sarahmatthews's reviews
77 reviews

NW by Zadie Smith

medium-paced

NW by Zadie Smith

Read in Braille

Hamish Hamilton

Pub. 2012, 337pp

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I thought I’d read all of Zadie Smith’s backlist until I read Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson recently and NW features in it as a favourite book by the main character. So I ordered it in Braille straight away. I love Zadie Smith’s writing which is smart, witty and sharp. She just has a way of expressing herself  that appeals to me. It probably helps that she’s only a few years older, so many of her pop culture references from the 90s and early2000s are spot on for me. 

This novel is firmly rooted in a small area of north west London, around Kilburn and Willesden and the fictional Caldwell estate where her characters grew up. I remember this area from when I lived a stop north on the Jubilee Line, in Dollis Hill. I definitely think that readers who are at least a bit familiar with this neighbourhood will connect more closely with the novel. It also had details that root it to it’s publication date, as I’d forgotten that in 2012 we used physical tickets on the tube instead of Oyster Cards, and that touts would hover by the stations and offer second hand tickets for a couple of quid.

Travel is an important part of the novel, whether by bus, train or walking.Here, towards the start, Leah’s taking the tube with her chatty mother, Pauline, who knows everyone’s business:

“Leah lifts two free papers from the pile as the train pulls out because reding is silent… The window logs Kilburn’s skyline. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent. Empty State Empire, empty Odeon, graffiti-streaked sidings rising and falling like a rickety roller coaster … Behind the opposite window, retreating Willesden. Number 37. In the 1880s or thereabouts the whole thing went up at once—houses, churches, schools, cemeteries—an optimistic vision of metroland.”

We follow the lives of Leah and Keisha (later reinvented as Natalie) who’re best mates at school, drift apart for a while and are reunited in their early 20s.

The book is divided into three sections which are loosely connected. A name, Felix, that comes up at a party to celebrate the Notting Hill Carnival becomes the main character of the second section and I’m glad I was reading this book at bedtime when I was calm and paying attention because this could have easily passed me by and I’d have been left confused by the change of perspective. The third section is concerned with Natalie’s life, including her history with Leah, her career as a lawyer and her marriage, and is experimental in that it’s told through little numbered vignettes which is quite a change of pace.

Zadie Smith explores how growing up in poverty affects the lives of these characters in different ways, encompassing issues of class, racism, sexism, marriage, motherhood, street crime and drug culture. She’s highlighting the fact that coincidences and assumptions abound as we live our lives, and that we make judgements according to our biases. There’s a lot going on here and a reread might be in order now I understand the structure. I found it to be one of her best books and need to find someone who’s read it to discuss the ending with!

Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

Read on audio

Narrator: Kimberly Farr

Penguin Audio

Pub. 2017, 272pp

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Like the Olive Kitteridge books by this author, this is a collection of linked short stories, and similarly it is concerned with the inner lives of a small town community and therefore has a kind of gossipy tone at first. It’s the sequel to My Name is Lucy Barton, about a New York writer who left her rural community through winning a scholarship to study at university (though you could easily read it without having read the first book),and we’re meeting characters from Lucy’s upbringing who’re connected to her in some way, often thinking of her because she’s just published a new book.

I remember enjoying My Name is Lucy Barton, but that her childhood had been spent in poverty so I was expecting this novel to be pretty bleak. I actually skipped it and went on to the 3rd in the series, O William, which was  a good read but my book club chose this so I was happy to give it a go as I love Elizabeth Strout’s writing. Once I got into the rhythm of it I found that the reflections of the characters were often touching and poignant. Having read Olive Kitteridge I knew that some of the connections between characters would be a little tenuous (like a random cousin or an old acquaintance’s daughter) so I did make a few notes as I went along.

In the first story Tommy, a school janitor, remembers Lucy as a schoolgirl as he spots her book in a bookshop:

“Once when she was still so young he had walked into a classroom after school and found her sitting reading, and she had jumped! He saw her really jump with fear, when the door opened. He had said to her quickly ‘no, no, you’re fine.” But it was that day, seeing the way she jumped, seeing the terror that crosssed her face, when he guessed that she must have been beaten at home. She would have had to have been, to be so scared at the opening of a door.”

Some of the stories are surprising, others a bit shocking but the masterful way Elizabeth Strout observes their motivations, worries and past traumas is what kept me reading. The story where Lucy appears is one of the strongest and overall I think the stories get better as the book progresses, perhaps because you have an idea of how the characters are related. It’s not possible to get really close to many of them due to the fact that some only feature in one story, and that can be a bit frustrating.  It’s not a cheery book by any means but it also didn’t feel as sombre as I was expecting.

