I suspect one of the key issues is that Life Out Of Order takes us far into the future where the first novel stayed in the real life timeline. Reading about the end stages of climate change and the advance of artificial intelligence felt uncomfortably prescient reading during the worst heatwave since records began. But it does mean that where Henry and Clare’s love story could still be recognisably domestic, Life Out Of Order is a more foreign beast. The world-building is far more detailed this time yet it somehow makes the story feel less immersive rather than more.

When I watched the film back in 2009, I remember being startled at how the fade effect of Henry’s vanishing was so visually incongruous. Something which I had accepted on the page suddenly seemed ludicrous onscreen. It was not as humorously awful as with the Twinkle sound effect of the Twilight sparkle vampires but it is still the main reason I have never rewatched the movie. I got the distinct feeling reading Life Out Of Order that Niffenegger herself had had a similar moment as she seemed to have lost confidence in her original story.

In the years since its publication, there has been quite a heavy backlash against Time Traveller’s Wife for its under-currents around grooming. Clare is six years old when she meets Henry, although he first meets her when she is twenty and he is twenty-eight. In Life Out Of Order, Clare remarks that she tries not to tell too many people that aspect of how they met since it gives most people ‘the squick’. This made me sad as I did not think the original Clare felt quite that way. For me as a teenager, I just thought it sounded great to have the man you would marry drop into your life with no further questions needed. Now I am older, I can see it is problematic. But I also stand back and look at it critically. I am cautious about the modern puritanical drive to whitewash all that does not measure up to moral standards. It seems like we would lose quite a lot of stories that way.

When I compare The Time Traveller’s Wife to The Thorn Birds, I feel that Niffenegger can be absolved. Henry never looks at Clare’s body and wishes she looked more like a child. When he encounters Clare as a child, he treats her as a child. He defends her when a boy of her own age does her harm. He does his best to maintain boundaries. Ultimately, he describes their relationship as ‘boy meets girl’. He is also utterly faithful. There is an injustice in how Henry gets only fifteen years to love his wife while she gets closer to double that in how he flits in and out of her life. For me, it was a tale of true star-crossed love. Which is perhaps why Life Out Of Order felt like a true crash down to earth.

Life Out Of Order felt like it under-cut various incidences of character development from the first book. There are the minor things such as Colin Kendrick never really making any appearances or indeed Clare’s family. Even the fact that Clare’s childhood home was sold with barely a murmur felt strange given how important a focal point it had always been for Henry. Richard confesses to Clare that he always keeps clothes ready for Henry just in case he appears again. Later, Kimy and Clare discuss whether they should keep Henry’s childhood home empty in case he needs it. But not Clare’s home that he time-travelled to hundreds of times? The place where he met his death?

The biggest inconsistency though was Alba. She did not feel like the same character from the first book. The original Alba seemed fearless and independent. The new one felt querulous and uncertain. She lived her life according to the commands of her older selves. She also apparently hated playing violin. Life Out Of Order often felt like scenes from the cutting room floor of its predecessor. [View post to see spoiler]

The funny thing is that The Time Traveller’s Wife remains the only book that has ever inspired me to try my hand at fan fiction. Written over twenty years ago, it was not something that ever saw the light of day on the Internet and I am not even sure if I still have access to the document. But my rough idea was of a time traveller girl who met a time traveller boy and fell in love before discovering that he was actually travelling from a hundred years before, so that they could never be together in their own time. I remember having them meet once when he was extremely old and she was still young and have to say their farewell. She then had to move on with someone who the old man version of her love told her would be the man she would actually marry. But the complication was that the younger version of her original love would keep dropping in. On balance, it is a fairly cliched premise but when I read the synopsis for The Other Husband which is now Life Out Of Order, for a split second I did wonder if Audrey Niffenegger had somehow hacked my hard drive.

I think this also touches at a core problem for Life Out Of Order. Alba meets Zach and her older self tells him that they will marry. He is a young adult and blithely accepts this. This seemed insane to me. Clare had years to accept Henry and he was a core part of her childhood. She grew up with him. What Niffenegger fails to recognise is that twenty-first century dating is a hellscape which various hurdles around ‘defining the relationship’. The idea of Zach cheerfully going from single to the woman he would marry in one evening is to put it mildly far-fetched. And don’t get me started on Oliver.

As I mentioned above, I did not particularly care for Alba. She never came to life as a protagonist. This meant that I also could not really engage with either of her marriages. Both seemed like nice enough men but Alba was not interesting enough for it to seem realistic that either of them would be willing to make so many sacrifices to win her love. I whole-heartedly believed in the love of Clare and Henry. Even in the snippets of their conversation on the phone or when the child Albas observe them having breakfast together, they felt like two people own love. The same cannot be said for Alba and Zach and Oliver. Incidentally, between this triangle and what was going on with Clare, it really made me wonder if Niffenegger was trying to make an argument for polyamory. For me, a resolute monogamist, it rang false. [View post to see spoiler]

Life Out Of Order made me question Niffenegger’s time travel mechanism. While Henry was content to play the stock market, he still had a recognisable job. Alba does not. But the whole Yellow House system gave me pause. [View post to see spoiler]

This is not to say that Life Out Of Order is without beauty. The creeping power of artificial intelligence is unnerving. There was something chillingly believable about how it becomes normalised for people not to speak to each other aloud since the chips in their heads perform communication instead. I think that a separate novel about the Instertices could have been powerful but unfortunately characters such as Lucinda felt under-developed. Over time, I found myself reminded of And Just Like That, which I have not watched in full episodes but I read the recaps and saw clips. Like them, Niffenegger seems to have taken onboard the accusations of tokenism in her original work and tried to course correct but again like And Just Like That, she has somehow done so without true soul.

Life Out Of Order only exists because of The Time Traveller’s Wife. Its story is not strong enough to stand up alone and I am not even quite sure what story it was trying to tell. I did not feel engaged by any of the characters who had not appeared in the original book. There are individual images which linger but I think that this is an episode which I will be disregarding in my future reading about the Detambles. Sometimes less is more (an ironic statement from someone like myself who struggles to be succinct) and The Time Traveller’s Wife never needed a sequel. While the title refers to the non-linear nature of Alba’s life, to me it revealed the truth at the book’s centre. This story felt broken. Out of order.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This post contains affiliate links which you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

The post Review: Life Out Of Order, Audrey Niffenegger appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

Born on a sheep farm in the 1880s, Sarah Catherine Maunder – always known as Dolly – is one of the younger siblings. By the time she comes along, the new teacher is less willing to turn a blind eye to children skipping school to help on the farm and so Dolly gets an education. She dreams of escape from domestic drudgery, works hard at school and hopes to be a schoolteacher. But her father slams that door shut and so from the age of fourteen, her world shrinks to the family farm. There is no way out.

Dolly’s desire for escape turns towards matrimony but the men prove disappointing. Grenville hammers home that the choice is never Dolly’s. Dolly is smitten by one boy who treats her as a holiday amusement. Another refuses to commit as she is not Catholic. Eventually, Dolly has no choice but to wed Bert Russell, who at least appears to view her as having a value beyond housework. Yet the marriage is uneasy. He is a philanderer. She does not love him and never stops hoping for an escape.

