What I've been reading

Ruth
by Elizabeth Gaskell

narrated by Eve Matheson

"The orphaned heroine Ruth, apprenticed to a dressmaker, is seduced by wealthy Henry Bellingham who is captivated by her simplicity and beauty before abandoning her to her fate. She is offered a chance of a new life, though shamed in the eyes of society by her illegitimate son."

The fate of fallen women and illegitimate children was mighty cruel in those days, but the story and writing are excellent. It doesn't exactly end well, but that's the 19th century for you.

The Card
by Arnold Bennett

"The book tells the story of the rise of Edward Henry ('Denry') Machin from washerwoman's son to Mayor of Bursley. His success is accomplished through luck, initiative and a fair bit of chutzpah."

An early twentieth century setting this time, but with a lot of the nineteenth in it. The writing is excellent but I couldn't warm to the hero, who was successful but never seemed warm-hearted, and only generous when it suited his ends. The book ends with him in mid-life, married, and in the position of the youngest mayor of the town - I would actually have been interested in the rest of his life, except that he would probably have continued to irritate me.

Whisky Galore
by Compton Mackenzie

narrated by David Rintoul

"It's 1943, and the war has brought rationing to the Hebridean Islands of Great and Little Todday. When food is in short supply, it is bad enough, but when the whisky runs out, it looks like the end of the world."

A lovely book that celebrates all that is Hebridean, improved further by the narration which delivers the correct pronunciation of the Gaelic words. Much gentler than the famous film version, the salvaging of the shipwrecked boat's cargo isn't the main story, but runs quietly alongside the tales of men and women sometimes getting along with one another and sometimes not.

Back Story
by David Mitchell

narrated by the Author

"David Mitchell, who you may know for his inappropriate anger on every TV panel show except 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks', his look of permanent discomfort on C4 sex comedy 'Peep Show', his online commenter-baiting in The Observer, or just for wearing a stick-on moustache in 'That Mitchell and Webb Look', has written a book about his life."

I like David Mitchell's work, and thought he seemed like a decent chap. This memoir doesn't change that view, and fills in some detail about his background, which isn't very posh but is nicely middle class, much like my own.

The Painter of Signs
by R. K. Narayan

"In this wry, funny, bittersweet story, love gets in the way of progress when Raman, a sign painter, meets the thrillingly independent Daisy, who wishes to bring birth control to the city of Malgudi."

Quite a light read: a small story about a man, his aunt, and the woman that he falls for. It is pleasant and serves to illuminate some aspects of India in the 1970s.

The Shell Seekers
by Rosamunde Pilcher

"A mother loves her children; of course she does. But sometimes she may not like them very much. In Penelope Keeling's case, two of her three grown-up children often give cause to dislike. And when they put her under pressure to sell her most treasured possession - one of her father's paintings- they provoke a family crisis."

I read this long book in a weekend - admittedly a weekend in which I was at a festival with nothing much else to do - and it was great. At last, a proper story with lots of interesting characters who are introduced in such a way as to allow me to remember who they are and how they fit into the story, and fleshed out into people that I recognise and can sympathise with (or not). There wasn't anything much to learn from it, which is often what I look for in a book (even fiction), but I really enjoyed reading it.

Solaris
by Stanislaw Lem

narrated by Alessandro Juliani

"When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories."

I think this is a beautiful book without actually liking it all that much. It's ostensibly about a scientist arriving at a research station where they are studying the planet's sentient ocean. This is an attractive concept in itself, but the main evidence of sentience is that the scientist's dead wife is recreated in near-perfect detail, but over time comes to know that she is not 'real'. There's very little story, no suspense, and it's hard to say whether the ending was happy or not, but I found the experience pleasant without wanting to repeat it.

Mr Norris Changes Trains
by Christopher Isherwood

"After a chance encounter on a train the English teacher William Bradshaw starts a close friendship with the mildly sinister Arthur Norris. Norris is a man of contradictions; lavish but heavily in debt, excessively polite but sexually deviant."

Loosely autobiographical, this is set in Berlin in the years leading up to World War 2, and I'm sure it's really good - it's very readable - but I lack the knowledge of political history at that time. Of course I know what the eventual outcome was, but I get confused with the names and forget where the different parties stand: Fascist vs Communist vs Nazi, and this puts me at a disadvantage when the plot is revealed.

The Snow Goose
by Paul Gallico

"Set in the wild, desolate Essex marshes during the second World War. this is an intense and moving tale about the relationship between a hunchback and a young girl."

Just a short story, not really a book, but it's in my list of classics and it's utterly beautiful.