this week

Is spring just around the corner?

I don’t know where the last week went either! It’s proving to be quite a good practice to take some time to reflect on what the week has actually held, otherwise I run the risk of them all blurring into each other and forgetting all the small, sweet things, the little pockets of joy. The things that might seem inconsequential at the time but later I’ll be pleased weren’t lost.

I also enjoyed doing a little ink painting of my blue jug of pink tulips.

Favourite experience/s of the week

At the risk of sounding like a complete nerd, I did enjoy my annual review on Wednesday. The enthusiasm and support for my PhD project at my university is beyond anything I could have hoped for and always spurs me on. Which was a good thing, as I had to spend the rest of the week preparing my exegesis draft for my supervisors to read. I felt oddly scared sending that to them on Friday evening - more scared than I’ve been sending them creative work. Is it because, ironically, I am taking more risks with the exegesis, putting myself out there that little bit more? It was an interesting thing to think about and energy that I hope to transfer over to the creative work too.

I also loved my Hidden Nerve lecture on Thursday evening, which was given by Amanda Lohrey. It’s not often that you get to hear thoughts on the craft and pearls of wisdom from a writer of Amanda’s stature (though she was my lecturer for one of my undergraduate units 20 years ago, and I so wish I had been more aware of what a great writer she is back then!) so my hand could barely keep up as I tried to scribble down everything she said. The first thing she said was that there are absolutely no rules in writing - “except don’t be boring. But even that is problematic and subjective too!” she laughed. The overriding message I took away from everything she said was that every book is a gamble, reading is a deeply subjective experience and therefore you can only ever really write for yourself. Write the book or page that you find interesting.

Reading

Last week’s bedtime reading was The Bloomsbury Cookbook which, while fascinating, gave me some very peculiar dreams one night which I didn’t fancy a repeat of (!), so I have switched to some favourite spiritual books on Kindle over the last week, which get my mind into a peaceful space before sleep (always advised). I’ve been reading What Helps: Sixty Slogans to Live By, Coming Home: Refuge in Pureland Buddhism, and Just As You Are: Buddhism for Foolish Beings, all by Satya Robyn whose writing is the equivalent of a soothing hand on the brow.

I started reading one of my Persephone books I bought in London - Random Commentary by Dorothy Whipple, who I am a huge fan of and on the pleasures of whose work I have waxed lyrical many times before. As I suspected, I’m finding it fascinating and so very entertaining. This week’s quote of the week is from this book.

Sydney Review of Books: In The Garden with Amanda Lohrey (preparation for this week’s Hidden Nerve!)

LitHub: Winning the Game You Didn’t Even Want to Play

Bustle: What Do We Owe Each Other?

I feel certain I read more than this but, to be honest, the week has passed in a blur of writing and rewriting my exegesis, cutting words, putting them back in, switching things around and trying to entice some order out of the chaos!

Listening to

My “writing beats”, general “for writing” and inner winter playlists were on repeat, as well as a lot of blues, for some reason. Alabama Shakes was in there a lot, particularly this song. Nick Cave and Ludovico Einaudi were also constant companions, but that’s pretty standard!

Best Friend Therapy: People-pleasing - why do we do it? Is it really nice to be nice? How do we say no? Hooray, this podcast is back with another season and yet again delivers some profound and illuminating messages. I had to stop the washing up, take off the gloves and press rewind and listen to one section several times over, such was the power of what Emma had said.

The Imperfects: Glenn Robbins - Listening To The Voice In Your Head - I listened to this last week and loved it so much I listened to it again! I’m also halfway through the episode with Dr Emily, The Pesky Hedonistic Treadmill.

Vegan Sunday Roast

Eating

We had a delicious Sunday roast - I used up a box of vegan stuffing I bought sometime in 2020 when I was looking for things in the supermarket that would last a long time if indeed we were at the beginning of the apocalypse. The stuffing was made and then wrapped in puff pastry with some piquant sun-dried tomatoes. To accompany the roast, we had roast potatoes, sprouts and boozy carrots (carrots cooked in foil in the oven with white wine and herbs). I made enough for a crowd so we had leftovers on Thursday night when we were both working until late, which was nice as it felt like someone else had done the cooking - well, Past Phil had!

Creamy roast pumpkin risotto

There was also a delectable roast pumpkin risotto which has almost overtaken tomato risotto as my favourite this winter. It tastes so creamy and indulgent.

Vegan banana bread - made in the new air fryer!

Sticky crispy cauliflower, which I served with fried rice - I really didn’t expect this to work, seeing it was baked in the oven. But it was brilliant, and the cauliflower pieces were beautifully crisp!

Cauliflower stalk and lentil tacos - I used broccoli and cauliflower stalks (and cauliflower leaves) for this recipe and subbed kidney beans for the lentils - very delicious and no waste! We had these in wraps with cashew queso, which I’ve made many times this year. Totally planning a taco mac and cheese with the leftovers!

