Notes from Willow Tree Farm: from the diaries of Roger Deakin

Another Oxton Men's Book Club recommended read.  Difficult to get into, with endless details about coppicing and pollarding of different trees, but the journalist and environmentalist, turned naturalist, writes with such enthusiasm for his subject that it is hard not to develop an interest in the minutiae of his daily life as expressed here. He makes some interesting general observations too: on the pastiche architecture of new-builds in the countryside; of the suspicions that surround men walking for pleasure on their own unless accompanied by a dog; on the inappropriate planting on common land; on the lack of any real isolated landscapes in the UK.  However, too much of the book is devoted to denigrating modern society and asking questions about nature without attempting to provide the readily available scientific answer, as if a metaphysical answer would in some way be more natural. ❤❤❤

Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning, an auto-biographical portrait by Kerry Hudson

I was interested in reading this as the author spent some of her childhood in the most deprived housing estate in Coatbridge, my home town.   The periods covered are a good 20 years after I lived there; so the experiences are not identical in timing, nor in the level of deprivation endured by the author.  Her childhood was one typical of all too many young people: poverty, single mother with multiple partners, insecure housing, limited education, teenage pregnancy, rape and prostitution. Somehow the author had the ability to find the opportunity to emerge from this experience, achieve an education as an adult and be able to publish this work. 

Shocking, if one did not already know that similar lifestyles occur all over the country. The author puts forward a political solution to this national problem.  It is a fairly simplistic one, but it clearly does not involve voting for this current government. ❤❤❤

The Atlas of Reds and Blues, a novel by Devi S. Laskar

A shocking commentary on the racism (now officially approved) experienced in Trump's USA by an American female journalist, descended from a Bengali immigrant family family. We follow her thoughts as she lies dying on her driveway after an attack by the police and her struggle to understand the answer to the basic question she continues to be asked: where are you from? Powerfully written and very topical. ❤❤❤❤

How to be Right in a World Gone Wrong, a political commentary by James O'Brien

The author is a presenter on a popular LBC radio phone-in show, in which he challenges often right-wing views.  O'Brien's thesis is that most interviewers do not challenge political figures adequately, sticking often to a set of pre-determined questions and allowing the interviewee to get away with either not answering or providing an answer that is flawed and inconsistent and could easily by counteracted with a little more effort.  If you listen to some mainstream political interviews, e.g. Radio 4 Today programme, you would agree with his thesis. O'Brien doesn't often do television work, but I recall him presenting BBC Newsnight where he appeared particularly agressive in his interviewing technique. 

The book uses verbatim radio interviews with members of the public who have phoned in, usually outraged by some current day phenomenon, e.g. immigration, homosexuality or, of course, Brexit. O'Brien confess that his success, for the most part, in pointing out the flaws and absurdities in the callers' arguments makes him look arrogant and boastful at times, which it does.  However, there are lessons to be learned about how, and when, to challenge unacceptable opinions that are widely spread throughout social media. 

The book is only recently published and the epilogue is devoted to dismantling and expressing dismay at the illogicality of the Brexit arguments, in particular around the 'backstop'.  The dismay stems from the fact that politicians can argue for years about a topic without anyone accepting that the underlying concept is, by definition, absurd. And so it continues.....❤❤❤❤❤

The Long Take, a novel by Robin Robertson

Undoubtedly an original attempt to use poetry, prose and something in between the two to create a full-length novel.  But I found the medium too difficult.  The poetry on occasions became simply a list of observations that looked designed to set the scene for the next occurrence in the storyline but then nothing occurred where those observations would have been relevant. Similarly, there would be stretches of conventional narrative where it was challenging (to me at any rate) to understand who was conversing with whom and under what circumstances.  Apart from the narrator, there was very little development of the characters.

I did however like the way that reference to the traumatic events that the narrator had been subjected to in the War gradually gained more and more importance as the novel progressed and showed how even with the passage of time his life remained seriously damaged by them. ❤❤❤

Middle England, a novel by Jonathan Coe

The latest of a trilogy from the author that has followed the life of a writer, Benjamin Trotter, through marriage, divorce and now 'old age' (early 60s).  Characters are in conflict with one another, not through the normal aspects of relationships but as a result of difference of opinion on Brexit -- an interesting observation on how Brexit, as we now see, has become not a matter of politics but of personal identity.  See next book review. While most of the likeable characters are clearly Remainers, Coe manages to convey perfectly the upper middle-class Tory-voting determination to Leave in the monologue by Helena that encapsulates all the prejudices and irrationality underlying the Leave campaign.  Amusing, if not great literature. ❤❤❤