The one saving grace of the Russell marriage is that Bert trusts Dolly’s business acumen. The two of them have three children together but their strongest collaborations are in real estate. They go from a shop to a boarding house to several hotels. Always, Dolly grows restless. Always she wants more. She is not always easy. She rarely appears kind. But yet the reader sees her disappointments and her determination. She does not take her disasters as sweetly as Meggie in Birds. Dolly bites back.

The stepping-stone advancements seemed almost excessively detailed because I was missing one very important fact. It was only in the final pages that I discovered that Dolly was indeed Grenville’s own maternal grandmother. I had picked this up at the library doing my usual where my children spend thirty minutes choosing their books while I grab mine in thirty seconds as we leave. The cover said something about long-listed for an award and it was about Australia so I decided it was worth a try. It turned out to be a book which gave me a huge amount of food for thought.

Dolly Maunder is a complicated figure. Reaching the novel’s end, I was unsurprised when Grenville noted that her mother and grandmother had had a strained relationship. While Dolly had moments of successful connection with her sons, there is a painful thread through the novel of how her daughter Nancy was ignored, pushed aside and her needs neglected. Grenville’s own key memory of Dolly was when the old lady approached her once in childhood and asked if she loved her. The child Kate looked up at her and replied bluntly, ‘No.’ Yet we see how the exchange haunted her. This book is her apology.

Every family finds its villains. Nobody hurts us as deeply as those who are close to us. But yet by the very proximity, we know the origin stories. Sarah Catherine Maunder is a kind-hearted girl who is faced with appalling injustice from the moment of her birth. She never stood a chance. Grenville consoles herself and her mother that Dolly’s difficult adult behaviour was barely a matter of choice. Nobody would choose to end up their lives so isolated and emotionally estranged from their immediate relations.

I have struggled a lot over the past few years with familial estrangement. I have carried guilt and the weight of judgment from all sides. Yet when I explain what has happened to third parties, they are always aghast and I find myself moved to defend my relative. After all, I remember her sitting on the bottom bunk of my childhood bed and howling out her sorrow to our aunt. I remember being four years old and brushing her hair with my fingers as she cried down the phone. Of course her wounds have leaked out. Yet when I have tried to reach out, both times all I have received was a vicious letter. I feel such sorrow for the person I know she wants to be and yet I have had to accept her decisions. There will never be an apology or closure. Restless Dolly Maunder feels like a roadmap for those of us who have had difficult relatives. Not to excuse them or to rewrite the past but to offer grace and pity. I will never forget Dolly Maunder but I hope that she has finally found her rest.

This post contains affiliate links which you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

The post Review: Restless Dolly Maunder, Kate Grenville appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

I have mixed feelings about saying goodbye to the old year. The first half was far from easy. At times the waves of pressure were akin to being in labour. But from the summer onwards, things have steadily improved. Both my children have overcome some challenges and have made some fantastic personal achievements. I feel extremely fortunate to be their mother – and slightly emotional about how quickly they are growing up. It is officially eight years since I found out that the first Astronaut was imminent and I am now realising that the baby years are done. In a year when both have needed me more than ever before, they have also both embraced new levels of independence. Breastfeeding is over, baby swimming lessons are done, the pram et al are all listed on hand me on sites. I looked at the vitamins that I have been loyally taking since 2018 and realised I likely no longer fall into the ‘New Mum’ label. So long, 2025.

But I face 2026 with a huge amount of hope. I have found my way back to creativity in a way that I thought was gone. It has been like a homecoming. I am keeping well in my dark Tudor cave. I thought I was a Tudor fan before but the last few months have been something else again. But even aside from that, I am extremely aware that these are ‘the years’. The ones that I looked forward to. I vastly underestimated the slog that came with babies but I knew that I was looking forward to having children to whom I could chat. This year, my son and I read the first three Harry Potter books (illustrated editions, obvs) as well as The Hobbit. The Astronaut has also introduced me to How to Train Your Dragon which I will say is a lot better than the movies. Then this Christmas we even sat down and watched The Muppets’ Christmas Carol which was a true moment of #LifeGoalsAchieved. There are big milestones approaching – I only have 9 more months until my youngest child starts school. It’s definitely time to step back and focus on that for which we are thankful.

Looking over my reading though, it’s been weird. Far fewer audiobooks than usual. I haven’t even finished the new Peter Grant. Until this week, I hadn’t read fiction for almost six months. Instead, I’ve been writing and re-writing. I am not sure where the reading will take me in 2026 but I am really excited to see where my story leads.

In the spirit of keeping my toe in the water with blogging though, I wanted to share my favourite books of 2025

The List of Suspicious Things

This painfully beautiful coming-of-age tale managed to make me laugh and also make me cry. Young Miv is growing up in 1970s Yorkshire under the looming shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper. Yet this is not a crime novel but rather a tale of growing up. For me, the most poignant part came as the adults stop turning off the news or avoiding the subject of the Ripper around Miv and instead her aunt sits her down and tells her what to do if she ever finds herself being followed. It’s that horrible moment when you realise that the Terrible Awful could happen to you. It is when you realise what it means to be a woman.

Rizzio

This account of the horrible death of David Rizzio was one of several books this year that got me thinking again about writing for myself. Partly because I once heard Denise Mina speak at a writing event but also because Rizzio is such a sharp take on historical fiction. I have become increasingly jaded over the years with non-fiction which looks on Mary Queen of Scots as a fool or as boy-crazy or having terrible taste in men. Rizzio underlines that the woman never had a hope in hell.

The Hallmarked Man

I read this book in just over three days. It’s 900 pages. I have young children who rarely give me any peace during daylight hours. I really don’t know how JK Rowling does it but that familiar feeling of crashing through a story is something so peculiar to when I read anything by her. Of course it isn’t perfect. It’s sodding Book 8 and Strike and Robin still aren’t communicating as adults should. This offends me because my naive self always likes to suppose that my own experience is common to everyone and that relationships become easier with age because everyone is a grown up. Apparently not. Also, despite being now dead, Strike’s annoying ex-fiancée still had more of a role than I would like. Every book I hope it will be the last we hear from her. Alas. But despite these gripes, Rowling’s plotting was pretty decent and there was far less padding than usual. Thematically, there was a lot of interesting exploration concerning mental health and parenthood – I will look forward to 2027 and the advent of Book 9.

The Painter’s Daughters

This haunting tale of a sisterly book struck asunder blends historical fact with historical imagining. The unhappy lives of Thomas Gainsborough’s daughters feel doubly tragic given how he immortalised the idyllic images of their childhood. It was also genuinely clever how Emily Howes speculated on a cause for Molly’s symptoms.

The Cafe With No Name

A gentle tale of a community forming around a cafe and then fragmenting once more. A novel of kindness – it was a balm during a stressful summer.

Cuddy

For various reasons, St Cuthbert is a friend to our house so reading a novel about his origins and ongoing legacy was fascinating. It was also just a stunningly beautiful novel.

