On one idle afternoon in lockdown (can’t remember which one!) I decided to count my books. It took some time and I rather lost interest by the time I reached 2,500. This isn’t counting books belonging to other members of the family. I then badly needed a cup of tea. And, rather on the back of this counting process I have decided to read from home for the year 2022. In other words I will refrain from pressing the Amazon or the Wordery button and if I wander in and around bookshops (love doing that) I will try and leave without clutching new delights. So hard, but I have done it before, inspired I think by Susan Hill and her books: Howard’s End is on the landing and Jacobs Room. (Reference to Virginia Wolf there.) Anyway, if I don’t re-read my books what is the point of keeping them? I am looking forward to some historical novels by Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick and, stories from India by Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Anita Desai are on the shelves waiting for me. But, that is all to come.
I have recently read a series of books by Paul Henke. I happened upon him at a Waterstones book signing some long time ago and was almost forced to buy the first book. If you like to become absorbed into a long, involved family saga, then you will enjoy his offering. Henke has had a vivid, exciting and diverse life involving much the travel, time in the navy working with Prince Charles and periods working on mine detection. He has written several thrillers that make use of all this experience but the books I have enjoyed are called the Tears series: ‘A Million Tears’, ‘The Tears of War and Peace’, ‘The Shadow of a Tear’, ‘Silent Tears’ etc. They take an impoverished family in a Welsh mining valley and follow through the generations, all set in the first half of the 20th century. There is the (slightly inevitable) emigration to the US, the building up of a trading empire followed by financial loss in the depression and the eventual return to England with involvement in both government and the Second World War. In many ways the style of writing reminds me of Jeffrey Archer. I have read his Clifton Chronicles, which struck me as quite autobiographical. Those books kept me page turning long into the night and eager to start the next one. I heard Jeffrey Archer speak once at Merchant Taylor’s School in London. He was exactly as I had expected: super confident and utterly full of himself. No inner angst there. So why I wonder do critics call Archer ‘ a great storyteller’ rather than a good writer? I think they would say the same of Paul Henke. Is this just some literary snobbishness tinged with a slice of jealousy, because they are using it as a slight? Archer has made millions from his writing and I’m sure doesn’t care a jot what any critic calls him. It is I think something to do with style and oh my goodness therein lies a swampy mire of difficulty. I think I can recognise good, literary writing style, simply from having read widely but explaining what this is, is an entirely different thing. And does it even matter? The books of both Paul Henke and Jeffrey Archer have enthralled me and given me pleasure and surely that is what it is about. Anyway, I would be very happy to be called a good storyteller!
Regular readers of this column will know that I like a varied reading diet, so now at entirely the other end of the literary spectrum is Penelope Fitzgerald. I have no problem in saying that stylistically this is literature of the highest quality, referencing both Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark, thus having a distinctly English feel, and I do specifically mean English not British.
Penelope Fitzgerald came from a high achieving family, eminent both in the Church of England and at Oxford University and hence seemed destined for great things. She did however not publish until she was 60 and her life took her in very alternative directions. Her husband might be said to have been wayward and she taught to support herself and her children. They lived on a houseboat in London which at some point sank, leaving them to live for a while in a refuge for the homeless. This, despite having wealthy relatives in Hampstead.
In her third novel called ‘Offshore,’ which won the Booker Prize in 1979, the houseboat is used as a metaphor for emotional restlessness, characters being unmoored, adrift, in between land and water. As you read it (and it is only slim, a long train journey’s worth) you feel slightly unbalanced. The sharply outlined prose, written with beautiful economy allows you to look down a microscope as you are shown the inner hopes and fears of the people you meet. Penelope Fitzgerald, a quiet, rather unassuming women, mousey or frumpy some would have said, nevertheless writes with authority. She does expect to be listened to. There will be no more of her well defined stories as sadly she died in 2000 but I will continue to re-read these literary gems as they delight me. Begin maybe with Offshore and if you like the taste then move onto The Blue Flower, At Freddie’s and The Bookshop. There is also a film of the last title.
From chalk to cheese, I hope you find something here to enjoy.