I’ll be going on to read Lucy by the Sea next, which I know is set during the lockdowns of the early pandemic so I might choose a few more light hearted reads in between!

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by Jenny Hollander

tense fast-paced

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead by

Jenny Hollander

Read on audio

Narrator:  Marisa Calin   Macmillan Audio

Pub. 2024, 292pp

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I heard about this book in the days when I was still getting recommendations from #BookTwitter and couldn’t resist the mix of murder mystery and the magazine industry! It’s been sitting on my list for a while and when it came to choosing a new read this title jumped out. I wasn’t feeling too well and was in the mood for something fast paced and twisty to get lost in for a day or two. 

It’s about Charlie, who was involved in a traumatic incident in college where 3 people died and has put it all behind her and started a successful career as an editor in New York. Secrets are bound to be uncovered about her past…

I found this to be overall a good read though I had a few moments when I felt I knew the kind of reveals that were coming. I didn’t mind too much as the story zipped along and the characters were interesting enough to keep me reading. Charlie was a classic unreliable narrator and so I just immersed myself in the audiobook (slightly speeded up which added to the feeling of thoughts racing!) and let it all wash over me. I’d definitely recommend reading this in a short space of time as there’s so much going on and the writing is designed to be disorientating and claustrophobic. The dual timeline worked effectively but if I’d stopped reading for a bit and returned to it I think I’d have felt a bit lost.

I found the depiction of someone wrestling with their traumatic past, trying to uncover details through therapy that their brain has hidden from them for self preservation, very gripping to read for the most part. The sense of Charlie spiralling out of control was handled well.    

My main criticism is the ending which wrapped it all up a little conveniently, as if the writer wasn’t quite sure how to get to a resolution and wrote what they’d like to happen to leave all the characters in a good place in their lives, which didn’t quite fit with the rest of the book for me. A great premise that didn’t quite deliver.     

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

reflective slow-paced

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Read in Braille

Vintage 

Pub. 2024, 137pp  

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This Booker Prize winning novella is the story of 6 astronauts housed in the International Space Station. We follow them as they orbit the earth 16 times in one day and there’s an immediate sense of the unreality of living in space, trying to keep time straight in your mind:

“To his tally he kept on a piece of paper in his crew quarters, Roman will add the eighty-eighth line. Not to wish the time away but to try to tether it to something countable. Otherwise – otherwise the centre drifts. Space shreds time to pieces.They were told this in training: keep a tally each day when you wake, tell yourself this is the morning of a new day.”

Roman, Nell, Chine, Shaun, Anton and Pietro are from 5 countries around the world and are in close proximity but always focused on earth, either for their work or personal reflections. It takes a while to get to know them as the perspective shifts frequently, I found their inner thoughts, anxieties and back stories fascinating.

Early on, Nell is trying to reply to her brother who’s ill with flu and has written to her about how lonely he is, and that it must be nice to be experiencing everything with “her floating family” and she reflects:

“Up here, nice feels such an alien word. It’s brutal, inhuman, overwhelming, lonely, extraordinary and magnificent. There isn’t one single thing that is nice… She went to put that thought into words for her brother but it felt like she was making an argument or trying to outdo or undermine what he’d told her, so she wrote only to send love and attached a photo… She finds she often struggles for things to tell people at home, because the small things are too mundane and the rest is too astounding and there seems to be nothing in between”

I enjoyed reading most about the day-to-day routine of the astronauts; the challenge of floating around, trying to exercise, carrying out experiments, sending weather reports back to earth, having to share a tiny space with strangers you rely on to stay safe, and the sense of claustrophobia. I kept thinking how terrifying I’d find it to be stuck in a pressurised metal structure whizzing around the earth! The wonder of it all does also come across in the poetic writing and I finished the book with a renewed appreciation for the world we humans share:

“With each sunrise nothing is diminished or lost and every single one staggers them. Every single time that blade of light cracks open and the sun explodes from it, a momentary immaculate star, then spills its light like a pail upended, and floods the earth, every time night becomes day in a matter of a minute, every time the earth dips through space like a creature diving and finds another day, day after day after day… it staggers them.”

Something that really struck me was the idea that these astronauts are just lab rats themselves, all the tests and data they’re sending back to earth;  they’re guinea pigs for the ambitions of future space programmes that are looking further into space, to Mars. Terrifying really!

