Heron Books

Upon my word, how I love a good argument. And a good list. One causing several of the other is ideal. Pour me a drink and let’s get stuck in. The Guardian’s ‘100 Best Novels of All Time’ (I think they appreciate the silliness of the title, having published the same one with different content in the past) has caused all sorts of rage and discussion from guessing what will come first*, to arguments about the order of the Austens (P&P>Emma>Persuasion>Mansfield Park, apparently, with S&S and Northanger Abbey failing to make the cut. Of course placing not one, not two, not three, but four times on the list is quite…

In Dear Historian by Joff Winterhart, the academic Margaret Crypt is courted by a television production company, Giant Past, run by the self-obsessed if charismatic ‘personality’/historian Allan Hands. Margaret thinks the work of a historian involves removing oneself as much as possible, being secondary to one’s subject. Allan, who likes dressing in period costume and crass puns, disagrees: his role is central. When she begins speaking about her interests, Margaret transforms from a nervous, barely noticeable elderly woman into an enchanting and compelling figure of erudition. Television gold, one young producer thinks. Dear Historian explores their relationship with tenderness and humour (and much else which we look forward to discussing…

Upon my word, this has been a mighty week in publishing.* Four books were published this week which I think will stand the test of time. (Not necessarily only four but I am yet to read Asterix in Lusitania, Room For Us All by Lu Fraser, or, um, the new thriller from partners in crime James Patterson and Bill Clinton.)** The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout is a short novel about a few characters in a small community. Artie is a teacher who welcomes each new class by asking the students to write about themselves. He wants to know them. Recently students have written of being scared. It…

I am going to write about Ben Lerner, Val McDermid and lyrical ballads in the same newsletter. Try and stop me. I’m changing directions like a bat in high rafters – with rapidity, great aplomb and no little nod to the gothic, I’m sure. Transcription by Ben Lerner is as good as my fellow bookseller kept saying (cf. newsletter previous). It is told in three parts, the first in which a man breaks his phone on the way to interview his mentor, Thomas, a recondite and charismatic academic, and thus only pretends to record the encounter which will form Thomas’s last public testament, the second in which his entertaining story…

There are myriad exciting new books out. My shelves and I are overwhelmed. Harry keeps pointing at Transcription by Ben Lerner and announcing, ‘That’s how to write.’ I suspect from her previous books that when I do read The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley I will repeatedly say the same about it. I’ve only had the chance to read the first story in the new collection by Colm Tóibín, The News from Dublin, but this too seems to give that pure pleasure of really excellent writing. But I am, as I say, overwhelmed. A pile of art books awaits me: on how the seasons shaped Constable’s paintings; on two sisters…

On returning to Finsbury Park from postings with the RAF in Egypt, Kenya and Cyprus, a young man, short of cash, pawned his Rolleicord camera for £5. He had bought it with his life savings in Aden, Yemen, ‘one of those twin reflex cameras that you hold up to your chest and look down into’ with no knowledge of such a camera being used by the great photographers Bill Brandt and Brassaï. ‘What happened to that lovely camera?’ his mother asked. She immediately bought it back for him. Thus was Don McCullin armed when he came across his old acquaintances, The Guvnors, still hanging round in greasy-spoons, still strutting at…

The world has gone crooked and turned upside down. Perhaps so many times in history and in my lifetime that one wonders: how do we recognise the right way up? How does love endure? How does family? At the beginning of Crooked Cross, devoted brother and sister, Helmy and Lexa, decorate the Christmas tree with candles and an angel, itself a little crooked from years of use. Their young cousins are held back from bursting through the door by Lexa’s fiancé, Moritz. Finally, they are allowed in. There are songs and games. The families hold each other and laugh in the peaceful glow. Lexa’s brother Erich returns unexpectedly to complete…

Vernice and Annie are getting out. Vernice is bound for college in Atlanta – all very proper and with the approbation of the good people of Honeysuckle, Louisiana. Annie for Memphis, without a goodbye and as fast as her possibly-boyfriend’s erratic car will allow. Born in 1941 within days of each other, they have been tied together ever since. Vernice’s mother was killed when she was a few months old. Annie’s left. The former was raised by Aunt Irene, her own breakout thus curtailed, the latter by her grandmother, a woman never able to escape the maternal role as her own children leave behind theirs. They are getting out separately…

It has been a slick week in books. At Accidental Graphic Novel/Memoir Club we discussed Ducks, Kate Beaton’s depiction of two years in the Canadian oil sands. I have been reading Blood Will Flow, Alex Perry’s investigation into a vast oil and gas compound in Mozambique and the terrorist attack there in March 2021, as well as travelling to Patagonia with María Sonia Cristoff through her book, False Calm, which reports on the lives of those left behind after the oil boom in unromantic desolation. All have been fascinating, if dark. Please find antidotes below. In Ducks, Kate Beaton struggles with the knowledge that she must leave her home on…

Inspired by Natalia Shaloshvili’s Bear Worries, in which Bear, known to and beloved by us already from her previous book, Bear, (it’s about a bear) is enjoying a cookie until it occurs to him that it might be the last cookie, I had resolved to write this week of anxieties, concerns, the things that keep us up at night munching cookies whilst worrying about running out of cookies. I was going to write of: Work away days and team building trips: Daunt have just published two new editions of Beryl Bainbridge’s novels, with more planned, and The Bottle Factory Outing centres on the plans for the Italian men and the…