Review: The Covent Garden Ladies – Hallie Rubenhold

★★★

Having loved The Five last year I really wanted to get around to reading to Hallie’s other work, because I love her writing. After reading A Curious History of Sex I was apparently in the mood to read a book about historical sex workers and the Georgian underworld.

So, Harris’ List was a document created and updated over the course of several years in the 1800s. It was a list of sex workers in the Covent Garden area of London, and outlined the names, their sexual skills and talents, any traits that may be preferable to any prospective client, and of course their price for their service. This book uses these pamphlets as the backbone of the narrative, elaborating on them, using information from the time (albeit, not all of it reliable) to weave a story of these women – and the man who created the list – together.

There are three individuals who are intrinsically linked to this list, and who Rubenhold focuses on – the pimp John Harrison (Harris) who inspired the list, the person who published the list (name of who escapes me), and a woman wo started as a sex worker, became a madam and wanted to retire to the country, Charlotte. And it was Charlotte’s story that ultimately turned this book around for me. Until Charlotte’s story was the one being explored, I was really struggling with this book but I was invested in Charlotte. While exploring the stories of the men who created and inspired the list was interesting, it just didn’t engage me in the same way.

This is not as engaging or easy to read as The Five is and maybe it is because it’s a lesser known topic. I think Rubenhold’s writing is fantastic, I think how she wove the narrative together was creative, and I did go in to this with “high expectations”-itis. Ultimately, it delivered what it said on the tin, was interesting, and taught me something about a topic I didn’t have any clue about. I consider that a win!

Review: Gentleman Jack – Angela Steidele

★★★

Another non-fiction book today – this time a biography of Anne Lister. For anyone unfamiliar with Anne Lister, she was an obsessive diarist who wrote not only her day to day minutiae of being a female landowner but also is known for being an unapologetic lesbian. Her diary is filled with coded entries of her relationships with women – quite a few of them – and this is a biography which explores her outside her own words.

So, I did listen to this on audiobook. While the narration was sublime (thank you Heather Peace), I don’t think this particular book suited the format as well as I had hoped. The book uses extracts of her diary and puts information around them, it’s prose-y in places which is fine but in audio it’s quite hard sometimes to distinguish what was written by Anne and what was added by the biographer as diary snippets are just thrown in the middle of sentences and paragraphs to put things in to Anne’s own words next to the biographers own. It’s a little jarring at times.

My main issue with this, aside from the fact I listened to it rather than read it, is that I don’t think the author actually understood the period, or the topic at hand, properly. I do think that her naivety comes through. She did say at one point that she has not read Anne Lister’s diaries in full, and I don’t think she read much source material at all. It feels like she picked the bits that suited her and put a narrative around them. She took the sex and romance and put her own interpretation on it, which really just takes away from the complexity that was Anne Lister. Additionally, in the final chapter/epilogue there was a paragraph which basically went on to say that there was “no consequence” for Anne and Ann (her wife) living as a married couple and while I’ve read very little around Anne Lister, I know that this is not true at all. They were practically shunned, subject to homophobic attacks, and to paint Anne Lister’s life as some Jane Austen romance is not fair, or right, at all.

Anne Lister was not perfect – she had numerous wives, cheated on most of her partners, 2 of her ex-partners were institutionalised and, to top it all off, she was a Tory. She was not perfect by any stretch of the word but I feel this book completely removed her of all nuance. She was a highly educated woman, long before that was socially acceptable for women, she was well travelled – there is so much more to her, more depth than the women she was in relationships with.

I gave this 3 stars because parts of it were good, the narration was impeccable and I had knowledge about Anne Lister away from this book to fill in some gaps myself. But I think if you’re looking for a more in depth look at Anne Lister, this isn’t the book for you. If you want a romanticised version of her that defines her by the women she was in relationships with (each section of her life is separated by her partner of the time) and nearly completely erases the homophobia? Give it a whirl.

Review: This Really Isn’t About You – Jean Hannah Edelstein

★★★

This was my first foray in to the Wellcome Book Prize Longlist for 2019 and, what can I say, this is an okay book.

This Really Isn’t About You is the authors experience with finding out she had a gene which increases her risk of specific types of cancer, and ultimately is the gene that killed her father. For me though there wasn’t nearly enough about this aspect of it – it was more a memoir on grief, sexual harassment and dating in a 21st century world than it was about the medicine and Lynch syndrome. That’s fine, but I was expecting a lot more from it I think.

