June 8, 2019
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Picador, £20, out now
This collection of essays from great science writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who died in 2015, is a real treat for anyone who loved his previous works.
As with his other books, the essays are readable, beautifully written and engaging. Known for his books The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia and Migraine among others, he also wrote about his own life. His insatiable curiosity shines through, and it’s clear that this carried on throughout his long and interesting life. He covers a wide range of topics, from the joy of swimming to his love of libraries, to a piece about ferns, and the life of Humphrey Davy.
He addresses the ethics of writing about people who are or have been unwell in a clear and helpful way. His book review of Michael Greenberg’s A Summer of Madness raises the question, as Greenberg is writing about his teenage daughter Sally’s first experience of mania. Writing the book “… was not a quick or easy decision for either Sally or her father. Greenberg did not grab a pen and start writing during his daughter’s psychosis in 1996 – he waited, he pondered, he let the experience sink deep into him. He had long, searching discussions with Sally, and only more than a decade later did he feel that he might have the balance, the perspective, the tone that Hurry Down Sunshine would need. Sally, too, had come to feel this, and urged him not only to write her story but to use her real name, without camouflage. It was a courageous decision, given the stigma and misunderstanding that still surround mental illness of any kind” (p. 182).
My favourite essay is Travels with Lowell, an account of a road trip he takes with photojournalist Lowell Handler to find out more about Tourette’s. In the course of the trip, they visit La Crete, a Canadian town where many of the population have Tourette’s and town life accommodates this. I loved his observation after visiting: “There is, among Orthodox Jews, a blessing to be said on witnessing the strange: one blesses God for the diversity of his creation, and one gives thanks for the wonder of the strange. This, it seemed to me, was the attitude of the people of La Crete to the Tourette’s in their midst. They accepted it not as something annoying or insignificant, to be reacted to or overlooked, but as a deep strangeness, a wonder, an example of the absolute mysteriousness of Providence” (p. 106).
This is a deeply humane and engrossing collection. Read this and then read Gratitude, a book for all time (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/gratitude-by-oliver-sacks/).
Review by Bethan
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May 4, 2019
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Hamish Hamilton, £20, out now
Underland is an exploration of the subterranean world, and Macfarlane interprets this widely. He ranges from a glacier in the middle of a warm mountain range to the tunnels under Paris, from mines under Yorkshire to London Bridge (which is hollow and can be climbed through by those in the know). He does not shy away from difficult subjects, dealing with war crimes and human rights violations in European caves and crevasses, as well as the Anthropocene and climate change.
It is always a pleasure to read a new Robert Macfarlane book. Here at the Riverside Bookshop we loved The Lost Words (see https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/the-lost-words-by-robert-macfarlane-and-jackie-morris/). He writes beautifully and manages to include very diverse fields of knowledge without alienating the reader or appearing like a dilettante. His account of visiting an underground lab exploring dark matter gave me the first explanation of this phenomenon I felt even vaguely able to understand (p. 56). He can make mysterious landscapes vivid, as when walking in the Julian Alps: “Holes in the trunks of the beeches hold micro-gardens of moss and ferns. Dwarf pines spread between the boulders of the streambank. Harebells, gentians and edelweiss star the understorey. Little trout flick as quick shadows in the bigger stream-pools. Towering above us are scree-slopes and bone-white summits jagging several hundred feet up from the ridge line” (p. 231).
Happily for me, Underland also includes much ice and snow. There are reflections on physical culture and the impact of global warming: “There is something obscene both to the ice and its meltings – to its vastness and vulnerability. The ice seems a ‘thing’ that is beyond our comprehension to know but within our capacity to destroy” (p. 363). This reminded me of some of the things I liked about the Library of Ice by Nancy Campbell (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/the-library-of-ice-by-nancy-campbell/).
The book is as much about challenging our experiences of time and space as anything else. How do we find language that will be understood for certain thousands of years from now, in order to warn those in the far future of our sealed tombs of nuclear waste? Do we carve warnings into rock in English? Macfarlane notes that only about 1,000 people read Cuneiform on Earth now, where once it communicated powerful proclamations across vast spaces – how do we know English will still be understood? Should there be ceramic tiles with pictograms? Showing what? He asks us to expand our thinking: “…a deep time awareness might help us see ourselves as part of a web of gift, inheritance and legacy stretching over millions of years past and millions to come, bringing us to consider what we are leaving behind for the epochs and beings that will follow us” (p. 15).
Fans of Macfarlane’s writing on mountains, lost ways and obscure words have a treat in store with Underland. A bonus for the curious and engaged.
Review by Bethan
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April 23, 2019
by Team Riverside
Hardback, John Murray, £16.99, out now
Heiða details a year in the life of a solo woman sheep farmer hard by the highlands of Iceland. Heiða Ásgeirsdóttir took over her family farm at Ljótarstaðir in her early 20s, when her father became ill. She is an environmental activist and poet as well, and during the year considers standing for Parliament for the Left-Green Movement (she is already a local councillor). From the farm, she can see highland pastures, a glacier, mountains. This is an engrossing quick dispatch from an unusual life.
Volcanic eruptions as well as extreme cold and snow on her remote farm make for hard work. Her commitment to her 500 sheep and other animals is evident, and leads to both her extreme work ethic and her worries when things go wrong. She is clear about the essential role farmers like her can play in conservation: “Icelandic agriculture is very close to my heart, no less than environmental conservation. As I see it, the two are totally intertwined since the farmer is entirely dependent on nature for his survival and has a duty, in my view more than in any other profession, to defend it by any means possible” (p. 161). Sometimes she works co-operatively with other farmers and family members, and you begin to understand how such working is essential to survival in extraordinary places.
