{"id":5109,"date":"2020-08-15T17:21:04","date_gmt":"2020-08-15T16:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodvale.com\/?p=5109"},"modified":"2020-08-15T17:21:04","modified_gmt":"2020-08-15T16:21:04","slug":"the-lit-fix-august-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/the-lit-fix-august-20\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lit Fix August 20"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marshwood Vale-based author, Sophy Roberts<\/strong>, gives us her slim pickings for August.<\/p>\n

Since the last issue, when we were just coming out of lockdown, I haven\u2019t much changed my habit for slim reads. In these distracting times, I\u2019m still attached to those short books which allow me to escape for an hour or two each day\u2014something I can start and finish in the bath, or before I fell asleep at night\u2014giving me a daily sense of achievement (and much-needed escape) in these otherwise bewildering times.<\/p>\n

I have, however, found myself picking up more travel writing than usual, or at least books with a keen sense of place, which is perhaps a reflection of itchy feet. I\u2019m also being drawn to food writing as I dream of eating oysters shucked on a Breton beach.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my shortlist of books for August\u2014some short stories, a memoir and an ode to a mollusc (recipes included).<\/p>\n

The Piano Tuner is an exceptional novel by the American contemporary author, Daniel Mason, about a nineteenth-century Englishman who travels to colonial Burma to fix up an instrument belonging to a Kurtz-like character in the jungle. Its themes, explored in this persuasive fiction, are not unlike Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness. I was therefore quick to jump on the author\u2019s latest: a marvellous new book of his short stories, A Registry of My Passage Upon The Earth. In it you will find a particularly moving tale about survivor\u2019s guilt, told through the experience of a man who enjoys army re-enactments, and my favourite: a short story about the Dorset-born genius, Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, whose work in biogeography led to Wallace simultaneously articulating the theory of evolution through natural selection. Mason\u2019s writing is transporting, taking you deep into the thick of the Malay forests. Mason\u2019s pen, so adept with fiction, gives spirit to the boundless curiosity of the scientist\u2019s brain (Mason\u2019s \u2018other job\u2019 is as a practising psychiatrist and a professor in the department of psychiatry at Stanford University, California). His Wallace story, entitled \u2018The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace\u2019 is also a prescient reminder to contemporary readers of the wonder of the natural world we are doing such a remarkable job of destroying.<\/p>\n

Gift from the Sea is an essay written by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a remarkably brave woman (despite her political muddles tarnishing her reputation) who ventured from Kamchatka to the Arctic with her husband, the aviator Charles Lindbergh. This 1955 instant bestseller records her solo retreat to a cottage by the sea on Florida\u2019s Captiva Island. Using seashells as a means to anchor her meditative journeys, this book is a trove of insights about the necessity of both the near and the far in our lives, particularly among women. The far-flung can also be a difficult interior journey, she says: \u201cWe must relearn to be alone\u201d. It is a phrase I have scribbled onto a note on my fridge, to remind myself about silver linings in the Age of Covid.<\/p>\n

Optimism is a powerful emotion, especially in times like these. And if there is one thing that makes me salivate with appreciation for life it is the food writing of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, another American who commanded huge post-war celebrity. Her style is pithy, sensuous, and witty. Her prose weaves like the storytelling of an amusing friend you want to keep plying with wine. \u201cTo Mary Frances food was a metaphor for life,\u201d observes the contemporary critic, Ruth Reichl (it was she who flagged up M.F.K Fisher\u2019s writing to me, in an article published by an exceptional blog, lithub.com, which I recommend to everyone). As a small taster of Fisher\u2019s oeuvre, try Consider the Oyster. It reads like an orison for a mollusc, taking us from docks of Marseilles to the gumbo stews of the Deep South, with recipes gleaned from home kitchens, shifty Russians and many more besides. I finished it as this column went to press, her writing leading me straight out of my door to Mark Hix\u2019s new venture, HIX Oyster & Fish Truck, at Felicity\u2019s Farm Shop on the A35, to stock up on supplies.<\/p>\n

Sophy Roberts is a freelance journalist who writes about travel and culture. She writes regularly for FT Weekend, among others. Her first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia\u2014one of The Sunday Times top five non-fiction books for summer 2020\u2014was published in February by Doubleday. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marshwood Vale-based author, Sophy Roberts, gives us her slim pickings for August. Since the last issue, when we were just coming out of lockdown, I haven\u2019t much changed my habit for slim reads. In these distracting times, I\u2019m still attached to those short books which allow me to escape for an hour or two each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[33],"class_list":["post-5109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reviews","tag-sophy-roberts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}