Kathy Hamilton It’s time for What I Read in May, my monthly round up of mini reviews. This past month was a diverse one, including a memoir as well as literary fiction. Despite the fact that I suffered serious book burnout at the start of May I’m really pleased with What I Read in May. It was a good reading month.
A Start in Life by Anita Brookner
“Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intelligent and lonely. Studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry, she seeks not salvation but enlightenment. Yet in revisiting her London upbringing, her friendships and doomed Parisian love affairs, she wonders if perhaps there might not be a chance for a new start in life . . .“
Regular readers may have noticed that I’ve been trying to up my book review count recently. And this smashing book by Anita Brookner is the most recent. You can read the full review here. But let me just say that A Start in Life by Anita Brookner is worthy of its inclusion in the Penguin Essentials range. I’m actually on a bit of an Anita Brookner kick at the moment! But for good reason. No one quite captures the curious mixture of loneliness and self sufficiency like she does. She has a refreshingly intelligent style that draws you into her books and leaves them lingering in your mind long after you’ve finished.
Lowborn by Kerry Hudson
Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma. Lowborn is Kerry’s exploration of where she came from because sometimes in order to move forwards we first have to look back.
The second book in what I read in May is Lowborn by Kerry Hudson. This book is about the complexity of being Working Class in the UK. This Guardian review sums it up better than I ever could! It made me cry before I’d even finished the introduction. Because it was so strange to have some of my own life experiences there on the page before me. Like Kerry, you could say I “got out” of the Working Class experience. I went to university, I am working as a copywriter.
But this book explores an underrepresented issue, what impact does growing up Working Class really have on us? I love how Kerry is able to talk about these complications so well. The curious mix of striving forward but not wanting to forget where you are from. Some books you read for fun and some books you read because you know your soul needs to hear them. Lowborn is in the second category for me.
That Wraps Up What I Read in May
Despite being a two book month I am amazed by the range I managed to cover. The style and content of Lowborn is practically the polar opposite of A Start in Life but in the best way. I never usually read memoirs but something about Lowborn cried out to be read. But this reminds me about what I love about books. The way they bring different experiences and lessons with them. I fell that I got so much out of both that it’s impossible to compare them to each other.
