Books of 2021

Wow, where did this year go? It does not feel like it is supposed to be the last day of 2021 by at least a couple of months, but apparently, here we are.
Apart from going pretty fast, this was not a year to remember for its good qualities in many respects. But book-wise, it was a pretty good year for me. I read a whopping 32 books, which is even higher than my already pretty high score of last year. I discovered a couple of great new writers but also reread some old favourites. 

 So my full list is:

1 Daring Greatly

2 The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse

3 The Luminaries

4 Focus aan/uit

5 No Bones

6 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

7 Thinking in systems

8 Soul Tourists

9 Wish you were here

10 Life after life

11 Klara and the sun

12 The Three Musketeers

13 Utopia Avenue

14 Here we are

15 Weather

16 The Midnight Library

17 Summer

18 Beach Read

19 The Switch

20 Such a fun age

21 The Flatshare

22 Anxious People

23 Beautiful world, where are you?

24 Public Library and other stories

25 The man in the red coat

26 Normal People

27 Expectations

28 The Eyre Affair

29 Sweet Tooth

30 Mansfield Park

31 A Man called Ove

32 The Christmas Pig

So I (almost) started and finished the year with children's books. I read The Christmas Pig, J.K.Rowling's newest, during a feverish Christmas Day, so chances are I won't remember much about it in a couple of weeks. But it is a better note to end on than last year, when illness drove me to romantic drivel.

I had a couple of rereads when I wasn't really in the mood for trying new things, mostly during October (The Eyre Affair, Sweet Tooth and Mansfield Park). Rereads from earlier in the year were The Luminaries and Life after Life, two novels I loved but didn't really fully understand the first time I read them. Upoin rereading I liked them better than before; sometimes you have to go back after a couple of years and look at such stories with fresh eyes. Normal People was a reread after I was so very disappointed in Sally Rooney's newest novel.

Again, only 1 'classic' novel in The Three Musketeers. No Dutch novels at all. But a surprising amount of non-fiction, especially in the start of the year.

Best English novel

1 Wish you were here

2 Such a fun age

3 Utopia Avenue

So many great novels to choose from! I am really spoiled for choice here. But in a stark contrast to last year; my top 3 contains just 1 female author. I read a lot of books by female writers, but apparently they were not the greatest (and at least 3 of them were romantic summer reads). For example, I immensely enjoyed Ali Smith's Summer, but it was not enough to make the top 3. Maybe if I'd reread the rest of the quartet first, but now it just felt a bit too rushed and unconnected to make the grade.

So what did I love? Wish you were here took me four years to receive and read, but of all the novels I've read this year, it is the one that still sticks out in my mind the most. The whole atmosphere of the novel, with two people so at odds with each other and with the world for all the wrong reasons... I've just reread my original review from March, and apparently the novel really grew on me after that. The same is true for Such a fun age, which I apparently didn't even write about it when I first read it. But it paints such a pointed, accurate picture of current 'woke' times and the way people interact with others; careful to be correct while at the same time doing that mostly so others will think better of them. It is one of the few very American novels I read this year, but the whole American atmosphere only improves on the story it tells. Finally, I would never have thought that David Mitchell could write a novel that would not go to the top of my list that year, but Utopia Avenue apparently does the trick. I loved it, it is certainly in my top 3, but it is not his best novel. 

Best Dutch novel

Zero Dutch novels in the entire year, and just 1 non-fiction book in Dutch (which won't make any list, but it was a nice read on how to focus).

Best non-fiction

1 Thinking in systems

2 The man in the red coat

3 Daring greatly

So I read a lot of non-fiction this year, some of which was an overflow from last year, when a December illness drove me to reading soppy romantic stuff. Thinking in systems opened my eyes on how to see things in connection with each other. I rate highly on the 'system thinking' score in personality questionnaires, so this really spoke to me. The man in the red coat is by Julian Barnes, and at first I didn't realise it was a non-fiction book about an actual person, Dr Pozzi. But being Barnes, the language reads almost like a novel. That I read most of it during an Italian holiday probably also helped with setting the atmosphere of the belle epoque. Finally, Daring greatly is Brené Brown's famous book on how to overcome your inhibitions and dare greatly. I liked her writing style and was interested in reading more, but seeing her online personality as some sort of pep guru makes me wonder if this really is the thing for me.

Best short-story collection

1 Public library and other stories

I read only the one, by Ali Smith, but it was a beautiful read. She combines stories about libraries and books with eyewitness accounts of people's connection to a specific library, now that apparently they're being closed down all over the UK.

Best scifi/fantasy

1 Klara and the sun

I think this is the only novel I could realistically put in this category, although it perhaps fits better in a new sort of 'dystopian' category (but maybe it feels that way because I'm currently reading The Every and everything connected to tech feels somewhat tainted). Apart from that, it is a beautiful, haunting novel. I must really read some more Ishiguru (as I actually said in my original review, back in April...). 

Best 'new' author

1 Frederik Backman

2 Anna Hope

Frederik Backman is a Swedish author whose novels I've read in English. Apparently they've been pretty popular for a while, with films and series made after them. I discovered him through his newest novel Anxious People, which led me to also try some of the older ones. I like his style and his insights, even though the Swedish setting does not always translate well through the English language. From Anna Hope I read her newest novel Expectations, which was so much better than Sally Rooney's new novel. I am really looking forward to reading Wake, also an older novel that sounds really good based on the description and reviews.

Most disappointing novel

1 Beautiful world, where are you?

2 Here we are

3 No bones

So the first one should be obvious from what I wrote about it before: somehow Sally Rooney's third novel is plagued by the 'second novel' effect, in my eyes at least. Here we are is not a bad novel in itself, but after reading the profound depth of Wish you were here, it fell a bit flat on its face. Graham Swift can be a bit hit and miss apparently. The same is true of No Bones; after reading Milkman my expectations for this novel were so high, that they could only be disappointed.

