Golgonooza

  What if Churchill had not been made Prime Minister in 1940? Removed from the field of possibilities, an alternative in Lord Halifax falls into place, and an armistice or peace is signed with Hitler. No one is the wiser that this has taken place, for time has been magically altered. All is different now. This is the possibility that haunts Francis Spufford's latest novel and that its heroine must thwart. Iris is an unlikely candidate as saviour of Britain. She works as a secretary at a stockbroker's, is highly ambitious, wants to be rich, and she labours under an unexplained estrangement from her mother. She likes sex, has multiple male admirers, and is definitely aiming to 'marry up'', curbing her Watford vowels and having a side hustle so she can both dress well and afford to save for an investable nest egg. Yet, she must be careful; she does not want to be caught by a man who might curb her freedom and throttle her ambition. She definitely does not want to fall ...

  Michael McGregor, in his 20s, decides to go to a Greek island, step into solitude, and write a novel. He chooses Patmos, then, in the 80s, decidedly off the beaten tourist trail, and to make assurance doubly sure, he goes in winter.  Setting himself some ground rules - no alcohol, writing six days a week, no television or radio, etc.- he finds a place to stay, a little cold and austere as it turns out, and begins his experiments in solitude and in writing. So, this thoughtful, reflective book begins, and takes us on a journey to epidsodes of solitude experienced in multiple dimensions - in the isolations of childhood and refuge in libraries, as part of a spiritual retreat at the ecumenical community in Taize, snatched amongst the travails and joys of being a tour guide and in the context of an unfolding writer's life, both as a single man and a happily married one.  In each of these contexts, solitude unfolds its offerings to thought and experience. The challenges of le...

A prosperous family living in Calcutta, conscious of its status and robustly vegetarian, is disturbed when the youngest child of the younger son, at age three, boldly demands to eat fish with rice. Even more disconcerting is her assertion that her 'real' mother is a poor fisherwoman living in the Sundarbans - the extensive region of islands, waterways, and mangrove swamps in Bengal. Consternation reigns! What to make of this? Has someone surreptitiously been feeding her fish? But why would they? Is she ill, and if so, is it physical or mental? Fortunately, her pediatrician is married to a therapist, one who has had reason to study ''cases of the reincarnational kind" and recognises the signs. There follows an intertwining story of two "cases of the reincarnational kind," one apparent, one hidden, woven within a developing environmental campaign to dislodge a prospective coal-fired power station by animating the powers of an 'other world', and weav...