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Book Reviews

Staff Recommendations July 2025

 

What We’re Reading

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier (Borough Press, £9.99)

We are in Venice (500 years before Bezos despoiled the place) and meet a family of glassmakers on Murano, just across the lagoon. The book features the same set of characters, ageing slowly, but modern to the age of each section of the book which skips down the centuries. From medieval plague to Covid and steps in between. Not a Doctor Who or a time slip but the same people reacting to their times, with their same personalities and family and friendship networks. The industry changes, there are love affairs and disasters, and Venice eventually becomes joined to terrafirma to become the place we know, where you can still buy Murano glass, though primarily tourist tat rather than the craftwork of before. We learn a lot about glassmaking, and a little Venetian as we go along. One neat character is an initially enslaved gondolier, drawn from a Carpaccio painting from the Renaissance. These days, I imagine you would need to be Bezos to afford a gondola, but they were the standard mode of travel around the city and the watery suburbs. A great summer read.

Ross

How To Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks (Penguin £10.99)
David Brooks’ is a journalist who I think falls somewhere between social scientist and moral philosopher, and within two books has quickly become one of my favourite writers. In How to Know a Person, he offers a thoughtful exploration of the crucial (and sadly often lacking) skill of truly seeing and understanding others. Beyond superficial interactions, Brooks looks at the art of deep listening, asking real and meaningful questions, and the task of recognising the unique inner lives of individuals. The book provides plenty of raw but honest home truths, valuable insights and practical guidance for fostering more genuine connections out in our fragmented world and closer to home. A worthy follow up to The Second Mountain, his inquiry into living a moral life.

Carl

Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison (Serpent’s Tail £10.99)
The book’s title is a clue to the inimitable style of a writer described by the Sunday Times as ‘The best writer you’ve never heard of’. He writes in most genres you can think of, and his work includes the Goldsmiths Prize-winning novel The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. The author starts this fragmented, brilliant ‘anti-memoir’ about writing and who he is, or was, with a dedication: “For everyone who couldn’t think what to say”; and a quote: “Yesterday upon the stair/I met a man who wasn’t there.”

Giselle

The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness by Amy-Jane Beer (Bloomsbury Wildlife, £10.99)

If you pay attention to nature writing, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that Robert Macfarlane has a new book on rivers (which you should absolutely read) but if you’d like to know more about Britain’s beautiful and oft mistreated waterways Beer’s 2023 book is well worth a look. Her personal love of rivers sings through the pages, as she grapples to redefine her relationship with the water after stepping back from kayaking following the tragic death of a dear friend. It’s much more than a touching memoir though – it’s also a wealth of information on natural history, geology, and access rights. Worth noting – Beer is one of the key figures in the right to roam movement, fighting to give us all better access to swim, paddle, or simply sit and watch the flow.

Kate

Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation edited by Jeremy Tiang and Kavita Bhanot (Tilted Axis £12.99)

I don’t think I’ll ever stop finding value in this brilliant collection of essays. Each time I pick it up, I learn something new and am challenged on things I thought I understood about, to quote Jen Calleja, the “life-art of translation”. If you enjoy fiction in translation, thinking about language or have an interest in forms of communication, this is a book for you.

Sarah

Passion by David Morley (Carcanet, £12.99)

Start by looking closely at the cover, then google the original painting, Gypsies by Rafael Barradas, then sink in… Initially to a poetic equivalent of Merlin, the app where you can identify birdsong, then to a long section on Romany life, which takes two readings, one before, one after reading the extensive glossary.
Here we find the lives of Esmeralda Hystead, Luminitsa Walker, Yoska Small… Their gledala, their reflection, as we rocker, speak, their honour.
Finally we return to other birds, and to women scientists, to complete a verbal triptych of Morley’s worlds.
    There are also more personal, perhaps autobiographical family poems.
Highly recommended for gajo and Rom, non-Romany and Romany.

Ross

Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent Poets ed. by Rachael Boast (Bloodaxe £14.99)

This is the best poetry anthology I’ve picked up in a long time. Where many fall short on consistency, this collection maintains a high standard throughout, while showing a diversity in form and approach. A particular favourite is Levent Beskardès’s poem ‘V’, transposed to the page and translated from French Sign Language by Stephanie Papa. The talent on display in this collection is staggering and has introduced me to so many exceptional poets.