It’s a very readable account, and the title is correct, it really isn’t about you it’s very much written by the author for the author. It reads like a therapy exercise, and while that does make it very easy to get through I did get to the end of the book and wonder what the point of it was. I would have loved a book which was more about her father – her father who was partly responsible for building the worlds first MRI scanner, a man who has had his part in the history of medicine. Her father was an incredible man and I’d have loved more about him, instead I found parts of this book to be really self absorbed.

But as I said, finishing this book I wondered what actually was the purpose of it. I don’t feel any more educated on Lynch Syndrome and, honestly, I read this book nearly a week ago and don’t feel I can recall much of it at all. I’d not have picked this up if it wasn’t for the Wellcome Prize, and honestly unless you’re really in to memoirs I’d not recommend it to anyone either.

Review: Washington Black – Esi Edugyan

★★★

Washington Black is a book that seemed to be everywhere last year – it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year and has won numerous accolades. Needless to say it was a book I approached with some trepidation as it had such high praise from so many different areas, including reviews from people I trust.

I will start with saying that the writing in this book is beautiful, and I will definitely be reading more of Edugyan’s work. I can completely understand why this book had so much praise heaped on it however I can’t ignore the fact there are a lot of issues here that just made this book unbelievable. One of the biggest issues for me was that the plot drove the characters, not the other way around. For a first person narrative it feels quite passive, and while I understand the book is written as someone (Wash) looking back on his life I didn’t feel there as if I were seeing things through his eyes and living it with him – it was very much this happened, then this happened, then this happened. All tell, no show. Then there’s the whole globetrotting element which is just absurd, it doesn’t seem to matter where in the world someone is they find exactly who they are looking for just around a corner – Canada, Barbados or the Arctic it doesn’t matter.

The book starts off really strong, with a particularly interesting take on slavery in the West Indies, I was interested in the direction I thought this book was going to take but then it just became both meh and far fetched beyond belief. Some bits of it were fascinating, and fantastic, and when it was good it was really good. Come the end though I was slogging through it just to say I’d finished.

Also, I listened to the audiobook for the most part and while it was for the most part fantastic narration, there’s a bit in it which really ground my gears. There’s a brief interaction with a Scottish character and I don’t know what accent the narrator was doing but it sure as hell was not Scottish. It was awful. Just putting that out there.

I gave this 3 stars in the end, the first third of the book was good, the writing as a whole was beautiful, but the actual plot – the absurd twists and the dull characters just made this so, so difficult to enjoy.

Review: Evolutions – Oren Harman

★★★

This is the first book I’ve read in what feels like an age and I’m very much out of practice writing reviews, so let’s give this a go, shall we?

I’ve been in the mood to read non-fiction lately, and this was by far and away not what I was expecting when I picked it up. The way this book is written is far more poetic and ‘flowery’ than I was anticipating from a book in the popular science section of my local Waterstones to be.

I thought this book was going to be something that combined theology, mythology and evolution in a factual way – explained the origins of myths from a scientific point of view and instead it was a book which gave a personality to the universe. It could easily be in the fiction section of a book shop because it reads like flash fiction, just drawing inspiration on science and nature and, honestly, parts of it are breathtaking. As a scientist, however lapsed I am, it’s a very surreal experience to read the hard facts in and amongst such literary language.

While I loved how this book was written, and I shouldn’t judge a book based on what I was expecting. I think for someone maybe dabbling in popular science, this could be a good stepping stone between fact and fiction. For me the best part of the book wasn’t his wax poetic about the universe, but the essay section at the end. While it felt like an abrupt change in pace, it actually gave analysis to the first two thirds and provided references both for and against the mythology that was drawn. That’s what I wanted when I picked it up.

It also is worth saying that this is very binary in representation of gender and sexuality, which does grind my gears. Even when talking about asexual entities he was assigning gender to them and completely ignoring non-binary sex/gender (which is not just some modern development, it exists in history as long as life has been evolving).

Overall, a solid 3 stars, not sure it’ll be one I read again though – and I’d wait for the paperback, frankly.

Review: Trickery – Roald Dahl

Rating – 3*

I was fortunate enough to be approached by Penguin to take part in a blog tour to celebrate Roald Dahl day on the 13th of September, in exchange for taking part I was sent four of Dahl’s short story collections to peruse and review. Today I’m going to discuss one of those in the shape of Trickery.

