Dear friends are renovating at present, which leaves me in the blissful position of caring for a lovely old rocking chair and a pile of books.
With so many tempting new books published every year, it’s easy to forget the delicious pleasure of re-reading an old favourite.
My fingers felt that old tingling when I found ‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’ (Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, 2008) in the pile.
Now, I have to admit a tiny addiction to the film version, to the point that the book version was a dim memory. What a pleasure to pick it up again one night and read until the wee hours. Characters bursting with genuine character, the allure of an island setting, the historical back-drop of WWII, and lashings of heart-warming romance and laugh-out-loud humour.
‘High Tide in Tucson’ (1995) was in the pile too. I’m a fan of Barbara Kingsolver – ‘Poisonwood Bible’ makes my all-time favourites list – but this was one I hadn’t read. Here’s an extract from the blurb of this beautifully-written and eclectic collection of musings on society (http://www.kingsolver.com/books/high-tide-in-tucson.html):
‘In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, she returns once again to her favored literary terrain to explore the themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Her canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois.’
Writers will savour the ‘Not-So-Deadly Sin’ essay about letters from fans who suspect her stories are autobiographical. As she so amusingly points out, why would she risk using her family and friends as fodder for stories, when it is so much more fun making stuff up? Or as she puts it, with far greater eloquence: ‘Now I spend hours each day, year after year, sitting at my desk with a wicked smirk on my face, making up whopping, four-hundred-page lies. Oh, what a life.’ So true!
For anyone facing challenging times (and who isn’t?), the ‘High Tide in Tucson’ essay is a joy to read. Lessons in life from a displaced but determined hermit crab and a grinding stone abandoned in a desert cave – exquisite!
Rose Pascoe 