cooperative business structures, racist mascots, climate change, Puerto Rico, Yemen, Syria, Flint, Michigan, women, children, wheelchairs, factory farms, bees, whales, sharks, daylight saving, roman numerals, centimeters, condoms, coal, cockfighting, horse betting, dog racing, doping, wealth redistribution, mass transit, the IMF, CIA, IDF, MI5, MI6, TNT, snap bracelets, Pez dispensers, Banksy. It didn’t matter what it was. If the Human Rights Council (or Cuba) advocated one way, the United States went the other.

She’s wearing a gold band, but no engagement ring. I’m relieved. Literate women who wear engagement rings destabilize all my notions of feminism. I’m grateful this tradition seems to be falling by the wayside.

As if on cue, my little wombat skulks into the room with a guilty but also aggrieved turbulence in his eyes and brow. We adopted Julio, and he looks nothing like me, not his hair, not his teeth, not his marshmallow face, but he is me, almost more so than I am.

“Did you hear that, Julio?” I shout toward my son as he and his friend take off down the hallway. “One hour. I don’t want to hear any crying or screaming. I’m setting a timer too.”

Timers. Christ.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for any tools or techniques that facilitate the trauma-free domestication of our small, wild humans, but the gulf between my childhood and my children’s is vast and vertigo inducing. My parents used to set timers with the backs of their hands. Sometimes, the timers were made of leather. But those were different times, I’ve heard people say. I assume they meant different income brackets.

Earlier this year, I read and enjoyed Jessica Andrews’s first novel, Saltwater. I said then that I looked forward to reading her second novel, Milk Teeth, and here we are.

I thought the first novel was particularly good on the sense of ‘otherness’ that people from the North often feel when they are in London. This novel channeled similar feelings but on a bigger canvas: instead of London, our female northern protagonist finds herself in Barcelona and Paris. The slightly disorientating non-chronological structure is back, as is Andrews’s brilliant, lyrical writing. Milk Teeth is both a love story and a coming-of-age story. It examines how relationships can help us grow, but how those same relationships shift as the people within them change.

As with the first book, I found the writing to be superior to the plot—although this time round, the plot was pretty engaging on its own terms. I found the main character’s descriptions of her relationship with food to be interesting and insightful. This relationship was a recurring theme through the book, perhaps reflecting the coming-of-age aspect of the novel.

I really enjoyed this, and won’t hesitate to pick up Andrews’s next novel.

A couple of quotations I noted down:

I bathe my knee carefully with a pan of warm water, wiping away dust. There is a big chunk of grit trapped beneath the skin and I dig it out carefully with a small twist, like a loose milk tooth wrenched from a gum, and it leaves a tiny wet hole. I roll it between my fingers and wonder how long I might have carried it around, if I had not noticed it. I imagine my skin healing, growing over the stone, sealing it inside me. I wonder if it would have got infected, or whether my body would break it down. Maybe I would have just carried it for the rest of my life, without even knowing it was there.

I didn’t know how to explain to you that I want wanted sensation, beauty and chaos but I had to swallow my basic needs so I could meet my wants because they were bigger than I could afford. I wanted to go beyond the borders of the life that was set out for me, to stand on the threshold and see the world beyond it, but stepping off the edge came with a cost I did not anticipate. I want to inhabit a space with ease, somewhere airy and light with room to grow into. I want to be part of the world instead of just skirting the edges, to feel deserving of love and care. I want to hold onto the good things tightly, to learn what it means to stay.

I’ve previously read Max Porter’s popular book Grief is the Thing With Feathers and not really liked it. But so popular is his writing that I thought I’d give it another go with Shy, a novella covering a few hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy.

Like the previous book, this just wasn’t up my street. The writing was a bit too abstract and confusing. Some people have described it as poetic, and perhaps it is, but it’s not a style of poetry with which I connect.

I don’t think I’d pick up another of Porter’s books, but mine seems to be a minority opinion, so don’t assume that you won’t like them.

This book was a 2019 bestseller, which has since been adapted into a TV series. It’s author, Brodesser-Akner, is a celebrated writer of magazine features.