Sarah

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link (Head of Zeus/AdAstra £9.99)

Kelly Link is one of my favourite short story writers and her latest collection does not disappoint. Loosely based on fairy tales, the stories quickly diverge into truly original Link tales, full of playful humour. She is a genre-bender of note, effortlessly blending realism, horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Be prepared to go on a wild imaginative journey full of fantastic surprises, from cats running a cannabis farm to a house sitter who is instructed to never let in the owner, should he happen to visit. My favourites are ‘The White Cat’s Divorce’ and ‘Skinder’s Veil.’

Giselle

Mouthing by Orla Mackey (Penguin £9.99)
I picked this up for June’s fiction book group and though I didn’t manage to attend the discussion on the night, I’m so glad I read this! Told from the multiple perspectives of inhabitants of a small Irish town, it is at turns funny, heartbreaking and brilliantly shows how flawed our perceptions of ourselves and each other often are.

Sarah

Staff Recommendations June 2025

What We’re Reading

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence(Penguin, £9.99)

Finally got round to reading this most autobiographical of DHL’s novels, the one which caused the breakdown of his real-life relationship/friendship with “Miriam” – Jessie Chambers, about whom we have published and whose own memoir we are planning to publish down the line.

This long novel is pretty grim reading at times – the first part particularly due to the the father in the book – “Walter” – becoming a bully and a drinker, though later there’s an entrancing section on him telling stories to his children about a pit pony from his work. The portrayal of his inadequate but tender feelings for his children when they are seriously ill is moving too. The book’s good on “Paul Morel” visiting Nottingham, and on his relationship with “Muriel” and “Clara”, the lovers, and his cloying relationship with his mother. I was surprised about the overt descriptions of sexual relationships. This was 1913, but it was Lawrence.

I read the book on holiday in Robin Hood’s Bay. It’s not a great holiday read, but one of those essential Nottingham books, even if, like me, you are late to the party.

Ross

Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince (Macmillan £20)
I’m currently reading Robin Ince’s Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal – a great description of what it’s like to be neurodivergent in a neurotypical world. Ince’s raw honesty about his faults and feelings adds an extra dimension, bringing the description to life.Robin did two sold out events earlier this month for us, one in the shop and the other in conjunction with Beeston Library.

Pippa

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix (Hope Road £12.99)
For fans of Camus’ The Outsider, this is my personal pick from this year’s International Booker Prize short list. It is as compelling as it is uncomfortable to read. Taking as his fictive starting point the real tragedy of a small boat sinking in the Channel in which 27 lives were lost, Delecroix interrogates the relationship between morality and legal responsibility and what accountability in face of tragedy looks like.

Sarah

Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno (Seven Stories £14.99)

A powerful, intelligent and fierce account of child sexual abuse, multiple award-winning Sad Tiger blends memoir and literary criticism to deeply explore a difficult subject in a unique way.

“Everyone should read it.” — Annie Ernaux.

Giselle

Enemy Feminisms : TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation by Sophie Lewis (Haymarket £14.99)

I’ve been a big fan of Sophie Lewis for years and this latest work feels so necessary and timely. This book is a confrontation for all of us who call ourselves feminists, asking us to acknowledge and own the ugly parts of the movement, throughout history and today. In accessible prose, Lewis shines a light on our skeletons while offering ways to move forward and hold the line against fascist policy and agitators.

Sarah

Staff Recommendations May 2025

I’ve been enjoying the Penguin Archive books we got into the shop this month. Celebrating Penguin’s 90th birthday, these 90 works by seminal authors have a striking white and red design and show the brilliant range of writers Penguin has published over the years. I also love a book I can fit in my pocket and read in a sunny afternoon! Personal favourites include: The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, Passion by June Jordan, The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera, and Can Socialists be Happy? by George Orwell.

-Sarah

What We’re Reading

Brightening the East: essays on landscape and memory by Ken Worpole (Little Toller, £16)

The last words in this book are “The good life was to be found in fellowship and generosity to others, in a world in which people carried on learning and supporting each other until the music stopped”. And fellowship and generosity suffuse this book of essays, personal, architectural, historical, ethnographical, biographical, by an old comrade of Five Leaves.

The “East” is often Essex, home of utopian experiments, good, like Canvey Island, and, like Bernard Cornwell’s Peculiar People, bad. The book starts with Worpole’s own story of growing up in Southend, with skiffle and CND. I hope he will write a full autobiography one day.

