Monthly Archives: November 2019

November 26, 2019 · 7:57 am

I’m just catching up with Bookish Podcasts

So I need your help. I am fairly new to podcasting. Not to making them, I don’t do that. I mean that I have only recently begun listening to them. On the train, while I wash up, or cook or clean my walking boots.

First, I had to discover how to find them – by accessing the podcast app on my ipad. It turned out it was simple.

Then I had to find the ones I wanted to listen to. There are lots of different podcasts, all keen to be listened to. It was a little like investigating apps on my first smart phone. I didn’t know that so many were available. They were simple to download but hard to choose between. The search facility will bring lots to your attention.

And then to be more discerning I began to pay attention to recommendations and emails from organisations that make them, in particular the publishers. And now I am asking you for your recommendations.

So what is a podcast?

Let’s consult the oracle.

A podcast is an episodic series of digital, audio or video files that a user can download in order to listen. Alternatively, the word “podcast” may refer to the individual component of such a series or to an individual media file. (Wikipedia)

They often have an automatic facility to download onto your device through a subscription. Subscriptions are usually free, btw. They’ve been going since about 2004. I told you I was late to the party.

How is a podcast different from a radio programme?

The main difference is through the subscription and downloading aspects. But in many ways podcasts are a way of spreading audio content, as radio programmes are.

In practise I think they are often longer than the average radio programme, aimed more at a specific interest group than the general listener, and often presented as a conversation 

I would also point out that radio programmes about books and writing are becoming harder to find. But there are any number of podcasts about books it seems.

Which bookish podcasts have I been enjoying?

You can search for these four that I regularly listen to:

Slightly Foxed: this podcast is recorded in the offices of the magazine of the same name. The magazine features essays by readers who describe books they love. The podcasts take up this theme often with guests on particular topics. I particularly enjoyed the recent discussion about George Mackay the poet from Orkney.

Backlisted: it has been going for about 2 years. Each episode features a guest (usually a writer) who has chosen a book they love and which they think deserves a wider audience. Though sponsored by the crowd-funding publisher Unbound, it isn’t about selling new product: it’s about how and why some books stand the test of time. As their title suggests this is not so much about new books. Each episode is about an hour long.

Virago Books: a monthly podcast featuring writers published by Virago. I always want to read the book they feature. This month it was Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig. Usually about 30 mins.

Guardian Books: a weekly look at books, poetry and great writing, hosted by Claire Armitstead, Richard Lea and Sian Cain. I have recently listened to an interview with the poet Kathleen Jamie. Each podcast is about 30 minutes.

The podcasts usually feature recommendations and some include episode notes (aka show notes) with details of books discussed or recommended.

And others?

Not so bookish, but interesting and entertaining:

Fortunately features Jane Garvey and Fi Glover who ‘share stories they probably shouldn’t’. Recommended by friends as soon as I said I was trying out podcasting. Weekly. About 45 minutes. 

Something Rhymes with Purple: Susie Dent and Gyles Brandreth talk about words and language. Just right for a train journey I have found. Weekly. About 30 minutes long.

The Verb: hosted by Ian MacMillan. This really is a radio programme, sent out weekly and lasts about 45 minutes and featuring all sorts of writing stuff.

And some lists

Penguin books: 25 of the best literary and book podcasts for book lovers. There are quite a few suggested podcasts on this list to explore.

Sunday Times: has apparently recently published a list of 100 podcasts to love. But it is behind a paywall, so good luck.

How you can help

As you can see, I enjoy listening to people discussing books almost as much as I like talking about books myself. And I like hearing writers’ recommendations of books that are not necessarily new. So you can help me by adding more recommendations of bookish podcasts you think are worth listening to. Happy listening.

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November 21, 2019 · 7:41 am

L’orangeraie (The Orange Grove) by Larry Tremblay

I am trying a kind of double review here. I have recently joined a French book club to accelerate my French learning. Our second book is L’orangeraie by Larry Tremblay. I had already read this short novel in English, The Orange Grove in the Peirene edition. 

Two things struck me as I read the French version: the simplicity of the language, with few adjectives. The main characters in the first part are twins of 9 years old. They live simply in the desert, and the language reflects their lives.

