English Nationalism
Jeremy Black
Hurst, £16.99
Jeremy Black believes membership of the EU has led to a partial loss of British sovereignty, which has caused "a sense of dislocation" for many English people, and that the "four nations" approach to the history of these islands, "highly fashionable" since the 1980s, has paid insufficient attention to England. He also believes accounts of the British Empire have been "overly critical" and that "Britain has a more noble and more distinctive history than is often allowed for". He gives English nationalism deep historical roots. Common Law, parliament, Protestantism and empire were its chronological building blocks. The decline of these has led to a loss of pride in English nationalism and to "anger, ugliness and insularity". He rightly condemns as anachronistic the modern tendency to expect people from earlier historical periods to think and behave as we do but his tendency to ascribe "nationalism" (essentially a 19th-century concept) to the Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods might also be considered anachronistic. It's certainly a timely book but reaches some questionable conclusions. Brian Maye
Let Me Be Like Water
SK Perry
Melville House, £14.99
A bereavement in four seasons, Let Me Be Like Water follows Holly to Brighton after her boyfriend is killed in a car crash. She wades through the sorrows of the next year through apathy, anguish and rage, lost in a world that turns on, regardless. A catalyst for her recovery is Frank, a retired magician, whose kindness and wisdom open up new possibilities, important experiences and deeper truths.
The novel is a litany of small relatable agonies: "You feel so real still that whenever my phone rings I look down and expect to see your name. I leave you a voicemail and feel ashamed." On sex and grief it is particularly astute: sudden memories like severed nerves, the muscle memory of the body, the betrayal of desire.
The writing is artful, witty and poetic although sometimes you hanker for a little less sugar, for fewer metaphors and more meat - but only a cynical heart would fail to be moved by this tight as a bow detailing of that old lesson: when it is time to let go, let go. Ruth McKee
Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories
Edited by Audrey Niffenegger
Vintage
£14.99
Opening with Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat, Audrey Niffenegger's new selection of ghost stories starts off conventionally, but takes a few daring decisions. In her introduction, which is short, witty, and insightful, Niffenegger gets quickly to the core of the unsettling motifs of the modern ghost story in English. Regarding Poe's tale, she observes that "cats are like ghosts. They live with us, but they have their own secretive agendas. Cats are uncanny." From a story by Neil Gaiman to new work by Amy Giacalone, Ghostly is mainly a twentieth-century affair. It includes classic writers such as MR James, but doesn't just stick to the well-trodden path (for James, for example, Niffenegger includes The Mezzotint, rather than a more obvious tale by that master of the uncanny). Also included is Oliver Onions's classic novella, just under 100 pages long, The Beckoning Fair One (1911). Onions's story, taking cues from Poe, charts the slow disintegration of the protagonist's mind as he isolates himself in an otherwise empty house. Terrifying and unsettling, this is an eclectic but compelling book for when the nights draw in. As Niffenegger quips: "It is not necessary to believe in ghosts to appreciate a good ghost story. We all believe in death." Seán Hewitt
Year of the Drought
Roland Buti
Old Street Publishing, £8.99
Perhaps many of us can pinpoint when our childhood illusions were shattered. This is what Roland Buti does with Gus Sutter, the 13-year-old narrator in this engaging, economical book.
It is 1976 in Switzerland: the year of the drought, and its heavy symbolism hangs over the Sutters, a farming family. The land becomes arid and cracks soon appear on the domestic front too, especially when Cécile - who may as well be a fox entering the chicken coop - appears. Gus's mother has an epiphany and this tilting of her axis sends the Sutters's world spinning.
Buti won the Swiss Literature Prize - this is his first novel in English - and his strong narrative and sparse style will keep you interested until the end. The book feels more like a long short-story though, with some strands frustratingly underdeveloped or characters too lightly sketched (none more so than the mother; a fulcrum of most families). This coming-of-age tale could do with a little more light relief, too; if the Sutters didn't have bad luck, they'd have no luck at all. NJ McGarrigle
If I Could Tell You Just One Thing
Richard Reed
Canongate, £12.99
Richard Reed, founder of Innocent Drinks, tells us that on at least three occasions a single piece of advice changed his life and that he's gained "a deep appreciation of learning from people both wiser and more experienced" than himself. Ten years ago, he vowed that whenever he met someone remarkable, he'd ask them for their best piece of advice. The result is this book, where well-known high achievers in business, technology, politics, sport, the arts, spirituality, medicine etc, and survivors of great hardships, give life advice. Inevitably, some of the 70 contributors are worth listening to more than others. Bill Clinton's advice is "to see people" and always acknowledge them, no matter what their position in life; Terry Waite's is to live for the day and live it as fully as you can; Harry Belafonte's is to "discover the joy of embracing diversity"; David Attenborough's is to never lose the sense of wonder at the world we had as children. Of the others, Helena Kennedy, Shami Chakrabarti, the Dalai Lama, Alexander McLean, Noella Coursaris Musunka and Katie Piper were the most striking. Brian Maye
The Story Collector
Evie Gaughan
Urbane Publications, £8.99
Anna and Sarah live a century apart but are connected by a strange thread. Living in Thornwood Village in 1910, Anna meets American scholar Harold who is collecting local folklore about fairies; she becomes his assistant, translating Irish into English, explaining everything from spells to songs. While they gather stories, roots of a disturbing mystery emerge which could devastate Anna's way of life.
A hundred years later Sarah ends up in Ireland completely by chance, following her marriage breakdown in America. She finds Anna's diary in the hollow of a Hawthorn tree, and Sarah's life is pulled into hers through peculiar parallels. "She wasn't sure if she could ever believe in the existence of fairies, but she was a firm believer in synchronicity."
The writing is bright and fluid, in contrast to the grim mischief of Hannah Kent's The Good People, dark superstitions and curses. The novel has a nostalgia for an Ireland that perhaps never existed, and an idealised vision of a contemporary one we hope still might somewhere: both of these things make it read, appropriately, with the warmth and charm of a fairy tale. Ruth McKee
