Summer holiday beach reading or just sitting around at home on a warm summer evening reading, here are four books you may like to have in your hand.
Of the 321 books shortlisted for the Booker Prize over its 53-year history, A Little Life became, and has remained, my favourite. Published in 2015, it tells the story of Jude St Francis and his three close friends, Willem Ragnarsson, Jean-Baptiste (JB) Marion and Malcolm Irvine. The friendship between these four main characters forms the heart of the story over a period of several decades. The book opens with flatmates Jude and Willem moving into a New York apartment.
There are eight or ten additional, significant characters in the story which has perfect pace and is written in beautiful prose. The architecture of the book is captivating and compelling. Add to this the outstanding quality and depth of characterisation and you have the adhesive which binds this complex and difficult, sometimes shocking and brutal but profoundly moving and rewarding, novel. Jude is a complex man. He is capable of great empathy and an almost spiritual connection with those whom he loves and cherishes. Intellectually gifted, he will become a successful lawyer. Skilfully and carefully employing flashbacks to former times, Hanagihara tells of Jude’s early life from foundling, raised by monks, and his abduction and horrific experiences at the hands of the self-serving Brother Luke. Later, the young Jude meets the seemingly friendly and helpful Dr Traylor, only to be imprisoned and shockingly mistreated. Both Luke and Traylor are key people in the story: they are responsible, in turn, for Jude’s addiction to self-harm and to the frequent episodes, throughout his life, of crippling, debilitating pain and seizures.
A brief but important episode involves Ana, a social worker, who treats Jude with great kindness and encourages him to go to college. Through Ana a most important aspect of Jude’s nature is revealed: the feeling of care, fondness and love he imbues in many people.
Willem and Jude’s relationship is the most significant in the book. From their early friendship, through a brief sexual involvement, to the bitter sweet, tender and loving reaction which the identification of Jude’s self-harm invokes in Willem, the interplay between their characters is elegantly scripted and tactfully worked into the wider story.
Dr Andy Contractor is Jude’s medical doctor and close friend. He is the only person to whom Jude truly reveals the extent of his self-harm. The anguish Contractor experiences, as he battles with his obligation to treat Jude as a patient, dealing with the, sometimes, life-threatening consequences of Jude’s persistent self-abuse is an intrinsically key part of the story, which is brilliantly developed by Yanagihara.
There are several major shocks in the novel. A fatal car crash has a counterpoint in the reader’s slow burning realisation of what will happen to Jude. I find that I have acquired an enduring fondness for Jude, flawed and disturbed as he might be, he is a truly memorable creation from this talented young writer. A Little Life has had a profound effect on me and I frequently find myself thinking of Jude and by extension, the wider story and main characters of A Little Life. It deserves to be called a brilliant novel.
Robert Jackson
Known as a writer of war novels (his best-selling book being Pilot Error) David Spiller’s most recent book Desert War Nurse is set in Egypt and culminates in the Battle of Alamein, 1942. What makes this novel different is that it focuses on the medical teams that tried to patch up the fallen soldiers. The central character is Sara Cox and we first meet her as a nurse at the London Hospital in 1940, but she doesn’t stay there for very long. Circumstances and brave decisions take her into the very heart of war. We join Sara as she attends dinners and dances of the officers stationed in Cairo where she meets eligible, or not so eligible, young soldiers. We live her fears and hopes but also get some inside gossip about some of the real-life generals who were stationed there during the war.
This book is meticulously researched but details are woven seamlessly into the story as Spiller brings to life the everyday fears and boredom of war as well as the intensity of being a medic at the bloody centre of vicious battle. Available from Amazon, Desert War Nurse is available as a Kindle edition as well as in paper.
Karisa Krcmar
What do a lonely pensioner, a depressed bank manager and a man dressed as a rabbit have in common? A lot more than at first meets the eye.
In a small Swedish town on New Year’s Eve, a group of people viewing an apartment are taken hostage by a figure in a ski mask who had foolishly attempted to rob a cashless bank and who is really not having a good day. Over the course of the evening, the hostages and their captor discover they have far more in common than they first thought, and that several of their paths had begun to intertwine ten years previously when the death of a stranger sparked a chain of events that brought their fates together.
Anxious People is certainly a novel to be devoured – although perhaps not in public, due to the author’s uncanny ability to bring you to both laughter and tears with a click of his fingers. Backman beautifully captures the highs and lows of life and love and how the choices we make often have longerlasting effects than we can ever dream of. His bittersweet narrative takes you deep into the psyche of each of his well-crafted
characters and is a stunning portrayal of the similarities and differences between old and young, hope and despair and, perhaps most importantly, intelligence and idiocy.
Genevieve Silk
This is the latest novel by the prolific author Anne Tyler. After suggesting her writing days were numbered, Tyler went on to write a couple of Booker prize listed novels (The Spool of Blue Thread 2015 and Redhead by the Side of the Road 2020) and very recently this little gem.
The book follows the Garrett family through six decades, focusing on the actions and characteristics of the family members and the ripples that these create for future generations. Mercy and Robin have three children, Alice, Lily and David. Alice finds herself having to give her young sister the attention she needs as a consequence of their distant mother’s longing and desire to become a painter. A family rift then separates the sisters. An unspoken event on a family holiday seriously affects the relationship of Robin and his son; details are revealed later in the text.
Mercy’s desire to paint results in her slowly and surreptitiously leaving her husband to take up residence in a nearby studio, only for them to be temporarily reunited in a very poignant chapter where they see their marriage and relationship over 50 years as if for the first time.
This book is about families, yours and mine, the characters contained within them and the events occurring over the years. If you know Anne Tyler you will know this is her forte. This book though, feels different. The writing is spare and the time period covered is vast. And yet Tyler manages to focus effortlessly, sometimes humorously and so precisely on the characters and consequences that you cannot fail to see that her skill has not faded and is, in fact, more defined. If you are new to this author then I envy you. There are 24 novels for you to enjoy, some of which we have in the library and others available to order through Leicestershire County Council Libraries.
Catherine Holmes (Barrow Community Library)