Authors I read more than once:

Ali Smith (2x)

Graham Swift (2x)

Sally Rooney (2x)

Frederik Backman (2x)

Expectations

So I am a big fan of Sally Rooney. Her novels Conversations with Friends and Normal People both made laugh and cry and love in equal measure, so when I read that her new novel, Beautiful world, where are you? was published, I gnashed my teeth knowing I had to wait until it would be released as a paperback, which for most British novels takes at least half a year. But the publisher probably had a sharp idea of their target audience, as it was immediately published as paperback, upon which I immediately bought it.
Now my expectations for this novel were high. They were not the highest they could have been, because in the weeks prior to the publication I'd read several interviews and/or reviews of the novel, all of which stressed that Beautiful world... would be very different from its predecessors on one crucial point; we would be looking outside in on the main characters, much like the script of a film or series. This was caused by Rooney actually writing/adapting the scripts for the TV series of those first two novels, which led to her discovering that she really liked this style, that it helped her develop the new novel. But despite this slight warning on what to expect style-wise, my expectations were still high.
Sadly, as I found out after just a couple of chapters, I do not like this style. Or rather; when such a remote viewpoint is combined with in-depth relationships between people, who are living lives in which not that many spectacular events happen, so for whom their inner lives and struggles and ambitions and thoughts are the main 'event' of the novel, I do not like it. And that is basically what Beautiful world... is about; Alice and Eileen, two long-time friends, who do not meet for most of the novel, but at the end hang out together for a while, and their lovers, Felix and Simon. The friends have grown apart somewhat, due to various reasons, and communicate with each other via email. Even these emails are remote, as if the main characters cannot actually take themselves or their friendship seriously.

Okay, so this is not entirely true; the novel is also 'about' mental health struggles, families, class differences, aesthetics, 'millennial angst' in general, etc etc. But this is all somehow hidden, because we only have their conversations, emails, and the way they act. We can see these people trying to connect and to form an intimate, lasting relationship, but we can only see this from a distance. We never know what they are thinking, or feeling, or why they behave the way they do. We can only guess. That is of course the point of it all, that you can never really know. And it is very cleverly done, I just didn't like it all the time.

So after finishing Beautiful world..., I went back to Normal People. I loved this novel so much when I first read it; how would it hold up?
Well. Interestingly enough, I liked it less the second time around. Probably because all those little things that annoyed me in Beautiful world..., for example how much she focusses on sex as a means of an exchange of power, was also already present in Normal People. And the remoteness found in the new novel is also present here, only less clearly so.

What really struck me, was how Sally Rooney herself is in each novel. She actually mentioned this in an interview, that she can only write about things she has experienced herself. So her characters grow with her; in her first novel they are early twenties, then late twenties, now early thirties. They all live in or near County Mayo or Dublin, study at uni, etc. But it goes further than that. Connell, in Normal People, reads English at Trinity in Dublin. At the end of the novel, he gets an offer to follow a prestigious writing program in NYC (which Mariann heartbreakingly tells him to take, still the moment at which I sobbed for these poor characters). Then in Beautiful people... Alice is also a writer who has written two very successful novels, lived in NYC to follow a writing programme, but after a mental breakdown has retreated to a small town to focus on her writing. All of these things happened in Sally Rooney's life, including the mental breakdown following the two novels. Of course, these works are not autobiographical, but still it bugged me somehow, like it took something away from the novel.

So my high expectations weren't really met.

The opposite was true for Expectation: a novel (yes really), the novel by Anna Hope which I read after my Rooney reread. This deals with some of the same themes; female friendship, millennials, finding happiness. Here we have three female characters; Cate, Hannah and Lissa, who've known each other since school but now find themselves in very different lives; Cate has moved to Canterbury when her son was born, while Lissa still tries to make it in the acting world. It took some getting into, but after a while the writing style grew on me and I actually started to like these characters. As with Rooney, not everything is said explicitly, some feelings or motivations only come to light through actions or speech. But these characters were so much easier to get to know, to understand and to sympathise with, it compensated for the poorer quality in writing and sometimes somewhat forced themes or conflict. The ending is horrible, it doesn't fit in with the rest of the novel, but overall it was a better experience than Beautiful world... Maybe because my expectations were lower. Maybe because I really don't like that remote writing style. Or maybe because an author cannot always write a novel you love.

Summer

Yes, the final instalment of Ali Smith's seasonal quartet is finally out! Out in an edition that fits with the other three novels, I mean; the actual novel was published more than a year ago already.
So, after Autumn, Winter, and Spring, Summer is finally here. The first novels dealt (sideways) with Brexit, Trump and immigration, big themes of our times. I don't know what the original theme for the fourth novel was going to be, but with the corona pandemic and lockdown going on around us, this kind of became the theme. Or one of them. I read somewhere that Ali Smith always wanted to end the quartet with summer, to be sure she'd end on a high note, but with it becoming somewhat of a 'lockdown novel', I'm not sure this went exactly how she'd planned it. But then again, that is the story of 2020 in a nutshell.

Like the other novels, Summer consists of several interwoven stories. We meet Sacha, who tries to save the world from global warming, and her brother and mother who each have troubles of their own. Their father has moved next door with his new girlfriend, but is somehow still part of the family. They meet Art and Charlotte and go on a journey together before the lockdown takes hold.

The other main storyline concerns Daniel, an elderly man in a care home who alternates between this time and his memories of being interred on the Isle of Man during WWII. I really loved his storyline; his thoughts were one fluid motion between his memories and the present day, which made for interesting transitions. The two story lines meet at some point, but I won't spoil that for you. Apart from that, there are several references to the other storyline, sometimes in the simple form of a word such as 'letterbox'. Thinking that Ali Smith has written this book on such tremendous speed and was still able to intersperse these little references, to weave the web of this novel so finely, amazes me. She really is an amazing writer.

Now there are supposedly many, many links between the four novels of this quartet, as I mentioned in my very short review of Spring. Recurring characters, recurring references to art, recurring themes. For me, most of these went way over my head. When one of the characters walked past the fence of an immigration centre, I realised that I'd read about that same fence before. I knew there was something to do with a fence in Autumn, and people chaining themselves to a fence in Winter, and something to do with an immigration service in Spring. Was this all the same fence? Really? This realisation came about three quarters through the book. At that point, I belatedly realised that yes, all of these novels are interconnected, but at so many more levels than I'd thought. Somehow I'd missed that completely. But thinking about it, the name SA4A rang a bell somewhere, as did Art in Nature.

Then I went back to my review for Autumn, and lo and behold, Daniel is one of the main characters in that novel too. And Summer apparently explained several untold mysteries from that novel, mysteries I'd already completely forgotten about. Art and Charlotte are some of the protagonists of Winter, who apparently I'd also forgotten all about. That may be the trouble with these novels; the main themes stick, the examples and ideas that you need to think about for days after finishing one of these novels, but the characters and plot elements are gone pretty quickly. If I were to read all four novels back to back (which I will definitely do at some point in the future), I'd probably see a lot more of these neat little connections, these wires that not just connect the stories within the novels, but all the novels into one big story.

So what is Summer about? This is one of the hardest questions to answer with Ali Smith, she has so many themes and ideas and storylines that they all bundle together to create one whole. The blurb tells us; "People on the brink of change. They're family, but they think they're strangers." I think that applies not only to the characters in Summer, but to all the characters in Ali Smith's novels. "So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they've got nothing in common have in common?"

