Reading, rereading

Two books I have just finished reading/rereading

The Plot: Madeleine Bunting

I read and enjoyed Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey and I heard Madeleine speak in Keswick. What I did not know was that some years ago, she wrote this book I, in fact she was apparently in Keswick seven years ago talking about it. This is the many-layered story of an acre of land in North Yorkshire that her father bought and on which he built a chapel. The book is basically an account of her search for the reason why he did this strange thing. So it tells the story of the piece of land through time, but also tells of her father’s life. I think it’s a beautiful, engrossing book, but then the idea of footsteps from the past being beneath our feet is one that resonates with me every time, as does the quest to go back through time to find out why a person was how they were, and did what they did.
 
The Gustav Sonata: Rose Tremain
   
It is not very often that I can allow myself the time to reread a book, except one that I may have read a long time ago. There are just too many books waiting to be opened. But this book I did read again and I am so glad I did. I read it a last year when it was short-listed for the Booker Prize and, now it has made the long list for the Women’s Fiction Prize, I decided to read it again. I love this book. It is a calm, thoughtful, measured book – ‘profoundly tender’ is how it is described. And yet it has great depth and deals with huge issues. It is Rose Tremain at the height of her writing power – ‘beautifully orchestrated’. The skill with which the book is written certainly comes through on a second reading. Set in Switzerland, it follows Gustav Perle, growing up during the second world war. He has had to learn to have a stiff upper lip, yet neutrality brings with it great problems when coping with real life.