#saveourlibraries

How do we measure the benefit of a good local library in the community?

We're now at a point when our libraries need a radical repositioning in the minds of the public. Events organised to celebrate National Libraries Day demonstrate that there ARE pockets of innovation and creativity at some independently minded libraries across the country but how can the success of one annual awareness day drive real change?

Libraries must leverage their role at the heart of the community to fill a huge gap being created by the decline of the traditional high street and cost saving in public services.

So, to that end here is the Word's Shortlist guide to the future for the neighbourhood library.....

1. Extended opening hours, at least on selected days, would open up library services to workers who struggle to leave their desks on tightly squeezed lunch breaks. Opening on Sundays would provide an alternative destination for families and couples during their leisure time. Demand will differ by location but libraries must be open when people want to use them.

2. Our local libraries should offer a programme of regular book clubs, gallery events, music recitals, film screenings and talks that bring like-minded people together. Events need not be managed by library staff but by collaboration with independant bookshops, special interest groups and a network of enthusiastic volunteers.

3. Pubs and cafes have long understood the benefit of providing groups and social clubs with a warm and friendly meeting place. Many libraries have unique and flexible spaces that could be put to similar benefit if they thought of themselves as 'destinations'.

4. Every town has a growing community of home workers and freelancers. Libraries should offer a place for them to meet, share and collaborate in a comfortable and connected environment. Who knows what future partnerships could be forged amongst the book-shelves. Free wifi is a start but communal hot desks would be even better.

5. Our local libraries should be our knowledge hubs offering advice through courses, briefings, oh and yes books. Working closely with local schools and colleges could lead to reciprocal benefits. Some supermarkets even offer after school classes for kids - this should be owned by the neighbourhood library. 

6. Bookstores have long understood the benefits of extending customer dwell time with cafes but libraries have been slower on the uptake. A new generation of librarian baristas wouldn't go amiss. Libraries could become the perfect testing ground for start up coffee brewers and artisan bakers.

7. With good quality newsagents on the decline in the high street Libraries have an opportunity to introduce a well stocked news stand covering specialist and professional print titles not stocked by WH Smith.

8. New start ups, Doddle and the like, are finding a growing market for parcel collection services at train stations. Libraries should work with a commercial partner in this area to help distribute all those Amazon orders (and maybe convert a few to book borrowing at the same time)

9: Many libraries offer much loved read and play sessions for pre-schoolers. This needs to continue but libraries also need to engage young adults. With YA publishing on a high libraries need to work harder at the stage when they currently lose their cool.

10: Finally, libraries need to embrace social media to communicate services and events and to attract new members. Book publishers create huge demand for new titles by developing digital content and working with online bloggers. Libraries are behind the curve.

So how do we measure the benefit of a good local library in the community; number of books borrowed, footfall through the door, demand for top titles, membership numbers? If each town had a happiness rating there can be no doubt that a well stocked and curated library, with friendly, knowledgable and approachable staff, that's open when people want to visit would take any town to the top of the league table.

The Word's Shortlist

Find your next read this Easter....

"What do you do when you stop?..When you're used to a schedule that takes care of each second of the day?"

K J Orr's stories always leave you wanting more, find out why here

"Now they were not just reviewing his music but editorialising about his existence"

Succinct chapters and moments of deeply personal empathy from master story teller Julian Barnes. Read the review here

"It was almost as if there were two brains, a walnut halved, his and hers"

There has never been a better time to read The Danish Girl. Read the review here

#readmorebooks

Tinkers is like a draft of something far more heartfelt but not yet fully realised

Paul Harding's Tinkers popped of the shelf with its prestigious fanfare - 'Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction' and 'Campus Best seller' at Harvard. Needless to say I was pretty excited when I picked up a copy on a recent business trip to Boston. I'm always trying to find something 'authentic' when I'm out and about and it usually works out well for example the paper-back copy of Philip Roth's Indignation I bought at Newark airport and Murakami's Kafka on the Beach found in a bookshop in Shinjuku.

