The novels I read depend on so many things, such as the frequent train journeys I take and the shops I pass, and the recommendations of others. Books are for swapping and giving away; I do that a lot, which is why I have just started by Muriel Spark, sent from Germany by a friend who always passes on what she herself has liked, and empties my shelves of the newer books when she visits. Then there are reading passions, when you’re frantic to find another novel by an author you’ve loved so much that reaching the last page is grief, and you can’t rest until you have the sound of that voice again. This is why I’ve just finished Patrick Gale’s , because I can’t get enough of his novels at the minute. This one is all about strange goings on in a Cathedral town, a veritable parade of English eccentrics, cynical clerics, unexpected tolerances, the lonely, the odd and the deeply humane included. He’s a very unusual, musical writer, whose books often feature the glorious Cornish landscape, music, small communities, friendships which cross generations, the agonies of youthful sexual awareness, gay or heterosexual, and above all, the enduring power of love. His novels intrigue and delight me, because of their Englishness and their celebration of kindness, their humour and the sheer suspense of wanting to know what happens to every one of his characters.
And on my train journey home, away from the sea, I’ll have to read a proof copy of my own latest. Damn. It has to be done to check for mistakes, but I wrote it after all, so I’ve read it already. It may be postponed again, even though a deadline looms. I never travel without two books, one I’ve started, and another in case I finish it. There’s usually a pile, waiting to be packed in the bag, or by the bedside. Books from charity shops, new buys and old favourites. Agatha Christie and Andrew Taylor, Anthony Trollope, John le Carre and P. D. James, are all authors I can be re-reading, and still forget to get off the train. What I can’t read is anything badly written and condescending, or the biography of a new celebrity still only 23 years-old. Otherwise, anything, but I always like to intersperse novels with plays, because then I do, rather enjoyably, have an excuse to talk to myself and act out the roles. Not popular on a train, but no worse than a mobile phone.
Frances Fyfield is an award-winning crime writer and her latest novel is
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