A Book Blog 2026 by Books do Furnish a Room

[lunababymoonchild]

I weakened and bought Hawthorn too 🥰

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Hope you enjoy it!

Vaim by Jon Fosse

What do you write when you have just won the Nobel prize for Literature? Well for Jon Fosse it was this. It is set in a couple of Norwegian fishing villages and a town, all on the coast. You can get a sense of the novel by a few of the summations:

 

“The first in a trilogy of novels, it continues his investigation into the human the subtle encounters that come to define our lives and our deaths, and what lies in the threshold between what is and what is longed for.”

 

Or try this:

 

“Critics have highlighted the novel’s ability to weave complex themes of love, identity and the human condition in his narrative.”

 Are you getting a sense of the general direction?

It is a stream of consciousness novel, although it is only about 115 pages. However, there are plenty of commas, but no full stops. Some have called this mystic realism.

There is a sense of calm about the whole, although it is the calm of a flat sea and the knowledge that much more goes on beneath the surface. Initially the reader might think this could be a simple romance between Jatgeir and Eline, but of course, it isn’t. Death and even a ghost intervenes. It draws the reader in. Unfortunately it didn’t draw me in and it bored me senseless, even though it was clearly written by a master storyteller.

5 out of 10

Starting The Evening and The Morning by Ken Follett

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Dead Lions by Mick Herron

““We don’t like being out of the loop.”
“You’re always out of the loop. The loop’s miles away. Nearest you’ll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel. I thought you were aware of that.””

 

This is the second in Herron’s Slough House series, now on Apple TV. Slough House is where MI5 send their “spies” who are washed up or who have made some heinous but not sackable offence. They get to do all the boring and menial tasks, apart from when things don’t quite go as planned. It’s character driven and this does show. Herron himself says:

 

“Plotting is pretty much secondary to me. What really interests me is the characters and getting to grips with them, and them getting to grips with each other.”

 

Most of the characters from the first book are still present, including Jackson Lamb (admirably played by Gary Oldman in the TV show), who runs Slough House, still shows his usual care for those in his charge:

 

“You’re a f*** up, but you’re still in the game. So if you turn up dead one day, and I’m not busy, I’ll probably ask around. Check for suspicious circumstances.”

 

Herron writes good prose and the wit and humour  keeps the plot moving along. There are inevitable comparisons with Le Carre and the plotting is similarly intricate with the usual twists. It’s entertaining  and a good read.

8 out of 10

Starting Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

Edited February 14 by Books do furnish a room

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Painting in Blood by Francoise Sagan

I’m not sure how and when this arrived on my bookshelf (one of the perils of age), but I decided it was time to read it and move it on.

The protagonist is Constantin von Meck, a German film director who made a name in Hollywood in the 1930s. In 1937 he returned to Nazi Germany to make films. The setting of the novel is Nazi occupied France in 1943. Constantin is a complex and contradictory character. A favourite of Goebbels, but enabling Jews to leave the country. His hires Jews and helps them change their names so they sound more Aryan. His assistant is Roma. Constantin has many affairs with men and women, but is still in love with his slightly estranged wife Wanda.

The novels charts the thin and sometimes non-existent line that needed to be trod to navigate living in Nazi occupied territory. The ending is shocking.

The whole thing flows well and does illustrate the perils of surviving in wartime. It’s very different to Bonjour Tristesse and is one of Sagan’s later works.

6 out of 10

Starting Complicit by Peter Oborne

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Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers

“My dear child, you can give it a long name if you like, but I'm an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it's so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.”

 

This is the second in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. In this one Wimsey is called back from a holiday in Corsica when his elder brother is accused of the murder of his sister’s fiancé. Inevitably there are complications. Wimsey’s brother refuses to say anything or provide an alibi. There’s a homicidal farmer to deal with and a few revolutionary socialists. There are also the usual twists, turns and red herrings. The ending is rather sudden and somewhat unsatisfactory.

In terms of Wimsey himself, there is character development. We learn more about his shellshock and how it manifests itself and much more about his family background. Sayers does seem to have it in for Wimsey in this one as he falls off a wall, is shot, chased by dogs and almost dies in a bog.

Sayers also satirises the literary scene of the time, as per this snippet from a dinner party:

 

““The girl next me is Erica Heath-Warburton–the writer, you know.”

Wimsey looked with a new respect at the lady in the Russian blouse. Few books were capable of calling up a blush to his cheek, but he remembered that one of Miss Heath-Warburton’s had done it. The authoress was just saying impressively to her companion:

“–ever know a sincere emotion to express itself in a subordinate clause?”

“Joyce has freed us from the superstition of syntax,” agreed the curly man.

“Scenes which make emotional history,” said Miss Heath-Warburton, “should ideally be expressed in a series of animal squeals.”

“The D. H. Lawrence formula,” said the other.

“Or even Dada,” said the authoress.

