The first hint of Spring arrived this month and although I love reading by the fire in the Winter, it was a good reminder reading outside in the sunshine is pretty great too…

I started the month off strong with The Seven Moons of Maali Almedia by Shehan Karunatilaka. It is an amazing piece of writing. Set in a specific time period with plenty of details grounding it there, Karunatilaka also manages to pull out the universal human experiences of difficult periods of history, love, politics, and death. The balance between Maali’s struggle to learn about the afterlife and move on and the flashbacks and scenes on earth as those left behind deal with his death works perfectly. There are also a million small scenes and details that mean every page, every paragraph, every sentence has something to offer. Maali’s constant struggle to communicate with animals in the afterlife was a particular favorite recurring theme of mine that pays off beautifully in the end. And as interesting and complicated and powerful as the story of his relationship with DD, I also loved the power of his relationship with Jaki. Love stories (meaning those between lovers) are so often the focus of a story, but I always appreciate a writer who explores other kinds of loving relationships. There’s a reason this book has been such a sensation – I won’t stop thinking (or talking) about it for a long time.

The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn is a 500 page family saga that takes you across two generations and two world wars but Quinn plays with time, structure, and style so you never quite know what is coming next, even as the famous dates of history pop-up in the chapter headings. Sometimes in these family stories you can easily prefer one perspective over another but each of the residents of Chilcombe have plenty to offer a reader and Quinn knew exactly when to move forward in time or switch settings to keep all of the characters moving forward and the narrative engaging. It is a remarkable book.

Fish and Chips: a Takeaway History by Panikos Panayi is the ideal academic text about a specific corner of history. It’s a short and focused food and social history about exactly what the title says: fish and chips. I have always loved food history because it’s such a good tool to understand the daily life of those in the past and it often offers a connection to the modern day. For instance, Panayi describes the deep skepticism of the public as potatoes arrived in Britain as a new crop which is obviously a stark contrast to the integral role potatoes have in modern British food. Obviously, not everyone enjoys such specific historical studies, but I certainly enjoyed this trip to the chippy.

Dracula by Bram Stoker was one of the classics I revisited during lockdown. I found an excellent audiobook on Audible with a full cast (including Tim Curry as Van Helsing and Alan Cumming a Dr. Seward!) I picked it up again this month because of a course at a local museum about the science of the era and the novel and it’s been an excellent reminder that reading a book in a different time of your life and different context can really change your view. I read Dracula for the first time when I was very young and loved it because it was a vampire book and I very much enjoyed vampire stories. Now, after spending a few weeks discussing both the mythical roots of vampire mythology and their relationships to disease outbreaks and the development of blood medicine – and understanding how much research Stoker put into the book – it has been such a different reading experience. It has also highlighted the emotional side of the novel as these characters all face the fear of their time and this threat from the past together. Just a reminder that your relationship to a novel can always change (for better or for worse!)

And I finally finished Heavy Weather: Tempestuous Tales of Stranger Climes edited by Kevan Manwaring, part of the British Library Tale of the Weird Series. There is plenty to say about the collection itself as well as the individual pieces within, but in the end, I think the easiest way to sum it up is the remind ourselves that weather is both the easiest way to chat with someone behind you in line at the post office and the thing that scares us the most…