She is resisting construction of a power plant near her farm, which would involve flooding part of her land. She resists despite the anxiety it causes her: “In these kinds of circumstance, I feel as if a knife has been thrust between my ribs – almost as if I’m having a heart attack” (p. 128). She also talks usefully about surviving depression: “now I also began to come to better terms with the things that I couldn’t fix, and to forgive myself for making mistakes…” (p. 273).
She notes that the farm has been worked since the 12th century. Refreshingly, she expresses her commitment to the land alongside her stance against discrimination: “I can’t bear prejudice based on skin colour, race, sexual orientation, nationality” (p. 249).
When Heiða gets to relax, it sounds heavenly, but you are clear it is hard won: “A winter’s night with a book is the best. Surrounded by stillness in my own mountain palace, lit up by stars and the moon; and maybe by the world’s most spectacular display of Northern Lights” (p. 205). There are memorable animals, including her cat Huggan (Solace) who can’t stand the smell of sheep and herds mice into the house. Also her excellent German Shepherd puppy Fífill (Dandelion).
The book is likely to be popular – Heiða has been interviewed in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/14/heida-asgeirsdottir-icelandic-shepherd-new-biography) and will appear at the Hay Festival. I wish they had done an illustrated version of this book, as the places and people are so intriguing. This will appeal to lovers of nature writing, to those who love to read about completely different lives, to anyone who wants a story of women doing it for themselves and to other activists who find themselves at the forefront when they already have vastly too much to do…
Review by Bethan
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March 9, 2019
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Skyscraper, £15, out now
First published in 1919, Words in Pain is a collection of letters written from a woman to her doctor and other friends and family following her diagnosis with a terminal illness. Olga Jacoby, young mother of several adopted children, writes with clarity and verve of her love of life and nature, of her rationalist and humanist beliefs, and of her dislike of organised religion.
Jacoby’s doctor was Christian and many of the often kind and humorous letters aim to provide him with a different perspective on life’s meaning. Jacoby can also be sharp and angry however, and so we have a rounded perspective on a woman applying her rational mind to her extraordinary situation. She is always courageous and often conciliatory: “death does not frighten me now. I think it is like taking chloroform; don’t struggle against it, hold the hand of a friend, and it is not half bad with its promise of rest for me and Heaven for you” (p. 5).
The book will be useful to anyone interested in the history of adoption. All her children know they were adopted, and her work to prepare them for her death is impressive. Her love for their individuality is clear: “Charles, the farmer-to-be… has been planning… how he can arrange to make farming pay, without killing ducks, chicken or even field-mice. I do not think he has yet found a satisfactory solution” (p. 25).
It is an intriguing book to read from a disability and chronic illness perspective, too. Her attitudes vary and are sometimes (to a modern reader) very dated, in this and other matters. At one point she demands of her friend: “Do not give in and say ‘I am disabled’. As long as you do not feel disabled you cannot be so” (p. 75). Later, as she becomes more unwell, she welcomes the use of a wheelchair as a way to conserve her energy. She always has absolute ownership of her own life and experiences. She talks about rationing limited energies in a way very reminiscent of the useful spoon theory (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory): “I have had to draw on a stock that a year’s incessant struggle had left small. No wonder that I deal out each ration now with minute carefulness and some fear that capital (this most valuable capital of all) may fail me at last” (p. 168).
The new edition has a helpful update on what happened to the family after Olga’s death from her great-granddaughter Jocelyn Catty, and useful notes from Trevor Moore providing context to the references. Jacoby remains in control and engaged till the last, reading, writing, thinking and debating. A remarkable record of a remarkable woman.
Review by Bethan
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January 15, 2019
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Oneworld Publications, £9.99, out now
How refreshing to get a completely different take on a period that can seem so familiar! Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, this is an outstanding history which tells the stories of ten African lives in Britain, and usefully sets each in context.
There is a strong local connection to the Riverside Bookshop. Reasonable Blackman, an independent silk weaver, lived here in Tooley Street in the parish of St Olave’s. Two of his children died during the plague and he and his wife and remaining child were shut up in their house with a red X marked on the door. They were not permitted to leave, to prevent the further spread of infection. An independent skilled craftsman, he supported a family of five with his fine goods. Tooley Street then was known as a rough and ready area, with many alehouses – Kaufmann quotes Christopher Hudson writing in 1631: “alehouses are nests of Satan where the owls of impiety lurk and where all evil is hatched…” (p. 117).
If you enjoyed David Olusoga’s Black and British: a Forgotten History, you must definitely read this (I loved Olusoga’s book, as it completely transformed both my knowledge of and my attitude towards British history). Black Tudors would also be perfect for those who like readable social history, focussing as it does on everyday lives. It includes the stories of a countrywoman, a rural worker, a sailor, and many more diverse and intriguing people besides.
Kaufmann is clear about the relevance of her work in the current political and social climate: “As debate about immigration becomes ever more vituperative and divisive, it is vital to understand that the British Isles have always been peopled with immigrants. The Black Tudors are just one of a series of peoples who arrived on these shores in centuries past” (p. 262).
Entertaining and enlightening, this would be a perfect non-fiction holiday read.
Review by Bethan
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December 2, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Scribner, £14.99, out now
The list of places Nancy Campbell covers in researching The Library of Ice was enough to make me keen to read it. Upernavik Museum in Greenland, Vatnajökull in Iceland, Walden Pond in Massachusetts, Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam…
Campbell is an artist, writer and poet, and The Library of Ice could be considered travel writing, cultural history, nature writing, or memoir. It’s not necessary to pick these bits apart: the book as a whole works well as a meditation on ice. She is an engaging guide, and her curiosity leads to adventures in the archives and outside.
