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The Raven's Book Bunker, Central Brighton (2025)

16/07/2025

The Potter family, like most, boast two grandfathers - 'Poppa' George Potter, and 'Opa' Heinrich 'Henry' Muller, a German national who came to England as a refugee during WWII. Everyone knows that George and Henry are old friends and go back a long way, but there's more to it than that - unbeknownst to their children and grandchildren, they are also lovers. Their affair began back in the early 1960s, following the death of Henry's wife Clara but very much under the nose of George's wife Eileen, who later comes to accept the situation, remaining married to George and good friends with Henry.
'Radcliffe Road' is George's retelling of how this situation came about. Writing during his last few weeks of life in order to contribute his story to a time capsule his care home is putting together, George reveals the secrecy he and Henry had to maintain over decades, the painful process of finally coming out to their joint family and the whole history of their 50+ years together.
It's a moving and at times heart breaking story, but underscored by the resilience of 'the love that dares not speak its name' - especially back in the 1960s when homos*xuality had yet to be legalised. The characters are beautifully and vividly drawn, and we get to know and love all of them - including brave Eileen, survivor of childhood abuse along with her waspish sister Beryl, both of whom will be instantly recognisable to readers of a certain age.
It's a fictional narrative that nevertheless has a ring of truth about it, as this will have been the experience of many gay men during the last half of the twentieth century. I really enjoyed it!

10/07/2025

Five stars for this because (a) it's a jolly good story, and (b) it's so rare to find a depiction of OCD, either in books or in films, that goes beyond the 'germ-phobic neatness freak' trope to tackle the crippling anxiety and overriding need to feel safe that lies at the root of the repetitive rituals and bizarre behaviour. I was convinced that Fisher must either be a sufferer herself, or have a close family member with OCD, but no, she says in the Acknowledgements that both she and her children are neurotypical - which makes her depiction of Jonathan 'Joe-Nathan' Clarke all the more amazing.
Joe, aged 23, lives with his mother Janet, who encourages him to engage with life and is often heard to repeat that her son 'doesn't have a mean bone in his body.' He finds work at the Compass Store - so named because it has a helpful compass mosaic embedded in the floor pointing out the different directions - as a shelf-stacker, a tidy, repetitive job that he enjoys. His boss, Hugo, is kind, understanding and helpful, as are his colleagues, middle-aged, motherly Pip and sweary, abrasive Chloe. But other colleagues, such as 'Mean Charlie' and his sidekick Owen, are not so understanding, and Joe often finds himself the butt of jokes that he does not understand but knows are not kindly meant.
However, as long as he can keep to his morning routine, greet the trees on the way to work and put his satchel in his locker, fasten his tabard and stow his lunchbox safely in the fridge without having to talk to anyone, Joe can enjoy his day, and look forward to finishing it off with a few episodes of 'Friends' to relax with before bed. Sometimes, of course, a 'new thing' might crop up and have to be dealt with, but 'he was buoyed and drew reassurance about dealing with the new thing by the consistency of his normal life; it was a bedrock and a safety net; a reliable place that was there like the bass note in a song.'
The one day a new thing happens that blows everything else out of the water - his mother dies unexpectedly, and Joe is left to continue his life without the one who has guided, comforted and protected him since childhood. His colleagues and two kind neighbours who have promised Janet to keep an eye on him in the event of her death all step into the breach and try to help - and in addition, Janet has left two books, one filled with notes about daily household tasks and one containing various nuggets of advice about life in general, to help her son should he ever have to manage without her.
Gradually, a new routine is established with the help of these written guidelines and an alarm clock to parcel out the time at weekends; and when 'Mean Charlie' turns out to be not so mean after all, but rather to be the victim of an alcoholic, abusive father, Joe is determined to make a friend of him against all the odds, and show him that he has 'no mean bones'.
It's a tender, heart breaking, life-affirming story that will have any reader rooting for Joe, but especially one who, like me, also suffers from OCD. Although I'm much more high-functioning than poor Joe, there's so much about him that I can identify with - not least this lovely description of the effects of alcohol on the OCD brain: 'He suddenly realised that although the cups were not lined up and there were sheets of paper that were not cleanly stacked, and the pen was half on and half off the table, he did not care. Okay, he cared a bit. That pen could easily fall. He moved it so that it was fully on the table with no part of it hanging over the edge. But it wasn't straight, and he didn't care at all, when he usually would. A lot. Joe felt free from himself. And even though he loved himself, it was nice to be free.'
Cheers, Joe! I'm so glad you get your happy ending.