Ross

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (Penguin £10.99)

I was disappointed this didn’t make the International Booker shortlist, but am so glad the longlist prompted me to pick up the first work from a disabled author to win the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Hunchback is funny, unapologetic and addresses the complexities around disabled rights, reproductive rights, sexuality and feminist activism all in just 97 pages. Be prepared for some raunchy descriptions, as our narrator has a side-line in online erotica!

Sarah

Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo, trans: Herbert Lomas (Pushkin £9.99)

The premise of this peculiar novel is one small tweak to our world – in the early 20th century, trolls were discovered to be a real wild animal, endemic to northern Finland. It begins as the young, gay photographer Angel rescues an injured troll, which proceeds to obsess him and turn his life upside. Written more as a queer love story than a fantasy book, I was drawn in by short punchy chapters with shifting narrators, and interludes of Angel’s research into trolls. Sinisalo’s debut novel, first published in 2000 (now deservingly revived under its new title by Pushkin), has stayed surprisingly current feeling, with only a few now-nostalgic references to CD-roms and Windows 98.

Kate

Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali (Penguin £9.99)

 A classic from the 1940s and a Turkish bestseller by political author, Sabahattin Ali, thought to have been murdered by the National Security Service. His most uncharacteristically romantic book nonetheless challenges gender stereotypes and conservative norms. Set in Ankara and 1920’s Berlin it is a touching and tender account of first love.

Giselle

Transitions: The Unheard Stories by Jane Fae (Trans Media £12)

This anthology is written by and about trans people, tackling milestones, jargon, creative expression, healthcare and everyday life. If you are trans, you may be feeling particularly scared and alone right now – this book won’t change the world, but it might give you some solace and a sense of solidarity through the pages. If you are not trans and want to know and understand more about trans people and their experiences, give this a read. Trans people are the experts on their lives, not the tabloid press, cis men in courtrooms or MPs perpetuating culture wars through fear-mongering!

Sarah

 

Keep All the Parts, by Roy Young

Roy Young is a scientist, poet, artist and this collection of poems reflects the beauty he finds in landscape, wildlife, the sea. He pays special attention to his more immediate, ordinary surroundings. There’s plenty to admire here – my own favourites are ‘What trees do’, ‘Ocean song’, ‘Map of you’, ‘Forest engineers’, ‘Gaia’s song’. These quiet poems allow Nature the space to almost speak for itself.
Acorns have ideas
of trees inside them
and dreams of forest…
(Forest engineers)
Despite some apparently ominous titles (‘Extinction Stories’, ‘The assassin’, ‘Not in my back yard’, and ‘Erosion’), Keep all the parts sings with awe and respect for the natural world to highlight concern for the environment. These stories are delivered without sentimentality, but with such heart that after the final poem, which is almost an incantation, we are left with a sense of hope for our planet and our own human nature.
May we touch ice and need it.
May we feel heat and read it.
May we see change and heed it.
(Gaia’s song)
Julie Burke
Available from Five Leaves at fiveleaves.co.uk/product/keep-all-the-parts/
Part of the Five Leaves New Poetry series

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann (Granta, £9.99)

If this book had a soundtrack (and one of the main characters is a music obsessive) it would be Mozart’s Requiem, the Pilgrims’ Chorus by Wagner and a song by the East German Communist exile Wolf Biermann. The first two are sublime, but not exactly cheery.
But if this novel could be summarised in a sentence from the book it would be “She knows that what he wants is what she is to want”.
So this is the DDR – East Germany – towards and at the end. The two main characters – others barely feature – are in love. A young woman and an older man, the music obsessive. A thirty-four years older man, Hans, which enables Erpenbeck to give him a childhood under the Nazis and an entire youth and adult life under communism. The woman, Katharina, on the other hand, from a communist family, is part of the generation that wants more. She has relatives on the west and on her first visit to them she sees one part of more, the shops with plenty goods in, but is shocked to find homeless people and beggars, people her relatives see as lazy and workshy rather than unfortunate.
But that sentence “She knows that what he wants…” – read as many DDR metaphors as you like into it – tells you this is a book about male coercive control. There is no doubt it was initially a love match, and both Katharina and Hans mark their early anniversaries. They met on the eleventh of the month so the eleventh is their special day. They went to a particular cafe, which is their special place. They behave as so many teenage lovers do, but Hans is no teenager. He is a married man, more than twice Katharina’s age and his demands, including sexual demands, get harder. The relationship lasts for more than two years before the Wall is breached. And then there were consequences.
I’m a fan of Erpenbeck and would encourage you to read this and her other books though bear in mind the content warning on this one. But if I had any advice for Katharina I’d be coming over all East Enders. “Leave him Katie, he ain’t worth it.”
Ross Bradshaw

Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang

Cinema Love is the impressive debut novel by Chinese American writer Jiaming
Tang. The book’s blurb and the opening chapters may lead readers to believe that it
primarily explores the lives of gay men in post-Mao China, a period when
homosexuality was still a criminal offence. That portrayal includes the imagination of
a nondescript cinema functioning as a queer utopia and a Stonewall-type riot in
which gay men courageously resist the police—both of which lack historical
accuracy. However, as the narrative transitions to 1980s Chinatown and
contemporary, post-pandemic New York, the novel’s true strength emerges: a
poignant story of migrant lives, women’s agency, and the reconciliation of traumatic
pasts.

The tentative, fearful gay characters eventually give way to resilient female
characters who dare to love and hate with intensity. The book becomes most
relatable and evocative when read as a chronicle of the migratory experiences of an
older generation of (often undocumented) migrants from China to the United States.
These individuals carry buried but unforgotten traumas, endure shattered ‘American
dreams’, and yet persist in valiantly holding on to their aspirations, hopes, and
desires. The novel stands as a love song to Chinatown and the Chinese diaspora
community that the author knows intimately.

The introduction of ghostly elements might initially seem disorienting in a narrative
grounded primarily in social realism. Nevertheless, readers are encouraged to
embrace the supernatural—ghosts, destiny, and other ethereal forces—to make
sense of the novel’s many twists, turns, and coincidences. Accepting these elements
opens the door to intriguing insights into the mundane, everyday dimensions of
religion and spirituality in Asia, as experienced by some.

The title, Cinema Love, primarily references gay men’s affection for one another
within the Workers’ Cinema, where mainstream war films created an ideal backdrop
for clandestine cruising in the shadows. Tang’s writing is strikingly cinematic, deftly
cutting between scenes, characters, and perspectives—from intimate close-ups of
individual lives to expansive long shots capturing the social panorama and
communal mobilisation. At times, the story risks lapsing into melodrama,
sentimentality, or even kitsch. However, written in an era when diasporic Chinese
communities in the United States and worldwide are grappling with the historical and
contemporary traumas of homophobia, xenophobia, migration controls, and anti-
Asian racism, this gut-punching melodrama serves as a potent and necessary salve
for its characters and readers alike.

The sophistication of the novel’s narrative structure and character development
belies the fact that this is Tang’s debut work. Cinema Love is a substantial contribution to Asian American literature and provides a strong foundation for an inevitable feature film adaptation.

Source: Bao, Hongwei. “Gut-punching Melodrama: Jiaming Tang’s Cinema Love.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 9 Jan. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/01/09/cinema-love.

Hongwei Bao

Cinema Love is available from fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/product/cinema-love-not-just-an-extraordinary-debut-but-a-future-classic-jessamine-chan/.

The novel is also published in paperback at the end of January 2025

Five Leaves Favourite Books of 2024

Fiction

  Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury, £9.99)

Tom Lake is not a person but a lake in Michigan. There Lara, the main character in this novel, has a youthful affair with an actor who would go on to be famous while she turns her back on an acting career. Decades later, working hard picking cherries on their family farm, Lara drip-feeds the story of that relationship to her three grown-up daughters in great detail. To match the slow unveiling of the story I read the book slowly, over many days, the better to savour Patchett’s telling.

–Ross

Playground by Richard Powers(Hutchinson Heinemann, £20)

Powers’ new novel is exploration of the ocean and the future of humanity, weaving together themes of technology, ecology, and human connection. The novel dives into the potential of artificial intelligence and its impact, while also examining the delicate balance between human progress, the human experience and the preservation of our natural environment. Much like The Overstory, one of my favourite novels, Playground is a thought-provoking, beautifully written novel that manages to bridge subject depth, sympathy with complex and troubled characters with high readability. Powers’ masterful storytelling is once again on top form.

–Carl

                              Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde(Hodder & Stoughton, £20)

The (very) long-awaited sequel to Fforde’s brilliant Shades of Grey (2011) did not disappoint. It’s set in a future where civilisation has rebuilt itself after a mysterious ‘Something That Happened’ with strict societal rules and roles based on the colours people can see. Eddie Russett intends to use his better-than-average red perception to marry above his station, but when he falls for Jane, a lowly Grey with a fierce temper, he starts to challenge the strict chromatic dogma imposed by National Colour, and discovers layers upon layers of lies.

