Batten Down the Herons – 20/07/2024

As I begin to write, the sun is glittering through the glass roof of The Clifton Arcade. Books with sunflower yellow covers must be moved inside for protection. By the time I send this, the forecast suggests we’ll be enjoying thundery showers.

The national picture is warning of gales. Correction: warning of Gail’s. Gail’s Bakery can’t function thanks to the Microsoft/Crowdstrike kerfuffle. Remember where you were when Radio 4 accidentally failed to broadcast the Shipping Forecast? (30^th May 2014, M’Lud.) Some think this is bigger. I suggest veering west: the independent bakeries and coffee shops of Clifton are operating at full force. Fortunately, reading is an all-weather activity. And physical books are unaffected by global IT outages; they don’t even require Fastnet.

Yes, if you were wondering, I did love Eley Williams’ latest short story collection, Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good. In the title story the reader of the Shipping Forecast sails away from the strict format and addresses their partner, with whom they earlier had a fight, a severe squall in fact. All the stories are full of quiet wit, intimate portraits of relationships and the joy of toying with language and expectation. Verdict: consistently excellent. Imminent reading required.

Reading this week has taken me from the hottest to the coldest climates, through blustery showers, violent storms, winds, fog, icing…
Belay the painter while I offer the general synopses at 0700:

Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi: following their breakup, Kalu drives Aima to the airport. She plans to leave New Lagos for London; he fails to beg for her to stay. Yet she changes her mind about going, calls a friend and they plan a wild night out. Kalu too has a friend ready to offer all manner of curative activities and substances. Meanwhile two people on the other side of town prepare for their own indulgent night. Forecast: characters to collide, becoming cyclonic, rough or very rough. Verdict: brutal, feverish, exposing.

Yorùbá Boy Running by Biyi Bándélé: in 1823 in Òsogùn, Nigeria, Àjàyí wakes from a dream in which he saw the healer god, Ọ̀sanyìn. He rushes to tell his mother who needs help in interpreting the god’s behaviour and sends him on an errand for kola nuts. One moment Àjàyí is contemplating the gods and being mocked by his sister, the next Malian slave traders arrive and tear the village apart. Verdict: epic, heroic, hurricane force 12 or more.

Black Girl From Pyongyang by Monica Macías: daughter of Equatorial Guinea’s first president and adoptive daughter of Kim Il Sung, Monica Macías’ memoir, is extraordinary. Shortly after she was sent to North Korea at age seven to study, her father was assassinated. Her mother returned to Equatorial Guinea to protect her eldest son without explaining her departure. Macías tells the story of her education, first her formal education in North Korea and then the one on which she has embarked for decades to understand her roots, relearn the languages of her family, investigate whether her father was corrupt and a murderer and to challenge those who claim insight into North Korea without basis.
Verdict: a storm finding its identity, wild disguised as moderate. Certainly a suggestion for a future non-fiction book group, to which you are warmly invited. This month, that group is reading the superb Black Boy by Richard Wright. Chance of fires: good, rising to certain.

Private Revolutions by Yuan Yang: Yuan Yang was born in China in 1990 and lived with her grandparents in a Communist work unit until her parents moved her to London. While she grew up abroad, returning for summer visits in what seemed an unchanging rural landscape, a social and economic revolution was occurring. Yang investigates this through the personal revolutions of four idealistic women who did grow up in the midst of these changes. Verdict: vast waves overturning assumptions; turbulent, becoming boisterous.

Strange Husbandry by Lorcán Black: a poetry collection that reaches into the depths of history and mythology and pulls their characters into a modern world beset by pandemics, wars and terror attacks. Verdict: take me to Cape Wrath; enraged, ardent.

Dreaming the Bear by Mimi Thebo: Darcy’s father is conducting research in Yellowstone which has uprooted the whole family from London to an icy, Wifi-intermittent-at-best landscape, where a short walk takes hours on snowshoes, the power is liable to go out and grizzly bears come a little too close to the front door. Verdict: solid icing; visibility poor, occasionally dire; moderate bears.

Once Upon A Giraffe by Ken Wilson-Max and Tumi K. Steyn: part of a beautifully illustrated series of picture books inspired by traditional African animal stories, find out why giraffes developed such long necks. Verdict: becoming longer.

Not the End of the World by Talya Baldwin: an adventure to St Kilda to meet the birds and people living there. And their barnacles. Forecast: Vikings. Verdict: may be the edge of the world, showers likely.

If you aren’t a Radio 4 listener/Shipping Forecast enthusiast, I can only apologise. You may sit this one out while others Mull it over on this Fair Isle.

May your weekend be smooth sailing,
Lizzie

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