Never a spare minute but loving the land and the lifestyle
This week it’s the usual mixed bag, and hopefully there’s something here you may be interested in.
Happy, thank you. More, please., Kyla Cobbler, Hachette, €18.99
Corkwoman Kyla Cobbler seems to have come from nowhere to being a huge comedy star in about eight seconds. But of course, it’s been longer than that. She’s being doing comedy since 2021, but only recently has she hit a million social media followers, and her shows are regular sell-outs.
This memoir is primarily one of gratitude. She writes that when she was 21, a woman introduced her to five words that changed her life; happy, thank you. More, please. I’m not sure I get it, but anyway she charts her life in this book, growing up in Cork and working abroad as an au pair, a caterer and in the rag trade and finally returning to Ireland.
On the way, she realised something huge; she was responsible for her own happiness. If she wanted to take life by the liathróidí, it was up to her – and her alone – to do so. And she’s done it.
She’s now hugely successful with a rapidly growing fan base and she’s not going anywhere.
Life of M, Rachel Cusk, Faber, €19.95
The rumours and media frenzy since the publishing of this book have made it a ‘must-buy’ for lots of people who would not normally read highbrow literature like Rachel Cusk, but you know what they say; there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and I doubt very much if Cusk is complaining about her sales.
Apparently, the character of ‘M’ who is never named, is based on Natalie Portman, who shot to global fame as the star of the movie, Black Swan. And the portrayal of M, whoever she might be based on, is not good.
The story’s narrator (also not named) asked M if she could write M’s autobiography. M liked the idea. ‘Would you just make it up?’ she said.’ And therefore, from the get-go the reader is slightly wrongfooted, because there’s no telling which passages really occur or which are fabricated.
Cusk describes a life of luxury around M’s home in London and in far-flung places where she’s on location or on holidays, and it’s all as vacuous as one would expect it to be. But M likes to think her life is authentic, so when in London, she walks her dog and walks her child to school, the normal stuff of everyday life.
She doesn’t see any disconnect. The narrator does. The reader does. M is impenetrable, too removed from real life to be part of it. And the regular allusion in the text to the homeless under the bridges of the Thames is a foil to accentuate lives of London privilege and extreme wealth.
If it really is Natalie Portman, then I doubt she’s pleased. And if it isn’t, shur didn’t it work a treat for the sales?
The Mare, Angharad Hampshire, Penguin, €12.99
This novel is based on a true story and it’s both compelling and horrifying. Hermine Braunsteiner was an ordinary woman before WWII and worked as a housemaid in Vienna. But when she got a job as a guard in the Ravensbrück and Majdanek concentration camps, she descended into unspeakable acts, earning herself the nickname of ‘die stampfende Stüte’ – ‘the stomping mare’ – from her penchant for killing prisoners by kicking and stamping them to death.
She became widely known during the war as one of the most violent and merciless of Nazi prison guards. She fled to Vienna after the war, met and married an American and moved to New York with him.
She lived a normal life as an American housewife until one day in 1968, when a New York Times journalist knocked on her door.
Those are the facts, and Hampshire has written an outstanding work around the facts, exploring how an ordinary human being can become so unflinchingly and excessively violent, and then return to domestic normality afterwards.
Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, it’s impossible to put down.
An Irish Family Farm in Twelve Fields, Phil and Liv Stewart Gill, €19.99
The Stewart family have run the same Longford farm for more than a century, rearing cattle, agri-contracting, restoring vintage farm machinery and running a farm shop. It’s a busy life but they love it.
They also love the land. And it’s the 12 fields of land that a lot of this book is about. Each field has a name connected to its history, which is explored here. But it’s also a book about the everyday running of a large, 500-acre modern farm, its joys and disappointments, the sheer busyness of it all, never having a spare minute but loving the land and the lifestyle.
The farm has more than 9,000 Instagram followers and is currently welcoming people to the Pumpkin Patch, having earlier welcomed visitors to the Sunflower Trail and Maize Maze.
Maybe some readers might think about doing something similar – if they have 12 fields to spare!
We Chase Shadows, Richard Osman, Viking, €17.99
When the bodyguard of a Cockney wide boy is found murdered in the Italian hills, Osman’s trio of unlikely detectives, Amy, Rose and Steve, are asked to solve the mystery and find the killer.
Vern Blackwood is the dodgy wide boy expat, an ‘ordinary decent criminal’ type who sells health supplements that are not really health supplements. Vern doesn’t want to involve the police in the solving of this case due to his murky history and his association with other criminals who aren’t quite as ordinary or decent.
It was a gamble for Osman to branch out from his Thursday Murder Club books and create a different set of amateur sleuths, but it has paid off. This is his second book in his ‘We Solve Murders’ series and if it hits the same sales as his first, well…
Footnotes
The Belfast International Arts Festival, continuing until 8 November, has some big names and events. See belfastinternationalartsfestival.com for details.
Wexford Festival Opera also starts this week and runs until Halloween. See wexfordopera.com for details.