–Pippa

Monstrum by Lottie Mills (Oneworld, £16.99)

This featured as my first read of the month when I joined Five Leaves, and I’ve not stopped thinking about it since. It’s rare to read a short story collection where each story feels ‘stand-out’. These are inventive and emotional stories that had me crying on a train and impatiently excited to read whatever Mills writes next.

–Sarah

Non-Fiction

                                 Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture edited by Matthew Teller, Mahmoud Muna, Juliette Touma, Jayyab Abusafia (Saqi Books, £14.99)

This book includes historic pieces, older articles and nearly up to date stories by people from Gaza. The book goes beyond the obvious, so there’s material on Christianity, the Dom (the local Romani equivalent group) and a short memoir by one of the African minority in Gaza. When Matthew and Mahmoud came to the shop they played voice notes of some of the Gazan authors talking to them – the editing process – and you could hear bombs going off in the background and drones overhead.

–Ross

Bound by Maddie Ballard (The Emma Press, £9.99)

Structured around items of clothing Ballard has made for herself since starting to sew in the pandemic, this memoir reflects on self-image, over-consumption, labour and exploitation, family, love, race, belonging. It’s a small book you could read in a day, but I would encourage you to take your time and really soak up the beautiful language and moving reflections Ballard offers.

–Sarah

Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You by Nick Hayes (Bloomsbury, £20)

A fantastic book of essays from some of the most influential voices in the Right to Roam movement, as edited by Nick Hayes (author of The Book of Trespass). The essays are widely varied and from a diverse range of voices, some showing how and why Britain became one of the most nature-depleted countries in Europe while some are more creative, incorporating poetry and stories of beauty. The main chapters are interspersed with profiles of regular people doing inspiring things for the land and their communities, plus musings on places where humans interact with nature (from rope swings to clootie trees) and Hayes’ striking illustrations.

–Kate

Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide by Samir Chopra (PRINCETON U.P., £22)

Samir Chopra delves into the nature of anxiety, examining how it has been understood by various philosophical thinkers throughout history. He argues that anxiety is not necessarily a pathology but rather an integral part of the human condition. He suggests that rather than seeking to eradicate anxiety, we can learn from it, learn to understand it, and manage it in a way that allows us to live calmer, happier lives. An essential read for anyone seeking to better understand their own anxiety, how the human mind works or how philosophy can help still the vexations inherent in all of us.

–Carl

Every Man for Himself and God against All: A Memoir by Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann (Vintage, £10.99)

The title of this book says it all. The thing that strikes one about Herzog, one of the most important directors in post-war European cinema, is his absolute unwavering commitment to and faith in his artistic vision. Not for Herzog, the ordinary watered-down path. What some might call obsession, he calls his life’s work. He strides forth and passionately does what he sets out to do. He talks like he writes and his writing is full of vigour and life, wild and fascinating stories and strange and brilliant ideas. His memoir will make you see the world differently and wake you up. Guaranteed.

-Giselle

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew (WW Norton, £9.99) (Back in stock soon) 

Everyone should read this book! Incredibly accessible (pun intended), this is a funny and comprehensive introduction to the ways in which technology shapes our lives and how we think about disability, cure, advancement and access. If we’re lucky to live long enough, we will all become disabled at some point in our lives. It’s time we stopped thinking of assistive technologies as a niche topic that doesn’t already impact how we move about the world.

–Sarah

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore, Steve Moore (Knockabout Comics, £39.99)

I should just start off by saying that, despite the tricksy cover, this is not a book of card trick for kids. In fact there’s rather too much sex, drugs, and demon summoning in it to even leave it on the lower shelves of the bookshop, lest a curious child picks it and ruins the carpet by summoning a fire elemental. Mixing a comic book styled history of magic, with essays on occult philosophy and a healthy dose of irreverent weirdness (there’s a maze that winds through the Qabalistic Tree of Life), this could only have come from the mind of famed comic book author Alan Moore (WatchmenV for Vendetta). Possibly the strangest and most delightful thing I’ve come across this year.

