Some Summer Reading

Although I haven't written about what I've been reading these past few months, I have read a fair selection of books, mostly novels. Some are more memorable than others


Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin tells the story of Angel Tungazara, a Tanzanian now living in Rwanda and running a small business making cakes for special occasions, parties, weddings, anniversaries and the like. The stories that people tell her about themselves as they choose their cakes form the basis of the book and also reveal the complexities of life in a modern African state, which has suffered a civil war and an AIDs epidemic. Although the tone of the writing is fairly cosy, this in some ways highlights some of the darker side of the tales Angel hears from people ordering one of her cakes, as well as some of the more difficult aspects of her own life - she is bringing up her grandchildren, as both her son and her daughter, their parents, are now dead. Nevertheless, there are several lighter tales in the book, such as how to ensure the tailor does not measure one too tightly for a new dress, so it fits more comfortably on one of traditional build!.

I'm a bit late to the party in reading James Rebanks The Shepherds Life: a tale of the Lake District, which came out to excellent reviews in 2015. It begins with young James Rebanks in school, listening to a teacher expounding on the Lake District, talking about the 'wild' landscape, but without really mentioning the farmers and other local workers, whose families had worked the land for generations and were no less proud, intelligent and ambitious as people elsewhere, and whose work over probably thousands of years, made the Lake District what it is today. The book roughly follows the seasons on the small hill farm  owned by his family, raising Herdwick sheep. He explains the business of the farm, raising sheep for sale, either as breeding ewes or for meat. Although the author had an early disdain for education, when in his early twenties, he attended evening classes to study for A levels and went to Magdelen College, Oxford. He then returns to farming, but also has a job as a consultant to UNESCO.

When I came across The Reading Cure by Laura Freeman in my local library, how could I not borrow it. Laura Freeman was diagnosed as anorexic in her early teens and gradually and gently restored her appetite for food by reading about it, not in cookbooks, but in novels, whose appeal to the imagination is much more powerful. She describes her anorexia as the voice in her head, which reading managed to replace with a more positive one. Reading about a dish or a meal roused her curiosity to want to taste it, which led to actually eating it. The list of books included at the end of the book is both extensive and varied, and includes many titles by Dickens as well as Virginia Woolf. A beautifully written book about the power of novels to change a life.



While we were away in France earlier in July we went for a walk up above the Vallee du Mars, following part of the Grand Randonee 400, one of France's long distance walks. The views over the valleys and mountains are well worth the climb up.

A view of the Vallee du Mars, Cantal. The  yellow flowers in the foregroud are a variety of gentian, whose roots are used to make a liquer.

I read W G Sebald's The Rings of Saturn on my Kindle, as I was away at the time and couldn't get hold of the physical book. Apparently classified as "documentary fiction" this is a somewhat discursive description of a long walking tour through parts of Suffolk and Norfolk,particularly those near to the North Sea coast.
There was a read-along on Twitter, hosted by Robert MacFarlane earlier this summer, with some interesting points raised.
The narrator, unnamed, raised many thoughts in his wanderings, with references to Thomas Browne, Roger Casement, silkworm raising in Europe, a hare which crosses the walkers path and is apparently terrified. The style is almost 19th century in its effect, although it was written in 1995, originally in German, (translated into English by Michael Hulse) and densely written, full of allusions and inferences. In many ways a visual book, as it has many photographs and illustrations, and many descriptions of what the narrator sees on his travels, it also considers listening and hearing. This is the first book by Sebald I have read, and will probably look out for others.

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. 

September round up

Having settled back at home for a while, I have finished a few books but not posted about them.
Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is the story of Rose Edelstein who discovers aged nine that she is able to taste feelings and emotions in food, that is the feelings of those who made the food. This is first revealed when she tastes a slice of lemon cake made by her mother, and is almost overwhelmed by the sadness she felt which her mother was experiencing when she made the cake. The descriptions of the various foods that Rose eats and her response to the emotions revealed in their taste are numerous, and eventually leads her to rely on food which is , as they say, untouched by human hand, although even this food reveals  its origins to Rose. Her family although apparently an average American one, are rather detached from each other, and become increasingly so as Rose grows up. This is a beautifully written story, so much so that its writing almost hides the strange bleakness of Rose's family life. For me, there were some resonances of Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Travellers Wife, which I found a really intriguing and memorable read.
Heather Gudenkauf's debut novel, The Weight of Silence, is written from several points of view. Calli is seven years old and selectively mute, but also very bright. One morning she and her best friend Petra disappear. The story of what exactly happened that day, the lead up to it and the consequences for both families and others involved in the events is told by Call's mother, Toni, her brother Ben, Petra's father and the local sheriff, a former boyfriend of Toni's. Calli's voice is the only one we don't hear. The others are all written in the first person, using the present tense, which gives a more intensely dramatic effect, while what happens to Calli and what she is thinking are written in the third person and past tense. An interesting and successful debut novel.
One classic story I had never read was William Thackeray's Vanity Fair. This was a Book Club read, so the discussion was fairly wide ranging, from the humour of the names ( Lady Bareacres), to how sympathetic we felt towards Becky Sharpe, and also to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and thence to the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament of the Bible. Several of the group had read it before, mostly as teenagers and felt that on re-reading it, their opinion of Becky had changed radically. I found it an easy read, humorous despite the tragedies that happened to the characters, and it left me wondering just how much human behaviour hadn't changed at all in 150 years. Most of the group enjoyed the story, even those who hadn't finished reading it.
Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind is an essay on what affects mountains have had on human imagination. From a history of how we came to view mountains as adventurous places to go , instead of being avoided, to descriptions of Mallory and Irvine's attempts to climb Everest, and how that mountain was discovered and eventually measured, the beautiful descriptions of glaciers, mountains and people carried my imagination along. I read my copy on Kindle, bought as an offer earlier, together with his The Wild places, which I read some time ago.