The Ministry of Time

I loved this book – it was my Mothers Day gift. Graham Gore rises to become a wonderfully charismatic romantic lead in this intelligent and thought-provoking take on time travel, climate change and challenging authority. Definitely one that I will return to and re-read.

Orbital

Like The Ministry of Time, I have gifted this one to quite a few people since. On the surface, it’s a novel set in space where very little happens. No aliens, no flying saucers, no high adrenaline. But yet in other ways, it is an incredibly moving observation of humanity.

Unruly

Moving on to non-fiction, I listened to this twice back t0 back, something I normally only do with The Martian and even that solely when I am experiencing high stress (I listened to the story of Mark Watney twice through this year). David Mitchell’s analysis of the kings and queens of England challenged my deep-seated prejudice around celebrity authors. Unruly was witty, incisive and intelligent. It is another of the books that got me thinking about writing historical fiction. Mitchell’s conclusion is essentially that none of the monarchs were replaceable got me thinking about the life of Henry Fitzroy, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son. He died at seventeen, meaning he lived two years longer than the son people actually remember, Edward VI. I am currently imagining a version of Fitzroy who grew up and it’s been quite ridiculously good fun even if I do have to do it between 8.30-10.30pm – the only time I get any peace.

Heresy

Another book that challenged a lot of my thinking, Heresy reminded me again of why faith has to come from God. My favourite discovery was that the donkey and the cow so celebrated within the Nativity came from a Gospel now rendered apocryphal. I thought about this while reading my children the Christmas story.

The Tudors in Love

Of all my Tudor reading – there has been a lot – this has been my favourite and I only picked it up on a whim while in a National Trust shop. This got me thinking about the emotional and cultural background to so much Tudor courtship and has really boosted my understanding.

The Waiting Game

I loved this book so much. So often when reading Tudor history, the women are named as background characters. The wives, the mothers, the perpetually pregnant and those who died in childbirth. In The Waiting Game, Nicola Clark underlines that just because they were in the background does not mean that they were inactive or unimportant. Also, she provides convincing evidence that Anne of Cleves and Henry VIII probably did consummate so the tale of the king finding her repulsive and smelly really does need to die. Just because Anne of Cleves’ brother went to war with Spain and Henry needed to get out of the alliance fast does not mean she deserves to be immortalised to history as unattractive.

So this was my 2025 – here’s to a wonderful reading year for you and all your kin!

The post Top Ten Books of 2025 appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

The biggest change for me was that I became a mother seven years ago. Since then blogging has been more intermittent. I have this feeling that I am currently ‘in the years’. I so wanted to be part of a family, to have my own children and now I have it. My children are past the Usborne ‘That’s Not My …’ books and we are reading the good stuff. I am actually reading The Hobbit with my eldest and my little one loves the Old Bear stories. My reading life has come a beautiful full circle.

But in and among, this year has been draining. For all that we have our beautiful bedtime story routine, I am usually utterly wrung out by 8pm. For various reasons, I have found certain parts of this year to be mentally exhausting. On top of that, I had to deal with an estrangement with a relative which I realise now is not in my power to repair. My head is held high but it was still disappointing. All of it added up to me feeling some burn out and my enthusiasm for blogging flagged.

Then, deep in the chaos of childcare over the summer holidays, I found some inspiration in my fiction writing. In case it is not obvious by this point, I love stories. My earliest ambition as a child was to be a writer. As I grew up, I told myself that professional writing and communication had replaced this dream. It was to be a skill rather than a vocation. But now I suddenly have a sixty page outline and a vast reading list and the process is utterly invigorating. I am genuinely excited about a creative project for the first time in years.

Over the horizon, not here yet but in sight, is my fortieth birthday. I am thinking about what I want from my life. And I think that I want to see where this takes me. Even if nobody ever reads it but me, I want to write a story. This is a Tudor story which has rolled round in my head for about ten years. I do not want to give up my blog which has been with me through the darkest of times, but I am giving myself permission to do other things.

I will be back to report on my reading but for now, it is au revoir.

The post Blogger Birthday: 14 Years appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

It’s strange because I assume the name sends the same shiver of horror thorough everyone as it does for me but I realise that this is not the case. My husband, who has also visited Holyrood with me, drew a complete blank when I asked him. For me though to hear the word Rizzio is to think of blood. It is a man dragged screaming to his death. Stabbed not by one but by many. It is a heavily pregnant woman petrified for her life. It is chaos, savage chaos. The English never had anything on the Scots.

Rizzio is part of a series of Darkland Tales, retellings by celebrated authors of various historical events within Scotland’s history. In this particular instalment, Denise Mina imagines the murder of David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary Queen of Scots. I was very young, no more than six or seven, when I first saw the plaque in Holyrood Palace which marks where the crime took place. I am more cynical as an adult about whether the mark on the floorboard is really his bloodstain but back then I was totally convinced.

The arresting opening chapter sets out Mina’s case. Entitled ‘David Rizzio Plays Tennis with His Assassins’, the first line says ‘Lord Ruthven wanted him killed during this tennis match but Darnley said no. Darnley wants it done tonight. He wants his wife to witness the murder because David Rizzio is her closest friend, her personal secretary, and she’s very pregnant and Darnley hopes that if she seems him being horribly brutalised she might miscarry and die in the process’. And so David Rizzio plays on, aware that there are people around who do not like him, suspecting that something is afoot but this is court life and he assumes that he will find his way through, protected by the favour of the Queen. Alas.

I admire Mina’s attitude towards the killers. She grants them no dignity whatsoever. They fancy themselves ‘Great Men of History’. No. They are ridiculous. They are vicious. They are crude. They are pathetic. I thought of all the times across history where courtiers have ‘remonstrated’ with their monarchs over ‘wicked counsel’ of this or that favourite but there tended to be at least some pretence at due process. This is just a bunch of thugs. I watched Denise Mina talking with Robin Baillie about the famous painting of the crime by Sir William Allen. It was interesting to contrast this rather formal portrayal with Mina’s depiction – she sees it as a drunken night out of control. I veer more to her version compared to Allen’s.

I read Rizzio feeling utter rage on the behalf of Mary Stuart. For most of my History Nerd life (from around age seven or so), I was a devout fan of Elizabeth I and so saw Mary as the Enemy. In recent years though I have moved past such a binary viewpoint. I feel a powerful sympathy for a woman trying desperately to keep in control in a room full of men who want to see her fall. In a world which still claimed to believe in the Divine Right to Rule, the duty of obedience was conveniently skipped over when the head wearing the Crown belonged to a woman. Thinking back on any male ruler in history, the notion of them being pinned down while their advisor is slaughtered is ridiculous. Yet it happened to Mary. As Mina describes it, the Queen became ‘trampled meat’.