It took me over a month to plough through this. I didn’t exactly dislike it—it had some sparkling writing, and some great one-liners—but I didn’t feel particularly engaged, nor did I develop any emotional attachment to the characters.

The novel is set in New York, and initially focuses on Toby Fleishman, a hepatologist in his 40s who is estranged from his wife, Rachel. Early one morning, she drops their two kids off with him, and then disappears from their life.

The novel is oddly structured. The narration for the greater part of the book is told from Toby’s perspective, but by a named third-party narrator, Libby. Later in the book, Libby also narrates from Rachel’s perspective, and from her own perspective. This doesn’t seem to add much, but does make things unnecessarily confusing at times.

I didn’t really find myself drawn into this book. Unusually, I am quite interested to see how it translates to television, so I might seek that out at some point. But really, this book just didn’t resonate with me.

A few highlighted passages:

In the park, the beautiful young people—they were all beautiful, even if they weren’t—would be lying out on blankets even this early, their heads tilted up toward the sun. Some of them were sleeping. Back when Rachel consented to go on long walks with him, they would make fun of the sleeping people in the park. Not the homeless people, or the strung-out ones. Just the ones who’d made their way over to the park in their sweatpants, laid out their blankets, and pretended that the world was a safe place that only wanted you to be well rested. Neither of them could imagine having so little anxiety that you could fall asleep in the middle of a park in Manhattan; the anxiety was a thing they had in common to the end.

His former intern Sari posted a picture of herself bowling at a school fundraiser with her husband. She’d apparently gotten three strikes. “What a night,” she’d written. Toby had stared at it with the overwhelming desire to write “Enjoy this for now” or “All desire is death.” It was best to stay off Facebook.

He marveled for the millionth time that summer about how a person could be this miserable and bewildered, and this horny and excited, all at the same time. What a piece of work is man.

People who are good don’t need ambition. Success comes and finds them. See? Competence and excellence are rewarded for those who are competent and excellent.

“Marriage is like the board in that old Othello game,” he said as he ate a chicken breast baked dry, no added oil, please. “The board is overwhelmingly full of white discs until someone places enough black discs in enough of the right places to flip all the discs to black. Marriage starts out full of white discs. Even when there are a few black ones on the board, it’s still a white board. You get into a fight? Ultimately fine and something to laugh at in the end, because the Othello board is still white. But when it finally happens and the black discs take over—the affair, the financial impropriety, the boredom, the midlife crisis, whatever it is that ends the marriage—the board becomes black. Now you look at the marriage, even the things that were formerly characterized as good memories, as tainted and rotted from the start: That adorable argument on the honeymoon was actually foreshadowing; the battle over what to name Hannah was my way of denying her the little family she had. Even the purely good memories are now haunted by a sense that I was a fool to allow myself to think that life was good and that a kingdom of happiness was mine.” (I told him I understood his metaphor, but also that’s not how you play Othello.)

Toby left the room and found his fellows right outside the door, waiting for him. “What is wrong with you all?” he asked. They looked surprised.

“Dr. Fleishman?” Logan asked. Joanie and Clay looked at each other.

“You were making notes while that man was crying.” Toby began walking and they followed, but then he stopped and turned to face them. “You have to look these people in the eye. This isn’t organs. This is people.” He kept walking and arrived at his office. “The people who come to you—they’re not here for checkups. By the time they get to you, they know something is wrong. They’re sick. They’re afraid. Do you know how scary it is for a body you’ve had your whole life to suddenly turn on you? For the system you relied on to just break down like that? Can you just close your eyes and try to think what that might feel like?” He was filled with disgust for the three of them and the way they looked bewildered. “Maybe you should all go into surgery if you hate people who are awake so much.” He walked into his office and before he closed his glass door, he said, “I’m very disappointed.”

“It seems so clear to me,” she’d said, “that the ocean would rather you didn’t surf on it. If it wanted you, it would give you a more sustained wave.”

“I think that’s the point,” he’d said. They were sitting on the bench on their balcony, she upright and he lying down, his legs crossed over her lap.

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

This paperback has been taken on numerous trips as my ’emergency book,’ in case all other sources of reading material fail me. I recently decided to retire it from that role and actually read it.

