Dancing Mad God

I finished reading nine books this month, five by women/POC (this time all women), five for my Hugo awards monthly theme, one in Portuguese, and none in German (one longish short story collection in progress).

• Deadlock — Dorothy M. Richardson
• A Drop of Corruption — Robert Jackson Bennett
• Shroud — Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Uma menina está perdida no seu século à procura do pai — Gonçalo M. Tavares
• The Incandescent — Emily Tesh
• The Goblin Emperor — Katherine Addison
• Revolving Lights — Dorothy M. Richardson
• The Lemon Table — Julian Barnes
• The Everlasting — Alix E. Harrow

I tried to read all the Hugo best novel shortlist, but failed. The ones I did read were all very good, however. I posted a longer review of A Drop of Corruption earlier, so here I’ll just mention that it’s made me a fan of the hitherto unfamiliar genre of cosy fantasy detective horror.

Shroud was very different: the only real SF book of the month, it’s a well thought-out first-contact story, reminiscent of his Children of Time in its interest in alien thought and technology. This probably gets my vote for best novel, if only because I suspect it’s the one I’ll keep thinking about longest.

The Incandescent was tremendous fun, a kind of Sapphic modern-day Diana Wynne Jones. It was of particular niche interest because the protagonist is a teacher, and actually mentions some useful points about teaching which I might nab. Some of the jokes and plot points were over-predictable, but those are minor niggles.

The fourth best novel nominee was The Everlasting, and it runs Shroud very close, while being completely opposite: the time-travel device is not really explained at all but simply a given in this fantasy world. The working out of its effects on the characters is splendid, although the societies portrayed are so thinly described that I didn’t really get a feeling of people from 1000 years apart trying to communicate.

I over-ambitiously also tried to read the best series nominees, only managing The Goblin Emperor. It was very odd, which is not at all a criticism: the characters are elves and goblins, although they behave entirely like humans apart from occasionally flattening their ears. The central character has all the opinions one would expect of a modern teenager, for no obvious reason, and the interest of the book is seeing them interact with the hideboud imperial court. It is all very heartwarming in the end, but I don’t think I need to continue with the series.

Pausing to mention my non-novel reading for the Hugos: I managed all the novelettes, and will vote for The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For (Cameron Reed), which follows up the eyecatching title and first sentence with a fascinating story; also all the short stories, where I’m torn between In My Country by Thomas Ha (dark political fantasy) and Six People to Revise You by J.R. Dawson (clever use of an SF premise to explore social relationships).

I’ll vote for Last War in Albion: “The Cuddled Little Vice (Sandman)” by Elizabeth Sandifer for Best Related Work (not yet finished, but a weird and wonderful feminist critique of Sandman), and The River Has Roots (Amal El-Mohtar) which I read a few months ago for Best Novella.

Finally, no less than four re-reads, for various reasons: Deadlock was a bit of a slog, but Revolving Lights was splendid: four mostly long, but nicely-balanced chapters showing Miriam moving between her various worlds.

This was my third reading of Uma menina está perdida no seu século à procura do pai, this time for the Portuguese in Translation book group, and with just a dictionary and my memory to help me through. The discussion was, as ever, very informative, and a combination of this and reading more quickly helped me see the connections between the various episodes.

Barnes of the month was also a re-read: The Lemon Table is a pleasingly linked set of stories about ageing and death, leavened with plenty of humour:

Daphne always refused to wear hearing aids on the grounds that they caught in the branches of trees.

Misunderstand me correctly. (Apparently a genuine Sibeliusism.)

Next month is basically #WITmonth, for which I’ve amassed a Tilted Axis shortlist:

• Andhar Bil — Kalyani Thakur Charal
• Park Seolyon — Capitalists Must Starve
• Yuliana Ortiz Ruano — Carnaval Fever
• Hwang Jungeun — dd’s Umbrella
• Thuận — Elevator in Sài Gòn
• Astrid H. Roemer — On a Woman’s Madness
• A Revathi — A Life in Trans Activism
• Baqytgul Sarmekova — To Hell With Poets
• Lee Hyemi — Unexpected Vanilla

Plus a Richardson, a Barnes, a Portuguese book, and some stories in German….

A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett, is not quite like any other book I’ve read: “cosy fantasy horror crime” is the closest I can come to describing the genre. If I hadn’t been reading for the Hugo awards, I would not have picked it up, but I’m very glad I did.