The whole series is about divisions, groups of people being set against each other for no particularly good reason. For the final novel to function as a bringer-together of people is a hopeful note. This must be the high note she mentioned in that review.

Of the four novels, Autumn is still my favourite, although apparently I can't quite remember what it is about. Summer felt a bit too rushed in places, too much trying to be current, with sideway references to events that don't really fit in the main theme. But Ali Smith did an amazing job writing this quartet that feels so current and still so universal. I'm sure if you were to reread these novels in about 10 years, you would get a pretty accurate picture of what the main events of the time did to people's lives. But I would strongly suggest reading all four novels closer together than I did, so you can actually see the full magic at work.

The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is one of those rare books I bought purely on the blurb text. I was wandering through the bookshop, this must have been one of the first times back after the last lockdown, and noticed a dark blue book with a bright house on the front. And a cat. You can always trick me into picking up your book when you put a cat on the front. I knew the author from his Reasons for staying alive book, and I knew he wrote other things, but I hadn't heard of this particular book. The blurb told me it was about Nora, who "at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth [...] finds herself transported to a library", where she can "undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived". Well, who doesn't want that? Who, in random moments, hasn't thought about choices and regrets and mused how their life may have turned out if they'd done things differently? And who doesn't want to know that happens when you actually get the chance? So this book was coming home with me.
(It was only later that I found out that this is a hugely popular book, finding it's way into top 10s and top 5s and 'must read this summer' lists. I just loved the premise on the blurb.)

So the book turns out to be closer to Haig's self-help novels than I first thought. Nora doesn't just 'live her last day on earth'; she commits suicide. Because her life has gone downhill; she has been fired, she doesn't have any loved ones around her and her cat has just died. Not seeing any way out of the mess she finds herself in, she decides to end things. Then she finds herself in the aforementioned library, surrounded by books that all contain a version of her life where she made different choices. But before she can delve into those, she has to face The Book of Regrets. For someone who feels so miserable they have chosen to end their life, the Book of Regrets felt like an unnecessarily cruel addition, but there you are.

Nora's first choice is to see what would have happened if she'd stayed with her ex boyfriend and opened a country pub, as was his big dream. Now the trick is that the books don't take you back to the moment you made the choice. They take you back to exactly the same day, exactly the same time. So in each story she is thirtyish and it is the stroke of midnight. Safe to say, the whole boyfriend thing didn't work out in this life either, after which she finds herself back in the library, ready to pick another version of her life.

Now Nora is a pretty special person. Apart from swimming at a very high level until she was a teenager, she also played in a band and wanted to be a geologist. In the library, she finds out that she could have been an Olympic medallist, or a world-famous singer in a relationship with an equally world-famous movie star, or a world famous geologist doing research in Spitsbergen, if she'd pursued any of those ambitions. And that is where the story came apart for me. There is no way that if Nora kept on swimming, she would automatically have become an Olympian. There must have been thousands of variants of the story in which she chooses to keep on swimming and still doesn't achieve much. It would have been so nice to find out she would have had a pretty average life in most cases (which, let's remind ourselves, is still better than the mess she finds herself in now), instead of the fame and glory that she immediately dives into.

Not that those lives turn out to be all that great, mind you. But still, the whole 'reaching the top of your field' angle didn't feel quite right. 

But that is one of the only two minor downsides to the novel. The structure of the novel is neat, with some really short chapters that just contain a single sentence or a single chant interspersed with the 'regular' longer chapters.  Nora is a pretty complicated character, who grows throughout the novel, realising life is more than the choices you make. 

We get to know a variety of people around Nora; her parents, her brother, her friends. We learn how her choices affect them and the choices they make. After living so many lives, Nora starts to see people close to her in a different light, from an elderly neighbour to the young kid she teaches piano. She realises she means something to them, that she influences the way their lives play out, and vice versa. She realises her choices matter, but that the people you live your life with matter more. Without spoiling the ending, which some reviews find too 'happy', I can safely say this book will make you look differently at any missed chances of regrets you may be beating yourself up about. And knowing everything Matt Haig himself has been through, I think he is well equipped to teach us something in that area.

Etappe 18 - Beek naar Gennep

Onze 18e etappe begon ongeveer halverwege de officiële 17e etappe, bij het pannenkoekenrestaurant in Beek waar we de dag ervoor geëindigd waren, en voerde helemaal naar het eind van de 18e etappe in Gennep. Hierna zouden we eindelijk weer in het 'echte' Pieterpad ritme zitten. De bedoeling was dat dit stuk ongeveer 20 kilometer zou zijn, maar het werd uiteindelijk een stukje langer. En waar het de dag ervoor nog broeierig warm en zonnig was, liepen we nu in flink lagere temperaturen in de motregen. Gelukkig ging het grootste deel van de route door het bos, waardoor we niet heel veel van de regen merkten, maar op de stukken van de route door het hoge gras werd de onderkant van je broek en je wandelschoenen behoorlijk nat. Nu, vier dagen later, zijn mijn wandelschoenen nog steeds niet helemaal droog...

Hoe dan ook, we begonnen op de top van de Duivelsberg, de eerste van vele heuvels deze dag. Het was een fijn slingerpad, zowel heuvel-op en heuvel-af als mooi bochtig tussen de bomen door. Heel anders dan de productiebossen die we eerder op het Pieterpad wel gehad hebben.

Na een paar kilometers bos kwamen er aan weerszijden ook velden bij, nog steeds met een slingerend pad, tot we tussen de velden door liepen op paden met hoog gras. Dit gras was behoorlijk nat, zoals eerder gezegd, wat het wandelen niet heel fijn maakte.

Slingerpad door het bos.

Uitzicht over de volgende heuvels.

Het pad verdwijnt in het natte gras.

Na deze smalle zandpaden kwamen we in Groesbeek, eigenlijk het eindpunt van etappe 17 en het begin van etappe 18. Nog 14 kilometer te gaan.

Het landschap en de route veranderden hier meteen; we liepen nog steeds door het bos, maar de paden waren veel breder en het bos zelf was lichter; beukenbomen in plaats van eiken en naaldbomen. Na weer een stukje velden kwamen we in het bos bij de Sint Jansberg, waar we weer het Streekpad Nijmengen en nu ook het Maas-Niederrheinpad kruisten. Ook hier flinke hoogteverschillen, met op een aantal plekken een soort stuwmeertjes. Apart hoe twee bossen die nog geen vijf kilometer bij elkaar vandaan liggen, zo kunnen verschillen.

Breder bos ten zuiden van Groesbeek.

