ISLA DEWAR
House of Glass – Hadley Freeman A Thousand Moons – Sebastian Barry Scotland the Dreich – Alan McCredie
I have travelled during lockdown. I have been to France, Poland and America. Hadley Freeman took me to Poland and then France with her memoir House of Glass. It is a wonderful, beautifully written story of the Glahs family, Hadley’s own, who became the Glass family.
She found a burnished red box in her grandmother’s closet that set her on the path to discovering a whole fascinating Jewish history, long gone relatives who had moved from Chrzanow in Poland to Paris to escape the pre-war pogroms only to face, in time, the horror the second world war brought. The story is told with compassion and humanity.
Freeman does not shrink from exposing the brilliance and ghastliness of her great uncle Alex, a couturier and art lover who knew Picasso. She discusses assimilation and social mobility, important issues as we now consider nationalism and racism. I felt an old longing to have conversations I was too young and proud to have with relatives now dead and lost to me.
Sebastian Barry took me to America with A Thousand Moons. The book is a sequel to Days of Heaven, but it stands alone. It is the story of Winona, an Indian of the Lakota tribe – the saddest people that ever were on earth – who was adopted by Thomas McNulty and John Cole. It is 1870 and post civil war. Winona is raped and, dressed as a man, sets out to seek revenge. Freed by her change of identity Winona moves through a story that is shocking, thrilling and wonderful and is told in Barry’s gorgeous lyrical prose.
Alan McCredie brought me home with Scotland the Dreich. His photographs are of Scotland caught with her skirt tucked into her knickers, gazing into the distance and whistling tunelessly. I love it and have bought umpteen copies for friends. I have not visited all the locations but I have been visited by all the emotions it evokes. It makes me smile. And smile. And smile.
Isla Dewar’s latest novel A Day Like Any Other is published by Polygon.