Kieran.Stories

Handover: complete. I am outta office for a whole week. We have no plans, apart from watching films, reading, and going to the pub. Bliss. We are also going to take advantage of the seaside which is literally on our doorstep. But I’d like to take you back, all the way back to the start of July. Thanks to everyone who read my post about Our Mutual Friend. I had some lovely feedback, and I’m pleased that I put the time and effort into that piece of writing. This post might feel like a return to the décontracté, but it is, I assure you, as tight as a screw. July was a fun month. The highlight was seeing CMAT in Scarborough on the 18th. Alice drove coast to coast twice in as many days, and I continued to live my best life as a passenger prince. I have promised that I will learn to drive before our wedding next year. I have this image of slapping down my license on the top table, but that feels perhaps a little too demonstrative. CMAT was fab. Scarborough was ace. And the day after, we saw Alice perform with her choir. It was a top weekend. I almost forgot about the World Cup. It was sour. It all felt very sour. I really wanted the Ronaldinho cup from McDonald’s, and I was instead sidled with Lamine Yamal. So it goes. Here’re the books I started and finished in July. I also picked up and put down quite a lot. I read the first few chapters of The Hobbit and came across the best line written in English: “The washing-up was so dismally real…”

The Shortest History of Ireland by James Hawes (2026)

One of my most lucid reading memories is starting and finishing James Hawes’ The Shortest History of England on a flight from Rome to Bradford, two years ago. For the whole of the holiday it had stayed on my bedside table, unread. It was a poor choice of book. Why return to dreary England when in Rome? I had also brought The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, but who wants to read such a thick novel after walking around touristing in the Italian heat? I was ready for a good read on the flight home. By the time we landed in England, I did feel a bit like, not more of fucking this – not more England. I have also read James Hawes’ The Shortest History of Germany, which is perhaps the masterpiece out of the three. I read The Shortest History of Ireland, the newest entry in this series, over one day at the start of July. “Read in a day. Remember for a lifetime.” The trouble is, when I read that on the back of a book, my brain decides that if I don’t finish it in one day, I have failed somehow. I probably should have taken my time with this. But that’s not to say I got nothing from it. I learnt lots of things I didn’t know, but more importantly it made me realise how little I do know about Irish history.

The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke by Mark Chadbourn (2002)

I picked up this book (signed!) by Mark Chadbourn in Panda’s Books and Records in Levenshulme, back in May. There is no text at all on the cover. Instead: a part of the titular painting by Richard Dadd. It’s a striking book, and that’s before you’ve started the story. Danny is troubled. He is ruminating on his childhood. Those sticky summer days. He is terminally troubled by the adult world. He has escaped into drugs – at one point in the narrative, he almost dies from an overdose. But his greatest escape is into The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke and the story behind the painting. Murder, mysticism – madness. Patricide. Its misdirections are satisfying, even emotional. Chadbourn has something to say about the bridge between childhood and adulthood. The voice of Danny is totally compelling, always intriguing, and dreadfully unreliable. Seek this out, I’d say.

A Freewheelin’ Time by Suze Rotolo (2009)

I would be surprised if this wasn’t one of my top reads of the year. I have been going through a big Dylan phase. The remarkable thing about this book, a memoir of Suze Rotolo’s late teens and twenties, is that it refuses to become a book about Dylan. I was completely gripped by the section in which Rotolo leaves New York for Perugia, Italy. By this point, her relationship with Dylan is fizzing with love and import. They’re long distance now, though. Things change. It’s a powerful narrative and Rotolo tells it so well. There are particular sections I love about her family, especially her mother:

Now and then in the evenings, my mother would talk about her life, about death, and about philosophical issues. These occasions frightened me profoundly. I felt she was speaking not to me but to my father, or maybe to no one at all. (pp. 68)

I was less interested in the passages on the folk scene, but then again Rotolo’s stories about the characters within that scene are intriguing. I am thinking about the ‘flower lady’ who used to pass out flowers at a club, without saying a word, without even replying when someone asked a question. And then:

One warm evening a few of us were sitting outside on the loading dock around the corner from Gerde’s and we watched a sleek black Cadillac pull up to the curb. The door opened and the Flower Lady climbed out with her bunch of roses. She took no notice of us or our dumbfounded expressions as she heavy-footed her way into the club to do her night’s work. (pp. 131)

The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine (2025)

I read this novel last year and included it in my end of year list, which you can read here (if you’d like to, that is!). This time I read the novel via the medium of audiobook. I have to be in the right mood for an audiobook. And I need to like the voice – that is obviously the most important thing. I was in the mood, and the narration was brilliant. Erskine herself reads most of the book, but the sections between chapters, those disembodied and fascinating voices, are narrated by a different person each time. I was pleased with myself for spotting Blindboy immediately. I feel much the same about the book, overall. Again, I think, my favourite character was Frankie. And my one reservation is the same: I’m not convinced by the Benefactors site, and I think maybe a pre-existing site could have been used. But that’s a minor reservation. There was something special about hearing Wendy Erskine reading the novel. Again, I found the final section with Misty and her family very moving.

Big Swiss by Jean Beagin (2023)

I have found a new reading spot for lunch breaks at work. I have half an hour. Big Swiss by Jen Beagin was the first book I read in the Shrub. If you want to see my reading bench, I have posted a couple of photos on Blue Sky. The novel opens with Greta transcribing a sex therapy session. This is her job. She falls in love with one of her employer’s clients, and they meet by chance in a park. Greta then lies about her identity, and she begins an affair with Big Swiss. I was in love with the opening of this novel, but when it started to have a plot (the temerity), I lost interest. In fact, it was when the character of Big Swiss made her first in the flesh appearance, I started to wonder what all this was about. It didn’t help that probably my least favourite plot device is anything to do with mistaken identity; and the payoff here, in my opinion, falls especially flat. It’s a dangerous game explaining how you think a book could be improved, but I honestly think Big Swiss should have stayed in the same mode for longer. But there is gold in them there pages, and I would say that Big Swiss is worth a go, despite the slog.

Tell by Jonathan Buckley (2024)

This novel means a lot to me. I read it in 2024 during a time when I was struggling with my own writing, and I found it both instructive and captivating. It felt like this nesting doll of a novel; something new and deeper on every page, a new thread sending you deeper into this world, which was always out of reach. Two years later, Tell is just as impressive, but the mystery felt thinner, less rich. I dipped into the audiobook this time, and that was a good experience. Perhaps the feeling of getting lost in the world was hindered by this flipping between mediums. It is also true that since 2024 I have read much more widely, and a novel like Tell is less of a surprise to me now. Tell is a hugely impressive exercise in voice. It is in many way miraculous. It is certainly meticulous. I have another Jonathan Buckley on my to be read pile, and I am looking forward to getting to it in 2026 – which is this year, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed. We are further in than out.