Really the grey area was a whole other spectrum of colours new to the eye

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Girl Meets Boy
by Ali Smith

This is such a lovely book. Using that word, I fear undersells or even undermines it, but it’s precisely how I feel about it.

Sisters Anthea and Imogen live together in what was their grandparents’ home in Inverness. Their relationship is strained, fractious, as they see the world very differently. Imogen enjoys her job in marketing at Pure, a large corporation that is looking to bottle and sell the local water. She even got Anthea a job there too, but Anthea is less keen. Corporate isn’t really her.

Through the sisters, their lives and love lives, Smith explores Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a modern setting, in particular the story of Iphis and Ianthe. It isn’t hidden away in the subtext; one character explains this story to another, but Smith makes that feel entirely natural. (There are also Shakespeare references that are a little more hidden, but I don’t think the reader who doesn’t spot them will miss anything. No doubt there are allusions I didn’t see too.)

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K-drama review: Squid Game

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squid game poster
Seong Gi-hun (centre) is our hapless hero.

This is not the light, fluffy fare I usually review but it was still very much up my street. Squid Game (Netflix 2021) is a brutal, violent horror story that satirises capitalism, in particular how the rich prey on the desperation of the poor.

Usually when I write a K-drama review I can reveal the plot of the first two or three episodes – in fact, it’s often necessary to explain the concept of the show. And they’re not usually the type of shows that can be spoiled by knowing the storyline going in. But Squid Game is both shorter than most K-dramas and, as is common in the horror genre, contains many reveals and plot shenanigans from early on that it would be a shame to know before having watched any of it.

That said, it’s going to be difficult to review it without at least talking about some details from after the middle of episode one. I will try to keep it vague but I may have to write a second spoilery post.

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October 2021 reading round-up

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Oh dear, I only finished two books this month and neither was very big. I did have a really bad cold that meant I spent a week mostly watching The Mindy Project and failing to read anything at all. I am currently halfway through three books and gave up on another that I was struggling with. But I was still surprised when I checked Goodreads and saw my October stats.

I did watch the usual quota of films, my top picks being Moxie and Summer of Soul.

Anyway, I’m over the cold and currently away in Devon for a long weekend with Tim, Beckett and our good friend Tushna, so I think things are looking up. Hopefully.

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K-drama review: Crash Landing On You

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Ri Jeong-hyeok, Yoon Se-ri, Gu Seung-jun and Seo Dan are the lead characters in Crash Landing On You.

I know, it’s months since I last wrote a K-drama review and I choose now to come back but it’s not about Squid Game? Rest assured, I am watching Squid Game and a write-up will follow soon. But when that dropped I was halfway through this previous smash hit show. Crash Landing On You (TvN/Netflix 2019–2020) could not be more different. And I loved it.

Crash Landing On You has all the classic K-drama ingredients: a lead couple who are clearly destined to fall in love but whose circumstances make it impossible; a huge disparity in wealth; complicated power dynamics including a chaebol family where the father is retiring and choosing which child to name as his heir; nefarious villains who kill and kidnap at will; some really beautiful friendships that withstand tests of their strength; very cheesy romance and slapstick humour that are sometimes at odds with the rest of the plot.

So what makes Crash Landing On You different from other K-dramas? The obvious thing is that much of it is set in North Korea, and many of the lead characters are North Korean (though obviously the actors are South Korean and no filming took place in North Korea). I have never seen North Korea depicted in a K-drama before (possibly because South Korea has very strict rules about depicting North Korea in its media) but this felt like it was treading a fine line where it showed the infrastructure and political system in negative light but the people as for the most part good and generous.

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September 2021 reading round-up

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Beckett and Tim in the woods

This has been a good month. The weather’s been beautiful, I read a lot, and today I got my third COVID shot so I am safer for the winter months to come.

My favourite read this month was The Street by Ann Petry, which was a staff recommendation at Stanford’s bookshop in Bristol. This is one of the many reasons why bookshops rule.

As always I’ve watched lots of films this month – including both Kate and Beckett, which are recently released thrillers on Netflix. Kate is the better film, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an assassin in Tokyo. We’re hoping they release a thriller called Tim soon! I also really enjoyed Sylvie’s Love (a 1960s-set romance starring Tessa Thompson) and Sound of Metal (Riz Ahmed as a drummer who loses his hearing).

And having learned from our holiday in August that Beckett is up to walking for a couple of hours now that she’s all grown up, we’ve done a few longer walks lately. It’s nice to explore a little further afield and not just go to our three local parks every day. Though with winter weather and shorter hours of daylight coming soon, we might not have that choice for long. For now we’ll enjoy the autumn colours.