I’ve never read any of Dahl’s adult fiction before so this was a really new experience for me, and I’m happy to say that his writing translates really well to an adult audience. The bizarre and slightly dark nature of all of his children’s books is elevated to a new level, a much more mature level, and it really works.

The reason I picked this book up opposed to one of the other three I was sent is that I felt that a book around Trickery would have a more varied assortment of stories than something like War. And it was just what I was in the mood for, stories with good twists! As you’d expect with a theme of trickery linking all the stories the collection focuses on how we as humans use deceit, lies and manipulation to achieve our goals – but this book also focuses on the repercussions and fall out which shows that it doesn’t always get you what you think it has and that life has many twists and turns to surprise you yet!

I’m sure many of you reading this will agree with me when I say that the trouble with short story collections is that it’s highly unlikely that you will love every single story. I gave this collection 3 stars because I really enjoyed around half of the stories, some stood out to me more than others, and while none were bad there were just weaker stories sandwiched between stand outs.

My two favourites in this collection were The Visitor and Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat. Both really stood out to me. In The Visitor we follow Oswald, a man who has travelled extensively and finds himself stranded in the Egyptian outback and receives help from a wealthy local resident and his family. However, I do think my favourite among the stories was Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat in which we follow Mrs Bixby, a woman who is carrying out an affair and gets more than she bargained for when trying to pull the wool over her husbands eyes.

This was a solid collection, and I feel very fortunate to have been picked by Penguin to take part in this Blog Tour to celebrate Roald Dahl’s work! I’m definitely going to be picking up more of his short stories because the good stories in this collection were great and ones that will stick with me. Not only that, but I’m also really looking forward to reading what all these wonderful people have to say over the next 2 and a half weeks!

Review: Circe – Madeline Miller

Rating – 3*

Having seen high praise for Circe prior to publication, and also the adoration for Madeline Miller’s first novel this is one of the easiest new releases I’ve purchased this year. I’ll be honest and say that I’ve not read The Song of Achilles, but it is a book that has intrigued me for a long time.

Circe is – I thought – a book about Circe. Circe, daughter of Helios, witch of Aiaia, famed for her part in the Odyssey and I was hoping this book would would be a history of her through her own voice. Yet at times I felt that she was a secondary character in her own story. The only time I felt she wasn’t was around the last third of the book which I ended up really enjoying but I didn’t find it, on the whole, anywhere near as compelling as I expected.

From what I know of Greek mythology this book is well researched, and that appears to be the general consensus on the internet. That’s not something I can fault. I can’t even fault the readability because it is very well written, it’s accessible and I think it may even spark a love of Greek mythology in readers who would otherwise have not discovered it. But, and I hate to say this, it’s dull. I found only a handful of moments in this book actually gripped me and I think Circe as a character deserved so much more than the lot she was given in this, and yet it’s meant to be a book about her.

The one redeeming feature, the bits I absolutely loved, was when Circe meets Penelope and what unfolds on Aiaia after this point. I could have read an entire book about these two women who had pivotal roles in Odysseus’ life and yet even parts of their tentative friendship were marred by Odysseus himself, even though he was not in the picture.

Ultimately this is a coming of age story, and maybe that’s why it just didn’t resonate with me. I’m not the biggest fan of a coming of age story, but if you are this might be a really good way to bridge the gap between your typical coming of age story, and something with historical and mythological context. It was good enough, and parts of it were good I can’t deny that but it wasn’t what I was expecting, and it wasn’t what the hype built it up to be. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I wouldn’t recommend it, I would just say go in to it with this blinkered view and be open minded about what you’re going to get.

A lot of people are saying this is one of the best books of 2018 or “the best book ever” and, if I’m honest, I’m going to have to disagree. It was average, and had this not had Madeline Miller’s name on the front, had it not have been so hyped, had it have had different characters but the same plot, I don’t think it would be lauding praise right now.

Review: The Third Reel – S J Naudé

Rating – 3*

As those of you who have followed this blog for some time will know, one of my favourite short story collections of recent years was The Alphabet of Birds so when I found out that not only was Naudé writing a novel but that it was to be published by Salt, I got very excited.

The Third Reel is set in an interesting point in history – Thatcher’s Britain, Apartheid South Africa, the beginning of the AIDS crisis. Our main character, Etienne is a young man who has fled conscription in South Africa and sought asylum in the UK. He is enraptured by film, and wins a scholarship to study at London Film School but then his world is flipped upside down by a young German artist who makes art and moonlights as a paediatric nurse. While researching for a project on lost film, Etienne is introduced to this lost German wartime reel, and he becomes obsessed with finding the other two. There is so much more to this book as this is just the surface, but finding the words is difficult.

