memoir a woman on the edge of time by jeremy gavron, scribe, hardcover, available now. In 1965, when Jeremy Gavron was four, his mother dropped him off at day care, drove to a friend’s apartment, wrote an inappropriate goodbye note, and gassed herself. at home no one spoke of her again. Gavron, now a 52-year-old father, sets out to resurrect the mother he never knew and, through painstaking reconstruction of his life, to understand her death. the image that emerges is contradictory. on the one hand hannah gavron seems generous, lively, caring, on the other selfish, narcissistic, reckless. In a decade when most women still had to choose between children and a career, she had both, plus a devoted husband. but if her suicide remains a mystery, what is never in doubt is her bitter legacy. half a century on jeremy gavron remains agonizingly “longing”.
short stories cockfosters by helen simpson, cape, hardcover, available now. helen simpson’s sixth collection is haunted by the passage of time. an insomniac-ridden husband watches the luminous digits of his bedside clock as he staggers through a “forest of worry.” A mother bakes the lemon drizzle cake that she has been making for her adult daughter since she was little. two women progress stop after stop on the piccadilly line, their conversation oscillating between trivia and the meaning of life. these are fifty-somethings, for whom exhausted fatherhood has given way to varifocal lenses and glimpses of mortality. it could all be a bit dour, were it not for the humor present in each story. my favorite is “cheap”. an overweight and overpaid lawyer offers professional advice to a grieving young man. little by little we discover which of them we prefer to be. the conclusion is devastating.
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story spqr by mary barba, profile, hardcover, available now. studying roman history is like walking a tightrope, says mary beard. on the one hand, the view is familiar, its forms are written in our verbal and political life; on the other is alien. opening dramatically with Cicero’s speech against Catilina in 63 BC. c., this magisterial history dates back to 735 a. c. and a small malarial settlement on the tiber, then scroll over 600 pages to 212 AD. c. when caracalla declared all free inhabitants of the empire full roman citizens. Throughout, the beard blends conversational tone with a cinematic eye, focusing on vivid detail: Catilina’s great-grandfather going into battle against Hannibal with a hook instead of an arm, then retreating to give the larger picture. We have access to more Roman literature than anyone could master in a lifetime, Beard says. she has tried very well.
essays alive, alive, oh! by diana athill, granta, hardcover, available now. For most of us, the time to stop and look comes only in early childhood and advanced old age. at 97, diana athill spends much of her day reviewing her life, an exercise she finds not regrettable but “quite enjoyable”. In the ten essays collected in this volume, she transports us back to her past with a combination of graceful prose and amusing intelligence. There are scenes of piercing beauty, like the “flame of love” on her mother’s face when she saw Diana bending over her deathbed, and moments when her longevity lends her invaluable wisdom: anyone who remembers medicine before the second world war, he says, considers the sns as “an almost miraculous institution”. even when she recounts setbacks, she shows a flair for satisfaction. she in a final poem she asks: “why want something more wonderful / than it is?”
nonfiction book of the year the pastor’s life by james rebanks, allen lane, hardcover, available now. At age 20, James Rebanks studied history at Magdalen, Oxford. this is remarkable, firstly because he had failed his exams, and secondly, because in this outstanding memoir, dream needles barely get a mention. Herdwick Sheep Farm and Rebank’s Lakeland are “the beginning and the end of everything, and anywhere else feels like nowhere.” In a book that began as a series of tweets, he introduces us to people of few words but great wits, and the changing seasons of their year. It’s a hard, simple existence, and Rebanks’s prose can make other nature writers seem swaggering and sentimental by comparison. But when he looks up from the task at hand, there are flashes of poetry and an enviable ingrained sense of belonging: “My life has a purpose, an earthly and sensible meaning.”
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fiction book of the year■ a spool of blue thread by anne tyler, chatto, hardcover, available now. anne tyler is the laureate of family life. in her 20th novel and, she says she, last, she explores three generations of whitshanks, drawing us into her secrets, always writing with a wry humor that gives sadness and extra pull. when abby, the central matriarchal figure, feels the onset of dementia-“look, sometimes my mind jumps for a few minutes, like a needle on a record”-her four children and her spouses gather at the family home . But Abby, so good at taking care of others, can’t stand to be the focus of pity. her escaping from all of them, she goes out with the dog, suffers a lapse of concentration and finds the end of her. Even in this shocking moment, Tyler’s joy doesn’t leave her. Abby wanted them to play “good vibes” at her funeral? her children can not agree.
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