Tussen de velden, waar ook de Market Garden route loopt.

Een van de vele 'stuwmeertjes' bij de Sint Jansberg.

Nadat we het bos uit kwamen waren we er eigenlijk wel een beetje klaar mee. Het was een prachtige route, maar al die hoogtemeters werken behoorlijk op je kuiten, en de regen hielp ook niet mee met hoe zwaar je kleren en je schoenen voelen. Daarbij wordt je op een gegeven moment wel moe van continue in de regen lopen. Maar we hadden nog wel even te gaan, door Milsbeek naar Gennep.

Zo plotseling als de heuvels er in de vorige etappe waren, zo plotseling kwamen we er nu ook weer uit, in de vallei van de Maas (dit 'blokje' in het boekje heet ook "Maasterrassen en rivierduinen"). Het blijft wonderlijk hoe die overgangen zo abrupt zijn, waar de rivieren de heuvels hebben uitgesleten. Het laatste stukje route was grotendeels verhard tussen de velden door, met op het einde nog een mooi stukje onverhard tussen de bloemenweiden en de koeien. Dat gaf wel een mooi einde aan wat verder ook een hele mooie wandeling was, alleen kun je er niet echt van genieten als het de hele dag zo nat en grauw is. Jammer genoeg ben ik niet heel vaak in deze buurt, anders zou dit wel een stuk route zijn om nog een keer opnieuw te lopen...

Uitzicht terug op de heuvels.

Het allerlaatste stukje, met de kerktoren van Gennep in de verte.

Aangekomen in Gennep, het echte eindpunt van de 18e etappe, zijn we ook de laatste provincie van het Pieterpad binnen gelopen. Nog 8 etappes te gaan tot de Pietersberg, allemaal door Limburg. Deze twee dagen waren al een behoorlijke logistieke uitdaging, dat zal de komende etappes niet anders zijn. We zullen zien wanneer we weer een paar dagen kunnen vinden om naar het diepe zuiden af te reizen!

Gelopen: 30-6-2021

Afstand: 22,2 km

Tijd: 4:47

Etappe 17 - Tolkamer naar Beek

Pieterpad etappe 17 gaat natuurlijk niet van Tolkamer naar Beek, maar van Millingen aan de Rijn naar Groesbeek. Maar omdat we etappe 16 eerder hadden afgebroken en de volgende etappe van Groesbeek naar Gennep weer een hele korte was, hebben we de etappes weer wat gemixt om tot 2 etappes van ongeveer 20 kilometer te komen. Etappe 17 werd daarmee van Tolkamer naar Beek, en etappe 18 van Beek naar Gennep, waarna we weer in het daadwerkelijke Pieterpad ritme zouden zitten.
Het eerste stuk langs de Rijn voerde over dezelfde dijkweg waar we een paar weken eerder in de wind en de regen hadden gelopen, maar deze dag was het broeierig warm en benauwd. We stonden wel enigszins op tijd, omdat de pont van Pannerden naar Millingen volgens de website alleen op het hele uur zou varen. Uiteindelijk bleek de veerman gewoon te wachten tot alle fietsers en voetgangers die hij kon zien aan boord waren, maar toch hebben we niet heel veel mee gekregen van de eerste 4 kilometers. Wat op zich jammer was, want een deel van de route voerde door een mooi onverhard stukje door een uiterwaard, waar het gras tot je ellebogen kwam. Deze dag was dat vooral verkoelend, op etappe 18 zou nat gras wat minder fijn worden.

Mooi stukje onverhard langs de Rijn.

Op het pondje midden op de Rijn.

Aan de overkant van de Rijn moesten we eerst een stukje door Millingen, waarna we echt in de 17e etappe zaten, maar daarna volgden al gauw de velden. Het stuk etappe dat we vandaag liepen zou tot aan de Duivelsberg alleen maar velden geven, met een klein stukje door Leuth en een klein stukje door het Duitse Zyfflich. Een groot deel van het pad was precies op de grens tussen Nederland en Duitsland, een onverhard pad langs een sloot. Hier was een grote graafmachine bezig om het riet uit de sloot te halen, gadegeslagen door nieuwsgierige koeien. Dit was eigenlijk het meest boeiende uitzicht dat we op dit stuk hadden; het was niet de meest inspirerende omgeving en in deze warmte ook niet de fijnste plek om te lopen.

Langs de velden, met flinke plassen op de weg.

Graspad met graafmachine en Duitse koeien.

Na dit lange, vlakke stuk door de Rijnvallei doken de heuvels op die het tweede deel van de officiële etappe 17 zijn, maar die wij dus pas in etappe 18 zouden krijgen. Het zag er bijna on-Nederlands glooiend uit en de aankondiging in het boekje was ook dat dat er "een steile klim" zou volgen naar de top van de Duivelsberg.

Overgang van de Rijnvallei naar de heuvels.

Het was inderdaad een redelijke klim, maar helaas was er op de top niet een mooi uitzicht om dat te belonen, omdat de varens zo hoog stonden dat het uitzichtpunt helemaal geblokkeerd was. Het Pieterpad kruist hier nog 2 andere wandelroutes, het Grote Rivierenpad en het Streekpad Nijmegen, dus het was even opletten. Maar na nog honderd meter waren we bij wat voor ons het eindpunt van deze etappe was, bij een heel fijn geplaatst pannenkoekenrestaurant vlakbij Beek.

Padendrukte op de top.

In de ochtend waren we hier ook al geweest om de auto te parkeren, toen hing het hele bos vol met damp van de regen die de dag ervoor was gevallen. Inmiddels had de zon het ergste vocht weggebrand en konden we genieten van wat eigenlijk het mooiste weer van deze twee dagen zou zijn. Het was al met al een prima etappe, veel onverhard wandelen in een mooi wisselend landschap, en etappe 17 als geheel is waarschijnlijk een van de mooiste om te lopen.

Gelopen: 29-6-2021
Afstand: 20,0 km
Tijd: 4:09

Utopia Avenue

The first novel I bought on the first time I was back in a bookshop after the lockdown ended was Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. Not because it was newly published; it came out months and months ago and I could have ordered it online at any time since then. But because it is a novel by David Mitchell, one of my favourite authors of all time, I wanted to have it in the right edition, the one that would fit in with his other novels on my bookshelf. So I waited until that beautiful day, on which I bought six novels in one go.

So David Mitchell. He is known for his magical realism novels, mostly for Cloud Atlas, but more recently for The Bone Clocks, which I reread a couple of months ago. Utopia Avenue is seen as one of his more 'realistic' novels, comparable to Black Swan Green, which has long been one of my absolute favourites. The wonder of his novels is that they all fit together into one big Mitchellverse; characters from one novel reappear in the next, or their parents, or their children, even if the novel is set in another country or century or different realism realm. I'd heard good things about Utopia Avenue, but I tried to keep away from any spoilers, to have the joy of that magical first read.

