Tower and Town, May 2019 (view the full edition)A Good ReadWhen he became a father, for the second time, and later in life, Jonathan Gornall decided, rather randomly, to construct a traditional clinker boat for his daughter, a genuine labour of love and a concrete (well, wooden-planked) symbol of his aspirations for her. How to Build a Boat documents the process, but of course it's more than a record of how a 'soft-handed, desk-bound modern man' painfully started to master the skills needed to create a vessel that the Vikings would have recognised. It's about forgiveness and acceptance of failure, about (finally) growing up. And metaphors about putting out to sea, bold adventure, steering your own course, following your own star, all the things that parents hope for their children. After 300 pages of sweat and blisters I do so hope that Gornall's daughter doesn't turn around one day soon and say 'Daddy, I really want to be a glider pilot'.  
I have a bad habit of rolling my eyes and sighing when presented with books that re-write classic literature, so I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic when presented with The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. It’s a re-telling of The Iliad, from the point of view of the women who are taken as slaves and concubines, trophies of war. Sigh. But I told myself ‘it’s Pat ‘Regeneration’ Barker, it must be worth the effort’. And so it is, and it’s no effort at all. Not a ‘light’ read – couldn’t be, given the subject matter - but immensely readable. Nothing’s perfect, there are things I could criticise if I wanted to be nit-picky, but this column is about recommendation rather than serious Lit Crit, and this is a book I’d mark very highly, and which I plan to read again soon. It’s obviously ‘Debby Eats Her Words’ month, because another classic re-write that I snorted and swivelled my eyes over has turned out to be delightful. Becoming Jo, by Sophie McKenzie is an updating of Little Women, and I’m enjoying the way the author has caught the spirit of the original, while transposing the setting to C21st South London. Debby Guest |