The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Doctor’s raw account her Covid experience
Pick of the best new fiction and non-fiction
NON-FICTION
EVERYTHING IS TRUE: A JUNIOR DOCTOR’S STORY OF LIFE, DEATH AND GRIEF IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC Dr Roopa Farooki
Bloomsbury Publishing, priced £14.99 (ebook £10.49).
On the face of it, Everything Is True is an NHS doctor’s memoir about working on the frontline during the early days of the pandemic. However, Dr Roopa Farooki’s striking recollections are haunted by grief, following the loss of her sister weeks before the pandemic - and it’s reflected in her tone. The first 40 days of the first lockdown are remarkably welldocumented, with chapters and sentences varying in length, giving you a feeling her accounts were scrawled down as they were happening. The memoir recounts how the risks faced by frontline workers were magnified by governmental ineptitude. Her political observations throughout are offset with recollections of mundane tasks as a mother-of-four coping during the pandemic. The phrase Everything Is True appears throughout the memoir and in the last sentence, giving you a sense Farooki wants you to pay attention. The raw honesty in Everything Is True makes it a must-read.
FICTION
9/10 (Review by Ellie Iorizzo)
THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. DU BOIS
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers Fourth Estate, priced £20 (ebook £9.99). Slavery is often referred to as America’s ‘original sin’, but in her
remarkable debut novel, poet Honoree Fanonne Jeffers begs to differ. She argues the real problem was greed - and her point resonates throughout 800 pages, written so beautifully and lyrically they truly sing. The story of one family’s travails from slavery to the modern day tells much of America’s story, but does so without sentimentality.
Ailey Pearl Garfield guides us through this saga - herself the victim of horrible crimes growing up in the 1970s, her attempts to come to terms with what happened to her and her sisters leads her back to the past. She finds that the lines of colour, supposedly the foundation of so much in society, are blurred, but the love passed down by generations of black women never wavers.
9/10 (Review by Ian Parker)
THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR Nina de Gramont
Mantle, £16.99 (ebook £8.99)
Agatha Christie is known for solving mysteries, but her readers never discovered the secret behind her own disappearance. The 11-day period in 1926 when the author went missing provides the basis for Nina De Gramont’s novel, The Christie Affair. The story is not told from Christie’s perspective, but instead from the point of view of her husband’s mistress, Nan O’Dea. The book has mystery, intrigue, love affairs and drama, even before you get to the mysterious deaths at a spa hotel. There are twists and it’s a treat for fans of murder mysteries, but still leaves you desperate to find out the real truth behind the story.
8/10 (Review by Eleanor Barlow)
THE KEY IN THE LOCK Beth Underdown
Viking, priced £14.99
(ebook £7.99).
The Key In The Lock is a neat piece of historical period drama, and a love story with many twists and turns. It covers a 30-year timespan, with the action leap-frogging between 1888 and 1918 - a device that can drag the reader away from a good thread, but it worked well here. It covers an age of great change in society, from the late Victorian era to the horrors of trench warfare in the Great War. Underdown devotes many lines to describing the fighting’s fear and futileness.
The main action is located in Cornwall – Ivy has lost her son in World War One, and thinks back to someone else who died in a fire many years before – and there are definite hints of Du Maurier’s Rebecca.
8/10
(Review by Mark Davey)
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA: AQUITAINE, A PLACE FOR ME BASIA GORDON
Matador £12.99
If you loved Fidelma Cook’s columns from France in this magazine, you will be interested in this tale of a Scottish couple renovating a crumbling farmhouse in the far south west of the country.
Rather like Fidelma’s columns, it offers a blast of sun-soaked escapism while at the same time tackling everything from building disasters to Brexit, wine, food and mud.
It’s a lively, life-affirming read. Nicely written, too. “There are some choice place names here. Just down the road is the hamlet of Pis. When we drive past the village of Tourette, it is understood everyone has to shout “F***. It’s Tourette!”