September’s paperbacks are a bit of an improvement on August, a few too many for just one post although only enough for two short ones, the first of which 
has a little bit of an art theme for those who like that kind of thing.
Originally published in 1986, Gayl Jones’ The Birdcatcher sees an American writer living on Ibiza. Amanda has become both a companion and a witness to the dysfunctional occasionally violent relationship between Catherine, her sculptor friend, declared clinically insane, and Catherine’s husband. ‘’With the plush scenery of a travelogue, the misshapen soul of a noir and the anarchic spirit of a trickster tale, this novel revolves around three Black American expatriates . . . Catherine is suspicious of Amanda’s intentions toward her husband, but, in Jones’s fearsome, fractured narrative, her potential for violence seems no more alarming than anything else that might befall these social outsiders’ says the New
Yorker who included it on their best books of 2022 list.
Vigdis Hjorth’s Is Mother Dead sees a recently widowed artist return to Oslo for a retrospective whose theme is motherhood. Johanna’s already strained relationship with her mother has been made all the more difficult by her more controversial paintings. She finds herself unable to get her estranged mother out of her thoughts, lurking outside her house when her mother refuses to reply to any attempt at contact. I very much enjoyed the wonderfully named Long Live the Post Horn! earlier this year so have high hopes for this one although Jacqui sounded a faint warning note in her review.
Steve Stern’s The Village Idiot sees some of Europe’s most renowned artists stage a bizarre boat race in Paris in 1917, headed by Amedeo Modigliani in a bathtub, apparently towed by a flotilla of ducks but in reality young Chaim Soutine, an immigrant painter, is underwater propelling his friend. ‘Disoriented and confused Chaim stumbles through the events of his life, from impoverished beginnings in an East European shtetl to wild fun times with artists. But always on the horizon is a coming storm that threatens to sweep away Chaim…’ according to the blurb. Not sure what to make of all that but it sounds intriguing.
In Defne Suman’s At the Breakfast Table celebrated artist Shirin Shaka marks her centenary with a gathering full of 
reminiscence and stories as she looks back over her life. Her family has invited a dear friend who is an investigative journalist to interview her in the hope that she might divulge the secrets she’s spent so long concealing. Shirin responds by painting a picture on the dining room wall expressing her pain and telling both her family and her country’s difficult story. Elif Shafak has described this one as ‘Fiercely intelligent, finely textured and achingly beautiful’ which sounds very promising to me.
I’ve still not got around to watching Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things based on a novel by Iain Reid whose work I’ve not read, either, but their association decided me to keep an eye out for Reid’s We Spread. An ageing artist is being looked after in a care home in accordance with arrangements her late partner made years ago unbeknownst to her. Surrounded by stimulating conversation and beautiful countryside, Penny starts to make a recovery but is beginning to wonder if she’s part of an experiment. ‘At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid’s genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old’ says the publishers promisingly.
That’s it for September’s first batch of paperbacks. A click on a title will take you to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with new fiction it’s here. Part two soon…
A collection of some unusual books, nothing grabbed me this time.
Bit of a patchy month, sadly.
An interesting spread. I might head for the Suman, the Reid and the Jones first.
That’s a good hit rate. The Jones and the Reid do sound particularly intriguing.
Another tempting list–Is Mother Dead and At the Breakfast Table sound worth exploring as does We Spread–treatment of age (and relatedly ageism, even self directed) are intriguing me more and more these days; why we bracket everyone and everything that can/cannot be done by it makes no sense when it is defied every day and we know it can be, in either direction.
All of those sound interesting, don’t they. Youth obsessed advertising has done much to make ageism worse, I think.
I very much enjoyed We Spread which is wonderfully ambiguous and very chilling. I like the sound of The Birdcatcher and The Village Idiot sounds wonderfully bonkers!
It does, doesn’t it! That’s very encouraging re The Spread. You’re the first person I’ve come across who’s read it.
I’m a big fan of Iain Read’s work. Would love to hear what you think.
I read At The Breakfast Table when it first came out and really didn’t get on with it finding the story very disjointed because of the different narrators and jumps back and forth in time. I liked the Turkey setting though and some of the history included in it.
Oh, that’s a shame. It’s such an interesting premise.
Both Gayl Jones and Vigdis Hjorth are perhaps authors I need to try again with. I read one novel by Gayl Jones and liked it rather than loved it, but a second of her novels I gave up on. I read Vigdis Hjorth’s Will and Testament with my book group and it left me a bit cold although the themes were interesting.
I know Jacqui had mixed feelings about the Hjorth. I’ve come across Gayl Jones before but not read anything by her. It’s the dynamics of the relationship between the three main characters that interests me with this one.
Some very striking covers this month! We Spread appeals the most although they all sound interesting.
Particularly that first one! Makes me feel quite summery. Cathy is very encouraging about We Spread.
Modigliani in a bathtub – the mind boggles!!!
I do like books with an art theme and you’ve given us a few options this month. At the Breakfast Table sounds the most promising to me
I think I’m going to have to read The Village Idiot if only to find out about the bathtub incident. Hope you enjoy whatever you plump for, Karen.
Based on other readers’ comments, I get the feeling that Hjorth’s ‘Is Mother Dead’ is quite different from ‘Long Live the Post Horn’. While I could admire the writing in ‘Mother’, I found it very intense and claustrophobic – deliberately so, perhaps, as I think that’s what she was trying to achieve with it.
Posthorn was relatively upbeat but, given its subject matter, I can see that wouldn’t be the case with this one.