Art, Simon Schama

I thoroughly enjoyed this, the intro looks at art in general but the rest focuses on the life of Caravaggio. Schama is incredibly engaging and Caravaggio's life played out like a Greek tragedy. Schama entwines the story with detailed descriptions of a few of his works and gives us insight, context and drama. Gorgeous.

 

The Eye of Childhood, Short Stories

These were great stories and I loved them, I was expecting some of them to be a little dark, but I was genuinely shocked at how horrible a couple of them were. 

Beautiful World, Where are You, Sally Rooney

There were some things I liked about this, in terms of the characters and their relationships with themselves and each other it was great, nuanced and realistic and intriguing. 

However the story is interspersed with emails between the two main characters, and these I found forced and self absorbed. They seemed like thinly veiled opinions of the author, unconvincing and should have been a series of essays, published apart and made more well rounded. I think they did little to augment the characters, or at least didn't tell us anything that couldn't have been shown, and I found them clunky and distracting. 

Speckled throughout the novel are also vignettes of the landscape, maybe a little on the nose regarding the title, and gave the impression that Rooney was writing with TV in mind.

On the whole I enjoyed the story, but not one of the best.

La Ciudad de las Bestias, Isabel Allende

I read this as a kid and I remember being blown away by the magic of it. It seems so realistic and possible, and then melts into a fantasical world. It was lovely to read it again through the light fog of a second language. The images and impressions I remembered were still there, and it is a gorgeous novel. 

The Summer Book, Tove Jansson

A gorgeous wander though days or episodes of a summer (or multiple summers?) on a remote island off the coast of Finland. A grandmother, her grandaughter and a silent son/father. It is gorgeous, human and funny and deep with unreasonable emotions from both sides. Beautiful. 

 

White Teeth, Zadie Smith

I really like Zadie Smith and have read a lot of articles about and by her, and watched her speak on various topics, but this is the first novel of hers I've read. I thought it was excellent. The way it weaves stories through the different parts and knits them together at the end is very skillful. The novel follows two men, their wives and their children (and meanwhile weaves in the stories of their ancestors) as they navigate Britain. It is a satisfying novel in terms of story but also Smith has so much to say about 'multicultural Britain' and about people in general in terms of experience, fear, beliefs, character, relationships. It is huge.

The Captain and the Enemy, Graham Greene

I alaways forn Graham Greene a bit hit and miss, some of his books I have loved and others I really haven't liked. This one was good, but I thought it lacked something. The narrator is plucked out of boarding school by 'The Captain' and goes to live with The Captain's sort-of partner, to keep her company. As a young man the narrator is re-living his experience from then on and eventually goes to find the Captain. There is some intrigue, but nothing is ever very clear, this is definitely intentional on the part for Greene, but I think some engagement is lost because of it.