Tag: Review

Book Review: Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift

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A story of desire, secrets and memories

MotheringAbout the Book

Description (courtesy of Goodreads): It is March 30th 1924. It is Mothering Sunday. How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?  Beginning with an intimate assignation and opening to embrace decades, Mothering Sunday has at its heart both the story of a life and the life that stories can magically contain. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual and deeply moving, it is Graham Swift at his thrilling best.

Book Facts

  • Format: ebook
  • Publisher: Scribner
  • No. of pages: 145
  • Publication date: 25th February 2016
  • Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Mothering Sunday from Amazon.co.uk, click here (link provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme)

Find Mothering Sunday on Goodreads

My Review

Mothering Sunday is one of the novels on this year’s shortlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. You can find a list of all the shortlisted novels here.

This is the first book I’ve read by Graham Swift and on the strength of the writing in this book, boy, what I have been missing.    He is a master of observation with meaning drawn from gestures and objects, even from the way a man dresses.

‘Dressing, anyway, among their kind, was never conceived of as just flinging on of clothes. It was a solemn piecing together.’

‘It was in some way all for her – that she should watch him dress, watch his nakedness gradually disappear. Or that he just didn’t care. The sureness, the aloofness, the unaccountable unhurriedness.’

For a housemaid, Jane is unusual in that she has been taught to read and write. Foreshadowing her later life, she loves books and has a writer’s interest in words and their meanings.  So when Milly the cook asks Jane, ‘Are you an orchid?’ when she clearly meant orphan, Jane muses:

‘And did it matter if she’d used the wrong word – if the wrong word was a better one? …And what if orphans really were called orchids? And if the sky was called the ground. And if a tree was called a daffodil. Would it make any difference to the actual nature of things? Or their mystery?’

Of course, Jane’s interest in words is a manifestation of the author’s own interest. A love of language, playful at times, is apparent throughout the book with words explored for oppositions and multiple meanings.

‘The sunshine only applauded their nakedness, dismissing all secrecy from what they were doing, though it was utterly secret.’

‘She knew him and she didn’t know him. She knew him in some ways better than anyone – she would always be sure of that – while knowing that no one else must ever know how much she knew him. But she knew him well enough to know the ways in which he was not knowable.’

‘He had ‘possessed’ [her body]. That was another word. He had possessed her body – her body being almost all she possessed. And could it be said that she had possessed and might always possess him?’

However the attraction of this book is not only about the wonderful quality of the writing. There is narrative power too as it takes a sudden, devastating turn a third of a way through, conveyed in just two simple sentences.  As well as the story of an assignation between people of different positions in society on a pivotal day in both their lives, it seems to me the book is a meditation on words, writing and story-telling.  This aspect becomes more of the focus in later parts of the book.  As Jane reminisces about the events of that Mothering Sunday, she observes, ‘Well there was a whole story there, a story she’d sworn to herself never to tell. Nor had she. Nor would she. Though here she was, look, a storyteller by trade.’   But, of course, Jane has told us, the reader, her story.

I thought this was an outstanding book and I’m afraid no review of mine can do it justice.  I loved the sensual, lyrical writing. I also have to mention the absolutely stunning cover. Whoever chose the painting that appears on the Scribner edition – Modigliani’s “Reclining Nude” – deserves a prize as well.

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In three words: Lyrical, sensual, intimate

Try something similar…The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell

GrahamSwiftAbout the Author

Graham Colin Swift FRSL was born in London in 1949 and educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens’ College, Cambridge, and later the University of York.  He was a friend of Ted Hughes. Some of his works have been made into films, including Last Orders, which starred Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins and Waterland which starred Jeremy Irons. Last Orders was a joint winner of the 1996 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and a mildly controversial winner of the Booker Prize in 1996, owing to the superficial similarities in plot to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Waterland was set in The Fens; it is a novel of landscape, history and family, and is often cited as one of the outstanding post-war British novels and has been a set text on the English Literature syllabus in British schools.

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Book Review: A Tapestry of Tears by Gita V. Reddy

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Fascinating stories about Indian culture and society

ATapestryofTearsAbout the Book

Description (courtesy of Goodreads): Set in the early nineteenth century, A Tapestry of Tears is about female infanticide, and the unmaking of tradition. If a woman gives birth to a female child, she must feed her the noxious sap of the akk plant. That is the tradition, parampara. Veeranwali rebels and fights to save her offspring.  The other stories span a spectrum of emotions and also bring to life the varied culture and social spectrum of India. Woven into this collection is the past and the present, despair and hope, and the triumph of the human spirit.

Book Facts

  • Format: ebook
  • No. of pages: 204
  • Publication date: 2nd November 2016
  • Genre: Fiction, Short Stories

To purchase A Tapestry of Tears from Amazon.co.uk, click here (link provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme)

Find A Tapestry of Tears on Goodreads 

My Review

Subtitled ‘Short Stories from India’, A Tapestry of Tears comprises twelve short stories, of varying lengths, which explore different aspects of Indian culture, in particular family relationships.  As is often the case with short story collections, some stories are more compelling than others.

The standout story is the one that gives the collection its title, A Tapestry of Tears. This explores the dreadful tradition or parampara prevalent amongst some families in early 19th century India of killing (or to use the euphemism, ‘putting to sleep’) girl infants, using the sap of the akk plant. To make it even more terrible, a mother was expected to administer the poison herself. Known as kurimaar, this awful practice stemmed from a belief that a wife was for begetting sons.

‘Daughters weakened the clan. Having a daughter meant bowing one’s head to whoever would wed her. It also meant dowry. Daughters were of no use. You fed them and clothed them, and they went away to serve in another’s house.’

Through the story of one wife and mother, Veeranwali, we see the impact of the custom on the women forced to participate in it.   Their only solace is to record their lost daughters in the form of embroidery on a traditional bagh phulkari chadar, a cotton shawl embroidered with silk. Gradually we see the power of women coming together in mutual support, quiet resistance and solidarity to overturn the practice of female infanticide. In time, the creation of the bagh becomes a celebration not a remembrance of their cherished daughters.  You can see a few examples of phulkari here .

Another story I liked was the deliciously dark ‘The Quizzing Glass’ in which a man who arrogantly believes he has learned to read the minds of others from their gestures and body language – including that of his poor wife – finds it less comfortable when the spotlight is turned on his own character.

I would also single out ‘The Prisoner’, the heart-warming tale of Mira, rejected by her mother because of her disability. Mira has learned to shun social contact despite being bright but finds that not all of the world views her in the same malevolent fashion as her mother.

I really enjoyed reading this collection of stories. The author has a clear, readable style and I liked the fact that explanatory information was provided for some words that might be unfamiliar to readers outside India. Although the stories are situated in Indian culture and society, they address some themes that are universal: family, love and death.

I received a review copy courtesy of the author in return for an honest review.

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In three words: Moving, thoughtful, tradition

Try something similar…Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

GitaVReddyAbout the Author

Gita V.Reddy is a writer of fiction for middle-graders and adults. She enjoys thinking up tales of different genres. She has written mysteries, adventure, fantasy, science fiction, and even an animal tale for children. She wrote and illustrated her first picture book for kids in August, 2015. She plans to write a few more because the experience was very satisfying. Ms Reddy was born in India, is a post graduate in Mathematics, worked in a bank for twenty-six years, is married to a physics professor, has a son doing research in neuro-electronics, and loves literature. Yes, her life is as mixed up as the multiple genres she writes.  She enjoys painting and spending time with her family, and LOVES walking in the rain. She also writes under the name Heera Datta.

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