The second observation was the very visual aspects of the novel: the orange grove in the desert; the kite dancing free in the mountain wind, the dust from the jeep that brings Soulayed to the family, with his machine gun, loquacity and menace. Larry Tremblay is a theatre director as well as an author and he works in Canada. 

L’orangeraie / The Orange Grove

This novella begins in the parched desert landscape of an unnamed country in the shadow of mountains. A family makes a living from the orange grove, despite the harshness of the climate. Then the grandparents’ house is bombed from over the mountains, and the way is open for revenge and the gradual destruction of the survivors.

The novel is concerned with the choices that war, hate, revenge require of ordinary people. And with the destruction to human bonds brought by action in pursuit of these. Soulayed arrives to instruct Zahed to choose one of his twin sons to revenge the deaths of his parents with a suicide mission. 

The father chooses Amed, not wishing to send his other, sick son to an early death. Perhaps the choice of his son with a terminal illness would have been a lesser sacrifice. His wife Tamara does not agree and persuades Amed to swap with Aziz.

The reader is confronted by many questions. How can parents choose between the deaths of their children? How can the death of either twin make up for the bombing of their grandparents? How can the seducer, Soulayed, persuade Zahed and the twins that the suicide mission is the right response? What will be achieved by more killing?

In the second section action has suddenly switched to Canada where the grownup Aziz (formerly Amed) is studying acting. The director Michael tries to find the right way to end a play about war. He struggling to find the ending that will reflect something of the reality of the experience of violence and of Amed/Aziz’s experiences in particular. 

He [Michael] was asking himself the same questions about evil. It was too easy to accuse those who committed war crimes of being assassins or wild beasts. Especially when those who judged them lived far from the circumstances that had provoked the conflicts, whose origins were lost in the vortex of history. What would he have done in a comparable situation? Would he, like millions of other men, have been capable of fighting for an idea, a scrap of earth, a border, or even oil? Would he, too, have been conditioned to kill innocents, women and children? Or would he have had the courage, even if it meant risking his own life, to refuse the order to shoot down defenceless people in a burst of gunfire? (120)

Michael is asking the questions that those of us who live far from conflict must consider. He wants Amed/Aziz to play the part of a child who must justify a soldier’s decision to shoot him or not. The young man comes to his own decision about the ending, addressing the audience directly. 

‘No, you don’t need to have a reason or even to have right on your side to do what you think you must do. Don’t look elsewhere for what is already within you. Who am I to think in your place? My clothes are dirty and torn, and my heart is shattered like a pebble. I cry tears that tear at my face. But as you can hear, my voice is calm. Better still, I have a peaceful voice. I am speaking to you in a voice that is seven years old, nine years old, twenty years old, a thousand years old. Do you hear me?’ (138)

L’orangeraie by Larry Tremblay (2013) La Table Ronde. 143 pp

The Orange Grove by Larry Tremblay (2015) Peirene Press. 138pp. Translated from the French by Sheila Fischman 

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November 16, 2019 · 7:51 am

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

Here is my final choice for the Decades Project on Bookword in 2019. Having explored children’s fiction from each decade from 1900 I have reached 2000-2010. And my choice can only be How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell.

My previous choices for this series have drawn on my mother’s books, my own reading and my daughter’s. How to Train Your Dragon and the following series were the obvious choice because for several years they had been the favourite books of my grandson, Oli, now 11 years old. I went, so to speak, to the dragon’s mouth for his comments.

How to Train Your Dragon

I had planned to interview my grandson about this book, but time was running out as half term was coming to an end. We were on the train last Friday. Oli was sitting behind me, so I wrote down some questions and sent my pad of paper back for his answers.  Here’s how that interview went.

Me: How old were you when you first read HTTYD?

Oli: 6

Me: How did you know about it?

Oli: Films. 

[The DreamWorks Animations use the ideas but not the illustrations of the original books. They have also been loved by my grandson.]

Me: What did you like about Hiccup? [the hero]

Oli: His confidence to learn and do the right thing.

Me: What did you like about Toothless? [Hiccup’s dragon]

Oli: His childish craziness.

Me: What did you like about the stories?

Oli: How unexpected they are.

Q&A Caro / Oli

Me: Would you recommend the books to a younger reader?

Oli: Yes, younger than I am now.

Me: Anything else about HTTYD?

Oli: I really enjoyed how each character had particular skills and characteristics.

Me: And how are the films and books different?

