Tower and Town, May 2021

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A Good Read

You know when you really love something - a band, a TV series or a writer - and you're torn between wanting to tell the world about it and hugging it to yourself as a private pleasure? Then it becomes popular and you're even more torn, glad that everyone else now recognises whatever it is, but wanting to shout “I've always known it's good. I've been a fan for years!” That's me at the moment with Laurie Colwin, novelist and food writer (Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen). Colwin's novels, perceptive, droll and emotionally complex stories of privileged lives in New England and Manhattan's Upper East Side have been among my favourites for over thirty years. An unusually intelligent publisher has reissued Happy All the Time, which is lucky for you. Enjoy. I'll be in the corner, glaring and muttering “I've been reading her forever, you band-wagon-jumping johnnie-come-latelys....” Don't mind me.

I've not read much that's 'new' lately, but new to me is The Lark by E. Nesbit, an adult novel, very much in the same vein as her children's books, a bit like a grown-up The Wouldbegoods. Orphaned cousins  discover that the money held in trust for them has been embezzled by their trustee, and they're left with a small cottage, a modest sum of money, and their own wits to make their way in the (immediately post WW1) world. Be prepared to accept the attitudes of the time (though nothing too offensive to modern sensibilities), and the author (Fabian/Arts and Crafts) but it's sparky light-hearted fun, just like the heroines.

You can't have missed the Reverend Richard Coles all over the papers, TV and radio talking about The Madness of Grief. I tend to sigh when yet another book appears chronicling 'My Great and Unique Sorrow', or offering 'Wise Words of Comfort in Your Time of Pain'. But there are always exceptions and this is articulate and unguarded about the stupefaction of the first days, then weeks and months, after the death of someone you love. Warm and fluent, Rev. Coles describes the kindness (and sadly, the occasional malevolence) he received from strangers, and the unexpected humour that pops up even in the first desolation of loss. Anyone who's been bereaved, which is of course everyone sooner or later, will find something in this book to remind them that they're not alone.

Debbie Guest