Mythos – Stephen Fry

In this precursor (in both senses) of Heroes, Stephen Fry starts right at the beginning of the Greek mythology with the creation out of Chaos of primordial deities, such as Gaia and Ouranos, and with clarity moves through the early orders of Titans to arrive at the more familiar Olympians. These are the six offspring of Kronos and Rhea – Zeus, the eldest, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, and Hestia.

Zeus, having overthrown the Titans decides that six Olympians are not enough so he co-opts Aphrodite and goes about fathering another five – Ares and Hephaestus by Hera, twins Artemis and Apollo by the nymph Leto, and Hermes who actually springs from his cleaved head (immediately healed). As you might imagine, Fry has great fun relating all this.

However the mischief really starts when Zeus finds Olympus has become boring and decides to create a diversion in the form of humans. The rest, literally, is history.

But the exploits of men and women are mainly for the Heroes volume. Here it is the interaction of the gods that take centre stage. And fill it with wonder and chaos, rivalry and revenge, trickery and treachery, using humans as disposable proxies in their attempts at one-upmanship. Fry relates it all with gusto, humour, and erudition. Scholarship and etymological links are provided in copious footnotes that reward perseverance with the small print.

A wonderful laying out of Greek mythology made relevant by a modern viewpoint and a highly entertaining narrator.

Pity – Andrew McMillan

For brothers Brian and Alex, born and bred in Barnsley, career choices were few and like their father they went down the pit. Until there weren’t any pits anymore.

Nowadays the jobs on offer to the next generation – Alex’s son Simon, and his boyfriend Ryan – are different, reflecting the new economy. Ryan is a security officer at the main shopping mall. Simon works at a call centre while pursuing supplementary careers as a drag queen and provider of pay-to-view on-line gay porn (some of which is graphically shared with the reader).

This short novel delivers three connected narratives. In the here and now, Simon and Ryan’s relationship is examined along with attitudes towards it from the locals. At the same time, but with flashbacks to the past, Brian is participating in a study project conducted by some university academics keen to assess the town’s collective memory of its mining past. They may be keen, but Brian and the other locals are lukewarm but appreciative of the tea and biscuits. The third strand goes back another generation and uses repetition and evocative prose to give a taste of the miner’s daily grind.

The mix of styles – novelistic, academic, poetic – each expertly crafted, and the use of short chapters, ensure interest is maintained to the end with each strand having a resolution of sorts.

Verity – Colleen Hoover

Lowen is a struggling author, behind on her rent and facing eviction, when an opportunity presents itself. A famous, successful, and wealthy writer, Verity Crawford, has been badly injured in a car accident and is unable to continue a hugely popular and remunerative series of novels. The publishers and Mr Crawford need a reliable and discreet ghostwriter to pick up the threads, decipher Verity’s notes, and finish the books.

 Lowen is dubious but two things propel her to at least take a look at the job. First, she is homeless and there is a residential element, at least initially, to the task. Second, Jeremy Crawford is handsome and seems to find her attractive too. She moves in to find the household includes a young son and a daytime nurse/housekeeper. She also discovers that two earlier twin daughters have died in separate tragic circumstances and that Verity is not just injured, she is bedridden and unable to communicate – the lights are on, but nobody is at home.

 Where does this leave Jeremy Crawford? Two daughters dead and a wife as good as. Surely in need of comfort, if Lowen can overcome her scruples and the overshadowing presence of Verity upstairs.

 Things happen to spook Lowen, cause her to suspect Verity’s incapacity. She discovers a draft autobiography that reveals uncomfortable details of her and Jeremy’s marital (and detailed sexual) relations and of the daughters’ demises. It gives her all sorts of moral dilemmas to resolve against a background of increased attraction between her and Verity’s husband.

 The present tense, first person narrative gives a fine urgency to proceedings. Jeopardy and tension abound. How far can the reader rely on Lowen’s self-serving narrative, or on the husband’s version of events, or on the son’s occasional curve ball revelations, or for that matter on Verity’s written testimony? Whose is the truth, where, so to speak, is the verity?

It is a promising set-up. The wife upstairs enables Hoover to generate a Du Maurier’s Rebecca-like atmosphere, but that is swiftly overridden by the rather prurient autobiography and antics of Lowen and Jeremy that seem increasingly unlikely and turn the novel more into a bonkbuster than a blockbuster.

The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins

Arch-atheist Richard Dawkins sets about religion with relish in this polemic destruction job. He is convinced, and seeks to convince, that religion, all religion, is a delusion – a persistent false belief held in the face of contradictory evidence.

He first deals with God, dismantling all ‘proofs’ offered by apologists. While conceding the notion of using the term for the creative force that set the universe in motion (‘Einstein’s God’), he dismisses any notion of a supernatural being continuing to run things on a daily basis, answering prayers, rewarding the good (or faithful) with heaven, and the bad (or disbelievers) with damnation.

Having disposed of God, religion, as set out in scriptures, is an easy target, rife as they are with immorality, contradiction, and poor role models. Of particular resonance is the section on how morality has changed over time, diverging from the word of God which is set (sometimes literally) in stone.

