sarahmatthews's reviews
78 reviews

My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley

tense medium-paced

My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley

Read on audio 

Narrator: Helen McAlpine

Granta Books

Pub. 2021, 208pp

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This has to be the best audio narration I’ve heard all year! It’s the story of Bridget and the relationship with her family, most notably her mother, Helen (known as Hen), who can be a difficult person to connect with. The narrator shifts seamlessly between accents, bringing these distinctive characters alive and helping the reader  feel the impact of the complex feelings expressed in this story.

There’s agonising tension and miscommunication and an unwillingness on both sides to lay bare difficult feelings for fear of damaging a fragile relationship permanantly.

Bridget narrates the story, and you feel the pressure she’s under to keep contact even when it’s incredibly fraught, awkward and painful. There was certainly fault on both sides for the distant relationship, with Bridget being unwilling to let her mother too close, for reasons we never quite get to. 

Hen is a character who on the surface appears outgoing and forceful but is shown to struggle deeply with relationships and can’t find fulfilment in her life, though at times she really tries:

“‘I’m putting myself out there’ she told me, and ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it. I’m pursuing my own interests’ she said, quoting the advice routinely given for meeting like-minded people.”

Later on they’re meeting for their annual dinner and conversation is horribly strained:

“If there was something going on in the news I could try that, but there too she would resist being put on the spot. And sometimes, as when I was little, she simply didn’t reply at all. She only smiled and stayed very still, or else just said ‘yes, yes”, or ‘no, yes” while straightening her cutlery. And then she was back to looking at me, waiting happily for my next gambit.”

Some of these exchanges are on the edge of being funny for their toe-curling awkwardness and reminded me of conversations I’ve had with people who’re just on a totally different wavelength to me, and, wow, those silences can be excruciating!

As the narrative developed my feelings towards the characters shifted and I adore fiction that does this to me so subtly, creating a sense of unease.

A truly unforgettable read.

   

  

Mary Swann by Carol Shields

funny mysterious slow-paced

Mary Swann by Carol Shields

Read as e-book, using a mix of Braille and text to speech

World Editions

Pub. 1987, 320pp

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It’s rare that I read much about a book before starting it but I loved Larry’s Party by this author which has a brilliant concept behind it and I guessed Mary Swann might have a similar approach, so to get the most out of the experience I figured I ought to go in with a few clues.

This is a satirical look at the literary academic world through the eyes of four characters who’re all preparing to attend a symposium on a (fictional) poet called Mary Swann.

The first part is told from the perspective of each participant; the academic Sarah Maloney, the biographer Morton Jimroy, the librarian Rose Hindmarch and the publisher Frederic Cruzzi. They’re all then brought together at the end for the big event.

There’s mystery surrounding Mary Swann that they’re fascinated by; why was she murdered by her husband, what’s special about her apparently ordinary poetry, and why are artefacts concerning her work disappearing? This is enough infomation to get going and without it I think I’d have given up fairly quickly as the pace is slow and the characters rather unlikeable, though, of course, that's part of the point.

What drew me in was the wonderfully witty and insightful writing, highlighting the absurdity of each character. They're all obsessed with Mary Swann; very much from the perspective of how her tragic life can benefit their own. There’s a great scene where Rose Hindmarch and Morton Jimroy go out to dinner and he’s making all kinds of intellectual insights into a poem and Rose can’t quite bring herself to put him straight on what it was likely to have really been about. For her part, Rose is so flattered to be invited to the symposium she’s unable to be totally honest about how little she really knew Mary Swann. And it’s amusing how she was so keen for the Mary Swann Memorial Rooms to be a success (and so underwhelmed by Mary’s real few lasting possessions she’s been offered), that she uses money given through grants for the project to buy second hand items:

“…she has considered, then rejected, the idea of placing a small card in the doorway advising visitors that the contents are similar to those found in Mary Swann’s rural home. But quite rightly she has decided that such a notice would be a distraction and that it might inject a hint of apology of insufficiency. (The charm of falsehood is not that it distorts reality, but that it creates reality afresh.)”

