Week 2
This week I picked up my new milk frother (probably quite boring to other people, but a heavenly purchase for me), caught up with Season 4 of The Traitors (I love Claudia Winkleman) and spent an evening with my sisters, nephew and niece. Life feels lovely and full, even if the winter and emotions hit me hard.
This week I read 2 books - and loved them. I say this every year, but as time goes by, I really think I refine my taste in books. It becomes easier for me to enjoy every single book I read because I only start reading books I know I’ll love. Maybe this year I should try and diversify….
Henry, Henry by Allen Brettan
I read this on the recommendation of a friend. Henry, Henry a modern day re-telling of Henriad (Shakespeare) and features 3 central characters: Hal, the son. Henry, the father. Richard, the dead. The main character, Hal, grapples with the tension of his Dukedom, the life he wants and terrible, awful secrets he must keep - because that is what he knows. After an accident on a shooting trip, it feels like his life changes. He experiences tenderness, warmth, normalcy for the first time in his life. But he cannot escape his family or his history, or the secrets buried in their story.
This was a difficult read at times, but I thought it was well written and engaging. Towards the end, you feel Hal slowly free himself from his father, and all the resounding, careful ways his father tries to respond. The characters are written in ways make you forget they are the opposite of who they actually are; we’re told Hal’s father is in his 40s, but you forget this as you read about his many ailments and fragile health. It’s so intricately done, working the reader into the narrative of abuse that you don’t quite notice it until you really think about the characters. There are a lot of trigger warnings for this book and I wouldn’t recommend people to read it without first looking into it, but I enjoyed reading this.
Rating: ★★★★★
Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent
I picked this up on a whim inside Waterstones last year. I think I’d had a bad day, with £25 burning a hole in my pocket, and nothing felt appealing to me. I briefly skimmed this, and I am so glad I did, because this was incredible to read.
This was a memoir about Kent’s experience of a gap year during her teenage years, and the spin it placed on her life afterwards. She is raised in Australia, seemingly born with a feeling of outsiderdom and a sense of wanting more; at the age of 17, she spends a year in Iceland with 3 host families, and her life changes forever. She finds herself initially lonely, with only her writing and journal for company, and then compelely swept up in the Icelandic culture. The language, the food, the customs, the weather, the hospitality. On a trip one day with her host family, she learns about Agnes Magnusdottir, the last person to be executed in Iceland. Agnes’ story stays with her, long after she leaves Iceland. Kent cannot get her story out of her mind. She begins to write her first fiction book, Burial Rites, and takes us along for the ride as she goes back to Iceland, pours over transcripts and articles, meets people equally as conscious of Agnes.
This was beautifully written and compelling. The year we spend in Iceland with Kent are some of the best parts of this book, and whilst we move along Kent’s life with her in this memoir, we are immersed in the fact that Kent found her life and family in the single year she spent in Iceland. As time passes, her host family - or really, her second family - never leave, never forget, never stop reminding her that she is their daughter too.
Rating: ★★★★★