Ten books from the last twelve months

Last year was the first time I did this (it's quite likely I was procrastinating over organising a Christmas card list then too), it was interesting to look back and assess what books really stood out - looking at that list again tonight I wonder how many would have made the cut pitted against this years books. There were plenty of good books last year but it was quite hard work to pick ten that really stood out. This year couldn't be more different, the difficulty has been in narrowing it down to only ten - whatever else has been less than satisfactory on the last twelve months the books have been tremendous.

So once again in no particular order here are my favourites - the ones I've actually buttonholed strangers in bookshops over and tried to persuade them to buy, or bought to press on friends with utterly evangelical fervour, and if you're not already acquainted with these books you really should be...

John Sutherland's Lives Of The Novelists was a birthday present from my sister, it's great for dipping in and out of as well as for reference. I don't read much biography generally being more interested in the writing than the writer but sometimes curiosity gets the better of me. What I love about this book is that you have the basics of a career, a few key dates, a recommendation for the must read text of each author, and quite a lot of gossipy detail - everything I want in short. 

Ford Madox Ford's 'The Good Soldier' was my first successful foray into modernism, I liked it so much that it really shocked me to find that not everybody is a mad keen fan. Personally the conversational nature of the book, the narrator's chronic unreliability, and the way it bends itself to any number of interpretations were all irresistible. I'm really curious to see what I make of this book when I get round to a re-read, I have a feeling that I'll hardly recognise it and that's an exciting thought too. This has also been the year that I overcame my prejudices regarding Dickens and read 'Great Expectations' I have no idea how it compares to the rest of his oeuvre but this just totally hooked me in - what more can I say?

Shirley Conran's 'Lace' did much the same sort of thing, hands up the writing can be pretty dire, but it all bounces along in the most encouraging way and when you strip away the trash there's plenty of substance. It's not everyone who could deal with child exploitation, alcoholism, and rape in the way Conran does. There's an energy about this book that really brings the eighties back to life as well as a passionate manifesto for female friendship and saying when something just isn't good enough. 

Somewhere between 'Great Expectations' and 'Lace' lies Elizabeth Jenkins 'Harriet' (probably not entirely the company she's entirely used to keeping). There's a gothic quality to 'Harriet' that puts me in mind of 'Great Expectations' as well as a burning sense of social injustice which ties all three books together. 'Harriet' is an extraordinary book - despite knowing better I tend to think of Persephone as being a source of cosy books - this one really isn't cosy. It's shocking and provocative; almost a horror story this is a subtle examination of how ordinary enough people can find themselves doing terrible things without ever really noticing they've crossed a line until far to late. 

My love affair with Trollope continues, I'm by no means blind to his faults but I still adore him. 'Can You Forgive Her' comes with it's frustrations but it's also glorious. The heroine can't make up her mind about who to marry which leads her into all sorts of bother; honestly she's quite annoying, so happily that's not the only story line. Where Trollope excels is in creating thoroughly human and nuanced characters, whilst I'm reading his books I really feel like I'm living in his world - I just think he's wonderful. 

Back in the spring I replaced my disintegrating copy of 'Ring of Bright Water' which lead me to discover Little Toller books, from there I found first Frank Fraser Darling's 'Island Years Island Farm which felt like a book I'd been looking for for something like thirty years (ever since I grew out of Enid Blyton's island books) and then onto so many others. Islands draw me in, this account of family life in tents and huts speaks of adventure without ignoring the more mundane aspects of life on a deserted island. Gavin Maxwell's Harpoon at a Venture probably shouldn't be on this list. This is a favourite from way back, it's also out of print at the moment, but it's worth tracking down - it was Maxwell's first book and to me is probably his best. There is a rawness about that it that creates a real bond between reader and writer. It could have been all boys own adventure but I think it's a far more significant book than that. It touches on what life was like for the many ex service men who struggled with peace, and for boys who perhaps weren't quite ready to grow up. It's also a brilliant, visceral, read.

  'Findings' was a serendipitous discovery off the back of my island reading, reading it was an unexpectedly profound experience; It's one of those books that quietly encourages you to look at the world around you again and find new patterns in it. There's nothing flashy about it, it's simply a beautifully crafted piece of art that should on no account be overlooked.

Finally, and this might not come as a surprise, there is Diana Henry's Salt Sugar Smoke, in a vintage year for every sort of book that's crossed my threshold this is the One, something really special. I've mentioned it a few times but will say again; it's given me a huge amount of satisfaction already. The kitchen shelves are groaning under the weight of preserved goods waiting to go out as Christmas presents, soon the post man will be groaning under the weight of copies of 'Salt Sugar Smoke' destined to be yet more Christmas presents. Promise me you'll look at it...

