Authors Electric

My late mother was a marvellous raconteur (or raconteuse, to be correct). She’d regale a whole room with her funny stories of life as a diplomat’s wife, or – cringemaking for us – the hilarious things her children had said and done. Growing up, I began to spot embellishments in these anecdotes, not to say downright twisting of the truth; but whenever I pointed this out (with a doubtless annoying puritanism), I’d be silenced. ‘So what?’ she’d roar. ‘It makes a far better story this way.’ Cue uproarious laughter from her audience.  It didn’t matter, of course it didn’t. Or not very much. But over the years I found myself increasingly treating her accounts of her early life, family history, relationships, discussions and quarrels with a large pinch of salt, to the point when I would doubt her version of a certain important event, only to find out later that it was true. The problem was, how could I tell? Knowing her talent for spinning dull, factual straw into exciting, gleaming, semi...

Non fiction this month, and to celebrate summer we have two different books about walking the UK's South West Coast Path. This scenic 630-mile coastal route winds its way from Minehead in Somerset around the edges of Devon and Cornwall and finally along the Jurassic coast to Poole in Dorset. Despite living in a seaside town on the route, I confess I've walked very little of it, just a few miles of local footpath on my way to somewhere else. But, of course, books about walking the 'Salt Path' are rarely just about the walking. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn Raynor Winn's The Salt Path has recently hit the big screen, although the book is worth seeking out too as the film version only covers part of the whole. This is the story of Raynor and Moth, who become homeless when they have to leave their family farm. With their children grown, and Moth having had a life-changing diagnosis with advice to "be careful on the stairs", they decide to pack up their belongi...

My A level English teacher once began a lesson with a challenge: ‘Why should people read novels?’    Easy, we thought. ‘To find out about the world.’    ‘Say I’m someone who works in an office, a bank, a business. I have my newspaper for that.’ Who needs books? Photo by James Abbott from FreeImages    ‘To find out about people, then; what makes them tick.’ ‘Feelings and emotions.’ ‘See what it’s like to go through something you haven’t experienced yourself.’    All of these answers – perfectly reasonable, we thought – he batted back like flies. ‘People! I know all about them, believe me. Work with people every day. What can a story someone has made up, all about characters they’ve also made up, tell me about life? That stuff’s just for kids. Pure entertainment. I don’t need to escape into fairy stories, thank you.’    It was a wind-up, of course. Boris, as we called him (I have no idea why – it wasn’t his nam...