Unfortunately, this really wasn’t my kind of thing. It’s a Sunday night TV drama of a book about a group of Brixton residents mounting a campaign to save a lido that the Council wants to sell off. It’s black and white, residents good / developers bad sort of stuff. It’s a warm mug of cocoa of a book, with no unsettling surprises and no challenges to any preconceptions.

To me, I’m afraid, it was very dull. But others have found it uplifting and heartwarming, so each to their own.

This 2022 popular science book by Annie Duke is focused on when we should walk away from an endeavour. Its thesis is that we tend to over-celebrate ‘grit’ as a characteristic, even where to ‘quit’ would be the most beneficial option. I picked the book up after reading about it in Trung Phan’s email newsletter, which gives a much more complete summary of the key messages.

Duke’s central argument is reasonable: I see overcommitment both in profession and in other areas of life. Within my own team, I’m the hard-wired ‘quitter’: I’m often the person challenging the team whether processes or ways of working are still serving their intended purpose, or ought to be stood down. There are few things that frustrate me as much as attending regular meetings which have outlived their purpose. Emails asking for suggestions of things to be discussed at future meetings are a pet hate of mine: the meeting should not have been arranged until it was apparent that there was something to discuss.

I found insight in Duke’s discussion of the link between identity and positions which run counter to the general consensus. I recognise this in myself.

However, as so often in popular science, I think Duke pushes her ideas too far. Duke seems to have the view that if only humans were more economically rational, their lives would be better. I profoundly disagree. I think Duke misses the point that economics is a science which tries to describe human behaviour, but which does so imperfectly, rather than a perfect science that humans fail to live up to. I think our irrationality is part of what makes us human, and is the source of a lot of beauty and joy in the world.

To give a specific example: Duke makes the argument that we should ignore sunk costs by suggesting that if we would not accept a free ticket to an event as a result of the prevailing weather conditions, then we should also not attend that event if we had pre-purchased a ticket. Duke’s argument is that the rational basis for decision-making is the expected future value, and that this does not differ between the two scenarios.

This argument fails on two fronts.

Firstly, the expected future value does vary in the two scenarios. To make only the most obvious point, if I have paid for a ticket and then decide not to go to an event, my willingness to pay for tickets in future may change because of the psychological burden of that decision. The same does not apply to an offer of a free ticket.

Secondly, the expected future value is not the only relevant consideration. The fact that we view situations with the same expected future value different is a feature of the human condition, not a bug. Our financial position might be improved by being ever-rational, but our lives would be very much poorer.

Duke also talks about ‘kill criteria,’ an idea from military and economic strategy which suggests that, when embarking on an endeavour, we ought to set criteria that would direct us to quit. This helps decision-makers to avoid over-committing to a losing position, such as continuing in a battle with too few helicopters, or continuing to invest in a business that is not growing as expected. ‘Kill criteria’ make sense in these settings.

But, Duke argues, we ought to be equally ruthlessly rational in other parts of life. She suggests that we ought to set a time limit on after which we end a relationship if marriage isn’t proposed. She recommends that we plan to quit a job if we haven’t secured an appropriate promotion within a pre-set time limit. I think this advice is appalling—it allows no room for learning and growth to change our priorities or our view of the world. The way our views change as we progress through life is one of the joys of humanity. We might hope that a new partner will alter our view of what relationships mean, or that the experience provided by a job will alter our desired career trajectory. Setting ‘kill criteria’ on things like this, and sticking to them, sounds like a bleak way to live life.

This is minimally explored in the final section of the book, but more from the point of view of diversifying your skills and assets to protect against external shocks like a company going bust, rather than from the point of view of learning and developing yourself, and growing as a person.

In the end, I felt that this book promoted an unfamiliar and possible unfamiliar goal-orientated approach to living life. I found this uncomfortable, and I am not confident that it is healthy advice.

I think it’s helpful to read books that make me a bit uncomfortable and give me new perspectives and ideas. This book made me reflect on my response to it, and I probably understand myself a little better as a result. However, ultimately, I don’t think I took much of value away from the book itself, and it isn’t one that I’d recommend to other people.

