Five Things To Read This...

... November/December

Some suggestions of what's new and noteworthy this season.

The Thread 

by Victoria Hislop (Headline)

There’s no mistaking Hislop’s writing, a combination of uncomplicated, passionate storytelling and the interlinking of significant episodes of European history. Her third novel sees her returning toGreece, specifically to the city ofThessaloniki where, through catastrophe, ethnic discrimination and war, she traces the huge, often tragic sweep of the twentieth century. It’s also a family saga, driven by the love story between a refugee girl and the rebel son of autocratic merchant. Solidly entertaining fare with some memorable set pieces.

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Fear

by Gabriel Chevallier (Serpent’s Tail)

The literature of World War I is augmented by an exceptional rediscovery this November, when this French classic by the author of jovial bestseller Clochemerle sees its first translation into English. The furious anti-war message of Fear, published in 1930, led to it being withdrawn before World War II. Chevallier’s indictment of war, jingoism and infectious stupidity deserves to be widely read. Drawing on the author’s own experiences in the trenches, the novel follows the experiences of Jean Dartemont whose scathing opinions of the politicians and generals are matched for force by on-the-ground depictions of the chaos, physical demands, privations and hellish suffering of the battlefield. A literary punch to the solar plexus.

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A Dancer in Wartime

by Gillian Lynne (Chatto & Windus)

Despite a tragic opening, the renowned choreographer’s (Cats etc) memoir of her childhood in the 1940s is an engaging nostalgia-fest mixing innate talent with memories of wartimeEngland. It’s littered with reminiscences of Lilley & Skinner’s shoe shop; tea at Lyons Corner House; evacuation;Anderson shelters; and ENSA. And among the scholarships and schooldays and first indications of stardom, there are working encounters with figures like Moira Shearer, Noel Coward and Margot Fonteyn. An evocative seasonal indulgence.

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The Interrogative Mood

by Padgett Powell (Serpent’s Tail).

Will every review of this novel be written in the form of questions ? Is it the only way to discuss a book composed entirely of enquiries ? What will reading groups make of it ? Will the formal structure be too much ? Or is it imaginable that book groups might have fun with its cleverness and originality ?

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7 Ways to Kill a Cat

by Matias Nespolo (Harvill Secker)

If the UK’s blazing summer has left readers more curious about the lives of the dispossessed, then this striking debut might offer a glimmer of insight. Although plastered with expletives and bad behaviour of all kinds, including an illustration of one of the 7 Ways to Kill a Cat, it’s a punchily immediate piece of writing set in an Argentinian barrio, tracking the downward spiral of a sympathetic kid, Gringo, who is distracted on his unpromising trajectory by a copy of Moby Dick. Nespolo is one of Granta’s best young Spanish-language novelists. As grittily contemporary as they come.

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