Walking Home, Simon Armitage

A refreshing one this. Simon Armitage is from Marsden, one of the stops on the Pennine Way. He sets out to walk the Pennine Way backwards (as in the opposite way round to the way most people do it). Walking from Kirk Yetholm towards his home town. He travels as 'a modern troubadour' setting off with the rail fare to Scotland and no more. He stays with strangers and gives poetry readings each evening for donations.

It is such a good read. Armitage is engaging, funny and honest. The book is full of the stories of the people he walks with, those who put him up at night and musings (or just generalisations based on stereotypes depending on his mood) on those he passes on the way. The writing is poetic in the way he chats, wonders and describes the walk. Im parts you can feel the rising panic of being lost in the mist and rain, or that weathered, rosy cheeked feeling of someone who has come in from a day on the tops in good weather.

My parents and their families are all from Huddersfield (im from just next door in Wakefield). Which meant I felt like I could relate to Armitage, I could see in my head the places he was, and feel his surprise at seeing Emley Moor mast from Malham Cove. The point though is that Simon Armitage writes so well, with an immediacy, that I think you'll get that feeling even if you've never been anywhere near anywhere.

Armitage notes that 'the Pennine Way is a pointless exercise, leading from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular via no particular route, for no particular reason' but if you go along with Mr Armitage you will get stories and thinkings and snippets and giggles and lost, and its great fun (especially curled up warm and dry in bed with tea).

Thank you very much Faber and Faber for the proof.

Im a couple of chapters in to In One Person by John Irving. Its very 'John Irving', if you know what I mean, so far. Im looking forward to being in the thick of it. 

The 32 Stops, Danny Dorling

This is one of Penguin's Underground Lines books. Dorling follows the Central Line one Saturday, telling us of the social and economic state of the people who live around each of the tube stops.

Sounds dry I know, but Dorling conjures a portrait of a cross section of London. At each stop there is the textual equivalent of a photograph of someone who lives nearby. A surgeon out to lunch with a younger female colleague. An old woman in a home thinking she would just like a change of company every now and then. A homeless woman who used to beg outside St Paul's Cathedral. These images are compelling and so the work is never boring. I'm not entirely sure weather or not the stories are true. I can't figure out how they could be but its implied that they are.

All in all its a good read, really nice length and I think does what the series set out to do, it is a celebration of London and the tube but doesn't romanticise it, a collection of engaging and well written information. Thanks so much for the proof Penguin!

Just cracked the spine of Simon Armitage's Walking Home. Im looking forward to this one, I like Armitage (seen him presenting a few things) but never read much of his work. This one looks interesting. He is walking the Pennine Way 'backwards', ending up in his hometown of Marsden, which is very near where my Mum, Dad and Grandparents are from.

Telling the Bees, Peggy Hesketh

There isn't much to say about this one really. Its ok, an easy, steady read. It is narrated by an 80 year old beekeeper, who has lived in the same house all his life and is a solitary character. Outwardly the only thing he cares about are his bees. 

This from Waterstones.com: Young Albert Honig spends much of his time in solitude, his daily routine shaped by the almost mystical attention he quietly lavishes on his bees. Into his tightly repressed existence bursts a brash young neighbour, whose vivacity and boldness begin to transform his life. Yet years pass by, feelings are repressed, opportunities missed. When, one balmy day, led by a trail of bees, Albert discovers her body, he is plunged back into his memories, and finally confronts the lies and secrets that led to their estrangement. In doing so he unearths the real truth of Claire's murder - a question not so much of who but why.

It isn't really the kind of novel I expected it to be, the characters are likeable but I wasn't enamoured with them. You are definitely on the outside looking in, despite the first person narrative. I learnt alot about beekeeping which is interesting, and it made me crave honey. Essentially it is mildly interesting and an easy read. Thanks to Oneworld / Penguin for the proof.

Next up is The 32 Stops by Danny Dorling. It is The Central Line of the Penguin Underground Lines books, looks interesting and is very pretty.

The Shape of a Pocket, John Berger

This is a collection of essays and writings by Berger. I haven't read it all in one go but have been dipping in and out, probably for about a year. You can rely on John Berger to be knowledgeable, in-depth and interesting. I find him a bit condescending and authoritative, he seems to be aware that all artists have to read him- but he is worth putting up with - he writes so well and says such good stuff!