Mina’s obvious disdain for Darnley drips from the page. You read about him and it becomes extremely obvious why Elizabeth I chose chastity. I have always enjoyed the long-standing rumours that Elizabeth I used reverse psychology to manipulate Mary into marrying Darnley since she recognised what a disaster the wretched idiot was but if it is true, I can imagine even Elizabeth would have winced at the efficacy of the plan. But again, I feel sympathy for Mary who was a woman alone who had been brought up with the expectation of becoming Queen Consort of France. She was supposed to be a wife, not a ruler. Is it so dreadful that she hoped to find a companion? Do we really have to blame her downfall on poor taste in men? Should not some of the shame be apportioned to the men themselves who were just such utter shits?

Rizzio subscribes to the increasingly accepted theory that it was Darnley who was Rizzio’s lover rather than Mary. But it underlines the power that Darnley had over Mary either way. He was a wastrel and an adulterer but Mary could not dispose of him as her great-uncle did his wives because she needed him to recognise her child as legitimate. Even as a Queen, Mary had no authority in her marriage. Her heir could not be her heir unless the child’s father gave his seal of approval. The whole concept makes me seethe.

Mina also introduces the Earl of  Bothwell, Mary’s future third husband, as ‘an adulterer, an adventurer and a rapist’. In the interview I heard of Mina on Suzannah Lipscomb’s Not Just the Tudors, Mina explained briskly that consent did not have the same meaning in that era and that most men would have been rapists. But still. The threat holds. Rizzio signals clearly to the reader that things will not improve for Mary. She is surrounded by men who do not wish her well. She will ultimately submit to marriage with Bothwell after he rapes her, once more in the knowledge that he has gotten her pregnant and she needs to protect her unborn child’s legitimacy.

Rizzio makes little attempt at capturing contemporary speech patterns but still, these long-dead men lurch forward. Lord Ruthven – half dead. Henry Yair – a ticking time-bomb of psychotic rage. Morton, Lindsay, the list goes on. And of course Darnley, the idiot who thinks he is in charge and whose dagger was left sticking in Rizzio to underline his involvement. But it is the details that Mina imagines that made my blood run cold. Darnley held his wife down. His heavily pregnant wife. Mina imagines him squeezing her belly, an explicit threat to the unborn life that they have created together. Five hundred years later, I shuddered.

The only moment of kindness within the whole novella comes as Mary’s lady in waiting assists her in feigning a miscarriage to try to make good her escape. These fleeting instances of intimacy between women only serve to underline the extent to which they lack agency regardless of their status. Physically, Mary was surrounded and overpowered. Politically, it was just the same. Mary may not have lost her throne the night that Rizzio died but his murder made it obvious that she would not be able to keep it.

It is strange how these dark episodes of history can be told and retold and lose their meaning. Mina’s clear intention is to make the whole grisly event shine in all its bloody glory. The sound of Rizzio’s body being rolled down the stairs. The blood he leaves behind, ruining the hose of his murderers who will never get the stains out. The rooms then shut up for centuries, a dumping ground for detritus. Somewhere to be deliberately forgotten. The nobles could take no pride in Rizzio’s death. They were not dealing out justice. Their methods were too savage.

Just the same, when Mary tried to complain about what had been done to her, she was not believed. The event was too extreme. Another tale as old as time. I have the feeling that the uneasy spirit of Mary Queen of Scots would be satisfied with Mina’s interpretation of her friend’s death. This is no clean and carefully draughted Victorian portrayal but a tale told with a pen as sharp as the knives that once cut that poor man to pieces. Mina should be applauded for this book which puts shame back on the side where it belongs – not on Mary Queen of Scots for her ‘poor choice in men’, not on David Rizzio for being ‘not from around these parts’ but on the barbaric murderers drunk on their prejudice who carried out such a vile act.

This post contains affiliate links which you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

The post Review: Rizzio, Denise Mina appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

Atherton charts the key texts which come up for study for English in secondary school, describing what each one has to offer and also its respective the perils and pitfalls. Along the way, she makes a powerful argument for the role of English Literature within the curriculum, particularly important in a time when the humanities are under threat. Unsurprising for someone who has been book blogging for a decade and a half, I have always relied on stories to guide me through but it was a new idea to consider this as something directly taught at school. Strangely, while I have thought a lot about the books that I studied at university, I always felt quite dismissive on the curriculum reading I participated in at school. Reading Lessons made me think of secondary English with greater fondness and respect.

It was striking that there were so many familiar friends on Atherton’s list. I studied An Inspector Calls for GCSE myself. One of the few things I remember about it is that I wrote an 18 page piece of coursework in size 10 Times New Roman. I would go on to write many essays after this one and I would never find the words to flow as easily. I feel like the high mark can only have been because I mused about everything except the kitchen sink. I certainly did not know what I was doing.

But I also felt rather jealous of Atherton’s pupils because there were also quite a decent number on this list that were so much better than my own high school reading. I can see that my school made its choices largely on the basis of being inoffensive. Buddy was one of the most tedious books I can ever remember. I still recall my distaste at vividly how badly my copy smelled. I handed my copy back with relief as I had been convinced it stank out my rucksack. Wicked was a book about a boy whose twin brothers had killed a tramp and it was so forgettable that I actually cannot find any links to it online. Then there was Alan Gibbons’ Chicken which was also deathly dull. None of them were ever likely inspire a life-long love of reading. I do remember enjoying Ruth Thomas’ The Runaways but I had also already read it two years previously. I remember that the other Year Nine class got to read Jane Eyre as I recall the boys giggling a lot over lunch about a passage that featured the phrase ‘Mr Rochester ejaculated’.

I saw English teaching from another angle during the year when I worked in a secondary school supporting low ability groups. I was in classes with Of Mice and Men and The Lord of the Flies on the curriculum. Some of the students I supported were studying Of Mice and Men for the second time, it having been picked up for both Year Nine and GCSE. These feel like choices that would make Michael Rosen weep, aiming at decent exam scores rather than promoting awareness of literature. I remember vividly how a Year Eleven child expressed his disdain for Lord of the Flies as utterly pointless. He felt that time spent studying it was fruitless given his planned career as a sheep farmer. He had more interest in Mice and Men because he could identify with the main characters’ plight as underpaid agricultural workers. But even so, the English curriculum had failed to reach him.

Looking at the books on Atherton’s list, I felt as though there were examples there which might have been more successful. Atherton freely admits the quandaries around shaking up a curriculum. Setting up a new scheme of work takes time. It is risky to steer off the beaten track when experimentation may lead to lower grades. Teachers living in terror of performance management understandably cling to the tried and (literally) tested. If you pick a new book and it goes wrong, you can quite literally lose everything. So just dig out Mice and Men and play it safe.

Yet for all that this can appear lazy, good books are gifts that keep on giving. Atherton discusses teaching An Inspector Calls written by socialist JB Priestley. In 1940, Priestley attacked the sentimentality of those waving farewell to RAF pilots without thinking about Britain would be able to offer them when they returned. Atherton draws a parallel with this thinking and those politicians who ‘Clapped for Carers’ during the 2020 lockdowns and then voted against giving key workers funding and pay rises. The central message of An Inspector Calls burns bright, ‘We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, that they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish‘. These feel like words which could apply to a number of different modern day global situations.