The novel begins as a whodunnit, with our protagonist Din investigating a murder on behalf of his outrageously talented (and sometimes just outrageous) boss Ana. The story takes place in Yarrow, a kingdom which is semi-independent from the empire for which the investigators work, and it gradually broadens out to make the social and political background one of the main themes, without losing track of the central plot.

The world-building is outstanding: this is the second in the series, but a new reader starting here learns enough about the empire and the characters to want to read the other instalments, without ever feeling lost.

Din’s local contact Malo is a particularly enjoyable companion, set between the two worlds of empire and Yarrow, and acting as an unobtrusive guide for both Din and the reader. The perils are exciting enough to involve, while mild enough not to be disturbing, and the touches of humour are well-judged.

I’ve already bought the first book in the series, and will be filling in the backstory of Din and Ana soon!

Thank you Del Rey Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I finished eight books this month, five for my monthly theme (Spain), four by women/POC, and one each in German and Portuguese.

• Cronopios and Famas — Julio Cortázar, tr. Paul Blackburn
• Living Things — Munir Hachemi, tr. Julia Sanches
• So forsch, so furchtlos — Andrea Abreu, tr. Christiane Quandt
• The Man in the Red Coat — Julian Barnes
• The Heart and Other Viscera — Félix J. Palma, tr. Nick Caistor and Lorenza García
• É sempre a hora da nossa morte amém — Mariana Salomão Carrara
• Tears in Rain — Rosa Montero, tr. Lilit Žekulin Thwaites
• All Souls — Javier Marías, tr. Margaret Jull Costa

The Spanish theme was something of an accident: I started with Living Things, and decided to continue from there. This was by some distance the worst of the month’s reads — particularly disappointing as Fitzcarraldos are almost all excellent. The adventures of four overprivileged jerks pretending to be poor for a summer did not enthrall me, and while I know that likeable characters are not essential for a good book, there has to be something that makes me want to spend time with them. In this case there wasn’t. The final reveal was extremely underwhelming, although it did at least signal the end of the book.

So forsch, so furchtlos was a great counterpoint: the characters don’t need to be likeable, because they’re full of life and show the reader a side of life close enough to be fascinating, but remote enough to be unfamiliar. The two main characters are pubescent girls from poor families on the Canary Islands, whose relationship reads like a scurrilous parody of Elena Ferrante: the girls explore bodily functions and fluids largely unhindered by the adults in their lives. The ending again was not great, but the journey there was outstanding.

Another man, another relatively poor book: The Heart and Other Viscera is by an apparently well-known Spanish fantasy writer, though most of the stories here were on the realistic side. A special form of “realistic”, however, in which women have empty heads and curvaceous bodies, which they are only too willing to deliver unto the protagonists who bear a suspicious resemblance to the intended readership. There’s some nice writing in between, but the overall impression of misogyny was not pleasant.

Tears in Rain is a very odd book: a series of murders involving replicants — artificial humans with short lifespans who are used as off-world slaves, but face discrimination on Earth — is investigated by a detective who is herself a replicant. All of which may sound very familiar, and to Montero’s credit she explicitly acknowledges her debt to Blade Runner. The world-building and characters are interesting, particularly the detective (for mysterious reasons named “Bruna Husky”), and I’d like to read others in the series. The very substantial problem is that the psychology of the replicants seems not to have received any thought: with a few years on Earth, they apparently get ordinary jobs and live virtually indistinguishably from humans until their fixed death date.

I read All Souls thirty-odd years ago, and could remember only the general gist and a few details, but nothing of the story. This turns out to be because there isn’t really a story, apart from a very contrived background link which is the climax. The rest of the book is diverting, especially if you know Oxford already, but I’d hoped for a lot more given what others have said about Marías.

My second book of stories for the month was Cronopios and Famas. I almost give up in irritation at the first section (very dated trying to hard to be surreal), but the other three parts were much better — weird enough to keep you on your toes, but old-school enough to actually have stories, of a sort.

Neatly, one of the Cortázar stories is referred to in É sempre a hora da nossa morte amém. This was an intriguing one: it’s told from the point of view of a woman with amnesia, presenting us with mutually inconsistent possible fragments of her life. Thus we get several versions of her daughter’s death, but the emotional effect of each is watered down by the uncertainty whether it’s “real”. The end of the book is less dramatic, but is the more powerful for being some kind of truth.

