The rain has been here in full force this week. Drenching me as I hop across London from my hair to my pumps. However I do love gazing at Christmas lights throught hazy rain and the possibility that I might be one step away from my own movie scene like Bridget Jones or Four Weddings and a funeral [hopefully I'll say my lines with more conviction that Andie McDowell].
My reading this week has taken place behind closed doors looking over my Dickensian feeling high street whilst being tucked up in my duvet [add snuffles and soup for effect]. With all this quality me-and-my-bed time, I thought the ‘Books to read and Love’ section was due for something a little more highbrow. Don’t be put off however by reviews of this weeks book that tend to include statements like ‘prose that is by tiers wild and terse; angular and lavish’ oooooh errrrr!! This book is not too lavish for a Sunday afternoon read.
The Rowing Lesson is the story of the emotional distance between a father and a daughter. The daughter Betsey Klien arrives at her father’s hospital bed in South Africa from her home in New York. Pregnant with her first child she keeps watch over her father Harold whilst he is in a coma. As what seems to be his last days unfold, Betsey, unable to communicate with him imagines and contorts her way through his life.
The journey takes us to Harold’s beginnings as a sexually charged teen and the effect the river Touw has on his life. The river draws him back and back until he teaches his daughter to row on the river. Harold is an incredibly complex and misunderstood character. A committed doctor, both Betsey and his patients find it hard to become close to the man. His daughter relates his story with great empathy touching on the thinigs that shaped the way he was, such as the death of his father and his marriage to her mother. She recounts his view of the present situation from the coma in the way he would have been in life.
The book is touching as Betsey wrestles with her emotions for this figure in her life. The descriptions of South Africa are powerful and evocative. Anne Landsman has taken a small subject and made it into a great novel. It is a book of loss and memory as well as closure on the feelings that have not yet been voiced.
As Landsman’s second novel, the first being ‘The Devils Chmney’ this book is guaranteed to take you to far away places not near the gloomy skies over our own heads. It is a quietly brilliant read and worth adding to your Christmas list. – Lauren
My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Chastened by Hephzibah Anderson
