(3.5) Suzy the cat lives in a French seaside village with a fisherman and his family of four sons. One day, she curls up to sleep in a basket only to (3.5) Suzy the cat lives in a French seaside village with a fisherman and his family of four sons. One day, she curls up to sleep in a basket only to wake up airborne – it’s a hot air balloon, taking her to England! Here the RSPCA place her with old Auntie Jo, who feeds her well, but Suzy longs to get back home. “Chez-moi” is her constant cry, which everyone thinks is an awfully funny way to say miaow (“She purred in French, [too,] but purring sounds the same all over the world”). Each day she hops into the basket of Auntie Jo’s bike for a ride to town to try a new route over the sea: in a kayak, on a surfboard, paddling alongside a Channel swimmer, and so on. Each attempt fails and she returns to her temporary lodgings: shared with a parrot named Biff and comfortable, yet not quite right. Until one day… This is a sweet little story (a 77-page paperback) for new readers to experience along with a parent, with just enough repetition to be soothing and a reassuring message about the benevolence of strangers. Susan Hellard’s illustrations are charming.
(3.5) A forthright and moving collection about queerness and code-switching between British identity and an Indian Muslim family. I'm grateful for the(3.5) A forthright and moving collection about queerness and code-switching between British identity and an Indian Muslim family. I'm grateful for the Jhalak Poetry Prize shortlist introducing me to it....more
(3.5) Ellis was distressed to learn that her refugee parents’ first language, Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, is in danger of extinction. Her own knowledge of it (3.5) Ellis was distressed to learn that her refugee parents’ first language, Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, is in danger of extinction. Her own knowledge of it is piecemeal, mostly confined to its colourful food-inspired sayings – for example, living “eeyam al babenjan (in the days of the aubergines)” means that everything feels febrile and topsy-turvy. She recounts her family’s history with conflict and displacement, takes a Zoom language class, and ponders what words, dishes, and objects she would save on an imaginary “ark” that she hopes to bequeath to her son. Along the way, she reveals surprising facts about Ashkenazi domination of the Jewish narrative. “Did you know the poet [Siegfried Sassoon] was an Iraqi Jew?” His great-grandfather even invented a special variety of mango pickle. All of the foods described sound delicious, and some recipes are given. Ellis’s writing is enthusiastic and she braids the book’s various strands effectively. I wasn’t as interested in the niche history as I wanted to be, but I did appreciate learning about an endangered culture and language.
Susanna Jones’s When Nights Are Cold is one of my favourite novels that no one else has ever heard of, so I jumped at the chance to buy a bargain copySusanna Jones’s When Nights Are Cold is one of my favourite novels that no one else has ever heard of, so I jumped at the chance to buy a bargain copy of her debut back in 2020. Lucy Fly has lived in Tokyo for ten years, working as a translator of machinery manuals. She wanted to get as far away as possible from her conventional family of six brothers, so she’s less than thrilled to meet fellow Yorkshire lass Lily Bridges, a nurse new to the country and looking for someone to help her find an apartment and learn some basic Japanese. Lucy is a prickly loner with only a few friends – and a lover, photographer Teiji – but she reluctantly agrees to be Lily’s guide.
We know from the start that Lucy is in custody being questioned about events leading up to Lily’s murder. She refuses to tell the police anything, but what we are reading is her confession, in which she does eventually tell all. We learn that there have already been three accidental deaths among her family and acquaintances – she seems cursed to attract them – and that her feelings about Lily changed over the months she showed the woman around. This short and reasonably compelling book gives glimpses of mountain scenery, noodle bars, and spartan apartments. Perhaps inevitably, it reminded me a bit of Murakami. It’s hard to resist an unreliable narrator. However, I felt Jones’s habit of having Lucy speak of herself in the third person was overdone.
The themes were of a piece with lots of my recent reading: science and nature imagery, ageing, and social justice pleas. But Lewis adds in another majThe themes were of a piece with lots of my recent reading: science and nature imagery, ageing, and social justice pleas. But Lewis adds in another major topic: language itself, by way of etymology and translation. “Another Way of Saying It” gives the origin of all but its incidental words in parentheses. The “Tales from Mesopotamia” are from a commissioned verse play she wrote and connect back to her 2014 collection Taking Mesopotamia, with its sequence inspired by The Epic of Gilgamesh. There are also translations from the Arabic and a long section paraphrases the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which recalls the books of Ecclesiastes and Job with its self-help aphorisms. Other poems are inspired by a mastectomy, Julian of Norwich, Japanese phrases, and Arthurian legend. The title phrase comes from the Rubaiyat and refers to the creation of humanity from clay. There’s such variety of subject matter here, but always curiosity and loving attention.
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