Barnes of the month was a new one for me: The Man in the Red Coat is a sort of biography of a French doctor who would not be particularly notable now were he not the subject of the Sargent painting of the title, and generally in the centre of the Belle Epoque. This is the real interest — seeing how all the familiar figures related to one another, and all told in the characteristic witty voice.

No Richardson this month — Deadlock is still in progress. I’ve also started on my July project, which will be Hugo award reading — there’s more than I could possibly finish, but I’m hoping at least to manage the novels, novellas, novelettes and stories.

I finished nine books this month, four as part of my “Nordic septologies” theme, seven by women/POC, and two in German.

• The Tunnel — Dorothy M. Richardson
• The Midnight Timetable — Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur
• Über die Berechnung des Rauminhalts III — Solvej Balle, tr. Peter Urban-Halle
• The Tokyo Suite — Giovana Madalossa, tr. Bruna Dantas Lobato
• Staring at the Sun — Julian Barnes
• Über die Berechnung des Rauminhalts IV — Solvej Balle, tr. Peter Urban-Halle
• Money to Burn — Asta Olivia Nordenhof, tr. Caroline Waight
• A New Name — Jon Fosse, tr. Damion Searls
• Interim — Dorothy M. Richardson

Starting with the Scandinavians, I read volumes three and four of Über die Berechnung des Rauminhalts (On the Calculation of Volume). The story itself is progressing in very interesting directions, though Tara’s/Balle’s verbal tics are increasingly irritating when one reads two volumes per month. Volume four spends a lot of time recounting endless meetings, which is as exciting as one might expect. All of which means that each volume since the first has been progressively worse, though they’re still pretty good. And she does excellent cliffhangers.

Another Danish septology still in progress begins with Money to Burn, which wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It’s a short, (artfully) messy story of the kind of messy, fucked-up lives we tend not to associate with Scandinavia, tangentially linked with the ostensible centrepiece of the series, the Scandinavian Star disaster/scandal. On which subject, as the narrator says, “If there’s anything rare about this case, it is only that the victims of capitalism (assuming we ignore the ones not even counted as victims: plants, insects, fungi, fish) aren’t usually located in Scandinavia.” So surprises all round.

Not so many surprises in A New Name, the last instalment (of two books) of Jon Fosse’s Septology. This is basically the same as the previous books, the repetition here being very definitely the point. Disappointingly the excellent German audiobooks only cover the first two instalments, so I had to settle for reading the English translation. It was disconcertingly different (slangy American English and odd capitalisation, which I assume reflects the original but obviously didn’t affect the audiobooks).

The Midnight Timetable was my only book of short stories this month: a series of (sort-of) ghost stories with a mildly SF bent. The setting which links them together is occasionally ropey, but gives it a satisfying togetherness nevertheless.

Another Portuguese in Translation book club book this month: The Tokyo Suite didn’t bowl me over, I suspect because the short chapters created a lack of focus. Further confusion arose because the two voices in the book are distinguished in part by the linguistic mistakes which one character makes, but some poor production means that there are quite a few similar accidental mistakes in the other chapters too. The discussion was at least interesting, and the author mentioned that her first book was “much darker”, which I take as a recommendation.

And the ongoing projects: two volumes of Dorothy Richardson (The Tunnel and Interim), where she’s much more linguistically inventive and wilfully obscure than in the opening “trilogy”. Interim has the best example so far of her characteristic repetition:

Two tall vases on the mantelshelf holding dried grasses carried her eyes up to two short vases holding dried grasses standing on the wooden-pillared brackets of the overmantel, and back again to themselves.

This month’s helping of Barnes was Staring at the Sun, which I first read thirty or so years ago. Very good, very funny, very humane, and with a marvellously retro version of Chatgpt in the final section. What more could one wish?

Next month’s theme is a work-in-progress, but may be a revival of my planned European tour which never quite happened….

I finished eight books in April, four from the International Booker longlist (plus one former); four by women/POC and a feeble one in German.