The book is full of intriguing and pleasing facts and stories. I was pleased to learn of the origins of Torvill and Dean’s immortal Bolero skating performance, and of Robert Boyle’s attempts to research the phenomenon of cold and his irritation at the difficulty of his experiments.
Despite my longstanding Antarctic obsession, I did not know that George Murray Levick of the Scott expedition in 1912 was so horrified at what he found to be the ‘hooligan’ and ‘depraved’ behaviour of the penguins that he censored his scientific reporting on the Adélies. In the Natural History Museum archive survives a copy of a report Levick wrote for colleagues, limited in circulation and with a note on the front saying: ‘The sexual habits of the Adélie penguin, not for publication’.
Campbell’s awareness of damage from climate change informs much of the book, and her accounts of traditional knowledge of ice reminded me of some of the testimony from Mary Robinson’s excellent book Climate Justice (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/climate-justice-hope-resilience-and-the-fight-for-a-sustainable-future-by-mary-robinson/).
If you enjoy good books about cold places, such as Sara Wheeler’s Terra Incognita or The Magnetic North, this will be a chilly pleasure.
Review by Bethan
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October 17, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Chatto & Windus, £20, published 11 October 2018
Eve was Shamed is a timely and comprehensive update on women as they engage with the UK’s criminal justice system, from a legendary feminist human rights lawyer. The depth of her experience over years of legal practice and activism makes this a must-read. You don’t have to agree with everything she says to benefit from her thoughtful and erudite commentary.
17 years after I first read her classic book on women and the law Eve was Framed, Eve was Shamed shows where we have made progress and where so much remains to be done. Her account includes experiences of women lawyers, survivors of domestic or sexual violence, prisoners, judges, and others. She finds that “despite the dramatic changes which have taken place in women’s lives over the last four decades, women are still facing iniquitous judgements and injustice within the legal system. All the legal reforms have produced only marginal advances”. (p. 317)
Kennedy’s dual commitment to feminism and to human rights is particularly interesting. Her values inform her approach to her work, including her analysis of difficult or controversial situations in public life. She recounts occasions when this has led to conflict with people she has been allies with, and it is evident that she values the process of discussion and exchange that leads to resolution, even where this is uncomfortable or challenging. She notes: “feminism is about justice if it is about anything, and that means for men as well as women. Justice for women is not secured by reducing justice for men.” (p. 324)
She has lost none of her passion or commitment on the things that matter to her, making her a useful model for how to survive and remain effective during bleak times. Her considered solutions to problems are offered throughout, and this means that despite the subject matter you feel that real change is possible. Jacky Fleming’s inspirational cartoon remains helpful (see https://www.jackyfleming.co.uk/product/never-give-up/).
Review by Bethan
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October 8, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Bloomsbury, £16.99, out now
I wanted a book to remind me that climate change can be tackled, and to inspire me to engage with this massive problem without leaving me doom laden and depressed. This useful book by former Irish President and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson does just that. Taking a rights and justice approach is natural for her. “This injustice – that those who had done least to cause the problem were carrying the greatest burden – made clear that to advocate for the rights of the most vulnerable to food, safe water, health, education, and shelter would have no effect without our paying attention to the world’s changing climate”.
Robinson places the stories of people on the frontline of climate change at the heart of this short book, and sees her job as getting their voices heard. It was the stories of these activists, mainly women, which I found most useful.
Constance Okollet is a small scale farmer from Uganda who has organised women in her community to challenge climate change, has given evidence internationally on the direct impact on her region of extreme weather: “in eastern Uganda, there are no seasons any more”.
Through activism, Okollet met Sharon Hanshaw of Biloxi Mississippi (founder of Coastal Women for Change) and other climate witnesses. Hanshaw, a former beauty salon owner who saw her community devastated by hurricane Katrina, said: “Connecting with women who were facing similar issues across the globe, and standing up and working for solutions, was inspiring. It is women who bear the brunt of climate change”. (Read more of Hanshaw’s story here: https://lithub.com/climate-change-needs-to-be-about-economic-justice/)
The price some of the activists pay for their work is heavy. Robinson describes a tearful Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim of the Republic of Chad speaking of reporting back to the elders of her region: “I tell them that I will have a solution soon… They think I am finding a solution, but I know how slowly the fight against climate change is going and that a solution is not coming tomorrow. The solution for this problem will not be for them. It will not be for now.”
There has been some criticism of the book for failing to focus sufficiently on failures of states in addressing climate change (see for example Cara Augustenborg in the Irish Times – https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/climate-justice-review-irish-sins-cloud-inspiring-stories-1.3643596). Others may notice that Robinson does not for example address population control, or the issue of whether nuclear power should be part of the renewable energy that replaces energy from fossil fuels. But the book is not intended as a primer on climate change (though it can be read with no specialist knowledge). It is a call to positive action against despair, and is best summed up by the advice of Hanshaw, citing her civil rights activist father: “pray and believe, and always believe in what you can do instead of can’t do”.
Review by Bethan
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October 3, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Hodder and Stoughton, £25, out now
This gorgeous cookbook marries tempting recipes with luscious photos of both the dishes and the market. The recipes are unusual but achievable, and unsurprisingly give star billing to the exceptional ingredients for which the market is famous.
I immediately wanted to make (or more accurately, eat) the barbeced courgettes, burnt lemon and za’atar. Suzanne fancies Autumn Panzanella and Cat would like rhubarb and ricotta on toast. We could all do with a Gooseberry Syrup Gin Cocktail right about now as well.