Oli: The storylines are different. Also Toothless is big enough to ride [in the films].

Me: Do you like Cressida Cowell’s pictures?

Oli: Yes.

Me: Why?

Oli. I like them because they can be crazy but also majestic and detailed.

Me: What are the stories about (books)?

Oli: About restoring the king’s lost things in order to bring peace to the Dragon Rebellion and stop a war between the humans and the Dragon Rebellion.

Me: What have you moved on to since reading HTTYD?

Oli: Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Me: And what’s the best book you have ever read?

Oli: Now: Harry Potter, before: How to Train Your Dragon.

An endorsement I think for Cressida Cowell and her creations. Thank you Oli. And here is her Children’s Charter, for Cressida Cowell is currently the children’s laureate.

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, published in 2003 by Hodder Children’s Books. Illustrated by the author.

The Decade Project in 2019

In 2019, the third year of my Decades Projects, I have been exploring children’s fiction from the start of the 20thcentury through my monthly choices. Next month I will be looking back at the children’s fiction choices and forward to next year.

Here are the links to the previous choices in this year’s Decades Project:

The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson (1991)

Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian (1983)

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry  by Mildred D Taylor (1976)

A Wizard of Earthsea  by Ursula K Le Guin (1968)

The Eagle of the Ninth  by Rosemary Sutcliff (1954)

The Little White Horse  by Elizabeth Goudge (1946)

Ballet Shoes  by Noel Streatfeild (1936)

Joan’s Best Chum  by Angela Brazil (1926)

The Secret Garden  by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911) 

Five Children and It  by E Nesbit (1902)

To subscribe and receive email notifications of future posts on Bookword please email me with your email address: lodgecm@gmail.com

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November 11, 2019 · 7:39 am

Themed review: novels from the Home Front in WW2

One might expect wartime fiction to provide comfort, escapism, even propaganda. Many no doubt did. However the four novels featured here written and set in Britain during the war also took the opportunity to reveal something new and different about the human condition and to record some of their bizarre and unusual experiences. 

Setting novels on the Home Front of the Second World War

Setting novels in wartime brings the writer many opportunities. Unexpected locations, events, characters and relationships arise in wartime. Motives can be unclear. Characters, especially heroines and heroes, are often required to find resources within themselves that they did not know they had. 

For me, the ultimate war novel will probably always be Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. The protagonists face some dreadful and nonsensical situations, meet officers who are completely out of their depth, and try to survive however they can. Much of the novel points up the craziness of the war. It was set on a Mediterranean island in the Second World War, but not published until 1961. 

In the Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen

1st Edition

This novel is a thriller, set in war-time London, centred on the Regents Park area. Stella is approached by the mysterious and rather malevolent Harrison at an open air concert. He appears to know things about her lover Robert, questioning his commitment to the war effort. Allegiances to people and countries of birth are under suspicion. The description of an air raid is vivid and exciting. And this passage about the presence of the dead in London is moving.

Most of all the dead, from mortuaries, from under cataracts of rubble, made their anonymous presence – not as today’s dead but as yesterday’s living – felt through London. Uncounted, they continued to move in shoals through the city day, pervading everything to be seen or heard or felt with their torn-off senses, drawing on this tomorrow they had expected – for death cannot be so sudden as all that. Absent from the routine which had been life, they stamped upon that routine their absence – not knowing who the dead were you could not know which might be the staircase somebody for the first time was not mounting this morning, or at which street corner the newsvendor missed a face, or which trains and buses in the homegoing rush were this evening lighter by one passenger. (p91-2)

Elizabeth Bowen wrote most of the novel during the war, but apparently found it hard to complete and it was not published until 1948.

In the Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948). You can find the full post here.

A Footman for the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson

This novel considers a formerly wealthy landed family confronting the changes of the 20th century. The story includes their energetic efforts to resist the advancing demands of the war, for example, to take in evacuees. And is it possible that the peacock is signalling to enemy aircraft?

It is both a social commentary and a thriller set against the background of the first months of the war.

A Footman for the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson (1940) reissued by Furrowed Middlebrow Books (2016). My comments on this novel on Bookword can be found here.