• Lichtspiel — Daniel Kehlmann
• Taiwan Travelogue — Yang Shuang-zi, tr. Lin King
• The Deserters — Mathias Énard, tr. Charlotte Mandell
• On the Calculation of Volume II — Solvei Balle, tr. Barbara J. Haveland
• She Who Remains — Rene Karabash, tr. Izidora Angel
• The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories — Susanna Clarke
• The Porcupine — Julian Barnes
• Travel Arrangements — M. John Harrison

Lichtspiel was one of the best longlisted novels for me (along with the Shida Bazyar). There’s a gimmicky ending, which is a big negative, but the portrayal of Pabst is touching and believable, and the Nazis are brilliantly done, with a terrifying mix of charm and random violence. I now want to see the films themselves, so it worked on me.

I wasn’t so keen on the other three. The Deserters is also set largely in Germany, and is overshadowed by the war, but I found the two story threads each too slight to really interest me. I missed the humour of The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild; now I’ve no idea what kind of a writer Énard actually is, I need to read more!

Taiwan Travelogue was disappointing. The printed version includes some metafictional apparatus which should put the story in an interesting context, but for some reason this was omitted from the audiobook (and the narrator did not help matters). The political side managed to be underexploited and crashingly obvious, which is quite the combination.

Last of the four was She Who Remains, which I also didn’t like. The first part in particular is a Kadaresque honour code story in an unremittingly bleak world, the twist being the gay/trans aspect with which it is entwined. Unfortunately Karabash pathologises this in a rather offensive and reductive way.

Solvej Balle was shortlisted for the first volume of On the Calculation of Volume; part 2 is not quite so good, as repetition creeps in to the writing rather than just the events. It’s hard to judge whether this is Balle writing poorly (spinning it out to seven volumes!), or whether we should take is as Tara’s shortcoming, but either way it’s not great to read. The development of the idea make continuing worth it however, and there’s a splendid reveal at the end.

The Barnesathon continued with The Porcupine, which I first read when it came out 30+ years ago. There’s lots of lovely writing I’d forgotten, so well worth reading even if not one of his deepest. The central character, like Kehlmann’s Nazis, has a lovely balance of charisma and horror.

Finally, two books of short stories which each set memory bells constantly ringing. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories is effectively an appendix to Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which is no bad thing. I kept thinking I’d read parts before, and I’m still not sure whether I had, or it was because they reminded me of the novel. The audiobook is also excellently performed.

Travel Arrangements definitely does repeat material which is worked out differently in some of Harrison’s other works, as is his way. Often baffling, but poetic, funny, and overall an enjoyably weird collection.

I haven’t finished this month’s volume of Pilgrimage (The Tunnel — a big one), so there should be two next month, along with — if it goes according to plan — at least three books for my very normal topic of Scandinavian septologies.

I finished 8 books in March: 5 for my month’s topic of South America, 2 for my failed topic of 1983 BYBN, 5 by women/PoC, and one each in German and Portuguese.

• All Fires the Fire — Julio Cortázar, tr. Suzanne Jill Levine
• Little Eyes — Samanta Schweblin, tr. Megan McDowell
• Indoctrinaire — Christopher Priest
• Macunaíma — Mário de Andrade, tr. Katrina Dodson
• Assim na terra como embaixo da terra — Ana Paula Maia
• Honeycomb — Dorothy M. Richardson
• Nachts ist es leise in Teheran — Shida Bazyar
• Flaubert’s Parrot — Julian Barnes

Accidentally, five of the books were also re-reads, which partly explains why I got through so many (Cortázar, Schweblin, Priest, Richardson, and Barnes). All Fires the Fire is also the only book of short stories finished this month (I’m also gradually re-reading Lydia Davis’s), which has one of my favourite stories ever — The Southern Thruway, which combines a Ballardian societal collapse with another collapse/return to normality.

Little Eyes is one of my favourite books full stop, combining plausible technology with a devastating critique of the flaws in human natures which it exposes and allows to flourish. The diversity of stories contained in such a short book is impressive.

Indoctrinaire is an interesting, but not great book by a great writer: the surreal cruelty of the Brazilian section now looks like a harbinger of early Banks, while the later part is reminiscent of Priest’s own Wellesian The Space Machine.

The other two South American books were first-timers: Macunaíma was sitting in a pile for some time before it fortuitously became one of the Portuguese in Translation book group selections. No author this time, but theere was a fascinating discussion with Katrina Dodson. The book itself is completely different from what I’d expected: rather than a serious national epic, I got a collection of folk tales somewhat tenuously linked by the adventures of the “hero” (of questionable morals). “Broke all to smash” has now entered my vocabulary.