There’s a lot of self-deception going on here, looking at how literary reputations can be shaped by those who obsess over them, and commenting on how we often live our lives telling ourselves and others all kinds of half truths to justify our actions.

The last section, at the symposium, is written in the form of a film script which I enjoyed for it’s quirkiness and for the brilliant stage directions, e.g. “MUSIC: A skirling tune, strings mainly, with some bagpipes.” The scenes of the symposium are hilariously cringey as Shields pokes fun at the pettiness of academics trying to get one up on each other. So many egos!

At the very end of this edition there was a lovely surprise for me as a blind reader where the cover is described; the font used, the colours chosen and composition: “The letters form a rotating vortex; a play between form and counter-form, hovering at the border of recognisability and readability.”

All in all this was a compelling read with a dramatic and entertaining conclusion, and one that would make for a great reread in future. 

A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

reflective medium-paced

A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

Read in Braille

Vintage Modern Classics

Pub. 1947, 313pp

___

This was a surprisingly good choice for a holiday read, seeing as it’s main theme is loneliness so not the most uplifting of topics! I found myself reading it by the coast and the sound of the waves and clattering masts of boats along with the warm breeze all added to the experience.

There is a cast of about 8 quirky characters to get to know in this quiet and rather shabby post-war coastal town and it does take a while to get into their lives, but once you’re there you’re hooked.

The central friendship of Tory and Beth is so well told; they’ve known each other since school and are very different and argue, but also have moments of wonderful companionship. They live next door to each other now, Tory has a son, Edward, who’s at boarding school, and is divorced from her wealthy husband who’s run off with a young servicewoman he met during the war; and Beth and her doctor husband Robert have two children.

Beth is a writer and I was struck by how her storyline is concerned with the timeless issue of mother’s guilt, as she carves out a way to write which results in her becoming completely absorbed in her creativity and oblivious to what’s going on around her. And there’s a great scene where Tory’s delighting in dressing Beth up for her trip to London to meet her publisher where she’s comically disappointed at the end to find that Beth’s editor is a woman.

Bertram’s a key character who weaves the story together, and we’re introduced to him right from the beginning. He’s a retired naval officer who’s visiting Newby to take up painting but mostly spends his time ‘insinuating’ himself (as he puts it) into the lives of women in the town. He’s staying at the local pub where he spends his evenings playing dominoes with the men and meets Lily, a widow who he starts to befriend, and who craves his company. He soon transfers his interest to Tory who he’s admired from his vantage point at the harbour and also spends time with the housebound and rather bitter Mrs Bracey, who he gets to know through her daughter Iris, the pub’s barmaid. He thinks he’s doing good by making these connections but soon shows himself to be rather self centred:

“‘Yes,’ he thought to himself, ‘they will all remember me. Yes after, they will say to one another, ‘that was the summer he came,’ like the man in the concert party who wore the pink-and-white striped blazer and whom they all remembered and so often talked about. Where was he now? But wherever he was he had left something of his personality in the place as other visitors had not, a thumb-print, something not tangible like Mr Walker’s oil-painting hanging in the Anchor, but the very gentlest of mementoes, a stirring-up of the imagination merely. And I will leave both,’ Bertram decided, ‘the tangible and the intangible, the souvenir and the memory itself, the thumb’s pressure and the painting in the bar parlour.’”

Later in the novel I was rooting for Prudence, Beth’s 20 year old daughter. She’s a quiet girl who doesn’t have much of an independent life, cooking for her beloved cats and looking after her 5 year old sister Stevie, while her mother works. She sees what’s going on between her father and Tory and is filled with rage but is not mature enough to influence the situation. There’s a lovely scene where she finally goes on a date:

“While the sun was setting Prudence and Geoffrey sat under the may-tree in the churchyard. Prudence wore her sage green dress, her coral bracelets. Geoffrey read poetry out of a little suede-covered book. Prudence passed her hand across her jaw and put a little yawn into it as she did so.” That made me laugh!

