Summer reading mixture

A bit of a mixed bag of books have been read this summer ( but my winter reading is just as much of a mixture as well)

Marilyn Robinson's Lila was a book club read, and provoked quite a bit of discussion on and around the story. Several others in the Book Club had read the author's other two books in this trilogy, Gilead and Home, although I hadn't at the time. I'm slowly reading Gilead at the moment. Marilyn Robinson' s writing beautiful, spare prose is a delight to read, with not an unnecessary word, but sufficient to build a picture in one's mind of the people and places she delineates.Lila is the focus of the story and sometimes the narrator in a sort of stream of consciousness. Lilais rescued from a traumatic and neglectful situation in early life by Doll, who is a drifter. Both Doll and Lila are taken and looked after by an old woman who cares for them both, helping to bring Lila back to normal health. Lila and Doll live a drifter sort of life, along with a group of others, finding work where they can and living rough. Doll does find settled work for a while, and sends Lila to school for a year, during which Lila learns to read and write and impresses the teacher with her innate intelligence. Doll kills a a man, possibly Lila's father and is put in jail,.Lila, after a job in a brothel in St Louis where she quickly prefers to do the cleaning, drifts away and finds shelter in a small abandoned cabin in Gilead. Eventually she meets the Reverend John Ames  almost by chance, while he is preaching a sermon in his church- she takes shelter in the church during a rainstorm. I loved the writing and the thoughts about theology that the Reverend John Ames displays, as well as Lila's reactions to him and the people in the town.

Rachel Johnson's Winter Games was a completely different read. Set in the 1930's and 2006, it is a family story, of a sort. Daphne is the heroine of the earlier period, which is set mostly in 1936 and in Germany, where Daphne is sent to be "finished", aged 18. Francie, Daphne's granddaughter goes to Germany in connection with her job as a feature writer for a glossy magazine, and discovers a picture of her grandmother there. Francie is wildly attracted to her boss, Nathan and has a brief fling with him, despite being married to Gus. The story goes back and forth between past and present, although not in a confusing way. A good, light read with some very amusing comments about modern urban life, although given the subject matter of Daphne's part of the story, not too light -hearted.

Julian Barnes' Nothing to be frightened of is an interesting meditation and exploration of the fear of death and dying, combined with a sort-of family memoir. (review here )Although the subject of death and dying is serious one, this book is very funny in places, and I mean laugh-out-loud funny, especially some of the family memories and how truthful they actually are. Various family members of the author's family make their appearance, notably his brother, a professor of philosophy. There is also some discussion about the reliability of memory ( Julian and his brother often recall the same event quite differently) and the contrast between memory and imagination.



The last of this mixed bag of reading is Esther Freud's Lucky Break, a story of a small group of actors who meet for the first time at drama school. We follow their lives through their college days and their early acting careers. The group is mixed in many ways. Sita is Asian, Charlie has a Nigerian father and an Engkish mother, while Nell, Dan, Pierre and Jemma are all English. nell and Sita join together to do some work, Sita gets offered "Asian girl being forced into arranged marriage" parts too often for her liking. Nell eventually gets offered a lead part in a film, the premiere involves meeting Royalty. Charlie seems to be headed for success as soon as she leaves the drama school, but her career later apparently founders. Dan and Jemma marry and have 4 children; by the end of the story, he seems to be successful.  An interesting look at behind the scenes of actors lives, the highs and lows, and the many and varied links they have with each other, those who mange to stay in the profession and those who leave for their own varied reasons.