Books I Read and Loved in May
Books I Read and Loved in May
and a few new book releases in june that i can't wait to get my hands on
Friends,
This month I’ve been a little all over the place with my reading as I’m transitioning from a forced UK-recession-imposed sabbatical into full time working, which is great news for capitalism but (alas) means less time for books. I still have a few gems to share!
To make up for the short list of 5* reads I’m also sharing a few exciting June releases at the end 🤗
Address Unknown - Kathrine Kressman Taylor (64 pages)
Banned in Nazi Germany, the book is written as a series of fictional letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his former business partner, who has returned to Germany just before the war.
Kathrine describes her original motivation for the story:
“A short time before the war, some cultivated, intellectual, warm-hearted German friends of mine returned to Germany after living in the United States. In a very short time they turned into sworn Nazis. They refused to listen to the slightest criticism about Hitler. During a return visit to California, they met an old dear friend of theirs on the street, who had been very close to them and who was a Jew. They did not speak to him. They turned their backs on him when he held his hands out to embrace them. How can such a thing happen? I wondered. What changed their hearts so? What steps brought them to such cruelty?”
*side note: the immediate rage I felt when I read the back cover which shares that the book was originally published (in 1938) under the pen name Kressman Taylor because the editor believed that the story was ‘too strong to appear under the name of a woman’. This new edition rightfully restores the book to Kathrine Kressman Taylor’s full name.
Clear - Carys Davies (152 pages)
Set in 1843 on a small island off the coast of Scotland, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation which all changes when he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister, has been sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing for sheep. I won’t say any more because it will ruin the story but safe to say I absolutely LOVED this book. ❤️ «feels very similar to The Colony by Audrey Magee which I mentioned here»
About two hours from where I live in Brighton, and close to the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station, you can find Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman’s House. If the name is unfamiliar, this may help: ‘Prospect Cottage is the former home and sanctuary of artist, filmmaker, gay rights activist and gardener Derek Jarman (1942 - 1994). Following a successful campaign to save the cottage for the nation, you can now step inside the home and workspace of one of Britain's most iconic creative figures.’
Over a near-decade from 1986, the artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman and his partner Keith Collins created a home at Prospect Cottage. After Jarman’s death in 1994, Collins hung net curtains to shield the home they had shared from the eyes of visitors to Prospect’s world-famous garden.
In 2018, the photographer Gilbert McCarragher, a friend and neighbour in Dungeness, was asked to record the house, the first time this private world had been so extensively chronicled. Gilbert shares his photographs and also intimate & tender stories of his friendship with Derek and Keith - this is a beautiful book.
Ask anyone who has published a book and they will tell you how important pre-orders are in terms of predicting release day sales. That said, I pre-ordered these three June releases months ago and am excited to finally have my hands on them this month.
Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones: A Memoir - Priyanka Mattoo (304 pages | UK Release Date 18 June)
"Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced Mattoo’s community to flee. The home into which her family poured their dreams was reduced to a pile of rubble.
Mattoo never moved back to her beloved Kashmir—because it no longer existed. She and her family just kept packing and unpacking and moving on. In forty years, Mattoo accumulated thirty-two different addresses, and she chronicles her nomadic existence with wit, wisdom, and an inimitable eye for light within the darkest moments.”
Scaffolding - Lauren Elkin (400 pages | UK Release Date 13 June)
Honestly, given my openly conscious bias towards Deborah Levy (we are both South African women), any books she gets excited about are immediately added to my tbr list. I’ve also loved all of Lauren’s books (I wrote about her last one here) so this may actually be my most anticipated June read.
In short, this is the story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart.
“Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we’ve known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who’ve lived in them and the stories that have been told there.”
Into a Star - Puk Qvortrup, translated from the Danish by Hazel Evans (240 pages | UK Release Date 27 June)
“'Three in the bed. One not yet born, another dead, and I'm alive.'
Puk is 26 years old, preparing for the birth of her second child, when her husband has a heart attack on his morning run. She leaves their toddler with a friend and dashes to the hospital, where Lasse lies unresponsive in a coma. He dies a few hours later.”
ps: in case you missed it:
Nicole, I enjoyed Clear. Carys Davies did a good job adding depth to an historical time, created little tensions here and there, which on an island with two characters is hard. Thought the ending a badly done as Davies, after being in the head of the preacher, reverts to his wife to explain what and why. Would’ve liked to hear from the preacher himself, even just a few lines.
Congrats on the job even if it takes time away from books! So pleased to hear you loved ‘Clear’ bc I have it on my shelf! I also thought it sounded like ‘The Colony’ so pleased you’ve reaffirmed that for me. Also have a copy of ‘Into A Star’!!! - look at us this month being twins? Glad you loved it bc I also have high expectations for it xx