The book is arranged by season, and includes helpful lists of what’s best at each time of year. It manages to capture some of the sensory delights of the market – Turnips greengrocer Fred Foster writes: “I like to think of our produce displays as live art. They draw people in and provide a backdrop to the Market… The seasons are crucial because ultimately they affect what the displays are made from. As the seasons change, the displays change. It’s continual. You can define the time of year by the colours you see”. (p. 205)
The first mention of the market by London Bridge was in a Norse chronicle in 1014 – a thousand years of tasty snacks, feast preparations, and irresistible tasters.
As London Bridge’s local independent bookshop, we are big fans of our local market and have been known to head over there for emergency baklava to provide instant mood lifts for our hardworking booksellers. For a poetic take on the market, see also Michael Shann’s recent poetry collection To London (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/to-london-poems-by-michael-shann/).
Review by Bethan
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May 15, 2018
by Team Riverside
Posted in News, Nice things, Non fiction |
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March 6, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Virago, £14.99, out now
A wonderful book featuring our occasional shop dog Zeus, seen here running Riverside on Christmas Eve https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/happy-christmas-from-team-riverside/.
On Smaller Dogs and Larger Life Questions has already received very positive reviews (see Alison Burns’ review here: http://bookoxygen.com/?p=7761) and Kate Figes appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour to discuss it (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09smh89).
We are delighted to have this book at Riverside and send good wishes to our friends Kate and Zeus.
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January 31, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Tinder Press, £18.99, out now
Neil Ansell wrote Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills, a transporting account of living alone in a remote hut in Wales, which has become a modern classic of nature writing. It was beautifully written, dealing with the choice and personal consequences of human silence and solitude. His descriptions of the nature that surrounded him (and particularly the birdlife) were vivid.
The Last Wilderness addresses many of the same themes. Ansell visits a truly wild area of Scotland in a series of solo trips over a year, and also recalls his journeys all over the world. The silence in this book is not optional. He is losing his hearing. He notices over the year that he can no longer hear the songs of different birds.
He still delights in birds: “I might catch a glimpse of a water rail emerging shyly from among the reeds, or a jewel of a kingfisher driven to the coast by bad weather inland.” His recollections of childhood encounters with nature can also be very funny. A crow lands on his head and he feels very proud, “… and then it drove its beak into the very top of my skull, as if it was trying to crack a nut”. He sometimes reminds me of Chris Packham when he’s talking about this period of his life. Ansell remains engaged with the present, and he reflects as he wanders on the likely impact of climate change on the places he visits. The area explored is around Knoydart, and is remote and wild enough to appeal to anyone with a love of nature and solitude.
Review by Bethan
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November 26, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardcover, Chatto and Windus, £14.99, out now
An ice cold exploration of Finland and ships, told with style and wit by the author of Down to the Sea in Ships. Clare travels on the icebreaker Otso, which is clearing a path through the Arctic Circle.
Reflecting on climate change, Clare discusses A Farewell to Ice by Peter Wadhams who wrote of how changes in the sea ice will impact human life profoundly over the coming years (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/273799/a-farewell-to-ice/). He also introduces us to the characters of those who do the dangerous work of icebreaking. There is something very appealing about reading about a whole area of work and life about which you know nothing. In this way it is similar to Mark Vanhoenacker’s joyous book about being a modern pilot, Skyfaring.
There are pleasing nuggets of information, as you find in the best travel books. I am looking forward to using the Finnish word kalsarikännit, which is “The feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear – with no intention of going out.” I am already familiar with hygge but this is a useful addition to my vocabulary.
Another pleasure of this book was the reminders to read or reread other eclectic Arctic literature, of which Clare is a fan. He reminded me to reread Arto Paasilinna’s Year of the Hare (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/06/books/a-skewed-and-skewering-look-at-finland.html).
This would be a great present for any armchair (or actual) traveller who favours ice, snow and the Arctic. Clare’s turn of phrase is vivid: “The ice stretches to opaque horizons. As the lines of the forest fall away behind us, all bearings seem lost”.
Review by Bethan
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October 23, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Maclehose Press, £12.99, out now
Lampedusa – Gateway to Europe is a book of extraordinary and moving first hand 
testimony from Dr Pietro Bartolo who runs the medical services for refugees landing on (or shipwrecked near) the island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean. Those he treats are often in profound states of suffering after terrifying flights from their home countries. He is also deals with the bodies of those who have died on the journey. Often, the living and the dead arrive together.
Dr Bartolo interweaves the story of his own life, and particularly how he came to be doctor on the island where he was born, with accounts of individual refugees he has met over the last 25 years. His father was a fisherman, and his family are shown as hard working people with a deep respect for the sea. He writes: “There is an unwritten rule that you might only understand if you were born on an isolated island like ours: leaving another human being at the mercy of the waves, no matter who they are, is unacceptable – unthinkable, in fact. This is a law of the sea. It is taken so seriously that when the Italian government prohibited taking migrants on board a boat, fishermen often defied the law and ended up in court” (p. 87). He recounts one maritime disaster after another, relentless deaths and terrible injuries, which continue to this day.
He tells the story of the miraculous revival of one young refugee, Kebrat, who has been given up for dead when she is landed on the pier during the catastrophe of 3 October 2013, in which at least 368 people lost their lives. After 20 minutes of emergency work, her heartbeat is re-established: “I had experienced the greatest surge of emotion in my twenty-five years of first aid work” (p. 190).