This is a contemplative read that I kept putting down and returning to over a few weeks. When I finished it I felt my experience was a little disjointed and I ended up downloading the audiobook and read it again over one day!    

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

medium-paced

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Read in Braille

Viking Books

Pub. 2021, 145pp

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This novella was a compelling read from start to finish, breathtakingly good. It’s a coming of age love story, and an exploration of what it is to be a young Black British man living in south east London. The writing is very poetic and the voice so strong.

The main characters are unnamed and it’s written in the second person, something I’ve come across in books that switch perspective during the story but I don’t think I’ve ever read a full book written in this way before. I found it very effective, helping to get into the head of the main character as he navigates the upheavals inn his life and experiences love for the first time.

The main character, a recent graduate working as a freelance photographer and at Nike Town in central London, meets a woman at a party but the timing couldn’t be worse; she’s dating his mate and is partway through her degree in Dublin. They strike up a friendship which can’t help but develop into a deep connection.

I know this area of London well but this is a very different experience to my own, as a middle aged white woman, and reading about the day to day fears of being stopped by the police for just existing in the world was very impactful. Fitting a profile, being wrongly identified over and over and the toll that takes. The exploration of grief, trauma, injustice, and loss was beautifully expressed throughout.

Art, literature, film and music are important in these character’s lives and are woven into the narrative; I found myself playing the tracks mentioned in the background on Spotify to add to the atmosphere.

There’s some gorgeous writing about relationships:

“The two of you, like headphone wires tangling, caught up in this something. A happy accident. A messy miracle.”

“You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone… It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close… You knew what you were getting into, but taking the Underground, returning home with no certainty of when you will see her next, it is terrifying.”

And I love this little piece when they’re getting late night snacks:

“… you are sat outside her apartment block, watching a dog dance across the lawn with the moon as his spotlight.”

These characters got under my skin and I really felt like I new them. Oh, and the inclusion of an author signing by Zadie Smith was very enjoyable.

As one repeated refrain says, summing up the book:

“It is one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen.”

Highly recommended, and one not to rush through!

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

medium-paced

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Read on audio

Narrator: Eanna Hardwick 

Pub. 2024, 442pp

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I went into this book so happy to be reading Sally Rooney’s beautiful, often experimental writing and was left conflicted.

The novel is about brothers, Ivan, 22, and Peter, 32, who’re grieving their father’s recent death, exploring how they struggle to navigate this new world. Rooney’s characters are always flawed and introspective, and I so enjoy getting into their heads. Ivan, a chess champion, is dating an older woman he met at a tournament and Peter’s dating someone Ivan’s age and has an ex he’s still close to, and the story revolves around their relationships in a similar way to Rooney’s previous books. 

The brothers have a complex, often antagonistic relationship. In one scene when they meet for dinner, there’s a rare moment where they talk about romantic relationships and their uncertainty about what best to do on a practical level with the family home and Ivan’s beloved dog:

“Ivan is nodding his head, sensing for the first time in his life Peter is speaking to him as an equal, someone who understands the complexities of life and intimate relationships, which, he thinks, is exactly what he is. Someone who has come to understand those complexities for himself.

There are a lot of feelings there, Peter says, and Ivan knows exactly what he means. With Margaret when she cried and he was holding her there were a lot of feelings then, too many. To think of his brother and Sylvia in a similar situation strikes Ivan as strange and sad, although why it should be so sad he doesn’t know exactly. He wants strongly to communicate all this, somehow, how much he understands, how similar he feels, in a way, their circumstances are, and, looking down at his own menu, almost unconsciously affecting the same manner as Peter, he says 

I get you”

But moments of connection like this are fleeting between these brothers, who seem to come together and then clash spectacularly, because they have a shared history of conflict as siblings and know how to hurt each other. Despite their often rather unreasonable behaviour I found myself invested in them and caring about what happened to them; Rooney has a talent for expressing the messiness of life.

I hoped the issue of disability was going to be well depicted here when I realised a character lives with chronic pain, and though my own experience is very different from Sylvia’s, the way she describes the struggle to accept her new circumstances was very relatable and rang true.

