ORANGE LONGLIST 2011

The longlist:

Lyrics Alley Leila Aboulela (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Jamrach's Menagerie Carol Birch (Canongate)

Room Emma Donoghue (Picador)

The Pleasure Seekers Tishani Doshi (Bloomsbury)

Whatever You Love Louise Doughty (Faber)

A Visit from the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan (Corsair)

The Memory of Love Aminatta Forna (Bloomsbury)

The London Train Tessa Hadley (Jonathan Cape)

Grace Williams Says it Loud Emma Henderson (Sceptre)

The Seas Samantha Hunt (Corsair)

The Birth of Love Joanna Kavenna (Faber)

Great House Nicole Krauss (Viking)

The Road to Wanting Wendy Law-Yone (Chatto)

The Tiger's Wife Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld)

The Invisible Bridge Julie Orringer (Viking)

Repeat it Today with Tears Anne Peile (Serpent's Tail)

Swamplandia! Karen Russell (Chatto)

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives Lola Shoneyin (Serpent's Tail)

The Swimmer Roma Tearne (HarperPress)

Annabel Kathleen Winter (Jonathan Cape)

CALLING ALL READING GROUPS

I would like to invite any reading groups in Shropshire, or surrounds, to join an email mailing list that I will host via the bookshop so that reading groups can be informed of events taking place at Wenlock Books and around the county.

The list will never be passed on to third parties, and will only be used for the exchange of material of interest to reading groups. It would work if one person were designated from each group, but it could work equally well with any members being on the list.

I think there are so many of us in reading groups, and reading groups come in all shapes, sizes and affiliations, that it would be such fun if we occasionally got together too. To this end, to start the ball rolling, I would like to invite any reading groups to join us at Wenlock Pottery on Friday May 20th for an evening with Isabel Losada, author of The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment. On this occasion, we will be celebrating the latest Losada book - The Battersea Park Road to Paradise - join us for complimentary wine and delicious nibbles from our local Indian restaurant - and to be entertained by Isabel's unique take on what to do when your life feels 'stuck'!

This will be a really good night out, with special rates for reading groups! Contact Anna to find out more!

CAMBO

I have recently joined up to CAMBO (think Real Ale for Books!!) http://www.campaignforrealbooks.org


The Campaign For Real Books was established last November to preserve and promote real books and the independent bookshops that sell them. Well over 100,000 British jobs depend on printed books and bookshops are the most visible aspect of this industry. CAMBO wants to keep all of these jobs alive by making sure that paper books are never seen as second-rate to screens. They are not fighting progress – they are fighting the marketing strategy of multi-national electronics companies, and that is a fight we can win. Will you join in? Membership is £15 per annum, but as well as knowing that you are fighting to preserve the printed book (and bookshops) you will receive a card you can use to get 10% discount from participating booksellers, and here in Shropshire both Burway Books in Church Stretton and I (Wenlock Books) are signed up members so you will get your 10% off every time you shop with either one of us!

Today it's the libraries, and if we all do nothing it will be bookshops tomorrow. Together we can make a difference. Hurrah for the fighting spirit!

The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett, published by Penguin, £12.99

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel is brave, exciting and very, very good. After a hectic time with the Poetry Festival, I needed one of my quiet Sunday’s reading, and picked this off the bookshelves on the strength of the first paragraph: I wasn’t disappointed. Set in the first half of the sixties in the racial powder keg of Jackson, Mississippi, this is a story told in three voices: two black maids, and the white woman who decides to try to tell their story. Right there Kathryn Stockett faces up to all kinds of difficulties. Each of the main characters gets to tell the story from their own viewpoint, and while I can’t fault the different viewpoints explored, what doesn’t quite come off for me is the actual differentiation of those voices. In my opinion, the best writer of voice is Barbara Kingsolver – her five-voiced Poisonwood Bible never has me turning back to the beginning of a chapter to check who was talking as each voice is so perfectly pitched as to be always recognisable. In The Help though, the two maids, Aibelline and Minnie, sound just a bit too similar, and even Skeeter, the white woman writer, isn’t always distinguishable from the other two. Having said that though, it may be that my English sensibilities are not quite finely tuned enough to catch the nuances of black and white southern dialect, and I must also admit to being really surprised to find out that Stockett is herself a white woman writer: the only other time I have had that kind of shock is when I was reading the first of the Precious Ramotswe novels and having no idea that Alexander McCall Smith was a man! In other words, I’m quite prepared to give Stockett the benefit of the doubt, and say that the difficulty might lie with my hearing rather than her enunciation.