Night Shift by Inez Holden 

Night Shift is a novella first published in 1941. The episodes are framed as six night shifts in a factory in East London during the Blitz. The workers, mostly women, make surveillance cameras for aircraft. There is little story, but the people who work, supervise, or relax in the canteen reveal their separate lives as they work together. Each person is given a name or nickname, and they interact in a way that demonstrates a sense of community, but they are not connected to their important work. They are strangely isolated on their night shifts. The novella strongly conveys the daily interactions of Londoners, the inconveniences of Blitz damage, the noise, the concerns about women’s wages and the sense of so many individuals being involved in these events.

Reading it one felt it was a record of a strange and unusual time. The novella has been republished with Inez Holden’s wartime diaries so in a sense that impression is justified.

Blitz Writing: Night Shift & It was Different at the Time by Inez Holden (1941/5), published by Handheld Press 2019. The second half of this book is extracts from her diaries. Thanks to Heavenali and JacquiWine’s Journal for drawing my attention to this volume.

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther

It is a bit of a stretch to call this a wartime novel. To begin with although the characters are fictional it is more a collection of articles from The Times about everyday middle class life in pre-war Britain. And secondly it hardly features the war. But it has the reputation of a wartime novel largely because of the famous film which can be seen as propaganda. The character of Mrs Miniver was considered very successful and Churchill claimed it contributed to the entry of the USA into the war.

There is a comforting feeling about Mrs Miniver despite the looming violence. Perhaps the pieces were gathered together and published as war began to remind people of what could be lost.

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther was published in 1939 and by Virago (1989). My thoughts about it on Bookword can be found here. 

And you might be interested in The Love-Charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War by Lara Feigel (2013), published by Bloomsbury. This book explores the varied effects of war upon the following writers: Elizabeth Bowen, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel, Henry Yorke (Green) and Graham Greene.

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November 6, 2019 · 7:53 am

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers

Continuing my theme of reading books from the 20th Century, in this post I consider Dorothy L Sayers’s novel Gaudy Night. Is it a who dunnit? Or is it a romantic novel? Or is it a feminist book? Published in 1935, and already alluding to nasty things happening in Germany, and making no comment on the effects of class structures that influence the story, this is a book that must be considered within the context of its time.

First Edition

Gaudy Night

Terrible things are happening at the new Women’s College, Shrewsbury College, in Oxford. A former student and a detective novelist of repute, Harriet Vane, agrees to attend a gaudy, a reunion. On her return to her rooms she comes across a poisonous letter which seems to refer to her own past: she was known to have been ‘living in sin’ and to have been tried for the murder of her lover. She was acquitted through the skill of the famous detective, Lord Peter Wimsey.

From there things escalate: more poisonous letters to other academics and students, vandalism in the new library, effigies, fleeting sightings of a strange hideous angry creature. Harriet agrees to return to Shrewsbury to try to help solve the mystery. 

As the story unfolds Harriet is not able to establish the identity of the Poltergeist or the motive behind the damage. She calls in Lord Peter and he resolves everything.

A mystery

There are many suspects in this novel and circumstances point the finger at the Senior Common Room. I am not much of a detective novel reader. I find it hard to notice the clues, and this was not helped by the large number of characters introduced, nor by many of them being referred to either by name or by job title. The Dean is also Miss Martin, and the Warden is Dr Baring. And of course I got the motive and resolution quite wrong.

The tension of the mystery is held until almost the end, of course. When Lord Peter reveals the culprit, it is only after Harriet’s life has been put in danger. 

The malevolence that has been unleashed turns on a question of loyalty to one’s sexual partner versus loyalty to the ideals of scholarship. (See Michelle Roberts’s piece in Slightly Foxed, no 63)  

Queenie Leavis’s suggestion that the novel pretended to realism does not stand up to scrutiny because the things that take place in the college at the hands of the malefactor are absurd. Nor does the hatred that fuelled it appear to be in the least realistic. But that’s detective fiction for you.

A romance

Gaudy Night is definitely a romance. Harriet Vane’s attraction to Lord Peter is clear to any reader. In previous novels having saved Harriet from the hangman he proposed marriage. He continues to profess his love for her and makes periodic routine and prosaic proposals of marriage which she consistently refuses. 