I was interested as Atherton described how some texts were better avoided with certain groups. She and a group of colleagues had all agreed that they would not teach Lord of the Flies to a class which contained a child who was being bullied for being overweight, since the character of Piggy might be triggering. This got me to thinking about all of the books which are not chosen to be studied in secondary school. While so much of Reading Lessons is about the joy of generating conversations from books, there are some conversations which cannot be adequately contained within the classroom. I studied The Color Purple for AS Level and found the rapes at the beginning to be extremely upsetting. I remember feeling very anxious that I would not be able to study the course as I have a habit of getting dizzy and fainting when I read about disturbing topics. But then things picked up for Celie and I was able to appreciate the book’s beauty. But what are the topics that teachers can see are off-limits?

Reading Lessons also made me reflect on my own thorny experience with Anne Fine’s Carnegie-winning novel Flour Babies. This is a novel about Simon Martin, a boy in his early teens, who has to take care of a bag of flour as if it is a baby for four weeks as part of a school experiment. This proves to be a triggering experience as it brings up unhappy memories about his fatherless state. There are strong themes about male role models, the responsibilities of parenthood and what it means to grow up without a dad. Anne Fine is a thoughtful writer and this is one of those books which is clearly designed to reach out to boy readers. But for me, I found it deeply distressing.

Admittedly, I was far too young to have been reading it in the first place. I was a seven year old girl who had been given ten pounds to spend on books which seemed like riches. I wanted to buy a copy of Finn Family Moomintroll but had been told that I was not allowed as I had already read it in the library. As an adult who is now free from this rule, I currently possess three different copies including a Folio edition in colour. Back in 1993 however, my money was taken from me and spent on Flour Babies as it had the Carnegie Medal winner sticker on it. When I protested, I was scolded. When I tried to explain that I hated the book, I was scolded more for a lack of appreciation of literature. I did not have the language at the time to explain that the whole premise of a boys’ secondary school that had different ability groups which were then doing a science experiment was confusing and unclear, let alone the ability to articulate the fact that the book was picking up on fatherlessness and I didn’t like it.

I do remember the horror I felt as Simon Martin looks back on the time he had a really cool costume to play one of the Kings in his Year Two Nativity play, how his mother had promised to come and see it but then been too ill and then one of his teachers suggested that his dad might come instead which made seven year-old Simon burst into hysterics since his father had walked out on him when he was six weeks old. He was so upset that the costume was taken from him and another child got the part while he sat and sobbed privately and missed the whole performance. Up until that point, the adults around me had always been briskly accepting of my lone-parent status. Flour Babies whispered in my ear that it was a trauma.

For context – I read that book thirty years ago and I did not have to look up the synopsis to check the facts because that passage was burned into my brain. I still remember the tight feeling in my chest as I read it. As an adult at all this distance, I can feel pity for my little seven year-old self wrestling with a book that was so utterly inappropriate for her personal situation and that she did not know how to escape. It took entirely too long for it to occur to me to just lie that I had finished it so that I could put it on the shelf and get away. There the book lurked uncompleted for many years, an unwelcome reminder of the time I had not been allowed to pick what to do with my book money.

At last, when I was eleven, my Year Six teacher wanted us to all read books by Anne Fine. Lots of books by Anne Fine. The more the better. My competitive nature won out and in a bid to beat the rest of the class, I picked Flour Babies up again. Simon Martin’s feelings about his absent father were easier for me to accept. I had a clearer idea in mind of what would happen if my mother were to vanish too (I would end up at my grandparents’ house) so it did not inspire the same panic. Aged eleven, I had a greater understanding of my personal history but even if I did not understand it yet, I was a couple of steps forward on the journey to constructing my own narrative. But perhaps most importantly for my appreciation of the book, by eleven I had watched the iconic Frasier episode where Niles looks after a flour baby so the whole premise made far more sense. I didn’t love it but it was ok.

Still, after reading it in 1998, I did not give the book another thought until last year when a new copy of it was gifted to my then five year old with the instruction for him to read it over the summer holidays. I remember looking at it and quite clearly thinking ‘Oh this is what that phrase ‘the memories are flooding back’ means’. Strangely enough, this new copy then mysteriously disappeared and is unlikely to resurface for at least another six years when the Astronaut can decide for himself.

It’s funny because I can see that despite its award-winning status, I notice that Flour Babies has had zero recognition in terms of curriculum reading. I would suspect this is because the topic of fatherlessness has high potential to give children like me the colly-wobbles. It is too hot of a potato. You can teach a class about school boys murdering each other on a desert island (Lord of the Flies). You can teach about racial prejudice and unconscious bias (Noughts and Crosses). You can teach about sexism and male violence (My Last Duchess, Of Mice and Men, The Color Purple – half of English literature to be honest). Because these are all global societal issues. Flour Babies gets too personal. It is dealing with private family matters. So it is not appropriate for classroom discussion.

It is not to say that all the books in Reading Lessons are straightforward to teach. Atherton explains the complex history of To Kill a Mockingbird which has become under fire in recent years for promoting a white saviour narrative and for marginalising the black characters it claims to champion. Certain schools have dropped it from their syllabuses in an attempt to ‘decolonise the curriculum’. Yet, Atherton points out that Bob Ewell’s rage at his situation is still frighteningly relevant to modern-day America. If MAGA hats had been available in 1934, he would definitely have put one on.

One of my own gripes when I was a teacher was the push to keep things simple. I remember teaching the Bill Naughton short story to a Year 3 and 4 class and being told to use the English as a Second Language simplified version. Not long after leaving teaching, I read news reports about the growing ‘vocabulary deficiency’ among children and rolled my eyes. In the current climate, it is hardly surprising. We are hardly building a nation of readers. If everything remotely challenging is removed from children’s reading, what is the point? At some point, do we not have to allow children to approach a book that requires thought and listen to what they have to say?

My concern with movements to ‘drop’ older books is that we risk erasing painful moments of history. Men like Tom Robinson really were put on trials where only one verdict was ever going to be delivered. A modern day reading of To Kill a Mockingbird has to leave room for the adults in the room to condemn the behaviour of the people of Maycomb. One of the passages I remember is when Scout talks to her brother about how her teacher had described Adolf Hitler as a terrible man. Jem agreed. But if the teacher is right about that, Scout wonders, why did she also express satisfaction about Tom Robinson’s conviction? And there Jem becomes enraged. He, like Scout, is coming to terms with the systemic racism of their society. It is immovable. Seen in that context, Atticus’ words become a battle cry; courage is ‘when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway, and you see it through, no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do’. Again, for young people growing up in a deeply flawed world, this is a message worth hearing.