The second difficulty Stockett faces is the question of whether or not it is acceptable for a white woman to yet again be telling a black woman’s story. This dilemma is addressed within the novel, and also in Stockett’s notes at the end of the book where she wonders whether she “was crossing a terrible line, writing in the voice of a black person.” She goes on to say that she thought she had said both too much and too little, and her greatest fear was that she would fail to describe a situation that had been so “grossly stereotyped in American history and literature.” I’m more than glad that she took these risks, as what we get is a reworking of the Gone with the Wind type of Mammy-figure, with the maids’ lives being fully realised rather than caricatures. The complex and intricate relationships between black and white women whose lives are intimately entwined but utterly imbalanced in terms of power, are drawn in ways that force us to think again.

The book is very culturally specific, with references to Kennedy’s assassination; Martin Luther King’s world changing march on Washington and the death of Medgar Evers (who lived in Jackson and was a prominent member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The coming of flower-power and peaceniks, the war in Vietnam, even fashion and food, are thrown carefully into this melting pot to recreate the time and the place with vibrant and telling authenticity.

Stockett is obviously drawing on her own family background – she was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, looked after by a black maid, and went on to live in New York as a magazine writer. This book isn’t The Color Purple (Alice Walker), nor is it Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) but it is in the same family and not-too-distantly related. She has told a great story – I hope there will be more.

Anna Dreda

Wenlock Books

Isabel Losada and the Battersea Park Road to Paradise

The Battersea Park Road to Paradise at Wenlock Pottery, Friday May 20^th, 7.30pm

Isabel Losada has worked as an actress, singer, dancer, researcher, TV producer, broadcaster, public speaker, comedian and author.

Her latest book is about getting stuck on the road to enlightenment. In The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment, she set out with a modest aim: ‘to be absurdly happy every day’. But the road has been tough and the eternal optimist, Isabel, needs to get herself out of a rather deep hole. It's a real life overhaul with humour and inspiration for you if you are ‘stuck’. It's honest, tougher than 'enlightenment' but light and funny, too. Never cynical, always clear-sighted, Isabel has a delightful ability to laugh at herself and will have you laughing too.

Wenlock Books is hosting this event at Wenlock Pottery. Seating will be cabaret-style, with a complimentary bottle of wine and a delicious array of Indian starters on each table. There will be a wine bar.

Tickets are £10 with a 10% discount for reading group bookings of five or more. As this is a catered event, there will be no tickets on the door. Bring your friends, your sister, your Mum – even your boy-friend or husband – for a laugh out loud night out!

Bookings to Anna on 01952 727877, info@wenlockbooks.co.uk,

or on twitter @wenlockbooks

The Light Years

The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard published by Pan Macmillan, £7.99

This novel, the first of a quartet known as The Cazalet Books, was recommended to me by Glenda, a member of the Farley Reading Group – one of the many thriving local reading groups in the area. Glenda had so enjoyed this book that she had immediately gone on to read the rest of the series. When she told me that it was set just before and during WWII, I knew that it would provide good background material for our year of reading around the Second World War, and I promptly ordered The Light Years for myself.

I was delighted! Howard’s writing is gorgeous; beautifully observed, carefully crafted, and full of insight. Her subject matter is the Cazalet dynasty: ‘The Brig’ and ‘The Duchy’ are the parents and grand-parents of this ever-increasing family, and live at Home Place, a beautiful old manor house in gorgeous grounds, complete with stable-boy, gardeners, cooks, maids, nannies and so on. The Duchy is a firm believer in fresh air and regular baths – tepid or cold being her preferred temperature and she meets each morning with Mrs. Cripps to discuss the day’s menus for family and staff. There are four younger Cazalets; Hugh, Edward and Rupert, all of whom are married with several children, and unmarried Rachel who doesn’t know that she is in love with her best friend. Hugh and Edward live in London, Lansdowne Place and Lancaster Gate, but all spend their annual holidays at Home Place and the story begins with the onset of the long summer holiday, with wives and children settling in for the duration, husbands going back and forth at weekends.