Her history of love is not a good one and she has found real pleasure in the academic life. Moreover, she is indebted to Lord Peter for saving her life, and she does not believe that gratitude is a good basis for a marriage. But by the end of the novel … 

A feminist book

Dorothy Sayers had experienced the obstacles to women’s education in the early 20th century and she is entirely supportive of female academics and their new college. She had been awarded a scholarship to Somerville, going up in 1912, completing her studies by 1915 but not able to receive her degree as a woman until 1920. The women of the senior common room would all have been veterans of the struggle for education for women. We know how these new women’s colleges lacked prestige, history and funds (see A Room of One’s Own for an explanation of how this affected women’s writing by Virginia Woolf in 1929).

The women in Gaudy Night are intellectuals, creative women, capable managers and professional standards are upheld. We should note that a theme of the novel is the fragile nature of female reputation. Harriet has suffered from an unwelcome notoriety for her past and the college women are very keen to keep the existence of the Poltergeist away from the outside world.

One of the key conversations these senior women have with Lord Peter concerns the importance of truth and scholarship. They explore what it meant for a woman to be a scholar, to manage the college, or to work and have children.

At the gaudy meal the company is addressed by one of these women:

She spoke gravely, unrolling the great scroll of history, pleading for the Humanities, proclaiming the Pax Academica in a world terrified by unrest. […]

And then, her [Harriet’s] imagination weaving in and out of the spoken words she saw it as a Holy War, and that the wildly heterogeneous, that even slightly absurd collection of chattering women fused into a corporate unity with one another and with every man and woman to whom integrity of mind meant more than material gain – defenders in the central keep of Man-Soul, their personal differences forgotten in the face of a common foe. To be true to one’s calling, whatever follies one might commit in life, that was the way to spiritual peace. (32-3)

To me this is an extraordinary passage. Before it Harriet had been thinking about how she wished she could have met Lord Peter on an equal footing, and immediately after she finds the first of the poisonous notes. And it says much of what is needed to say today in a world terrified by liars.

The motives of the Poltergeist result from an old-fashioned belief in support of a wife. Confronted with her actions the guilty party addresses the senior common room. Her long statement reveals the arguments that women face.

A woman’s job is to look after a husband and children. I wish I had killed you. I wish I could kill you all. I wish I could burn down this place and all places like it – where you teach women to take men’s jobs and rob them and kill them afterwards.  (539) 

I’ve heard you sit around snivelling about unemployment – but it’s you, it’s women like you who take work away from the men and break their hearts and lives. No wonder you can’t get men for yourselves and hate women who can. (540) 

You couldn’t even find out who was doing it – that’s all your wonderful brains come to.  […] You don’t know what love means. It means sticking to your man through thick and thin and putting up with everything. (541)

So the anti-feminist rhetoric is put in the mouth of the malefactor. However, the overtly feminist character, Miss Hillyard, is not pleasant either.

So while not exactly a feminist novel (see romance) there is a great deal that reflects the discussions of the 20thcentury in Gaudy Night. The women must find a way through the many binary choices presented to them: male versus female; body versus mind; and marriage and children versus the academic life. 

 

Gaudy Night is a detective novel from the golden age of detective novels, even if the hero detective does not appear until halfway through. It is also undeniably a romance. And it is influenced by the feminism of its day and the experiences of the writer as a student at Oxford during the First World War.

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers, first published in 1935. I read the edition published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2016. 564pp

I enjoyed reading Michelle Roberts’s article in Slightly Foxed, no 61 Autumn 2019. 

And for those interested in her Oxford education, a new book is about to be published by Little, Brown: The Mutual Admiration Society by Mo Moulton. The cover claims that it shows ‘how Dorothy L Sayers and her Oxford circle remade the world for women’. Thanks to my Pilates friend Lesley for drawing my attention to this book.

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November 1, 2019 · 7:50 am

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

Does Unsheltered live up to the high standards of her previous books? We have come to expect a great deal from Barbara Kingsolver following the success of the novels she has published since The Poisonwood Bible. In particular, Flight Behaviour was considered a great success by my reading group. We all found something to admire in the story of Dellarobia and her family’s struggle against rural poverty. And in the warning of the changed behaviour of the monarch butterflies.

We discussed Unsheltered recently and some of the group were disappointed; it was too dry, too close to home, they found splitting the stories across two time zones was irritating, and some of the characters were like cardboard cut outs … And because there was also plenty to like and admire, we had a good discussion.

