The result of idle speculation

Hamnet is the name of Shakespeare's son who died aged 11, but the book is not really about him, it's about his mother Anne, or Agnes as she is known in the novel. It begins in 1596 with the boy home alone. The narrative follows him through the house, setting the scene, introducing us to the players. In the second chapter we go back in time to 1582 or thereabouts and meet Agnes Hathaway and her family.

Truth or fiction?

In John Banville's The Book of Evidence, Freddie Montgomery sits in prison, awaiting his trial and sentencing for the murder of Josie Bell. The unfortunate maid came across her killer as he was stealing a painting, and one thing led to another. In Freddie's account he imagines he's standing in court, talking to the judge. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Don’t make me laugh".

Freddie identifies the turning points that have led him to his current situation. But if we think we can begin to understand his actions by these meaningful moments, Freddie quickly puts us right. He says, "They have significance, apparently. They may even have value of some sort. But they do not mean anything. There now, I have declared my faith.".

We can't believe anything that Freddie says. Which parts of his life are fake and which real? He tells us he might try to use what he has written as his testimony. "But no," he says, "I have asked Inspector Haslet to put it into my file, with the other, official fictions." On finishing The Book of Evidence I can only conclude that Banville has written a metafiction, an account of a murder narrated by a fictional murderer who never stops telling us stories. Deep!

A generous and wise aunt

How brilliant it would be to have an aunt like Fay Weldon in her epistolary novel, Letters To Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen. She not only dispenses advice to her niece Alice on literary criticism and the art of writing, but she's also generous with her money; £500 for a word processor, and the offer to pay for a course of study at UCLA.

The first of sixteen letters explains that Alice is "doing a college course in English Literature, and ... obliged to read Jane Austen" Alice finds Austen boring, petty and irrelevant and sees no purpose in reading her books, but Weldon attempts to persuade her niece otherwise.

Can you trust your memory?

Sometimes you'll be watching a movie or TV series that portrays the ideal family, one where problems are discussed and resolved, where mothers dispense hugs and wisdom to daughters in equal measure, and you think to yourself, "what a crock of sh*t". This is what I imagine Antara, the protagonist of Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar would think. Age 36, she's resentful of the way she has been raised, despises her mother who has recently developed Alzheimer's, but can't cut the ties.

You're better off without him, love!

According to the Wikipedia page Cats and the Internet, "images and videos of domestic cats make up some of the most viewed content on the web". It goes further: "viewing online cat media is related to positive emotions, and ... it even may work as a form of digital therapy or stress relief".

Can the same be said for feline-centric literature?

A grim and fiercely joyless old lady

These days it's impossible to read a book without the gloomy cloud of Covid looming above me. Unfortunately Caroline Blackwood's Great Granny Webster filled me with a despondency and ennui that might not have been so bad if I'd read it before 2020.

The eponymous matriarch is a "grim and fiercely joyless old lady". Her 14-year-old great-granddaughter is sent to live with her for two months in the hope that the girl will benefit from the sea air in Hove, where Mrs Webster lives. As the teenager is leaving she discovers that her father, who died when she was nine, regularly enjoyed visiting the old woman.

A modern day Beowulf

Maria Dahvana Headley's The Mere Wife opens with a female soldier, Dana Mills, "facedown in a truck bed, getting ready to be dead." It's a powerful beginning which draws the reader in, written in the present tense with short, punchy sentences. It hints at an optimistic future too, as Dana's only comfort is the memory of "a line I read in a library book. All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."