05/07/2025

A very interesting series of glimpses into the Buddhist way of tackling some of life's biggest challenges - chronic illness, imprisonment, s*xual and physical abuse, racism, memories of the Holocaust - and the paths various teachers and leaders not born into Buddhism have taken to discover their spiritual home. Several different Buddhist paths and practises are highlighted, emphasising the importance of being able to free oneself from harmful thought patterns such as anger, vengeance and self-pity while at the same time giving space to and acknowledging those feelings as and when they arise. None of the individuals featured claim to have perfected this practise, and their honesty and courage is both admirable and inspiring to read.
I was already familiar with some aspects of Buddhism, as my father practised it for a time during my childhood - he discovered it whilst stationed in Tibet after WWII, waiting to be demobbed and struggling to cope with the horrors he'd encountered during his time in Burma. But as a spiritual path it's a tad too cerebral for me. Since childhood I've longed for Divine encounter, and although it can be argued that enlightenment and a sense of the oneness of all creation is in essence the same thing, I need to approach it in a different way.
However, as Jesus says in the Christian scriptures, 'there are many rooms in my Father's house', and I love to hear the testimony of anyone whose religion has brought them spiritual fulfilment, inner peace, and an attitude of kindness to all creation.

01/07/2025

A fascinating debut novel from Susie Dent, renowned lexicographer and doyenne of Channel 4's 'Countdown'. And given her background and speciality, what else should she write about but a group of Oxford lexicographers working on the ever-evolving 'Clarendon English Dictionary' (the OED by any other name ...) There is however a twisty, turny murder mystery thrown in, as Martha Thornhill, returning to her native Oxford from a stint in Berlin, is confronted along with her colleagues by a series of cryptic messages from someone signing off as 'The Chorus', all seemingly referring to the disappearance of her sister Charlie 13 years ago.
The messages are mostly composed of Shakespearean quotes, which at least gives the team a starting point ... but what, exactly, was promising PhD student Charlie working on at the time of her disappearance, and why are these clues only surfacing now?
It's a really gripping read, and my only reservations relate to the obscurity of the messages- as someone who's hopeless at crosswords, I really couldn't follow some of the decoding processes and just had to take them on trust - and Dent's overkill when it comes to inserting and explaining the meanings of obscure words. Some of these are very relevant to the narrative, and it was fun discovering them, but others seemed to have been inserted rather clumsily just for the hell of it - an understandable indulgence for a lexicographer, but to me it did seem to be overegging the pudding somewhat.
Nevertheless, 'Guilty by Definition' gets a hearty recommendation from me for anyone interested in words!

18/06/2025

Really good exploration of what life in early 1960s Berlin might have been like if the Germans had won WWII. The 'Beloved Fuhrer' is still going strong, Europe (excluding Switzerland) is part of the Third Reich, King Edward and Queen Wallis are on the throne in the UK, and all Jews have disappeared, seemingly having been 'sent to the East'.
When Kriminalpolizei homicide investigator Xavier March volunteers to look into the 'su***de' of a former senior Party official, he has little idea of what he's getting into; the murky depths he'll end up probing, the incriminating documents he'll discover, the partnership he'll develop with an initially annoying American female journalist, or the danger he'll be leading them both into.
Can the truth be smuggled out of the Reich and into America before March and his unlikely sidekick Charlotte 'Charlie' Maguire are 'disappeared' in their turn? Or will there be, as the Party claims, no trace of the Final Solution left for anyone in the future to discover?
A great read with a sad but brilliant ending.

11/06/2025

Okay, so I first read 'Dorian Gray' as an impressionable, s*xually confused 14 year old, and thought it was wonderful and fascinating, especially with its ho******ic undercurrent. Reading it again at the age of 67, I find it unbearably self-indulgent and artificial. It's not the casual misogyny and racism that bother me, that was of its time and I'm not one of those who think books (or any works of art) should be altered to soothe modern sensibilities - it's the constant spouting of clumsily witty epigrams, the solipsistic philosophy of the Victorian privileged classes, and the 1890s obsession with 'sin' and 'decadence' that ring so hollow. In fact the whole thing was enough to bring on an attack of that must-have fin-de-siecle affliction, ennui.
Of course this was one of Wilde's earlier works, and he grew much sharper and wittier as his talent matured - compare the sparkling dialogue in, for instance, 'The Importance of Being Earnest'. What does amaze me, though, is that 'Dorian Gray' was written pre-Bosie, which means that Wilde's infatuation with Lord Alfred Douglas became a classic case of 'life imitating Art'. Bosie was only 17 when he first met Wilde, and had apparently become obsessed with the book, having read it 9 times - he then, during the course of their relationship, seems to have proceeded to model himself on its main character, who was in fact inspired by one of his predecessors, John Gray!
Having said all that, it's a jolly good story, isn't it? And it's passed into the national consciousness, as the phrase 'oh, so-and-so must have a picture in the attic' bears witness. If only the narrative was less self-indulgent, and half as long!

