Alongside the nonfiction I read last month, there was fiction, too. Two were surprises that I sumbled across and one was a smaller book I've been dragging around for a few years.
Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan
This novel begins in 1973, when Moll, a 20-year-old woman living with her parents in rural Ireland, gets on the bus early one morning and disappears. She is an only child and her parents are scared and bewildered, hoping and praying to hear from her. As time goes on and they hear nothing, they drag themselves through their days until one day, 5 years later, Moll walks back through the gate and back into their lives. At first she doesn’t say much of anything about why she left, where she went, and why she returned, but soon, people and recent history catch up with her, her parents, and the people in the village.
This was a great book! It won the an Post Irish Book Award for Fiction last year. I’ve read a couple of Donal Ryan’s previous books and loved them, too, so when I saw this in the e-book section of the library website, I borrowed it. I’m glad I did.
Children of Men by PD James
This dystopian novel begins in January 2021 with a diary entry by Dr Theo Faron, an Oxford don, who wants to keep a record of what is going on in the UK as the population is declining, as it is all over the world, from mass infertility. He also wants to note that he’d read a news article about the fact that the last living human being to be born on earth had died in a pub brawl. Theo happens to be the cousin of the Warden, who now rules the UK, along with his council. Theo used to be a sort of advisor to the council, but had left by the time the novel opens. He finds himself involved with a group of resisters called The Five Fishes who do not like the authoritarian turn things have taken as society crumbles. The last generation to be born is called Omegas and they are spoiled, have a sense of entitlement, and are left to form violent mobs that attack and kill people in ritualistic sorts of ways.
The novel moves between a first person narrative, through Theo’s diary entries, and a third person narrative that moves the story along.
I found this book in a charity shop about 4 years ago, I think, and since it was a regular size paperback, it kept getting stuck into spots where it would fit and I forgot about it. When I came across it again, I decided it was time to read it and pass it on. I liked it, so I’m glad I found it again, even though aspects of the ending were fairly predictable. I had heard somewhere that a film based on the novel had been made, so I looked that up after I’d read the book. Reading the description of the film, I could see that it was only very loosely based on the book and the entire storyline and character development was quite different.
The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
This is a novel inspired by a historical event. In 1900, a group of lighthouse keepers disappeared without a trace from their lighthouse in the waters off the Hebrides.. In this novel, it’s 1972 and when a relief boat lands on the rock at a lighthouse to relieve one of the keepers and bring supplies, they find the lighthouse empty with the door locked from the inside.
The novel moves back and forth in time between 1972 and 1992, when a writer of novels decides he wants to find out what happened and starts to investigate. He contacts the partners of the men who disappeared, although not all are willing to talk to him. The narrative switches between perspectives, with each partner given voice in various chapters set in 1992. They remember what was going on at the time of the disappearance and before. Some of the tensions from that time remain and the woman have not spoken to one another in a long time. In between those chapters, the reader goes back to 1972, where a sense of the keepers’ experiences and what led up to that moment are revealed.
There are some weird aspects to what happens to them—a slightly supernatural element, or maybe just strange tricks of the mind playing out in a small space out on a rock in the sea, where three people are on top of each other all the time.
I found this book on a display shelf at the library when I went in to pick up some other books. It was a great read!
4 comments:
I don't want to keep hauling some of them around! Some books I want to keep, but some I bought in charity shops knowing I would not keep them. That's one thing about the pandemic--we both read a lot of books we have had for years!
It´s weird, I only read non-fiction but I like series like Eureka (at least based on "science") or even Supernatural (OK, sexy guy there). Quantum Leap, too, I bought them all to see them in the original (I know you don´t watch, and most on TV is rubbish, but these DVDs are really great.)
I go back and forth between fiction and nonfiction. Back when I was still in academia, it never used to feel like break time until I could sit down with novels instead of dry academic writing. :-)
Dry academic would nothing I would want now anymore, either, LOL.
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