Category: Non-Fiction

The Bridge Between Worlds: A Brief History of Connection by Gavin Francis

30th January 2025 / / 0 Comments

In his preface to this book, Gavin Francis writes that his interest in bridges began in childhood, from the Forth Rail Bridge just a few miles from his house, to a Ladybird book about bridges (which I’m pretty sure I must have read as a child too), to the tale of the Billy Goats Gruff. That is to say, it’s not just the spectacle or the technical aspects of bridges which captured Francis’ interest, but also how bridges can be used imaginatively – what they may represent. 

All these aspects come together in The Bridge Between Worlds, which is not a history of bridges as such, but a tour of bridges that Francis has visited or lived near, bringing in elements of memoir, history, geography, technology, culture and metaphor. The way I phrase that, it sounds a lot, and I honestly wasn’t sure at first whether it would all fit together – but it does. 

The first chapter, about the Union Chain Bridge across the River Tweed at the Scotland-England border, is typical of Francis’ approach. He sets the scene with a link to his own life (in this case, crossing the bridge on childhood holidays), then goes into the history of the bridge and its construction, a wider look at the border and the changing position (so to speak) of Berwick, and a mention of bridges as a metaphor in Paradise Lost, before touching on the politics of that point in his life (shortly before he was born in 1975, Britain had voted to stay in the European Community).

Francis ends the chapter reflecting that the announcement of a new bridge may bring hope:

Perhaps during periods of retrenchment behind borders, when literal and metaphorical drawbridges are everywhere being pulled up, people are comforted to think that the closure of bridges won’t prove permanent. We want to hear that new connections will one day be laid across the boundaries we draw around ourselves.

In mixing the different topics together as he does, Francis makes his book feel both wide-ranging and intensely personal, which is fascinating to read. Francis’ other destinations in the book include London as a 17-year-old, where he has a sense of life’s possibilities opening up at a student science forum; Türkiye, and the world’s oldest bridge still in use; and Scandinavia, whose bridges suggest to him a picture of international cooperation, post-Brexit. It’s a world tour of bridges, their roles and meanings – one that I found rewarding. 

The Bridge Between Worlds is published by Canongate.

A selection of 2024 favourites

30th December 2024 / / 0 Comments

2024 was another year when, for whatever reason, I just didn’t click with reading in general as much as I would have liked. There’s no point dwelling on it, I just hope this will turn around next year. In the meantime, I have picked out the following four highlights from the reading year:

Leonard Cohen: a Novel (2024), by Jeffrey Lewis

An aspiring songwriter named Leonard Cohen writes to his more famous namesake, and we learn of an intense relationship that ended in ambiguous circumstances. This is a novel of a life haunted by possibility: what if Leonard could step out of the celebrity’s shadow? What else could have happened in that relationship? Other realities, just out of reach. 

Weasels in the Attic (2012-4) by Hiroko Oyamada
Translated from Japanese by David Boyd (2022)

This is the shortest book I read in 2024 – a collection of three stories – but it certainly carried its weight. Each story centres on a meal which acts as the focus for broader currents at play. For example, a tale told over dinner about weasels in the house points to deeper problems in a couple’s relationship. I found these stories to open out more the further I went in. 

84, Charing Cross Road (1970) by Helene Hanff

Collected correspondence between American writer Hanff and the staff of a London bookshop. It suggests that Hanff could be spiky but also generous, and there’s an obvious warmth in her relationship with the shop. This book felt like a fascinating glimpse into an older world, with an unexpected echo of the future in a comment about buying books without leaving the typewriter. 

Mary and the Rabbit Dream (2024) by Noémi Kiss-Deáki

If I were to choose a favourite book of 2024, I think this would be it. Mary Toft was a real-life 18th century figure who (for a time) was believed to have given birth to rabbits. In the novel, this is a scheme devised by Mary’s mother-in-law that gets beyond her control. What I like most is how the prose itself embodies the forces holding the characters in place, and enables Mary eventually to find a voice. 

***

So, there was 2024. You can find my highlights of previous years here:

2023, 2022. 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009.

You can also find me on social media at Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and X/Twitter. I wish you well for 2025!

#1970Club: 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

17th October 2024 / / 10 Comments

Twice a year, Kaggsy and Simon host themed ‘club’ weeks dedicated to books from a particular year. Joining in has long been on my to-do list, and this week finally I’ve managed it, with the 1970 Club. 

84, Charing Cross Road was the address of a London second-hand bookshop, Marks and Company. The book of the same name is a collection of correspondence between the shop and Helene Hanff, a writer who lived in New York. The letters begin prosaically enough in 1949, with a note from Hanff accompanying an order, and a formal reply from the manager, Frank Doel. But, over the years, this blossoms into far more. 