As someone who only has remedial knowledge about 1980’s Britain, I think the way this is written suits that time period. It feels very artsy, but also very industrial and brutal much like that period of history was. Nothing in this book was what it appeared on the surface, it was so multifaceted with art and music and architecture all layering on top of each other to build this really quite unsettling – yet oddly beautiful – environment.

A lot of this book feels unsettling, and I think the reason for that is simply that it’s so beautifully written yet the content isn’t always very pretty. The relationship between Etienne and Axel is a bizarre one and one I’m not entirely comfortable with, but as a reader I don’t think I was meant to be comfortable with it.

Ultimately, this didn’t quite match up with the high bar I set it based on The Alphabet of Birds but it’s nonetheless a good book. Had I not been familiar with his writing style, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it as much however. So it’s very swings and roundabouts as to how much I enjoyed this, which is why I settled at 3* – because it wasn’t a bad book, it just wasn’t as good as I was hoping.

Review: Wrecker – Noel O’Reilly

Rating – 3*

I picked this book up based on the cover and a recommendation from a wonderful bookseller – she knows my love of du Maurier and thought it would be impolite not to mention a book which has “echoes of Daphne du Maurier” on the front cover as a review quote. And I get the “echoes” I really do, but it’s just hard for me not to judge a book harshly when it’s promising something so big.

Wrecker is an interesting read – it focuses around a woman called Mary Blight who lives in a rural coastal village in Cornwall. Part of the day to day life of the villagers is shipwrecks, and we start with Mary going down to the beach to see what she can scavenge from the wreck. This time she discovers a lot more than she bargained for, and that’s really where our story starts.

Mary for me was a very bizarre character who I couldn’t fully understand or relate to – which makes it a bit more difficult in a first person narrative. On paper she’s my dream character in a historical novel; she’s independent, does what she wants and for herself only, she’s strong and unapologetic in her ways yet I didn’t connect to her because I didn’t understand her motivation. She seemed quite a conflicted character to read, and this uncertainty in her characterisation made it really difficult for me to enjoy the book to it’s full.

As for the plot, there didn’t really seem to be much of it. It was more of a meandering piece with a lot of nothing much happening. I suppose one of the main focuses is religion, and there was a lot more religion than I was expecting. That conflict between the traditional – pagan – beliefs of this small community and the Methodist faith that is thrust upon them by a relative stranger that made up quite a lot of the plot.

I think I would have enjoyed this book more had it been something more. For me there was just something missing even though it was a very well constructed and researched book but something just kept jolting me out of the historical setting and back to reality – it wasn’t a book I found myself absorbed in.

All in all though, I think this was a really good debut – while I find the likeness to Daphne du Maurier tenuous at best (the only connection I can find seems to be Cornwall and boats?) it’s not at all a bad book and I think I would keep my eye out for Noel O’Reilly in the future

Review: The Scent of Cinnamon – Charles Lambert

Rating – 3*

Firstly, it’s been a while since I wrote a review, so I’m more than a little rusty. Secondly, welcome to the first review in a series I’m going to be calling my Summer of Salt.

The Scent of Cinnamon is a short story collection published by Salt and is full to the brim with stories which completely boggled my mind. As with all short story collection there were some which I didn’t enjoy as much as others, but the collection as a whole is full of mysteries and things which made me think.

The titular story is one which on the surface didn’t seem all that deep, in fact it came across as a little meek and mild but come the end I was really engaged, I loved the direction it went in and genuinely didn’t see the end coming. This was a recurring theme with the whole collection – each story took it’s own path away from what I had cooked up in my head and I don’t think there was even one story in here which was predictable.

The collection spans time and genre, the only thing which really linked each of the stories together being the general writing style and I actually really enjoyed that. I enjoy a themed collection as much as the next person but sometimes it’s nice to have stories which really stand on their own.

My only criticism is that a lot of the stories end very abruptly, and as someone who likes all loose ends gathered up and neatly put in a bow that was really frustrating. I also found several of the stories haven’t really stuck with me, which isn’t great.

Overall this was a pretty solid collection, and if you enjoy very varied collections I’d definitely suggest this. There, I think, is something for everyone – maybe more for some than others. For me it was very middle of the road overall, but it was definitely worth a read!