01/06/2025

Just finished reading this for the second time - I wanted to read it again before seeing the film - and I'm just as impressed with it second time around. It's weird to think it was first published back in 2016, because it seems even more relevant today, and not just because we've recently seen the death of one Pope and the election of another ...
The Pope (unnamed, but he seems to be based on the late Pope Francis) has just died, and a Conclave is called to elect the next successor to the Keys of St Peter. Cardinal Lomeli, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, is given the task of organising the voting procedure, which can of course be complicated and prolonged. 117 Cardinals are summoned to Rome, and a surprise late arrival, the recently appointed Cardinal Archbishop of Baghdad, eventually makes 118.
The voting commences. The daggers are out between the traditionalist and liberal factions, and personal ambition is bound to rear its ugly head - as do various past misdemeanours and shady deals attached to some of the front runners. Lomeli, a conscientious, pious, meticulous man, is dismayed to find that he himself is receiving a fair numbers of votes, for an office he definitely does NOT want to be elevated to. The results are inconclusive, not once, twice, or three times, but again, and again, and again ...
A tenner says most present-day readers will see the twist coming by the beginning of Chapter 13, and it's not entirely without historical precedent, if the medieval myth is to believed ... but I still found the ending vaguely unsatisfactory, and couldn't stop myself from nit-picking - I mean, there's one problem in the backstory of the successful candidate that Harris seems to have entirely overlooked, and for me it spoilt the credibility of the narrative.
But still, it's a brilliant and addictive read, especially if you know your Catholic stuff!

20/05/2025

A nice varied collection of short stories, all of them featuring the inner lives of women as they go about their daily business, whatever that might be. I enjoyed some of them more than others - a couple had a bit too much graphic s*x in for my liking, but that's because I'm totally vanilla and a prude. My faves were 'The Cat', in which a woman is adopted by a capricious and sometimes vicious stray cat just as she's embarking on a relationship with a man she's met via a dating app; 'Single Serve', in which a woman with OCD copes step by step with her day (which also happens to be her birthday), searching for a brief, precious period of respite from 'her bingo wheel of thoughts' - I have OCD myself, and Pender's portrayal of an ordinary day accompanied by tapping, counting, and conscientious attention to a list of duties absolutely rings true; and 'Look At Me Mummy', following the thoughts of a mother watching her little daughter's dancing class from the sidelines and remembering how her own innocent enjoyment of her body as a child was polluted by the judgements and humiliations that are still every growing girl's lot. Some of the stories ended a little vaguely and unsatisfactorily with their point only half made, but all in all this was a sobering and thoughtful read which will definitely ring a bell with female readers.

09/05/2025

If someone had told me in advance, 'this is a book about a woman who sees the future every time she has s*x', it would have put me right off - so I'm glad no-one did, as it's much more delicate and insightful than that.
Maddy is an aspiring actor, getting used to the disappointments and rejections that her choice of career inevitably involves, with a best friend who's training to be a doctor, a Mum and Stepdad who worry about her, and a little brother who's confined to a wheelchair following an accident. She doesn't have a boyfriend - she tends to eschew intimate relationships because from her late teens onwards she's know that every time she sleeps with a man, she sees a vision of what their relationship would be like ten years in the future. And she's never, so far, liked what she's seen, so has always walked out on her boyfriends before anything gets serious.
Then she meets fellow aspiring actor Oliver. She puts off the inevitable as long as possible, but their mutual attraction will not be denied, and sure enough, Maddy has visions - many visions, as theirs becomes a passionate relationship - of their life ten years hence, living together, seemingly married, and with an adorable little daughter named Isla.
It seems like this could be Maddy's perfect life - so why does she get the feeling that something, somewhere, is not what it appears to be?
There are several twists and turns as Maddy struggles to interpret her visions, and work out what exactly she can do, or not do, to keep her happy-ever-after ending and most importantly, to keep Isla whom she's already grown to love. Could it be possible that a deliberate, brutal act in the present could ensure Isla's existence in the future? Or should she leave things to chance?
It's a light but thoughtful read, and will strike a chord with anyone who's ever worried that their dream relationship might be too good to be true.