Hanff’s voice in her letters is often spiky and forthright, and I can imagine the British bookshop staff finding it disconcerting. For example, here Hanff writes in 1950, wondering where her books are:

you leave me sitting here writing long margin notes in library books that don’t belong to me, some day they’ll find out i did it and take my library card away. 

I have made arrangements with the Easter bunny to bring you an Egg, he will get over there and find you have died of Inertia. 

As that second sentence suggests, though, Hanff was also often generous, sending the shop parcels of food and other supplies at a time when rationing was still on in Britain. Hanff’s evident warmth gains a response in kind: Frank’s letters become less formal, and Helene also hears from other shop staff, and even Frank’s family. 

Hanff’s correspondence with Marks and Co. lasts for twenty years, until Frank Doel’s sudden death. Reading the book now feels to me like a glimpse into an older way of selling and relating to books that, for better or worse, has now gone. There was one line of Hanff’s from 1950, though, which struck me as an unexpected echo of the future:

Why should I run all the way down to 17th St. to buy dirty, badly made books when I can buy clean, beautiful ones from you without leaving the typewriter?

I don’t know if Helene Hanff could have imagined how we’d be buying books fifty or more years in the future, but there’s a familiar impulse behind that comment all the same.

Melville House ‘Futures’ blog tour: The Future of Songwriting by Kristin Hersh

23rd February 2024 / / 0 Comments

Today I’m taking part in a blog tour for the new ‘Futures’ series from Melville House – short books in which authors reflect and speculate on the possible future of their subject. The first four titles were published in the UK yesterday, and include volumes on the future of trust, war crimes justice, and Wales. But I’m looking at The Future of Songwriting, by Throwing Muses co-founder Kristin Hersh. 

Hersh’s book is written as a series of conversations between herself and a comedian friend (standing in for a number of actual conversations she’s had along similar lines), while both are playing a festival over Christmas in Sydney. The two of them are not out for fame, but they do want to work, and to keep working. Hersh is constantly thinking over how to balance art and commerce:

Art plus entertainment, substance plus style, and maybe they could get along, of all things. But don’t goddam sell, you know? No selling, no stars, no status, just pass the hat so you can work again.

Hersh and the comedian talk around this and related issues, with various symbols recurring. They see echoes of themselves in the Jack of Diamonds, the messenger travelling between the material and spiritual worlds. An apple growing on a tree represents music in its primal form, and (Hersh suggests) people’s relationships with both have grown distanced and denatured. 

My overall impression of Hersh’s book is not of an argument that progresses and reaches a firm conclusion, but more of a dance that explores the space opened by the subject. That feels appropriate, when Hersh highlights the importance of reaching back as much as pushing forward. 

Six Degrees of Separation: Time Shelter

1st July 2023 / / 12 Comments

Well, I haven’t done this for a while… nine years, in fact!

Six Degrees of Separation is hosted by Kate of Books Are My Favourite and Best, and takes place on the first Saturday of every month. Everyone starts with the same book, and puts together their own chain of six more.

The starting book for July is the winner of this year’s International Booker Prize, and one of my favourites that I’ve read so far in 2023:

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (tr. Angela Rodel). The time shelter is a clinic that re-creates different periods of the 20th century, an immersive environment intended to jog its patients’ memories. Which reminds me of another novel involving elaborate re-creations of the past…

Remainder by Tom McCarthy. The protagonist of Remainder has had an accident that leaves him conscious of every little difficult movement. He spends his settlement money paying people to re-create his past environments, in the hope that he might capture the experience of living as he did then. There are also characters searching for authentic experience in…

Plume by Will Wiles. This novel concerns a lifestyle journalist who gets an interview with a reclusive cult writer, one who appears to have extraordinary insight into the social forces that underpin life in the city – into what makes it real. One of the recurring images is a cockatoo, and another novel in which birds feature prominently is…

Bird Cottage by Eva Meijer (tr. Antoinette Fawcett). This novel is based on the life of Gwendolen (Len) Howard, who conducts in-depth study of the birds near her Sussex home, though her work is rejected by the scientific establishment of the time. Len’s passion for studying birds is all-consuming, which brings me to another book about a deep interest…

Brian by Jeremy Cooper. Here, the main character’s interest is cinema, and he becomes a regular at the BFI, where the world of film opens up and enriches him. There are a lot of films mentioned in this book that I haven’t seen, but that didn’t stop me enjoying the book one bit, because it was so deeply felt. I had a similar reaction to…

The Wandering Pine by Per Olov Enquist (tr. Deborah Bragan-Turner). An autobiographical novel by a writer I didn’t know of beforehand. There was no reason for me to have any great expectations, but I just loved it. I would go so far as to say that The Wandering Pine has one of the most vivid depictions of childhood that I’ve read. I’ll finish this chain with another book about a life lived through most of the 20th century…

Homelands by Chitra Ramaswamy. An account of the friendship between the author and Henry Wuga, who fled Nazi Germany with his wife Ingrid. As Ramaswamy puts it, she and Henry might seem unlikely friends, “a middle-aged Indian woman [and] a white nonagenarian gentleman”, but there are points of connection between their lives. A good place to finish a post about connections.

Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965 (ed. Mark Andryczyk)

8th September 2022 / / 1 Comment

Penguin have recently issued a paperback edition of this anthology, which was originally published in 2017 under the title The White Chalk of Days. It’s a selection of Ukrainian texts in translation that were presented as part of a literature series in North America between 2008 and 2016.

There’s a lot I could talk about in this book: fifteen writers represented, and a variety of pieces. I’m going to pick out a few of my favourites to highlight.

‘Books We’ve Never Read’ by Marjana Savka (tr. Askold Melnyczuk). I love the imagery of this short poem. It gives me a strong sense of the world opening up to the speaker: “The roads turn like pages. Eyes reddened by wind. / Nothing now but the bookmark of the horizon.”

‘Genes’ by Andriy Bondar (tr. Vitaly Chernetsky). There’s a sarcastic tone to this poem (“should I explain to you what a laptop is?”) that I appreciated. It starts with Bondar commenting that his family has good genes (or so he’s been told, at least) before reflecting on how modern lifestyles may affect health. At the same time, he talks about people who think that what he writes isn’t really poetry. His conclusion that he writes the way he does because he has to, that the ideal can’t fit everyone.

FM Galicia by Taras Prokhasko (tr. Mark Andryczyk). A selection of vignettes that were originally read out live on the radio. There are some striking thoughts and turns of phrase here. For example, in one piece, Prokhasko reflects on the place of firewood in mountain life: “when you only come to the mountains occasionally, firewood is not treated as daily bread but as some kind of delicacy, as gourmet food, like a cordial.”

‘The Flowerbed in the Kilim’ by Yuri Vynnychuk (tr. Mark Andryczyk). The narrator of this story imagines what it might be like in the small house woven into a rug hanging on the wall. One day, impossibly, he is able to enter the scene, and finds himself taken back to his childhood, visiting his Grandma. This situation can’t last, and the effect is poignant.

Apricots of the Donbas by Lyuba Yakimchuk (tr. Svetlana Lavochkina with Michael N. Naydan). A cycle of poems about the centrality of coal to the poet’s native region. There’s some vivid imagery, as in ‘The Face of Coal’, whose speaker imagines their father affected by a life of mining: “His cheeks are like trenches / Chopped up by the pit”.

I didn’t know much about Ukrainian literature, so I’m glad to have read this. If you’re interested, I think there is a good chance you’ll find something to enjoy within these pages.

Mid-Year Book Freakout tag

25th June 2022 / / 3 Comments

We are coming up to halfway through the year, which is a pretty good time to take stock. For various reasons I haven’t read as much as I usually would (partly through getting stricter at abandoning books, partly through taking more time), but let’s have a look anyway. I found this set of questions on Nina Allan’s blog; here are my answers:

Best book you’ve read so far in 2022. I would have to say Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (tr. Anton Hur), a story collection which had me from the first page to the last. Chung goes straight on to my list of must-read authors.

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2022. Well, Marseillaise My Way by Darina Al Joundi (tr. Helen Vassallo) is the only actual sequel I’ve read this year. It’s very good, but also kind of a default answer to this question. Perhaps I could add J.O. Morgan’s second novel, Appliance. This is not a sequel to Pupa, but it is definitely a companion piece aesthetically. I will be reviewing Appliance for Strange Horizons, but I can tell you now that it’s excellent.

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year. The first book that comes to mind is Life Ceremony, the forthcoming story collection by another of my must-read authors, Sayaka Murata (tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori). I also can’t leave out Malarkoi, Alex Pheby’s sequel to the wonderful Mordew – sure to be a treat.

Biggest disappointment. I’m chary of calling books disappointments these days, because I know from personal experience that it can be that you’ve just caught a book at the wrong time. So I will say that I’d been looking forward to reading Damon Galgut for the first time, and I was disappointed that I didn’t click with In a Strange Room. Maybe another book, another time. 

Biggest surprise. I’m going to say Homelands by Chitra Ramaswamy – not because I didn’t expect to like it (I did), but because it was not on my radar at all until I found it in the publisher’s catalogue.

Favourite new author – debut or new to you. Bora Chung, Russell Hoban, Geetanjali Shree, J.O. Morgan, Nathacha Appanah.