-Kate

 

The Body in the Library by Graham Caveney (Peninsula Press £12.99)

I’m in a book, and so is Five Leaves… Graham Caveney describes me as a 60s man of rabbinic appearance who looks as if he never leaves the bookshop. This is calumny. I left the bookshop on Tuesday. Didn’t like the outside world much and came back… But in this book Graham is describing his time working at Five Leaves – his first job for many years – which led to him returning to writing and recovery, all of which leads up to this, his third memoir, but the body in question is his, and that body is failing. He’s just had an improbable 60th birthday, and the book explains that improbability. It’s a book about dying, and not quite dying, about literature and friendship. And is introduced by Jonathan Coe, who’d said that if Graham didn’t finish the book Jon would finish it for him. He didn’t have to for Graham is still with us.

–Ross

Staff Picks December 2024

Non-Fiction

A Flat Place by Noreen Masud (Penguin, £10.99)

Morecambe Bay, Orford Ness, the Fens, Orkney Islands… all of these written about in A Flat Place. I picked it up like an idiot shopper in hurry, checking those names and its “nature-writing” looking cover. And on page nine there’s “The first time the therapist had mentioned complex trauma…” What? So, add Lahore to the list of places, add dealing with Complex PTSD and you get a very different book than the one I’d hurriedly grabbed for a Friday night read. There is nature too in this complex memoir.

-Ross

Time for Magic : A Shamanarchist’s Guide to the Wheel of the Year by Jamie Reid, Stephen Ellcock, Philip Carr-Gomm, John Marchant (Watkins, £26.99)

A beautiful book on the art of the (until now) unjustly overlooked artist Jamie Reid. Best known for his work with the Sex Pistols -particularly that iconic image of her late majesty- Reid continued producing political art throughout his life, including for XR and Pussy Riot. Reid was also a lifelong Druid, and many of his works were based on the eight druid seasonal festivals. In a delightfully idiosyncratic format, each chapter starts with an article by Philip Carr Gomm, former Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, explaining the symbolism of each festival. Despite giving Reid the authorship it was published posthumously and begins with biography of the artist and includes stories of from his life woven throughout.

–Kate

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber & David Wengrow (Penguin, £12.99)

This is a book I passionately advocate to everyone I know. It deserves all of its fawning and seemingly endless cover quotes. Yes, it will turn everything you thought you knew about the so-called trajectory of history on its head. Yes, it will suggest astounding possibilities you probably haven’t considered. Revolutionary, fascinating, challenging, and entertaining, a book to return to.

-Giselle

The Moon Looks At Them All: of friends and friendship By John Lucas (Greenwich Exchange, £14.99)

This book is primarily about male friendship and friendship with poets at that. Those who’ve been around the literary scene a while will be most interested, but there is also a chapter on Brian Clough who Lucas did not meet but admired, Ted, who the author worked with on a building site almost seventy years ago, and several trad jazz colleagues, who were most definitely not on the literary scene.

-Ross

(more…)

Jonathan Taylor, A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline and Other Lessons. (Goldsmiths Press, £23.00)

Jonathan Taylor is an author, editor, lecturer and critic who lives in Leicestershire. In the first chapter of A Physical Education, Taylor writes, ‘I want to explore the hall of mirrors that is criticism and autobiography … I want to explore the uses and abuses of educational power from a subjective, rather than pseudo-objective, perspective.’
He achieves those aims with clarity and grace. In a book that wears its evident scholarship lightly, Taylor reflects on his own experience in educational institutions, referencing literary criticism, philosophy and sociology.

Having been a victim of workplace bullying myself (the workplace in question was a large primary school where I was deputy-head) perhaps I was looking for some kind of validation of my own experience as I read this book. I found it, but not until Chapter 7, ‘Politics’, when I recognised in Professor Caligula many of the behaviours that had broken my physical and mental health to such an extent that I finally resigned from a job that I had loved.

As Taylor says, ‘most bullying is complex, nuanced, full of incongruities and ambiguities.’  Reading the earlier chapters of the book, I found myself thinking, sometimes uncomfortably, about my own behaviour as a primary school teacher and that of my colleagues. I remembered an incident in the mid 1970s when I had witnessed a boy being asked to remove his plimsoll so the headteacher could hit him with it and the irony of the child’s ‘thank you sir’ as his shoe was returned to him. Taylor notes that Corporal punishment was banned in British state schools in 1986, when he would have been in his early teens, ‘I was there, in school, at that watershed moment. I witnessed the change from a system based on caning to a system based on surveillance, one that attempted to act ‘on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations.’