Tinkers is the story an old man, George, who lays on his death bed in New England with his family close by. George is, amongst other things, a repairer of old clocks; a discipline which leaves him reflecting on his life with the methodical precision of an antique timepiece. 

Little actually happens in Tinkers, this is an existential story made up of flash-backs and reminisces of a life lived and one about to be lost. Plot is thin as the narrative is largely made up of short and disjointed memories meant to capture a dying man's final hallucinatory hours. 

George reflects not just on this life but that of his father, Howard,  one of the 'Tinkers' alluded to in the novel. At times the novel is beautiful and reminiscent of other short-form literary fiction such as Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending. 

"I breathed the book before I saw it; tasted the book before I read it"

But at other times the prose gets tangled in its own metaphor;

"When his grandchildren had been little, they had asked if they could hide inside the clock. Now he wanted to gather them and open himself up and hide them among his ribs and faintly ticking heart"

There are sections I really enjoyed but others that left me wanting to skim read. Tinkers is a draft of something far more heartfelt but not yet fully realised in this format. The novels setting might play out a pastoral east coast US romance made for the New England psyche but I was left feeling cold and unmoved. The plus side is that its only 176 pages long.

K J Orr's stories always leave you wanting more

First up an admission, I adore the short story genre. Some of my most memorable reads have been slices of fleeting fiction that cut to the chase succinctly leaving indulgently verbose prose in their wake. In this blog I've reviewed a number of great short story collections from Haruki Murakami to Stuart Evers but K J Orr's tenderly written Light Box is up there with the very best.

Light Box is a collection of 11 short stories about change, about humans in transition in one form or another. The light box itself features in a story about the challenge of an astronaut adjusting to life back on earth at home with his wife.

Each story resonates with relatable yet deeply profound emotions. From the man buying a train ticket to nowhere in order to escape from his wife's illness in The Lake Shore Limited or the recently retired man who checks into a Tokyo hotel to ask the inevitable question "Now what? in The Ice Cream Song is Strange.

"What do you do when you stop?..When you're used to a schedule that takes care of each second of the day?""

K J Orr's stories always leave you wanting more. Many of the tales in this collection could easily be adapted into longer format novels but therein lies their particular appeal - read in one go to fully appreciate the way a short story can completely alter the shape of your day. Orr takes us on a journey far across the globe yet never far from the universal human condition. Quite simply, Orr understands what is means to read brilliantly constructed stories and carefully crafted prose - this is a collections of short stories for readers. 

Light Box is a superb debut novel which Daunt Books must be seriously commended for publishing. I literally cannot wait to read more work from K J Orr.

#amreading The Noise of Time

Succinct chapters and moments of deeply personal empathy from master storyteller Julian Barnes

The Noise of Time is Julian Barnes's long awaited follow up to his Booker Prize winning novel (and favourite of this blog) The Sense of an Ending. No pressure Mr Barnes! With a work trip to Boston last week I had been saving this book for the journey, after all with a cover this handsome the novel was to be the perfect in flight companion.

The novel is a fictional biography of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and walks a fine line between historical account and lyrical novella. Shostakovich's story is remarkable given the speed at which he could be hauled in from of the KGB to receive a review front Stalin himself but readers should note that this territory is about a far removed from The Sense of an Ending as you could get. Yes there's the succinct chapters and moments of deeply personal empathy but on the whole this is a novel about ideology and Establishment.

"Now they were not just reviewing his music but editorialising about his existence"

On the whole Barnes's beautiful prose carries the novel through the detailed and well researched biographical sections which explore the pressure Shostakovich endured to produce work that met the approval of Stalin's ideology. But at times too much attention, in such a short novel, is given over to this pressure and less to the spirit of the man himself. That said, there are moments when the balance is blend is perfect.

By the way, my bookish highlight of Boston? An afternoon browse through Harvard Bookstore...

Black Deutschland

Darryl Pinckney's novel is fresh, fearless and uniquely brings the 1980s back to life with a new and powerful voice.    