Book that made you cry. I don’t know that any book has made me cry so far this year. Gerald Murnane’s Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs changed how it felt to look out at the world from inside my head. 

The most beautiful book you’ve bought so far. Henningham Family Press always publish beautiful books. The Lost Spell by Yismake Worku (tr. Bethlehem Attfield) is no exception. 

What books do you need to read by the end of the year? Well, the beauty of it is that I don’t need to read anything by the end of the year. What I might like to read is another matter…

Looking ahead, July will be Spanish and Portuguese Lit Month, for which I plan to catch up on some unread Mexican books that I have. August is Women in Translation Month, and perhaps it’s time for me to read the rest of Agota Kristof’s trilogy, after The Notebook (tr. Alan Sheridan). Later on will be the 1929 Club, which would give me a pretext to read Henry Green’s Living and Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel (tr. Basil Creighton). There’s also the Goldsmiths Prize shortlist to come… That’s plenty to be going on with, I think. 

Homelands by Chitra Ramaswamy: a Shiny New Books review

17th May 2022 / / 0 Comments

I don’t read an awful lot of non-fiction, but I was particularly intrigued by the premise of this book… Homelands (published by Canongate) is journalist Chitra Ramaswamy’s account of her friendship with Henry Wuga, a Holocaust survivor. It’s part biography and part memoir, as Ramaswamy finds echoes and points of connection between her life and Henry’s.

I’ve reviewed Homelands for Shiny New Books. It felt a bit strange at times to be passing comment on a living person’s account of their recent life, but hopefully I achieved a good balance in the review. Anyway, Homelands is an absorbing book, and if you like the sound of it I suggest you give it a try.

Click here to read my review in full.

Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland

6th March 2022 / / 1 Comment

Originally published in French in 1977, this is a travelogue by Togolese writer Tété-Michel Kpomassie (translated by James Kirkup). As a teenager in the 1950s, he is (reluctantly) about to be initiated into a snake cult when he reads a book about Greenland. This place is beyond anything he has experienced or can imagine, but there will be no snakes – and, he reads, “the child is king, free from all traditional and family restraint”. This is enough to make the young Kpomassie resolve to travel to Greenland, even though it means running away from home.

Kpomassie’s journey to Greenland is an epic tale in itself. It takes six years for him to earn enough money to leave Africa, followed by a spell working in Paris before he finally reaches his destination. He stands out, not just for his skin colour but also his height (hence he’s nicknamed Michel the Giant). This will be a two-way meeting of cultures: “I had started on a voyage of discovery, only to find that it was I who was being discovered.”

Kpomassie’s book is a fascinating account of his travels. There are telling details, such as the cinema that stops foreign films every ten minutes to explain the action to the Inuit audience, because only Danish subtitles are available. These episodes are mixed with Kpomassie’s broader reflections on the people he encounters. His openness and willingness to meet Greenland on its own terms are what make Michel the Giant so engaging for me.

Published by Penguin Modern Classics.

And Other Stories: Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs by Gerald Murnane

15th February 2022 / / 2 Comments

My introduction to Gerald Murnane was his debut novel Tamarisk Row, which I loved for the way it depicted childhood imagination and the sense of strangeness hidden within the everyday. Murnane’s 2005 essay collection Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs came as part of my And Other Stories subscription, and it has proven an ideal follow-up to Tamarisk Row. I’ve valued it for the chance to spend time in the author’s world. 

The essays in this collection gave me some insight into how Murnane perceives the world. For example, the young protagonist of Tamarisk Row would imagine whole worlds in the abstract patterns of light through glass. It came as no surprise to discover that, when Murnane played horse-racing games with marbles, he would focus on the patterns created out of each small movement. He also mentions a liking of charts and diagrams: some of his essays feel like diagrams put into words, as they circle back over images and memories. 

Murnane’s writing often seems to return to landscapes, but landscapes of the mind, imagined grasslands or plains. As he puts it in ‘Birds of the Puszta‘:

Plains looked simple but were not so. The grass leaning in the wind was all that could be seen of plains, but under the grass were insects and spiders and frogs and snakes – and ground-dwelling birds. I thought of plains whenever I wanted to think of something unremarkable at first sight but concealing much of meaning. And yet plains deserved, perhaps, not to be inspected closely. A pipit, crouched over its eggs in the shadow of a tussock, was the colour of dull grass. I was a boy who delighted in finding what was meant to remain hidden, but I was also a boy who liked to think of lost kingdoms.

Murnane’s work keeps evoking for me a sense of “lost kingdoms”, imaginative spaces hidden just out of sight. When I finished Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, I had been changed by it: when I looked around at the world, something felt different. 

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