05/05/2025

Oh my goodness, I've never read a book quite like this, and I don't know how the author actually managed to write it!
Set on the fictional island of Nollop, off the coast of America, it imagines a dystopian society in which citizens are forbidden on pain of severe punishment from using certain letters of the alphabet, either in speech or in writing, as one by one they fall from the statue of the island's founder, Nevin Nollop, credited with inventing the iconic sentence 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'.
18-year-old Ella Minnow Pea, her cousin Tassie, her parents and her aunt all struggle increasingly to write letters and communicate with one another, whilst organising an underground resistance movement against the island's bureaucratic and fanatical High Council. They are given one chance to reverse the Council's diktat - come up with a new and shorter phrase (32 letters max) that comprises every single letter of the Alphabet, thus proving that Nevin Nollop was not the unique and semi-divine miracle-worker that he's deemed to be, and the whole of the Alphabet will be restored.
As more and more letters are forbidden, both writing and speech becomes increasingly impossible - and phonics, numerals and alternative language begin to pepper everyone's correspondence, until only five letters remain - l,m,n,o and p.
Quite how Mark Dunn managed to keep track of all this in each increasingly challenging chapter I just can't imagine, and the painstaking checking, re-checking and researching of similes and homophones that writing this novel must have involved blows my mind! Hats off to him for creating a unique and fascinating book - I was utterly hooked from beginning to end.

03/05/2025

What a lovely book! I do enjoy Ann Patchett's family sagas, she has parent/child/sibling relationships down to a tee.
This particular Catholic Boston family is somewhat unusual, in that it comprises of a widowed father, ex-Mayor Bernard Doyle, his disgraced older son Sullivan, returned unexpectedly from a sojourn in Africa, his wife's uncle, John Sullivan, a retired priest - all White - and his two adopted sons Tip and Teddy, who are Black. Their mother, Bernardette, is long gone, having died when Teddy, the youngest, was only six, her longing for a daughter to whom she could pass down the cherished family statue of the Virgin unfulfilled.
Doyle is an ambitious father, and having lost his own political career following the disgrace of his eldest son is channelling all his political ambition into Tip and Teddy. Unfortunately, Tip is a nerdy scientist only interested in ichthyology (the study of fish!), and Teddy, under his Uncle John's influence, is contemplating becoming a priest. Still, he continues to drag both sons along to political rallies, in hopes of firing their enthusiasm, and it is at a Jesse Jackson rally that a serious car accident throws Kenya Moser and her mother Tennessee into their path (literally). Kenya is eleven years old, bright, poor and an exceptionally gifted sprinter - and she claims to be Tip and Teddy's younger sister.
It's quite a simple narrative in some ways, and a complicated one in others. While they wait for Tennessee - Kenya's mother, who may or may not also be Tip and Teddy's birth mother - to come round from her operation, there are many threads to be untangled, many hopes, fears and prejudices to be faced, as the entire set of family dynamics, past, present and future, churns and resets. I found it an uplifting and insightful read.

26/04/2025

This amazing and thought-provoking book should be a required reading text for schools (in simplified form) - it's an education in itself, in that it not only explores the sentience and intelligence of animals, but exposes, in the process, the arrogance and ignorance of humans!
Whilst eschewing anthropomorphic language and sticking strictly to scientifically proven data - Frans de Waal is, after all, an eminent primatologist and ethologist - it demonstrates repeatedly that our fellow Earthlings have intelligence, self-awareness, social awareness, empathy for others, the ability to think ahead and plan for the future, and the ability to learn and implement lessons from the past, each according the needs of their species.
Our cousins the primates, with whom we share 98% of our DNA, are obviously singled out for comparison with ourselves - de Waal often gleefully pointing out the genuine distress exhibited by hide-bound animal behaviourists whose emotional investment in the superiority and uniqueness of humanity is such that rather than accept that we are basically, as Desmond Morris called us, 'naked apes', they seek to 'redefine what it means to be human' every time a supposedly unique human attribute is found to be shared by our fellow hominids. But we also share more intellectual and social skills than we think with, for example, intelligent birds such as the Corvids and Parrots, rodents, and even fish! Not that we should be judging other species, which have evolved methods of communication and perception different to our own (echo-location in dolphins and whales, for example, is shared with bats but not with humans; both dogs and elephants have a senses of hearing and smell vastly superior to ours, and use them to good advantage) by human standards - this is another arrogant but basic mistake made in the name of 'scientific research' for decades if not centuries.
'The study of animal cognition,' says de Waal, 'not only raises the esteem in which we hold other species, but also teaches us not to overestimate our own mental complexity....instead of making humanity the measure of all things, we need to evaluate other species by that they are.'
A thoroughly enlightening read, and one that makes me hopeful for the future of life on our planet - as long as we don't nuke it all to smithereens before we've had the chance to discover and celebrate the interconnectedness of life.

The Raven's Book Bunker

16/07/2025

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