What we read in August
Reading the Booker Longlist
I've challenged myself to read as many of the Booker Prize longlist for 2024 as I can, and I managed 7 in August. The following would be on my personal shortlist.
Much vaunted and in my opinion, a likely winner, James is Percival Everett's reimagining of Huck Finn, through the eyes of 'Jim' the enslaved character. Everett brings both of James' voices - the one he uses with white people, and his authentic voice - to full realisation as the character flees down the Mississippi, ahead of potentially being sold away from his family. Everett’s novel is both a darkly humorous adventure story and thought-provoking, eye opening look at the reality of live for enslaved peoples at the brink of the American Civil War, making it a truly remarkable achievement.
For full immersion into James' voices, listen to the audiobook on Borrowbox.
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
From a young man who survives the brutal slaughter of his peoples in 1864 Colorado, to his modern day descendants in urban California, Orange's remarkable story of generations of Native peoples is poignant and shocking. A sequel to There There, Wandering Stars also works as a standalone novel.
See here for a full review.
Eight young women descend on a boxing gym in Reno, Nevada in a fight to become the best young female boxer in the country. They bring with them ghosts of loss, family feuds and aspirations for the future. Told through the 7 fights, both on the mat and in the girl's heads, this is a gritty and intimate story in the style of Kathryn Scanlan and Annie Proulx which, while quirky, never lets the gimmick overpower the writing.
Six astronauts orbit Earth in the space station, watching as our planet dips and spins underneath them, the sun rising and setting multiple times in their day. A deadly typhoon forms, forest fires decimate and cities come and go with the light. A glorious, poetic ode to the vastness of humanity and to our home planet that will leave you with goosebumps.
From the trenches of 1917 France, to the near future, touching on Marie and Pierre Curie, Darwin and Rutherford Held is a story told in fragments, of love that crosses time and space, of loss, of war and ghosts. Of Curie, Darwin and Rutherford, an exiled composer, soldiers and photographers. Lush with beautiful and elegant prose, Michaels walks the delicate line between saying too much and leaving something out.
New titles from old favourites
Greymist Fair by Francesca Zappia
A collection of cleverly interwoven short stories riffing on Grimm's fairytales, with good witches, evil humans and naughty boys who get what they deserve, and Death prowling the woods. An easy read, and just a little scary.
A Death in Cornwall by Daniel Silva
Gabriel Allon, Silva's former super spy has retired to Venice to restore art. But ofcourse, international drama and intrigue are never far away. Allon returns to the UK at the request of an old friend to investigate the murder of an Oxford professor involved in identifying art looted by the Nazis. Long time readers of Silva (this is Allon number 24) will be pleased at the carousel of old favourite characters and locales from Geneva to Monaco to Corsica as the intrigue ends up on the doorsteps of Buckingham Palace. A great fun read.
The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
Anton Waker, desperate to break free from his family’s criminal history, accepts a mundane office position at a large New York City firm. However, his past is not easily forgotten. His conniving cousin, who has escalated her illicit activities from fake IDs to human trafficking, blackmails Anton into one final job. Abandoning his honeymoon, he waits on a Italian island for instructions. Like St. John Mandel's other works (this one was published in 2010), the writing is spare, leaving room for the reader's interpretation of events as storylines weave and twist. Eagerly awaiting a new story from this masterful author in 2025.
Historical fiction
Tóibín's long awaited sequel to Brooklyn finds Eilis Lacey married to Tony, the mother of two teenage children, a housewife on Long Island. Living in a compound with her bothers and sisters in law as well as Tony's parents, Eilis is very aware of her 'otherness', an Irish woman in an Italian family. But when a strange man comes to her door telling her his wife is pregnant with her husband's child, Eilis leaves Long Island, returning to Ireland for the first time since the events in Brooklyn. Don't expect to find much here in the way of characters with admirable morals, as everyone seems to be cheating on their partners, but Tóibín's writing is as always, beautiful and precise.
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
Called on to determine the cause of death of a man's body found in a frozen river, midwife Martha Ballard discovers the dead man is the accused in a rape case, and she suspects he was murdered. Determined to see justice served despite the challenges of a woman accusing a powerful man, and with increasing opposition from the townspeople, Martha sets out to find the murderer. Martha Ballard was a real person, a midwife and mother in 1780s Maine, who kept a diary that Ariel Lawhon has used as inspiration for this book, and a cosy mystery this is not, with several graphicly described assault scenes.
Got a book club? Borrow The Frozen River book club set.
