The Likes of Us – Stan Barstow

This book has the subtitle ‘stories of five decades’ combining, as it does three previous collections, first published in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, with a couple of more recent stories.

The Desperadoes collection (published 1961) has stories from the late 50’s and early 60’s with post-war austerity and emerging youth culture ,set in the industrial north, providing the context for his tales of everyday working-class men and women.

A Season With Eros (published 1971) and The Glad Eye (published 1986) show how times have changed for these folk with many materially better off and enjoying the freedoms (moral and material) on offer – nice houses, foreign holidays, semi-detached relationships – but against a contrasting background of 3 million unemployed.

For me Barstow is a master of the short story. Usually a punchy opening line hooks the reader in and then the tale unfolds in uncomplicated prose, exploring whatever facet of human nature he has chosen to expose. The dialogue is convincing (any dialect remains readable) and the denouements are satisfying.

The location, characters and situations are reminiscent of Barstow’s classic A Kind of Loving trilogy (one of my favourite reads that similarly had volumes published over an extended period and so reflected social change, as well as Vic Brown’s personal development) and there can be no finer recommendation from me.

A word of caution to the Kindle edition; the page numbering is hard to credit as the 251 pages cannot possibly contain the 41 stories that originally made up three separate books. I timed my reading of the last “12” pages at 40 minutes, so either the printed version is in a miniscule font or the real length is more like 500 pages – which makes the purchase (it was a 99p deal of the day) even better value.

Twelve Years a Slave – Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup was of slave stock but was born a free man in the state of New York where he lived, worked, married and started a family, enjoying life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness promised by the constitution.

This however is 1841 when in the southern ‘slave’ states such niceties did not apply to those still in bondage; so when Solomon visits Washington DC to work he takes the precaution of securing papers authenticating his status. However this is no protection against kidnap, imprisonment and transportation to Louisiana where he is sold into slavery.

His protestations to be a free man earn him only a savage beating, leaving him resigned to using his wits and education to survive the hard labour and pitiless whippings that comprise his new life as he awaits an opportunity to reassert his freedom.

It is no giveaway that this takes a dozen years, in the prime of his life, to achieve and his harrowing testimony is all the more affecting for the lack of hyperbole. Told in a voice to which I mentally attached Lenny Henry in his serious but Caribbean mode, it has truth and humility as it intersperses the narrative of pivotal events with informative sections on the day to day life of a slave in the American south.

There is action and tension (although we know he gets get through it) but it is the matter of fact delivery that makes for the compulsive reading. Several times it is necessary to remind oneself that this is fact not fiction, and that such a set-up was ever thought, by anyone, as defensible.

An uncomfortable but strangely life-affirming read.

Mr Golightly’s Holiday – Sally Vickers

Read as part V of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey

Chosen because

Potentially the least worst of the three authors on offer and intrigued by the blurb’s claim that she is ‘a word of mouth best seller’.

The Review

Mr Golightly arrives at his rented cottage in a Dartmoor village with a view to taking a break from running his (unspecified) business and using the time off to update and adapt a book he wrote some time previously into a modern day soap opera script.

If it was peace and seclusion he was after then he is soon disappointed as the various residents of Great Calne soon latch onto him as a potential new audience, ally or confidante. So instead of writing a soap opera he finds himself living in one.

At this point the characters come thick and fast, and it takes a while (and for me a list) for them to become familiar. Eventually they do, just in time for a couple of more substantial plot lines to emerge – a prisoner escaping from the nearby prison, and Mr Golightly receiving a series of enigmatic e-mails.

These carry forward well the second half of the book and effectively distract the reader from a third, developing, theme that only burst into my consciousness about 30 pages from the end (others may be more perceptive and pick up earlier clues).

The prose is easy on the eye, if prone to the odd flight of fancy, and the main characters soon develop from their stereotypical stock into more complex individuals. The structure, leading to its final reveal, is clever, subtle and rewarding; to me rendering the Afterword superfluous.

This book definitely gets a ‘word of mouth’ recommendation from me.

Read another?

I would be tempted, not by the style but by the inventiveness of the concept and the skill in delivery, which may or may not be replicated in her other works.

The Geneva Trap – Stella Rimington

Liz Carlyle is a high ranking agent with MI5 working to counter the threats to the UK of subversion, espionage and terrorism; but when a Russian spy based in Geneva demands to speak with her (and no-one else) she is drawn into a joint operation with the sister service working abroad, MI6.

As it happens the information received relates to an internal threat by an unknown nation so she is soon stuck into the task of uncovering a mole in a top secret project. As the investigation unfolds liaison is needed with the CIA (the project is joint with the US), with the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (who have had an agent killed by the Russians), and with the French DGSE (as the action moves to Marseilles).

The contributions made by the various agents are related and there is some ongoing personal stuff between Liz and her French connection, Martin Seurat. These two also get involved in a bit of moonlighting to assist a family friend threatened by some undesirable Frenchmen, who may or may not be part of the main case.

