The Occasional, issue 4
Lots of book recommendations in a post for paid subscribers, with my thanks.
The Fortnightly was born in 2016
and last week’s was number 173. If there has been an average of two book recommendations per issue, that’s … a lot.
Here is a selection of those recommendations in editions 1 to 100. Another Occasional will be along in a while with books from 101 to the present.
Books, in order of appearance in Fortnightlies, by: Thomas Harding, Emilie Pine, Donal Ryan, Simon Lewis, Kent Haruf, Jonathan Edwards, Sara Baume, Tim Winton, Philippe Sands, John Banville, Khamila Shamsie, Hannah Sullivan, Richard Ford, Melatu Uche Okorie, Anna Burns, Natalia Ginsburg, Sinéad Gleeson, Robert Macfarlane, Laura Cumming, Tom Sherrington & Oliver Caviglioli, Fiona Benson, David Park, Evan S. Connell, Bernardine Evaristo, Hallie Rubenhold, R.C. Sherriff, Jackie Morris, Scott Newstok and Caleb Azumah Nelson.
The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding
The first recommendation ever, in Fortnightly 1, this excellently tells a century of stories about Berlin, and Germany; this is history by a vertical drilling down through the events which happen to a single summer house near the German capital. The First World War, Weimar, the Third Reich, the DDR, reunification - all in such a short period. Harding's Hanns and Rudolf is also worth reading.
Notes to Self by Emilie Pine
A book I read in a burn over a day. It is written with clarity, pace and passion, and feels very much of the moment in an Ireland coming out of years of silence and not-saying. She says everything, from the first piece on her father's alcohol addiction, through the distressing and moving account of her attempts to have a child, and back into the chaos of her teenage years. And she says it with complete honesty, and brilliance.
All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan
Ryan is superb at getting voices just right: in this case largely one rather than the 21 voices of his startling début The Spinning Heart. Again, this is moving, particularly in the relationship between the central character, whose life spins out of control, and her elderly father. Is there anyone else writing now who gets the variety of Hiberno-English so well in fiction? And I wonder how possible it is for someone unused to it to understand how good he is at it?