“We need a new notation,” said the curly-haired man, putting both elbows on the table and knocking Wimsey’s bread on to the floor. “Have you heard Robert Snoates recite his own verse to the tom-tom and the penny whistle?””

 

On the whole it was entertaining, but I get the impression Sayers was still ironing out problems.

6 out of 10 

Starting  One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

 

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The Long Affray by Harry Hopkins

“The fatal flaw of the “game code” was that it almost wholly lacked the consent of the governed. Yet, infatuated with their self-made image, legislators were unable to perceive this. In so important an area of English life, it was a recipe for disaster. The image was benevolence, the reality, increasingly, malevolence – a blighting, widening distrust.”


This is a look at the history of the poaching and game laws from 1760 to 1914 in England, Scotland and Wales. Poaching has been a part of British history for centuries, hence the myths about Robin Hood and poaching the sovereign’s deer and game. It’s certainly in the blood in some rural areas, especially in Lincolnshire where I grew up. I remember my grandfather passing game onto us (rabbits, pigeons, hare pheasants), no explanation required as to where it came from. In fact the Lincolnshire County song/anthem is The Lincolnshire Poacher.
What is less well known is that in the nineteenth century the issue was referred to as the “poaching wars” and very bloody it was, on both sides. Landowners and country squires hired gamekeepers to manage the game, ensure the land was well stocked for the upper classes addiction to shooting. The were deaths on both sides. There were also punitive laws protecting game which were harshly upheld. There were hundreds of hangings and thousands were transported to Australia.
Hopkins details the history of this conflict in some detail. He makes clear that the usual view of rural history is biased:

“The perspective in which we see rural history is apt to be the perspective that unrolls from the steps of the “stately home”, now reinforced by the National Trust. As we look out over the majestic landscapes they created, the lakes they hollowed, the tasteful temples erected to close some vista, the discreet hills Capability Brown raised at their command, the magnificent trees they nurtured, it does indeed seem that their history of England must be the history of England. When we step into the Long Gallery and Gainsborough presents the Squire, standing under a tree, long gun in arm, faithful retriever at his heel, gracious wife seated beside him, all doubts dissolve.”

We need to remember that half the population of England, around five million people, lived in the countryside, nearly all occupied in agriculture. Eighty percent were landless, some had a small patch of land. Most struggled to live and eat from day to day. Hopkins points out that England produced no notable painters who portrayed the peasantry realistically.
Hopkins draws the links between poaching and other forms of unrest like the Luddites, Captain Swing and the Chartists. Sometimes the disaffected did work together. They also had champions. One of the main ones was William Cobbett who managed to get more and more radical as he aged. Hopkins examines the case of Charles Smith, a poacher from North Baddesley in Hampshire who was hanged after a controversial trial. He has two headstones. One explains her was a poacher and was guilty of attempted murder. The other erected by Cobbett explaining from a different perspective what happened on the land of the local Lord (As it happens Lord Palmerston).
Others supporters of the rural poor are also part of the story: John Bright, John Arch and the poet John Clare. It is clear also the effect the Enclosure has had on the rural situation, as the common land had disappeared and food was often difficult to come by.
This is a good history written with some detail, a little wordy at times but it covers the subject well.

8 and a half out of 10

Starting Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

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Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

“It had never occurred to me that wild animals could be so predictable in their habits. Seeing a flutter of wings, I would note in passing that there was “a bird” in the garden. I hadn’t thought that it might be the same bird, coming at the same time, to do the same things, day after day, and I felt a greater sense of connection to the wildlife around me. I wondered how much of the nature of animals is obscured from us simply because of the limitations of our senses and powers of observation.”

 

This is an account that Dalton has written about an occurrence during the Covid pandemic and the working from home that came as a result for many. Dalton worked in London and lived in the countryside. She found a leveret one day in the road near her home. This is the story, as the title suggests of the rather hit and miss raising of said leveret. There is a great deal of detail about the life and behaviour of the hare as it grew. It was semi wild and came and went from Dalton’s house and garden. It also raised its own leverets as it grew older and Dalton charts it all. She also reflects on nature and her relationship with it:

 

“I felt a new spirit of attentiveness to nature, no less wonderful for being entirely unoriginal, for as old as it is as a human experience, it was new to me.”

 

Reviews have been almost universally positive which words like “deeply moving”, lyrical”, “engaging”, and “wonderful” to name but a few.

I did appreciate the information about hares and the highlighting of their plight in relation to modern agriculture, human activity and hunting. There was also some snippets of poetry and folklore about the hare which was illuminating.

Whilst it was interesting at times, it was also rather repetitive and read a little like a wiki page. For me the reflection was somewhat limited. Dalton couldn’t have done what she did if her work had not involved sitting in computer meetings for hours on end. It’s all a little middle class and Kes it very much isn’t. However I did enjoy it and Dalton has clearly done her homework on hares.

6 out of 10 

Starting Sugar and Other Stories by A S Byatt