The author and his team were seen in the film Fire at Sea (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/09/fire-at-sea-review-masterly-and-moving-look-at-the-migrant-crisis). Newly translated from the Italian, the book is recommended by Philip Gourevitch, who wrote the extraordinary story of the Rwandan genocide We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families.
My personal view, shared by many others I am sure, is that when the histories of our period are written, future generations will be incredulous that we allowed so many to die while they were fleeing death at home.
The nightmare in the Mediterranean is not over. Bartolo is frustrated by the variation in media coverage, which is sometimes at saturation point and sometimes completely absent. This book stands as a lasting corrective to that. It is an instant classic of refugee and migration writing, and an overwhelming indictment of the human actions that make this happen.
Review by Bethan
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October 17, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Canongate, £9.99, out now
This fresh and interesting account of Laing’s midsummer exploration of the Ouse river is now available in a good new edition of the excellent Canons series.
Originally published in 2011, this is nature writing partly in the vein of Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, or Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun. Exploring East Sussex in part to get away after a horrible relationship break up, Laing brings a sharp eye to the natural world in what may feel like a very familiar area: “It is astonishing what wood and earth together will yield, given a spark and a puff of air. A windowpane, say, bubbling and settling into cool green sheets, like ice on a winter’s day” (p. 31). She preserves a genuine sense of wonder at the natural world, while never prettifying what she experiences.
There are excellent literary stories throughout the book, particularly about Virginia and Leonard Woolf who are strongly associated with this area. I am a fan but didn’t know that after their house in London was bombed, “the Woolfs went down to salvage what they could from amidst the dust and rubble: diaries, Darwin, glasses, her sister’s painted china. A melancholy business, but she says she likes the loss of possessions, the liberation” (p. 207).
The steamy heat Laing walks through rises off the page, and we are reminded that midsummer is still something magical, even in the midst of modern life.
Review by Bethan
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September 17, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Virago, £9.99, out now
A cracker of a memoir this, Darling Days tell the story of author and activist iO Tillett Wright’s distinctly off-the-wall upbringing in the squalor of downtown New York.
With its depiction of an exhilarating if hand-to-mouth existence in the East Village of the 1980s, the punk and new wave subcultures spawned there and the drugs that desolated its communities, Darling Days follows in the footsteps of autobiographies like Patti Smith’s Just Kids or Richard Hell’s I dreamed I was a Very Clean Tramp – both by poets and novelists who share not just glittery New York-based life stories but also a way with strong, beautiful prose. Tough acts to follow, but Tillett Wright more than holds his own on both counts.
He’s certainly had an interesting life straight out of the gate, born to a mother who was equal parts Amazonian warrior and Playboy centrefold, a model, hard drinker, addict and widow (her former husband having been shot by police in dubious circumstances). The pair’s adventures, clashes and anecdotes make for compelling, bewildering and sobering reading; there are several sections in the book, after the young iO has done something like rush to find a cop to protect her mother from an abusive boyfriend, when you find yourself saying, he’s how young at this point?
But all these wild experiences can make for sub-par reading at best if the author can’t bring them to life on the page. Thankfully, Tillett Wright’s writing is frankly brilliant; he has a fantastic way with imagery, razor-sharp descriptions of locales and characters bursting fully-formed into your mind’s eye. Angular faces, voluptuous bodies, mean streets and crumbling blocks are drawn in brilliant chiaroscuro style… and, as with Smith and Hell, there is something intangibly New York about it. At times his keen eye for this slum of a city and its crooked inhabitants is almost Dickensian.
The vivacity of Tillett Wright’s storytelling and style really can’t be emphasised enough, and his tale is a captivating one. For a living, breathing slice of a fascinating period of American life, look no further.
Review by Tom
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August 14, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, HarperCollins, £16.99, out now
In the Days of Rain is an engrossing and deeply personal account of a childhood in a fundamentalist Christian sect. What happens after you leave? How do you get answers about your own life when silence prevails and some of the people you might ask are dying or dead? This complex and moving book is a daughter’s story of being brought up within the Exclusive Brethren, in which her father and grandfather were preachers.
The sect ordered followers to retreat from the world, and many commonplace things were banned. Stott’s nuclear family left when author was six but the break was never really discussed afterwards, and much of her extended family are still members of the Brethren.
The book opens with the adult children gathering in East Anglia as their father is dying. He asks his daughter to help write his memoir of life in the sect, including the parts he has previously found impossible to discuss, about the sect’s turbulent period in the 1960s. What results is Stott’s own account, including not only chunks of social religious history but also reflections on how it affects family relationships. This includes Stott’s own children, born well after her relationship with the sect ended. Best known as a writer on Darwin, Stott’s explanation of how she both discovered Darwin’s work and then wrote about it is particularly effective. An engaging story, well told and strangely hopeful.
Review by Bethan
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July 23, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Penguin Random House, £8.99, Out now
A bona-fide stranger-than-fiction story, the twists and turns of re-released true crime sensation The Adversary will have you exclaiming “I don’t believe it!” to no one in particular as you read.
Beginning with an account of the 1993 murder of a wife and two children by their husband and father, Jean Claude Romand, the narrative then spirals rapidly out of control as the killer – a respected French doctor and member of the World Health Organisation – is revealed to have been living a double life of colossal proportions.
As a tale it’s utterly astonishing; but it’s the moments where author Emmanuel Carrère pauses to reflect on the proceedings – whether he’s tracing Romand’s footsteps while trying to get into his headspace or drawing comparisons between the murderer’s deceased family and his own – that truly affected me. Unexpectedly lyrical and philosophical, his interjections are just as engrossing as the plot, and make sure that the book never feels ghoulish or lurid despite its fixation on a horrific crime. This isn’t writing to titillate – it is measured, respectful and questioning, and all the more powerful for it.
