Post-collapse reading: "Station Eleven" by Emily St John Mandel

This is the first of three catch-up reviews, the result of finishing three books in the space of three days. How come? 

It's down to a long, solo car trip, of the kind not undertaken for several years, and the rediscovered joys of audiobooks. You may consider that to be cheating, but I make no apology for Station Eleven, which was a full ten and a half hour unabridged listen. I even think a case can be made for getting more out of a book this way: you do actually experience every word - no skipping or skimming - and are generally in the hands of a professional who places emphases correctly, paces and pauses appropriately and helps brings different voices to life. It is, in short, a great and rewarding way to "read" a book, just so long as you have the time and focus to do it, such as, for example, on a long solo car trip.

But enough of the medium, what of the book itself? I sought out the book when I remembered that I wanted to read it, but had forgotten to include it in my selection of "real" books for the holidays. I had heard it spoken of highly here and there, most notably by David Plotz, he of the Slate Political Gabfest (and whom I once met), who raved about the book on a recent podcast. 

Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic story, set in a world twenty years after a flu pandemic has wiped out most of humanity - though in fact probably about half of its volume is spent in pre-collapse flashbacks. If your heart sinks when I reveal the basic premise of the book, I sympathise. I am not one for disaster movies and post-apocalyptic fiction - all that scarifying revelling in doom and disaster is not generally for me. That said, there has been an exception, The Road, which I wrote about in 2011, a book so superbly written that its utter bleakness became a virtue. 

Rural reading: "Foxglove Summer" by Ben Aaronovitch

Sometimes you read a book which has to be followed by something a bit lighter. Ardennes 1944 was superb, but it was also such a book, gruelling in content and demanding in detail. So when it came to picking the next thing from my "to read" shelf, my eye alighted on something I had really bought for the holidays, Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch.

People who have followed this blog for a while will be aware of one of my weaknesses, namely an attachment to a series of books featuring streetwise London copper, Peter Grant, who is distinguished from his colleagues not so much by his good nature and fine line in banter, but by the fact that he possesses magical powers and is apprenticed to the head of the Met's "weird stuff" squad, the urbane and wizardly DCI Nightingale. This is the fifth in the series, with the previous four all reviewed on this blog: Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho, Whispers Underground and Broken Homes.

There's an extra little story behind this book, which was purchased at the new Hatchards in St. Pancras station, which replaced my much lamented Foyles bookshop there. I spotted a pile of hardback editions of Foxglove Summer, "signed by the author". Well, the signature tipped me over the edge, as this isn't really the kind of book you normally buy in hardback, and a few moments later I was at the till. "They're good, aren't they?" said the lady at the till, adding: " He's a nice guy, I used to work with him." Whence an account of Ben Aaronovitch's less affluent years working as bookshop hand in a small London store, and generally of what an agreeable chap he is. Judging by his writing, this is, in fact, rather easy to believe.

Ardennuous reading: "Ardennes 1944" by Anthony Beevor

Over twenty years of living in Belgium have made the Ardennes familiar to me. Both the tedium of regular shuttling to and fro between Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg, and many a rainy randonnée through fields and woods have made places like Marche-en-Famenne, Houffalize, Ciney, Rochefort, La Roche en Ardenne and Bastogne literally and metaphorically part of the scenery. 

I confess that the Ardennes, when not playing the role of the over-familiar 150 km or so of southward-bound motorway, have often been for me a rather poor substitute for the British hills I always loved to tramp over. All a bit tame, too domesticated, too easy, with villages which seemed rather dour and same-ish (albeit populated by friendly folk partial to fine - but different - walker's beer). Nice, with some excellent detail, but let's say it, a bit boring. 

Of course, I was aware that these hills and villages were the scene of what most people call the Battle of the Bulge. On those walks around the wooded hills and valleys, I had encountered many small memorials, roadside plaques and even, in Bastogne for example, the odd bit of memorialised World War Two military hardware. Still, it never really sunk in; the mismatch is just too great: the Ardennes for me are a place of unpretentious charm, unreliable (but unextreme and generally varieties of wet) weather, portly day-trippers, grey stone villages, the odd rock valley, damp forests and rolling agriculture. 

