Here are some more of the books I read last month:
The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray
In this dystopian novel, set in the 2050s, the earth’s rotation first slowed, then stopped a few decades earlier. This resulted in an extreme hot zone, and extreme cold zone, and a Goldilocks zone, where conditions were just right. The latter includes the UK, with slivers of continental Europe and North America on the margins. The US has managed to buy its way onto part of the UK ‘mainland’ and set up a territory there, but things are rough.
Ellen Hopper is a research scientist, studying ocean currents on a rig in the ocean. One day, she receives a letter from a former teacher, asking her to come and see him before he dies. They had a serious falling out and she hasn’t spoken to him in years. She has no intention of visiting him, but two government officials come to the ship and ‘encourage’ her to do so. When she continues to refuse, she is told that she can visit the guy or lose her job. She goes with them. Clearly, he has something he wants her to know and they want to know, too. What is it, where is it, and will she be able to find it?
This was a page-turner. I read all but the first 20 pages or so in one afternoon, because I did not want to stop.
The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
I must admit that I was a little disappointed in this book. I had not heard of it until a few months ago, when I read about it in one of the bookish emails I get. It sounded great—a dystopian novel, published in 1974, set in a near future Britain, and told from the point of view of someone watching the aftermath of some kind of collapse from her ground floor apartment window. At the time, the library was closed and not allowing requests, so I put it on my list to request later.
When I picked up this one and read the dust jacket, I saw that there was a sci fi or fantasy element. That’s not my thing. I’m not sure I would have requested the book had I known, but it was here, not that long, and I was greatly interested in the dystopian aspects of the book, so I decided to give it a try anyway. As expected, I was engrossed in the dystopian storyline and not so much in the time travel sections, although I see what she was trying to do with them. I would have preferred a different approach to the same thing, but that’s personal taste. I hated the ending and thought it was kind of a cop-out.
The story is told from the point of view of a self-described elderly woman, who lives in a ground floor London apartment after an unnamed ‘crisis’ that destroys life as people knew it. People have to adapt and create new ways of organising themselves, getting what they need, and everything else. There are ‘authorities’ that people are afraid of, but mostly they seem to let people get on with whatever they’re doing. People are forming ‘tribes’ as they leave the city to go to more rural areas, some of which they know are still inhabited and some of which have ‘gone silent.’ Food is scarce as are many other things, so people get creative and learn how to use the detritus from before to create what they need in this new world. One day, the narrator is faced with a man and a 12-year-old girl named Emily. The man tells the narrator that Emily is now her responsibility and leaves. Emily has a pet named Hugo, who is part dog and part cat. The three of them create a life together, navigating the world around them from the relatively safe haven of the apartment. The time travel element comes in when the narrator periodically finds that one particular wall is permeable and she can walk through it into a different world. Here she sees visions of Emily’s past, which explain some of her behaviour in the novel’s present. As I said above, I could have done without this.
One way this book reminded me of another dystopian novel, The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver, was that Emily was a guiding force for the narrator. She took charge, much like the 11-year-old boy in The Mandibles. Lessing has her narrator observe on more than one occasion that young people don’t know any world other than the one in which they are living now. They do not have to overcome nostalgic feelings regarding a real or imagined past. It’s a good point.
Homeland by Walter Kempowski, translated from German by Charlotte Collins
I read about this author in one of the many emails I get on the topic of books. I immediately went to the library to request this one and the author’s final book, All for Nothing. This one arrived just as the country went into lockdown in mid-March. One we started moving out of lockdown, a few branches in our county opened to browse, borrow, and return, but not ours. Requests from other libraries were not available for about a month after things started opening up.
Our library remains closed, but Fiona, our librarian, has started a call and collect system whereby we can call her when books come in and we’ll set up a time to go to the library. She lets me in and I place my returns on a table and take my new books, which she has already checked out for me. We are, of course, both wearing face coverings. So I was able to pick up a bunch of books this month, including this one.
It’s a good book, if a bit weird. Jonathan is a freelance writer who lives with his younger girlfriend in Hamburg. He is 43, but seemed immature. He is offered a job involving going to East Prussia, which is now part of Poland, to scope out the route of a potential motor rally. Since he was born in this area, he is curious and accepts the job. He is travelling with other people, so there are awkward moments between the people in the group and between the group and the people outside the group. Jonathan thinks a lot about his parents, both of whom died there. The story moves between his personal turmoil and the cultural turmoil between Germans and Poles, given the history.
All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski, translated from German by Anthea Bell
I liked this book much better than the one above by the same author. This one is his last and considered his best.
The Cruellest Month by Louise Penny
This is the third in the author’s Inspector Gamache series. I’d requested it months ago and it came in just as the country closed up due to the pandemic, so it was sitting in our local library branch since March. Had I read it then, it would have been timely, because the story takes place at Easter, when some of the residents of Three Pines decide to have a seance. Someone does not survive and appears to have been frightened to death. Gamache is sent in to investigate. At the same time he is trying to untangle this mystery, he is dealing with his own trouble with the Surete, which is divided because of a cop gone wrong situation in the past. I enjoy these books, but am probably not going to request any more for a while. As always with series books, I find myself more interested in the lives of the regular characters than in the specific cases themselves. This seems to be a series that I can read in small doses. There are some series that I can read in larger chunks—several books in a row, one right after the other. For some reason, these are not like that.
A Late Phoenix by Catherine Aird (audiobook read by Robin Bailey)
Construction has commenced on a lot across the street from a young doctor’s new surgery. This location is handy because when the workers uncover a skeleton, they don’t have far to go. Of course, there’s nothing he can really do except to call in the police. Sloan and Crosby have to find out who the bones belonged to, when and why the body was put there and by whom.
A Hole in One by Catherine Aird (audiobook read by Bruce Montague)
This is the last book the digital section of the library has by this author that I had not listened to/read. There are many of her works that this part of the library website does not have, but should they get more, I would check them out. I enjoyed this one as I have all the rest, but I still like Robin Bailey better as a reader. This guy is fine, but puts a completely different spin on the characters.
In this book, the ladies are playing golf at the club when one of them lands in a bunker. What she finds there is not pretty and Sloan and Crosby are called in to find out who was buried in the bunker and why.
I'll finish the August list tomorrow. In the meantime, onward into another month of reading 😀
