The Typees, Herman Melville

Typee tells the story of sailors who desert ship on islands in the South Sea and their contact with the ‘primitive’ people there. It is part adventure story, part amateur anthropological study, and very of it’s time.
Melville slips into long passages of description which can get very tedious, but on the whole it is a good read, all the more interesting as it is based on Melville’s own experiences.

The Western Wind, Samantha Harvey

A mystery of a man having disappeared, probably drowned, told through the eyes of the village Priest. The novel moves backwards in time and deftly reveals both the character of the narrator and the answer to the mystery. The Priest is flawed but a good man and is compared to the over-zealous Dean; a medieveal chief inspector to the Priest’s detective. The novel is pre-occupied with the idea of forgiveness, both from a god, a community and self-forgiveness, it explores mistakes and sins- all though the internal monologue of the narrator´s empathetic, medieval mindset. Rich and compelling, full of questions.

The Enchanted April, Elizabeth Von Arnim

This is a completely captivating read. Four women (strangers) end up renting a small castle in Italy for the month of April. Arnim shows how being submerged in sunshine and beauty, and being away from anyone who knows them, allows the women to heal and blossom. The novel is very romantic and has an improbable fairytale ending but it is satisfying and uplifting. 

The Enchanted April has a lot to say about life; how people drift into being a certain way, become who they are treated as or flourish under attention and interest and how taking yourself out of your life for a while can give perspective and potentially avert or reverse a crisis. It is based in truth; Arnim went to stay with a friend, in Italy for April after the breakup of her marriage and it is this wish for healing that really comes across in the novel. 

Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton

Alderton is a journalist and podcaster, here she talks about her teenage years and her twenties; the ideas she had about love at various points in her life and the situations that changed or augmented those ideas. She questions the way we see ourselves and how that is shaped by the world and popular culture and how self acceptance affects the way you can function. Alderton has warmth and an exuberant and pictoral way of writing which means the book doesn't at all feel like navel gazing, but honest discussion.

Everything I know about love is heartbreaking, joyful and hopeful. The undying love in the book is between Alderton and her close girlfriends, and the book points out a lack of importance shown to friendship in society, she makes a case for being as proud of an ability to keep an intimate and long lasting friendship as for a long lasting partnership or marriage. A warm, entertaining and nourishing read.

The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A thought provoking collection of short stories. Some have the same themes, of displacement, racism, judgement and the way people deal with the circumstances they have been delt. It's clear that Adichie is writing from her experience and there are frustrations played out in the stories; many of her female characters are constantly and consistently patronised.

The stories are never repetitive and always seem to linger. Adichie writes a sense of place and ambience so well that sometimes it isn't the stories (in terms of plot) that stay with you, but a sense of a character's experience, Similar to personal memories, emotions are recalled.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman

I was blown away by this book - it was a gift and I was expecting something more vacuous. It is brilliantly written. The central character has trouble fitting into the world and Honeyman makes us see why people can't bond with her, but shows the reader someone completely relatable. Oliphant makes hilarious, cutting observations which make the book a joy, even though the central themes are heavy. 

Primarily the novel is about loneliness - how a functioning young woman with a job can go home on a Friday evening and not speak to anyone until she goes back to work on Monday. She is disdainful of her colleagues who openly make fun of her and through the descriptions of her clothes and flat she doesn't seem to have any outward personality.

Oliphant's story is dramatic and in some ways this is annoying. I can see why Honeyman made that decision, though I feel it was a pragmatic one - for publishers and bookshops. She makes the point she wanted to and it is brilliant to read something so affecting and empathy-inducing, though it doesn't take dramatic circumstances to make someone disconnected from the world and unable to find a place and their people. Also, I think on some level everyone both struggles with loneliness and somehow contributes to another's sense of it. Having said that, Honeyman has begun conversations and opened thinking paths with a novel that has a weight and joy to it. 

The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton explores upper class society in late 19th Century America. She is powerfully critical of almost all who are, or aspire to be in and around, that social circle. Through Lily Bart she shows a woman born into a high society family who ended up with very little money. Her upbringing left her with social skills and a sense of entitlement, as well as a fear of living without luxury.  

Wharton presents Edith as a figure we should feel empathy for. She is charming and through her tightrope existence she exposes the hypocrisies and unnecessary, arbitrary rules of the class. Bart is both relatable and exasperating, she is in a constant state of ambivalence; seeing the society for what it is and priding herself on being able to manipulate it's members, though completely unable to commit to being one of 'them' - though that is what she desperately wants.

It is a good read, though the ending is a little dramatic and not as interesting as it could have been - a product of it's time perhaps.