Assim na terra como embaixo da terra was also a quasi-involuntary selection: its English translation is longlisted for this year’s International Booker, so I thought I should read it in the original. I’m quite happy I did: the author’s obsession with systems of violence is not one I particularly share, but I enjoyed the complexity of the characters (and the language practice).

Nachts ist es leise in Teheran is another whose translation has been longlisted, and is also timely for other obvious reasons. Bazyar is a really good writer, bringing the characters and settings brilliantly to life. Minus one point for the dream sequences, plus ten for the conclusion.

Finally, two re-reads from my year’s series: Honeycomb is volume 3 of Pilgrimage, and makes a nice end to the trilogy of Miriam’s attempts at being a teacher before she moves to her natural home of Bloomsbury. It’s full of her trademark repetitive descriptions and splenetic outbursts, mostly this time directed at all men:

the strange, beautiful, beautiful long wide hang of the faintly patterny faintly blue curtains covering the whole of the window space

How utterly detestable mannishness is; so mighty and strong and comforting when you have been mewed up with women all your life, and then suddenly, in a second, far away, utterly imbecile and aggravating with a superior self-satisfied smile because a woman says one thing one minute and another the next. Men ought to be horsewhipped, all the grown men, all who have ever had that self-satisfied smile, all, all, horsewhipped until they apologise on their knees.

Flaubert’s Parrot is the perfect Julian Barnes book, and interestingly similar to his more recent ones: a blend of fact and fiction, with an ageing, flawed narrator grappling with failures of memory and with a fine line in irony. It’s also liable to send me back to Flaubert, as soon as I find time.

Next month, though, should be more International Booker longlistees (and perhaps some other Booker books around Mr Barnes).

I finished 6 books this month, all of which fit more or less into my month’s theme of favourite writers, four by women/POC, and two in German. Portuguese might restart in March.

• The Silver Thorn — Hugh Walpole
• Bannmeilen — Anne Weber
• The Sad Part Was — Prabda Yoon, tr. Mui Poopoksakul
• Backwater — Dorothy M. Richardson
• Elizabeth Finch — Julian Barnes
• Die Geschichte des verlorenen Kindes — Elena Ferrante, tr. Karin Krieger

The choice of theme was mainly because I’d already committed to two of my favourites (Richardson for a book group, and Barnes because I accidentally read one of his last month and felt like continuing); also because I’d almost finished the Walpole. This was the first of his books I’ve read, mainly because I’d never heard of him before, but he’s fantastic (at least in these stories). They’re mostly of a similar type: wryly comic about middle-class Brits of the interwar period, with an irony that makes the navel-gazing go down easier.

Backwater is the second volume of Pilgrimage, and sees Miriam stuck in a north London which she, in her snobbish middle-class way, looks down on. The frankness with which Richardson portrays her often ridiculous 18-year-old alter ego is one of the great things about the book which I didn’t properly pick up on the first time. It’s full of extraordinary moments, possibly the best of which being:

Miss Meldrum and Miss Stringer, the two bald Scotch chemists who went out every evening to look for a comet, the pale frowning girl from Plaistow with her mad-eyed cousin whose grey curls bunched in a cherry-coloured velvet band seemed to say “death—death” to Miriam more dreadfully out here amongst the greenery than when she suddenly caught sight of them at table, sat disconnectedly in chairs behind the squatters on the grass.

The bald Scotch chemists not even being the most extraordinary description in the sentence is what really makes it.

To the Barnes: Elizabeth Finch is not his best book: as the reviews I read noted, Elizabeth Finch herself doesn’t come across as the intellectual colossus the narrator thinks she is. That of course may be part of the point: he’s a typically Barnesian slightly bumbling protagonist, which allows writer and reader to maintain an enjoyable (ironic, British) distance. We’re left to consider for ourselves the significance of Julian Barnes focusing on Julian the Apostate, and the unreliability of sources and memories are given typical airings.

The other definite favourite writer was Anne Weber: Bannmeilen is labelled a “novel”, but it’s not clear how much if any of it is invented. It describes a series of walks undertaken in the banlieues north of Paris by Weber and her half-Algerian friend Thierry. The two spend much of their time in — ironic — bickering which neither she nor the reader know how seriously to take. Nothing much happens, but the depictions of the places are fascinating, from the run-down tower blocks to the hostile liminal spaces which surround them.

