What I'm reading ...

I have started The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver. Time for fiction again and I am returning to a favourite author. Here’s the blurb:

All her life Serenata has run, swum, and cycled – but now that she’s hit 60, all that physical activity has destroyed her knees. And her previously sedentary husband Remington chooses this precise moment to discover exercise.

As he joins the cult of fitness, her once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist. When he announces his intention to compete in a legendarily gruelling triathlon, Serenata is sure he's going to end up injured or dead – but the stubbornness of an ageing man in Lycra is not to be underestimated.

The story of an obsession, of a marriage, of a betrayal: The Motion Of The Body Through Space is Lionel Shriver at her hilarious, sharp-eyed, audacious best. 

Old Rage - by Sheila Hancock

As I was expecting, this book was a great read. Very honest and straightforward. The author continues to be an inspiration. I feel that I need to seek out her earlier memoirs. 

What I'm reading ...

I have started Old Rage by Sheila Hancock. I have been a fan of the author for many years - she is quite an inspiration and generally has wise things to say. Here’s the blurb:

Sheila Hancock looked like she was managing old age. She had weathered and even thrived in widowhood, taking on acting roles that would have been demanding for a woman half her age. She had energy, friends, a devoted family, a lovely home. She could still remember her lines.

So why, at 89, having sailed past supposedly disturbing milestones – 50, 70 even 80 – without a qualm, did she suddenly feel so furious? Shocking diagnoses, Brexit and bereavement seemed to knock her from every quarter. And that was before lockdown.

Home alone, classified as 'extremely vulnerable', she finds herself yelling at the TV and talking to the pigeons. But she can at least take a good long look at life – her work and family, her beliefs (many of them the legacy of her wartime childhood) and, uncomfortable as it might be to face, her future.

In Old Rage, one of Britain's best loved actors opens up about her ninth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, she makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her childhood. And yet – despite age, despite rage – she finds there are always reasons for joy.

Good Omens - by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Although, as I commented before, fantasy is not my favourite genre, this book was a great read. Overall, a very silly story, but well told with lots of jokes along the way. I am sure that it was necessary to have lived through the 1980s to understand some of the humour.