Heron Books

Dear Reader,* The hero of Elizabeth McCracken’s novel – it’s not a memoir, definitely not; she is clear and unfailingly witty about that; if you want to debate this it won’t be on her time – has very short and very wide feet. She is a twin, she is short, has demanding hair with great character, cannot spell or navigate or whistle and insists that things discovered in her fridge with a use-by date several years ago were bought just the other day. She liked to sing but could not (tunefully). She loved goats and they her. She was admired and loved by those she worked with and she delighted…

As someone who can get a cardigan caught on the smoothest surface and only needs to be in the same postcode as a glass of red wine to find a stain on my, once white, dress I read Claire Wilcox’s book in awe. She knows how to handle everything with care, from lace to centuries-old costumes to glass buttons to causes for nostalgia or grief. Patch Work is about Wilcox’s life as a curator at the V&A, the jobs that led her there, her study of art and photography, her children, her parents and many unnamed friends and loves who have stitched her together. The book is hard to describe…

Last week, Little Dorrit. This week, Little Dorrit. I am still going. It is still fantastic. I don’t want it to end. Notwithstanding the conversation I had with a gentleman yesterday who insisted that I read Our Mutual Friend immediately. I’m going to need reinforced bookshelves. And more hours in the day. This seems to be a year of epic, bicep-strengthening reads. Harry won’t stop talking about Shōgun, people keep entering on horseback raving about Lonesome Dove, I have it on good authority that one person in the Southwest has actually finished The Books of Jacob and the veneration of The Count of Monte Cristo (newsletters passim) continues apace. Mysteriously…

Armando Iannucci has ruined my reading plans. Twice in as many days I heard him speaking about Little Dorrit, on his programme Strong Message Here and then at an event at St George’s. I had not read it. I do not need telling three times. Sorry, piles of books downgraded from ‘opening imminently’ to ‘please await further notice’. Sorry, rickety bedside table, now supporting another tome. My new object of settling in with Dickens under a duvet was slightly derailed when I reached the end of page 100, began the next and struggled to grasp its sense. I read the same sentence several times, feeling silly. Then I realised that…

Mark Haddon grew up in 1960s Northampton, a time of ‘cardiganed grandmothers eating roadside picnics beside Morris Minors,’ Hillman Imps, Ford Capris, budgerigars, tins of Watneys Party Seven, sheets of Letraset and chocolate cigarettes. Images of such things may evoke a kind of longing but not a wish to go back or a real nostalgia, a word that contains within it an idea of homecoming. The household in which he grew up is not a place for which he yearns. His parents wanted the appearance of a ‘normal’ family but were largely uninterested in their children, devoid of love and sometimes cruel. Yet Leaving Home is a book full of…

Steeped in books as I am every day, reading poetry collections, novels, art books, histories, essays and the deliciously uncategorisable, meeting the authors, comedians, composers and painters who wander in, not to mention the many heron photographers who inevitably come in to land, the creativity is almost overwhelming. From one box alone this week we unpacked a book-length poem about a twelve-hour shift in a plastic factory (superb), a picture book showing how a moment of frustration can result in a kick being passed around the world, affecting everyone from postmen to presidents to nuns (outrageous, new favourite) and a novel about a composer and saxophonist working together on a…

Some months ago I wrote to you of Gliff, Ali Smith’s novel about two siblings and a horse, about home and safety – who is entitled to it and who not. The novel is about much more besides, everything really, from family relationships to children enslaved in dangerous factories, to prejudice and poverty, from the games one can play with language to the hatred that can be created from its misuse. Within its leaves, already bursting with tales, and ponytails, Smith said, lay another story. Having driven myself to quiet distraction in the attempt to discover and solve the clues in Gliff (futile: I can barely complete a crossword), its…

The middle section of Sean O’Brien’s poetry collection, The Bonfire Party, is dedicated to Jules Maigret. Yes, that Maigret. Fictional creation of Georges Simenon, ageless inspector, pipe-smoker, bearer of a greatcoat and great humanity upon his broad shoulders. The poems are full of the canals, doorways, trains and atmosphere of the novels. They explore the resolution that each book offers, ostensibly, though there is more to the picture of the Inspector and Madame sitting together peacefully at the end of the day, a crime solved, a drink poured. O’Brien writes: The iron certainty that while the truth will out – sing up, my friends, we are the policemen’s choir –…

Writers, shy, aspiring, self-proclaimed or oft-published, should, I think, all read The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. Her account and analysis of writing, much of which includes recognising what must be discarded (usually the parts one considered best), is highly intelligent. It is a pleasure to learn from her: she brooks no nonsense – if you want to write you need to love sentences and you need to get on with writing them – while acknowledging the absurdity of choosing to lock yourself in a room, block the window and try to solve a problem of your own creation. In Dillard’s case, aided by cigarettes, coffee and chocolate, a diet…

When the writer and publisher Anuradha Roy and her partner were visiting Ranikhet, a town in northern India, they had heard stories of an astonishing view of the high Himalaya. The sort that stops you in your tracks, stays with you forever and takes on magical qualities. After days of drizzle spent in a town that hardly emerged from mist, they were sceptical. The sublime prospect was a myth. Not that there weren’t many other delights on this trip, held by the bountiful forests and the light washing the hills. Then, ‘early one morning we awoke to long ribbons of sunlight streaming in through the trees in the east… In…