A Book Blog 2025 by Books do Furnish a Room

[Books do furnish a room]

Hunger by Choi Jin Young

“If only it were a billion years in the future, I’d leave Earth with your body on my back and we’d be a pair of happy boats. Doesn’t that sound nicer than cannibalism?”

A Korean novel, novella to be precise about two lovers, Dam and Gu. They meet at elementary school and their novel charts their lives and relationship. It is told from both points of view. It is a romance, albeit a rather macabre one. At the beginning of the novel Gu dies. He is killed on the street as a result of the debt he inherited from his parents. Gu cannot bear to be parted from him. She takes him home, washes him down and over a period of time eats him. It really doesn’t pay to think of the practicalities of this, that clearly isn’t the point. The novel flashes back to the couple’s history. They live at the lower levels of society and life is difficult.

The novel covers a lot of ground, but because of its brevity nothing is covered in any real depth. It emphasises the lack of choices for the working class in Korea. These aren’t Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, there’s more struggle and desperation. It can’t really be called horror despite the cannibalism.

“But what do I know, really? Turns out we're as clueless in death as in life. The only difference is the dead don't agonise over the unknown. They know to leave some things alone.”

I think the trick is to focus on metaphor, but it didn’t really grab me, although it was interesting.

6 out of 10

Starting Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan

 

[Books do furnish a room]

The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk

“There is no doubt that this secret battle of wits - political chess game played out across the vast geopolitical chessboard of Asia - changed the course of History.”

This is a history of the nineteenth century struggle between two imperialist powers, Russia and Britain for ascendancy in Central and East Asia. It was about a number of issues. A number of imperialist powers had coveted India and Russia was one of those. Russia also had expansionist ambitions in relation to the many small states in Central Asia and towards Afghanistan and China. Hopkirk lays out here the various disastrous incursions into Afghanistan by Britain and Russia very clearly. It does make you realise that the twentieth century incursions into Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and the US supported by other NATO powers had not been thought through and no lessons had been learned from the nineteenth century.

The phrase The Great Game was inevitably coined by that arch-imperialist Rudyard Kipling:

“Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game.”

There are fascinating accounts of explorers and travellers from both sides going into places where Europeans had previously not ventured. There are descriptions of the harsh terrain, the various unpredictable rulers who soon learnt to play the British and Russians off against each other. There was one war in the nineteenth century between the two powers (Crimean War) but there were a number of other occasions where war was close:

“It was a shadow war, not fought face to face, but by proxy and by stealth, in the back streets of Kabul, the passes of the Hindu Kush, and the deserts of Central Asia.”

Britain’s primary ambition was to hang onto India with the occasional annexation of extra bits of territory (depending on whether the Whigs or Tories were in power). Russian ambitions were clear as well, this from Witte, one of Nicholas II’s ministers:

“From the shores of the Pacific, and to the heights of the Himalayas, Russia will not only dominate the affairs of Asia, but those of Europe also.”

Of course today many of those Central Asian states now have independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The story of The Great Game may also have lessons for the current situation vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine. I am sure current Russian tacticians are still looking at the way things worked out in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century Russia had a vision and long-term goals, they still do.

Hopkirk’s account is interesting and provides insights into nineteenth century imperialism and how it worked (or didn’t work) on the ground.

6 and a half out of 10

Starting The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman

 

[Books do furnish a room]

The Wych Elm by Tana French

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”

The title of this is The Wych Elm, written clearly on my copy. Not sure how it got changed to Witch along the way, because that title gives an entirely misleading impression of what the book is about. There is a variety tree called the Wych Elm. This variety is prone to having a hollow trunk as it ages and that is very relevant to the plot. The narrator is Toby Hennessey who is in his late 20s. He is not likeable, clearly unreliable and his attitude to women stinks. He is also privileged and entitled. This may be why many people did not finish the novel.

This is essentially a thriller. Toby’s uncle Hugo lives in a large rambling house (the elm tree is in the garden). Hugo is terminally ill and his family are rallying round. Toby has two cousins, Leon and Susanna. One of Susanna’s children finds a skull in the hollow of the tree and so a police investigation begins. The skeleton belongs to a teenage friend of the three cousins who had disappeared some 12 years earlier.  Incidental to this Toby has been the victim of a violent burglary which has left him with a significant head injury with some memory loss.

French sets up the plot well and there are plenty of twists and turns. The novel examines the nature of memory and its unreliability, what is luck, and what is culpability.

Spending the whole novel in Toby’s head is a trial and if I had been his longsuffering girlfriend Melissa, Toby would have ended up in the Elm as well. Of course there could be a link to Greek Myth here and the Wych Elm could be the entrance to the underworld. French looks at the darker side of human existence.

7 out of 10

Starting The Voices of Time by J G Ballard

[Hayley]

On 12/9/2025 at 2:11 PM, Books do furnish a room said:

if I had been his longsuffering girlfriend Melissa, Toby would have ended up in the Elm as well.

 this sounds interesting, I'm not sure if I have the patience to deal with Toby right now though 😂. I wonder whether the story was inspired by the true story of the body found in a wych elm after ww2.

 

Also thinking maybe 'witch elm' could be the American spelling? It does seem to give it a weirdly different meaning, if it's not!

[Books do furnish a room]

Hayley, I suspect it is the American spelling. I must admit it was better than I was expecting.

Roman Lincoln by Michael J Jones

This is a history of Roman Lincoln, published in 2002 and updated in 2011. Jones looks at the archaeological and other evidence about Roman Lincoln. There were settlements in the area prior to the Romans as the area has a steep defendable escarpment, a river and pool/lake and fertile land nearby. It became a significant Roman settlement and was one of the places where legionnaires were able to retire.

There’s plenty of evidence of the usual industries and public buildings. It was a walled city and some of the walls still survive, indeed an arch survives that is daily used by traffic. There are an awful lot of Roman remains around Lincoln and Jones details what you can see and where.

This is an interesting history, especially if you want to learn about Roman settlements. I discovered along the way that the street I live on used to be where the lodgings for centurions was located.

7 and a half out of 10

Starting Common People: A Folk History of Land Rights, Enclosure and Resistance by Leah Gordon and Stephen Ellcock