It’s OK. I might still have it on Korean DVD.
I think Factotum is better.
@sweetbeans think The Hole was my 2nd favourite read last year! Excellent vibes.
Just typed out a review of some recent reads, but it vanished. Booo.
The Man Who Fell to Earth - pretty good, but it either needed to be more plotty or the characters to be developed a bit more. There was a weird fixation with the weight of one of the female characters.
The Blade Itself - don’t think Joe Abercrombie is for me. Gave up.
The Lost Estate/Les Grand Meuniers - Henri Alain-Fournier. Started great, thought it was going to be a straightforward coming of age sort of thing, but it went a bit fairytale like and then pretty melodramatic and lost my interest. Meuniers wasn’t very grand.
Now on Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami. Interlinked stories set some time in the future, in which most people are - I think -artificially made, and regular humans are rare. Not completely sure what’s going on, but it’s good so far. Hoping the Big Bird in the title turns out to be the one from Sesame Street.
Maybe a niche request - anyone got recommendations for novels with uncanny stuff going on with a focus on the sea/fens/countryside?
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Not totally this but Gallow’s Pole by Ben Myers or The Sunken Lands Will Rise Again by M.John Harrison both kind of fit.
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Daisy Johnson short story collection Fen? I’ve read one or two of them only so can’t speak to it as a whole but the desc implies it’s along the lines you’re after.
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Nice, liked The Gallows Pole, got the M John Harrison on my Kindle, will bump it up the list.
I got pretty much the same recommendation request I just asked for from a friend earlier when I was sat on Cromer beach reading this… spooky.
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Ooh - I’ve either got it read it, I think. Thank you!
I’d go for Our Wives Under the Sea (character who was at sea, come home) and They (bucolic countryside gone wrong)
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Long poem not novel but Ness by Robert McFarlane
Ghost wall by Sarah Moss
Everything Under by Daisy Johnson (mostly canal side iirc)
The Breakthrough by Daphne Du Marier (only suggesting this as i remember thinking it was likely set at Orford Ness)
When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Sola (not UK but countryside and very unique!)
The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers (only hints at uncanny tbh but i great book about fields and two men who bond over making crop circles)
There’s a few short stories that’ll tick your boxes in Hag compiled by Daisy Johnson
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Very swampy. Very insane.
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If you read Ness or The Breakthrough maybe familiarise yourself with Orford Ness first as it’ll really add to your enjoyment (can also send you my short story based there too if you are really desperate- it was in an anthology called Uncanny…)
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I feel like the ending is where it becomes properly hamstring by its own structure, cause you kind of just know everything but it has to kind of go through the motions a bit for the sake of the specific chronology that it’s been working with
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Always up for a short story - can do a swap, if you like.
Will check out the McFarlane, Du Marier & Hag. Think I’ve got The Perfect Golden Circle. Have read and loved the others you suggested (particularly When I Sing…).
And cheers @JaguarPirate. Am in the Our Wives Under the Sea appreciation club, but hadn’t heard of They. They’ve got it in the library, so I’ll nab that tomorrow.
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If you’ve never read The Willows by Algernon Blackwood that will be perfect if you can stretch to something a bit more watery but very much nature and trees too (quite like the T Kingfisher retelling The Twisted Ones even though a lot of it is pretty trashy, the weird bits are great though a very different setting so maybe one for another time)
Swap sounds great 
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Yeah seems to have been properly overlooked and is just now slowly being picked up again. All credit to my mum for giving me it as a present!
had remained out of print due to poor sales and Dick experiencing harsh and sexist reviews … They was re-discovered by chance in an Oxfam charity bookshop in Bath, Somerset, in the summer of 2020 by a literary agent. It was then acquired by Faber and Faber for re-release on 3 February 2022 in the United Kingdom and MacNally Editions in the United States.
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Ghost Wall is fantastic. But extremely tense and my GF felt really uncomfortable due to the controlling male figure in it. (after coming out of a toxic relationship)
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Shame you missed the Maxine Peake perfomances of it a few years back. They sold out in silly time though so i didnt make it but its made They a staple in Mcr bookshops since
Had no idea about though, hope something pops up again. I’m just trying to bully all the readers I know into trying it, easily one of my favs I’ve read in the last 5 years
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Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry? Def fen-adjacent.
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February Roundup
The Night Manager - John le Carre
I’m genuinely surprised this was written in the 90s. It’s absolute old-fashioned (sexist/ homophobic/ vaguely classist) spy tosh. I hated all of the characters (charmers with no charm/ beautiful women with no personality/ posh English boys) and only kept reading because I finish books before they finish me.
Autumn - Ali Smith
I read this because my friend loves Ali Smith. I liked the dreamy bits and the misremembered bits but it all felt very inconsequential. I’m not really sure what I was supposed to get from it if I’m honest.
Grimwood: Party Animals by Nadia Shireen
Probably the best one since the first one.
Currently reading Chronicles From The Land of The Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka. It’s currently a novel about corrupt governments in Nigeria. I normally love a bit of vaguely-afrofuturist magical realism but this is taking a while to warm up. The prose is very dense and I’m having to reread sections often because I get lost.
I still haven’t finished the formative assessment book or the Grimm fairytales.
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Tell me what to read pls
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The Changeling - Robin Jenkins
My final Kindle Unlimited book, and I almost didn’t go for it due to reviews saying it was quite bleak, but I’m happy I did. Written/set in the 1950s in Glasgow, a school teacher decides to take a smart, but troublesome/under-privileged, boy on holiday with him and his family - thinking it would do him good to get out of his normal dreary life/situation. Needless to say it doesn’t go to plan, but I loved how it developed. The ending: Oh boy, I was wondering how it would end, as I saw the page numbers dwindle away. I suppose it may have been the only way that book could have ended, but still pretty shocking/depressing.
9/10
The Door - Magda Szabo
Set in Hungary, a busy writer and her husband hire an old lady to be their housekeeper, who is extremely good at her job, but has her own peculiarities and is very stubborn. An interesting/exhausting relationship builds between the two over the years. I liked it, but was happy to finish it. Still curious to read more by the author though. 6/10
Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
Thought I’d read a few short books to make a dent into my backlog after a month of Kindle Unlimited, and went for this book from the 1950s, which Gabriel Garcia Marquez said was one of his favourite books/biggest influences. Of course it was, you swine, as it was completely hard to follow. A young man visits a small village in search of his unknown dad, after his mum had recently passed away. Then a bunch of talking with dead people/ghosts, or jumping back in time to follow some of the past residents, but never entirely sure who is speaking/thinking/dreaming, from one paragraph to the next. I almost gave it up early on, but it was short and is nicely written - for the bits I can understand. It might get better/clearer upon re-readings. I’ll watch the film from last year that’s on Netflix so that I can find out what the plot was. 6/10
Minor Detail - Adania Shibli
The first half is based on a true event from after the nakba/Israeli war in 1949, and what happened to a Palestinian woman, from the perspective of an Israeli officer. A bit detached and unsettling, and unsurprisingly bleak. and then the second half is in modern times, as a young Palestinian risks her life to find out more. Obviously not cheery, but I read it in one sitting. 8/10
Assembly - Natasha Brown
Another short book, following a black British woman as she navigates through life/makes a success of herself, in a stream of consciousness kind of way, jumping back and forth through her experiences. Brilliantly written. 8/10
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