
The end of another month in lockdown, and as I am continuing to shield I may not be going anywhere just yet. I hope you all continue to safe, well and as sane as any of us are at the moment.
I have read some brilliant books in May, it was of course Daphne du Maurier reading week earlier in the month, I actually spent two weeks reading her and it was a complete joy. Seeing so many people sharing their enthusiasm for her books was really inspiring. It was also my birthday, I received good lockdown gifts, pyjamas, books, jigsaws, chocolate, and tea. Lockdown birthdays are necessarily quiet, but it was still nice.
I started the month with the first of the books I read in preparation for DDM reading week, The Birds and other stories. There are six long short stories in the collection, each of them fully immersive and of a satisfying length. In these stories, we find ourselves on the English coast, in a remote European mountain village, a sun soaked holiday resort for the wealthy and a rural English landscape. The opening title story is the most memorable of course, absolutely chilling and utterly brilliant.
The Flight of the Falcon was next – a thoroughly interesting and immersive novel with a tremendous sense of place. A young Italian man working as a courier with a tourist company travels back to his hometown, where the past is everywhere. There are simmering resentments, jealousies, and fragile allegiances at the town’s university, though at the heart of the novel there is a mystery about an old woman’s death – and a brother’s obsession.
The Parasites offered yet another kind of narrative from DDM and I started to really see just how varied her writing is. This is a pretty autobiographical novel about three theatrical siblings.
My final book for DDM reading week was The Scapegoat, it’s a novel of doppelgangers – two men meet and swap identities. You may initially have to suspend disbelief, but once you do, this is a fantastic read.
The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns was my next read, narrated by ten year old Frances it is classic Comyns. Comyns presents us with an adult world seen through a child’s eyes, several eccentric characters combine with the strange and the macabre.
The first of the books I have still to review is Wave me Goodbye edited by Anne Boston, a wonderful collection of Second World War stories – packed with the kind of writers I love, there were a few stories I was reading for the second time but that was no hardship. Sylvia Townsend Warner, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, Olivia Manning and Jean Rhys are just some of the women writers collected here.
The Murder of my Aunt by Richard Hull from the brilliant British Library was a thoroughly enjoyable golden age mystery, told in a wonderfully arch tone – it is wickedly wry and has a brilliant twist.
On my trusty old kindle, I read The House Opposite by Barbara Noble a Furrowed Middlebrow title from Dean Street Press. It is a brilliant depiction of living through the London blitz. It is a very vivid picture of the times, and a thoroughly enjoyable read.
My book group went with my suggestion of Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann for our June read. I first read it just over ten years ago, so it has been a great joy to re-read it. At the time of writing (early Sunday evening) I have less than a hundred pages to go – and I suspect I won’t quite read all of those pages by midnight, but it can still count for May – just.
Plans for June? I don’t really have any. Though I am reminded by the arrival of the Persephone biannually that I haven’t read any Persephone for a while. I have five tbr and four of those are non-fiction – and that is the problem. I read very little non-fiction anyway and have definitely been in even less of a non-fiction mood than usual. Still, I may try one of them. Other than that, I will go where my mood takes me.
What have you been reading in May? I always enjoy hearing about brilliant books I should be looking out for.
Whatever you are reading and whatever you are doing, locked down or venturing nervously out into the world, I hope you stay safe and well.