Life must be filled up

Death is a Word, Hazel Holt
Player One, Douglas Coupland
Taken at the Flood, Agatha Christie
Before the Rains , Dinah Jefferies
Murder Underground, Mavis Doriel Hay
Defectors, Joseph Kanon
Miss Marple’s Six Final Cases and Two Other Stories, Agatha Christie
The Revolving Door of Life, Alexander McCall Smith
Slow Horses, Mick Herron
Last Fling, Sue Gee
Dead Lions, Mick Herron
( opinions )

Not much of a Mayday outside, so I thought I might as well stay indoors and write up my recent reading.
Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh
The State of Grace , Rachael Lucas
A Very English Scandal , John Preston
Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love , James Runcie
The Fledgeling , Frances Faviell
The House on the Rhine, Frances Faviell
Crooked House, Agatha Christie
A Harp in Lowndes Square, Rachel Ferguson, abandoned
My Family and other Animals, Gerald Durrell
The Durrells of Corfu , Michael Haag
Golden Hill, Francis Spufford. ‘A Tale of Old New York’.
Thin Air, Sue Gee
( reviews )

The last book by Margaret Drabble I reviewed was The Pure Gold Baby, which I liked very much. I see I read it over a weekend. Her most recent novel, The Dark Flood Rises, took me much longer and is the reason I haven’t read many books this month. There it sat on the table and there I sat on the sofa not really wanting to pick it up again. This is because it’s all about ageing and dying, which is a pretty depressing subject for someone my age.

The main character, Fran, is in her seventies but still employed and hyperactive. Her work involves inspecting living facilities for the elderly, a useful way in to the main topic of the book. There is a large cast of characters, mostly comfortably off and many with a literary background. The sometimes tenuous connection between them all is very cleverly woven into the story. It’s a very clever book, written in Drabble’s characteristic style (give me a paragraph from one of her novels and I bet I could guess the author), and absolutely full of literary allusions which I think would pass many people by.

Drabble ponders ways of dealing with age: Fran busily fills every minute while her ex Claude (who is dying) gives in and makes himself as comfortable as possible. The book raises many questions for which Drabble provides no answers. Is it better to die young and avoid old age altogether? Can religion provide consolation? Is life so worth living that it should be clung on to? Call no man happy until he is dead. is quoted at least twice. It’s a good book but one which offers no cheer or hope.

At the market on Saturday, I bought some of those facsimile Crime Club editions of Agatha Christie novels. It was a relief to finish TDFR and turn to Poirot, where a body is just a puzzle and nothing you need care about.

In other news, Winifred Peck's Bewildering Cares is currently free for the Kindle.

My main read at the moment is Few Eggs and no Oranges the Diaries of Vere Hodgson 1940 -45. I was delighted to pick this up for a pound at the market and looked forward to reading it. But I’m finding it really hard going! While still ploughing through it I’ve managed to read five other books. The best of these was Starter for Ten by David Nicholls. I loved the film and liked the book a lot, finding it funny and sad. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did One Day but that’s a good thing. It’s always rather sad when an author writes a brilliant debut novel and then disappoints. Improvement, that’s what we want.

I’ve read three of the books in this Agatha Christie omnibus, all for the first time. I liked A Murder is Announced best, because of all the clues in it and the way Miss Marple is in on the action from quite early on. As with Miss Silver, I don’t like her to appear suddenly at the end of the story and solve the mystery where the Met’s finest have failed.

Then there’s Debbie Macomber. In my opinion, best selling Ms Macomber can’t write for toffee. What she can do is tell a story, in a rather plodding way, and I find it hard to resist chicklit which is focused on knitting. The first in the series I’m reading on and off is The Shop on Blossom Street. The main character, Lydia, now free of cancer, opens a yarn store on Blossom Street and soon gets involved in the lives of a group of women who all have Problems. It’s wonderful how knitting sorts them out. A Good Yarn goes even further, with pretentious philosophical quotes from famous knitters heading up each chapter. There’s even a complete Nancy Bush sock pattern! The formula is the same as in the first book: each character has a story and each is helped by knitting. I am never, ever going to knit socks on two circular needles; give me four dpns every time. I do rather like reading about people knitting, though, so in spite of my criticisms I’m about to start Wednesdays at Four. Confusingly, some of Macomber’s books have different titles here and in the States. For instance, I liked the sound of Susannah’s Garden, only to find that it was Old Boyfriends, which I’d already read.

On the Kindle I’m reading Berry & Co. by Dornford Yates. Yes I’ve read it before and yes, I have a hard copy but it was a free download and the stories are exactly the right length for bedtime reading. Kindle update soon.