Andrew O’Hagan's Picks
I am truly captivated by Namanlagh, the debut poetry collection after ten years by the esteemed Tom Paulin. A exquisitely crafted meditation about sickness & recovery, companionship and authorship, conflict & historical neglect, it is a true masterpiece. One finds graceful references toward Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney, while numerous of the poems are filled with a sense of late style & unfinished business.
Political memoirs tend to be terrible, frequently rants filled with excuses & revenge, however Nicola Sturgeon’s Frankly rewrites the genre. She’s a skilled author, for a start, who knows how to explore uncertainty, ambivalence, remorse, affection & kindness, openness to change, and numerous aspects which truly make people. I look forward to her future works.
I discovered a new writer – new to me, though cherished of Norwegians for years. He is the late Dag Solstad and I devoured his book Shyness and Dignity over two sessions. It tells the tale about an English instructor with a quarter-century career who suddenly breaks down while trying to deal with a broken umbrella. He experiences a breakdown and the book traces it in an illuminating, unfussy way, creating something beautiful.
I want to offer more freshly baked goods to my friends. In the near future, I plan to run a coffee morning from a kitchen table laden with fresh pastries, potato bread, artisan loaves and whimsical desserts. I’m hoping to receive guidance on this journey from Helen Goh’s Baking and the Meaning of Life.
Penny's Recommendation
Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions from Akshat Rathi was published in 2023. Every section describes a success story within the economic shift from oil-dependent systems toward renewable energy & environmental fixes, focusing on people who have made a huge difference. There is plenty of information and data I was unaware of previously, even with my intensive reading on this topic.
While some issues are contentious, like CO2 sequestration – and Bill Gates has proved to be less of a climate solutions man than is claimed in the book, due to his fossil fuel investments – overall, the progress outlined provide a tremendous amount of optimism. They show how certain governments have worked alongside businesses , are now heading in the right direction, as the new technology advance rapidly. The scientific explanations are excellent, as well. I was unaware how photovoltaic cells worked, for example.
An Acclaimed Writer's Favorites
Elaine Kraf’s Find Him! is being reissued this fall, so it’s an ideal moment to read it, or revisit her shimmery, patterned The Princess of 72nd Street.
Down Below by Leonora Carrington is a classic. Although not the exact blueprint for my latest novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, but I remember reading it outdoors during the pandemic and realizing: this is exactly what’s occurring within me. Moreover, it includes the closest approximation you can get of an illustration of God’s perineum.
Another major event – Airless Spaces by Shulamith Firestone first appeared over two decades ago, ten years after her mental health condition & retreat from public life. She was an influential leader, already somewhat remote to feminists of my generation, however these vignettes, which deal with her hospitalisations, feel immediate, close, defiant.
Another Reader's Insight
Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter provides an understated & quiet layered read. The story unfolds during the harsh cold of 1962-63 and traces the lives of two pairs who live across from one another across a field of rural England. Closed in in their surroundings, the main characters – Eric & Irene, Rita & Bill – wrestle with their history and present, moving toward a dissolution. It is an exquisitely penned novel that reaffirms Miller among Britain’s most talented authors on human nature.
