My Top Ten Books of the Last Year

It's the time of year when I like to look back at the books I've read over the last twelve months and make a totally subjective choice as to which have been the ten best. It's sort of a useful exercise in so much as if I'm keeping a reading notebook (blog) I should check over it form time to time - and actually it's been a really helpful reminder of some excellent books. There was one year when this was really hard but this time I was surprised at how many really good books there were to choose from. I re-read 'Pride and Prejudice' this year but opted not to put it on the list because - well because I've read it so many times before that it didn't really feel like it should count again.

So in no particular order here are my top 10 books of the last 12 months starting with Sara Maitland's 'Gossip From The Forest'. Maitland was my introduction to feminist fiction and Virago books (many years ago) but this was the first one of hers I've picked up in a long time. It was inspirational. I've looked at trees and fairy tales differently since. As an older sister I was particularly taken with her theory that fairy tales were originally mostly told by older sisters but basically you can't beat a book that makes you look at something familiar with fresh eyes.

Amy Sackville's 'Orkney' got some mixed reviews but I loved her take on legend and folklore and the darker side of love. The older narrators obsession with one of his students becomes increasingly oppressive but also left me wondering if their marriage is imagined. The shifting light and landscape of Orkney is the perfect backdrop for Sackville's tale and I also thought she did an excellent job of catching something of the spirit of the place.

Rumer Godden's 'A Fugue In Time' is one of three of her books that I read this year, all of them wonderful and disconcerting in equal measure. I thought I knew Godden reasonably well but exploring the titles re-issued this year have made me reassess her. 'A Fugue In Time' is the least obviously shocking of the trio (no rape and no exotic Indian location) but still managed to unsettle me as a reader. It's the story of a family and their home through almost a century. For want of a better description the memories have an independent life within the house and document the small triumphs, tragedies, injustices, cruelties, and loves that go to make up a family history. It's the sort of book that begs discussion.

Helen Hull's 'Heat Lightning' was a book that far exceeded expectations, it also has a particularly good introduction. It's another multi generational look at family life (which as a description is exactly the sort of thing which will make me pass over a book) and marriage. Amy Norton's marriage has hit a rough patch and she's gone home to lick her wounds. It's the beginning of the great depression and whilst she's home her uncle and cousin come off the rails in a way that threatens to take the whole family with them, her grandmother also dies. It isn't a depressing book - Amy and her husband look like they'll be able to make things work and the family will manage to re group and carry on somehow. What's really stuck with me though is the rising sense of tension against a background of oppressive heat. This one is a real Persephone gem.

Lindsey Bareham's 'The Trifle Bowl and Other Tales' is still sitting in my books to be dealt with pile, I got nowhere near doing it justice when I wrote about it and still haven't spent much time looking at the recipes yet. One way or another (River Cottage Fruit, anything that Prospect ever choose to publish, and Fiona Cairns 'Seasonal Baking' are notable exceptions) I haven't found many really inspiring cookbooks this year. Maybe it's because I no longer have a good local bookshop to discover things in but far to many of the cookbooks I've seen this year have felt like more of the same. The Trifle Bowl stands out because it looked at equipment as much as recipes, I love my kitchen and all it's bits so a book that puts those bits front and centre really appeals to me. The kitchens we have define the way we cook, eat, and entertain, I don't like anybody else cooking in my kitchen (they do it wrong) but I loved reading about somebody else's kitchen.

Georgette Heyer's 'The Grand Sophy' probably shouldn't count in the same way that 'Pride and Prejudice' didn't count but re reading it was something of a revelation (as were all the Georgette Heyer's I re read this year). I knew she was entertaining but I'd forgotten what very positive female role models Heyer wrote. Sophy isn't conventionally beautiful, she has a temper, and she's prone to tears at inconvenient moments but she's also smart, capable, and independent. I'm very glad these were the books I was devouring when I was 14.

I'm half way through Trollope's Palliser series now and so far 'The Eustace Diamonds' is easily my favourite. Lizzie Eustace is by far the most interesting woman I've found in Trollope, had he sympathised with her just a little more the book would have been even better (in my opinion). I know it's not everybody's favourite Palliser but for once this was a moral dilemma that I could really sympathise with, one where doing the wrong thing would come very easily (I'm not to be trusted with valuable diamond necklaces) and so much happens that Trollope doesn't repeat himself as much as usual. Entertainment aside it also has a lot to say about the position of women in Victorian society and the attitude of decent but conservative men like Trollope.