Darryl Pinkney's Black Deutschland is a provocative journey through post-war German history through the eyes of Jed, a young black American expatriate living in West Berlin. Jed is a fascinating and unique narrator and was actually the reason I picked this book up. Other novels, films and TV shows bring this period of history to life but none with the particular view point of an outsider so keen to evoke a Berlin of both the past and the future.

Jed's dream begins on arrival in Berlin, a city which he views through the lens of Christopher Isherwood and his friends. Escaping Chicago Jed can be who he wants to be in a city where underground bars and cruising spots provide a warm welcome to a young black American.

"I was determined to pour down the drain behaviour brewed in envy and low self esteem"

As the weeks and years pass Jed throws himself into work and an obsession with the Bauhaus Modernism he sees around him. The combination of Walter Gropius buildings and liberal loving are irresistible. Pinckney cleverly constructs the narrative so that reminders of home are never far behind. Jed's mostly disapproving cousin lives with her husband in a middle class area of the city a million miles from Jed's Weimar cabaret lifestyle.

The novel is at its best when shadows begin to creep on to the streets of Jed's Berlin. Hollywood legendary pin-up Rock Hudson is diagnosed with AIDS and the inevitability of a new unified Berlin and Germany become a reality. But it is Jed who has really grown up and who must embrace the new future ahead of him.

Darryl Pinckney's novel is fresh, fearless and uniquely brings the 1980s back to life with a new and powerful voice.  

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep: Kitsch 70s decor aside this novel is ultimately a suburban saga full of tea towel ideology and cardigans at dawn

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is a great title for a book and with a unique cover design the book literally popped on the shelf and into my mitts. 

The story hinges upon the disappearance of Margaret Creasy and the subsequent ripples created through the still waters of suburban England; the community the Creasy's call home. The back drop to the story is the sticky and sultry summer of 1976 with it's legendary heat wave which turned dreary and damp Britain into the blazing balearics at a time when many people were just discovering the package holiday to Spain.

Cannon's attention to detail is good, in parts, with some references to SodaStream and chintzy decoration to keep fans of the 70s happy. You can almost hear the Slade 45s spinning in the broiling sunlight. 


The novel portrays a group of characters whose faith is challenged in different ways by the mysterious going ons at casa Creasley. Each of the neighbours paths cross in different, and unknown ways, and each responds differently under scrutiny. 

The title of the book refers to the different sorts of people in the World - we are each, the book leads us to believe, either goats or sheep when is comes to matters of faith. This is ultimately borne out in the discovery, by the community, of a vision of Jesus on a drainpipe.

Kitsch 70s decor aside this novel is ultimately a suburban saga full of tea towel ideology and cardigans at dawn. For me the story is lacking in anything to really remember. It is is neither period enough to really bring seventies Suburbia to life nor raw enough to be a compelling thriller.

Best reads of the year so far

The smell of print is alive and well in 2016! From new paperbacks to second hand book finds, fiction continues to fight the humdrum and banish the mundane.

Here's my very own shortlist, keep reading.....

Aquarium by David Vann

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff

Aquarium: Vann's writing style is so rich in characterisation and recurring motifs that the possible discussion points are endless

Aquarium by David Vann is a quirky coming of age drama that, uniquely,  both begins and ends in an aquarium. 13 year old Caitlin visits said aquarium, its in Seattle though that's not important, after school every day whilst she waits for her mother, Sheri, to finish work at the container port. This is a seemingly safe after school club of sorts that Sheri arranges so that she can work over-time to 'get on in life'. Evolution and survival of the fittest are both themes that run throughout this novel.  

Caitlin's daily dive to the bottom of the sea is both comforting and a window into the World. Like Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Caitlin instinctively understands the life of the fish she sees every day as they begin to frame her own life. The scrap book like line drawings throughout the book illustrate the level of empathy Caitlin feels for her fish.

