#20booksofsummer20

20 Books of Summer ’20 – how was it for you?

No 471 Horses by Keith Ridgway Book 20 of #20booksofsummer20

Keith Ridgway’s writing gets under my skin. I first encountered his work when I read Hawthorn & Child a surreal, esoteric crime novel like no other crime novel. Even more intriguing was Animals, a novel which charts the mental and physical breakdown of an unnamed narrator as he wanders around his city and becomes terrifyingly…

No 472 In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders Book 18 of #20booksofsummer20

I am a big fan of George Saunders’ short stories, having really enjoyed Tenth of December and Civilwarland in Bad Decline. In Persuasion Nation is another thematically linked collection which explores a world, somewhat like our own, where consumerism and advertising have taken over and individuality is being crushed in favour of conformity. Split into…

The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm Book 17 of #20booksofsummer20

No 473 Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor Book 16 of #20booksofsummer20

Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor is a sly and complex book that uses recognisable literary tropes as a starting point for its narrative, before heading in a much more interesting direction. The novels opens as newly orphaned Cassandra Dashwood leaves her family home for the last time. A sensitive eighteen year-old, her knowledge of life comes…

Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy Book 15 of #20booksofsummer20

No 474 The Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler Book 14 of #20booksofsummer20

Set in a Jewish retirement home in Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1978, The Prince of West End Avenue is a haunting yet often hilarious novel that follows Otto Korner, an Auschwitz survivor who is directing his fellow retirees in a retirement-home production of Hamlet. Despite their age, the staging of the play features all…

No 475 Larry’s Party by Carol Shields Book 13 of #20booksofsummer20

“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house With a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, well How did I get here?” Talking Heads ‘Once in a Lifetime’ Larry…

No 478 Cooked by Michael Pollan Book 9 of #20booksofsummer20

Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation is a hard book to categorise. It is not a cookbook, although it contains recipes and Pollan is not a chef, although the book details his cooking exploits. Cooked is a fascinating look at how we approach the food we eat and encompasses economics, history, philosophy, anthropology…

No 479 The Trip to Echo Springs: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing Book 8 of #20booksofsummer20

Alcohol has had a starring role in the creative lives of some of the world’s most famous authors. In an essay entitled Alcohol and Poetry Lewis Hyde noted that four of the six Americans who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature were alcoholics, namely William Faulker, Eugene O’Neill, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. The…