This month’s snapshot includes a novel which disappointed several bloggers whose opinions I trust, a short story collection by an International Booker Prize 
longlisted author and a memoir by a museum guard.
The novel I’m reading is Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual which I started yesterday so it’s early days. It begins with a devastating event – a bomb which fell on South London’s New Cross Road branch of Woolworth’s in 1944. In memory of the fifteen children who died that day, Spufford imagines the lives of five fictional children murdered in the blast through vignettes over the following years, It’s a great premise and I’m quite enjoying it so far although the style is a tad overwritten for me.
The short story collection is Clemens Meyer’s Dark Satellites (translated by Kate Derbyshire) which begins with a dramatic and affecting short piece about a child, poisoned by eating crocuses. Meyer’s characters often live in society’s margins. My favourite, so far, sees a lonely railway shift worker who makes friends with a hairdresser at the railway bar and has her hair done in the deserted salon one night. His writing is quite striking and sometimes unsettling.
The non-fiction book I’m reading is Patrick Bringley’s account of his decade as a guard at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, All the Beauty of the World, which I picked up having often wondered about the work of the attendants at the many museums and galleries I’ve visited. Brinkley took the job after losing his beloved brother when they were both in their twenties, unable to concentrate on his work at the New Yorker. He writes beautifully about grief, camaraderie, art and the occasional joy of watching visitors’ amazement at what they see. I’m almost at the end of his book which I’ve loved.
What about you? What are you reading?