Butler-Gaille is a young Church of England priest, and this—not his first book—is a recently-published memoir of his first year following ordination. It’s rare that a book makes me actually, really, laugh out loud, but this one did that several times over. It also affirmed Butler-Gaille’s deep-seated faith, while recognising some of the frictions and absurdities of the institution of the Church of England.

I’ve often said that there is a lot of crossover between the occupations of a doctor and a priest, and this book underlined that more than ever. The parallels are manifest, from the constant requirement not to show judgement of people who have got themselves in the most peculiar pickles to the value of simply listening to someone unburden themselves, even when solutions aren’t forthcoming.

This book helped me to see the similarities in the organisational absurdities, too—just as my employer likes to talk in managerial jargon and to proceed with baffling decisions that priorities the oddest things, so the Church of England seems to act. Yet Butler-Gallie’s unwavering dedication to his faith shines through, as I hope my unwavering dedication to my patients does.

If it weren’t for my total absence of faith, I think I’d make a great priest—possibly a better priest than I am a doctor.

This short book is well worth reading. Here are some quotations I noted down from it:

Much of the time people describe medical phenomena that doctors have assured them simply are not there. Failing to find a medical solution, they come to a priest, crediting dark powers or supernatural attacks as being responsible for anything from tinnitus or corns to serious illnesses or even impending death. A willingness to listen, no matter how far-fetched the issue may seem, saying a prayer with the sufferer, allowing them to feel safe in church, is often enough to make these attacks go away. Sometimes all people want is someone to take them seriously.

Yet, as unusual as it may all seem in the twenty-first century, the Church of England still keeps, in every diocese – the chunk of the country under a particular bishop – a diocesan exorcist. These days they call them ‘diocesan deliverance ministers’, which makes them sound like the sort of person who’d leave you a ‘We’re sorry we missed you’ slip after knocking on your door with all the force of a gnat. ‘We tried to deliver your exorcism at ILLEGIBLY SCRAWLED TIME but sadly you were out. Please come to INCONVENIENT ADDRESS between HOURS YOU COULDN’T CONCEIVABLY MAKE to have your devil/demon cast out.’

In fact, they’re highly trained and experienced clergy, who either have degrees in psychiatry or act only in accordance with a psychiatrist to whom all instances of paranormal activity that seem to go beyond the explicable are referred.

Perhaps the most influential medical saint from Naples (just to keep things to a nice, broad category) isn’t Januarius but St Aspren, a Neapolitan convert from the first century whose prayers were asked for help with headaches and who, of course, was the inspiration for the brand name Aspirin.

Advent was historically a time when clergy would preach about the ‘Four Last Things’: death, judgment, Heaven and Hell. Unsurprisingly, the Church doesn’t bang on too much about them during Advent. Imagine the festive scene:

‘Ah, a knock at the door! I do hope it’s carol singers. “Jingle Bells” is my favourite.’

‘Hello, madam, have you heard the one about an unending lake of fire?’

That said, I think we should keep one eye on the apocalyptic at this time of the year. The temptation to be cheerful, generous and well fed for the entirety of December not only takes the shine off Christmas, which becomes one long hangover, but it’s not really possible for some people. I found that for a lot of people December really was a truly miserable time, replete with less than jovial ghosts of Christmases past. ‘Jingle Bells’ really does make some people think of torment. Lots of quiet tears are shed among the tinsel. Having a period of the year that says, as Advent is supposed to, ‘This is a bit crap, but something better is coming,’ is actually more hopeful a message for those people than unending smiling.

I can’t remember the last time I gave up on a book. It must be more than a decade ago. I know this is irrational: there are more good books to read than can ever be read in a lifetime, so persisting with a bad book is a waste of time… although it does make me appreciate the good books all the more.

I was recently unexpectedly detained in town for a couple of hours, so popped to Newcastle City Library. Unusually, I didn’t have access to my list of books that I wanted to read, so plucked Pier Review off the shelf based on the cover alone. I liked the pun, and thought a bit of light history of seaside towns would be entertaining and informative.

It turns out that this book doesn’t fit that premise: this is a crowdfunded book about a blokey road trip written by a couple of bloggers. It is written in alternating short sections by the two authors, alternating between a serif and sans-serif typeface. I’ve no doubt that this book will appeal to plenty of people, but humour is subjective, and this just didn’t tickle me.