It makes me think too about my decision to read the Little House books to my son. I read Prairie Fires earlier this year. I read Pioneer Girl about ten years ago. I am well-versed in all the ways in which the series is problematic. But it remains the best child-appropriate description of all the various processes and rounds of domestic labour required to sustain frontier life that I have ever come across. For the Astronaut, growing up in a home with a voice assistant, washing machine and a dishwasher, I want him to understand how life was for children generations before. But I still gasped and skipped over the racist ditty that Laura’s Pa sings towards the end of Big Woods. I know that when we read the sequel Little House on the Prairie, I will have to explain much more about the family’s trespass into Indian Territory. But I still think that that is a conversation worth having. I remember listening to Samira Ahmed’s interview with Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder in the television series, and his impassioned panegyric on how in ‘cancelling’ Laura Ingalls Wilder, people ignore the fact that these things really did happen. I feel it is a reading lesson itself to appreciate that characters that we love are still deeply flawed and can commit acts that cause harm to others, regardless of their intentions. Just like in real life.

Atherton’s words on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit have made me want to seek them out. I avoided both when I was a teenager for complicated reasons. In Lower Sixth, I had found The Color Purple rough going and had heard Caged Bird was similar and couldn’t really face it. I also read The Wasp Factory for a book group at around the same time and once again had nearly lost consciousness with the horror of it so was seeking books that were less demanding for my free time. Still, I see them now as missed opportunities. I intend to remedy this soon.

For all the talk about the books from my own schooldays, I was also intrigued by the couple of ‘new faces’ that have arrived. I was a couple of years too old to catch Noughts and Crosses as a teenager but can see how it can be a thought-provoking read for young adults. When I was at school, we were taught that racism was an issue of the past. Something from history. It is vitally important for adults in authority to admit to young people that these attitudes persist and that they are wrong. I was interested too to catch that Kit de Waal’s My Name is Leon is another book dealing with similar issues recommended for study – a review I wrote of that book won me an award a number of years ago so I am always pleased to hear it is doing well.

Still, I was most delighted to hear that Jamila Gavin’s Coram Boy is now a popular GCSE text. I read that book aged fourteen and absolutely loved it. I would be nervous to revisit lest it prove as unsettling a return as when I re-read Witch Child and discovered that all the high feelings had been confined to no more than a couple of paragraphs scattered across the book. I was intrigued though by Atherton’s description of how Coram Boy unlocks discussion about the history of the slave trade and of course about the lack of care for foundlings. And again, while this book may have been set over two hundred years ago, it was only in 2014 that an amateur historian uncovered a mass grave of over 800 babies hidden in a septic tank in County Galway in Ireland. These are not issues of the past.

But does it benefit a book to be studied? I remember watching the film adaptation of Atonement with a friend who had studied it for A level. She critiqued various points of the film in terms of how they clashed with the identified themes of the novel. I had read the book aged fifteen because I liked the look of the cover and wanted to read a Real Grown Up Book. The tragic love story between Robbie and Cecilia had been agonising in the best possible way. I loved that book so purely. With pride that I had managed to read it all by myself. And as I watched the film with my friend, I was filled with gratitude that I had never had to sully that with essay questions.

Atherton touches on this as she emphasises how she recommends certain books such as I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit as additional reading. Some books are worth reading alone. But additional reading is not something that I can ever remember being suggested until I reached university. I had English teachers who I liked. I think that for the most part they liked me. I won the English prize when I finished school although I never went to the awards evening to collect it. But I do not think that the English department in my school made any effort to steer my reading or to expand my understanding. By this I do not mean that they taught me nothing. To the contrary, I remember my GCSE teacher in particular taking me in hand because I was incapable of writing a proper paragraph (Point, Evidence, Explanation) but this notion of expanded ideas or discovering new literary worlds … never happened for me as a school pupil. So I finished Reading Lessons feeling rather jealous of Carol Atherton’s pupils. They have been extremely fortunate.

With a first class degree in English from Oxford and a subsequent DPhil, Atherton is clearly used to fending off enquiries of ‘Miss, why are you just a teacher?’ but in Reading Lessons she makes clear why the role became her calling. This book is not just about the importance of books but also about the vital role of good teachers. Reading Lessons feels like required reading for those in charge of education policy, emphasising why it matters to have some breathing room somewhere in the curriculum for independent thought.

But Reading Lessons also made me reflect on myself. I have always loved talking about my reading, sharing what I think about it, so much so that I had to start a book blog or else be an absolute nightmare at any and all social gatherings. I became a teacher in the hope that I could find that there. When I look back on those brief difficult years, I know that reading with my class was something that I did well. I tried to find different kinds of books to read with them. I read with expression. But any kind of individuality of thought always came under attack. We weren’t supposed to read real books, just the potted extracts from the literacy syllabus. It was about reading to boost data rather than as Atherton describes, ‘to prompt [the children] to look inwards at themselves and their developing identities, and out, at the messy world they are inheriting from us’. In an increasingly target-driven system, the fluidity of English has come under threat both in the secondary sector but also all the way down to primary.

Atherton’s closing words championing the importance of her chosen subject are a true battle cry. English Literature matters. The ability to ‘read sensitively and write precisely is vital, not only in many workplaces but also to participating in the life of a democracy’. English ‘is the subject that helps us to shape our relationship with words and the many ways in which humans have used them’. STEM disciplines may be important but so too are the arts and humanities in developing active citizens who can read critically and think for themselves.

I will never stand in front of a class again. I accepted that many years ago. But I do have two little people of my own and their future reading is of vital importance to me. Reading together at bedtime can be incredibly healing at the end of a long day. Giving children the chance to see the world from a different perspective is vitally important and the best way to do that is through books. Reading is about far more than phonics, far more than decoding. It is about empathy. It is about understanding that sometimes there is no right or wrong answer. Because there often isn’t in real life either. Education is not purely transactional. It requires the students to think for themselves too. And that often happens in English before it happens anywhere else.

For those who love books, read this book. For those who have children who are studying or will one day study books, read this book. For those who care about schools and how they operate, read this book. Reading Lessons is a true battle hymn for English Literature.

This post contains affiliate links which you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

The post Review: Reading Lessons, Carol Atherton appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

Still, there were a lot of his books that I did not actually own. I remember hoping regularly at story-time that our teacher would pick Peepo and even as young as six or seven deciding I would buy it for my own children one day so they would not be so deprived. It’s funny how I was so sure at that point that these children would one day arrive. However, Peepo does indeed count as the first book I ever read my son since I purchased our board book copy while I was pregnant with him. Funnily enough, he kicked whenever I said the word ‘Peepo’. I know it was almost certainly because I was putting on a voice to catch his attention but at the time, I took it as an early sign that the Astronaut would appreciate fine literature.

But it was the Ahlbergs’ The Baby’s Catalogue which both my children took particularly closely to their hearts. There were phases with each of them where we read it almost every night. I still recommend it to almost everyone I know with an approaching one year-old. It is one of the best books that explains a baby’s day, aimed squarely at the target audience. And there’s also the Accidents page which is objectively hilarious. We quite literally loved our first copy into pieces and the second one is well on its way.

The passing of Allan Ahlberg feels like the end of an era, similar to the losses of Shirley Hughes and Judith Kerr. They brought true artistry to the genre of children’s literature. The Jolly Postman was truly ground-breaking but then he and his wife built on that with the genuinely breath-taking sequels. Peepo is also a masterpiece in how it depicts a childhood in World War II while seeming like simple rhymes about a baby’s eye-view of the world. Each Peach Pear Plum is an incredibly beautiful daisy-chain grouping of fairy-tales. Funnybones and Happy Families are other superb creations. Allan Ahlberg’s writing had warmth and wit and rhythm and rhyme. It is not just sad that he has gone but that the field of children’s writer has few writers who seem likely to match the standards of those now gone. The golden age of the children’s picture book feels like it is passing.