Picking / growing

Winter greens are going strong in my mostly dormant garden. Spinach, chard, celery - the latter is particularly abundant. There’s a little kale. The garlic shoots are coming through. The lemons on my tree are starting to turn yellow. I have also spotted some nettles which I’m allowing to grow wild and which I’ll turn into a nettle soup at some stage over the next few weeks.

Watching

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Blu-Ray) - Tom’s choice! Not normally my sort of thing but I didn’t hate it. A plot full of highly improbable things but good fun! Fast-paced, stylishly shot and Simon Pegg was a real scene stealer and kept things lively.

C’mon C’mon (iTunes) - Mike Mills is one of our favourite directors and his latest didn’t disappoint! Shot in black and white, which naturally invites you to pay close attention (a theme of the film), this film follows the story of Johnny, a radio journalist whose current project is travelling around the US interviewing children about their lives and their opinions on the world and the future. One evening, in his hotel room, he randomly calls his sister, who he hasn’t spoken to since their mother died. It turns out Viv, his sister, needs his help - she has a young son Jesse whose father, her estranged husband, is mentally ill. She needs to try and get him into treatment and asks Johnny if he could come out to LA to look after Jesse for a few days. Those few days turn into a few weeks and, under pressure from his boss to get back to work, Johnny ends up taking Jesse back to New York with him temporarily. Johnny has spent a lot of time with children in his work but finds it’s a very different ball game being completely responsible for one, something he isn’t quite prepared for. He both marvels at Jesse and the way a child sees the world, and also finds caring for him 24/7 very frustrating. It’s a typical Mike Mills story in that it appears remarkably quotidian on the surface but there’s actually a lot going on. Mills’ oeuvre is very much centred around child/parent relationships and with this film, it takes a wider look at how children and adults relate to each other. With every scene, we are brought further and further into each character’s world, inviting empathy which I think is very much the message of the film. That and children are far, far wiser and observe much more than they are given credit for. I also love how intertextual Mills’ films are - there’s always part of a text (or several texts) read aloud that then informs your understanding of the characters’ cultural influences.

Quote of the week

“I’m not lost any more. I know what I have to do with my life. I have to write.” - Dorothy Whipple

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this post, or anything else, with me, please do! Stay well xx

my favourite reads of 2019

Another year over, and another favourite reads of the year post to write! But at least I’m not writing this in February or, as I did one year, August.

2019 was a wonderful reading year for me where I made up for being away from Australia for nearly 12 years and gulped down literature I had heard about but not managed to get my hands on - and I have only just scratched the surface! I feasted heartily on fiction and non-fiction alike. According to Goodreads, I read 108 books in 2019 - I’m sure I missed logging a couple (and I haven’t logged any I’ve read for my studies) - and of those 108:

• 2 were re-reads

• 57 were non-fiction

• 4 were poetry collections or plays (I thought I’d read more - clearly not!)

• 47 were fiction

• 10 were by men

• 98 were by women

• 5 were by women of colour.

I won’t lie, I’m surprised and really disappointed in myself for the last one, especially with the countless amazing indigenous writers in this country. I honestly thought it was more than that, as the five I read had a huge effect on me and I thought about them a lot - but that is hugely disproportionate. I clearly need to up my game in this regard to read more widely and beyond my own world view. It is something I will be more conscious of this year.

It was, as always, hard to choose my favourites of the year but I narrowed it down to these 11.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

My aunt gave me this book and also Normal People for my birthday. This was my pick of the two! It’s so compelling, thought-provoking and different. I was not the kind of 21-year-old that Conversations’ main characters are, but I was equally naive and self-righteous and this story about Frances, Bobbi and their “friends” brought it all back! All in all, it’s a very well-executed coming of age story and an interesting exploration of female friendships too. Rooney writes with the kind of restraint I can only dream of. Very worthy of the hype.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

A worthy winner of this year’s Booker Prize - this is a magnificent book that deserves to win every prize it’s eligible for! Girl, Woman, Other shines a light on contemporary Britain in a way I’ve rarely seen in other books - other reviews have described it like a choir of different women’s voices, and I think that’s very accurate! It reads like a beautiful prose poem, with a cast of fascinating characters, all of whom have a story of either racism, prejudice, abuse, misogyny or poverty (often all of them) which they fight to overcome. The writing is so visceral and poetic - you are in these characters’ shoes, hearts, heads and beds. And you won’t forget them in a hurry.

I learned a lot reading this book, not just about issues I have been privileged not to experience firsthand but about humanity. This book is a perfect example of how fiction is often the perfect vehicle for the greatest concerns of our time.