This beautifully observed novel has a lovely afterword by Robert Liddell, a writer friend of Elizabeth Taylor. A touching book which leaves you wondering about the fate of the characters. 

   

   

My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell

mysterious tense medium-paced

My Lover’s Lover by Maggie O’Farrell

Read partly in Braille and partly on audio

Headline Books

Pub. 2002, 288pp

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I’ve loved Maggie O’Farrell’s writing for years, since her debut After You’d Gone had me in tears while waiting for a train at Paddington station back in 2000! I thought I’d read all her books but when I looked through her backlist recently, looking for a holiday read, I found a couple I’d missed. This is her second book and, honestly, it’s not one of her best but her characters are always brilliantly drawn and interesting enough to keep me reading, plus the mystery element of this book was intriguing.

The set up here is that Lily moves in with a man she meets at a party who has a spare room and they start a rather doomed relationship. I found it hard to really understand how she fell for him as he seemed self centred from the start and there were plenty of red flags and I wasn’t convinced they liked each other much, they never seem to have fun together. But I guess there’s a 10 year age gap and she was young and inexperienced and was caught up in the glamour of his career as a respected archetect; a power imbalance she didn’t want to confront. But the main point of the story is the haunting by the ex-lover that drives her to the edge and this was told pretty well on the whole. I enjoy a psychological thriller and this did keep me guessing and mentally shouting at Lily “don’t do  that, get out of that flat now!” Etc., which is part of the fun.

The second half of the novel changed mood completely but I really wanted to know the end by then so I switched to audio to finish it quicker and I’m glad I did as I found a lot to enjoy about it. Maggie O’Farrell does the time and perspective switches much better in some of her later books and it’s fascinating to see how she was figuring some of this out while writing this one. 

I was left a little unsatisfied by it on the whole and a bit perplexed as it could have gone in so many directions but just didn’t take the extremes in the end which many commercial fiction books do, and, you know what? I really liked that about it. I’m pretty sure the confusion I felt as a reader was intentional. A book about obsession, jealousy, being young and the weight of life’s pressures.    

 

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

Read on audio

Narrator: Hugh Fraser

Harpercollins 

Pub. 1967, 245pp

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Agatha Christie does it again! This dark and eerie novel starts slowly, setting the scene beautifully which lulls you into a false sense of security. You know there’s a murder coming but here I kept having to remind myself that something nasty was on the way.

This is a standalone Christie told from the perspective of Michael, a likeable young man drifting from job to job . Recently he’s been working as a driver, chauffeuring rich customers to expensive destinations across Europe and their easy way with money and carefree lifestyle has him feeling envious. One customer is the famous architect Rudolf Santonix, who is casually dropped into the story but becomes a big part of it in due course.

Michael is drawn to a derelict house that he spots for sale in a remote and picturesque part of the countryside with accompanying land which is known by locals as “gypsy’s Acre”, and is said to be cursed. There’s a gothic atmosphere reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier, including a local gypsy warning him off the land with stories of death coming to those that live there, which he brushes off as silly superstition.

Michael meets a young woman at Gypsy’s Acre who he’s intrigued by; they’re both drawn to the house and enjoy discussing what a wonderful place it could be. They arrange to meet again in London and a romance blossoms. Ellie turns out to be a wealthy American with a complicated network of family looking out for her and she tells Michael they must keep their relationship secret as they wouldn’t approve, their expectation being that she’ll marry a suitably wealthy man chosen for her. Ellie’s life up to now has been very protected and controlled so In order to maintain their privacy Ellie asks her loyal companion, Greta, to cover for her. I enjoyed this ‘calm before the storm’ start to this book but some readers might find it a bit slow.

This was a Christie in which I thought I knew where it was vaguely going, had spotted some connections between characters and possible motives and method for murder. And then there was a twist that struck seemingly out of nowhere and I was kicking myself for not having guessed it! Just brilliant.