So Utopia Avenue. It's a band, three guys and a girl, trying to make it big in the final years of the 1960s. They are an unlikely combination, coming from folk, jazz and more electronic types of music to combine into a magical sound mix. They also each come with their own set of problems, psychological, sexual, social, and/or financial, which gives them more than enough source material for their songs. Unfortunately, we cannot of course hear their actual music, although Mitchell's descriptions make it seem he at least could hear their songs in his head. 

The novel's chapter titles are all taken from these songs, with the author of the song being the main character of their own chapter. The lyrics are interspersed with the action, usually a bit later than the actual chapter, since the events in a chapter are the inspiration for a song that still has to be written. This structure feels a bit forced at times, with several big events of a similar vein crammed into one chapter  to show all the inspiration for that particular song.

The characters themselves are nice, even though they can feel a bit flat. It's probably because there are four (actually, five) of them, but I felt I got to know them less well than Holly in The Bone Clocks or Jason in Black Swan Green. They are struggling with growing up, with the changing times, with their changing lives. As any good Mitchell character, they are swept up as the tides of their lives take them from good to bad luck, inspiring their songs along the way. It felt like they came out of this novel as better people than when they started, but how they grow exactly is not always particularly clear. 

In the meantime, it is a cameo fest. As they make their way through the 1960s music industry, first in the UK and then in the US, we meet anyone and everyone, from Janis Joplin to David Bowie. Some took me by surprise, some felt a bit too obvious. None of them really added anything to the story, apart from 'a-ha!' moments and entertainment value. But there are other cameos too, the characters from other novels I previously mentioned. I was very happy to have read The Bone Clocks so shortly before, as there are many allusions to its storyline and characters. But other, smaller mentions too; Luisa Rey, Crispin Hershey, Robert Frobisher. Each of these brought a little smile, a little mental jump of joy.

But sadly, those were the things I enjoyed most about the novel. Sure, it is an interesting picture of the 1960s world, of the cultural and social change taking place, of how music brought young people together and could liberate them, in a way. And Mitchell paints that picture well. And sure, I enjoyed spending time with his characters, learning about their lives and their struggles, seeing how they become a band and push each other to greater heights. And of course, I loved the language, Mitchells writing style and the way 400 pages seem to fly by. But apart from a couple of moments, I didn't feel I was reading a novel by David Mitchell. I was reading a great novel, sure, but not one of the best I'd ever read. Not even when I got to the end, where as usual the knife that has slowly been inserted into your heart, the knife you don't know that is there until David Mitchell suddenly twists it and then pulls it out, leaving you feeling devastated and fulfilled at the same time, did it feel like the great read I had upon first reading his other great novels.

So I enjoyed it, I would recommend it, it's a good read, but it's not one of his best.

Etappe 16 - Braamt naar Tolkamer

Etappe 16 gaat eigenlijk van Braamt naar Milligen aan de Rijn, maar om allerhande logistieke redenen, vooral dat Milligen ten zuiden van de Rijn ligt, hebben we deze etappe geeindigd bij Tolkamer. Ongeveer 4,5 kilometer te weinig, maar met 24 kilometer was dit verreweg de langste etappe die dit lange wandelweekend op het programma stond.
Waar de vorige etappe in rechte wegen en landbouwgrond eindigde, begon deze na een klein stukje door Braamt gelopen te hebben meteen al goed; via een zandpad liepen we de beboste heuvels in. Dit 'bosch' (afwisselend Zeddammer, Bergher, Zonder en Korter) strekte zich de eerste 10 kilometer van onze etappe uit. 

Het begin van het bosch.

En het was niet alleen bosrijk, maar ook flink heuvelachtig. Het begon meteen met een fikse klim tot (volgens het boekje) 74 meter boven NAP. Zo tussen de bomen kon je weinig zien van hoe hoog we zaten, je merkte het vooral in je beenspieren bij het klimmen en afdalen. Twee dagen eerder had ik bij station Doetinchem een krant gekocht van een mevrouw die vroeg of we het Pieterpad liepen (blijkbaar een van de weinige redenen waarom mensen in Doetinchem zijn). Naar Millingen was "maar een vlak stuk" wist ze te melden. Nou, voor Nederlandse begrippen was dit zeker niet vlak!

Op de foto minder goed te zien, maar het was echt best steil.

Uiteindelijk kwamen we op de Hulzenberg, een hoogte van 84,6 meter met een indrukwekkende uitkijktoren. Het was inmiddels weer redelijk hard aan het regenen, maar de uitkijktoren had een dak, dus met deze prima timing konden we de bui droog uitzitten met een fantastisch uitzicht over de heuvels en bossen.

Uitzicht richting de Rijnvallei inclusief regen.

Na nog een stukje heuvelachtig bos en hei kruisten we de A12, waarna we eigenlijk in overtreding waren. De route voert hier een klein stukje door Duitsland, waarvoor we technisch gezien een negatieve coronatest bij ons moesten hebben. Nou zijn de regels wat schimmig voor mensen die 'op doorreis' zijn, en we zouden deze paar kilometer eigenlijk alleen in de bossen lopen, dus als de zuinige Hollanders die we zijn hadden we ons deze commerciële coronatest bespaard. Uiteindelijk was er geen verschil te zien tussen het Nederlandse en het Duitse bos en waren de enige mensen die we tegenkwamen ons tegemoet lopende mede-Pieterpadders, maar het voelde toch wel een beetje spannend.

Duits bospad.

Nadat we weer terug in Nederland waren, was het landschap in één keer compleet anders; we waren uit de heuvels gekomen in wat het boekje de 'Gelderse poort' noemt; het dal dat de Rijn in de loop der eeuwen heeft uitgesleten. De overgang was een van de meest abrupte op het hele Pieterpad.

Vlak over de grens hadden de vriendelijke mensen van Spijk een 'uutbloashuuske' voor ons neer gezet, met daarbij een bordje van de afstanden. Dit was het eerste bordje waarop we konden zien dat we over de helft waren. Ergens weet je dat natuurlijk wel, want we zaten al in de derde etappe van het tweede boekje, maar de getallen zo op het paaltje maakten wel dat ik me pas echt realiseerde hoe ver we eigenlijk al gelopen hadden.

Met dank aan de Spijkenaren (Spijkers?).

