Lucy
Angsty, foody memoirs are my thing. This goes on a shelf with Heartburn and Crying in HMart, although the focus here is more angst, less food. Ree writes introspectively about her marriage and it's messy breakdown, just hours before the first Covid lockdown, her dating and eventual self discovery during the pandemic. Her food and love for food shine, as does her mental health journey.
A short collection of short stories centred around a young woman Flick and her family as they navigate post earthquakes Christchurch, new relationships, aging and aftershocks. As with most collections I found this to be a mixed bag but the characters are well realised and the city, complete with liquifaction and cones feels like a character in its own right.
As always, Stephen Daisley writes blue collar men - in this case shearers in WA in the 1950s, so very very well. The young shearer Lew, his older mentor Painter Hayes, the farmer Drysdale, the station cook Jimmy and the dingo hunter Smith are all painted in delicate, intimate brush strokes that show the men as they are and also the forces that shape them.
Another trademark of Daisley's writing is the lack of punches he pulls when describing the realities of life. In Traitor and A Better Place, Daisley describes the horrors of war on the men that fought in them, and here those horrors are shown again in the PTSD that several characters live with and how that shapes their lives, but the realities of farming life, in the stark hardship of the arid areas of Western Australia are brutally described too.
The other main character in Coming Rain is a dingo bitch that is being tracked through the scrub because she killed a young sheep. She and Lew are similar in many ways - very smart and clever, but also young and vulnerable. This relationship was my favourite part of the book.
I love Daisley's brutal and uncompromising writing style very much and I look forward to reading many more.
What a cracker book! The Year of the Locust starts off as a traditional spy novel, with a Denied Access Areas spy, Kane, travelling to Iran to meet a contact who can give the CIA information on a new terrorist cel. This part of the story takes most of the first 3/4 of the book and is a rollicking read. But then it gets weird, with a magical submarine, a time slip and zombie aliens... And then the ending is excellent, deep inside a Russian no go zone. All in all a non stop, intelligent, well planned thriller. 5 stars.
At the heart of it, this book is a very human story, and perhaps that's why I didn't love it like I loved her husband's books. Helen seems to swing between loving and promoting her lifestyle, and feeling overwhelmed by it all, which ofcourse, is totally normal. I didn't love the intensity to which she promotes eating meat, but again, she is a farmer, ofcourse she believes her way of life is best and I can't fault her for that.
Overall I found the book to be a bit disjointed and patchy in places, but really enjoyed the farming parts and the honest way she talks about her life.
Interesting concept. I wish there had been less ‘characters' though. Some chapters were immersive if short while others were dull and a little tedious.
I picked up A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom based on a list of books to read if you loved Cloud Cuckoo Land and while I can see why it made the list, the millennia spanning ideas, it lacked the intimacy and personal nature of CCL.
A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks does a similar concept with more fluidity and less chaff
