Here are some brief comments on books I read since September and put into the Fortnightly newsletter, excluding those I wrote about at length, which can be seen on my general books page.

The Stirrings, by Catherine Taylor,

subtitled 'a Memoir in Northern Time', is her first book. It tells the story of growing up in Northern England in the 70s and 80s, including the period during which the Yorkshire Ripper was terrorising women.

It is a world richly realised, and there is a strong apprehension of life’s fragility. She is hit by a tragic death just as life as an adult is starting to take shape, England is in the turmoil of the Thatcher years, her parents’ marriage falls apart and she is unknowingly harbouring a dangerous medical condition.

The Wren, The Wren, by Anne Enright

Anne Enright is one of Ireland's best novelists, and her latest shows her at the top of her game. Confident, fluent and funny, it tells the story of the relationship between Carmel and her daughter Nell, and also with the generation 'above', including her famous-poet father Phil McDaragh. I flew through it.

When writing about Nell, in her 20s, it seemed to me almost as if Enright was saying to younger writers: look, this is how to do it.

Carmel on Nell: 'And what pleased her was a slightly irritating purity, yoga breaks, surfing weekends, teaching English to refugees. Constant uploads about all this, of course, Nell’s thumbs flying on her screen – as though late capitalism (as she liked to call it) could be defeated by hashtags and eating kimchi.'

Enright's sentences are often delicious. 'She was wearing black tights borrowed from Imelda, whose wardrobe was always funeral-ready.' There's a very funny scene at that funeral.

Here’s a great conversation between the writer and Róisín Ingle on the Women's Podcast

Impossible Creatures, by Katherine Rundell

The ridiculously talented Katherine Rundell wrote my book of 2022, Super-Infinite: the transformations of John Donne.

She's probably still better known as a children's author, and Ms 11 year-old and I have been reading her latest together. Impossible Creatures is gripping, sparkily written, and often funny, and it's likely to be a huge success as the first part in a series.

Mrs S by K. Patrick

Boarding schools in fiction is a niche interest. I recently recommended Alice Winn's début In Memoriam, set in the First World War. I followed that up with another novel about same-sex love set in a boarding school, this time focussing on a relationship between women (a young Australian 'matron' and the Headmaster's wife) in a contemporary school.

Mrs S. stretched my patience a bit. This Guardian review by Joanna Briscoe, while recognising some of the book's strengths, seems to me to hit the nail on the head:

The stylistic choices present some serious problems of pace ...the entire novel is written in short sentences with very little variation in rhythm; the stop-start, staccato style can become relentless ... Atmospheric and daring and at times beautifully written, Mrs S would be more powerful as a novella in which the avoidance of conventional fictional devices in a shorter form would elevate its originality above its own challenges.