Harriet - Elizabeth Jenkins

When I think of Persephone books I think of titles like 'Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day' or 'Miss Buncle's Book' but really that's only a very small part of what they do. Persephone also excel at finding unexpectedly dark and thought provoking books; Dorothy B. Hughes 'The Expendable Man' is one of the best thrillers I've ever read, it's shocking and brilliant. 'Harriet' is that kind of Persephone, I finished it a week or more ago but it's still haunting me - 'The Tortoise and the Hare' is meant to be Jenkins masterpiece but I would be prepared to debate that now.

'Harriet' is based on the once notorious Penge mystery - although when I googled it I found very little that wasn’t related to this book. In 1874 the 33 year old Harriet became engaged to a Louis Staunton, a hard up auctioneer’s clerk. She had what we would describe now as learning difficulties, Jenkins makes these quite severe, but  Harriet was lucky to have a loving mother and plenty of her own money so life was on the whole a pleasant round of shopping and visiting within the extended family. It’s on a visit to some distant and hard up, cousins that Harriet met Louis. Despite her mother’s efforts to stop the marriage it goes ahead, which leads to a total estrangement between the two women based on Louis’ insistence. After Harriet has a child Louis removes her to Kent and the house of his brother and sister-in-law. He himself starts to live with Alice (his brother’s wife’s younger sister) in a neighbouring house. Within two years of her marriage Harriet and her child are dead.

Only known photograph of Harriet Staunton

It’s a curious book to read, Jenkins changes the surnames and Louis to Lewis but that seems to be all. The book was written in 1934, the same year that Louis Staunton died, the children he had with his third wife, the children of Patrick and Elizabeth Staunton – any of them might have read this reworking of their parents crimes and although right at the end Jenkins leaves us with the slight possibility that the Staunton’s might not have been guilty of premeditated murder by starvation everything that precedes suggests that they are. Perhaps because it’s based on fact there’s a hard to define something about the tone of the book as well, it’s not quite journalistic, rather more like a play with instructions regarding motivation, but not quite like a novel – the result is compelling, and really doesn’t feel like fiction at all.

Jenkins paints a horrific portrait of Harriet’s fate, she’s incarcerated in an attic, her cloths removed and given to her husband’s mistress to pick over, she is steadily terrorised, starved, and probably beaten, she becomes filthy and lice infested steadily losing the outward trappings of humanity. She must have watched as her child wastes away until he’s taken away from her hours before he dies, and then finally she too is at deaths door whilst all the time Patrick, Lewis, Elizabeth, and Alice watch on, their own lives made comfortable by her money.

For those four Harriet is a resource to be exploited, less than human, incapable of feeling as they do, undeserving of the good things in life when they have had to struggle, and finally an inconvenience to be disposed of but their own relationships also bear inspection. Lewis and Patrick Oman have an intensely close relationship; Patrick worships his brother to the extent that he’s prepared to do anything for him without question, Alice is infatuated by Lewis too which suggests he has a certain charisma, but it’s the relationship between Patrick and Elizabeth that disturbs me. Elizabeth is totally submissive to her husband’s will; his temper is violent and unpredictable and we would now consider Elizabeth to be an abused wife. The death of Harriet’s baby isn’t really discussed much in the book, so was presumably not a major factor in the trial either, and whilst I suppose that attitudes to child mortality were rather more resigned in the 19^th century it’s still hard to understand how Elizabeth as an apparently loving mother can reconcile herself to the babies fate.

There is one particularly shocking scene where Patrick wrenches the child from Harriet to baptize it. Jenkins makes his actions violent but Elizabeth hardly reacts. It’s one of the pivotal moments in the narrative – the power of the book is in the way that for most of the time it’s quite possible to follow the Oman’s reasoning – Harriet is to them sub human, she cannot feel as they do, and then of course they are so poor, always hungry; is it fair she has so much when they have so little? Violence is implicitly suggested but rarely explicit, so when for example we find Alice remodelling Harriet’s cloths for herself and wearing her jewellery it takes a moment to absorb the full implications of what’s happening. These are the points in the books where Harriet’s eventual fate is made clear, and where I also think Jenkins makes it clear that she believes that the Staunton’s were guilty of murder.

‘Harriet’ isn’t always an easy book to read but it’s rewarding and an effective way to challenge your own prejudices. It’s a simple thing to be impatient with those not quite like us, harder to question that reaction. This is a book that shakes your complacency and sticks with you for a long time. Highly recommended.