Allan Ahlberg is one of the finest authors for the very young, speaking to them directly and seriously while still having a strong sense of fun. The legacy he leaves behind will endure through countless generations and I feel so grateful that he and his wife have been a part of mine and my children’s childhoods. May he rest in peace.

The post RIP Allan Ahlberg appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

Following on from the events of Ithaca, Penelope is still in charge in her husband’s absence, still trying to fend off her suitors, still trying to protect her subjects while still appearing to be a meek and submissive female. Still still still still still. In the distant edges of the narrative, there are signs that Odysseus just might be packing up from his seven years on Calypso’s island but for now, Penelope is on her own. But unfortunately not completely alone because once more there are visitors.

Last time, it was Elektra and Orestes seeking their mother Clytemnestra for the purposes of executing her for the murder of their father. This time, it is Elektra and Orestes but they are instead fleeing Mycenae because Orestes appears to have gone mad with guilt for his mother’s murder. Hot on their heels is their concerned uncle Menelaus who only wants to help, to protect his brother’s children and to offer support to his sworn brother Odysseus’ wife in this difficult time. Of course, Menelaus does seem to want to achieve both these things by putting everyone under armed guard and blocking the exits.

In this instalment, North uses Aphrodite as a narrator where Ithaca was helmed by Hera. This does lead to an interesting shift in tone. Aphrodite is less cynical but also surprisingly thoughtful. She sees quite literally to the hearts of all of the characters including some rather stark observations, such as her verdict of Menalaus’ son Nicostratus who has ‘all the tender love-making skills of a broken pot.’ I had a strange thought reading this book wondering what it must have been like to be an ordinary woman in those ancient times, praying to the deities on Mount Olympus while knowing that the world that the gods ruled over had no respect at all for females. But then it occurred to me quickly that the same could be said for Christianity. Just look at the world today. The difference for me personally is that I accept that the central message of Jesus Christ has been profaned by those who claim to speak in His name. Greek mythology is just misogyny and wall to wall femicide and rape. Medusa was raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple and it was Medusa who Athena chose to punish. Aphrodite describes the judgment of Paris as a moment where Hera and Athena were humiliated by Zeus. Even the goddesses are at the mercy of men.

As before, I found the cast list to be a little bloated. I struggled to keep track of the maids and priestesses. It is undoubtedly interesting to consider how the actions of those in the far background who never catch the eye of the poets could be nonetheless vital to the story. Even those who are remembered in song may be playing their cards close to their chest. One character I particularly enjoyed this time was Odysseus’ father Laertes. He was rather in the background last time but in this second book, he provides some much needed comedy.Perhaps though given that so many of the characters are doomed to die upon the master’s return according to the events of the Odyssey, I slightly shrank from getting too attached to anyone. I sort of hope that Kenamon the Egyptian can at least make his escape. The next book is going to be messy.

North’s portrayal of Helen, formerly of Troy is truly fascinating. This is her in her post-wooden-horse career. Infamous inconstant wife, trotting in Menalaus’ wake and smiling brightly, apparently unaware of her reputation. Penelope stares at her, shocked as Helen refers casually to Hector or Priam. Menelaus seethes when Helen screams at the sight of blood, as if she had not held his hand as they walked through the burning city of Troy. She knows what death is. She steadied the knife as he stabbed Deiphobus.

But North underlines what a truly bizarre character Helen is within the Trojan story. Abducted as a young child by Theseus, given in marriage to Menelaus, stolen by Paris, then as Paris’ ‘widow’ she was then squabbled over by his brothers and ultimately allocated to Deiphobus, then the city fell and she ended up back with Menalaus again despite being stolen again on the way home. When one man’s turn ends, she seems to pass unprotesting to the next in line

She is apparently the most beautiful woman in the world but she never convinces as a romantic heroine. She and Paris hardly rank alongside Romeo/Juliet or even Orpheus/Eurydice. Helen is an object. She has no feelings. She is something all the men believe that they should get to have a go on. She might as well be a fancy sword. Her opinions about any of the various men who have claimed her are irrelevant. Throughout the whole of The Iliad, she has absolutely no interiority at all. North’s depiction of how Helen has come to manage this is intriguing.

Penelope watches Helen and burns to ask her, why did you do it? We all wonder that. Did she love Paris or was it rape? Did she realise it would cause an all-out war? Did she know it would break the world asunder? Did she feel any guilt at all? I have read quite a number of Trojan war retellings that paint Helen in a variety of angles. Taking a step back from it all, my personal opinion veers more towards trafficking. She just gets passed around way too frequently for me to see her as having much in the way of choice. If she managed to find a way to manipulate the men who used her … well, good luck to her.

North’s depiction of the Ancient Greeks is more thoughtful than the average re-telling. She is also careful to sidestep the violence against women. Thus far, the series has been a study of how women can find agency in their own story. A woman can hold a bow to go hunting. She can have an axe to chop wood. What I find most heartening about North’s version of events is that so far the Ithacan women have found a way through. I look at the approaching return of Odysseus with trepidation but I hope that Penelope and her maids continue their resourcefulness. This may be the House of Odysseus but it is clear that Penelope is the true queen.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This post contains affiliate links which you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

The post Review: House of Odysseus, Claire North appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

Corporal Valentine Vere-Thissett is freshly de-mobbed from the army and minus the tips of two fingers due to a mishap with a fellow-soldier’s mallet. There are signs that Valentine has appreciated the escape from the restrictions of upper class life, not least the weight of his mother’s disappointment. Where Felix was brilliant, middle brother Cedric is tragic, having suffered severe brain damage aged ten following a bout of encephalitis which is believed to have been contracted due to fishing a three year-old Valentine out of the manor’s moat. With Ceddie unable to cope with even minor changes to his routine, Valentine’s drive to preserve the family estate is motivated therefore less by class pride than by a need to preserve his brother’s familiar environment.

The narrative is shared across the cast, opening with an extract from Valentine’s bachelor uncle Alaric’s interminably dull book on the Vere-Thissett family history. We hear from Lady Irene, her widowed daughter-in-law Barbara who is hoping that she just might be able to wriggle free of Dimperley’s noose, Barbara and Felix’s two daughters newly returned from evacuation to America, and of course the ever practical Zena Baxter, last remaining maternity hospital resident who has chosen to stay on as Alaric’s secretary. Trotting behind Zena at all times is her daughter Allison, one of the most vividly recognisable three year-olds that I can ever remember reading – I currently have one of those in my house so I know of what I speak.

