Three of the books I read in September were a similar length of under three hundred pages, all with beautiful covers, two by one of my favourite authors Isabel Allende, and one by Mark A Radcliffe, who taught me so much about how to write.
The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende is a short novel that covers a lot of ground. The first thread focuses on the arrival of the Nazis in Austria, the Kindertransport, and the adult life of refugee Samuel Adler in San Francisco. The second is the story of another refugee, Anita Diaz, who ends up separated from her mother at the US border, having escaped El Salvador. The third is a love story between lawyer Frank and activist Selena, who are fighting to keep Anita in the US. All three stories are intertwined, and each is enjoyable in its own right, but it covers such a lot of ground and at such pace that I felt it skimmed over the surface and there was a lot of history being told, rather than shown through the lives of the characters.
I had the same issue with My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende. There was too much recounting of the history of the war in Chile and too many aspects of the protagonist’s life thrown together: a fascinating story of family life in nineteenth century San Francisco, an equally fascinating story of a woman making it in journalism at a time when that was unheard of, and then a detailed description of the Chilean battlefield with a love story thrown in. There was a lot of being told what was going on in long descriptions and too much was cantered over for me to care much about the characters.
In contrast Three Gifts by Mark A Radcliffe was a beautifully paced immersion into the life of Francis, a gentle man who touches lightly on the world and is determined to leave it better than he found it. As a child he meets a swimmer on the north Kent coast, who offers him a deal that will save his mother’s life, if he is willing to accept shortening his own. He is, she lives, and Francis grows up with the knowledge of what he has done, before facing the opportunity to do it again. This is a lovely book. It’s different, soft, kind, interesting and shows a masulinity not always foregrounded.
