A Year Of Reading: June 2023

I really felt as though I have got my reading mojo back this month. I made a conscious effort to absorb myself in the literature I was reading, got into the habit of reading on my morning and evening commutes again (something I picked up when I was reading A Little Life but that I let slip throughout April and May), and overall just felt much more invested in what I was reading.

Swing Time, Zadie Smith

In this novel we begin in north-west London and meet an unnamed protagonist and her best friend Tracy, who share a love for dancing. As we travel through their childhoods, our protagonist becomes absorbed in her friendship to Tracy, living in her shadow until, many years later, Tracy is replaced by the protagonist's new boss, Aimee, who unleashes a whole new world for her. It is not long, however, before everything comes crashing down.

Though not rivalling my all-the favourite Smith novel, NW, I did really enjoy this book. I was hooked from the start - why is our main character hiding in shame? Smith crafts a fantastic opener, but also keeps us gripped throughout as we move through the protagonist's life and see how she interacts with Tracy, her work colleagues, and her parents. There are really interesting motifs too, such as time, and conversations around whether we change, if time changes us, can time change us. Do people change us?

I would say this is the most accessible of Smith's novels I have read so far, and it is a great place to begin if you are interested in reading Smith.

'A truth was being revealed to me: that I had always tried to attach myself to the light of other people, that I had never had any light of my own. I experienced myself as a kind of shadow.'

The Natural Health Service: How Nature Can Mend Your Mind, Isabel Hardman

In 2016, Isabel Hardman's mind 'stopped working', and severe depression and anxiety took over. She cites her love of exercise (running, cold water swimming), nature and the outdoors as helping her overcome the mental health challenges she continues to face. Talking honestly about her own personal experience as well as interviewing other sufferers of mental ill health and experts, and diving into significant research, Hardman covers the breadth and depth of how nature and exercise can help us fight mental illness.

The introduction promises that the activities focused upon in this book are largely free, which was really heartwarming, but it made me wonder instantly about commercial value of mental health and how accessible help, therapies, treatment etc. are if there is a cost.

I especially loved the running chapter, as it resonated with the connection I have made between mental health and running. It was really nice to hear that others’ have found solace in running and the fact that a) the concentration required to run is what helps with taking ourselves out of our minds, and b) that being in nature whilst running helps take our minds off the pain of the activity as we can gravitate our attention towards other things. The credit given to parkrun was also warming, as it was the thing that made me fall in love with running too.

But there were also many discussions surrounding other activities in this book that were new to me. I learnt that cold water swimming, for example, can increase our tolerance to stress. I also learnt about the wonder of assistant dogs, and the importance of greening the built and urban environment.

And I also learnt how what Hardman terms the natural health service has been sidelined. It was shocking to hear that words such as acorn in the children’s dictionary have been replaced by words like broadband. I already loved the great outdoors before listening to this book, but Hardman ignited a new appreciation for what nature can do for our health, how precious it is, and the pressing need to ensure future generations can appreciate its magic too.

Overall, I really loved this book and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about how nature, the outdoors and physical activity can support our mental wellbeing. Thank you to Hardman for a well-researched, honest book.

‘But while the British National Health Service is oversubscribed and struggling to balance its books, the Natural Health Service's waiting rooms are often empty. Too few of us see nature as essential to our lives, whether we are healthy or in need of a spell on a ward. Too few of us realise that it can form an important part of our therapy when we are unwell, or seriously enhance our wellbeing if we are not. We don’t see the right to green spaces as being fundamental in the same as we do proximity to a good emergency department.’

Mouth Full Of Blood, Toni Morrison

In this collection of essays, thoughts, and speeches, Morrison gives us her wisdom on topics including race, gender, globalisation, American history, politics, the press, art, writing and more.

The parts that were most interesting to me were the parts that talked about her writing process and intentions, and her conversations about her own books. As someone who has read, loved, studied and critiqued her books, and has read a lot of other peoples views and ideas about her books, it was really fascinating to hear it come the author herself, and someone so regarded and accomplished as Morrison. I have to be honest, I did feel slightly overwhelmed by some of these essays, but that is not a reflection on Morrison and instead my own ability to understand complex topics and arguments.

'We go to art sometimes for safety, for a haven of order, serenity; for recognizable, even traditional beauty; for anticipation with certainty that the art form will take us past our mundane selves into a deepness where we also reside. We go, sometimes, to art for danger; to be riveted by experiencing the strange, by understanding suddenly how uncanny the familiar really is. We go to be urged, shaken into reassessing thoughts we have taken for granted; to learn other ways of seeing, hearing. To be excited. Stirred. Disturbed.'

Three Sisters, Heather Morris

The final instalment in The Tattooist of Auschwitz trilogy, Three Sisters is a fictionalised account of three siblings' experiences in Auschwitz-Birkenau. When Livia is ordered to Auschwitz, Cibi goes with her out of her commitment to a promise they made their father that they would always protect one another. Magda, and the sisters' mother and grandfather are safe at home for a time, but are too eventually captured and also taken to the concentration camp. During the pain, hardship and trauma, it is love and strength that carries the sisters forward. This is their story.

I knew this would be a heartbreaking book, having read several other Holocaust memoirs and novels including the other books in Morris' trilogy. But no matter how many survivors' stories I read, I am never able to comprehend the unbelievable suffering so many innocent people faced as a result of the Nazi's unforgivable actions throughout the reign of their regime. But, there is a hopeful message to take from this book, as from Morris' previous two books about Lale and Cilka: that endurance, compassion, strength, and love can bring us through even the most outrageously harrowing and terrifying of experiences. It is an honour to have read the story of Cibi, Magda and Livia.

'Is that it? she thinks. They went through all that horror, and now they're just being sent home, on a bus, as if nothing had happened? Rage spikes her body. Who is going to say sorry? Who is going to atone for their suffering, the senseless deaths?

Feel Free, Zadie Smith

Split into five sections--In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free-- Smith poses important questions in these essays about the Social Network, libraries, politics, literature, Hanif Kureishi, and more.

Unfortunately, I felt this was a bit of a slog. I did find some of the essays quite bewildering and too long, but that is more because I was not gripped by the topic rather than Smith's failure. Like with Morrison's book, I enjoyed hearing about Smith's writing process the most, especially her mediations on the first person: 'But the moment I starting writing in the first person myself I realized how wrong I'd been. I saw how this form utilizes something so fundamental, which experience every day talking to our children and partners and friends and enemies, overhearing the conversations of others, in almost all our human interactions: the latent power of the anecdote, of testimony, of confession, of witness. Once upon a time there lived is The most basic example of the third-person set-up, but how much work one has to do to convince your reader of its reality! She will have so many questions.'

A small point for the editor: I would like to have known where/when these essays/speeches were first delivered (if relevant), as was cited in Morrison's book, for a window of context.

'When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it's a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned.'