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The years slip by, stealthily, on tiptoes; they whisper behind our back, making fun of us

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The Sum of Our Days book coverThe Sum of Our Days
by Isabel Allende
translated from Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

This is the third volume of memoir that Allende wrote, which is perhaps an odd place to jump into someone’s life. When I bought this I was attracted purely by her name, after having read and loved House of the Spirits. But it was made extra odd by the circumstances in which this book was written. Allende’s daughter Paula died in 1992. The following year she published her second memoir Paula, mostly written while Paula lay in a coma that they knew she probably wouldn’t wake up from. She started writing this third memoir after Paula’s death and addresses it directly to her daughter, updating her on the extended family as if she had moved away rather than died.

Allende talks candidly about her writing process, her relationships, her hopes and fears, along with all the details of her life. And Allende’s life is surprisingly eventful. Admittedly, this book covers 13 years but the big stuff all happens in the first couple of years following Paula’s death.

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August 2021 reading round-up

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Beckett at our holiday home in Wales

I read a lot this month! Holidays rock. We spent a week in Snowdonia with friends, chilling in the most awesome holiday house. There were two hammocks in the big garden, a balcony around the entire first floor and access to the roof. Plus it had a copy of Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama, so I read about a quarter of that. Maybe one day I’ll buy/borrow a copy to read the rest. He’s a good writer, unsurprisingly.

As August is Women in Translation Month, I read three and a half books by women in translation from my TBR (I’m halfway through an Isabel Allende right now). I’ll write another post about them soon.

As always, I also watched a lot of films. The top ones were Rocketman, Late Night and Tune in for Love.

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Piece by piece, we put the shells back together, reencasing ourselves

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Siracusa book coverSiracusa
by Delia Ephron

I never used to care about liking the characters in the books I read, but I must admit that I spent the first quarter or so of this novel wondering if it was worth persevering with four irritatingly self-involved narrators. I’m glad I did, because I enjoyed it overall.

I’m pretty sure the self-absorption of the four main characters is the point, and the extremity of their smug egotism is by turns funny and tragic. They all narrate the same events from their different viewpoints – which if they were less self-absorbed would mean they actually noticed the same things at least some of time, rather than these wildly different accounts.

The story is simple: a small group of Americans travelling abroad don’t get on very well. Two married couples, Michael and Lizzie, and Finn and Taylor – plus Finn and Taylor’s 10-year-old daughter Snow – travel to Rome and then Siracusa in Sicily for a week’s holiday together. Lizzie and Finn are old friends – former lovers, in fact – but otherwise the group aren’t close at all. The holiday was suggested on a whim while having dinner together, the kind of suggestion that usually wouldn’t be followed up on by mere acquaintances.

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July 2021 reading round-up

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I am currently in the middle of three different books and I’m on holiday next week so hopefully next month’s “books read” list will be much longer. We’ll see.

This month we went from heatwave to weeks of rain storms, so outings have been sporadic. We ended the month with a trip to Brean Down in Somerset, which was a fantastic afternoon out. And Beckett graduated from doggy obedience classes, so she is now officially a Good Dog.

My top films this month were Black Widow and The Dead Don’t Die, which are both very entertaining. I also watched the first season of Rita, a Danish comedy about a school teacher who initially appears to not care about anything or what anyone else thinks, but it gradually becomes clear that this is a facade. It’s wryly funny and has been left in a very interesting place for season 2.

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Becky’s heart punches itself out of her chest and runs screaming through the room

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The Bricks That Built the HousesThe Bricks That Built the Houses
by Kae Tempest

I am a big fan of Kae Tempest. Everything they create is brilliant: music, poetry, rap, books and plays. I’ve seen Kae perform live three times and they were fantastic every time.

This novel takes characters Tempest created in their solo album Everybody Down and their epic poem Brand New Ancients, and gives them a full story. Storytelling and character creation have always been Tempest’s strengths so I knew this would be great and I was right.

In the opening chapter young Londoners Becky, Harry and Leon are escaping the city with a suitcase full of stolen money. The narrative takes us back to when they all met each other and how that situation came about.

At a glitzy promo party for the launch of a Cool New Band’s music video, Becky is trying to look like she’s happy to be there, but in truth this isn’t her scene and she isn’t especially proud to be a dancer in the video. It’s dance work, which she’s glad to get, but she worries the longer she keeps taking these jobs, the worse her chances of joining a “real” dance company. Then across the room she spots Harry, and her night picks up.

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