Reading, not writing

A few short notes about some recently read books, which I have written about in my reading journal, but not here on the blog.


Set in Ghana and America, this debut novel by Yaa Gyasi is a really interesting read. The story concerns two African half sisters, one of whom marries an English slaver, the other being taken into slavery. The repercussions of these events continue down through subsequent centuries and succeeding generations, descendants of the two women. For instance, Quey child of James the slaver and Effia the Beauty is educated in London at his father's expense, but returns to the Gold Coast.
There is a good description of the Ashanti wars in the 19th century as well as grim details of the conditions slaves were held in at Cape Coast Castle before they were shipped off to the Caribbean or America.
There is also excellent detail about the power of the Asantahene, the head of the Ashanti ( and whose position still exists today), how he lived in his compound, the customs and complications of dealing with him and his courtiers.
The author, a Ghanaian, doesn't shy away from including the involvement of Africans in selling slaves to the English, but presents an interesting read on a very complicated period in West African history.
I found it particularly interesting as I had spent my early childhood in Gold Coast/Ghana and found the images described by the author had a particular vivacity for me, conjuring up memories of long ago.

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien is an emotionally demanding read, the background to the story being the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990's. The story set initially in a small Irish town, includes several themes about immigration;about how people are affected by events most of us only read or hear about through newspapers or television. Also about how a war criminal attempts to escape the law , but is eventually caught and brought to justice.
Edna O'Brien's writing is as strong as ever in this sometimes harrowing read, but it is also lyrical and
unforgettable. 

I've read most of Robert Macfarlane's writings since his first book and enjoyed them all. This one is intriguing with its lists of words to describe local landscapes from many parts of the British Isles . There are chapters on various types of landscape, such as mountain, moorland, hill, stream,marshland to name only a few. Each chapter has a glossary of words from many places in the British Isles, from Shetland to Cornwall, Wales to Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex and include words and phrases from dialects which are now unspoken.
He also cites other writers on the land, from Nan Shepherd's book on the Cairngorm, The Living Mountain, Jacquetta Hawkes' A Land and Roger Deakin's books on nature. 


My Book Club recently read A Change of Climate, by Hilary Mantel, and had a fairly lively discussion on its varied themes and locations. 
The novel is set in 1980 in Norfolk, where Anna and Ralph Eldred live in a rambling house, taking in good souls and sad cases as part of their charitable work, and bringing up their children. The story goes back in time to the 1850's , to South Africa, where Anna and Ralph were missionary workers and later to Bechuanaland after their deportation.
There are several themes, such as how religion makes people behave, how can children be protected from some of the awful events that happen around them, how relationships in a fairly long marriage can change. 
Hilary Mantel also gives clear, detailed descriptions of places and houses that the Elders live in. 

Catching up

I don't seem to have read so much this last winter as some years., certainly fewer novels than usual for me. Most of my reading has been from pot-luck visits to my local branch library, now in danger of being closed or offered to local community group to run.
Over the winter months we have been spending time tidying up the garden, MOH hacking back various overgrown trees and shrubs, to let in a bit more light and air.

 I have however enjoyed a few books in the last months, Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go being one of them. The descriptions of Ghana itself roused memories of my early childhood, which was largely spent in that country, where my father worked as a mining engineer. Taiye Selasi's writing switched from lyrical to staccato rapidly, but with meaning, and I thought beginning a story with an ending was intriguing.

I enjoyed several of the stories in Rose Tremain's short story collection The American Lover.  I rely on Rose Tremain's writings for interesting, engaging and well-written storytelling, and this didn't disappoint.
Another book of short stories was Hilary Mantel's The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, some of these were qutie memorable, especially the title story and the story about an author visit to a book group in a provincial town. This last seemed to be an author's worst nightmare and had a definite ring of truth to it.  The book was widely reviewed in the press when it first came out, to not entirely complete approbation.
 I finally caught up with Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, one of her most famous and probably the most widely read of her ghost stories and thought it disturbing and unsettling as are some of her others I have  recently read.
I have struggled somewhat with Stefan Zweig's Beware of Pity, because I do not like the narrator/main character very much at all; I find him and his actions arrogant and self-centred, although the discussions by him with others about his behaviour are fascinating. I also find his constant referrals to Edith as being a child, when she seems to me to be a young woman with a mind of her own, irritating. As this book was lent to me by a friend, I am determined to finish it, but cannot find the impetus to read much of it at one sitting. But then not all books are to be read simply at one go, so to speak. Some are better for being read at a slower pace, thus being savoured more.