The story is tight and at times claustrophobic as Caitlin's immediate family expands to include Sheri's boyfriend Steve, Caitlin's school friend Shalina and, most significantly, her Grandfather. Some sections are uncomfortable such as where Sheri forces Caitlin to face her own harrowing experiences as a teenager. Vann doesn't hold back on the descriptions of the emotional pressure Caitlin is put under by her close to the edge mother, this is at heart a no-holds barred family drama.

Aquatic motifs can be found throughout the novel as Vann immerses the reader deeper and deeper into Caitin's life. All the key scenes take place in water such as the scene with Sheri in the bath and later with Shalini in the snow. 

This is a novel in which men are forgivable and women are complicated and a story where humans are harder to understand that the sea life on display in the aquarium. Great writing, punchy dialogue and succinct plotting make this a brilliant quick read that would be perfect for book groups. Vann's writing is so rich in characterisation and recurring motifs that the possible discussion points are endless

There has never been a better time to read The Danish Girl....

There has never been a better time to read The Danish Girl....

Reading David Ebershoff's novel on the Tube, as Lili Elbe's face looms large over the platform on posters for the film adaptation, I realised just how contemporary her story is. Ebershoff's novel is more than a piece of historical fiction this is literature shining a spotlight on an issue that is capturing the zeitgeist.

Einar Wegener was one of the fist people to undergo gender reassignment surgery back in the 1930s when a Doctor in Dresden agreed to transform Einar into Lile, the woman he recognised inside. The procedure was extremely experimental at the time and ahead of the curve in both social and political terms and yet faced with courage and dignity by both Einar and his wife Greta.

The novel negotiates its way through the years in Copenhagen, with the couple both devoted to their painting, through to their time in Paris as Greta's work becomes commercially successful. As the years pass, the boundaries between Einar and Lile blur as muse becomes creator of her own destiny, "It was almost as if there were two brains, a walnut halved: his and hers"

Whilst The Danish Girl is Lili's story the novel, in many ways, is equally Greta's. Ebershoff uses Greta to push the story on and to put some of the challenges the couple face into context. That said, Greta's role is largely open for interpretation moving as she does from supportive wife to artist in need of a muse.

Copenhagen plays a key role in the story due, at least within artistic circles, for its liberal and avant-garde values. The Wegener's 'Widow House' is a perfectly permissive home for Einar's metamorphosis into Lile.

This is a beautiful and heartfelt novel. Ebershoff's skill lies in the way he weaves a fictional narrative around a real life course of events. Though characters and settings are created for the novel these only serve to tell the real truth of the story.

#amreading The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

The Loney leaves a lasting memory long after you've read the final page. The story takes place in one of the most unsettling of settings I've ever read where the forces of raw nature collide with with the power of fervent religious conviction. 

The novel is told in flash back to the 1970s and one family's visit to a house near a shrine with healing powers on a forgotten part of the North West coast. Morecambe Bay's mysteriously shifting sands, rising tides and half-starved sea gulls circling the mackerel grey skies are the ever present back drop to this unlikely pilgrimage which Hurley writes about with carefully penned prose, “that strange nowhere between the Wyre and the Lune where Hanny and I went every Easter time with Mummer, Farther, Mr and Mrs Belderboss and Father Wilfred, the parish priest”.

Hurley's characters are deeply unnerving, the profoundly religious mother, 'Mummer', brings to mind the masked performers in ancient Mummers plays. Also, the boys dad, 'Farther', who is at once present yet more distant that the paternalistic priests who loom heavy.  

Fans of gothic fiction will instinctively recognise the motifs that run through the novel but that it not to say that The Loney is a straight genre piece. For me the Gothic lies less in the haunted house setting than in the ominous cast of characters who inhabit this perfectly disturbing literary landscape. Though brilliantly threatening the novel could have built more on the cameo roles of The Loney's outsider inhabitants.

For a debut novel this is quite a feat but a surprise perhaps, given the hefty religious content, that it won the Costa First Novel Award 2015. The judging panel describing the book as "as close to the perfect first novel as you can get". For me, The Loney just misses the mark but Hurley is without doubt a talent to watch.