cold comfort

The thing about a comfort zone, right, is that it’s comfortable.

Reading outside your comfort zone is great *in theory*but in practice, well...

I mention this only because I have found myself outside my zone for the third fortnight in a row. Which is great – that’s what this project is about, I’m supposed to be finding new books that I otherwise would overlook, books that fall outside what I would normally read. The trouble is... they’re outside what I would normally read. And that makes me uncomfortable.

This isn’t to say there’s anything intrinsically wrong with literary explorations of sibling rivalry and moths, sprawling epics about Irish family life, or gritty urban dramas where everything is always terrible. Whatever floats your boat, lady. It just doesn’t seem to be my thing.

Which brings us neatly enough to this fortnight’s book, WHAT THEY DO IN THE DARK.

Reviews for this on Goodreads are, ehhh, mixed at best. People are apparently put off, not by the unrelentingly grimy feel to the whole narrative, but to the (spoiler alert) sickening, horrendous swerve the plot takes in the last thirty pages. And honestly I have to agree with them a little. The story follows two young girls, about 11 years old, from very different backgrounds, who become unlikely friends and eventually do something almost-inexplicably terrible. Throughout the book, there’s violence and child abuse and racism and a lot of other stuff that sits uneasy with the reader. It’s all very real, don’t get me wrong, the author obviously has a talent for describing people and events in squirmingly accurate detail. But then, like I say, in the last few pages the horrible, irreversible thing happens, then it just... ends. Almost none of the plot strands are tied up at all. We don’t find out for definite what happens to the two main girls, or their families, or the victim, or any of the characters in the sub-plot about a movie that’s filming at the girls’ school. One character, who narrated at least a half dozen chapters, doesn’t even get a mention in the summing-up.

So it’s difficult to tell what everyone reacted badly to – the grim, grubby realism; the swerve into the final act of horrendousness; or the fact we don’t get proper closure about any of it. I can see why the author made the choices they did but still... it all leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Which, honestly, was probably the intention.

Anyway, onwards and onwards, into the C-section (... may need to rephrase that):

12 shelves of C authors, and the Random Number Generator picks number 6:

(I may need to find a new way of choosing these shelves, because right now it seems to be either too random or not random enough...)

And again I’m left with a choice of two authors, neither of whom I’ve read before, neither of which is anything like my usually (comfortable) reading material:

So... which should it be? Regency historical fiction (which literally has a bodice on the cover) or WWII historical fiction?

If anyone has any kind of preference, please leave a comment below. I’m gonna give myself a few days to think about this one.

busy busy busy

Before we do anything else, I need to tell you about this:

My next book has just been announced from One More Chapter, and I am quite giddy with excitement. LITTLE GIRLS TELL TALES is available for preorder now. Please do check it out.

ALSO! Me and a few friends have teamed up to make a podcast. It's called WELL RED and involves us drinking wine and chatting books. This month we're discussing FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC (the 40-year-old classic that I am ashamed to say I've never read until this year), and trying to decide which wine you should drink while reading it. If that sounds like your sort of thing, give it a listen on Anchor.fm or find us on Spotify. Ta.

Anyway, last week for Reading the Library, the book was THE GLASS LAKE by Maeve Binchy and, honestly, it was quite good.

It’s a big community-saga, following the ebb and flow of life in a small village in Ireland as people fall in love, fall out of love, fall in the lake, run away with shady men, and question whether true love is really all it’s cracked up to be. It’s got a perfect sheen of ‘real-life’ all over it – people occasionally make ridiculous decisions, things don’t always work out neatly, people have the same name as each other (I’m certain there were two Kevins), sometimes fate is cruel and random: just like in real life. This does become annoying sometimes (just like in real life) because there are loose ends which don’t fit with the story (did we really need the whole subplot about the fella who breaks into the car shop?), but that’s not really the point. This book is essentially a soap opera. You can cut it a lot of slack for that.

Plus the main(ish) character, Kit McMahon, has some wonderful moments – for example, when some boy starts telling people she slept with him, she promptly sues him for impunity her virtue, and wins. Hats off to you, missy.

Next week, we’re looking at the C-shelves:

25 of these buggers, including three that belong exclusively to Catherine Cookson.

The random number generator gives us shelf number 9:

Hmm. So it looks like my choice is Harlan Cohen or Jonathan Coe or... oh hey, what’s that?

Okay, this looks interesting. I’ve never heard of this book or this author (the inside flap says she was a scriptwriter on Shameless). Let’s give it a go then.