Possession by A.S. Byatt - one of my biggest influences

A tremendous roller coaster of styles and times, the original of the research-based plot, with pages of fine poetry. It's remarkably like the process of archive research. Every word is beautifully chosen but somehow you rattle over some of them, just as you would if really handling old letters in a freezing room in a Lincolnshire mansion, or in a boiling dusty basement in the British Museum. I remember well the 'ironworks' where Prof Blackadder has his lightless office - all swept away now for the Disneyland-like space of the Great Court. That was a sad loss and I'm sure that The British Library's St Pancras offices will never have the same atmosphere. I also remember the Great Storm of 1987 - I was in Sussex at the time too - and the specificity of that night of destruction gives even the modern scenes some historical distance now. As also do the feminist emphasis of Maud, and her womens's studies library. That would never have seemed, in the 80's, to be something we'd lose, but now of course that kind of feminism is a dead letter on any university campus. Why not 5 stars? - [Spoiler alert-] The final scene in the graveyard was a little too rushed, I would have liked more Gothic descriptions of coffins etc. And I was unconvinced by Mortimer Cropper meekly climbing down from the role, so well portrayed throughout the book, of acquisitive villainy. Still, a great read and a great book. It stays with you.

She didn't just live as a man, she fought as one Hannah Snell: The Secret Life of a Female Marine, 1723-1792 by Matthew Stephens

Hannah Snell served as a marine in the Royal navy in the 1740s, under the name of James Gray. According to the legend her true sex was never detected during several years on the lower deck. She was even wounded in action - possibly at the siege of Pondicherry, possibly elsewhere - and kept the secret by insisting on removing a musket ball from her own groin! Later, back in England, she exploited her reputation by touring in uniform and giving drill demonstrations. I first heard of her when visiting the Warwickshire Regiment's museum, though her connection to the regiment or its predecessors is not apparent from this book. She was born in Worcester and supposedly first put on uniform by joining Guise's Regiment in Coventry in 1745, but this seems much less convincing than her later marine service. The main source for her biography is a sensationalist account written in 1750 by Robert Walker. Stephens has traced the documented facts such as Hannah's marriages and children and the service of 'James Gray'. He points out that in many instances Walker's account is contradicted by the facts - she could not have been receiving 500 lashes at Carlisle Castle because she was in fact having the baby in London! The truth remains elusive, even after finishing this little book (which includes all of Walker's account) though the image of a young woman, no doubt strong and muscular enough to be taken for a boy, yet able to act as a wardroom servant and even sing for his masters, remains alluring. I was left wanting to know more. I wonder what further research has been done, or can be done - the life of an illiterate member of the working class, in the days before universal registration and censuses, will perhaps always remain frustratingly shadowy, and, in the case of Hannah, hidden by legend. One annoyance is that on a Kindle the illustrations can't be enlarged, and text notes don't link to the text, but have to be read in a block at the end. However, this is well worth reading and buying, and very good value.

Cramped Solitude

For the first time for many years I have used a train to make a social weekend trip to the West Country. In this case it was the 'further' West, the area that normally would have involved both the M4 and the M5. I exchanged the driving seat, with its relative space but limited freedom of immediate physical action, with the (now) strangely high-backed armchair of what is once again called the Great Western Railway. It is strange to see how the prices of transport have artificially skewed the demographic: the majority of travellers are under 30; nearly all are alone (on any journey of 100 miles +,  a group of three or more would almost certainly save money by using a car rather than the train, even to include maybe hiring a car.)  The recent booms in rail travel - perhaps related to the growth of the student population - have fed through to rolling stock design. Most of the young singletons are coralled into  rows of airline style seats. There is little visibility to the front, back or sideways, as the 'four across' table configuration is all but obsolete. So few tables are there, that when two passengers request a table seat facing forward, they can, rather ludicrously, be placed side by side in an otherwise near-empty carriage.
There is, though, an unarguable advantage to travelling by rail, the one that prevails despite the inflated ticket prices and strange interior layout.  This is the difference: you retain the use of your eyes, hands and to a large degree your mind, so you can read, write and think whilst someone else takes charge of the menial but important business of checking the way ahead is clear.