Barefoot Pilgrimage by Andrea Corr

A beautifully written memoir that you can see is actually trying to capture the feeling of memory, of remembering. The narrative is subtle in parts, but surprisingly revealing too. Andrea is a woman who owns her success but also her vulnerabilities. The story she shares in this book is mostly about what it’s like to not have your parents alive anymore, about the preciousness of life, and the desire to capture what you remember before you too are no longer here. If you’re a Corrs fan, you’ll adore it. But you’ll also enjoy it and be moved if you like to read memoirs that are a bit different and poetic. The Corrs’ last album Jupiter Calling has the same mood - trying to capture the beauty and pain of life in one container. Beautiful, and highly recommended.

Why You Are Australian: A Letter to My Children by Nikki Gemmell

This book was a much-needed companion in January 2019. Tom and I had been back in Australia for only a few weeks and I felt dazed and disoriented, like a time traveller. Not that we doubted the decision to move back here, not for a second, but the move brought up a lot of discomfort and a lot of things I hadn’t realised I still needed to face. Gemmell quotes Les Murray (being interviewed by Ramona Koval) quite early in the book - “I came back to go mad. That’s what you do if you’ve got old, unfinished business back in a place and you go back there, you’ll tend to deal with it. “ Oh how those words rang true.

In this book, Nikki Gemmell and her husband - Australians who had lived in the UK for over 10 years and now raising a young family - decide, after a series of life-altering events, that perhaps moving home is the answer. Nikki articulates so beautifully (better than I ever could) the ache for home, for the familiar, for space, for warmth, for family; and also the resistance and sadness when you start dismantling the home and life you chose and created for yourself, even though it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Nikki wants to give her children the carefree, idyllic childhood she had. And so they begin the process to return and decide to do a trial run, spending a few months in Australia with the children, enrolling them in schools, etc. Australia is still a wonderful place, and the children love it. But Nikki does find herself wrestling with what lies underneath Australia’s sun-drenched “she’ll be right mate” reputation - the ugliness of racism and overt nationalism, tall poppy syndrome, natural disasters - and has to consider whether the Australia she grew up in is now a thing of the past.

I felt so seen reading this book - the aspects of life in London that Nikki loved but that also drove her mad were also some of my biggest joys and frustrations; her yearnings for Australia were the same as mine, and the things that she found difficult and alienating when she returned have also been some of my experiences. It’s a nostalgic but honest and (as always) beautifully written book. Highly recommended for any returning expat!

Back, After The Break by Osher Günsberg

I was not expecting this to be one of my reads of the year, but on reflection it simply had to be. In 2018 I listened to an interview with Osher where he confessed to working on edits of this book in the cab to the studio! The interview was fascinating so when I saw the book at the library last summer I was curious to give it a read.

I wasn’t prepared for how compelling a book it is - this is honest, frank and brave writing. While some of Osher’s decisions and aspects of his lifestyle are not always easy to empathise with, many of the insights he has on his road to redemption I found very relatable.

I had tears in my eyes when he writes about reclaiming a sense of identity through changing his name. His stability and sense of worth have certainly been hard-won. This excellent, compulsively readable book shines a bright light on mental illness and works hard to dispel the stigma around it. It’s a very important book and one I am still thinking about nearly a year later.

The World Was Whole by Fiona Wright

In my attempt to read all the books on the Stella Prize longlist, I picked this one up in March last year - by the end of 2019 it was still one of the best books I’d read all year. This is a stunning collection of essays about life, chronic illness, friendship, love, family, animals, travel and belonging - and particularly the need to feel at home, in many senses of the word. I absolutely loved it and it made me seek out and read all of Fiona Wright’s work, particularly her poetry. She’s a wonderful writer.

The Woman Who Wanted More by Vicky Zimmerman

Charming, funny and uplifting, The Woman Who Wanted More is a wonderful read from a talented writer. It is a celebration of food and female friendship, full of insights about life, the choices we make and the effect those we encounter have on us. Heartbreak is always best remedied with food and with good friends, and this book shows why. It's an empowering reminder that life is full of opportunities, once we are open to them. And that admitting you've failed is "not really failure; it's the first step towards the future". Highly recommended!

The Bridge by Enza Gandolfo

A very relatable story about loss, grief, guilt, redemption, family and community. I could barely put it down - one night I just kept reading until the battery on my Kindle died. The characterisation is superb, I particularly liked Sarah, the court-appointed lawyer. The descriptions of Melbourne are spot on - I spent a lot of time in the parts of the city where the novel takes place and it was a pleasant trip down memory lane, despite the sadness of the story. Compulsive and moving reading, I highly recommend it.