The cast of characters is huge and my only slight criticism of the book is that there are so many people in it that I did have to keep referring to the character list, thoughtfully presented at the front of the book. However, we do gradually get to know them all well, and now that I have just finished book two ‘Marking Time’, I think I’ve got them all correctly assigned to the right families! We get to know many of the characters intimately, having access to their thoughts, hopes and fears.

Howard is particularly good at recreating the long hot days of summer and the sense of endless time that school- and governess-free days brings the children. Their capacity for mischief, adventure, friendship and rivalries is beautifully drawn; their small, but tremendously important, anxieties are tenderly and affectionately portrayed, also the difficult transitions from child to adult (this is an era without the in-between stage of teenager!)

Relationships between the husbands and wives, brothers and sisters-in-law are also carefully and sometimes wryly observed. Rupert has remarried following the death of his first wife in child-birth: Zoe is young, pretty and selfish, woefully inadequate as a new mother for his children and a misfit in the family until the Duchy takes her under her wing. Sybil has been married for a dozen years or more to Hugh, and their loving relationship is gently teased by Howard, based as it is on a complex modus of mutual self-sacrifice whereby each of them negates their own desires in order to please the other – usually with quite the opposite result. Villy, a glamorous dancer before her marriage to Edward, is quite unaware of his regular liaisons with other women, and in particular the fact that he has a mistress of many years.

Throughout this first book, the threat of war hangs in the air like an impending thunderstorm, and as readers we are well aware that their fears will all be realised, and that the comfortable, privileged world they have inhabited so thoughtlessly until now will soon be gone for ever.

Anna Dreda
Wenlock Books

Howard's End is on the Landing

Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill, Profile Books, £8.99

Subtitled “A Year of Reading from Home”, this is a celebration of the joys of a reading life that found pretty short shrift with the serious reviewers of the major broad-sheets and journals, but that has been loved by (mainly) women of a certain age, which club I realise I now belong to!

The premise of the book is that Susan will feed her reading habit without buying any new books for a period of one year. (As a bookseller this does of course strike fear and terror into my heart, but more on that later!) Susan will pick 40 books from her many bookcases, made up of books she has bought but never read (her chapter on un-read books is brilliant!) or that she is confident will bear re-reading. She will also, during that year, cut down on all but the most essential internet use, in order to be able to both maximise her reading time, and to allow her imagination to stretch itself again: she believes that prolonged and regular use of the internet stultifies the mind. (Watch out tweeters and facebookers!)

Although the book does end – literally the very last page! – with a list of 40 books, it is the choosing of the books, and the slow meandering route to them, that is of far more interest than the list itself. (Having said that, it’s a fine list and there are several on there I would like to read.) Susan Hill was born in Scarborough in 1948 (just seven years older than me) and much of her reading mirrors mine: reading about her reading reminded me of mine, and I felt I was in the company of an old friend – or several old friends: a friend whose reading taste and history makes up for the fact that this is someone I don’t know; our shared reading past would surely commend us to each other? And the old friends of the books themselves – for like me, reading is of huge importance to Susan, and like me, Susan remembers certain parts of her life according to what she was reading at the time.

