Continued from Books I Read in 2025 Part 1
Fenner Brockway, Towards Tomorrow
See separate blog post on this book.
Jan Gradvall, The Book of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover
I live in Brighton, UK, and often go to the Dome, the venue where ABBA won the Eurovision song contest in 1974 with Waterloo. I was 10 and very into pop music then, so suspect I must have watched this on TV. When visitors come to Brighton and we pass the Dome I always proclaim this is where ABBA won the Eurovision with Waterloo. This is not always received with the enthusiasm and glee with which I announce it. I love ABBA (much to the dismay of some who know me), just an absolutely brilliant pop band, I fail to see how anyone who likes pop music could not appreciate them, which many do not. So, I expected to moderately enjoy this book (which I was given as a gift) just as a book about them. But It turned out to be much more interesting and unusual than I thought it would be. It includes lots of historical, sociological, and political context about the wider Swedish and global music industry and Swedish society. There were many musicological and sociological discoveries for me and I am sure for all readers of it. There is information on the history and intriguing background of the 4 members of their group, their previous musical endeavours and how they came together. I had always assumed ABBA was more of a contrived creation, but seems they were a very organic development. The book covers a huge range and has many unexpected turns, going off on digressions which are linked yet also way off course but always informative, fascinating and often very surprising. Material for the book includes the results of interviews with the members. Some readers didn't like the detours and wanted something more conventional from the book, more linear and focused on the band. This seemed a shame to me that something different and fascinating is seen as negative; and something conventional and usual what is preferred. I loved all that was unusual about the book, and also the aspects you would expect to find in a pop band biography.
Paul Harrison, The Black Flash: The Albert Johanneson Story
This is a very shocking book about a footballer who came to Britain from Apartheid South Africa to play football for Leeds United and faced terrible racism, seemingly a big factor in his alcoholism, decline, and early death. The author, Paul Harrison did many interviews including with Johanneson, and collected information and transcripts for a book, but then left them to rest, until 17 years after Johanneson's death he published this book from them. Albert played 172 times for Leeds, including in the 1965 cup final, scoring 48 goals. He was born in 1940 and died in 1995. The book starts with the physical brutality of apartheid and goes on to the racism Albert faced in the UK. There are accounts of the support he received in the face of this from players and others close to him but also the lack of support from many others in face of repeated traumatic racism. Some well-known personalities are discussed; the midfielder Billy Bremner (who played with Albert and who Harrison has also written about) comes across very well, manager Don Revie less so. The book is effectively about racism but it also highlights the pioneering role for black players that Johanneson played. The book is a bit tabloidish in style. There are long quotes from interviews, which is unusual but I felt worked fine, although the quotes are too perfect to be real speech so must have been reconstructed. It's a shame not to hear more from Albert's family who don't seem to have contributed. But Harrison interviewed many people from around the world who knew the player. We know he lost his family but don't know, from this book, if he kept in touch with them or became completely estranged. But it does seem in 2005, 10 years after his death his daughter and granddaughter came to the UK from the US (where presumably they had moved) to find out more about him. And his granddaughter was in Leeds for the unveiling of a plaque commemorating him. Harrison knew Albert and talked to him many times, right up to near the end. Albert seemed a lonely, emotional man who struggled with a life in which the football community failed to act on the racism he was subjected to.
Douglas Stuart, Young Mungo
This book is portrayed as about a tender love story set in Glasgow, a city that has a lot of meaning for me, but also set in the surrounding (unfamiliar to the characters) countryside, with very mixed experiences of the latter. It is also a story of unremitting relentless grimness. It's great but the latter outweighed the former for me and it made me depressed. The world is depressing enough as it is, and I was glad to finish it. One reviewer says 'This novel cuts you and then bandages you back up', but for me it was the other way round often. But, as I say, a really good book, the second by the author of Shuggie Bain. It has some of the same themes as Stuart's first novel but maybe shuffled around with different degrees of prominence and priority, the new as well as continuity, but on rougher and darker seas. It's a coming of age gay love story, at least that's what it seems to be principally but, as mentioned, it's about of lot of other things many of which overshadowed the upbeat role of this theme, including some stunningly described violence. There is a backwards and forwards flashback narrative which added interest for me. A story about the 'perils of being different' as one reviewer put it and, interestingly, of very contradictory family relationships.
