All is Calm, All is Bright – 14/12/2024

This feels like rather a chaotic time of year. A siege of herons is here for you.

Whether you need Five Minutes’ Peace, a more extended Rest and Relaxation, or are the life and soul of The Party, whether you require a Cypriot version of Dutch courage, constant hot coffee or take advice from great authors in the matter of food and drink, whether you love Winter, prefer to dream of spring, long for a stocking teeming with treats or think that everyone should buy Less, whether you wish you had more family around you, are a little unsure of some of your relatives, or feel even less warmly toward them, we endeavour to help.

Can it be a siege if there are only two? Doubtless we can consult a book and discuss the Sorites paradox to our hearts’ content.* All needs are covered here in The Heronry.  

Do you need present ideas…
…for the permanently hungry? In Search of the Perfect Peach by Franco Fubini shows, deliciously, how the search for excellent flavour can lead also to improved food systems and health.  
…for the permanently cold? A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez is a wild, eerie collection of short stories set in Argentina and in realms not of this world.
…for the erudite Oulipian? Dante’s Inferno and Dante’s Purgatorio by Philip Terry move the inferno to the University of Essex and purgatory to Mersea Island…
…for the crime-fighting nun (not actually about nuns but why let plot ruin a good image?)? Death in Holy Orders by P. D. James investigates the death of a theology student at an East Anglian college and several ensuing murders, presumably frowned upon by the Almighty Patron.

Our books of the year (Lizzie’s; Harry’s) and previous newsletter recommendations and this list of magnificent wintry children’s picture books may also assist if you need inspiration.

Or – and this is not an endorsement of this course of action – here are some things I loved which you have time to read yourself before giving away:

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor is set on a remote, tiny Welsh island in 1938 beset first by a beached whale and then by two English anthropologists marvelling, naively or maliciously, at the inhabitants’ way of life.
Quickly, While They Still Have Horses by Jan Carson is a set of short stories showing how people behave when someone is watching them and how they would like to behave when no one is…
Recipients may thank you if you read Barrowbeck by Andrew Michael Hurley before wrapping it up so that you can warn them when to pull a duvet over their head and hide from this chilling place…

Things to get you in the festive mood:
The Wood at Midwinter by Susannah Clarke is a Christmas story and a folkloric fable about a woman, a woodland and a longing for a mystical child.
Village Christmas: And Other Notes on the English Year by Laurie Lee brings together traditions and stories from Lee’s childhood home in the Cotswolds, evoking melancholy and delight.

Things to distract you whilst others are in far too festive a mood, from cryptic crosswords to film from art to photography to architecture:
Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai is a series of connected but discrete episodes forming a novel about art. I have not completed the cryptic crossword which begins the story of an ancient queen… (The first chapter is about a heron, in case anyone is keeping notes.)
Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang is not about love of film but about the one place where gay men could meet and find love in a deeply prejudiced 1980s China.
Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle tells, in fictional form, the story of the painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, a seventeenth century artist who had the temerity to be a woman.
Hold Still by Sally Mann is a fascinating memoir in words and images by the celebrated photographer.
A Short History of British Architecture: From Stonehenge to the Shard by Simon Jenkins examines why Britain looks as it does and why we ought not be entirely happy about some aspects…

Are you in danger of finding yourself sitting next to that person at a Christmas lunch? The weather is a more fruitful topic of conversation than cliché would have you believe:
Funny Weather by Olivia Laing is a collection of short and fascinating essays about art and whether it can change anything, even in this stormy time.
Heavy Weather: Tempestuous Tales of Stranger Climes brings together weird, turbulent writing from Shelley, du Maurier, Melville and others, to be enjoyed inside on windswept nights.
The outlook is Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good while Eley Williams’ writing in this collection is playful, intelligent and far more than occasionally excellent.  

Are you pondering the whole concept of gift giving, your insignificance in the vast span of time, the terrible destructions caused by humanity and the ephemerality of experience? I thought so.
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a hopeful essay about picking an abundant fruit which leads to an argument for a new economy.
Are you Killing Time between mince pies? Or are you in need of a recommendation, a story, love, honesty, humanity?
Then, Tell Me Everything.
We declare that Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel is our favourite book published this year (some suggestion of why here), a surprisingly easy decision to make after the agony of compiling longer lists.

We are here for all your literary needs. If you are ordering online, we strongly recommend placing Last Orders by Monday.

May your weekend lead you to the perfect peach (or the, more seasonal, sublime sprout),
Lizzie

Festive opening hours:
24 December: 10am-3pm
25 and 26 December: closed
27-30 December: open as usual
31 December: 10am-3pm
1 January: closed
2 January: open as usual

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