The Priory by Dorothy Whipple

I am yet to read a Dorothy Whipple book that I don’t declare magnificent - she is a simply wonderful writer and probably one of the twentieth-century’s most under-appreciated. The main story of The Priory takes place around the crumbling estate of Saunby, which has been in the family for generations but now being run into the ground by Major Marwood whose main priority in life is cricket. He is reluctant to spend money on anything else, including his two grown daughters Christine and Penelope (who still live in the estate’s nursery!) and his spinster sister, Victoria. All of this changes when the Major decides it’s time he remarried. His new wife, Anthea, is determined to get her new home into some sort of order and does away with many relics of the estate’s former life - including the hapless cook Mrs Nall and the Major’s beloved cricket - and, finding herself pregnant with twins (to the Major’s great horror), decides Christine and Penelope must leave the nursery and engages a no-nonsense nanny Nurse Pye (reminiscent of Sister Evangelina in Call the Midwife!) to come and live with the family and help her with the new babies. Christine and Penelope are aghast and actively look for ways they might be able to escape. Unfortunately, as they didn’t have much of an education and therefore have little chance of getting decent jobs to support themselves, their only option is to get married themselves.

Behind the scenes - or below-stairs - are the lives of the servants at Saunby, equally interesting and full of drama. There’s a love triangle between the Major’s right-hand man Thompson, a former professional cricketer, and the two maids, sweet and sunny Bessy and the manipulative Bertha, which plays out very dramatically!

It’s a fascinating novel and entirely absorbing. I love Whipple’s stories for their remarkable insights into human nature and observations about the changing nature of life, and The Priory is no exception. It’s a treat to see the characters grow and change too as they adapt to their altered circumstances - some characters start off as admirable, earnest and well-meaning but turn out to be very selfish, and vice versa. This novel also explores the lack of options available for women at the time - if a marriage did not eventuate or, even worse, failed, things really could get very desperate (and indeed they do for some women in this book). I loved the ending, as it was so hopeful, though it was also tinged with sadness, knowing that the Second World War was just around the corner.

The Confession by Jessie Burton

Of her three novels, I think this is Jessie Burton's finest and the one I have most enjoyed so far. It's an intimate, intelligent and compelling novel that explores the lives of several different women. It takes place across two timelines - the early 1980s in London, LA and New York, and 2017-18 in London. The characters are well-drawn, believable and tender - Connie, in particular, is brought to life very well, I had visions of Eileen Atkins playing her in a TV adaptation if it goes that way! - and though it's an emotional and absorbing tale, there's also a lot of humour. Rose's nice enough but ultimately ineffectual boyfriend Joe with his burrito business Joerritos, for example, and the emotional strain of spending Christmas in the middle of nowhere with your strange in-laws!

While ultimately there is one big confession which the story builds towards, The Confession actually contains many of them. So many of the characters aren't telling the truth, to others or to themselves. But it is possible, they discover, to free yourself from the ghosts of the past. New beginnings are always possible - but you have to choose them. I actually found more sage life advice in the pages of this novel than I did in some motivational books I read last year. This is a novel I can see myself rereading, and I don't say that often. 

Bruny by Heather Rose

Another magnificent novel from Heather Rose - she never disappoints. I highly recommend reading the the prologue of this book with Ludovico Einaudi’s “Uno” on the stereo - it wasn’t a deliberate pairing on my part, but an accidental one, and it only heightened the tension evident in the first few pages! Bruny is quite a departure for Heather Rose in terms of subject matter - this is a political thriller about the smoke and mirrors world of modern governments and overdevelopment - but it also delivers what she’s always done best. And as a recently returned Tasmanian, I had a good laugh at the digs she makes at this state and its inhabitants (they are so true)! Bruny is a dystopian family drama that will make you think and probably weep. The world in it is all too recognisable. Most of all, it is a plea to us all to fight to protect the places we love.

***

So, reading goals for 2020 - try to do some non PhD reading (hard but essential for the maintenance of sanity) and read more widely. More diverse writers, more indigenous Australian writing. More poetry. I want to be challenged. If you have any recommendations, please let me know in the comments.

As always, I’d love to hear your favourite reads of the last year too!

PS: As I mention every year, any links to Amazon are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and end up making a purchase, I get a small commission. Many thanks for your support xx

my favourite reads of 2018

Books should always be accompanied by tea and homemade cake where possible.

In true Phil tradition, I wait until it is quite embarrassing to have a blog post with “2018” in the title to divulge my favourite reads of the last year. Also in my usual style, some of the best books were discovered and read in the final days of December, hence the long mulling over. But now I have decided and I hope you will enjoy hearing about my choices and maybe even be inspired to read them yourself. As always, I’d love to hear what your favourite reads of last year were too.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland

Full disclosure, Holly is a friend and I had been eagerly anticipating this book for years but I bought my own copy (which is the best way to support a friend who publishes a book! Buy it! Buy two! I speak from experience here) and was under no obligation to say nice things about it in public. But that is neither here nor there because I have nothing but nice things to say about it!