As is evident from the title, the book is not just about bullying, it is also about discipline. Superficially, these are two separate concepts, one acceptable, the other not. ‘Discipline is the legitimate exercise of authority, bullying is illegitimate, abusive, verboten’ but, as Taylor points out, ‘the problem is that the line between them can easily seem hazy, even arbitrary.’ This haziness can result in a climate where ‘disciplinary systems reflect, even enable the bullying they were meant to deal with’ and this, Taylor argues, is ‘institutionalised bullying.’

The book is obviously of particular interest and importance to anyone who works in schools or universities but it does not confine itself solely to educational institutions and is written in such an accessible and engaging way it would appeal to a much wider audience. There are observations and memories about family, ‘in general, the nuclear family is a little machine for bullying,’ including a description of Taylor trying (and failing) to cope with the demands of two-year old twins while his wife was out for the afternoon. Ideas from Foucault, Freud, and Hegel are weaved into a narrative alongside characters from Dickens, Kes and Harry Potter – all contained within what is essentially memoir.

But A Physical Education is much more than memoir. It is an invitation for the reader to think about the nature of power, to consider, in the words of Mary Beard ‘what we mean by the voice of authority and how we’ve come to construct it.’ It challenges the status quo of our (still) overwhelmingly patriarchal and hierarchical society. ‘After all, to question someone’s authority in any hierarchical system is implicitly also to question the system itself, which is responsible for raising that person up according to its own criteria.’

Towards the end of the book is a brief account of a time when Taylor’s experience of being bullied by a particular boy was at its most intense.

After being whispered at a hundred times about my lack of British patriotism, defective testicles, and similarity thereof to Adolf Hitler, I lost my temper, stood up, and threw a chair at Lee. He threw one back, accusing me of bullying him. Like most teachers, I can well imagine this scenario, indeed, like most teachers I have faced something similar on more than one occasion. To say it is challenging would be an understatement. Not only does the teacher have to very quickly establish his or her authority, because to fail to do so could lead to complete chaos, there is also (and arguably more importantly) the need to keep pupils and staff safe in a situation which could escalate quickly.

The teacher in question was Mrs Dee, by implication someone ‘individualistic enough to resist a whole ecology of power; someone who refuses to be ventriloquised by the system bearing down on them; someone who understands that violence, discipline, and bullying are not entirely deterministic – that the bullying cycle can be broken …’ Thus Taylor challenges ‘commonplace British wisdom’ arguing that ‘less discipline can mean less misbehaviour; less violence can equal less violence. Sometimes, not punishing, not disciplining, not bullying can actually be a sign of strength rather than weakness.’

This is an important book. I hope it is read widely by teachers, academics, and politicians and by anyone who is still haunted by past bullying.

Julie Gardner

Jonathan Taylor will be talking about this book, with James Scudamore in the bookshop on 25 November: fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/events/jonathan-taylor-and-james-scudamore-on-bullying/

