Heron Books

There are a lot of rules at Villa Coco: it is not pesto if it is not from Genova; no cheese with fish – NEVER; you must go to Naples as soon as possible, you must be accompanied by a Neapolitan and you must have the sfogliatella in midafternoon. Our young man, the protagonist of Andrew Sean Greer’s Villa Coco, nicknamed Giovedì by the Baronessa who has brought him here, is commanded to learn three things: to dress for dinner; to speak Italian – his American will not be tolerated, particularly in the car; to provide good conversation on history and culture at the dinner table. Decent instructions for life.…

Even more so than usual, it is play time here in The Heronry. Between Independent Bookshop Week shenanigans for the author Tom Cox, a picture book launch in honour of a mole, a persistent architect great in kindness and endeavour, and some concern about whether everyone else can see the young girl who has taken up residence in our window,* I have been at the theatre with Ana Kinsella, Lucy Caldwell, Conor McPherson, Chekhov, John Berger and Susan Sontag. Ana Kinsella’s debut novel Frida Slattery As Herself is fantastic. Five stars for dialogue, characters, set up and set design. Frida is an actor, wholly an actor even when she has…

Do you like ducks, hills, the sound of (funk) music, vinyl, church bells, folklore, post offices, onion bhajis, Morris Minors, clogs, bogs, mogs and the feel of the word ‘twazzock’? I thought so. Also knitting, cows, books and cemeteries? As if I needed to ask. Independent Bookshop Week begins tomorrow and we are celebrating all such things through the writing of Tom Cox. This has proved an excellent excuse to go hunting in charity shops for Hungarian folk singers, Steely Dan cassette tapes, creepy dolls and a robot. Some trips were more successful than others.* Do come and see the resulting window display tomorrow. Unless you’re afraid of invisible goblins.…

In Paris, Geoff Dyer reads on the grass in Le Jardin des Tuileries. Tourists photograph the garden’s statues. Joggers pass them without looking. A group of boys annoys everyone else by enjoying a kickabout. The sculptures are of mythical or biblical characters. The statues endure. They struggle. Impossibly perfect bodies radiate power even as they strain to the extreme. Dyer doesn’t have a guidebook or, how remiss, a copy of Ovid with him to lend context but writes that the statues’ concerns are clear: ‘punishment and suffering, agony and ecstasy.’ I’ve been thinking about football so I get what he means. Some of you may be very excited that the…

I write to you from the town and world of Middlemarch. Judging by this week’s conversations and sales, many of you are joining me, some returning, some making your first foray, thanks to that Guardian list or last week’s dispatch, whichever is the more influential. How I love being back here. George Eliot got it all in there didn’t she? Saints and rogues, real estate, religion, taxes, death, almost romances that never happen while the doomed marriages do, manners, gender roles, intricate architectural designs of both cottages and hair, political upheaval (so much discussion of ‘Reform’ unnerving today’s reader), characters who deserve the epic and instead get… a funereal, ‘old’…

Upon my word, how I love a good argument. And a good list. One causing several of the other is ideal. Pour me a drink and let’s get stuck in. The Guardian’s ‘100 Best Novels of All Time’ (I think they appreciate the silliness of the title, having published the same one with different content in the past) has caused all sorts of rage and discussion from guessing what will come first*, to arguments about the order of the Austens (P&P>Emma>Persuasion>Mansfield Park, apparently, with S&S and Northanger Abbey failing to make the cut. Of course placing not one, not two, not three, but four times on the list is quite…

In Dear Historian by Joff Winterhart, the academic Margaret Crypt is courted by a television production company, Giant Past, run by the self-obsessed if charismatic ‘personality’/historian Allan Hands. Margaret thinks the work of a historian involves removing oneself as much as possible, being secondary to one’s subject. Allan, who likes dressing in period costume and crass puns, disagrees: his role is central. When she begins speaking about her interests, Margaret transforms from a nervous, barely noticeable elderly woman into an enchanting and compelling figure of erudition. Television gold, one young producer thinks. Dear Historian explores their relationship with tenderness and humour (and much else which we look forward to discussing…

Upon my word, this has been a mighty week in publishing.* Four books were published this week which I think will stand the test of time. (Not necessarily only four but I am yet to read Asterix in Lusitania, Room For Us All by Lu Fraser, or, um, the new thriller from partners in crime James Patterson and Bill Clinton.)** The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout is a short novel about a few characters in a small community. Artie is a teacher who welcomes each new class by asking the students to write about themselves. He wants to know them. Recently students have written of being scared. It…

I am going to write about Ben Lerner, Val McDermid and lyrical ballads in the same newsletter. Try and stop me. I’m changing directions like a bat in high rafters – with rapidity, great aplomb and no little nod to the gothic, I’m sure. Transcription by Ben Lerner is as good as my fellow bookseller kept saying (cf. newsletter previous). It is told in three parts, the first in which a man breaks his phone on the way to interview his mentor, Thomas, a recondite and charismatic academic, and thus only pretends to record the encounter which will form Thomas’s last public testament, the second in which his entertaining story…

There are myriad exciting new books out. My shelves and I are overwhelmed. Harry keeps pointing at Transcription by Ben Lerner and announcing, ‘That’s how to write.’ I suspect from her previous books that when I do read The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley I will repeatedly say the same about it. I’ve only had the chance to read the first story in the new collection by Colm Tóibín, The News from Dublin, but this too seems to give that pure pleasure of really excellent writing. But I am, as I say, overwhelmed. A pile of art books awaits me: on how the seasons shaped Constable’s paintings; on two sisters…