sarahmatthews's reviews
74 reviews

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

___

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

___

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.   

The Proof of my Innocence by Jonathan Coe

medium-paced

The Proof of my Innocence by Jonathan Coe

Read on audio

Narrators: Roy McMillan, Mark Stobbart, Charlotte Worthing, Alana Maria and Sam Woolf

Penguin Books

Pub. 2024, 368pp

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A new Jonathan Coe novel is always a treat, but one that’s set in the predictably dismal premiership of Liz Truss and which is also sending up the publishing industry is like cat nip to me!

Phyl, a 20-something recent graduate is living at home with her parents again, working a boring job at Heathrow airport and unsure what life holds for her. But she knows she wants to write, and this is where the story begins:

“She was thinking of writing a book. What kind of book? A novel? A memoir? Something in the hinterland between the two?she didn’t know. Phyl had never written anything before, even though she was an avid reader. All she knew, was that since coming back from university, no, before that, she’d first noticed it in those few, long, languid weeks after her finals, she had felt a growing impulse, a growing need, the word was not too strong, to create something, to put words on a screen. To try carving something shapely and full of meaning, from the dull block of marble that made up her inert and formless experience.”

She proceeds to draw up a list of popular literary genres for inspiration and what follows is a brilliant satire with a cast of great characters used to explore the state of British society today, all mixed up in a kind of book within a book. There are three sections, experimenting with cosy crime, dark academia and auto fiction. I admit to being slightly lost at times but I just went with it, and with a storyteller as accomplished as Jonathan Coe you’re in good hands.

There’s a lot going on in this book and I really enjoyed the strand about author Peter Cockerill, who’s forgotten books become the cult obsession of a small number of fanatics ; I think Jonathan Coe had a great time constructing this narrative, even featuring briefly himself!

there’s also a great recurring theme about the calming effect of watching random episodes of Friends for young people,  as it’s rooted in a time before we had everything at our fingertips on smartphones.

This is a very entertaining unorthodox murder mystery that I whizzed through but which includes serious themes along the way, including the rise of extreme right wing politics, abuse of power, the bleakness of zero hours, minimum wage contracts, and the various ways we try to cope with grief. Being set in 2022, He weaves in the reaction to the Queen’s death, with a great scene where detective Pru Freeborn tries to figure out the murder while queuing for hours to pay her respects alongside her husband.

My only criticism is with the audio production which was a cast of several voice actors. I found the switching of voices really distracting and was always relieved when we returned to the voice used for Phyl which I enjoyed most. Personally,I would have liked that actor to have voiced the whole book.

All in all a fabulous, compelling read. 

Foster by Claire Keegan

emotional reflective medium-paced

Foster by Claire Keegan

Read in Braille

Faber and Faber

Pub. 2010, 89pp

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This is my third Claire Keegan novella and she’s become one of my favourite writers! I chose to read this one in Braille as it slows me down and makes me consider every word and sentence more closely, which is part of the joy of reading her, no word is wasted.

In this story we’re following an unnamed narrator, a child who’s been taken to stay with relatives she hardly knows in order to take the pressure off her mother who’s expecting another child to add to an already large family.

Distance is put between the narrator and her relatives as she refers to them as “Kinsella” and “the woman”, and from the beginning the child is trying to figure out how to feel about the situation she’s been thrust into, as seen in this small exchange at bedtime:

“She is just about to hang a blanket over the curtain rail, to block it out, when she pauses.

‘Would you rather I left it?’

‘Yeah,’ I say ‘yes.’

‘Are you afraid of the dark?’

I want to say I am afraid but am too afraid to say so.”

As the novella progresses family secrets slowly emerge, and we start to get a sense of the contrast between the attention she’s receiving here and what she’s accustomed to:

“Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this.”

There’s a lovely moment where Kinsella sets her a challenge to run to the post box and back, timing her on each run and it becomes a fun game, a motif that returns later on.

This is a powerful novella with beautifully written, complex characters, which is firmly rooted in rural Ireland. I thought Claire Keegan captured very effectively the feeling of confusion young children have in the adult world and the language she uses to tell the story reflects that so well.

A sad and poignant story that’s masterfully constructed, and one I’ll be thinking about for a while. I’m also intrigued to find out if the recent film version is a good adaptation. 

I read this for Novellas in November #NovNov hosted by Rebecca of Bookishbeck and Cathy of 746Books.  

  

Resistance by Owen Sheers

tense slow-paced

Resistance by Owen Sheers

Read on audio

Narrator: Richard Coyle

BBC Audiobooks

Pub.  2007

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I read this book for my first ever book club and it was a great choice for a discussion; I’m not sure I’d have picked it up otherwise.

Going in I knew it was an alternative history where we’re following characters in a remote Welsh valley during WW2, where the D Day landings have failed and Germany now occupy the UK. The only other novel of this genre I’ve read is Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier which was fascinating as it was written in 1972 and kind of foresees Brexit. I remember enjoying it but also finding it a little bonkers! 

This book is written in a very different style and, even though plenty happens, it is quite slow paced in the beginning with a lot of description of landscape. I liked the lyrical scene setting but, wow, were there a lot of similes! The author is an award winning poet so I guess he was particularly concerned with creating a sense of place. There were parts where the landscape was beautifully evoked and other sections where I just wanted the story to get going.

A group of German soldiers have been deployed to a small farming community on a secret mission. When they arrive a harsh winter sets in and they find themselves lending a hand to the women who’ve been suddenly abandoned by their husbands, presumably to take part in the efforts of the British resistance. The Nazi troops are  worn down from fighting across Europe and are relieved to be away from the front line. It soon becomes clear that if they’re all going to get through the winter they need each other and the boundary between the opposing sides is blurred. 

The women don’t want to become collaborators but the pressures of a bleak winter of farming in this isolated environment mean they’re given no other option than to accept help. This difficult tension is well explored, especially in the characters of Sarah and Albrecht. I didn’t think I’d enjoy the writing about farming but found I really got into it and the chapters describing this horrendous, treacherous winter were excellent. 

One of my favourite characters (who I’d have liked more of in the book) is George, a teenager who’s picked out during an assessment at the start of the war to be part of the UK underground intelligence. He works at night, observing the movements of troops from his vantage point, writing on rice paper so he could eat it if caught. I enjoyed the details we find out from his point of view:

“The newspapers stopped coming, and there was less news, more light music on the radio. Through it all they kept broadcasting light music. George suspected the songs chosen, and the order in which they were played were a code, but he couldn’t be sure.”

The turning point for me comes when Maggie takes a prized colt to a show in a  village outside the valley and one of the Germam officers accompanies her, dressed as a civilian. After this scene I found the story really picked up to a gripping conclusion.

This novel provided some great talking points for our group, most of whom enjoyed it, and we were very interested in the afterward which explained how much of the detail about the resistance was based on real plans drawn up during the war. Overall a fantastic concept and a great read.