Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

I think this is one of the loveliest books I have ever read. I was so fortunate last year to wander into my local Waterstones when they had decided to display the newly released Bloomsbury Modern Classics series. I was attracted to the aqua-blues in this beautiful cover design like something shiny at the bottom of the sea, and, on reading the first few pages, I knew it would need to come home with me.

I don’t know what it is about books which are set near the sea, on the sea, by the coast, or, concern themselves with fishing, sailing, lighthouses, pirates, and other sea creatures, but I always find them so enjoyable; Olive Kitteridge, Jamaican Inn, In the Heart of the Sea, The Loney, The Shipping News, are among those filling up my bookshelves devoted to maritime literature.

I think it is the mysterious language authors use to create their seascapes, a palette of folklore and boatspeak, mainly made up of knots and ropes, the almost witchlike signs and signals found in the weather to aid sea-navigation, all which holds certain foreign properties for any land-dweller.

David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars is part of this world. In the fictional island of San Piedro Guterson creates an eco-literary landscape which his characters spawn from. Water feeds the novel, the salmon gill-netters, the juice of the strawberries farmed inland, the rain that forces a young boy and girl to take shelter under a cedar tree, the snow that settles outside the town’s courthouse during a murder case. Land is also a preoccupation and planted in it are questions of nationality and ownership.

Keeping the literary analysis aside, (although this book would be a dream for any budding Literature student), this book offers a romance, a peep into Japanese heritage, a veer into crime-fiction; including forensics and downtrodden local cops, the delights found in American Literature, including a To Kill a Mocking Bird- type court case, the printing cogs of the island’s newspaper, a delve into lighthouse archives, a harrowing description of the Pacific campaign during WWII and above all a celebration of rural life.

There are passages which are so beautiful I feel compelled to take up cross-stitching, print making or calligraphy so that I can project them on my wall at home. Look at how Guterston takes describing snow to another level:

It swirled like some icy fog, like the breath of ghosts, up and down Amity Harbor’s streets – powdery dust devils, frosted puffs of ivory cloud, spiraling tendrils of white smoke. 

The book was written over a ten-year period, while Guterson was working a teacher in Canada, a fact which I discovered while reading the book. In the Acknowledgements he gives thanks to a gardening columnist, presumably in his local circular, who he likely consulted when creating the chinaberries and mulberry trees, and other lush foliage which grow out of the pages of Snow Falling on Cedars.

I am not ashamed to admit this book made me sob my heart out at one point. It really is that beautiful. And because of this and many other reasons I have tried to relate in this rambling review, it has now a top spot in my “to-be-reread” pile.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

In the last few months it seems like The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell has been following me around in every bookshop and Instagram page I’ve visited. The cover is really quite impressive and promises exactly was I found within its pages, a light and undemanding tribute to the Victorian gothic, which will go perfectly well with some candles, hot chocolate and a box-set of Downton Abbey.

Elsie Bainbridge, recently widowed and pregnant, travels by horse and carriage to her late husband’s country estate, along with her cumbersome cousin-in-law, Sarah. When she gets there, she navigates her way through dusty cobwebs, an eerie nursery, a pesky cat in the attic and an unruly set of maids. Flashbacks also make up chunks of the story, one storyline has Elsie years later in a lunatic asylum, the other a diary from a previous occupant.

A smorgasbord of historical titbits is crammed within the book’s 364 pages: a matchstick factory, herbal folklore and Black Magic, treason, pearl-drop diamond necklaces and a mysterious shop selling curiosities for wealthy clients. I didn’t find the “monster” nearly as horrifying as The Woman in Black, in fact it was quite sweet. All of this combined makes a tale which you can breeze through during a couple of cold December evenings at home.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier

It is very rare occasion to read a book and for it to deliver everything you wanted from it. Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier now has a permanent place on my bookshelf for life and I will be rereading it again and again.

Opening in a “cold grey day in late November” du Maurier selects her words carefully to set the mood for her coastal gothic tale; the coach Mary Yellan journeys in sways like a “drunken man”, while rain water drips down and smudges the leather seat like “dark-blue ink”. The first few sentences were enough to have me hooked, a piece of historical fiction built with the bricks and mortar of the period of its setting (the nineteenth -century), yet given an expertly modern finish. I turned back to see the book had been first published in 1936 and I could tell from the writing Daphne Du Maurier had in this book delivered a new form of expression in the genre.

Life is bleak in nineteenth century, especially for a woman with no friends or particularly sane family. In older classics I have read, set in the nineteenth century with a similar setup, often the hero cries, she prays, she is tormented, she walks for miles only to collapse in the arms of a man (very often a religious figure), she is pure and morally driven, and often after a few pages of this trial and anguish, I find her intensely annoying. Often, it’s not the hero’s end goal I find irritating but the words given to her by her author. Mary Yellan is quite possibly the character Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott tried to create, but couldn’t. She is on her way to being a woman of independence and free-thinking, a modern character, and that makes Daphne du Maurier my new #girlcrush.

The coastal landscape of Cornwall; its physical features, such as marshes, gullies, granite tors; its “clammy cold” temperatures; mist and fog, all are washed up for du Maurier to feast on and she places Mary Yellan in this plain, among the phantom wreckers, who light up corners in dark cliffs, joining the ranks of pirates and other devilish sea-people.

Jamaica Inn is a pleasure to read - for me anyway. It gave me a gothic story, set on the coast, with clear, yet captivating descriptions of the dark and violent world the hero finds herself in; there is a romance with a typical bad boy, whose nineteenth-century version of a motorcycle is a stolen horse; a thrilling page-turning plot which sucks you in quicker than a bog on a Cornish marsh, and the allure of an author’s words who knows how to write for their reader.