In short, Carrère has crafted nothing less than a modern In Cold Blood. Genuinely unputdownable.
Review by Tom
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July 17, 2017
by Team Riverside
This excellent new biography charts the rollercoaster life of Margaret Anne Bulkeley, 
born in Cork into genteel chaotic poverty, who became Dr James Barry – leading and innovative army surgeon in the nineteenth century.
An almost unbelievable yarn, Margaret’s remarkable life takes in Edinburgh, Cape Town, Canada, and many other places en route. A believably flawed character, several times I found myself gasping at the audacity of her behaviour. Some serious new archival research has been undertaken for this book, but the learning is worn lightly and the book zips along with much action, adventure, and drama. No wonder it was BBC Radio 2’s Fact not Fiction book choice.
This is a great addition to the literature of the history of medicine and surgery, but is equally important as women’s history. Advice: if you don’t already know the story of this life, don’t read a summary beforehand – let the book unfold and you’ll be treated to a truly vivid narrative.
The authors are very good at identifying the current names of locations so the reader can place the action. Some of it happens in London, and in particular Southwark, and so this is another great read for Riverside Bookshop locals. This was a perfect holiday read for me.
Review by Bethan
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June 14, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Vintage, £3.50, out now
“Don’t think, Tim. Do not think! Do not give yourself commands not to think! Silence!”
In this short delicious extract from his book Teach us to Sit Still, Parks is a very funny and very honest guide to the world of meditation. In response to serious health issues including chronic pain, he decides to learn to meditate, in a relatively extreme way, by attending a silent Vipassana retreat for multiple days.
He struggles with many things that will be familiar to meditators. His legs feel like they are on fire from the unfamiliar poses. He is enraged by catering trollies outside the meditation room. He is suspicious of some of the ideas promulgated and often tries, unsuccessfully, to suspend critical judgement: “I remembered something I had translated once from a book on pre-Vedic philosophy: ‘so as not to be hurt, before coming near the fire, the wise man wraps himself in the meters’. The arcane instruction had impressed, I remembered it, and I had a vague idea it might now be appropriate in some way, but it also sounded like something from Indiana Jones”.
Alongside the funnies there is a serious endeavour to learn something new and take a different approach to suffering, which makes for engaging reading. If you fancy giving mindfulness and meditation a go yourself, you can always try London teacher Tessa Watt’s excellent Mindfulness book.
This is part of a brand new series of extracts called Vintage Minis, out now for only £3.50 a pop. Read Nigella Lawson on Eating, Joseph Heller on Work and Roger Deakin on Swimming. Full list here, or see how many you can spot in the attached photo of our lovely shop window! (https://www.penguin.co.uk/vintage/vintageminis/)
Review by Bethan
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May 22, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Profile Books, £14.99, out now
This entertaining new book from railway expert Andrew Martin might be entitled ‘beyond the Orient Express’. Martin rides the remaining night (or sleeper) trains of Western Europe at a time of great change for the railways, with several of the historic night routes and trains going out of commission. He is partly doing the journey in memory of his railwayman father, who took him and his sister on holidays organised by the British Railwaymen’s Touring Club.
Martin is an amusing guide, and the book is stuffed with good anecdotes and facts. There are mentions of books, films and paintings involving sleeper trains that make you want to chase down the references immediately. Discussing a painting by Caillebotte called Le Pont d’Europe, he notes: “It shows a man looking down on the station from the bridge. There is a strolling flâneur, perhaps a depiction of Caillebotte himself. He is possibly eyeing up the man looking down on the station. The woman walking alongside the flâneur has been interpreted as a prostitute. It’s unlikely that both interpretations could be true. A dog is heading purposefully over the bridge in the opposite direction, and doubtless it, too, is going off to have sex” (p. 29).
He finds that night trains are not always glamorous and are sometimes exciting in the wrong way (he gets robbed and also wakes to find a stranger in his cabin). His journeys are sometimes interrupted by the refugee crisis as borders are closed, and lines disrupted. He touches briefly on this, but it’s not a primary theme of the book.
This would make a good original gift for train fans, and for anyone who (like me) loves travelling overnight on trains. I had never heard of the Nordland Railway but this made me want to go next winter: “the Nordland begins by skirting a fjord. There is the same thrilling proximity of rail and sea that you get on the Cornish main line at Dawlish, but that’s over after five minutes, whereas this lasts for a hundred miles”.
Review by Bethan
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January 22, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, £12, Pushkin Press, out now
This beautifully made small book is an excellent companion read to Philippe Sands’ award winning East West Street: on the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (see my review here, https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/east-west-street-on-the-origins-of-genocide-and-crimes-against-humanity-by-philippe-sands/). It comprises two essays on what is now known as the city of Lviv, in Ukraine. Exile Józef Wittlin, writing in 1946, recalls the city when he knew it before the Second World War. Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, whose mother’s family were from Lviv and whose story is told in East West Street, gives his account of the city in 2016.
The book’s striking cover shows the many names the city has had over the last 100 years – Lviv, Lwów, Lvov, Lemberg. Europe’s sometimes brutal twentieth century history has overrun this place over and over again. Evocative black and white photographs and maps add a ghostly and sometimes melancholy note throughout. Small publisher Pushkin Press can be proud of this book – read it, then read their republished The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig from 1942 (http://www.pushkinpress.com/book/the-world-of-yesterday/).