The other two books this month were if not quite top tier favourites, at least known quantities. The Sad Part Was is a collection of playful, postmodern stories which were always rewarding, but always something new. Special note for this brilliant bit of translation by Mui Poopoksakul:

my heart would beat like the engine of a train as it pulls into the platform, slow but deliberate, rhythmic but purposeful.

Finally, Die Geschichte des verlorenen Kindes is the last of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. I’ve enjoyed them, but four is possibly more than enough. There are interesting parallels with Elizabeth Finch: both are portraits of an admired friend, with the inadequacies of the writer-narrator very much on display. This volume suffered from the first section being largely about Lenù’s marital troubles, both being less interesting in itself, and making the later return of the various Neapolitan characters confusing for someone who read the third volume some time ago. The audiobook narration was very good, however, and I’ll miss the way Eva Mattes says “Lenù”, “Ja”, and “Nein”.

I started a reread of one other favourite author — Samanta Schweblin, Little Eyes — and am starting another reread of a not particularly favourite book by another favourite author (Indoctrinaire — Christopher Priest), which will both fit nicely into next month’s intersecting themes: 1983 Granta BYBN listees and South America. Again because I’m already planning to read Macunaíma (South America) and another Barnes (BYBN). I may spend the rest of the year choosing another nine somewhat Barnes-related topics, just for fun.

I finished a very modest five books this month, three by women/PoC (again = women), four for my “Dorothy Richardson and environs” theme; one German, and none in Portuguese (I’m doing some listening instead).

• Country People — Ruth Suckow
• Professor Unrat — Heinrich Mann
• Journey to Paradise — Dorothy M. Richardson
• Pointed Roofs — Dorothy M. Richardson
• Departure(s) — Julian Barnes

Starting with the inevitable, Pointed Roofs is not typical Pilgrimage — it’s a much easier read than most volumes, and along with Oberland is the non-England chapter — but it’s a very fine book, and contains the passage that made me fall in love with DR:

Someone was saying “Hi!” a gurgling muffled shout, a long way off.

She opened her eyes. It was bright morning. She saw the twist of Harriett’s body lying across the edge of the bed. With a gasp she flung herself over her own side. Harry, old Harry, jolly old Harry had remembered the Grand Ceremonial. In a moment her own head hung, her long hair flinging back on to the floor, her eyes gazing across under the bed at the reversed snub of Harriett’s face. It was flushed in the midst of the wiry hair which stuck out all round it but did not reach the floor. “Hi!” they gurgled solemnly, “Hi…. Hi!” shaking their heads from side to side. Then their four frilled hands came down and they flumped out of the high bed.

In one of her later letters to her younger sister, written when she was 72, DR remembers the original of this episode.

The 40-year-old DR has some fun with the perspective of 17-year-old Miriam:

how square and stout she looked and old, careworn, like a woman of forty.

I read some new to me Richardson too: Journey to Paradise is a miscellaneous collection of stories and sketches, some clearly adjuncts to Pilgrimage itself. One for the completists, I have to say.

Country People is by Ruth Suckow, a friend and correspondent of Richardson. It reminded me of Elizabeth Strout, or Garrison Keillor — rather matter of fact depiction of, well, country people. Once I’d got used to the gentleness of the pace it was interesting enough, but not enough to send me running for more Suckow.

Heinrich Mann is another contemporary who Richardson read and liked, so I chose Professor Unrat. This was great fun, well-narrated as an audiobook, with a central character seeming to deserve an interesting mix of pity, contempt, and admiration.

Pausing here to mention some DR-adjacent books which I haven’t managed to finish: Hugh Walpole is a great discovery, and I’ll finish The Silver Thorn next month; I haven’t got far at all with May Sinclair (Mary Olivier), Romer WIlson (Martin Schüler), or John Cowper Powys (Wolf Solent), though I do like what I’ve read of the latter two.

Departure(s) was not in the plan, but I saw that the audiobook was coming out, and grabbed. It’s classic late Barnes: combining memoir, essay, and fiction on, as he pre-emptively mentions, some of his favourite tropes. Barnes’ own narration makes it all the more powerful, fitting perfectly a book being narrated by … author Julian Barnes. A perfect ending rounds off his last words.

Next month, inspired by Julian, my topic is favourite authors: JB, DR, Anne Weber, Joachim Meyerhoff … the list is growing.