My Year in Books 2023: April

Well, this month's post is slightly longer than last month's. There are three books on this month's list! I'm quite pleased with that, as we've both been so ill I'm surprised I got chance to read anything at all!

My mini-reviews of the books I read in April are below, but in case you're interested, here are my posts for the rest of the year so far: January, February, March

Myst: The Book of Atrus by David Wingrove, Rand Miller and Robyn Miller (1995)

A while ago, me and my brother decided that we’d replay the Myst videogames together. We have very happy memories of playing the original Myst when it first came out in the 90s, and some vaguer memories of playing some (we’re not 100% sure which) of the sequels. We’ve been merrily (or should that be frustratedly?) working our way through the games, and we’re up to Uru: Ages Beyond Myst now. Sadly, we’ve had to put our weekly game sessions on hold in April due to illness. So this seemed like a good time to go full completist and read the novels! My brother read The Book of Atrus back in the 90s, but I’ve never read any of them before. If you know anything about the Myst games, then you might have guessed that the novels aren’t straightforward novelizations. Nothing as mundane as that! The Book of Atrus is more a prequel to the first game, which fills in a lot of the backstory and – much as I hate the word – lore that sits behind Myst. It’s a bit weird reading it several decades after first encountering the game, but I did enjoy the way it works as a parallel text to the game, and it’s very readable. Obviously, you don’t need to read the novel to understand the game itself, but it adds some interesting extra layers. It also adds some detail to Uru that perhaps would have been useful to us before we started that particular instalment!

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (2016)

The next book I read this month was another library book. I’ve had this one checked out for ages, but somehow never seemed to get around to reading it. I got a bit of a nudge from the library, as I discovered this month that I’d renewed it the maximum number of times! I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading Hag-Seed because I generally really like Margaret Atwood’s writing (and I love a couple of her books), but I guess it just ended up buried in my to-read pile. I’m glad I dug it out though (at the library’s prompting), as I thoroughly enjoyed Hag-Seed. The story is a riff on Shakespeare’s The Tempest – partly a retelling, and partly an exploration of the themes of Shakespeare’s play. Felix Phillips is a theatre director who is ousted from his position as a director of a prestigious festival during preparations for a production of The Tempest. For twelve years, Felix lives in a (semi-)self-imposed exile, planning his revenge against the people who destroyed his career. He takes up a post teaching literature in a prison and devises a Shakespeare programme for inmates. The stage is then set for him to lure his enemies to his ‘island’ for a very special production of The Tempest. Hag-Seed is compelling and readable, with surprisingly sympathetic characters and some rather moving considerations on loss, revenge and imprisonment. I’m very glad it finally got to the top of my pile!

Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel by Ruth Hogan (2019)

Another library book now… though not one that’s quite as overdue as the previous one! I’m not sure what led me to pick up Queenie Malone’s Paradise Hotel. Even a glance at the cover suggests it is not my usual sort of reading material, so it’s a bit of a mystery. However, I have to say I’m glad I picked it up. Yes – Hogan’s novel is absolutely not the sort of book I would normally read, but I actually really enjoyed it. The story is told across two different times and in two different voices. In the present day, we meet adult Tilda, a rather closed-off, even cold woman who had a difficult relationship with her mother. Tilda’s mother has died and we find the protagonist moving into her mother’s flat to sort through both the physical and psychological reminders of her childhood. These chapters are alternated with chapters about Tilly, a rather charming seven-year-old who lives with her mother after her father leaves for work. Essentially, the book is about Tilda’s task of reconciling her memories of childhood (including her stay at the eponymous Paradise Hotel with the larger-than-life Queenie) with revelations about what really happened – helped along by some diaries kept by her mother, and by her ability to see and speak to ghosts (something that I would normally find a bit annoying but actually works well here). It’s a story filled with warmth and – ultimately – forgiveness, but it steers on the right side of sentimental and saccharine.