Both Wittlin and Sands’ accounts show their great attachment to the city, while dealing with the terrible things that happened there. They speak to each other, providing a vivid addition to the literature on exile and belonging. Wittlin writes: “Balabans, Korniakts, Mohylas, Boims, Kampians – what sort of a motley crew is this? That’s Lwów for you. Diversified, variegated, as dazzling as an oriental carpet. Greeks, Armenians, Italians, Saracens and Germans are all Lvovians, alongside the Polish, Ruthenian and Jewish natives, and they are Lvovians ‘through and through’” (p. 49). Visiting the local museum 70 years later, and thinking about Wittlin’s quote, Sands asks: “… where were the spaces devoted to the former residents of the city, the Greeks, Armenians, Italians, Saracens and Germans?… What of the legacy of the Polish and Jewish inhabitants whose presence had been eclipsed?” (p. 130).
These memories of and reflections on the City of Lions, where many of Wittlin’s streets and buildings remain though their names and occupants have changed, help us to process and acknowledge the past. In our troubled present, inhumanity and change continue. But there is also hope, as Sands concludes: “We too can play at games, as the world erupts once more. We too can close our eyes, and imagine that beyond the dark clouds that settled over this unhappy city, a ray of light broke through, and that it still offers hope today” (p. 130).
Review by Bethan
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October 16, 2016
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Penguin:Viking, £14.99, out now
Hisham Matar’s father Jaballa Matar, an active opponent of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, was kidnapped in Cairo in 1990 and imprisoned in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim jail. After 1996, there was no word of what happened to him. This beautifully written memoir concerns not only Matar’s memories of family life before his disappearance, but also the desperation of those left not knowing their loved one’s fate. Read on Radio 4, the book has received remarkable reviews from (among others) Colm Tóibín and Hilary Mantel.
The book is particularly moving on the effect of the disappearance on everyday life. Matar’s mother continued videoing football matches for her missing husband for years after he disappeared. In their exile, Matar and his family do everything they can think of to find out what has happened to Jaballa. At the same time, Matar develops as a novelist, publishing among other things the well-reviewed Anatomy of a Disappearance. After Tony Blair’s rapprochement with Qaddafi in 2004, Matar, who was living in London, notes: “none of us felt safe. Officials from the Libyan embassy attended the first reading I gave from my first novel. A report was sent to Tripoli and I became a watched man. It was deemed no longer safe for me to visit my family in Egypt, which caused a second exile” (p. 174). While the book concerns Matar’s relationship with his father, his mother also stands out as a remarkable woman in her own right.
I learnt a lot about Libya’s history from this remarkable book, and its impacts on those who live through it. While The Return gives some truly horrendous accounts of human rights violations, it is also a book about deep resilience and love.
Review by Bethan
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June 19, 2016
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Picador, £9.99, out now
Gratitude is a final gift from the excellent neurologist and writer of popular science, Oliver Sacks, who died in 2015. These short but beautiful pieces encapsulate all that is best about his writing. Humane, kind, interesting and funny, they offer his reflections on a life well lived from one who knew its end would come shortly. Shortly after finding out his cancer was back and inoperable, he wrote: “Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight”.
Probably best known for his books Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks’ own life has not been without bumps, as his two volumes of autobiography show. Here, we learn more about his deeply personal love of science. How excellent that as an 11 year old fan of the periodic table, he was delighted to be able to say “I am Sodium” and remained equally pleased at 79 to say “I am gold”. His reflections on his different experiences of Jewish family life, in London and beyond, are intriguing. A book to read, and read over.
Review by Bethan
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May 31, 2016
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Orion Books, £20, out now
International human rights barrister Philippe Sands opens his remarkable new book with a quote from Nicolas Abraham: “What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others”. Sands tries to fill some of these gaps in the stories of both his family and two lawyers who developed the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity that featured for the first time in the Nuremberg tribunal – Hersch Lauerpacht and Rafael Lemkin. Remarkably, there turn out to be connections between all of these people and the (now Ukrainian) city of Lviv, a site of mass murder of Jewish residents during the Second World War.
The best thing I’ve read this year, East West Street is both personal and international in scope. Sands undertakes remarkable archival and other research and succeeds in uncovering surprising and illuminating stories, which help to explain both how international law developed as it did and why it was important that it did so. In this he echoes the approach of Hartley Shawcross, British prosecutor at Nuremberg, who in his closing trial address used a single devastating case study to force home the inhumanity of Nazi war crimes (Sands recounts this at p. 346-7). It takes a skilful and confident writer to manage the risks involved in bringing the huge themes of history back, over and over again, to real individuals. He does so seamlessly, creating a book that reads as compulsively as a detective story. The photos of people and original documents scattered throughout the text make it even more engaging. The related film, My Nazi Legacy: What our Fathers Did, is also well worth watching (http://www.wildgazefilms.co.uk/my-nazi-legacy-2015/) .
Sands’ perspective as a lawyer involved with the International Criminal Court and war crimes tribunals from Rwanda to the former Yugoslavia makes the work highly relevant when thinking about human rights now. 70 years after Nuremberg, how do we deal with crimes against humanity? Do we have the courage required to remember that real individuals are caught up in these huge convulsions, and the greater courage not to look away?
Review by Bethan
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November 3, 2015
by Team Riverside
Allen and Unwin, £16.99, paperback out now
A worthy winner of the Samuel Johnson non-fiction book prize, this is a fascinating and highly readable history of autism. We als
o get to meet several interesting people affected by autism, and an invitation to reconsider what we think we know about it.
