Tag Archives: memoir

#BookReview ‘Ammonites & Leaping Fish’ by Penelope Lively #writerslife

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Penelope Lively is one of my favourite authors and so it was with anticipation that I picked up her memoir, Ammonites & Leaping Fish. And I was not disappointed. From page one I was captivated by her writing style, her openness, her storytelling. She writes about her memories, ‘the vapour trail without which we are undone’. Penelope LivelyActually this is not quite a memoir; the sub-title is ‘A Life in Time’. Lively reflects on her life in five sections, leaving me with an insight into how she lived her life, her interests and, partly, her writing. She writes about Old Age, Memory, and Life and Times, ‘One of the few advantages of writing fiction in old age is that you have been there, done it all, experienced every decade.’ What she didn’t know, she imagined, used empathy, observation. ‘But it is certainly a help to have acquired that long backwards view.’
She is enlightening about her writing method. ‘I do need to have a good idea where the thing is going – I won’t have started at all until a notebook is full of ideas and instructions to myself. And I will have achieved the finishing line only after pursuing various options, wondering if this would work better than that. The reader should have an easy ride at the expense of the writers’ accumulated hours of inspiration and rejection and certainty and doubt.’
The most charming section of the book is the final one, Six Things, which is where the title of the book comes from. Lively chooses six things and explains their origin, what they mean to her, the memories they evoke. The duck kettle-holders from Maine. The blue lias ammonites. The Jerusalem Bible. The Gayer-Anderson cat. Elizabeth Barker’s sampler. The leaping fish sherd.
A delightful read. I wished it was longer.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read the first paragraphs of Lively’s novels MOON TIGER and FAMILY ALBUM.

If you like this, try:-
‘Charlotte Brontë: A Life’ by Claire Harman
‘Howard’s End is on the Landing’ by Susan Hill
‘Jane Austen: A Life’ by Claire Tomalin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview AMMONITES & LEAPING FISH by Penelope Lively https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3XY via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Mudlarking’ by Lara Maiklem @LondonMudlark #Thames #archaeology

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Lara Maiklem is a mudlark. She can be found at low tide walking the beaches and mud of the River Thames, foraging, searching, collecting bits and pieces. And in the course of her memoir Mudlarking, she tells the history of the river. This is a personal history, not a novel. Lara MaiklemStarting at the tidal head near Teddington and heading east to the Thames Estuary, Maiklem has written an anecdotal guide to London’s river, the treasures which can be found buried in the mud, and tells the stories of the people [real and imagined] who once lived there. From the discarded Doves Type to broken clay pipes and glass bottle stoppers, she describes the objects she has found, their place in her collection, her methods of cleaning and preserving them. Along the way she consults experts and historians and forages with fellow mudlarks who each have their favourite places, their specialist objects to collect.
‘Modern mudlarks fall into two distinct categories,’ she explains. ‘Hunters and gatherers. I am one of the latter. I find objects using just my eyes to spot what is lying on the surface. Eyes-only foragers like me generally enjoy the searching as much as the finding, and derive pleasure from the simplest of objects: an unusually shaped stone, a colourful shard of pottery or a random blob of lead. There is an element of meditation to what we do, and as far as I’m concerned the time I spend looking is as important if not more so, that the objects I take home with me.’
At times the pace seemed a little slow – lots of descriptions of mud – but the nature of mudlarking itself is slow and contemplative. I enjoyed the insights into the river’s history, the anecdotes and fascinating detail not normally heard. A book to be enjoyed at a leisurely pace.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ashes of London’ by Andrew Taylor
‘Dissolution’ by CJ Sansom
‘The Walworth Beauty’ by Michèle Roberts

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MUDLARKING by @LondonMudlark https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4ft via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Howard’s End is on the Landing’ by @susanhillwriter #memoir

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I selected this book off my to-read shelf where it has sat for at least two years and, on reading the first paragraph, knew I must read on. Howard’s End is on the Landing by Susan Hill is a gem of a memoir, a year in the life of a crime novelist who decides to read only the books on her bookshelves. But this is more than a review of books – it can be dipped in and out of, the chapters are conveniently short which makes you want to read ‘just another’ – because Hill attaches a personal story to each book, each author. Susan HillHill’s first novel was published when she was only eighteen, she lives an ordinary life but mixes with some breath-stopping names. She met and/or knew TS Eliot, EM Forster, Cecil Day Lewis, Penelope Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Bowen; it is a mirror image of my reading list at university, except for the Bond. Above everything though, the book reveals Hill as a reader who devours everything from Dickens to WG Sebald, Anthony Trollope to Anita Brookner, John le Carre to Olivia Manning. Her bookshelves contain signed copies, first editions, expensive sets, anthologies and poetry, plus shabby cheap paperbacks bought at airports and train stations, or second hand in charity shops. She writes in her books, turns down the corners of pages, discovers things used years ago as bookmarks – bills, paid and unpaid; receipts; picture postcards; shopping lists. She is, like you and I, someone who loves reading books. I recognised her description of reading library books as a child.
“Although when I was a child and growing up I could borrow books every week from the library, there was a limit on the number to be taken at any one time and so, as there was not the money to buy many books either, I found myself reading, re-reading and re-reading again. If I liked a library book I simply got to the end, turned it round and began again. It was a bit like sweets. Until I was ten, sweets were rationed. I had a quarter of a pound a week and there were various ways in which they could be made to last. A sweet a day. Buy only boiled sweets which could be sucked for a long time. Suck half and re-wrap the rest until tomorrow. Occasionally I would have such a sugar-craving that I bought something that was gobbled up in a great burst of sweetness that exploded in the mouth like a firework and then was gone. Sherbet lemons were like that. Marshmallows did not last long.” I turned my library books round and began again, too. I also read my mother’s books. That’s how, as a young teenager, I discovered Mary Stewart.
This is a delightful slim paperback which made me want to re-read many novels first read forty years ago, and to try authors I have always meant to read such as Sebald and PG Wodehouse.

Read my reviews of the Simon Serrailler crime novels by Susan Hill:-
THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN #1SIMONSERRAILLER
THE PURE IN HEART #2SIMONSERRAILLER
THE RISK OF DARKNESS #3SIMONSERRAILLER
THE VOWS OF SILENCE #4SIMONSERRAILLER
THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET #5SIMONSERRAILLER
THE BETRAYAL OF TRUST #6SIMONSERRAILLER
A QUESTION OF IDENTITY #7SIMONSERRAILLER
THE SOUL OF DISCRETION #8SIMONSERRAILLER
THE COMFORTS OF HOME #9SIMONSERRAILLER
THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT #10SIMONSERRAILLER
A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE #11SIMONSERRAILLER

If you like this, try:-
‘The Story’ ed. by Victoria Hislop
‘In the Midst of Winter’ by Isabel Allende
‘White Chrysanthemum’ by Mary Lynn Bracht

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HOWARD’S END IS ON THE LANDING by @susanhillwriter https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3t5 via @SandraDanby