Lost Flowers is a read you won't forget in a hurry. Exquisitely written, this is a compelling story of grief, heartbreak, love, magic, wonder and redemption, with Australia's beautiful landscapes (bush, sea and desert) as the backdrop. Despite very dark subject matter, Holly has crafted a truly beautiful story that reads almost like a fairytale and brings it alive with luscious detail, particularly when it comes to Australia's native flowers, the vehicle through which young Alice Hart learns to communicate again after a violent family tragedy. 

But flowers can only say so much and the book's ultimate, powerful message is that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot run away from grief, from pain and from your past because it will always find you. There are some very dark times for Alice as she ignores danger signals time and time again - which is so unsettling as a reader, because you end up caring so much about her! - but Alice's story is, in the end, a hopeful one as she realises that facing pain and owning your story is the only way to move forward and claim your rightful place in the world. 

Books don't often move me in the way this one did. The storytelling is truly spectacular and the character of Alice Hart is the lost, frightened child seeking love and belonging that I think speaks to that part of all of us. Holly is a magical writer and I'd say this book is destined to become something of an Australian classic.

Someone At A Distance by Dorothy Whipple

I mentioned this book in my post about my love affair with Persephone Books which was well and truly rekindled in 2018. Someone At A Distance has probably been my favourite Persephone so far, and that is saying something, because they are yet to publish something I don’t enjoy!

Described as "a fairly ordinary tale about the destruction of a happy marriage", I was quite unprepared for how compelling and absorbing this tale would be. It's a novel all about relationships, how they form and also how they fall apart. Sometimes all it can take is 'someone at a distance' for that to happen. The novel follows what happens to this family when the husband/father is unfaithful, and the emotional devastation that has on everyone - there’s no great twist, per se, but the book’s genius and charm lies in how it explores the emotional lives of the characters, and how compassionately Whipple manages to do this. And I think Louise (the other woman) is by far the most repugnant character I’ve ever come across in literature. Dorothy Whipple was an extraordinary writer and I now want to read everything she ever wrote.

The Tuscan Cookbook by Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer

Stephanie’s Journal is one of my favourite books (it’s one of my mate Veggie Mama’s too!) - it is the diary Stephanie Alexander kept in the year 1997, which turned out to be a momentous one for her. She closed her famous restaurant in Melbourne, opened the Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder, and held three residential cooking schools in Tuscany with her friend Maggie Beer. I have read the journal countless times - at least once a year since I bought it off the sale table in Fullers Bookshop in 2001 sometime - but I had never read the cookbook that Stephanie and Maggie put out the year after the cooking schools, which naturally were full! Of course, it was published 20 years ago and it wasn’t easy to get a copy in the UK - but an Amazon secondhand seller came to rescue and I managed to get a copy that was signed by Stephanie herself! (I shall have to hope I run into Maggie sometime now that I’m back in Oz so she can sign it too!) It was such a treat to read this book after many years of imagining the cooking school, in the magical Tuscan countryside, and all the mouthwatering food they cooked. It has not only added to my enjoyment of one of my favourite books but it was a sumptuous read in its own right, with so many delicious recipes and ideas. So many recipes for cavolo nero, my favourite vegetable!

Home Cook by Thomasina Miers

I could not leave this book out of my favourites of the year, primarily because I cooked so much from it in 2018. Every recipe from this book that I’ve tried is an absolute winner. My favourite was the marmalade breakfast muffins, which I must have made every week for a couple of months, I just couldn’t get enough! When you’re an experienced cook it’s very rare when a book comes along that gives you new ideas and fresh energy to get into the kitchen and try some different things. Highly recommended!

The entire works of Diana Henry but particularly How To Eat A Peach and Food from Plenty

Diana Henry is fast becoming my favourite food writer. Her words are so evocative and poetic, you can practically smell what she’s cooking. This is a woman who loves food and has lived it. So many of the milestones in her life have a food story linked to it somehow, and I find this so interesting to read. Stories behind food and dishes, when they are told well, add greatly to my enjoyment of a recipe. I made quite a few dishes from How To Eat A Peach (which Tom got me for my birthday) over the long, hot summer we enjoyed in the UK last year and they were all excellent. It’s a lovely summery book, evidenced in the great variety of recipes for ice creams and sorbets (and such inventive combinations!). Perfect to sit with a cold glass of something indulgent and plan a dinner party with. Towards the end of the year, I noticed that nearly all Diana Henry’s books were 99p on Kindle for a few weeks, so I bought all of them (apart from the one entirely devoted to chicken, seeing I don’t eat it!). As with Thomasina Miers, it is rare for me to encounter a food writer that makes me want to actually cook their recipes as opposed to just soak up their exquisite prose.

Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E Stevenson

Also mentioned in my Persephone post and one of my favourites of theirs. Written in 1934 and hence reflecting the concerns of women at the time, without the financial security of marriage, Miss Barbara Buncle finds herself needing to supplement her already meagre income. She does what many people think will bring certain fame and fortune - write and publish a book! She writes a novel based on her village and all the people who live in it, thinking that changing names and writing it under a pseudonym will be sufficient to hide their true identities. To her huge surprise, her book (or John Smith’s book!) is a huge bestseller and her publisher wants a sequel, but lo and behold, all the villagers have read it, recognise themselves and their village immediately (which says it all, as some of it isn’t flattering!), are outraged and determined to find out who ‘John Smith’ is and make ‘him’ pay. No one suspects the dowdy and quiet Miss Buncle for a second, which is where all the hilarity ensues - but also makes an interesting observation that people often do have hidden lives and assumptions we make about others can so very often be wrong. It’s absorbing, intelligent and very charming.

84 Charing Cross Road / The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff

“I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: ‘It's there.’” Oh, this glorious book. What a treat. I’d wanted to read it for years - and on one sunny Sunday in September last year I read it, the whole thing (my edition included the sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street), and adored it. Do you ever read a book and as you’re reading it you know you’ve found a new favourite you’ll read again and again? That was this book for me. If you love London and books, I highly recommend it. It’s as charming and delightful as everyone says.

The Fortnight in September by R.C Sheriff

Also a Persephone book and an unusual one in that it was written by a man! But this was one of the most accomplished, most finely observed novels I have ever read. The premise is so simple - we follow the Stevens family on their annual two week holiday to the seaside in Bognor Regis. They are a typical middle-class 1930s family and have been going to the same B&B run by the same people for a very long time. Their holiday is as well-planned and thought out as their daily lives in South London, Mr Stevens has thought of everything down to the packing of the suitcases, the timings of the trains and which beach hut to hire for the best perspective. The B&B isn’t quite as comfortable as it used to be - slightly shabby, the landlady a little older and dottier - but the Stevens family do what they’ve always done and make the best of things. It’s an absolutely fascinating novel and so finely and accurately observed. Like I said, such a simple premise but the novel manages to capture all the big concerns of life within it - love, hope, disappointment, home, family, the passing of the years. I also loved how the very feeling of being on holiday is captured in this book - how the arrival at one’s destination is so anticipated and exciting, and then the days begin to roll by faster and faster and before you know it, the holiday is over and it’s time to go back home, to normal life. Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

I had been meaning to read this book for years and it felt poetic that I read it in November, during my last autumn in London. I seem to be enjoying novels that are more character studies, perhaps reflective of the direction my own writing is taking. In Quartet in Autumn, we meet four people who are colleagues sharing the same office - two men, two women, all of whom are nearing retirement age. The setting is London in the late 1970s and it’s an interesting study of loneliness and friendship, and how people’s inner and outer lives can be poles apart. Pym’s ability to write about the humdrum existences of these people without losing the reader at any point is quite incredible. I am studying her techniques intently! A writer of great tenderness and humour. I loved it.

One Day in December by Josie Silver

Instagram friends raving about this book + 99p on Kindle + 23 hours of flying from London to Melbourne = done deal! I wanted an absorbing, fun read for the London to Singapore leg of our journey home to Australia in December (ha!) and I got that and more with One Day in December. Wow. Good thing I was able to read the entire thing in one sitting because it is such a sweet, compelling and emotional story that I would have found it hard to put down otherwise.  I won't say anything about the plot - all I will say is that is it very, very rare for me to be moved to tears by a book. I cried a few times during the reading, but by the end I was a sobbing mess! Maybe it's because I was sleep deprived and emotional about returning home, who knows! But if you want a romantic and unputdownable holiday read that will really make you think about love, friendship, life and fate, I couldn't recommend this more highly.

The Empress of Australia: A Post War Memoir by Harry Leslie Smith

Harry Leslie Smith sadly passed away just as I was discovering his work late last year. I would highly recommend watching his speech at the Labour Party Conference in 2014. A man who lived through the depression of the 1930s, the Second World War and enormous social change throughout his lifetime, in his eighties and nineties Harry became a passionate political voice, speaking out about NHS cutbacks, benefits policy, political corruption, food poverty, the cost of education – and how the world his generation helped to build out of the rubble of depression, social inequality and the terror of war is slowly eroding. “Don’t let my past be your future,” he warned. This particular memoir was about life in Britain after he was demobbed from service in 1948 and attempted to make a life back in his hometown with his German wife. The attitude towards her was quite shocking (but I was also shocked to realise that it’s not dissimilar to attitudes towards immigrants and foreigners in modern day Britain! Very little has actually changed. Even the scene that takes place at peak hour in Paddington station when Harry and Friede are trying to get home from Gatwick was hauntingly similar to my experiences! But that’s a post for another day) and Harry’s valiant attempts to make a home for her are so noble and heartbreaking, but sadly it all unravels as Friede simply can’t adjust to the culture shock of post-war austerity Britain and Harry’s hopes of making a good life in working class Halifax fade rapidly. Eventually the story has a happy ending as they decide to emigrate to Canada on the ship from which this memoir derives its title. I read this as part of research for my novel, also set in 1948, and will refer to it often. What a brave, extraordinary man he was. I’m so glad he wrote his stories down.

Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales

One of the first books I borrowed from the library on landing in Hobart! In this book, journalist Leigh Sales interviews several people who have suffered or been involved in high-profile tragedies such as the Thredbo landslide and Port Arthur (I found that one the hardest to read) and how they coped with the trauma and attention that followed. After all, the days that these tragedies took place were just another ordinary day, to begin with. They woke up that morning having no idea by evening their lives would be forever altered. The interviews are powerful and honest. And alongside these very courageous testimonies is Leigh exploring the idea that none of us know when something will happen that changes everything. We have no ability to control these kinds of events happening to us, or our loved ones. We are all vulnerable. And if the worst does happen, what do you do then? Any Ordinary Day is such a compelling book about human capacity for resilience, courage, kindness and endurance. I wouldn’t recommend reading it before bed (!) but any other time you need to feel reminded of the resilience of human beings, the ability of communities to rally round and support each other, or just to feel nothing but unbridled gratitude for your life’s many blessings, this is a great read.

What books did you most enjoy reading in 2018?

PS: As I mention every year, any links to Amazon are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and end up making a purchase, I get a small commission. Many thanks for your support xx

my favourite persephone books

I've had a bit of a love affair with Persephone Books since I arrived in London. Their charming shop in Bloomsbury's Lamb Conduit Street is one of my favourite places to go when I feel like a treat. 

Persephone reprints "neglected fiction and non-fiction" by 20th century writers, mainly women, and the shop itself is an absolute haven for writers and book lovers. Not only are the books beautiful but there's always fresh handpicked flowers dotted about, vintage posters, bookmarks and other enchanting paraphernalia to get your imagination going. I never fail to feel inspired after visiting.

And, needless to say, I also never fail to leave the shop without a few books!

One of my favourite podcasts, Tea and Tattle, devoted an entire episode to discussing their favourite Persephone reads last year so I'd highly recommend you check out that episode if you're new to Persephone books and are wondering where to start, because it's quite an impressive catalogue. Many of Miranda and Sophie's recommendations are my favourites too, but they also mention some that I hadn’t thought to check out before - and as they both have great taste in books I’ll certainly be doing so.

The books themselves are also beautiful - as you can see in my main photograph, they are the most elegant shade of grey and look really lovely arranged together. Each book has its own individual endpaper and bookmark, usually a pattern related to the content of the book or the time of publication. Everything has been thought about with Persephone books, and it really shows. 

So I thought I'd share the Persephone books I've most enjoyed since I discovered them - and since my love affair was revived after listening to the Tea and Tattle episode! - but this is a mere drop in the ocean as I am nowhere near through the range. I have many more Persephones than the ones I’ve mentioned below, but I’ve enjoyed every book from them that I’ve read and we’ll be here all day if I list them all! So these are the ones that I think are great ones to start with, in my opinion. If you want some absorbing, well-written books to curl up with on a rainy day with a warm mug of something delicious, you can't go wrong with any of these.

Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski (Persephone no. 28)

This was the first book of Marghanita Laski's I've read and it's made me want to read everything she's ever written. I read it in one weekend and it was absolutely breathtaking. It was desperately sad at times, even depressing, as it follows a father's journey to try and find his missing five-year-old- son after the Second World War, but all in all, it is a stunning novel about loss and hope. I'd even go so far as to say it's a masterpiece. I would also highly recommend To Bed With Grand Music and Tory Heaven: or Thunder on the Right, also by Laski and published by Persephone, and they’re both brilliant. The latter feels particularly pertinent in a post-EU referendum Britain!

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple (Persephone no. 3)

This is probably my most favourite Persephone book (so far). Described as "a fairly ordinary tale about the destruction of a happy marriage", I was quite unprepared for how compelling and absorbing this tale would be. It's a novel all about relationships, how they form and also how they fall apart. Sometimes all it can take is 'someone at a distance' for that to happen. The novel follows what happens to this family when the husband/father is unfaithful, and the emotional devastation that has on everyone - there’s no great twist, per se, but the book’s genius and charm lies in how it explores the emotional lives of the characters, and how compassionately Whipple manages to do this. And I think Louise (the other woman) is by far the most repugnant character I’ve ever come across in literature, and that is saying something! I absolutely loved this book and have all of Dorothy Whipple’s other books on my Persephone wish list!