Silberman, a journalist for Wired magazine, became interested in autism in 2001 when he heard of an ‘epidemic’ of autism among the children of Silicon Valley employees – parents who tended to be computer programmers and engineers. The book opens with The Wizard of Clapham Common Henry Cavendish, genius 19th century scientist and inventor, who Silberman retrospectively diagnoses as autistic. Silberman is an informative guide through geek culture, disability in Nazi Germany, faulty diagnoses of toxic parenting, Rain Man and more.
Critically, the author is respectful of autistic people. Oliver Sacks in his foreword notes that Silberman particularly sought out autistic people for his research. A further mark of quality is that it is dedicated to Lorna Wing, a psychiatrist and doctor who transformed thinking about autism for the better first in the UK and then internationally both through her work and her involvement in the establishment of the National Autistic Society. He concludes: “Designing appropriate forms of support and accommodation is not beyond our capabilities as a society, as the history of the disability movement proves. But first we have to learn to think more intelligently about people who think differently”. This is an excellent, accessible book, and a worthwhile call to consider the riches that can come from diversity.
Review by Bethan
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October 19, 2015
by Team Riverside
John Murray, out now, £25
A child of the Bloomsbury group, Jeremy Hutchinson became a leading QC at the criminal bar in postwar Britain. Fellow lawyer Thomas Grant has written Hutchinson’s life in an unusual style – a shortish biographical sketch, followed by in depth accounts of Hutchinson’s most famous cases. This approach successfully illuminates not only a well-spent life, but als
o the contribution of an exceptional advocate at pivotal moments of change in British social and cultural history.
As a lawyer who often defended the unpopular or those in conflict with the establishment, much of his work concerned freedom of expression. Obscenity trials feature – he represented Penguin Books in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial as well as the National Theatre concerning their production of The Romans in Britain. He also defended the rights of journalists Duncan Campbell and Jonathan Aitken when they were prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act, and also represented the notorious cold war spy George Blake. The movement towards a more open and freer society is traced through Grant’s well drawn studies.
Hutchinson emerges not only as a great advocate, but as a genial and thoughtful man. Now 100, his postscript to the book shows him to be as committed to the principle of access to justice as ever: “When at long last in 1950 the Legal Aid Act was passed, the idea was that everyone should be able to obtain legal advice if unable to pay for it because, after health, the most important element in a civilised society is the ability of every citizen to assert and protect these rights: in other words a ‘national legal service’.” He notes that “real prison reform calls for imagination, courage and determination; the dismantling of legal aid a mere stroke of the pen”. Recommended.
Review by Bethan
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August 19, 2015
by Team Riverside
Penguin, paperback out now £1.99
Somehow I had stopped really thinking about the piles of nuclear weapons placed all over the world: owned, operated and sought by fallible humans. In this substantial and important new piece of reportage, Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation, Executive Producer of There Will be Blood) updates us on the threats posed by nuclear weapons today.
He describes repeated security breaches at US nuclear bases, spending time with anti-nuclear weapons campaigners imprisoned for breaking in. He reflects on their pacifist and radical forerunners.
Looking to the future, he details attempts made by non-state actors to gain access to nuclear weapons and weapons-manufacturing materials: “In October 2009, ten militants entered the central headquarters of the Pakistan Army in broad daylight, wearing military uniforms and carrying fake IDs. They took dozens of hostages, killed high-ranking officers, and maintained control of a building there for eighteen hours. The two leading commanders of Pakistan’s nuclear forces were stationed at the base.” (p. 73).
Published by Penguin 70 years after the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this thoughtful and thorough work is a must read. Get ready to have your consciousness raised: as the author writes when thanking experts for their help, “I’m not sure how they sleep at night”.
Review by Bethan
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August 1, 2015
by Team Riverside
Bloomsbury Circus, out now
Katharine Norbury was abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent, raised by caring adoptive parents, and then had a family of her own. The book opens as she starts a series of British nature journeys with her young daughter, prompted by bereavement following a miscarriage.
In this nature memoir, Norbury describes her life and her relationship with nature with candour and flair. She is compelled to trace her biological mother, and takes us to the end of this difficult journey.
She heads off alone to remote spots: as a woman who often walks out alone, it pleased me to have another woman walker describe her own experiences so effectively. “The more space I put between myself and the wakeful inhabitants of the mainland, the better I felt. The sea shone pearl-grey, opaque, and the sky lightened above it with a bloom as soft as a plum”.
Mixed in are stories from Celtic mythology, and
thoughts about adoptive families (and non-adoptive ones). The theme of those who are grieving finding some solace, distraction or balm from the natural world has been covered in much recent writing, perhaps most famously in H for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. If you liked that, this will appeal. But it is also very readable for anyone thinking about what family means, how marriages can work, and how nature can be a part of our everyday lives.
Posted in Liked that? Read this!, London, Non fiction |
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July 4, 2015
by Team Riverside
Growing up in Yorkshire, brother and sister Matty and Cathy are ordinary teenagers living in a pub with their parents. Their family is close, loving, and funny. Everything changes when Matty is knocked down in a hit and run, and suffers devastating brain injuries. Matty’s life is saved, but he enters what turns out to be a Persistent Vegitative State (PVS).
In Cathy Rentzenbrink’s courageous and illuminating memoir, she charts what happens to Matty but also to herself and her parents as they deal with the consequences of one life changing moment. A very readable narrative, it 
is also a personal and thoughtful account of a complex and difficult situation. She shows that what may be right is not always evident and may change over time, and details the pervasive effects of grief, guilt and trauma. Using press cuttings and legal reports as well as family memories, we get a useful and unflinching analysis of the very human difficulties that can arise in cases of PVS. While the subject is bleak, the strength, love and commitment that sustain the family run throughout. Highly recommended.
Review by Bethan
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