After the first couple of chapters, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t getting anything out of the book, and decided to abandon it. I did flick forward briefly to see what they had said about the piers I’m familiar with, but didn’t find even that text particularly engaging.

This book wasn’t for me and I couldn’t finish it, but I don’t think I was ever really the target audience. You might well love it: don’t let my negativity put you off.

This 2022 novel was the first of Wait’s that I have read. It is a family drama set in the present day in a modern, dysfunctional family. The central character is one of two adult twins, and the book explores the relationship with their brother, their parents, and their wider family and friends.

The book opens with the funeral of their mother’s sister. This brings the family together after they have quite dramatically fallen out, and the rest of the book explores what lay behind that falling out, and whether it can be healed.

This all sounds very dramatic, and perhaps it is, but what really stands out is the humour. Wait made me laugh out loud several times, not least because the characters and the absurd situations in which they find themselves are so relatable.

This was a book I thoroughly enjoyed.

Some quotations I noted down:

People, Celia has observed, are not very imaginative and will in almost every case say what is obvious, not what is interesting.

But one day during the summer term, Olivia comes to him with that intense look on her face that always makes Michael nervous. ‘There’s something you should know,’ she says, sitting down on his bed. ‘I’m pregnant.’

‘God!’ Michael says. ‘Oh my God. Wow. Wow.’ He can see he isn’t doing particularly well. ‘Whose is it?’

He knows immediately that this is the wrong thing to say, but it is too late to take it back.

Olivia glares at him. ‘Does it matter?’ There is a pause, then she says, ‘It’s yours, if you must know.’

Michael is shocked by this, especially since they’ve never had sex.

‘Not yours literally,’ Olivia says. ‘Yours emotionally. I’m closer to you than any man I’ve ever known. My body is infused with you, and this baby is yours. Its soul is part you and part me.’

I think we just forget when we’re older all the hard things about being a child. I remember feeling anxious a lot of the time. It’s not always true that children are happier than adults. Even if you had a nice childhood.

‘Do you think he didn’t love us at all?’ she says to Hanna.

‘I don’t know,’ Hanna says. She has been unusually quiet since they learned about the will. ‘I think he probably did. But it’s sort of irrelevant what you feel if you don’t act on it, isn’t it?’ She is frowning, looking away from Alice. ‘His kind of love wasn’t worth much in the end.’

Thanks to the London Library for lending me their copy of this book.

Douglas Stuart’s 2022 follow-up to his Booker Prize winning novel Shuggie Bain explores familiar themes in a familiar setting: more domestic violence, more alcoholism, more coming-of-age against among the impoverished Glasgow schemes in the early 1990s.

Like its predecessor, it has sharp social commentary, profound insight, and beautifully lyrical writing. There is, once again, a particular focus on the mother-son relationship. Like Shuggie Bain, Young Mungohas been universally acclaimed, and so my opinion doesn’t really add anything.

But, for what it’s worth, I didn’t enjoy Young Mungo as much as its predecessor.

The character Mungo is a little older than Shuggie Bain, and is struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality. This adds an interesting extra dimension that was only hinted at in the previous novel. It adds a complicated element to descriptions of child abuse in the book, which is sensitively explored.

However, I didn’t really enjoy the structure of Young Mungo, which jumps between two different time periods within the same plot. This is a structure that is used in plenty of books, and when used cleverly it can draw out intriguing and compelling comparisons and reflections. But here, it felt like it was added as a device designed to sell the novel as more complex than it really is. I’m probably wrong, but it didn’t feel as though the chapters were initially written with this structure in mind.

I also didn’t really buy some key elements of the plot, and wasn’t as convinced on some of the characterisation. It’s difficult to discuss the former without spoilers. In the latter case, it’s no spoiler to say that a character who described a couple as ‘phlegmatic’ early in the novel describes another character as a ‘talking bicyclopedia’ later in the novel: maybe that is consistent characterisation in Stuart’s mind, but I can’t reconcile the two.

I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t enjoy this: this is one of the better books I’ve read this year, but I thought that it was a little more patchy and unconvincing than its prize-winning predecessor.