The audiobook was a delight to listen to with Hugh Frazer doing a fabulous job with all the accents, very slick and professional.

I read this book in preparation for attending the live recording of an episode of Backlisted podcast at Foyles Bookshop in London next week and I think it’ll be a lively discussion!

   

Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard

medium-paced

Casting Off by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Read in Braille

Simon & Schuster

Pub. 1997, 496pp

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The fourth in the Cazalet Chronicles series covers the years 1945 to 1947 as the family adjust to peacetime living in a changed England. We follow the innermost thoughts of all the characters including those who are on the edges of the family. The Cazalets have been very well off in the past, accustomed to running large London houses with many servants, and they are now leaving the safety and comfort of the big family home in Sussex where they spent most of the war, returning to London and having to make difficult choices about how they live now. Notably the younger children struggle to settle as they miss the country house full of others their own age to play with, having never known a different way of living.

I’m not going to go into detail for fear of spoilers as this book is part of a series, but here’s a small example of the writing:

“It was a windy evening. Blossom was being tossed off the trees to join the browning petals on the ground— it had rained earlier. A small child was listlessly kicking a large rubber ball down one of the straight gravel paths. Square gardens, he thought, were an adult’s view of a place for children. They had the appearance of being verdant—grassy lawns, shrubs, trees and a few flowers— but they were so ordered and confined that they contained no sense of adventure, of mystery: it was hard to enjoy something if you could see all of it at once.”

The three older cousins, Louise, Polly and Clary, are the heart of this novel and they all face tough decisions in their lives which are expertly explored with Elizabeth Jane Howard’s usual balanced and compassionate writing. You find yourself totally immersed in the intertwining storylines and I didn’t care at all that I saw several plot points coming as the storytelling is just so smart and compelling.

This series was originally going to conclude with this novel so the main characters get a resolution to their stories, some more definitively than others. I’m so glad she decided to write a fifth novel, All Change, many years later, set in the 1950s, as I’m not done with this family yet!

With transatlantic marriages, the harsh reality for newly disabled servicemen,messy divorces, unexpected pregnancies, navigating old age and many infidelities this book doesn’t shy away from the big issues of the time, and consequences of the war for one family.

So obsessed with these books that I’ve already decided that after I’ve finished them I’ll read Slipstream, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s autobiography, to see how closely Louise’s story matches her experiences.      

    

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers

medium-paced

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers

Read on audio

Narrator: Stephen Jack for RNIB

Pub. 1932, 499pp

Victor Gollancz

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I picked up this novel for the continuation of the relationship between private detective Lord Peter and novelist Harriet Vane that started in Strong Poison, and I’m looking forward to going on to her famous novel Gaudy Night after this one as they appear together again there.

This novel has a grisly murder (or was it suicide?) centred around a seaside town that Harriet’s visiting. She discovers the body on the beach and Lord Peter hot foots it down to help her try to figure out the details and ensure she’s not considered a suspect. Throughout the mystery Lord Peter and Harriet seem to have more creative ideas than the local police and Harriet even moves into the victim’s old lodgings!

The victim, Alexis, was a dancer at a large hotel and had been engaged to be married to one of the wealthy guests, and the mystery concerns the question of why would he have contemplated suicide when he had a secure life ahead of him?

There are so many quirky little moments to lighten the mood as things progress, such as this description of a policeman taking notes during an interview:

“The pencil happened to be an indelible one and had left an unpleasant taste in the mouth.he passed a pink tongue along his purple stained lips, looking to Mr Perkins’s goblin-haunted imagination like a very large dog savouring a juicy bone .”

Lord Peter continues to try to romance Harriet and she is still not having any of it, resulting in some amusing exchanges between them and this book is strongest when they’re interacting. 

I also enjoyed the description of Harriet reading through the books on the victim’s shelves as she tried to jog her subconscious for her detective novel, then turning to crosswords to try to get her writing going again.