No Name Lane (great title, great book)

A sprawling time-slipping serial killer mystery where, in a remote Durham village, young girls are being abducted and killed by a fanatical Christian, and moonstruck lovers of the 1930s have turned into bitter old ladies of the 1990s. Very enjoyable, though my only criticism is that the killer's 'religious' motivation has been offered by other writers, eg in James Oswald's Prayer for the Dead, which I also read recently (and on the whole enjoyed less.)
This book is clever and enjoyable. Both its timescales are in fact historical. The present day is actually 1993, which allows the author to indulge his enjoyment of sexist male group scenes, and also enables the power of the tabloid press to be a major plot motivator. Compared to Linskey's David Blake trilogy, which I admired enormously, this is much more ambitious, with two main characters, each with their own world of supporting characters around them. These are the ambitious, driven journalist, Tom, and the diffident, guilt-wracked detective Ian. By the end of the book their character arcs have developed so that, with extra knowledge, the readers' sympathies are reversed. <br>There are numerous points of view, sometimes changing within the same scene, but the author's very straightforward, people-centred style ensures things always stay clear, and the momentum keeps moving along. It was slightly disappointing, for a Penguin book, that the editors had not paid  more attention to detail in the punctuation. At several points quote marks are missing. But that doesn't matter. On the whole this is exciting, suspenseful and great fun - you'll read it quickly.

Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy

This late novel is harsher and more modern than its better-known predecessors. Prince Nekhlyudov is a moral hero - formerly dissolute, now abruptly brought face to face with the consequences of his past, and with the means, as a wealthy aristocrat, to feel the responsibility to make reparations. He encounters one of his former 'conquests', a maid reduced to prostitution and then convicted of a crime deserving of deportation to Siberia.  The story, in three distinct parts, takes us from wealthy metropolitan salons - the milieu that in Anna Karenina was mainly accepted as natural - to the crushing poverty of the peasant villages, and finally to the elaborate and arbitary cruelty of the Tsarist Gulag. Published less than 20 years before the Revolution, this is a world where telegrams and electric lights, trains and rubber coats, mix with penal processions of convicts, like modern accessories within a medieval scene. There are beautiful descriptions of weather and landscapes, and the accurate and keen observation of people that we expect from Tolstoy. The dialogue is natural and deeply-felt. There is some emotional interiority in Nekhlyudov but it is superbly balanced with action and with the long term suspense of the situation, as he awaits the decision as to whether his remorseful offer of 'rescue' will ever be accepted. It's a tremendous story of moral anxiety, degradation and regret, but it does finish on a note of spiritual hope. Even though this is late Tolstoy, it's actually easier to read than his earlier epics. And I particularly recommend it to anyone who likes Graham Greene.

3096 Days by Natascha Kampusch

3096 Days by Natascha Kampusch is a riveting read and rich in psychological material for any writer or creative person.
I picked up this book knowing very little about the story. The early pages are a little too discursive, as her family background is set up. However once the kidnapper strikes then my attention was riveted. The writing is calm, measured, seldom fraught, despite the author having gone through experiences beyond anything most of us could imagine- an indeterminate spell in solitary confinement, her only human contact with an unstable psychopath. Somehow Natascha managed him (as well as managing her own pain and indignity in passages that reminded me of Viktor Frankl's Holocaust memoir, Man's Search for Meaning)and so against the odds, she survived. Of course her dependence on her kidnapper was complete and not just a physical dependence, but also emotional. But who wouldn't become emotionally dependent on the one person in their life from the age of ten? After her 18th birthday she decided this was going to end. So she took an opportunity to escape, by no means the first she had been offered. Previously she had never dared - and one of the main reasons for that is that breaking the spell of her captivity would inevitably mean the death of either her or her captor. It's suggested at one point that his ultimate suicide on the railway came about as a result of a conversation with her. As with Frankl, you finish this book full of admiration for the author's psychological self-awareness, her 'groundedness'. <br>I was left wondering how many Prikopils there are in Austria. Certainly establishment complacency and police inertia seem to hide a very dark underbelly. She recounts how, after her release, one of the many crank emails she received was from a man who wanted her to come and live as his domestic slave...
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Effort and Faith

Faith is difficult. Why should it be true, in the face of so much contradictory evidence,  that an overarching good lies around and above us, and that the end of our earthly lives is far from the end of our spirit? Continuing to believe needs hard work and patience, often sustained by the mere bleakness of the compared alternative.
The world is distracting, the people around us offer little encouragement, and often offer vocal discouragement.
But on a pilgrimage we enjoy isolation (within gregarious group living with those sharing our mission), the sights of natural beauty, and the shared challenges of  cold wind, rain, sore feet. At the end of our trail - in my case, on the Northern Cross pilgrimage to Holy Island - we cross the icy  wet sands and emerge onto an island with a fairytale castle and a nestling little white village of pubs and churches.
Faith has never been easy. But the effort of pilgrimage, its simulacrum of the cycle of life and death, makes it a little more attainable.