Over the past two weeks I have read six books; Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Idol by Louise O’Neil, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and I reread A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

I also went to see Hex! at the National Theatre last Saturday. The 14th of January is important. It is the anniversary of my survival of an accident on the M25. (The very busy four lane orbital ring road motorway around London). I was my commuting to Warner Brother Studios in Leavesden at the time. On the 14th of January 2019 at 07:07am a left hand drive articulated truck collided with the passenger side door of my blue Renault Clio. The Truck did not see me when it was changing lanes. My car spun at 60 mph and then I was pushed 100 yards up the M25 on the bonnet of the truck before finally spinning again into the motorway crash barrier, only to end up facing oncoming traffic. My car was destroyed. Written off. The accident held up 4 lanes of traffic for two hours. I was lucky to have survived. To toast to four years I didn’t think I’d get to live for a hot second, Hex! Had show tunes to sooth my soul! My favourite songs from Hex! Are Sixteen https://youtu.be/EXqyUnsoKl0 and Above It All https://youtu.be/cN5CjJ4469o

Side by side comparatively these six books have me pondering the nature of time, memory and pleasure. We often forget that the past is a different country. I have also recently watched Paul Mescal’s new movie Aftersun on MUBI. Which is a director’s semi-autobiographical account of a last holiday with her father. The father in Aftersun suffers from depression, something which he hides. He shows himself to be a good Dad but beneath he is struggling with his divorce. Outside of the flashbacks, Our lead protagonist has recently become a mother herself. The finality of this last holiday is especially poignant as it is hinted that the father died afterwards. A flashback that occurs throughout the film is of our leading lady trying to reach out for her father in a familiar memory from that final holiday. In this memory, she’s dancing with him in a club as a child-but in the flashback she is an adult- she keeps trying to reach for him, to hold him- but the memory is painfully slipping away from her. Fragmenting and distorting out of being. It is a masterful depiction of the nature of grief that shows- not tells.

I have read so much! I’m going to be a terrible reviewer and say- I think I just reviewed a film instead of the six books! And six is far too many to give good comparative analysis for! How terrible… and I am currently reading Ulysses. I will have to just review that one next time. However, since Ulysses is a title by which it’s own towering reputation proceeds it- I will likely be reflecting on something else! Please be placated by the image of the beautiful bookshop that is Foster Books, located in Chiswick, West London.