The eventual solution was rather long winded with an overlong description of solving a cipher (which was tedious on audio), but otherwise entertaining. It took me a long time to read and the ending was rather abrupt, with Lord Peter and Harriet solving the mystery then speeding off to London to go out to lunch! A good read but not my favourite of hers so far.

Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness by Maud Rowell

medium-paced

Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness by Maud Rowell

Read in Braille

404 Inklings

Pub. 2021, 106pp

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This is probably the most enjoyable of all the disability related non-fiction I’ve red to date, just so full of relatable insights and thought-provoking discussion. I wrote so many notes!

It’s structured as 3 essays; the first called On Visibility (how the work of blind people is routinely undervalued and ignored), the second On Accessibility (how we improve life for all pwhen we design the world accessibly) and the third On Culture. My main focus at the moment is trying to explore how I can develop some kind of tactile art practice since losing my sight, so the highlight for me was the final essay where Maud Rowell talks about her own connection to art galleries and the meagre offering by major galleries and museums in the UK for blind and partially sighted visitors. I was very interested to read, for example, that in the 18th century, museum visitors expected to be able to handle the exhibits:

“This all changed with the rapid emergence of a middle class with wealth to protect, and so touch became linked with anxieties over theft or damage. Prudish Victorian sensibilities, exacerbated by fresh paranoia over invisible diseases, further vilified tactile encounters with art and artefacts by the uncivilised, unsanitary masses.”

This puts a very different spin on the events I’ve felt very lucky to attend over the years which are specifically designed for blind people, and often put a huge emphasis on touching sculpture with gloves on. As she continues:

“Across all UK museums and galleries, accessibility measures for the blind only ever facilitate engagement with a small fraction of the exhibits on display, a fraction of the time, with specially-designed tours (sometimes involving permissive handling) available only within small and specific windows.This significantly limits free and spontaneous explorations by visitors with sight loss.

This seems especially unjustifiable when the permanent collections of the UK’s metropolitan galleries and museums are free, protected by an almost sacred, untouchable subsidy that creates the illusion that art is accessible to everyone, without discriminating. The fact is that in reality ,the ability to walk into one of these spaces and freely explore any and all the exhibits as the master of your own time, pleasure, and cultural education is a privilege, and one that is not afforded to everyone in equal measure.” So very true!

This essay also talks about blind artists including a piece called Modes of Touch by Fayen d'Evie that I was blown away by when I experienced it at the In Plain Sight exhibition at The Wellcome Collection in 2022. It involved opening drawers in an old piece of furniture to discover 3 objects wrapped in cloth. The gallery assistant had a script written by the artist which was read aloud to talk you through ideas of how to interact with the objects and really focus on touch. It’s very much commenting on how exhibits are so often hidden in cabinets or behind glass.

The essay on accessibility has a section on how wonderfully thought out the train system is in Japan, with specially commissioned audio tracks for each line and I want to travel there even more now!

One more great quote to finish: “So while sight loss will always be an adjustment, it should never mean a severing from your sense of self, or from happiness - and we shouldn’t think it does, either. No one should have to feel that should they go blind, they must sacrifice their dreams or independence. We must fight the pervasive ignorance which feeds this mindset, and which continues to relegate blind history, blind accomplishments, and the realities of sight loss to the shadows.”

I think that at just over 100 pages this book effectively and eloquently introduces the barriers faced by blind and partially sighted people and I found I was very engaged with it throughout. Plus there’s a great afterward with suggested further reading. I’ll be telling everyone who’ll listen how good this one is for a long time! 

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Tr. Megan Backus

Read in Braille

Pub. 1988, 160pp

___

This book contains a novella, Kitchen, and a short story, Moonlight Shadow, a fact I hadn’t realised before starting due to my aversion to spoilers on blurbs so when the character names changed I was a little taken aback and had to do some rereading to get back on track! Both stories were beautifully written but the voices were not particularly different and Kitchen ends rather abruptly so it’s easy enough to be a bit derailed.