Mariana by Monica Dickens (Persephone no. 2)

This book is a real delight - Persephone refer to it as a “hot water bottle novel” and that’s exactly what it is. A book you can curl up with on the sofa and escape into. Mostly set in England between the world wars, it’s the coming-of-age story of Mary, whom we follow from childhood right through to the early years of the second world war where she is desperately waiting to hear whether her husband has survived the bombing of his ship. We see Mary’s idyllic childhood summers at her grandparents’ country home, her school days and life at home in a London flat with her widowed bohemian dressmaker mother and actor uncle, her hilarious adventures at drama school and eventually travels to Paris, and all the misguided decisions, in love and all else, she makes along the way. It is a very funny and heartwarming book all at once, for Mary realises, looking back at her younger years, that perhaps they weren’t as perfect as they seemed, and that the grownups did a good job of hiding harsher aspects of reality from her. For most of the book, Mary is less concerned about making her own way in the world and more about filling in time before she meets Mr Right (who will of course be able to provide her with everything, hence not really needing skills or a career of her own as such). And yet by the time the book is nearly over, Mary has realised something else - that her husband is potentially now dead and she will have to carry on, independently. That she will only ever really have herself, and that she doesn’t need anyone else to complete her. Quite a revolutionary thought for 1940! '‘When you were born, you were given a trust of individuality that you were bound to preserve. It was precious. The things that happened in your life, however closely connected with other people, developed and strengthened that individuality. You became a person. Nothing that ever happens in life can take away the fact that I am me. So I have to go on being me.”

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson (Persephone no. 21)

I read somewhere that this book is the closest thing to a Fred Astaire film in print, and I think that’s very accurate. Every time you think it can’t get any crazier, it does. It’s a rollicking romp of a book that is so much fun to read. On an ordinary day, the nearly destitute governess Miss Pettigrew, who has never really known a day of fun in her whole life, is sent by an employment agency to interview for a post….to the wrong address. She somehow gets drawn in to the highly dramatic, hilarious and scandalous antics of her would-be employer, Miss La Fosse, and finds herself doing, saying and experiencing things she never thought she would. There’s cocaine, nightclubs, a woman with a few men on the go…racy stuff! The dialogue is so witty and well-written, I read a lot of it out loud to myself (at home!) and plan to ask my grandmother if she’d like me to read it aloud to her when I’m next at home, because I think she’ll love it. Another ‘hot water bottle’ novel, for sure. It’s just fantastic, and proof that just one day is all you need for your life to completely change!

Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E Stevenson (Persephone no. 81)

I loved this one too! A bit like Miss Pettigrew, without the financial security of marriage, Miss Buncle finds herself needing to supplement her already meagre income. She does what many people think will bring certain fame and fortune - write and publish a book! She writes a novel based on her village and all the people who live in it, thinking that changing names and writing it under a pseudonym will be sufficient to hide their true identities. To her huge surprise, her book (or John Smith’s book!) is a huge bestseller and her publisher wants a sequel, but lo and behold, all the villagers have read it, recognise themselves and their village immediately (which says it all, as some of it isn’t flattering!), are outraged and determined to find out who ‘John Smith’ is and make ‘him’ pay. No one suspects the dowdy and quiet Miss Buncle for a second, which is where all the hilarity ensues - but also makes an interesting observation that people often do have hidden lives and assumptions we make about others can so very often be wrong. It’s absorbing, intelligent and very charming.

Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll (Persephone no.30)

If you love cookbooks and social history, you will love this. I was quite surprised to learn that ingredients like camembert and parmesan were available in England in 1921 - I guess one needed to know where to go! I don’t know what it is about food writing, but the best of it recalls a time and place just perfectly. And this book does this beautifully, every essay and recipe evokes a bygone era of gracious living where, if you could afford to (most of the recipes assume the reader has a cook and hired help of some kind!), every meal could be quite indulgent. And Jekyll’s turn of phrase is quite exquisite - instructions for baking biscuits, for example, "they should be of a deep cream colour, merging along their edges into the delicate brown of faded magnolias" had me in raptures. 

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So I hope these suggestions might inspire you to give Persephone Books a try, if you haven’t already. I must say when it comes to fiction these days, I am finding myself drawn more and more to the past, to women writers of the nineteenth and early to mid twentieth century. It might be a reflection of where my head is at in terms of writing my own novel (set in 1948) or perhaps because I find them comforting and a much-needed escape. Reading about the world I currently inhabit (modern day London) isn’t all that relaxing! There’s another blog post in that, for sure….

The Persephone Bookshop in Lamb’s Conduit Street, London.

But back to the topic at hand, I have to say I have never been disappointed with a Persephone book. Hand on heart, I have enjoyed every single one I have read. I’m sure if you’re tempted to check out the catalogue, there’ll be something there for you!

On my next visit, I plan to add The Fortnight in September, The Home-Maker and High Wages to my collection. What about you?

Are you a fan of Persephone Books too? What are your favourites?