Author: Sarah Prall

Raw space is a panther, feral and primal.

The 2024 Man Booker Prize went by unanimous decision to Orbital by Samantha Harvey. At 136 pages it is one of the shortest ever Booker prize-winners. It is an unusual book, fiction but not a conventional novel as it has only a very rudimentary plot. It follows six fictional astronauts over twenty-four hours on an orbiting international space station. The astronauts, from America, Russia, Italy, the UK and Japan are there to do vital work. Their days keep to a rigid pattern: preparing dehydrated meals, following a strict exercise routine to prevent muscle atrophy,  monitoring the effects of zero gravity on the mice, routine repairs and maintenance and occasional space walks.

As they travel at speeds of over 17.000 miles per hour, they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times in a single day, spinning past continents and passing through seasons, taking in the beauty of mountains, glaciers and seas. Although separated from their world, they cannot escape its pull as news comes from home bringing thoughts of their eventual return. They watch a typhoon, marvelling at its magnificence but fearful of the destruction it brings. They become increasingly aware of the fragility of human life – so far from Earth, they have never felt more part of it. It has been described as ‘mesmerising, ethereal and tender’, a beautifully written mediation on human aspirations and limitations.

Some of us had to get used to the lack of plot and character development and would agree with the Guardian reviewer that’ ‘thrilled reports of light effects start to fall a little flat’. Nevertheless, we found it enjoyable and worthwhile while the rhythms of the writing made it a compelling read.

Our next book is Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent.

Heather Mines

‘How much nicer and less boring it would be if we were all still children.’

Our book this month was Alison Lurie’s Foreign Affairs (1984), winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, also described as a perfect literary rom com.

Lurie herself was an academic at Cornell University. Like Vinnie Miner, her main character, she was a specialist in children’s literature and folk lore. In the early 1980’s she attended London University Institute of Education on a Fellowship and Foreign Affairs was a result of that time.

The novel is about two American academics who also came to London on a Foundation Grant to further their research. Vinnie, the main character of the novel is researching children’s playground rhymes and Fred Turner is writing a PhD on John Gay. Vinnie is plain and middle-aged and, although academically successful, suffers from self-doubt and self-pity which pursues her in the form of an imaginary dog called Fido.

Fred on the other hand is young and extremely handsome, an up and coming academic suffering from a rift in his marriage. Both characters become involved in romantic attachments. Vinnie with Chuck, a brash Texan engineer, who to her dismay is sat next to her on the flight to England.

Initially Chuck is everything that Vinnie despises about Americans, from his naivety, his lack of education, his wide hat and fringed jacket, and, above all, his plastic raincoat. However, as their paths in London cross and she comes to know him better, she is drawn to his generous spirit and surprising sensitivity and insight and they become lovers.

Vinnie herself is just the opposite – a confirmed Anglophile, staying in a tasteful Notting Hill flat. Now resigned to a single life, she has ordered things as she likes them. Perhaps not totally likeable, a bit of a kleptomaniac at moments of stress or unhappiness, taken for granted by others who think that as a single woman she is always available to help them. Chuck is her first experience who sees beyond the waspish exterior and loves for herself.

The novel is full of humour, in fact book club members described it as great fun and hilarious. I particularly liked the scene in which Vinnie first encounters Chuck sitting next to her on the plane and to keep him from disturbing her she gives him Little Lord Fauntleroy to read and to her surprise he finishes it.

It is not hard to detect the influence of Henry James – there are references to him and the novel echoes James’s own theme of the naïve American encountering the more sophisticated and duplicitous European. Fred’s actress lover is such a character, although there is a twist In this story.  We enjoyed the novel – the scenes of London in the 80’s, the humour as well as the sadness. We recommend it,

Next month: Confession With Blue Horses by Sophie Hardac

“ ‘They have removed our hats’, an Iranian way of saying ‘we have been cheated’

 ‘They have put hats on our heads’, another Iranian way of saying, we have been cheated’”.

 We have been reading French Hats in Iran (2011) by Heydar Radjavi, a mathematician of some repute born in 1935 and now living in Canada with his Canadian wife. He has always had a   love of literature although he is best known for his work on obscure mathematical subjects. However, he also loved to tell stories about his early life in Tobriz until he lived until he went to university, and his wife and children urged him to publish them, and this collection of mini tales is the result.

Each story can be read independently but together they build up a picture of everyday life in Iran in the ‘30s and ‘40s – a time of tension between the traditionalists and the Shah’s attempts to modernise.

The French hats (Frangi) symbolise this conflict. The Shah forbade both men and women to cover their heads and had policemen on motor scooters to enforce this. They were, however, allowed to wear the modern French hats although most women preferred to stay indoors rather than expose their faces. The theme of hats and head coverings runs through many of the stories.

Radjavi has brought his childhood vividly to life with all the humour and contradictions of growing up in a strict traditionalist family. His elderly father ran his household according to unbending religious precepts, but his resourceful mother and her friends found ways to enjoy such forbidden frivolities as music and dancing and to eat sweetmeats and engage in gossip and laughter together. There is humour in the way the fundamentalists tied themselves up in knots over religious rules – is a woman’s wig ahead covering, or not? for instance. Do animals depicted in art have souls?

One of the most shocking tales is the first one, in which his nine-year-old playmate is married (illegally) and had to leave her own family to live in seclusion with her groom’s family. She cried passionately for her pet cat which her strict father-in-law would not allow because he considered it unclean. The marriage however turned out to be a happy one with a gradual relaxation of rules after her father-in-law’s death until here granddaughters are able to go to university and wear Western clothes.

These are stories of a largely happy childhood in which he and his friends are inventive in finding ways to subvert the rules and enjoy themselves. Forbidden to go to the movies, they discover how to make their own film show much appreciated by their mother and the other women. It is a rich and loving enorinmen. The tone is light-hearted and humorous and sheds light on what is happening in Iran today. It can be dipped in and out of and is easy and pleasant to read.