Spijk is, volgens hun eigen motto, de plek waar de Rijn écht het land binnen komt en nadat we het dorpje door waren kwamen we dan ook op de Rijndijk terecht. Waar we in het bos nog enige beschutting hadden tegen de regen en de wind, liepen we er nu natuurlijk vol in. Ook was er op de dijk niet echt een apart wandelpad, we liepen in de berm van een 80 kilometer weg waar veel grote vrachtwagens beladen met zand op voorbij kwamen razen. Al met al niet de prettigste situatie om in te lopen en ik was blij dat we de etappe voortijdig afbraken in Tolkamer.

Rijndijk met in de verte Kleef.

Dat betekent wel dat we de volgende keer nog een flink stuk langs de Rijn moeten lopen, tot aan het veer in Pannerden, waarna de hele etappe Millingen naar Groesbeek nog volgt. Maar in de zon en zonder wind is dat vast een stuk beter te doen, want ook aan het eind van deze etappe begon ik me af te vragen waarom ik ook alweer ooit aan dat hele Pieterpad begonnen was. Grappig hoeveel invloed de omgeving heeft op hoeveel motivatie je hebt; toen we in de ochtend in dezelfde regen door het bos liepen, vond ik het geen probleem. En uiteindelijk horen de grote rivieren inclusief hun industrie ook bij Nederland, ookal zijn ze misschien niet het mooiste stukje.

Gelopen: 10-5-2021 

Afstand: 18,3 km 

Tijd: 3:47

Etappe 15 - Zelhem naar Braamt

Omdat we in Braamt in een huisje zaten, konden we bij de tweede etappe van het lange weekend mooi 'naar huis' lopen. Dat kwam erg goed uit, want na de zon in de ochtend zouden buien volgen. En dit was niet een etappe om helemaal voor heen en weer te gaan rijden, zoals zou blijken.
Om in Zelhem te komen konden we bij de ingang van het park op een bus stappen die ons naar station Doetinchem bracht, een van de meest troosteloze treinstations van Nederland. Daarna namen we de bus naar Zelhem, met nog twee andere Pieterpad duo's. Er stonden ook mensen klaar bij de bus naar Braamt, dus dit ging duidelijk een drukkere wandeldag worden dan de vorige etappe. Eenmaal in Zelhem bleken er nog drie duo's ongeveer rond dezelfde tijd te starten, waardoor we een groot deel van het begin van de etappe in een treintje liepen, met ongeveer 50 meter tussen elk duo. Normaal gesproken vind ik het altijd irritant als er mensen vlakbij lopen, maar bij het Pieterpad geeft het op een of andere manier een gevoel van saamhorigheid.

Na een stukje door Zelhem kwamen we al gauw weer op de onverharde wegen, die een beetje hetzelfde beeld gaven als in de vorige etappe; veel weilanden en akkers, maar niet in van die saaie rechte hokjes.

Voor ons liepen nog 4 Pieterpad stellen.

Ook vandaag kwamen we weer langs een landgoed, Kasteel Slangeburg, mooi gelegen in vrijwel het enige bos op de etappe. Het was hier wel even zoeken, want het Graafschapspad voegde zich bij het Pieterpad.

Kasteel Slangeburg, inclusief slotgracht.

Na een heel stuk langs de A18, waar we via een tunneltje onderdoor gingen, kwamen we in een klein dorpje waar een restaurantje net het terras geopend had. We hadden dit horeca punt al gespot op de kaart en maakten van de mogelijkheid gebruik om van ons eerste post-lockdown terrasje te genieten. Helaas konden we niet heel lang blijven zitten, want de voorspelde regenbuien bereikten ons al bijna, maar het was een fijne onderbreking.

Nadat het Graafschapspad ons weer verlaten had staken we de Oude IJssel over en kwamen op het laatste stuk van de route, door open velden en op asfalt wegen. Sowieso al niet de mooiste omgeving om te lopen, maar de wind kwam ook pal uit het westen en blies de regen vol in ons gezicht. Tijdens de laatste vier kilometer heb ik me meerdere keren afgevraagd wat hier ook alweer zo leuk aan was, dat Pieterpad lopen. Gelukkig kwam Braamt op een gegeven moment in zicht, waardoor we een duidelijk punt hadden om naartoe te lopen. We konden vanaf het eindpunt zo doorlopen naar ons huisje, om bij te komen met een warme kop thee.

De laatste saaie kilometers.

Ik wist dat het niet de mooiste etappe zou worden (ook zeker niet de lelijkste, trouwens), maar na de dag ervoor al gelopen te hebben en met de regen en wind werd het toch meer afzien dan gedacht. De lol gaat er op dat soort momenten wel echt vanaf, maar gelukkig komen na dit soort dagen ook weer mooie dagen, zowel qua uitzicht als qua weer.

Gelopen: 8-5-2021

Afstand: 17,6 km

Tijd: 3:34

Etappe 14 - Vorden naar Zelhem

Officieel is dit etappe 1 van het tweede Pieterpad deel, maar wij tellen gewoon door!
Na een winterstop van enkele maanden was de tijd gekomen om verder te gaan met onze Pieterpad avonturen. Omdat het steeds verder rijden is naar de start- en eindpunten, wilden we 3 etappes in 1 weekend gaan wandelen. We hadden daarom een lang weekend een huisje gehuurd in Braamt, op een kilometer van het start- en eindpunt van etappe 15 en 16. Maar voor etappe 14 moesten we iets meer moeite doen; eerst met de auto naar eindpunt Zelhem, daarna met de bus naar Ruurlo en vervolgens met de trein naar startpunt Vorden. Dat werd nog even spannend, want de bus kwam in eerste instantie niet, maar uiteindelijk haalden we het allemaal net. Toevallig zaten we in dezelfde bus en trein als een ander stel dat precies hetzelfde programma volgde. Hen waren we in Vorden al snel kwijt, want ze liepen veel sneller dan wij. Verder hebben we een aantal tegenliggers gezien, maar ondanks het mooie weer was het best wel rustig op het pad.

In Vorden moesten we eerst nog de laatste kilometer van het laatste boekje lopen, wat we de laatste keer eraf gesmokkeld hadden, maar daarna konden we echt los. Na een klein stukje door Vorden zelf begon deze etappe zoals de vorigen eindigden; hoge zandgronden, beukenbossen en grote landgoederen. Kasteel Vorden, waar het Pieterpad ooit geopend is, lag net niet helemaal op de route, maar we konden wel mooie plaatjes maken.

Kasteel Vorden in de verte.

Het monument voor Toos en Bertje, de bedenksters van het Pieterpad.

