Dec 26, 2024
Your Are Here, by David Nicholls
This is the story of Michael and Marnie. Michael, 42, is a geography teacher living in York. Separated from his wife for 15 months, he is struggling with loneliness, but still prefers his solitary nature walks to being with other people. Marnie, 38, lives in London, and works as a copy editor. Divorced for many years, shas managed to make a quiet, self-contained life for herself - her radio, her books, her small flat - but it does hit her hard at times, being alone. While the two don’t know each other, they do share a mutual friend, who regularly berates them both about their unsocial behaviour. The friend finally manages to convince them to join her and a small group on a walking holiday - three days to walk a portion of the famous Coast to Coast walk (a course devised by Alfred Wainwright that passes through the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and is about 190 miles long). Michael, the seasoned walker, is in charge and he intends to carry on after the first three days, once the "city" group drops off, to finish the 10-day course in the solitude he prefers. But at the end of the three days, while everyone else has quit, Marnie chooses to stick on, to keep walking, and Michael now has an unexpected companion. The two of them walk on, navigating the literal ups and downs of the trail, including the awful weather, the sometimes harsh terrain and the mostly crummy hotels. They find that they can talk to each other as if they were old friends - honestly, with humour, and no awkwardness or artifice. They exchange histories - major and minor - and even their innermost fears, opening up much more than they have to anyone in years. Their conversations are the warm and funny heart of the novel, and you end up rooting for them.
Vintage 1954, by Antoine Laurain
A story about time travel, set in the now almost-forgotten Paris of the 1950’s. There are four main characters, Hubert Larnaudie, a middle-aged real estate agent, Magalie Lecoeur, an antiques restorer, Julien Chauveau a barman who works at Harry’s bar, and Bob Brown, an American from Milwaukee, who works for Harley Davidson. Hubert, Magalie and Julien are neighbours who live in the same apartment building, while Bob is an Airbnb tenant in their building.
The story begins one evening when Hubert invites Magalie, Julien and Bob to his apartment to share a bottle of wine that he’s just picked up from his cellar. It is a bottle of Chateau Saint-Antoine, 1954, an exceptional wine. They have a wonderful evening sharing the wine, and trading stories. They wake up the next morning and step out of the building, expecting a perfectly normal day, only to find, that it is, in fact, a beautiful day in 1954.
They spend the day exploring the city, each going to places of personal significance to them. Laurain indulges himself and his readers by writing about the city as it was back then. He writes about the people of the day, both the famous and the perfectly ordinary, as well the places that have since disappeared or have changed so much as to be unrecognisable.
After a thoroughly memorable couple of days, the four of them find their way back to their own time in 2017. The explanation for why they went back in time and how they got back to their own time is a bit far-fetched, but I don’t think this matters. Because the how of time travel is irrelevant, at least to this story. It’s a contrivance, just a means to take the characters out of their familiar surroundings and put them in the past, a particular time in French history and the history of the world.
It was a good time. Not everything about it was perfect. The world was less inclusive, for instance, but it was still a good time. There was a lot about the way people lived back then that was charming and life-affirming. We get to see and experience some of that along with the characters, who, while initially shocked to find temselves in the past, are delighted by everything they encounter. They are eager to get back to their own time, but they can't quite leave the past without a feeling of wistfulness.
This is a good story, a bit whimsical, thoroughly delightful, and very well written.
This is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
This science fiction novella kept me on my toes. Mind bending, entertaining, and containing a favourite element of mine - letters!
This is the story of Red and Blue, two rival agents in a war that spans across time and reality, and that seeks to shape the future. Red works for the Agency, a technologically advanced, structured organization, while Blue serves the Garden, a faction focused on organic and natural evolution. Despite their opposing allegiances, they begin to exchange letters, initially as taunts and boasts left for one another across the battlefields of time. The story then unfolds through this correspondence between Red and Blue, who never share time, and whose letters must take ingenious shapes and forms in order for them to be a secret and hidden from the eyes of their superiors. Because what they are doing amounts to treason. They both grapple with their identities as agents in a war that demands unfailing loyalty and conformity. But as their connection deepens with the letters, they start to question their sense of self and their roles in the conflict. Their admiration for each other's cunning and intellect gradually evolves into love.
The novella is a collaboration between Amal El-Mohtar who wrote Blue and Max Gladstone who wrote the part of Red. While it can take a while to settle into the rhythm and language of their time travel, the narrative is ingenious and kept me engaged throughout.
The novel has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Locus Award, for Best Novella.