november round up
I just got back from Madrid last night. I was there to celebrate my Mama’s 75th birthday. My aunt, cousin and step sister were there as a surprise. We had a lovely weekend, filled with churros and red wine, some truly dreadful restaurant service, a lot of laughing and wandering about the streets. One of our meals came with English potatoes, turned out they were crisps! Maybe you had to be there.
What I Read
Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Twice The Speed of Dark by Lulu Allison
The Island of Missing Trees is magical realism at it’s very best. This was the second book I’ve read in as many months which writes partly from the point of view of a tree. Yup! Sounds absolutely mad but really it isn’t at all. Although non fiction this story tells the tragic history of the Turkish and Greek people of Cyprus from 1974 to late 2010s. ‘To immigrants and exiles everywhere, the uprooted, the re-rooted, the rootless, and to the trees we left behind, rooted in our memories.’ Culture, tradition, folklore, religion, war, the natural world.
I loved the previous Lulu Allison novel I read this year, it was dystopian and strange but very familiar at the same time and written in a visceral style that I could completely relate to. This one is very different and yet I loved it in all the ways that I loved Salt Lick. Highly recommend both.
MONTHLY FAVOURITES
Watched… Jonah Hill’s Stutz. This is a documentary about Jonah Hill, the actor and his therapist, a quietly spoken but impactful man named Phil Stutz. It details the treatment he offers his patients in order for them to lead happier lives. Throughout the 90-minute film, we get an insight into Jonah Hill’s mental health struggles and Stutz’s own personal traumas. Interspersed between these moments are drawings Stutz makes on note cards, lines shaky from his decades long Parkinsons, that visualise the tools that, as Hill puts it, ‘changed my life’. He wants everyone to have access to these tools. I found this documentary deeply moving.
Turned up for… Porridge Radio played The Old Market in Brighton at a homecoming gig. I think the night before we went was a bonkers affair with a pit and a lot of energy. Our evening was a more sedate experience, with the odd bit of heckling from Dana Margolin who clearly wasn’t sure why things were quieter! She even got the guitarist to tell a joke at one point to try to bring some enthusiasm. I loved the gig regardless!