Where there are differences they are big ones; Susan was educated at a Grammar School and read English at Kings College, mixing with writers like Iris Murdoch, Charles Causley and Roald Dahl. I went to the (new) comprehensive, and (eventually, as a mature student) to Wolverhampton University – but we both saw, and see, reading as the greatest form of self education, a primary life activity, and one of the enduring joys of our lives. And that’s what I really love about this book: it is a celebration of reading; from Beano annuals, and how to look after your pet, to PD James, to Proust, to Middlemarch – and so much more else in between. She talks about how characters from books can become people that you know (we found this especially true when reading The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James in our reading group!) and how the measure of a really great book is that you can find something new in it every time. She also talks about the e-book and how for her (and people of a certain age?) it will never replace the real book, where reading is so much more than just the words on the page, it’s also the design of the cover, the weight of the pages, the size and design of the font, the feel, the smell …

And that’s why I don’t mind too much that Susan Hill decides to spend a year not buying any new books. This book is a hymn to reading – and I can guarantee that when you’ve finished reading it the first thing you’ll do is to make a list of other books you want to read! As a person who makes a living from books – this is good news!

Anna Dreda

Wenlock Books

The Morville Year

The Morville Year by Katherine Swift, published by Bloomsbury, £18.99

On Friday March 4^th, Katherine Swift’s second Morville book was launched at Morville Hall, courtesy of Chris and Sara Douglas. The evening was a wonderful celebration of Katherine’s writing, with many of her Dower House Garden friends present, along with a few bookshop friends and customers, and the inspirational garden writer Mirabel Osler, author of A Gentle Plea for Chaos.

My shop window is now awash with yellow flowers and The Yellow Book on one side, and beautiful pale pink tulips and Katherine’s book on the other – with a tiny scattering of the spring edition of Slightly Foxed thrown in. With my pots of spring bulbs by the door and a lovely day of sunshine and blue skies, it really does feel as though winter is behind us!

I wasn’t going to read The Morville Year this weekend, much as I wanted to. I had a big bundle of poems to read for the Wenlock Poetry Festival competition, and another book that I was two thirds of the way through. Nevertheless, I took The Morville Year to bed with me, and decided before I turned out my light to just read the introduction, to see where Katherine might be taking us with this new book. Of course, the introduction whetted my appetite, and when I realised that the book started with the month of March, the urge to read about it was too great and I plunged in. I read until my eyes wouldn’t stay open, and then woke up early this Sunday morning and carried on. I read through March, decided to go for the whole of Spring, then Summer beckoned irresistibly, and by the end of summer I knew that I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had seen the year out. And that was my day!

I’m not a gardener. While lucky enough to have a beautiful garden that includes woodland, a brook, an ancient church just over one boundary and a motte and bailey over the other, it’s my partner Hilary who does the work, with occasional help from jobbing gardeners in the village. My self-appointed task is to admire, exclaim and appreciate – and I do that really well. For me, a garden is for reading in, and our garden room allows me to do that through all but the coldest of the winter months. The Morville Year is a book about gardens, and yet, as you will know if you are among the thousands who have already read and loved the Morville Hours, in Katherine’s hands, gardens are about everything, and so this book speaks to all of us, gardeners or not.

The Morville Year is an inspiring book, beautifully written, full of knowledge and wisdom that is written with the lightest of touches and with real grace. Katherine ranges from Bob Dylan to Gertrude Jekyll; from picking blackberries to star-gazing; from trundling around the countryside on her motor-bike to catching the stopping train (28 stations) to Cornwall. She gives us the recipes to the delicious scones she serves at her open garden afternoons, and shares the secrets of quince paste and cassis. The origins of decking our halls with boughs of holly are explored along with the druidic and celtic rituals that still mark the turning of the seasons. What comes across so clearly is her passion for her garden, for the little bit of earth from which she has created this exquisite, ever-changing, historically and spiritually rooted series of gardens that is the Dower House garden. Katherine mentions that it sometimes takes an artist to enable us to see what is in front of us in real life. For me, Katherine is that artist, who paints with words, and who so faithfully and remarkably pays attention to the smallest miracle and then writes about it for us, so that we can see, and share, and wonder, too.

We are so lucky to be in this lovely little bit of Shropshire that Katherine writes about so eloquently - the references to the wall flowers on John James garden wall in Bridgnorth; her visits to Avril’s flower shop that used to be in the High Street in Much Wenlock; her descriptions of the annual Morville Flower Festival – all so familiar to us, and now shared and enjoyed across the country, and probably around the world.

Anna Dreda

Wenlock Books