More reading.

Tess Gerritson, ‘The Silent Girl’ I was given for free so skidded through it, half enjoying and just enough intrigued to keep going, but they are ephemeral so today when I came to write about it I had to search the book out because I’d forgotten title and theme. That’s forgivable in a genre meant to entertain rather than enlightenment or bother ones head with the exposition of new ideas. Still, I only keep books that I know I’m going to want to read again so it’s off the the charity shop with it next.

In a mood for something - slightly - different next I opted for a thriller and read a Sophie Hannah, found for £2 in a bric-a-brac store. “The Other Half Lives’ infuriated me with it’s contortions, hidden secrets and yet more dreadful revelations constantly hinted at. The characters were two-dimensional, cardboard cut-outs, the settings sketchily drawn, but it was still rather better than the last of hers I read.

Next (I’ve been reading a lot lately, not sleeping well) the new Elizabeth George, 'Believing the Lie.' EG's satisfyingly long novels I have always liked, some more than others. For an American she does quite well at evoking the unreal but cosily imagined life in England that makes 'Midsummer Murders' a TV money spinner. She does much better than MM because her characters are fleshed out, have substance, are much more than name on a page. Still the analogy holds, she creates stories that might almost be from the ‘Golden Age’ of crime novels with stately homes, disaffected nobility, beautiful villages and countryside, in this case Cumbria. Her cast of regulars is, in my opinion, getting a bit unwieldy and the threads become distorted to include their personal angst. Still, this book will stay on my shelves. 

Today I started ‘The Cleft’ by Doris Lessing. The difference between her writing and the other authors aforementioned is marked but difficult for me to put into words not being a professor of Eng. Lit.. She isn’t a self-consciously ‘literary’ writer; there’s no artifice, just straightforward story telling, but she always has a point to make or an idea to explore, this time the difference between men and women, and the effect they have on each other. The blurb says: “Imagine a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, free from petty rivalries, a society free from men.’  Difficult to imagine, and even more difficult to imagine a writer pulling this off in a credible way. Her own foreword sums up better her interest in the creation and the exploration of a myth:

‘In a recent scientific article it was remarked that the basic and primal human stock was probably female and that males came along later, as a kind of cosmic afterthought.’ I cannot believe this as a trouble-free event.’

I’d like to quote more but the laws of copyright probably should be observed.

I’m on page 81. Totally absorbed.