Recently I went to a wonderful performance of Louis De Bernieres’ play for voices entitled Sunday Morning At The Centre Of The World.  I’ve read and enjoyed Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Birds Without Wings and various others of De Bernieres’ books but I’d never come across the play before and I went straight out and picked up a second hand copy to read. It’s such a vivid evocation of life in multi-cultural London and it’s a quick read which is useful for someone trying to read as much as possible in a year.  I realised it must have been based on Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, an old favourite of mine, so of course I then had to re-read that as well. Both plays stretch the boundaries of language, putting together combinations of words which are highly original as well as being thought- provoking and hugely enjoyable.  And both authors distill the essence of a community they know very well into just a few pages.  To give you a taster, this sentence is taken from the first page of Under Milk Wood  ‘It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.’  Magnificent!

There’s a series of books written by Chris Stewart, one-time Genesis drummer, (Driving Over Lemons, The Parrot in the Pepper Tree and The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society) which are laugh-out-loud funny.  They tell the story of how Chris and his partner Ana buy a rundown farm in Las Alpujarras, a region of southern Spain, and how their life develops over a period of years.  I first read them years ago and have recently been dipping in to them again.  Very enjoyable, but also well written and perceptive.  I see there is a recent addition to the original trilogy – The Last Days of the Bus Club – which I have now added to my list of books to read.

What’s next?  H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald has been in my pile since it won The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the Costa Book of the Year in 2014.  It’s not an easy read but it is one of the most sensitive and incisive portrayals of grief I have ever come across.  For me, the training of the hawk Mabel is almost incidental to the proceedings but I can see that it is also a vital part of the book and will no doubt be completely absorbing for anyone who knows about hawks and falconry.   The use of language and the descriptive passages throughout the book are quite simply outstanding.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed  was an obvious follow up since it too tells of a passage through grief and depression by returning to the wild and searching for healing in the natural rather than the human world.  It’s the story of a walk taken by the author along the Pacific Crest Trail. It isn’t as powerful a book as H is for Hawk, and at times I found it to be over-focused on the author and her feelings (so many paragraphs beginning with ‘I’!) rather than giving  a wider picture of the trail.  But it is very readable and I think actually resonated more with me – partly at least  because I can see myself setting out on a long walk or other adventure to assuage grief far more easily than I can see myself trying to train a hawk.

So this month my reading choices  have, purely by chance, been  pretty much entirely about people and the different ways they live their lives.  I’ve been by turn amused, saddened, educated, enlightened, inspired and always entertained.  I suspect it would not be at all difficult to continue finding books in this genre for the rest of the year, but I’m not going to do that.  Something different is calling.