Swinging sixties reading: "Funny Girl" by Nick Hornby

I knew a while ago that Nick Hornby had a new book out, but the potted plot summaries I happened across didn't quite persuade me I should go out and get it. Although I have hugely enjoyed and highly rate some of Hornby's books (About a Boy, Hi Fidelity, Fever Pitch), he never quite qualified for me in that "automatic buy" category of author, being a bit too obviously located in that laddish-but-sensitive-contemporary-male-writer genre. In other words, I thought I could harmlessly give it a miss, as it would be more of the same. 

What persuaded me otherwise was a March 2015 episode of one of my favourite podcasts, NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, in which the book was discussed. This show, which, as its title implies, focuses on the popular end of the cultural market, is both articulate and fun, and has proven itself, to me at least, as a reliable guide. Anyway, on this occasion, there was a clear consensus that Hornby's latest was a hit: engaging, touching, page-turning and funny. (You can listen to the podcast, if you like, embedded at the bottom of this post.)

In a sense, this NPR consensus was perhaps a little surprising, because Funny Girl is very, very English, and to understand it, you surely need all kinds of cultural reference points I would not expect to be common currency in New York City. That said, from what I hear, British is currently extremely cool stateside, so perhaps the pop culture cognoscenti are now completely clued up about Steptoe and Son, Hancock's Half Hour and Till Death Us Do Part. 

In any case, the story of Barbara (later Sophie) begins in the quintessential working class English North of Blackpool, where we first meet our heroine as the local girl winning a wind-chilled, goose-bumpy and mottled limb beauty contest to become Miss Blackpool. The scene oozes the aura of a rather bleak provincial England just beginning, though only at the margins, to discern the contours of a new post-austerity world. Barbara is one who seems to detect change in the air, and this, combined with the advantages of ambition, looks (she is in late-fifties, hourglass, "Sabrina" mode, we are told), and a comedic talent only she understands at this stage, is what drives her to renounce her beauty queen title and head for London, with the time-honoured objective of getting into show business, though, less usually perhaps, into radio or TV comedy in particular. The novel is the tale of how Sophie's (she changes her name at the suggestion of her agent) fortunes progress in London and of how she builds a career in a wildly successful BBC TV comedy series called Barbara (and Jim). 

Sabrina, in case you
were wondering

Hornby's story observes a changing society with a sympathetic and gentle eye. His cast of characters allows him to illustrate different aspects of the social revolution underway. Besides Sophie, we have the BBC comedy writing duo Tony and Bill, who live out their homosexuality (still illegal in England as the novel begins) in contrasting ways; the handsome co-star Clive, whose vanity and paradoxically naive eagerness not to miss out on any aspect of the sexual revolution are his undoing; and Dennis, the producer and loyal BBC man to his core, stuck in a loveless marriage with a humourless wife of Third Programme pretensions, who yearns silently for the lovely Sophie, but is far too much of a gentleman to compete with the more obvious Clive. Hornby does such characters well - according to the NPR podcast, better than Sophie herself - with delicate observation and wry humour. 

Unheroic reading: "Red Love: The Story of an East German Family" by Maxim Leo

This was one of those unplanned, serendipitous purchases. It took place in the new Hatchards in St. Pancras station, thereby providing some hope that the role of that station in providing me with unexpected good reads is not over following the tragic disappearance of the old Foyles bookshop. Maybe it was prompted in part by an upcoming visit to Berlin (just concluded), but, as regulars will know, I am in any case a sucker for Cold War era history and anything to do with Berlin in general, so it stood a fair chance of jumping off the shelf into my hand anyway. 

It was a good choice, it seems. Only after reading it did I notice all the highbrow accolades and commendations this book had received, including a citation from Julian Barnes on behalf of the European Book Prize jury, which awarded Maxim Leo the Prize in 2011. Said Barnes: 

He describes these 'ordinary lies' and contradictions, and the way human beings have to negotiate their way through them, with great clarity, humour and truthfulness, for which the jury of the European Book Prize is delighted to honour Red Love. His personal memoir serves as an unofficial history of a country that no longer exists... He is a wry and unheroic witness to the distorting impact - sometimes frightening, sometimes merely absurd - that ideology has upon the daily life of the individual: citizens only allowed to dance in couples, journalists unable to mention car tyres or washing machines for reasons of state.

"Red Love" is the maybe slightly questionable English title of the translation of the original Eine ostdeutsche Familiengeschichte (An East German Family Story). The original title (and the English subtitle) however sums it up: this is a family memoire covering three generations of Maxim Leo's family. And a remarkable story it is too.