It was interesting to contrast Small Bomb with Hannah Rothschild’s toe-curling House of Trelawney. The premise of the crumbling aristocratic pile is the same but with Evans at the tiller, everything feels far more grounded. Even the Dowager Lady Irene feels a less unpleasant figure than her Trelawney equivalents. I could find characters that I was ready to rout for whereas Rothschild’s novel was populated with nothing but selfish brats as far as the eye could see. Evans may be exploiting cliche but she never descends to caricature. The result is a novel that is not only more engaging but also far more full of warmth.

There are some truly hilarious set-pieces within the novel. As a keen National Trust member, I was entertained by the passage where Dimperley is visited and judged below the Trust’s standards. Evans notes that she was heavily inspired by the diaries of James Lee-Milne who carried out this duty for the Trust back in the 1940s. I used to find it terribly sad that so many old houses had been demolished when the owners could no longer afford them but my opinions shifted after I visited Bletchley Park and recognised that a lot of the lost houses were likely to be similarly hideous. Bletchley is worth preserving because of its unique history but it remains an absolute eyesore in terms of its architecture. I imagined Dimperley to be similar … though still probably less ugly.

Aghast at the notion of opening their doors to the public, Lady Irene is briskly certain that matrimony is the best way to save the family fortunes. She is sure that it will be short work to find a nice heiress who will be only too delighted to hand over her fortune and take on Valentine for the honour of becoming a Vere-Thissett. These rather Austen-esque machinations jar rather with a generation of young women who have decided that they can do rather better than a penniless toff. Even the Dowager Lady Barbara has found an understanding with a local Man with a Van.

It reminded me of Mollie Panter-Downes’ One Fine Day where Laura Marshall walks across the countryside searching for her lost dog and observes along the way all of the changes wrought by the recent war. She realises there will be no ‘getting back to normal’ as in a return to the pre-war class system but that the shift has been permanent. There are similar conflicts going on at Dimperley with characters in various degrees of denial. However, One Fine Day is ultimately about rejoicing in one’s survival and Small Bomb is similarly optimistic. It is no accident that the two wisest characters in the novel are Dusty Miller and Zena Baxter who both hail from the working class.

What I love most about Lissa Evans’ writing is its consistent kindness. The vestiges of Dimperley’s past are not belittled or dismissed. We see how Alaric’s relentless wittering about family history masks a life that has been deeply disappointing. It was so sad to see him struggle with his depressive episodes without the language to truly address them. But then there was also Miss Hersey, so proud of her status as Lady Vere-Thissett’s lady’s maid and with nothing to fall back on other than being the ignored poor relation at her brother’s house. One does not have to believe in the chummy upstairs-downstairs relations of Downton Abbey to recognise that fifty years working in the same place makes it one’s home. Evans emphasises that despite its imposing size, Dimperley is a haven for people who have nowhere else to go.

The love story was perhaps predictable but I found nothing wrong with that. There is a poignance to how the two are gradually drawn together with both of them sharing a mission to preserve Dimperley as their home. The obstacles to a union are all present and yet we know that Evans will find a way to bring them together. Having now read this twice, I have a real affection for this cast of characters who are each drawn with such detail. While I have a yearning for their story to continue, I also appreciate how Small Bomb trails off leaving us safe in the knowledge that they have all found their place and their path ahead. There are few contemporary authors who have such warmth as well as sympathy for her character’s foibles. Dimperley has endured much turbulence – financial, social, emotional, political, even physical if one considers the eponymous small bombs – but we can have faith that they will rebuild.

This post contains affiliate links which you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

The post Review: Small Bomb at Dimperley, Lissa Evans appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.

It was interesting that I struggled for so long to connect with a book which is itself about failures in connection. Nell fails to connect with the ghastly Felim, struggles with her mother Carmel and is also a classic millennial trying to find her place. Nell is fresh out of Trinity College Dublin in that curious gap between studentdom and genuine adulthood. She is stuck in a house share and working as a travel writer, writing pieces about places to which she never travels. Carmel’s chapters alternate with her daughter but her voice is rendered in the third person, putting her at a further distance from the reader.

Hovering a generation above them is Nell’s late grandfather, celebrated minor Irish poet Phil McDaragh. He is a consciously written cliche of a literary great. He sits in his tweed and looks sorrowful and modest. He claimed to champion the working man and to care deeply about his native land. He wrote his wife beautiful love poems. However, he then abandoned her brutally while she was going through cancer treatment along with his two young daughters, one of whom was Carmel. He fled to go teach in America and then marred the American Wife, a double betrayal since divorce was then illegal in Ireland. Interspersed through the novel are Phil’s poems and his apparent English language translations of famous Irish verses. Nell reads them for comfort ‘when things were bad’ but does not seem to fully connect that he is one of the reasons why this happens.

The Wren, The Wren is a study in inter-generational trauma. Phil’s betrayal looms large. Carmel has her daughter as a single mother to avoid the abandonment suffered by her own mother. Later, she also discards a man whose emotional demands have become too much. Nell seems to be simultaneously desperate for affection but also looking for it in all the wrong places. Enright’s depiction of Nell’s relationship with Felim is unpleasantly vivid and made me feel grateful once again that I spent so many tracts of my twenties very single. It was reminiscent of some of Sally Rooney’s work, interesting since she blurbed this book, describing it as ‘magnificent’. I struggled to identify with Nell however because unlike with Marianne and Connell, Felim made his disdain so deliberately and devastatingly clear. Are we truly so jumbled as a society that we prefer this kind of cruelty over contentment by ourselves? Are we saying that Phil’s abandonment of his family provokes his granddaughter to submit to sexual humiliation?

Despite this, I found some other moments of uncomfortable recognition just the same. For me, it was the chapter where Nell watches a video on Youtube of an old interview with Phil in which he refers in passing to the end of his marriage. He has regret in his eyes but no sense of responsibility. She has never met her grandfather but she is trying to understand him. I remember having a similarly eerie experience many years ago where I found a YouTube clip of my father. At that point, I had seen photos and I had talked to him on the phone but it was the first time in my life that I had ever seen him in motion. Like a real person. We look for clues about who these men are, both known and unknown. These absent men who never explained themselves. We scrutinise them. Stop. Rewind. Play it again. Still no answers. If you are smart, you realise that there never will be. Close the video. Switch to watching pandas eating bamboo. Or koalas. Whatever works.

It has been a while since I last read anything by Anne Enright but this book reminded me again of just how magnificent an artist she truly is. Alternating narrators can easier said than done for many authors and more often than not I tend to end up preferring one half of the story to the other. Not in this case. I am also always impressed when writers of prose are able to shift to poetry, particularly in this case where Enright is writing poetry through the voice of Phil McDaragh. The book’s title comes from a poem that Phil wrote for Carmel when she was a child. An empty gesture after he buggered off to America. Is the point that the poetry is beautiful but empty?

I think I appreciated The Wren, The Wren more than I loved it. It is a book about how we hand on our pain to the next generation. It is not trying to be an easy read. Still, Nell and Carmel seem to finish the book with hope for their shared future and for that, I was grateful. Anne Enright’s writing packs far more of a powerful punch than anything Phil McDaragh or his ilk could ever come up with.

The post Review: The Wren, The Wren, Anne Enright appeared first on Girl with her Head in a Book.