alobear | Reading Retreat Reviews

Last Thursday, I went to the matinee of Schism at the Finsbury Park Theatre. It’s a compelling two-hander, telling the story of a young girl’s interactions with a teacher at her school, leading to an in-depth analysis of their relationship and individual dreams. Written by and starring Athena Stevens, it’s a powerful story about figuring out what you want and doing whatever is necessary to reach that goal. Both characters are deeply flawed and very convincing, and both performances are committed and complex.

Later on Thursday, I went to an Intelligence Squared event where Mary Beard was promoting her new book, Women and Power. She was joined by a panel to discuss the history of misogyny, the impact of the #MeToo movement, and current ideas of feminism. It was an interesting evening, with some tricky subjects raised and varying opinions presented. It made for a lively discussion, and I was glad to have been there to hear it.

Then, on Friday, I travelled to Doddington Hall near Lincoln for my third reading retreat (www.readingretreat.co.uk), where I read six whole books - 1900 pages in 19 hours of reading. It was glorious, though my aim for the next one in November is to be less invested in how quickly I read and how many pages I complete, and more focused on really relaxing and enjoying myself!

My six books were:

Flambards by K M Peyton - written in 1967 and set in 1908, this tells the story of a young girl sent to live with hunting-obsessed relatives on a failing country estate. It’s an interesting portrait of a society on the brink of change, with one character much more passionate about cars and planes than horses, and some discussion of the role and place of the servants. The author obviously knows a very great deal about horses, as the portrayal of the riding experiences is visceral and absolutely in keeping with my own. I don’t think the development of the relationships was as convincing, which made it hard for me to invest in them. Plus, with books set in the early 1900s, I’m always distracted by working out how old the various characters will be when the war breaks out. I did like the heroine, though, who is portrayed as constrained by her youth, gender and reliance on others for financial security, but who fights against all that to get what she wants in the end.

I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell - a memoir told in near-death experiences, which was fascinating and horrifying by turns. It’s very well written, and brought up memories of some of my own experiences that I haven’t thought about in a long time. The author says the life-threatening illness she suffered at the age of eight could have made her timid, but instead prompted her to challenge herself and push her boundaries all the time, thus leading to several of the other instances recounted in the book. It made me feel very lucky to have so far avoided major trauma/tragedy in my life, but also made me realise that a lot of my fear about life stems from the fact that I’ve never had to deal with anything terrible, so I don’t know how/if I will be able to cope/survive.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham - post-nuclear-apocalypse society where any deviation from the accepted norm is excised. The child viewpoint at the beginning is masterfully portrayed so as to convey a lot of information that the read will understand, even though the narrator does not. It’s particularly interesting that young David is so surrounded by warnings to beware deviation, that they become meaningless and he is unable to apply them to reality when he does encounter something out of the ordinary. The book has really good pace and tension, and respects the intelligence of the reader by not spelling things out too much. I thought the idea that all the different groups of people had determined their own ‘normal’ and rejected anything outside it was very realistic, but made for rather a bleak conclusion.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout - an episodic tale, centering around a small town in Maine and its various inhabitants. Olive herself is the POV character for a handful of chapters, but only turns up on the periphery of others. It’s very grounded in reality and very sad in most cases. It’s about connection, and the lack thereof, and the difficulties people have in setting aside their own views to understand those of others. Certainly a complex portrait of an interesting character and a fairly insular community, but quite depressing, and weirdly political in the last few pages.

Wychwood by George Mann - a contemporary crime novel with a hint of the supernatural. George was the guest author on the retreat so I bought his latest book and read it on the Sunday afternoon. The other readers there who also read it agreed with me that it was entertaining and well-paced throughout, but quite light despite its violent subject matter. I enjoyed it, and I liked the characters, but the supernatural aspect wasn’t very well developed, and it felt more like it was skimming the surface of the story than really getting to grips with it.

The Red Threads of Fortune by J Y Yang - the sequel to their other novella, set in a Chinese-based fantasy realm of inventors and magicians trying to overthrow the oppressive ruling regime. The first one was very dark, and I liked this one better, so I was glad I persevered to finish the story. The magic system remained very unclear - it felt like there was a lot of exposition about how it worked, but none of it made sense to me. Still, it has interesting characters, and I particularly like the development of the various relationships.

On return from retreat, I finished listening to The Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, an African-flavoured fantasy YA novel with rich world-building and compelling characters. There are three POV characters, one of whom is ostensibly a bad guy, which adds a great deal of nuance to the storytelling. It’s very much a story of oppression and fighting back against prejudice, but it has great subtlety in the way the characters’ views and attitudes change as the story progresses. It gets pretty dark and very violent, but Iiked the fact that the consequences and lingering effects of trauma are not dismissed. What happens to the characters affects them deeply and makes them doubt what they are trying to achieve, and that makes for a complex and intriguing plot, exploring the ethics and ramifications of shifting power.