Both stories are about loss, loneliness and adapting to change and I found them very relatable though of course with very different personal circumstances. In Kitchen, 20 something Mikage narrates the story. She’s alone in the world now that her beloved grandmother, who raised her, has died and is taken in by Yuishi and his mother Eriko who run the local coffee shop her grandmother frequented. The relationship between the 3 of them is very touching. Mikage starts cooking to help out in the house and becomes obsessed with it as a way to distract herself:

“I washed and bleached dish towels, and while watching them go round and round in the dryer I realised that I had become calmer. Why do I love everything that has to do with kitchens so much? It’s strange. Perhaps because to me a kitchen represents some distant longing engraved on my soul. As I stood there, I seemed to be making a new start; something was coming back.”

In the second story Satsuki is grieving for her boyfriend who we learn very early on was killed in a car accident. There are elements of magical realism in this one which I really enjoyed and the writing is gorgeous:

“It was a noon enveloped in warm sunlight—it made you think that spring would truly come.A light wind was blowing soft and gentle on the face. The trees on the street were beginning to sprout their tiny infant leaves. A thin veil of mist hung distantly in the pale blue sky far beyond the city. 

Such blossoming delectability did not make my own insides flutter; it left me unmoved. The spring scenery could not enter my heart for love or money. It was merely reflected on the surface, like on a soap bubble. Everyone out on the streets” coming and going, looking happy, the light shining through their hair. Everything was breathing, increasingly sparkling, swathed in the gentle sunlight.The pretty scene was brimming with life, but my soul was pining for the desolate streets of winter and for that river at dawn.”

Kitchen is melancholy, soothing, sad and uplifting all at the same time, a brilliant read! Written in the 1980s it’s very progressive for it’s time though some of the terms seemed a little confused at times and not how we’d write about these issues now. 

Spoiler Alert: Eriko is a transsexual character which is written about sensitively in general for a book from the 1980s. I did notice a couple of points where transsexual and transvestite seemed to be confused and a line that appeared to insinuate that she decided to transition because her wife had died and she didn’t want to be a man any more. Obviously not what we’d want to read from a 2024 perspective. Overall though Eriko’s character is written very sympathetically.

 

The Next Big Thing by Anita Brookner

reflective sad slow-paced

The Next Big Thing by Anita Brookner

Read in Braille

Viking

Pub. 2002, 247pp

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Julius is retired, his parents and brother have died and his wife has left him. He’s living alone in central London, his adopted city after his family fled from Nazi Germany. He’s looking for the next big thing in his life, pondering his past and feeling concern for his failing health. Sounds gloomy, right?! Well, the insightful writing just carries you along and pulls you in before you know it and you’re hooked on this story of loneliness and regret in later life. I found myself, like I often do with Anita Brookner, rereading sections due to the beautiful prose. Here’s an example to give you a flavour: 

“He raised his eyes to a rooffline bristling with television aerials , lowered them again to windows still blank before the evening lights were lit. The sky was already darkening; signs of spring were absent, and yet the chilly damp held a promise of greenness, of new life only just in abeyance. it was even possible to appreciate that sky; its opaque blue reminded him of certain pictures, though no picture could compete with this strange sense of immanence. With the crust of the earth ready to break into life, the roots expanding to disclose flowers, the trees graciously putting forth leaves. The impassivity of nature never ceased to amaze him. This awakening process was surely superior to anything captured on canvas, yet art made all phenomena its province.in its unceasing war with the effort of capturing moments of time art won this unequal contest, but only just. The majestic indifference of nature was there to remind one of ones place, and no doubt to serve as a corrective to the artist’s ambition. When the canvas was finished it was already a relic, outside change. And surely change was primordial; all must obey it. To ignore the process was to ignore the evidence of one’s own evolutionary cycle.’

Haunting, introspective and with a hint of dark comedy this was so good, just maybe  one to approach with caution if you’re about to retire! This novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002.