Out & About Spring 2019

BOOKS The first books GERALDINE GARDNER read in 2019, she felt, were not a stunning selection, even though they have received great critical acclaim. The traumas of growing up, wartime romance and post war nostalgia all seem like great themes, but in each instance she found something lacking E arlier this year 27-year-old Irish author Sally Rooney won the Costa Best Novel Award with her self-harming when things aren’t going her way. Anyway, their on-again off-again affair

second novel Normal People . When her first book Conversations With Friends was published in 2017, it too received rave reviews. I decided to read both books, starting with this year’s smash hit Normal People . I can’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed. Normal People is primarily about two schoolmates – Marianne, a misfit who nobody seems to much like or ‘get’ and Connell, bright, sporty and universally like and lusted after, and whose mother is Marianne’s family’s cleaner. The two are drawn to each other and a clandestine affair begins. Marianne has created a facade of ‘not caring’ and Connell is worried about what others might think if they found out, even though he knows it shouldn’t matter. Both end up going to Trinity College Dublin and their on-off relationship continues. It takes Marianne some time to get over the fact that Connell snubbed her at the school prom and she lurches form one abusive relationship to another. But every now and then she needs the sensible and solid presence of Connell. He, too, cannot rid himself of her and it seems they are destined to stick together forever. When I got to the end I was slightly ‘meh’ about the whole thing, but I was told that her first novel Conversations With Friends was much better and so I moved on to that, reading Everyone Brave is Forgiven in between – more of which later. Rooney does not use speech marks – a bit of a bugbear of mine, which may have skewed my view of her writing, but I felt Conversations with Friends was rather more of the same – although this time we had lesbian students Frances and Bobbi, no longer a couple, but inextricably bound together. Enter artist Melissa and actor husband Nick, who begins an affair with Frances. If I sound a bit bored by it, I was. Like Marianne, Frances has issues, she starts

runs through the book, as does her rekindling of her love of Bobbi (sound familiar?). I’m not sure why all the hysteria about Rooney’s writing. Certainly, she writes well and there is a lyrical quality in her prose, but I was not hooked by her words – perhaps I’m missing something. So back to Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave, set during the Second World War, it is a sort of love square between Mary, Hilda, Tom and Alistair. Cleave paints a picture of wartime hardships and brings into the mix the role of women, the treatment of children and racism. It starts slowly, until an event that changes the whole dynamics. Its a bit of a hotchpotch of themes, but an easy enough read and taps into the exploration of the effect of war on society. I was looking forward to The Librarian by Salley Vickers. I am a huge fan of Ms Vickers’ works, having devoured and loved Miss Garnett’s Angel and The Cleaner of Chartres among others. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite so enamoured with her latest story. Set in the 1950s, Sylvia, a newly-qualified librarian, arrives in a small town to run the children’s library (how wonderful if that could still be the case today). It then turns into a mini soap opera as Sylvia gets drawn into various lives and events. My main probelm was that I didn’t actually care for the central character very much. Fast forward 50 years and we meet two of the children, now grown up, and discover what happened to them and others – a bit like Rooney’s books, I was left thinking ‘meh’, a disappointing reaction, as I had been looking forward this one. Not a brilliant start to this year’s reading for me, but it would be strange if every book I read was amazing. All these books have received high praise so maybe I’m just out of kilter – let me know what you think.

You can find book reviews on the Newbury Today website www.newburytoday.co.uk/out&about/books Leave your comments and tell us what you think of the books or email geraldine.gardner@newburynews.co.uk

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