When I'm next inclined to damn Christmas and all the crap that comes with it I should remind myself of how many good books appear at this tome of year - there have been some beauties in the last few weeks for which I'm truly grateful. The most hotly anticipated (on my part at least) was John Wright's 'Booze', it didn't disappoint. Wright is a charming presence on the page and the book is packed with useful and interesting things to know.

Philip Hook's 'Breakfast at Sotheby's' is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. For anybody with an interest in art this book deserves serious consideration. Looking at the art world through the art market puts a slightly different slant on things, it certainly underlines why the great public collections are so important as well as being an interesting indicator of taste.

And finally Michael Alexander's 'The Wanderer: Elegies, Epics, Riddles ('Micheal Alexander seductive is registering as a search term in my stats which I find slightly disconcerting). I expected this book to be interesting in a slightly dry sort of way so was mildly surprised at just how much I enjoyed it. I really liked Alexander's translations of Anglo Saxon poems and other fragmentary bits - there's some beautiful pieces in here, things that I'll go back to over and over (especially 'The Dream of the Rood'), it's reignited a long dormant interest in poetry and will make sitting through the second instalment of 'The Hobbit' somewhat more bearable.
 

Heat Lightning - Helen Hull

'Heat Lightning' is exactly the sort of book I associate with Persephone (and then I'm constantly surprised by how varied their list is) and I'll say it now - quite an odd one to read whilst there's still traces of snow on the ground (although thankfully it's starting to warm up) because oppressive heat is inescapable in the novel.

Amy Norton is visiting her parents somewhere in the mid west, she's recuperating from an operation and also running away from something uncomfortable in her marriage. Back at home in the stifling heat of that mid western summer Amy is able to observe her family with some of the impartiality of an outsider and hopes that this will give her some clarity to help deal with her own problems. It's also 1930 - the drought stricken summer that followed the stock market crash of 1929  - still the beginning of the depression and all sorts of storms are about to break over the Westover family.

Patricia McClelland Miller raises a couple of points in her introduction which I found particularly interesting. The first is about the American search for a national identity in the face of a lack of common tradition. This is something that was a major theme in American art (or perhaps more properly in the arts) at the time, the Westover family has acquired first and second generation immigrants amongst it's daughter in laws who bring their own cultural values and expectations with them. One of the problems Amy is grappling with is her attempt to work out her own set of values to live by in a constantly shifting society. The second point, and it's worth some consideration, is about the changing fortunes of domestic and 'feminine' fiction. McClelland says that ' When Helen Hull's earlier novels were described as 'women's books', reviewers meant that they were written on controversial topics from a woman's point of view.' By the 1930's though it became a somewhat more pejorative term, it still is, but really - why should it be? 

When Amy returns home it's to find the family suffering from the heat and all a little bit on edge. Things aren't going well in her father's business, nor are they looking good for her uncle. Cousin Tom may be having an affair with the maid, and Grandmother Westover promptly reveals that the increasingly erratic man she has to do the garden is in fact her husbands illegitimate son - his learning difficulties persuaded her that something had to be done for him and she's not the woman to renege on her responsibilities. 

As the heat shows no sign of breaking the tension increases, the cracks in Amy's marriage show, the financial implications of the depression get closer to home for Dewitt Westover who's about to show just what a man will do for money and then something happens which utterly alters the family dynamic. There's a lot going on in this book, Hull uses this extended family to work through all sorts of ideas - and the genius of it is that everybody has a domestic setting of some sort, whereas our individual experiences of the world outside of the home isn't always easy to translate into the experience of others, what happens within the home is far easier to empathise with. 

It's not the biggest spoiler to reveal that Amy's husband has been unfaithful , and as the book I'm struggling to finish at the moment is also about what I'm coming to think of as good old fashioned adultery, it's interested me to see the differences. In this case the marriage has hit a rough patch where both Amy and Geoffrey are out of sympathy with each other. When Amy catches him out she's not in a position to immediately have it out with him, but when they do they do at least manage to be honest with each other. The implication is that they might be able to repair things but that it won't be easy. As examples Amy has, amongst others, her grandmother who was able to accommodate her husbands indiscretions within their marriage somehow, her mother who has made her father her life, and an aunt who's marriage failed after a series of infidelities. Examining all those relationships allows her - and the reader - to consider what she wants from her own husband and what she's prepared to give. 

It's a rewarding book as well as a really enjoyable one, it's also a book to go back to and one that I whole heartedly recommend.