Unsheltered

The title seems awkward, Unsheltered, but this is new condition that requires a new term. At least it is new to the ordinary middle classes in the US, Barbara Kingsolver suggests. Both sets of characters, present day and in the 19th century, were finding themselves without protection in Vineland, Pennsylvania. Both lived in unsafe houses that were falling down. They were literally threatened with losing their shelter. But they were also unsheltered, unprotected from irrational beliefs, irrational policies, and new conditions. For me, the dual timeframe provided hope. However strange and dangerous our world today we should take some courage and hope by remembering that in times gone by people have coped with this kind of threat, not always well, but they coped.

The two stories, two timeframes intertwine. In the present day Willa and her family have been forced to move into a house that is falling down in Vineland. They find themselves challenged on multiple levels. Willa’s husband Iano had finally achieved tenure, permanent employment much sought after in American academia. But his college closed. He has to take a demanding but less intellectual post in Philadelphia. 

Willa lost her job in journalism and is finding freelance work beyond her because of other family needs. These include a house that is falling apart. Her son Zeke, in Harvard, is a new father but his wife commits suicide and Willa must help with the care of the baby and the recovery of her son. Tig, her daughter has returned from time spent in Cuba but she is a mystery to her parents and seems not to have found her way in suburban life. Willa’s father-in-law is staying with them, sick with diabetes, a stroke and revolting opinions. The family dog is also approaching her last days. There appears to be no solution to the multiple complications being experienced by this family. Traditional resources for middle class families have been eroded: access to affordable education, steady employment, secure accommodation, health insurance, career paths for the young. All gone.

The second story focuses on Thatcher Greenwood who is a teacher in the 1870s in Vineland. He is newly married to a beauty, Rose, who is not interested in his scientific pursuits. He meets (the real life) Mary Treat, next door, who is in contact with Darwin and other evolutionists. Vineland has been set up as a model town but is in the clutches of its founder Landis. Although Landis claims that he had created a utopia, its rotten core is revealed when Landis is acquitted of the murder of a prominent critic of his controlling practices. His acolyte the headteacher rejects evidential science and makes life difficult for Thatcher in the school where he teaches. The parallels with today are obvious and real. 

Underpinning both stories is the wonder and fragility of the natural world. Thatcher Greenwood and Mary Treat are uncovering the marvel of the flora around them through an understanding of the new theories of evolution and they are also contributing to the development of the new ideas and theories. 

In the present-day story the characters are facing the climate crisis. It is Tig who speaks for the future. She and her mother are sitting in the cemetery where they have deposited some of the ashes of Willa’s dreadful father-in-law.

‘It’s so scary. It’s going to be fire and rain, Mom. Storms we can’t deal with, so many people homeless. Not just homeless but placeless. Cities can go underwater and then what? You can’t shelter in place anymore when there isn’t a place.’ […]

‘I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Mom,’ she said quietly. ‘You and Dad did your best. But all the rules have changed and it’s hard to watch people keep carrying on just the same, like it’s business as usual.’

‘All the rules. Really?’ (462-3)

Challenged to describe how people like them might adapt to living in the future, Tig provides some very down to earth examples and I suggest you read them. It’s the core dialogue of the book. Barbara Kingsolver is again warning us about the future towards which our actions and attitudes are impelling us. Our future will be without shelter, unsheltered, unless we change how we live, change the rules, all the rules.

Barbara Kingsolver’s books

I have long admired the writings of Barbara Kingsolver and was pleased to be introduced to her more than ten years ago by my sister. I especially enjoy the variety of locations and timeframes of her writing, which always illuminate pressing present-day problems and issues by reference to history as well as to what we see around us. All this is carried by a strong narrative about very authentic humans who we can recognise and perhaps identify with. It feels like she shares some of this territory with Anne Tyler.

And to do all this she must be an excellent researcher; Belgian Congo for The Poisonwood Bible (1998); Freida Kahlo, Trotsky and post-war America for The Lacuna (2009); the monarch butterfly for Flight Behaviour (2012). In Unsheltered she takes pleasure in revealing ‘a nineteenth century biologist whose work deserves to be better known’. (523) This is Mary Treat who really did correspond with Charles Darwin.

She also lives her beliefs. The book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a year of food life (2007) was written with her family. They moved from Arizona to a farm to live as sustainably as they could in Virginia, learning by working with the community, as well as by drawing on the family’s experiences.

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, published in 2018 by Faber. 524pp

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