Welcome to this week’s blogpost. Here’s our roundup of your comments and photos from the last week.
“Now, here is someone who can write,” says Larts. Who? Sebastian Barry, author of A Thousand Moons:
The novel, like his other writing, is easy to read, fluent and completely in character. Yet it is so tightly packed with drama. Barry has created such tension that I am compelled to read on. Is there going to be a vengeful slaughter? Will there be a tragic finale? Justice - is that possible? This is a complex, tightly packed novel written in an authentic, clear manner. Wonderful stuff, as usual, from Mr Barry.
Three Apples Fell From The Sky by Narine Abgaryan has impressed safereturndoubtful:
In the remote village of Maran, high in the Armenian mountains in the 1920s, Anatolia Sevoyants lays down ‘to breathe her last’; at 58 she has already exceeded life expectancy of the day. She has had a tough life, lived through a powerful earthquake, the famine of the winter of 1918-19 which took more than half of the village, including all of its children, and the war, which we know nowadays as the Armenian Genocide. But this is not the end of her life, nor is it for the village, which has barely survived the hunger, suffering and infertility. This is a beautifully told story of resilience, and how to make sense of tragedy … Abgrayan’s prose, and its wonderful translation (Lisa Hayden), capturing all with its gripping imagery - lush lands of pomegranates, apple trees, and baked bread.
Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History Of Russia by Orlando Figes is “magisterial”, according to vermontlogger:
Perhaps more accurately A Cultural History of the Literate Classes of Russia. Figes does his best to show us how life was lived by the serfs and the peasants. No doubt for want of sources this is almost always as viewed from outside and above, by their owners and employers and other observers… Still less do we hear about the factory workers.
With those limitations, this is a magisterial study of what it has meant to be Russian. It brims with knowledge of a mass of interpenetrating influences ... For me it was an education, and not too heavy-going, despite the length. It is free of the contentious outbreaks that mar “A People’s Tragedy.” As a general survey, it is surely unbeatable.
RickLondon was inspired by TLS readers and the Backlisted podcast to read Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women.
What a joy it is. I love books that evoke that drab sense of post-war Britain, from the rationing to the buildings left in rubble. It seems like in the 50s that everything was a shade of brown and grey, and this book is perfectly ensconced in that time.
I wrote a few weeks ago that I’ve never quite agreed with the assertion that Elizabeth Taylor was a 20th century Jane Austen; I love both but just don’t really see the resemblance. Yet I think Pym could be more justly awarded that epithet. I think both Pym and Austen have a reputation for comedy that is benign, but that is actually more cutting than appearances might suggest.
AbsoluteBeginner76 has enjoyed Elizabeth Stoddard’s 1862 novel The Morgesons:
The sentences are sharp and direct, there are very few long narrative paragraphs, although the prose is as sophisticated as many of her contemparies. Life of a congregationalist (broadly Puritan) family is centered around the church, the idea of “revivals” and the sombre elders of the community. Various silent, brooding grandfathers and po-faced aunts. While not a landscape narrative novel, the simple direct descriptions of the sea, rocks and fields of coastal Massachusetts fit the novel well. I recommend it to all.
Captain_Flint has just finished The Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler:
A comic novel about the misadventures of the quirky residents of the Emma Lazarus retirement home for Jewish people in the New York of the mid 70s… devoid of literary pretensions, The Prince of West End Avenue is a humorous foray into the antics of an NYC geriatric institution via the colourful personalities of its occupants, their romantic affairs and amorous adventures, which provide numerous occasions for lighthearted mockery and comedic representation. I can almost guess this novel inspired the tone of one of the episodes in Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. One only wishes the book to be longer and the narrative a bit more developed.
Finally, GELBuck has tackled one of the big ones, Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo:
It is quite outstanding! This time I let the story wash over me without worrying too much initially about making sense of the time shifts and multiple viewpoints. Eventually it coalesces and the grand sweep of Conrad’s vision and his intricately managed plot become clear … This magnificent novel rather eclipses everything else I have read recently.
It also eclipses most other things written in the last 150 years ... Arguably.
Interesting links about books and reading
Simon Armitage on Desert Island Discs.
The US Authors Guild write an open letter asking newspapers to keep covering books, now more than ever.
In 1948, Stephen Spender wrote for the New York Times Book Review about Albert Camus’s The Plague.
Against consolation: reading dark materials in Covid-19 quarantine.
The digital Hay Festival launches on 18 May.
A reminder that Ron Charles’ Book Club newsletter in the Washington Post is a continual source of wisdom and interest.
If you’re on Instagram, now you can share your reads with us: simply tag your posts with the hashtag #GuardianBooks, and we’ll include a selection in this blog. Happy reading!
