Heroes, Heroines and Herons – 30/11/2024

We all have our icons. Judging by the current bestseller lists in the UK, among their number are a beloved comedian always clad in an enviable range of knitwear, a beloved comedian who is not very good at fishing but who holds heartwarming conversations while being not very good at fishing, a beloved dog who accompanies the comedian who holds heartwarming conversations while being not very good at fishing and Cher.

Our icons – and our bestseller lists – here at Heron Books look a little different. Miranda Hart and Bob Mortimer may be delightfully funny but have you seen the dark humour and deceptive illustrations in this new edition of Stevie Smith’s poetry? Ted the Dog may be devoted but can his friendship begin to match that of Frog and Toad? Cher may be a musical genius but have you heard the Animal Orchestra playing Vivaldi? (Tip for the tired parent: you can remove the batteries.)

Giants of literature: Jon Fosse, Lore Segal and Yuri Herrera

Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse: Olai sits where he is instructed by the midwife as his wife gives birth to their son. Johannes. They’ll call him Johannes. After Olai’s father. Johannes arrives and Olai strokes his soft cheek. And then, Johannes is old and aching and a widower and only one of his children visits him and every day is the same. Except this one.
How quickly it all passes and how much can be said in so few words.

An Absence of Cousins by Lore Segal:
“Una is a chilly English schoolgirl who came to America and caught the Sixties.” Eliza says to Ilka, their new colleague who has accepted a teaching post at Concordance Institute. Ilka finds herself a refugee for a second time and is in search of more than friends whilst there: she wants elective cousins.
“Why isn’t that a good thing for a chilly English girl to catch?” Ilka asks.
“Because she had to work so hard at it. Have you ever seen a hedonist with gritted teeth?”
This series of connected short stories by the Austrian-American writer, who died a few weeks after the publication of this edition at the age of 96, asks why people are drawn to one another, how one becomes close with new acquaintances or identifies who to avoid and how to deliver killer lines in front of the Head of Department. Or a Nobel laureate. Also: if the dog is barking at the dumb waiter, check to see what’s inside.

Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera: Benito Juárez was President of Mexico from 1858-1872 but, before then, he was imprisoned and then exiled when a political enemy came to power. For eighteen months of that exile, he lived in New Orleans. His otherwise detailed autobiography says nothing of that time. What happened? Yuri Herrera imagines the answer. Is it verifiable? No. Is there music? Yes. Plotting? Yes. Coffee? Absolutely.

Poets deserving paeans: Stevie Smith, Mosab Abu Toha and Ovid

• Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith: this collection is pocket-sized so that you can keep it on your person at all times. Whether you are waving or drowning or perhaps aren’t sure, it’s good to have a frog prince, an old ghost and a cry for love on hand.  
• Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha: if it has always been like this, is this ordinary life? In Gaza, the poet’s house is bombed, the library he built is destroyed and his children are terrified. In harsh, urgent tones, he describes the tragedy and absurdity he and his family suffer every day.
• Bone Into Stone by Jhumpa Lahiri: Jhumpa Lahiri and Yelena Baraz have been collaborating on a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for years. In this collection of short essays reflecting on that epic and the work of translation, Lahiri focuses on the transformations of stone and of language. The pamphlet is illustrated by Jamie Nares, adding depth and movement to each page. If you want your reading to change you, to feel like touching a Bernini and hearing Monteverdi, this is the one.

The famous persons whose biographies I do want to read (with no disrespect to Ted the Dog): four writers, an artist and a messiah’s conduit

Biographies of four writers I deeply admire have been published recently and I hardly know where to start:

• In Blythe Spirit, Ian Collins depicts the life of the prolific writer Ronald Blythe, a life lived partly in an idyllic English countryside and partly in an imagined version of it, full of characters, real and imagined, of silliness and of love for Thomas Hardy.
• In the Future of Yesterday by Rüdiger Görner offers a picture of Stefan Zweig focussing on his life in the UK, US and Brazil after he was forced to leave Germany in the 1930s, as well as drawing on Zweig’s fiction and non-fiction to examine his changing political attitudes.
• Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik… When Joan Didion died, I tried to buy her Le Creuset pans at auction. Thankfully other people wanted them more and I turned to mourning in the usual way: dressing like her, reading her books behind big sunglasses and composing diary entries in (a terrible approximation of) her style. I love her writing. I love Eve Babitz’s writing. I love their rivalry. I’m so excited to find out about the two of them together through Anolik’s examination of a box of letters found in Babitz’s wardrobe… I advise turning off your phone whilst reading so that you aren’t tempted to bid on Joan Didion’s last cigarette stub. 

Pauline Boty: British Pop Art’s Sole Sister by Marc Kristal: this is what you buy for the Ali-Smith-aficionado-and-bookseller-who-already-has-a-copy-of-Didion-&-Babitz-because-she-couldn’t-wait-until-Christmas-sorry. A luscious coffee table book about the iconic artist, a founder of the British Pop Art movement and a hedonist whose teeth were certainly not gritted… 

Heron Books is and always will be a safe Christmas music-free zone unless recommending Every Valley by Charles King counts. This is the story of how Handel’s Messiah was written and the people who shaped it. Speakers turned up to 11, please. Speakers off if anyone even mentions Wham!

Children’s books to treasure: from Dylan Thomas to Toni Morrison to Lily Murray

Favourite local publisher Read & Co have produced a gorgeous edition of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Memories of a Christmas in Wales. I’m not Welsh, I have never experienced a white Christmas by the two-tongued sea, I don’t know a Mrs Prothero and no one ever gave me a tram-conductor’s cap. Yet I am nostalgic for all of it.

A Toni Morrison Treasury brings together the eight children’s books which she wrote with her son, Slade (not that one) including retellings of Aesop’s Fables and stories celebrating the relationship between three children and their brilliant grandmother and the love of libraries.  

A Dragon Called Spark by Lily Murray (author of perennial favourite, A Dress with Pockets) is set during Hannukah, when one can wish for a miracle. Though Eva has moved house and everything is strange, she doesn’t need a miracle for herself. She is happy being with her best friend, a tiny dragon. But perhaps Spark does need a friend?

May your weekend bring you light, a spark in whatever form you need it,
Lizzie

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