The Gathering #

by Anne Enright
4.5 ⭐️

challenging; dark; emotional; reflective; sad; medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

What a splendid book. The adult siblings of a large family are brought back under the same Dublin roof for the funeral of one of the younger members, a brother, Liam. As the closest sister travels to Brighton to repatriate her brother's body, the novel mostly tells the story about the family's early life and the tradgedies that drove Liam to take his life.

It's a beautiful and painful story told in beautiful and unflinching language. I really enjoyed this book.

Open Water #

by Caleb Azumah Nelson
4.25 ⭐️

adventurous; challenging; dark; emotional; informative; mysterious; reflective; sad; tense; slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

This is a debut novel — astonishing.

It's a love story for modernity, the tale of two people trying to make a mark on the world and maybe, possibly falling in love, finding it hard to admit it to each other let alone themselves, until they are pulled apart by a life and a history that they can't escape. The language is fabulous. The descriptions of the world these characters live in is vivid without being laboured. It's great.

This is a fabulous debut novel, and I really look forward to reading more by Caleb Azumah Nelson in the future.

Buddenbrooks #

(audiobook)

by Thomas Mann
with David Rintoul (Narrator), John E. Woods (Translator)
4 ⭐️

emotional; informative; mysterious; reflective; sad; slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

I've wanted to read something by Thomas Mann for a while, with The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus being high on the list. But I'm writing a family saga novel and Buddenbrooks seemed to be a good book to start with.

It's the story of a 'great' German merchant family in decline across four generations and the decades of the 19th Century. The slow fall is all of their own doing, the bad decisions they make, the paths they choose to take (or not take), and they bring their descent on themselves, from genteel stability to a fragile uncertainty.

I enjoyed the story a lot, though the language and narrative style felt quite dated, with the author taking a long time to say things that might be really quite simple and straightforward. I found the narration a little samey at times, too, the cadence of sentences too similar too often.

Raptor: A Journey Through Birds #

(audiobook)

by James Macdonald Lockhart
with Dugald Bruce Lockhart (Narrator)
3.75 ⭐️

adventurous; informative; inspiring; medium-paced

I have a real love for birds of prey, raptors, and really enjoyed this book. It's both a story of the raptors found in Britain and a journeythrough the land they inhabit, from Orkney to Cornwall. Raptor is written in 15 chapters, one for each of Britain's birds of prey. The author's big idea, he admits, in his planning, hunkered over maps and books, was to travel to 15 different parts of the country in search of each bird. His plan quickly unravelled, though, when confronted with the birds' reality, that they inhabit each other's worlds, crossing over the same land and sky, sometimes even creating the space for each other. When looking for Goshawks he find Merlin, and soon there are Hen Harriers, too. And so on.

The book is also a pilgrimage of sorts in the footsteps of William MacGillivray, a 19th Century naturalist famous for walking from Aberdeen to London just to visit the British Museum's natural history section. Both MacGillivray and Lockhart were gifted writers and Raptor is a really good book, except that it feels like it's two books in one and the two strands — the journey through Britain to find raptors in their homes, and the journey in the footsteps of MacGillivray — never truly feel united. I would have enjoyed reading two books just as much as the one, and maybe even more.