March in review

March has been a pretty good reading month all in all for me – although I have slowed right down again the last few days. A key reading challenge during March is Read Ireland month and this year I only managed three and really could have done much better, but the three I read were really excellent.

In other news March has seen me accepting an offer on my house and having my offer accepted on a flat about three miles away, in an area I once lived before. My only hope is that everything goes smoothly, still early days.

So, anyway despite house selling distractions in March I managed to read nine and a bit books – the bit will go into April’s round up.

For read Ireland month I started the month with The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor. An absolutely brilliant novel, with a truly malevolent teenage character at the centre of it. Set in a fictional Dorset seaside town, William Trevor’s sense of place, attention to detail and character study make this my favourite of Trevor’s novels I have read to date.

I think it has become a tradition for me to read a Molly Keane novel for Read Ireland month – this year it was Time After Time one of Keane’s later novels. It concerns a visitor to the home of four elderly, squabbling siblings. It is a subtle, sophisticated novel – something of a slow burn in the beginning but well worth the time spent with it.

I reviewed The Visitor by Maeve Brennan alongside the Molly Keane novel as they shared some similar themes. At just over 100 pages it is a very slight little book, but here not a word is wasted. It takes real skill to produce something this good in so few pages. A writer I shall be reading again when I can.

The first of my kindle reads in March was The Clock Winder by Anne Tyler for Liz’s read-a-long. This was definitely a slow burn novel for me, at first I was underwhelmed by it – but thinking back on it later, I was reminded of so many good things about it. Tyler writes families so well and she manages to make them so real, the reader becomes completely involved with them.

I was fortunate enough to win a copy of The Peacock by Isabel Bodgan from V&Q books thanks to Lizzy Siddal a few weeks ago. I read it straight away as it looked like exactly what I was in the mood for – it was. An absolute gem, quirky, funny, and hard to believe it was originally written in German, the humour often feeling very British.

My second novel in translation of the month and my second kindle read was Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg. Translated from Polish it is a coming of age novel, the narrator a young girl growing up in an agricultural community during the communist years of the 1980s.

It seemed so long since I read anything by Margaret Kennedy that I pulled one of my two Vintage Kennedy editions from the shelf. Together and Apart is the story of a divorce essentially. Kennedy depicts brilliantly the effects the separation, divorce and remarriage of Betsy and Alec Canning have on their family and friends. It is surprisingly compelling, I absolutely loved it. A full review will appear in due course.

Thank Heaven Fasting by E M Delafield came next, a novel in which Delafield depicts a young woman’s launch into society, the desperate search for a husband that was expected at that time. Delafield is very perceptive here, shining a light on some absurd practices and showing once again how for women at this time, options were limited, and really in this society how for many women finding an acceptable husband was a kind of salvation.

There is quite a bit that is a little grim in The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith, but that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. The first hundred and twenty pages or so are taken up with the main character Phillip’s imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit. Some of those prison experiences are pretty bad. Following his release, jealousy, suspicion, and the manipulation of him by another character take over his life. As ever Highsmith plays with the reader’s sympathies and knows just when to twist the knife.

Since finishing The Glass Cell, I have been reading The Years by Virginia Woolf but am only about a third of the way through it, two or three very slow reading days responsible for me not making a lot of progress with it. Anyway, that can be my first April book when the time comes.

April is already here; the Easter weekend approaches though with it comes some very un-spring like weather here in the UK we have been told. I hope it’s short lived I really want to return to sitting in the garden with a book after work. After, The Years I must read my book group book Maya Angelou’s I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I first read it more than thirty years ago – it will be interesting to read it alongside the group. After that Karen and Simon’s 1936 club gets underway. I don’t have as many unread books as I had thought for this year – a couple of kindle reads; A Harp in Lowndes Square by Rachel Ferguson and The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White both look promising as the only other one I have; None Turn Back by Storm Jameson is the third in the Mirror in Darkness series and I have only read the first book (years ago too).

How was your March for books? I love to know what you have been reading and what your plans for April are.

Happy reading.