Het overgrote deel van de route was onverhard, zandpaden langs bosranden en weilanden. De uitzondering hierop was het dorpje Linde, inclusief prachtige molen, waardoor ik de rest van de dag Linde met een E van Lucky Fonz III in mijn hoofd had.

Weiland met bosrand

Na nog een dorpje, Varssel, kwamen we in een het enige 'echte' bos van de etappe. Omdat de bomen nog niet echt in het blad stonden was het zelfs in het bos prachtig qua licht en rust. Tegen het eind van het bos hoorden we een vreemd gekrijs, duidelijk een of andere vogel, maar mogelijk ook een roofvogel die zijn nest wilde verdedigen. Uiteindelijk bleek het gelukkig een zwarte specht te zijn, een best zeldzame vogel met een vuurrode kuif.

Het bos, het Oude Schot

Het laatste stuk van de route ging weer door de velden, nog steeds via meanderende wegen, maar het voelde toch al 'industrieler' aan dan het noorden van Gelderland. Gelukkig waren de paden nog wel grotendeels onverhard, mede door een vriendelijke boer waarbij we recht over het erf en langs het veld mochten lopen. Op dit soort punten heb je altijd even een twijfelmoment; het kan toch niet zo zijn dat we zomaar over dit stuk eigen grond mogen lopen? Maar gelukkig zijn er boeren die het prima vinden dat het Pieterpad vol over hun land gaat, waardoor we een mooie groene tocht hadden in plaats van een recht stuk over een asfaltweg.

Vele waarschuwingen, maar wandelaars hebben vrije doorgang.

Eenmaal aangekomen in Zelhem waren we voor we het wisten weer bij de auto en aan het eind van deze eerste etappe van het tweede boekje. Officieel is de afstand 17 km, maar vanwege onze extra afstand van station naar het kasteel kwamen wij op 18. Qua snelheid zaten we op vrijwel exact 5 kilometer per uur, wat toch een stuk sneller was dan onze eerdere wandelingen. Blijkbaar heeft het dagelijkse Ommetje in coronatijd bijgedragen aan een betere wandelconditie.

Gelopen: 7-5-2021

Afstand: 18,0 km

Tijd: 3:37

Klara and the Sun

Never have I seen so many reviews, advertisements and other articles about a book by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is what winning the Nobel Prize does to your exposure rate, apparently. This was, in my opinion, a very deserved Nobel Prize. I've been reading his novels since Never Let Me Go was part of my English Lit studies and have both loved and feared them in equal measure. In his universe, you can never be sure that the narrator is actually telling you the truth, or that they are hiding some dark secret that will come to whack you in the face on the last couple of pages, leaving you devastated and wondering how you never saw this coming. Catharsis with a sharp edge. Which makes me realise I've never actually reread one of his novels before; I wonder whether they are still as beautiful when you already know what is real and what isn't.

Anyway, his newest novel, Klara and the Sun, is told by an Artificial Friend called Klara. She is a robot companion, designed to accompany 'lifted' children who may otherwise be lonely. Since her point of view is very limited, we never really find out where all this is taking place, apart from that it must be some time in the future in some generic American city.

Now the plot, as always with Ishiguro's novels, isn't the main deal here. Klara spends some time in the store, is then bought to accompany Josie and moves to the house she shares with her mother in the countryside. Josie is friends with an unlifted neighbouring boy, falls ill, recovers, makes her drawings and otherwise has a pretty uneventful life, apart from a trip to the city that casts a different aspect on the whole story. But it is not what happens that matters.

What matters, is that we're seeing all this through the eyes of Klara. Klara is a very smart and observant robot, as is mentioned time and again, and she sounds pretty human. But she is also an Ishiguronian narrator. So we can never fully be sure that she is telling the truth. Also, when Klara tells us she 'feels fear' or 'feels relief flowing through her'; is she actually feeling something? Can robots feel? She does her utmost to care for Josie and tries to save her on several occasions, but is this done out of love, or because she is programmed to take care of the child she has been assigned to, no matter what?

What is completely absent from Klara's voice, apart from any kind of humour, is judgement. She describes what she sees, experiences, interprets, but there is no judgement. Several of the humans she encounters are distrustful or even angry at her presence, but their emotions do not really have an impact on her. She can feel fear for her wellbeing, but is otherwise completely naive, without anger or other negative emotions towards people who threaten to harm her. This is of course logical; when programming a robot you'd make sure all those emotions never even enter their heads, but it casts a different light on all the positive emotions she tells us about. How genuine are they?

Apart from an exploration on how robots 'think', how humans behave towards them, and what this means for relationships of all kinds, there are at the edges of the novel signs of the society Klara finds herself in. Just as her own vision sometimes becomes fragmented into boxes, so the world seems to have separated into different social groups. Klara describes people dressed as 'high-raking' or 'middle-ranking', of course without giving any judgement on this herself. But the people around her are constantly moving in opposition to others; children are 'lifted' or not, people may become unemployed and move themselves outside of main society to 'communities', which also seem to be warring between each other. In the safe bubble of Klara's existence we never get to see the full picture, but the dystopian atmosphere is tangible throughout. It makes you wonder; is this what we're heading towards?

 

Klara and the Sun has been compared to McEwan's Machines Like Me because of the similar relationships-with-robots theme, but in my opinion, any comparison is moot. Ishiguro's novel is just so much better in setting the scene, in showing without telling, in creating the tension, the doubt and big questions that come with any good novel. Klara, because she has no stakes other than caring for Josie, gives us the ideal eyes to see without immediately judging and to put our own assumptions into perspective. To me, this novel is another great addition to Ishiguro's deserved Nobel Prize winning oeuvre. And with that said, it may be time to start rereading some of his older work...

Wish you were here

I waited at least four years for Wish you were here by Graham Swift. At least. I ordered it from my local bookshop, which called me a couple of days later saying it was out of print, but would be reprinted in a new edition. Would I like to be added to the waiting list? I would like that. I wrote about this experience in 2017, when Swift was number two on my list of 'new' authors. At least a year later I was in said bookshop collecting another title, when I realised I'd never heard about this book again. They checked; it was still out of print. The new edition somehow never came into being. So I put the novel on my wish list for birthdays and other celebrations and forgot all about it, until last Christmas when it suddenly came to me, wrapped up and innocent as if I could have just gotten it all that time ago.

The blurb tells us that Wish you were here works towards a "fiercely suspenseful climax", which is very true, but sadly the road towards that climax takes almost as long as it took me to actually lay hands on the book. It is slow going, this story about Jack Luxton and his dealings with mad cow disease, dying parents, an absent brother, a farm in debt and a new life on a caravan park. Slow going for a novel that actually takes place in a couple of minutes, half an hour at the most. All the rest is flashbacks.