I thought we were in good hands because, as far as I can remember, Rooney’s first novel, Conversations with Friends, covered pain pretty well when Frances finds she has endometriosis, but about halfway through this one it started to bother me and I wasn’t entirely sure why. Yes, the boyfriend has some awful opinions but as we know, the non-disabled general public find it incredibly hard to understand a fluctuating condition like pain, and Peter’s in a mental health crisis, so it wasn’t necessarily that. But I increasingly found Sylvia’s part of the storyline a turn off as it progressed. I think we needed to understand more about Sylvia’s past as her condition was never properly explained and it appears she wouldn’t be intimate with Peter more for reasons of shame that she’s not as physically active as she was at 22 than because she’s not able to have sex at all. I was left disappointed by this element of the book. Sylvia’s life is seen as tragic due to her disability; needing to rely on Peter but also pushing him away. It’s a complex issue which, in my view, was not sensitively explored.

Overall this was a good read, and the audio narration was flawless, but if you’re at the start of your journey with chronic pain I’d think twice about picking it up. 

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

fast-paced

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

Read in Braille

HarperCollins 

Pub. 1941, 220pp  

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Well, January’s a depressing month at best and 2025 hasn’t started very positively, with so much happening around the world, so I chose this book as a bit of escapism.

It’s set on a fictional island holiday resort just off the Devon coast, connected by a causeway, where a group of guests at the Jolly Roger hotel are sunning themselves, gossiping and generally having a relaxed time. Poirot’s among them and of course he won’t get time to chill out for long! Within 72 hours there’s been a murder and he’s called on to investigate, alongside the police who have theories that reach far wider than the island. With only a few people at the guest house and most of them possessing some kind of motive (either fairly obvious or tied in with their past) and some very strong alibis to crack, there’s plenty to get those little grey cells working on.

I thought this was one of the best Christie’s I’ve read so far, with a lot of twists and turns to entertain the reader, and I was convinced at many points I knew who the culprit was. Of course I was wrong! So many red herrings to wrong foot you. I doubt if it’s possible to solve this one as a reader as some of the essential info needed wasn’t disclosed until the very end, but that doesn’t bother me one bit when I’m glued to the story and losing hours in another world like this; a world where the bad guys show themselves in the end and are punished.

There are some very Christie characters here, the beautiful femme fatale, the jealous husband, the stuffy old Major and the commic older tourist couple. 

They’re all very interested in Poirot’s methods    and here Poirot’s talking to a guest in the lounge on a rainy day:

“It is a little like your puzzle, Madam.One assembles the pieces. It is like a mosaic–many colours and patterns–and every strange-shaped little piece must be fitted into its own place.”… “And sometimes it is like that piece of your puzzle just now. One arranges very methodically the pieces of the puzzle –one sorts the colours–and then perhaps a piece of one colour that should fit in with–say, the fur rug, fits in instead in a black cat’s tail.”

there were a couple of plot points that were somewhat implausible (not least why the murderer decided to go ahead even though the famous detective Poirot was staying at the hotel!) and she has a habit of letting down her strongest female characters right at the end but this book cheered me up hugely. Towards the end there’s a very entertaining section where they all go on a picnic on Dartmoor, which did have a point to it but felt quite unusual, and I so enjoyed the last few pages where Poirot captivates the guests with a full description of how he solved the crime. A wonderful piece of twisty Golden Age detective fiction.  

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

informative sad medium-paced

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See 

Read on audio

Narrator: Jennifer Lim 

Pub 2019, 374pp

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This is the story of two young girls, Mi-ja and Young-Sook who grow up together on a Korean island, Jeju, and are trained by their community to be Haenyeo, divers who harvest the sea for creatures they can sell to support their family. This premise was very appealing to me, a culture where the men looked after the children while the women went to work was so interesting. And the fact they train to do something so dangerous and have such impressive lung capacity and could withstand the cold waters for so long was fascinating. The book begins in 2008, with Young-Sook as a very old woman, being introduced to an American family asking  her about their relative, Mi-ja. The story then takes us back to 1938 where we follow the story of how the girls met and learn about Korea having been occupied by the Japanese since 1910. Anyone working with the Japanese were seen as collaborators and were outcast. The book returns to 2008 several times as we go along and, as there are some very harrowing parts to this story, offered a much needed bit of light relief.

I felt I was learning about a part of history I had no idea about, and on the whole the story was well told and kept me reading, but the history came through in a bit of a distracting way for me at times. The research done by the author was very apparent and this took me out of the narrative which was jarring. It reminded me of another book I read years ago about a female pilot, Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, not in content but in the way some historical fiction spans a huge time frame and includes so much drama it feels a little implausible.  

I wasn’t emotionally invested here as much as I thought I might become at the beginning of the story. The violent parts were affecting and hard to listen to, as they should be, reflecting a very important part of the island’s history. 