Patti Smith, M Train
A lovely and really readable book tracing Patti Smith's strange, nice, trips to places she has been invited by obscure organisations, or niche places she has decided to visit often in connection with some poet or writer. The search for coffee and especially her favourite local café run through it, a lost black coat, her cats and flat, and new home in Rockaway Beach. Poetry features a lot but strangely, given her profession, music rarely does. What appear to be tours with her band just get mentioned in passing and without any specifics. Her late husband Fred runs through the book, photos she takes and small belongings she picks up, notebooks, sometimes she loses them and they come back, often they are just gone. Items and happenings take on meaning for her. Friends appear, obviously affectionate and helpful to her while she describes solitude too. There are observations of the world she sees passing by, her dreams, TV detective programmes she loves. It's tempting to think it's the kind of book you would not be interested in if you did not know the person, but I don't think that's the case.
Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
About some small time, small town drugs gangs in Ireland, and a kidnapping, told over a few days. A readable crime thriller-ish kind of thing with some depth to the personalities. I was surprised it got long-listed for the Booker prize, I would have thought they would have wanted more depth and layers, but maybe they're there and I have missed them, or maybe a good yarn well told with character depth is enough for the Booker panel, which is fine with me. I enjoyed it, read it quite quickly, never really wanting to put it down.
Ben Markovits, The Rest of Our Lives
I should be the perfect demographic for this book. The main character is a middle aged male academic, having a mid-life crisis, with political problems at work, relationship problems (“What we obviously had, even when things smoothed over, was a C-minus marriage which makes it pretty hard to score much higher than a B overall on the rest of your life” - this sentence gets quoted in at least 3 reviews, it seems to have hit home for some), grown up kids, old girlfriends, health scares, an interest in sport (basketball in this case, the author was a basketball player) and a predilection for driving across America. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not going through all of these now, but have done all of them at one point or another or come close to (my son thankfully dissuaded me from my plan of taking a year off to drive alone across the US from New York to San Francisco). It's a bit like a Richard Ford novel, who I read lots of books by way back and liked until I stopped liking him and increasingly felt he had a problem with race. But it was all bit too close to home, and at the same time too narrow a white middle-class middle-aged world for me. As with Barrett's book above it seemed to have less to it than other Booker short/longlisted books I have read. Maybe, as with Barrett, I wanted a bit more connection with the wider world. But I read all of it in a few hours over 2 days. So it drew me in and was well written and absorbing.
Rita Bullwinkle, Headshot
The format of this book is a description of a series of boxing fights in the women's national under-18 competition in the USA, with a knockout format. Each bout is described, covering 8 boxers, more like girls. There is the physical tough pummelling, violence, and damage, much detail on their battered bodies, their very different boxing styles and idiosyncratic psychological methods, the particularities of their bodies, and the dream thoughts of the young women. They are very ordinary away from their sport, and underdogs in life, but also extraordinary as all people are, and the author writes portraits of them with humanity, recollects their past lives, sometimes tragic and all carrying wounds from these, and glimpses of what will happen in their lives later. They have a mix of very distinctive and ordinary names. The book is fresh, original, unusual, and absorbing. But about halfway through I had got tired of the format and wanted a change. This may have been as much to do with me and maybe my mood, though, as the book. I grew to like the girls and became curious about their later lives, all seem very individual and maybe a bit lonely to differing degrees, and their psychologies are delved into. At the end of the book and reflecting back on it in the next days I felt that this was a very special book. Despite growing tired of the format in the later parts of the book, I thought about the book for days afterwards, rehearsing its style and content, so it had made an impact at some deeper level.
Hisham Matar, My Friends
This book got under my skin, it flowed, was difficult to put down, and changed my mood, made me dwell on what is important in life. It felt like it was about the things that are important and is about politics, family, friends, exile, home, and is lived by people who live through poetry, literature, writing, reading, books and a bit of music. I would not say it is about violence but inevitably violence is part of it. It's also a slight, to the side, homage to London. The book hinges around two real-life events, the 1984 shooting of a WPC and demonstrators outside the Libyan embassy by gunmen from within who were eventually able to escape under diplomatic immunity; and the overthrow and death of the Libyan leader Gaddafi in 2011. Both were big events in my life. It is written by Marat, an American born Libyan whose father was a victim of the Gaddafi regime. Marat is a lovely writer. I had been listening to the oud music of the Tunisian Anouar Brahem a lot in the period before reading the book and this may have leant me to being ready to immerse myself in the culture and politics of the book. It is human, with depth, thoughtful, beautiful, with affirmation, compassion, and inspires connection with the world of things it contains.
Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars
Great book about the Native American experience in the USA from the 19th century onwards, charting generations of a family in Oakland over that time affected by all kinds of trauma. Written, unsurprisingly, by a Native American, of Cheyenne and Arapaho heritage, from Oakland. Also centrally about addiction, love, family, mental struggle, and survival amidst hostile and sometimes horrific experience. It felt original and different to me and varied with different layers, and I liked the writing. In places, it seemed a bit Catcher-in-the-Rye-ish in style. The book seems to cut through things. It has a prior partner book that I haven't read yet, on related themes and with some shared characters, There, There. It's a big (not long) book that includes a lot and feels important to me.
Enid Blyton, Five Go Adventuring Again
I read books at every opportunity when I was a kid, in my room all day, on the sofa in another world, under the covers at night with a torch after lights out, any time I could. It was sacred to disappear into fictional worlds; it still is. A few years ago I started re-reading books I'd read as a child, Watership Down (and others by Richard Adams), Ring of Bright Water (and its sequels) etc. My grandson got into the Famous Five and Secret Seven recently so I got hold of a few copies of the Famous Five from a charity shop. I meant to read one of two for bonding purposes with my grandson but read this one one afternoon and the next morning and was absorbed. It's the second in the series where the five siblings and cousins and George's dog are on their Christmas holiday back from boarding school in a remote countryside cottage (I didn't have the first Five book at this point). I could not put it down. As Julian says in the book: 'It's most terribly thrilling. Absolutely super!'. Enid Blyton used to live in the small town where I lived aged 9 to 16, in a (very Blyton-ish) little thatched cottage on a narrow leafy road going down to the River Thames. I still pass it now and then visiting my parents and crane my neck to look as we go past. Blyton is criticised for being a poor writer, too limited and simple. I don't know about that. All I know is I when I read this recently I disappeared into the world of the children on their adventure like magic. The story (and I guess the others too) has justice and injustice, mystery and action, solidarity and family, bravery and adventure, nature and the outdoors, children's and animal rights, goodies and baddies, secrets and discoveries. What more could you want, and all put very plainly and simply (meant in a good way). Of course, Blyton has been criticised for racism, sexism, and xenophobia. I'm not sure how pervasive these are in her books but they definitely come up. But you can read the books with a critical attitude and I didn't see anything of this sort in Five Go Adventuring Again itself. In fact, the character Georgina, wants to be known as George, cuts her hair short and wishes to be seen as a boy, all of which in this book at least seems to be painted in a neutral or even sympathetic way. George is a likeable spirited character. Some of Blyton's books have been altered to change the offending parts but I think it's better to leave them as they are with critical contextual notes about the offensive sections - better shown for being there, for what it is, and critically explained, for me, than brushed away. The stories are all very idyllic in a way which is not real and not connected to the wider world. You don't want most books to be like this but I'm sure I'm not the only one who could do with some escapism from the world around us. The book I read has a few nice little black and white line drawings by Eileen Soper, from an earlier edition, of the children and adults in scenes from the book.
Enid Blyton, Five Run Away Together
This is the third Five book and follows from Five Go Adventuring Again (see above). Five are back on Kirrin Island during their summer holidays as in the first Five book (that I had not yet read when reading this one). Again, there is something mysterious going on, some baddies who are not defined at first but have to be discovered and some adventures by the five outwitting the baddies, a familiar format. There's an island, caves, a ruined castle, a shipwreck, mysterious movements and sounds in the night, and more. I mentioned sexism, racism etc in discussing the second book above and said I hadn't come across it in that one. But in this book there is class stereotyping, class snobbery, class superiority, class contempt. It's not good. And the Five are fairly nasty and unpleasant in places in this one - in my eyes, but presumably not in Blyton's. But I think it's worth reading it rather than boycotting it in order to see it and see it for what it is. Aside from that, it's a great read, simple, short chapters, short book, engrossing, pleasurable, great if this is what you want and if you can cut through the prejudice which it is easier for me to do as a middle-class man than for others.
Enid Blyton, Five on a Treasure Island
This is the first Five book but I read it third in my re-reading of the Five books this year, as I only got hold of a copy after I'd read 2 and 3. Amazingly, when the kids get back home from boarding school in the summer their parents decide they want to go on holiday alone without their children, despite having not seen them for ages, so the kids get shunted off to the Uncle and Aunt's at Kirrin Cottage where they live with daughter George and her dog Timmy. This is how the story starts. My Mum was abandoned at boarding school aged 7 by her parents who went back to their missionary life in Peru for 5 years, coming back to see her at about 13, before again disappearing for years and seeing her again at 19. Incredible. It had an impact. So the opening of this book was a shocker for me. After that, the island, a shipwreck, treasure, some bad guys, lots of jam sandwiches. Very exciting.
Fenner Brockway, 98 Not Out
See separate blog post on this book.
Related post: Books I Read in 2025 part 1