So it took a long time to get into, but when the novel finally gripped me, I was completely captivated. It would never be the sort of novel I can read in one go; too many vivid descriptions of death and destruction which have to sink down in my mind before I can read on, but the last half of it was read in a couple of days, in contrast to the first half taking at least a month. It caught me in the end.

The language is beautiful, of course. Graham Swift is one of my favourite writers in that regard. You can feel the wind and rain lashing against a window, you can feel the wood of a casket beneath your fingers. The build up and plot are good too. Its not just Jack's story, for at the moments you really need to get the point of view from one of the other characters, Swift gives you an insight into their world, which is often radically different from what Jack assumes. 

However, I didn't find Jack or Ellie or any of the other main characters sympathetic in any way. I didn't really like them, personally. Maybe because I couldn't understand why they acted the way they did, even with all their experiences and emotions laid bare. Maybe because their reality is just so far removed from my own. But even in that final, captivation climax, when you cannot rip through the pages fast enough to find out what was going to happen, a large part of me mostly wanted to know the events, I wasn't really rooting for anyone.

So overall, a beautiful novel. A bit too long, maybe, with 430 pages in my edition. The pace could have picked up a bit sooner, the characters may have been a bit more accessible. But these are minor flaws in an otherwise great novel, with which I've officially 'rediscovered' Graham Swift, four years later than anticipated, as a great British author. Let's hope it doesn't take another four years until I read his next novel.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Although it may sound like a modernist piece of art, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is actually a novel. An epistolary novel, to be exact, consisting of letters written from one character to another (and another form of writing at the end, which I will not go into for spoilers sake). It has also been made into a film, which stars Michiel Huisman, which is why I saw the film. Now I loved that film, so I've been wanting to read the book for quite some time. After finally doing so, I'm not sure this was the best move.

Of course, there's always the issue of the book being better than the film. That is true here as well, even though I'm not a big fan of letter-writing novels, because they are always unrealistic; for the sake of exposition characters write each other with a frequency and level of detail (whole dialogues recollected to a word) that would never happen in real life. But the novel was a good read, lots of historical detail, lots of character depth, it felt like I actually got to know these people. 

Which is why the film upon rewatching isn't any good anymore. Half of the characters from the novel have been removed and some of the others have been given a complete character change. Especially the character of Amelia, a feisty, strong, independent and warm woman in the novel, has been turned into a nagging, scared, vengeful, closed person. This is clearly done for suspense's sake; whereas in the novel the protagonist Juliet quickly learns all the details of what happened during the Occupation and the focus of the novel is her trying to write a book about it, the film has her worm out the details from everyone on the island, as if she is some sort of detective. The actual writing of the novel is shown in a quick montage of 'Juliet writes' shots. I realise watching someone write is not the most appealing image, which is why in the film most of the letters have been replaced by telephone calls, but her actually writing a book is somewhat essential to the plot. Apart from characters being dismissed or changed, the film focusses solely on Juliet's experiences, so we miss all the insights from the other characters, who in the novel are also writing letters and give an outsider's perspective to Juliet and the goings-on. 

So did reading the novel ruin the film? No, but it put it in a different light. Knowing everything they left out, the film suddenly seems poorer in that respect, but stronger in elements that are not in the novel, such as the actual impact WWII had on British and Channel Island society. The message of the film is so different from that of the novel, that the two hardly compare. They are two takes on the same story, but the film should not be called an adaptation of the novel.

So they both have their merits and I enjoyed both. There is just one thing in the novel that really annoyed me (which luckily the film did do without): at two crucial decision making moments, Juliet's friend and publisher Sidney enlightens her on her own feelings and basically tells her what to do (in a letter). As if she cannot make up her own mind! For such an intelligent and wilful character, who fights her way out of the grasps of a controlling American suitor, having a man give her these insights just made the book that much poorer. 

No Bones

Ever since I read Milkman, the 2018 Man Booker winner, I'd been looking forward to reading more from this mysterious writer Anna Burns. She's only written three novels so far, which are pretty hard to get by. But last Christmas, I finally got her first novel No Bones. Or rather, I got No Bones twice, as there was some communication trouble between Santa's elves. Since I'd been wanting to read it for more than a year, a double delivery seemed right (one of which was of course returned to the sender, to be read by someone else).

Milkman is a darkly funny experimental novel set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. No Bones at first glance reads like more of the same; we follow Amelia Lovett as she grows up from a young girl in the 1960s to an adult in the 1990s. Living in Northern Ireland, during the Troubles. But the overlap stops there. 

No Bones is very much a first novel; experimental in parts, but pretty conventional in style and plot. The characters have names, there is proper dialogue, the story moves continuously forward through chapters which have descriptive titles and timestamps. There are smatterings of experimentalism; each chapter reads like a short story in itself, with changing perspectives and subject matter, some of which are only six pages long while another deals with the ravings of a madman for more than 40 pages. The author clearly hadn't found her voice yet, but the bones (yes) were starting to show. Speaking of bones, there is a reference to bones in every novel, always in a different context. Apart from Amelia, it is one of the few things that really binds these chapters together.

So how did I like it, this long awaited pearl? I'm in two minds about it. I really liked some parts, such as the haunting chapter with young Catholics having to walk home from the pub through a Protestant area, continuously looking over their shoulders, not sure when or where trouble will strike, with some not making it to the other end. I thought that chapter beautifully written, with the suspense but also the acceptance of life being like that in that area during those days. But then the descriptions of the crazed out Lovett family members, stark exaggerations of people who have been living through this madness, went a touch too far sometimes. Trauma theory would probably explain a lot of it, but during those parts I sort of zoned out, as there was no way to connect with these characters as they were going through their unrealistic (self) destructive motions. This includes Amelia herself, sadly. The chapters of her as a child are great, depicting the wonderment with which she looks at the world, hides her 'treasures' from her siblings, and accepts the violence she is growing up with. But as soon as she is old enough, she too falls into the aggressive, destructive behaviour everyone around her has. Again, given the circumstances this is probably to be expected, but it doesn't make for a great bond with the character. So some chapters, especially in the first half of the novel, were great. The rest not so much. No character really stuck by me, as none of them really develop into something you can relate to. No plot twists, nothing is resolved in the end. It sort of sputters out.

Like Milkman, it is one of the few depictions of life during the Troubles I've read, and as such it has value in itself. But as a novel, as a literary work, I prefer the later novel, which is so much better written. I'm glad to have read it though, for it shows the development of Anna Burns as a writer. Earlier novels are usually disappointing after first reading the novel that won a big prize. If you have the chance, read them in the right order around and be amazed at how much progress she made.