It all moves along briskly; the intelligence business has a ring of authenticity (to be expected from an author who herself was D-G of MI5); and tension is introduced through a few cliff-hanging moments, though these feel a bit contrived. Rimington’s writing style retains the echo of a civil service tone that suits the procedural stuff rather than the adventurous episodes – Liz is more George Smiley than James Bond.

This is the seventh book in the Liz Carlyle series but the first I have read. Jumping into the middle of the series is not a problem although references to past events do crop up from time to time.

This volume was diverting enough but I’m not tempted to delve into the back catalogue; rather I may look out for the author’s “Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5” which may better suit her writing style.

Quarantine – Jim Crace

The OED, in its third definition for quarantine, gives ‘any period of forty days’ and in Croce’s book it refers to a period of that length traditionally spent in the biblical desert by seekers of truth, miracles or god.

Four such pilgrims are making their individual way to the mountain top, following a well-worn path to caves frequented for this purpose. Some way behind them a fifth, a young man from Galilee named Jesus, is also en route to the site where he will choose (as ever) a more difficult path, down a precipice to a more exposed cave, the better to test his resolve and prove his faith.

Already on the mountain is a dying merchant left in his tent, by the rest of the caravan whose business won’t wait, in the care of his much abused wife whose immediate task is to find and prepare his grave among the stony scrubland.

It is her absence that Jesus arrives and seeks alms at the tent. Finding only a fever-ridden man there he helps himself to a dab of water and as an afterthought spreads a little on the merchant’s face and lips while wishing him well and departing to begin his fast.

When the wife returns she finds her husband indeed well - a disappointment to her and not good news for the pilgrims as he immediately sets out to create profits from their needs and vulnerabilities. And yet he is haunted by the feverish memory of the blessing of the Galilean, an inaccessible presence down the precipice.

So the scene is set, and as the forty days count down, relationships within the thrown together group develop, with a shared purpose of survival and a growing belief in the mystic powers of the reclusive and slowly starving Jesus.

The prose is simple and powerful in its down to earth telling of the pilgrims’ plight in the unforgiving wilderness, which is the main narrative; Jesus and his spiritual quest are there, but peripherally – it is his effect on the group that is more central. And the merchant is most affected as he tries to reconcile this brush with God with a life so firmly based on Mammon.

It’s a very good book that examines how faith and belief stack up against more prosaic needs and motives; there is ambiguity, imagery a plenty, and allegorical references to unpick if you are so minded, but they don’t overwhelm the story which is economically covered in less than 250 pages.

One to be read and discussed; ideal fodder for reading groups.

I Am the Secret Footballer – Anon

Read as part of the sport reading journey

The secret footballer hides his (alleged) identity as a top flight player, ostensibly to protect himself from his fellow professionals, not to mention the managers, referees, media, agents etc. who he exposes in his revelations on the beautiful game.

His motivation appears to be to hit back at the industry that has stigmatised him with the marks of excess and hypocrisy and has lured him with fame and riches away from a more rounded and fulfilling life that he was, and remains, more than capable of attaining. It’s clearly also therapeutic to get it all out there on paper.

The inside story holds no great surprises to followers of the game, although some detail on the crazy financial sums earned and squandered was noteworthy, the subject being inexplicably tiptoed around by the otherwise intrusive press.

The writing is fine but the structure of the book, divided into chapters such as tactics, managers, money, agents, bad behaviour and the like, seems a bit arbitrary as he wanders off the subject quite readily as he recounts his anecdotes. I haven’t previously followed his pieces in The Guardian but I suspect the book recycles much of the material – but that is no bad thing if it is new to you.

If you follow premiership football it holds plenty of interest, and it has currency with this paperback having an additional chapter that takes it into the 2012-13 season; for the general reader however, it sheds little light on the human (as against celebrity) condition.

For me the book strengthens my disillusionment with the game at the highest levels which now is just a television programme and a commercial enterprise; for real sporting involvement I go to the non-league games to see people playing for the love of the game with supporters cheering on players they can relate to and interact with on a personal basis, cheering on their mates rather than some clay-footed hero who will become a villain as soon as he changes clubs for that extra million.

Too Much Happiness – Alice Munro

In this collection most of the ten stories portray women in a variety of familial situations – as wives and widows, as mothers and daughters, and as mistresses and divorcees – in a wide range of social contexts.

The tales are delivered in a measured, thoughtful prose that gently probes into the lives, thoughts and motivations of the protagonists, often gradually revealing past events that cast shadows over current lives.

While most stories eschew the traditional twist in the tail, and some fail to provide a resolution (perhaps it is old-fashioned to expect it), they all have an unpredictability that maintains interest throughout.

It was engaging but I was a little disappointed not to be wowed by holder of the 2013 Nobel Prize for literature, but that may say more about my tastes than her writing.