Recommendations for rain

Or gobbling up culture as well as dinner

It’s somehow still raining, and in this house we are very much hibernating. I’ve been gobbling up so many lovely bits of culture, and I think this is the cure to all life’s ills.

Here’s what’s good:

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Jaz and Theo gave us this as a joint Christmas present and I read it over the course of 3 days, unable to put it down and desperate to understand, to know what was going to happen. The premise - a nameless woman is a ‘bridge’ for newly arrived people. Only they’re not newly arrived to the country - they are newly arrived to the time. Six people plucked from near death moments throughout history and brought to our near future to be studied, observed and monitored. How do they physically react, and how do they come to understand the realities of their new present.

Our main character’s charge is Graham Gore, reported as missing presumed dead from John Franklin’s expedition to the North West Passage. It’s a great premise, no? It’s readable, interesting, funny, sexy, with a bit of sci-fi and climate commentary thrown in.

Mission Impossible 3

My favourite thing to do in probably the whole world is watch an action film with Tom on a Saturday night. Bonus points if it includes Tom Cruise wearing a silicone mask of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s face in the Vatican. What a mad film, that twisted and turned and had me GASPING. Honestly just action fun at its best.

Wayward - Netflix

I simply love that Mae Martin wrote the gorgeous rom-com Feel Good and then came back with this - a very creepy, Stepford Wives-esque cult drama. A couple move back to one of their home towns and it soon becomes clear that everyone in the town attended Tall Pines school, a corrective facility run by ageing hippy Toni Collette. Creepy and propulsive and scattered with teenage rebellion. What happens when you don’t let kids be kids? What happens when you remove the ties of parenthood?

The Blackwater Lightship - Colm Toibin

Is every main female protagonist in a Colm Tóibín novel essentially the same woman? I sort of think yes but they’re very readable novels anyway. In this, Helen learns that her brother is dying of AIDS, and wants to be with his family as his illness worsens. Estranged from her mother but desperate to follow his wishes the family, and some of his close friends, join together at their grandmother’s house near the sea in County Wexford.

God I love a novel where women are furious with each other, where mothers are difficult and no one knows how to talk to each other. The knottiness of these relationships! The rage, the desire to be separate and apart from those who made you whilst feeling inextricably drawn back to your roots. Gorgeous.

Small Prophets - BBC

Now I haven’t actually finished this because it’s so gorgeous and rich I can’t watch too much in one go, like having to have a square of dark chocolate at a time.

But Mackenzie Crook is back on fine form, writing, directing and featuring in this folkloric story about a man who grows homunculi in his shed to find out what happened to his girlfriend. Written specifically for Pierce Quigley (what a name), with Michael Palin playing his care home resident dad, it’s got such richly drawn characters. What makes someone weird? What is normal? Why are people drawn to the absence of nature the suburbs offers?

The cul-de-sac setting and the quiet observations about nimbyism and the fear of the pastoral reminded me of the houses I see as I walk from Eltham high street to the posh end, the houses getting bigger, the cars shinier, the Gardens more neatly trimmed.

Fun and Games - John Patrick McHugh

I don’t go on Good Reads but I poked my head into the reviews for this and then remembered why I never go on there. Moaning about how unbearable and unlikable the main character is? He’s a teenage boy falling in love as his parents separate and he doesn’t know what to do with his life! Of course he’s unbearable! We are all unbearable when we are 17 and horny and confused!! Just because Holden Caulfield is insufferable it doesn’t mean that Catcher in the Rye isn’t a brilliant book.

There were so many moments of well observed pure gross boyness in this that I had to check some of them with Tom. Do boys really behave like this when no-one is looking?

I will say though, my main thought throughout the passages describing Gaelic football matches was what the hell is going on?

Oh, Mary - Trafalgar Theatre

Oh my god, a funny play. And not in a titter at the clever joke kind of way, in a laugh out loud, raucous and crazy funny way. The Guardian reviewer clearly has no joy in their heart because sometimes silly and gross is the funniest thing you can do, especially when it comes to portraying literally any American president. Mary Todd Lincoln is an ex-cabaret star, Abraham Lincoln is trying to deny his homosexuality and John Wilkes Booth is caught in the crossfire. Hot damn.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Otessa Moshfegh

Yes, everyone else read this 7 years ago when it came out but I hated the premise - woman drugs herself to sleep for a year - and then I saw it in the library and thought well, I’ll give it a go.

I think we can all agree that books about sad women being sad are over, but this one came out at the trends peak, and did offer something else. The women doesn’t necessarily want to self harm with destructive boyfriends or behaviours, she literally just wants to sleep a medicated sleep and watch Whoopi Goldberg films. The year is 2000 and the setting is New York, giving the whole thing a frisson of anticipation about what is to come.

Getting Killed - Geese

I don’t know anything about what makes music good. I mostly like songs if I heard them when I was in a good mood or they were in a beautiful bit of a film. But something about this album just unfolds and every time I listen to it I hear more weird, wonderful strangeness. The lyrics! Cameron Winter’s voice! It appeared to me in fits and starts and I am now fully obsessed. If I was able I’d love to be in a sweaty crowd jumping up and down to these songs.

Will it wash your hair clean / when your husbands all die?

A walk

I have been dutifully taking myself on a walk every single lunch time, even when it is raining, even when I don’t want to, and did you know that literally everything is solved by a stomp in the park and looking at a tree?

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What’s been getting you through the rain?

Lots of love,

Sian xxx