These essays were full of ideas. Apparently Degas said that you only have one heart, and there is love and your life's work. Degas (obviously) chose to put his heart only in his work, all the women he knew, and the only way he knew them, was to draw them. For Berger that plays a huge part in the sensitivity of his work. Another essay talks about the Fayum portraits, apparently the earliest portraits found. 'Flawed because very evidently hand-made. More precious because the painted gaze is entirely concentrated on the life it knows it will one day lose. And so they gaze on us, the Fayum portraits, like the missing of our own century'. (You see why we have to read him?- gorgeous)

The best essay I think is one on Frida Kahlo. Berger's idea is that she painted on a surface like skin, which she thought of as skin. Therefore she doesn't paint pain, but paints the feeling of it. Everything she painted was from herself and on herself. 'Frida Kahlo lay cheek to cheek with everything she depicted'

I am just on the last few pages of Peggy Hesketh's Telling the Bees, tell you about that one tomorrow.

The Fields, Kevin Maher

This book is phenomenal. Maher has you giggling along for pages and then has your heart pounding before he punches you in the stomach. Its giggling, hammering and punching in any order and often all at the same time after that.  It is narrated by Jim Finnegan, a 13 year old boy and the youngest in a family of 5 sisters. Jim ends up being exactly like a little brother to the reader and he is brilliant fun to be around. This from Waterstones.com: 

After a drunken yet delicate rendition of 'The Fields of Athenry' at the Donohues' raucous annual party, Jim captures both the attention of the beautiful Saidhbh Donohue and the unwanted desires of the devious and dangerous Father Luke O'Culigeen. Bounced between his growing love for Saidhbh and his need to avoid the dreaded O'Culigeen, Jim's life starts to unravel.

I hardly ever cry at books, can't remember the last time I did. But this one had me actually sobbing-crying at the end. That isn't to say its depressing, though it is sometimes hard to take. Usually I seem to be once removed from the world in a book, but Maher has taken down all the walls and you are right there. This coupled with a compelling story line means it is difficult to tear yourself away. The most incredible thing I think is the way Maher makes you care so much about Jim, he is a phenomenal writer just for that.

Ill give you this bit, so you can see why you love Jim as a narrator, and why the funny bits are worth the punches. Jim is at school, having a lesson on Wuthering Heights: 

'And Mr Clarke then puts down the book and looks around the room and asks us to imagine loving a girl so much that we'd want to bash our heads off a knotty tree trunk for her, even though she was dead. All the GAA lads snort at this, and say things like, She can knot my trunk any day of the week! Which is totally stupid and doesn't mean anything, but gets everyone laughing and kind of makes Mr Clarke stare into space and dream about a time when he might be teaching real-life boys and not a load of complete fecking eejits'

Thanks for my proof Little, Brown.

I have just started (meaning I have broken the spine and put my bookmark in the first page of) 'Telling the Bees' by Peggy Hesketh.

Binocular Vision, Edith Pearlman

These short stories are careful, quiet, thoughtful. Some are gorgeous. They're like photographs in that you get a sense of something, but the back story is left up to you. I love short stories for this, and these seem more at ease than others I've read. Pearlman seems to me to be imagining and testing. It has taken me a while to read them as you kind of need to let them breathe before starting the next one.

One of the best I think was If Love Were All (sounds mushy from the title, promise it isn't). Sonya finds herself in London during WWII, helping find homes for displaced children. She is a drifter, doesn't really seem to know what to do with herself and doesn't want to settle. The tale plays out and ends, and then the next story Purim Night follows Sonya as well, which is surprising and you get the feeling you don't want to know, you want to leave her at the start of something and not find out how it goes, but then obviously curiosity gets the better of you.

The only criticism I have to make is that I don't think books of short stories should be allowed to contain more than about 5 stories. No matter how good they are they get samey after a while. I don't seem to have the will power to read a few and then leave the rest because I want to know - and then regret it.

Thanks Pushkin Press for my copy!

Reading The Fields by Kevin Maher now, which is heartbreaking.

The Lifeboat, Charlotte Rogan

This is a good one, intelligent and questioning.

The Empress Alexandra sinks after an explosion, en-route from Liverpool to New York City. The story is told from the point of view of Grace, a young woman who ended up in one of the lifeboats and is now back in America, on trial for her life. 

We hear about the trial and the ordeal in the overcrowded lifeboat (it apparently holds 40 people, but is dangerously overladen with 39) The author is asking what is acceptable (and lawful?) behaviour when you are trying to survive in a situation where some have to die for others to live. 

Charlotte Rogan doesn't dictate the answers to the questions she is asking, she respects the reader and just asks us to think. In the same way there are small mysteries and gossips in the book, like why the ship sank and the motives and natures of the other people in the boat (and Grace herself, she is questionable and we hear everything from her subjective point of view.) Rogan never reveals the 'truth', we just hear rumours and have to make our own minds up. Really refreshing and enjoyable.

Thanks Virago for my copy!

I'm reading a couple of things at the moment - Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman which is a book of short stories (as a rule I love short stories) and The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger (as a rule he is interesting but vaguely annoying)