How quickly things change. I don’t think anyone needs any pontificating from me about how to find the silver lining in this particular cloud - that doesn’t sit well at all with me. And with my magazine journalist hat on, I have a word for the PRs who are using this time of global crisis to hawk their products: just STOP. Sales of standing desks and hand cream will go up anyway, no need to be gross about it.
Instead, let me suggest journalling to quiet an anxious mind. This is a beautiful and detailed explanation of the why and the how-to from memoirist Louisa Deasey.
And I will say I hope this enforced break from normal life enables us to see where we are going wrong - in our attitude to the environment, in our relentless productivity, in our lack of provision for the poor and failure to recognise the truly valuable members of society - and perhaps start to fix it.
I personally plan to do my bit by being MUCH less productive, going forward, and hanging out here with a book more often…
What I’m reading
Or: what I’m watching. I was blown away by this extraordinary experience of connecting with nature naked and on TV (watch it till the end - she is very interesting about how her attitude to nature completely changed).
What I’m listening to: the podcast Is This Working is consistently brilliant, and the hosts just recorded a special episode on working from home that’s chock-full of good advice. Like them, I’m a working-from-home veteran and I echo their advice to go easy on yourself, if you’re new to it. And I’m particularly fond of the suggestion that you shouldn’t get dressed if you don’t fancy it. I am currently rocking a toddler vibe in a mini dungaree dress and stripy pyjama top, and honestly, I got just as much done today as I do when I’m in my chic-est Ghost effort.
I did read this lovely review of two bibliomemoirs in the Sydney Review of Books, and now have both the books on my to-read list. The genre of bibliomemoir (a memoir about how the books the author has read have affected her life) is a favourite of mine and these two sounds like brilliant examples.
The wonderful author Olivia Laing, who wrote a book called The Lonely City that’s very much worth your time, has a piece in the New York Times about quarantine loneliness that’s rather beautiful.
And I’m very keen to read Julia Baird’s new one, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder And Things That Sustain You When The World Goes Dark. It’s out next week and it couldn’t be more timely, from the sound of it.
What you should read
Friends often ask me what books to read, and after laboriously typing out a list the other day in a WhatsApp group, I thought others might benefit from my expertise.
So, after a quick survey of my bookshelves and my Kindle, these are my suggestions for escapist books to while away isolation. Criteria: nothing too sad, frightening or tense; nothing that touches on illness or other current crises; totally absorbing. Oh, and for nature books, check out any of my previous newsletters: you can read the whole lot here.
FICTION
Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea. I wrote a whole review of it here.
Heather Rose, The Museum of Modern Love. Inspired by the performance artist Marina Abramovich, this weaves together the stories of those compelled to observe one of her famous artworks. It’s truly lovely and made me cry.
Ann Patchett has a new one out, The Dutch House, which is excellent, but I’ve loved everything I’ve read of hers.
Barbara Kingsolver: Flight Behaviour and Prodigal Summer are my favourites, with their beautifully evoked natural settings of Appalachia and Mexico respectively.
Madeleine St John’s The Women in Black was recently made into a good film, renamed Ladies in Black. It tells the tale of young Lisa, a new salesgirl at F. G. Goodes department store in 1950s Sydney.
One of my favourite ever books is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (who wrote 101 Dalmatians). It’s the diary of Cassandra, a teenage girl in 1940s Britain. She lives in a decrepit castle with her brilliant but blocked novelist father, beautiful but frustrated sister Rose, and lovely but distracted (and frequently nude) stepmother Topaz. It too was made into a film that I actually liked - phew.
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively won the Booker in 1987 and is told by an old lady recalling her experiences in wartime Egypt.
Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April takes us to 1920s Italy and is “a sun-washed fairytale”, according to one review. Clue’s in the name: it’s truly enchanting.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford. Easy reading considering it was written in 1851, and very soothing.
Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). A stone-cold comedy classic of boating mishaps in the 1880s.
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and The Book of Dust trilogy. Only the first two books of The Book of Dust are out yet, and I eagerly await the third in this prequel to the justly famous HDM books.
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy is the surprisingly sexually frank and so, SO funny story of Sally Jay Gorce, who gads about Paris in the 1950s having affairs all over the shop.
NON-FICTION
As mentioned above, Olivia Laing is a wonderful writer, and To the River is one of the very few books I truly wish I had written. Laing walks the length of the River Ouse in Sussex, from source to sea, and weaves in the story of Virginia Woolf (who suicided in the river during a depressive episode). The River Ouse is in my home county of Sussex and much of the countryside Laing writes about is familiar to me, but you don’t need that to love this book.
Any of Claire Tomalin’s biographies of literary characters (I particularly love her Jane Austen).
In A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor recollected a journey on foot to Constantinople (now Istanbul) that he had taken as a young man in the 1930s, before war changed Europe forever. His sequel, Between the Woods and the Water, was as well received as the first book, but, although he tinkered at it for decades, he never completed the third in the planned trilogy. It was eventually published in its unfinished state as The Broken Road after his death. He also wrote a perfect little book I regularly return to, about his time spent in monasteries: A Time To Keep Silence.
Somewhat along the same lines, Pico Iyer’s The Art of Stillness is about just that - he follows people who have removed themselves from the everyday bustle to meditate or find stillness in other ways. Bit on the nose, maybe? Sorry.
As its name suggests, Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga by Sylvain Tesson is about a year the author spent alone by Lake Baikal, in Siberia. He’s slightly pretentious but the experience is quite something.
Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer by Richard Holmes is a lovely blend of memoir and biography.
I could keep doing this for hours, but can’t imagine anyone would ever read it. But please know this: there is a book for every mood and circumstance; and there is endless consolation in books. The same can be said of the natural world. Both are the perfect refuge in times of crisis.
See you in two weeks!