All jolly stuff, but Dawkins gets serious, pointing out the harm caused by according religion a privileged place in society, protected from challenge by ‘good taste’ or the law of blasphemy. This allows it to freely foment division, discord, hostility, terrorism, and war. As for religious education in schools (or families) - in his view that constitutes child abuse, harming the mind and critical faculties of the young.

For me he is preaching tom the choir, so I found it both great fun and reaffirming a devout atheism. For agnostics, it may tip them over to the light side. As for those bound by religion, with faith being based on belief not reason, it is more likely to antagonise than convert.

Bournville – Jonathan Coe

On 8 May 1945, eleven-year-old Mary Clarke sits with her family to listen to Winston Churchill proclaiming Victory in Europe. She lives in Bournville, midlands home of the Cadbury chocolate factory where many of family work. The snapshot of the day gives a flavour of the times and introduces the family whose life will be followed over the next eight decades.

Not so much followed as periodically visited to join them on a further six days of national celebration or significance: the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; the 1966 World Cup final; the investiture in 1969 of the Prince of Wales, his wedding in 1981 to Diana, and her funeral in 1997; ending with the COVID-laden 75^th anniversary of that VE Day in 2020.

The theme, of course, is change. Change in society, its material context and more importantly its attitudes. But through all that change the thread of family runs strong even when events and differences stretch relationships to breaking point.

Coe’s prose is easy on the eye but very effective in getting over the subtleties of relationships and developing characters whom we see born, grow, age, and die as the generations pass. Bournville remains the spiritual home to the family and the book ends there as it started, fittingly and quite movingly, with Mary, now 86, socially distancing and reduced to communicating with her family via Skype.

Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead

This is an epic novel (all but defying a concise review) narrating the life story of Marian Graves from an inauspicious beginning to her tilt at circumnavigation of the world by flying a longitudinal ‘great circle’ over both poles.

Marian and her twin brother Jamie are born in 1914 to a self-destructive mother and a taciturn father who captains a transatlantic liner. The whole family is on board when a German shell cripples the ship. Mrs Graves goes down willingly with the boat, but Captain Graves, defying convention and inviting opprobrium, gathers his babes in arms and jumps aboard a lifeboat. That leads to a prison sentence and an end to his career. Meanwhile, Marian and Jamie are dumped into the care of an uncle living in rural Montana. They grow up in benign neglect, forming a friendship with local Huckleberry Finn type, Caleb.

A chance encounter with the Flying Brayfogles, a barnstorming aerobatic duo, gives young Marian an urge, a lust, a compulsion to fly aeroplanes. The book goes on to cover her against-the-odds battles to fly. Sacrifices need to be made as her life lurches from bad decision to crisis to disaster while still making progress in her ambition. Smuggling, freighting in Alaska, and delivering WW2 warplanes in Europe lead eventually to the attempt on the great circle.

Interspersed in the historical tale is a first person narrative from Hadley Baxter, a young out of favour actress, who is cast to play the lead in a movie of Marian’s life story, albeit based on the fragments and misinformation available to the scriptwriters. This false perspective, moving in parallel to the main story adds depth and enables a clever denouement, almost providing alternative endings to the story.

The epic scale (600 pages) allows Shipstead to wander off-piste to provide light touch information about early aviation, and to follow episodes in Jamie’s, Caleb’s, and Hadley’s lives, before homing back on to Marian. Hadley Baxter’s delivery may grate, while being ‘in character’, but this is outweighed by the main narrative style which breezes along nicely.

Reservoir 13 – Jon McGregor

A teenage girl goes missing in Northern England while out walking on the moor with her family. They have been holidaying over New Year at a village, and the locals inevitably join in the search. But she cannot be found.

In the aftermath, once the police and media (but not the girl’s family) have left, feelings and emotions in the locals remain high – anxiety, fear, sympathy, curiosity, mistrust, and suspicion. McGregor gives snapshot observations of, and conversations between, the villagers. There are no introductions to these characters, they pop up in context then the narrative cuts away to another resident in another part of the village, or to the natural environment around it, which continues oblivious to the human drama.

The year progresses, marked by its traditional milestones – Spring, Easter, the well-dressing, an annual cricket match, midsummer, mischief night, the bonfire, Christmas, and back to New Year. In parallel, the natural world marks time – migrating birds returning, fox cubs are born, vegetation blooms, badgers mate, leaves fall, weather happens.

McGregor takes us through the next year in the same vein, then the next, and the subsequent ten or so in the same style. The centrality of the missing girl fades, but our familiarity and understanding of the village life grows. The fly on the wall point of view is surprisingly effective. We soon feel as involved in village life as is the publican, vicar, potter, newspaper editor, farmers, gamekeeper, school caretaker, and the rest. Then there are the children, contemporaries of the missing girl who, unlike her, grow up into young adults under our watch.

It is a beautifully written, engrossing account of a village, and of lives lived in rhythm with the beat of the natural world around it.