This review will also appear on Everyone’s Reviewing

Books of the Year, from Ross Bradshaw

My reading this last year has been pretty random, and my faves are not confined to these books, but these are the ones still sitting on my desk for no good or bad reason. So these will pass as my books of the year.
Firstly, my book of the year has to be Rory Stewart’s Politics on the Edge (Cape). I’d never paid him much attention until I saw him being interviewed at length by Ash Sarkar on Novara Media. Wait a minute, here’s a former Conservative Minister engaging fully with a Muslim Marxist… The book is very well written and quite scary about the nature of real parliamentary politics. Things like there were only nine key activists in his Conservative Party in Penrith and the Border, or like when he was appointed Minister for Prisons he knew nothing at all about prisons or like when, a known expert on the Indian subcontinent,  the Conservative Government gave him Africa for his brief… And when he was in charge of Africa the civil servants didn’t bother to invite him to the meeting to discuss a coup in Zimbabwe. This was government by chaos, and few come out of it well. Stewart did get stuck into improving prisons though, in his whirligig tour through department after department.
Comrades Come Rally: Manchester Communists in the 1930s and 1940s by Michael Crowley (Bookmarks) is about a world we have lost: a world of trade unionists, Jewish lefties, folk singers, bibliophiles, women workers, Spanish Civil War volunteers – the network of activists based in the old CPGB that made Manchester a radical centre at that time.
On the fiction front there’s The Painter’s Friend by Howard Cunnell (Picador), the story of an artist who ends up living on the water, in an island community of lost souls which is under threat from developers. Everyone has their own story, and there are moments of despair and of solidarity. It is fiction but I can’t help but feel there’s been many real life situations like this over the last few years.
Kairos by Kenny Erpenbeck (Granta) is perhaps my favourite novel of the year. Warning though, the core relationship in the book is one of coercive control of a young woman by an older man.  The married man is of course a bastard, but there’s also a sense of what might be lost as the GDR collapses. In Siblings by Brigitte Reimann (Penguin) the GDR is still functioning. The main character is a young woman artist employed to teach painting to factory workers. The sibling aspect is about the way that three siblings deal with the GDR. One has already defected…
 In one of the books – I forget which! – a visit to West Germany shows the shops full of goods, luxury everywhere, but homeless beggars too – something that would never happen on the other side of the wall.
Buchi Emecheta came to Nottingham, what?, forty years ago for a packed reading at the old WEA on Shakespeare Street. There were perhaps 150 people there. I’d not read anything of hers since then, but the reissue of her novels drew me in to The Joys of Motherhood. The book opens with a woman running away, and there’s a lot to run away from in this Nigerian novel. The bride price, a house slave being killed because she would not willingly jump into the grave of her recently deceased owner, minimal education for girls, funerals that take years to pay off, polygamy… traditional Nigerian life was as patriarchal as it could get, but did things improve with the a money economy, the move from village to Lagos, to law and order? The book gets more interesting then, with conscription of men to fight for Britain in the war against Germany (the men now knowing what side they might be on), the start of a discussion on independence, a developing Nigerian diaspora, intermarriage but also conflict between Yoruba and Igbo, the difficulties of pastoralists… And the joy of motherhood? “The joy of being a mother was the joy of giving all to your children, they said.” Maybe not.
This year Claire Keegan is no longer the author of the year – though her novella, short story really, So Late in the Day is worth reading, This year it’s Ann Patchett. Bel Canto (4th Estate) is probably her best known book, in which a group of South American terrorists/freedom fighters take over a Government residency expecting to catch the Vice President and negotiate for their cause. He’s not at the function so they find themselves in control of an opera singer, a Japanese businessman and a cast of others. The negotiations drag on and on, and on, with the terrorists and their charges finding ways of being together… one terrorist takes up opera. How will it end? Patchett keeps us guessing, but we engage with her characters as they engage with each other. Patchett’s These Precious Days (Bloomsbury) probably would not have been published if Patchett was not already a famous writer, but fortunately she is and it has been. The subjects range from Snoopy to Patchett’s views of the covers of her books internationally, including Bel Canto. The stand out essay though is the one that gives the book title. Patchett gets to know Tom Hanks’ PA, Sooki. They become friends, with Sooki moving in to see out the COVID pandemic – and possibly her life, as she had pancreatic cancer. It’s a marvellous invocation of female friendship.
We know that the author of Clouds over Paris (Pushkin) did die. Felix Hartlaub was a German soldier who did not survive the war.. This book comprises his notebooks about his time in Paris in the German occupation. He did nothing bad, just observed what was going on. The book is slight, the author’s casual observations are those of a travel writer abroad in a strange city. But he is a close observer and the book adds something to the category of what ordinary Germans did or thought during the war. He would, it is clear, have been a great writer, but this anti-Nazi German did not survive the war, missing presumed dead in Berlin in 1945.
Two more, and that will be enough. Carson McCullers The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Penguin) has a large cast and we get to know them. In the Deep South John Singer, a deaf mute, becomes the confidant of many people, Black and white. Like McCullers Singer is – well, probably is – gay, many times an outsider. The others who float through the book include a hardworking but despairing Black doctor, teenagers, the owner of an all night cafe where the lost souls of that town turn up. Any one of the characters could form the basis of a good novel. McCullers offers them all to us. Maybe, typing these words, this was my book of the year.
Finally, let’s get a little more specialist with Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews and the Holocaust by Ari Joskowicz (Princeton). For many reasons – cultural, political, economic – the industrial scale murder of Roma and Sinti people in WW2 has been barely covered, either by the survivors or by outside commentators, compared to other aspects of the Holocaust. The late Donald Kenrick’s work is worth searching out if this subject interests you. The strength of Rain and Ash, however, is in its detailed description of how Roma and Sinti people worked with Jewish organisations to seek recognition of the genocide they experienced. Indeed they had to fight to have it understood that Roma and Sinti people were persecuted on racial grounds.
So, enough… it’s been a good year for reading. This piece could have been a lot longer, but I did not want to try your patience.
All in stock or available to order at Five Leaves
Ross Bradshaw