Am I behind writing about what I’ve been
reading? I guess I am. I’ve been zigging-zagging from book to book all week and
keeping to my plan of only deciding what’s next when I get to the gap between
volumes…
This time last week I spent the whole day
with Denis O’Donnell’s lovely cat memoir, ‘Paw Tracks in Moonlight’, which is
mostly about the first year in the life of a cat the author rescued in the
mid-60s. The action all takes place in the wilds of Northumberland, where a
single young teacher goes to live in what sound like idyllic surroundings. In
the depths of winter he finds a female Maine Coon caught in a cruel mantrap.
Though he’s too late to save her life, he manages to keep on of her kittens
alive – and this turns out to be Toby Jug, the hero of the book. It’s a really
lovely against-all-odds story about friendship and survival.
Then I spent much of the week inside a
wonderful novel that I happened upon by chance. Rainbow Rowell’s ‘Fangirl’ is (I
think) her fourth and it’s a delight from start to finish. It’s long but not
long enough. I just wanted more. I read it on my kronky old Kindle and I was
pressing that button so hard when I got to 100%, hoping there’d be more pages.
That’s how much I loved it.
It reminded me so much of being in
college. Of writing stories for workshops and writing Fan Fiction at the same
time, and the whole lot vying for time with real life and all my other work.
The friendships and the characters and the dramas that Cath encounters were so
familiar and real. It’s been a long time since I read anything that really
caught that excitement of writing fiction, and living inside the stories you’re
writing. Rainbow Rowell has a wonderfully readable voice. Her prose has that
addictive quality. Everyone is likable, too – even the flaky mother and the
slightly skanky room mate.
What else? Well, then I was straight into
the very funny and touching ‘Adventures With the Wife in Space’ by Neil Perryman, in
which a Dr Who fan exactly my age spends over two years playing every single
episode of the Show for his wife to watch and notes down all of her responses –
which are incisive and sometimes hilarious. She should be script-editing today’s
Dr Who. The whole thing is wonderfully excruciating – especially in the
anecdotal stuff about going to Dr Who conventions. (John Levene comes out of
the thing particularly brilliantly.) I can see this book as a quirky Brit movie
already – a road trip movie about sitting mostly still. It’s a love story,
really, and all the starships and rubber monsters are just a pretext, as they
always were.
And my week has finished with two days
hooked on Liane Moriaty’s ‘The Husband’s Secret’ – which is fabulously
scandalous and, again, addictive. It’s like moving into a new street and
everyone coming round to tell you all the neighbours’ most shocking, long-held
secrets. Another big recommendation from me.
The year’s going well so far. I haven’t
opened a duff book yet…! Let’s see if my lucky reading streak continues…
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