Some details really struck me, like when, in later years, diving became much safer with the introduction of wetsuits, weights and masks but when the divers were offered oxygen tanks they refused, stating they must respect the balance of the sea and not over harvest it, even though they could make more money. And how diving was not just a job but a way of life where the women were almost more at home in the water than on land:

“The sea is better than a mother. You can love your mother and she still might leave you. You can love or hate the sea but it will be there forever.”

I did feel that there was something a little too convenient about the ending but I won’t go into that here!

I read this for my book group and it was a great choice for a discussion; most people found it hard going and some people didn’t finish it. For me, I think it’s a very memorable book, though I wasn’t a fan of the writing style, and I’m glad I took the time to read it. 

All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard

reflective medium-paced

All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Read in Braille

Pub. 2013,  573pp

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Oh how sad I am to have reached the end of the Cazalet Chronicles! I’ve  spread this set of 5 novels out over the past year and it’s been so enjoyable. The cast of characters are so engaging and I always looked forward to reading it at bedtime, often reading far too late into the night.

This book picks up the story of the family in 1956, with their timber business in trouble and several of the characters dealing with the effects of aging. The book did have a reflective, often sombre tone and as it was written when the author herself was in her late 80s it’s understandable that this is the focus. We see Miss Milliment struggling with her memory and Villy doing her best to support her, and the older brothers also have health issues. Edward’s story was a kind of comeuppance which is told in such a way that you find yourself feeling sorry for him at times.  

Elizabeth Jane Howard writes children brilliantly and plays to her strengths here, you can see that she loves writing from their perspective and has given several characters new offspring.  I enjoyed Georgie and his zoo of small creatures, and the lovely, touching moment when Harriet collected snowdrops for Rachel. There were a few times when I thought the children were getting a little too much of the narrative and I wanted to get back to others.

Some of the storylines went as I kind of expected, such as Teddy who’s just like his father, and others took unexpected turns. Neville’s story started well with his career as a photographer giving him the opportunity to use his charm but went down a route that seemed to be designed to shock but wasn’t particularly successful and just sort of fizzled out.

I would have liked a bit more of Louise and her mate Stella and wanted to know more about her relationships from the previous books.

I read this book at Christmas which turned out to be very fitting as the last part is set at the family home in the Sussex countryside where they all come together for a traditional festive season, complete with snow! Possibly not my favourite of the series but it was such a treat to be back in their world again for a while. 

This really is  a delightful series which covers a large part of the 20th century and reflects changing attitudes and the social upheaval of post war Britain through wonderful characters, and I’m sure to return to it in future.  

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

lighthearted reflective medium-paced

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

Read on audio 

Narrator: June Tobin for RNIB Talking Books

William Heinemann Ltd. 

Pub. 1965, 271pp

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I chose this as my  final book of 2024 as It looked to be a lovely easy read for our car journey home from a Christmas break. It’s based on the experiences of the author, and The blurb reads:

 “One spring afternoon, in the middle 20s, a determined young actress arrived in London from Lancashire intent on a stage career. This is her story, told by herself with the utmost candour”

I found it to be a wonderful read, very nostalgic, as an older woman looks back to being 18; confident, adventurous and excited by the possibilities of London theatre life. it reminded me of those first days at uni, trying to make friends and understand how the shared accommodation worked, only this is the 20s so “Mouse”, as our narrator is nicknamed, is staying in a boarding house where large rooms of 6 girls are partitioned by thin walls. She’s lucky to meet two girls already working on the stage on the first night and they take her under their wing:

“Why were they so kind to me? Later I asked them and Molly said ‘ You looked so funny and pathetic, a sort of Little Black Riding Hood.’  I wore a little circular black cape and a black straw hat that resembled a coal scuttle bonnet, placed well back on my head to show the thick brown fringe of my childish straight bobbed hair.My dress was pale grey, tight boddiced and full skirted, not for me nude little stockings, mine were grey, and my black shoes had cut steel buckles”

I loved the world of their first summer together, totally clueless and getting into all kinds of scrapes. They named their shared room “The Village”, ate large amounts of veda bread as they were so short of money and would come home at all hours.

As time goes on life gets more complicated as they all fall in love and things get messy. Mouse ends up working as a secretary at a central London theatre and tries to get on the stage, with some amusing results!

This story isn’t all light hearted though and as it’s told looking back from the 60s we get to understand her motives, regrets and difficult choices.

I think I went into this book wanting to read the coming of age part of it but the characters and writing are so warm I was hooked right through to the last page.