Water meanderings

Rivers of water are running down the lane, muddy pools gathering for wellies to splash in, wet cats leave pawprints across the kitchen floor, rain runs down the windows in a seemingly endless stream. There is a lot of water in Wiltshire this month so it seemed entirely appropriate that our bookclub theme for November was "water". Members may choose to read any book on the theme, fiction or non-fiction and there were some excellent choices. Here are just a few I would highly recommend for winter reading.

My choice was Maidens' Trip by Emma Smith. It is a sort of memoir though it is part fact, part fiction, of Emma’s time with the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company during World War II. It is wonderfully written, humorous and humane and her descriptions are vividly drawn. Although it describes one trip, it is in fact, a blending of all her trips in the two years on the canal. Emma’s companions are fiction but everything that happens in the book did actually happen to actual girls.

To quote the blurb: "In 1943 Emma Smith joined the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company under their wartime scheme of employing women to replace the boaters. She set out with two friends on a big adventure: three eighteen-year-olds, freed from a middle-class background, precipitated into the boating fraternity. They learn how to handle a pair of seventy-two foot-long canal boats, how to carry a cargo of steel north from London to Birmingham and coal from Coventry; how to splice ropes, bail out bilge water, keep the engine ticking over and steer through tunnels. They live off kedgeree and fried bread and jam, adopt a kitten, lose their bicycles, laugh and quarrel and get progressively dirtier and tougher as the weeks go by". This was Emma's first book and I would highly recommend her memoirs.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson is one of those books you can't put down. I borrowed it from the member who brought it who said the same. It is a first novel set in rural Northern Ontario where the landscape is wide and unforgiving. The story starts with a tragedy: four children whose parents die in a car crash are threatened with separation until the oldest brother sacrifices his place at teacher training college to keep his siblings together. Narrated by Kate whose fascination for pondlife is fed by her brother Matt's interest in the natural world, it is full of tragedy, emotion and family love. A compelling read.

I found The Book of the Thames on my bookshelf and, although I decided on a different book for the meeting, it was brought by another member and is worth recommending to dip into and enjoy the beautiful 19th century woodcarved drawings and historical anecdotes.

Written by Mr. & Mrs. S.C. Hall and first published in 1859, it is the story of the Thames 'from its Rise to its Fall'. Mr. & Mrs. Hall "traced the bountiful river from the bubbling well out of which it issues, in the meadow by Trewsbury Mead, its lonely birthplace, through its whole course, gathering tributaries, and passing with them through tranquil villages, populous towns, and crowded cities; ever fertilizing, ever beautifying, ever enriching, until it reaches the most populous city of the modern or the ancient world, forming thence the GREAT HIGHWAY by which a hundred Nations traverse the globe". The book is full of stories, anecdotes, information and nature and is a delight to dip into.

In 1976 R.A. Harris and his family repeated the trip using the book and published a new edition, describing their experience as 'a magical mystery tour'.

Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea was a brilliant choice. Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. Santiago, the old man in the novel, is a dreamer. Fishing is his life, but lately the sea has been cruel and 84 days have gone by since he last caught a fish. Sailing far out to sea, he hooks the biggest of his life and the days-long battle to land it is a true test of endurance and courage. The story is full of hope and is a moral fable to rival any other.

Last, but by no means least, a gothic Victorian tale set in 1890s London and Essex. In Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent, natural sciences, and particularly paleontology, are all the rage. Newly widowed Cora Seagrove leaves London for the wilds of Essex. There she hears of the Essex Serpent, a folktale apparently come to life and terrorising the Blackwater estuary; and meets its spiritual adversary, the rector of Aldwinter, William Ransome, with whom she is soon entangled in a relationship of voluble opposition and unspoken attraction. There are sub-texts and red herrings, atmosphere and almost terror. A gripping tale perfect for those dark winter evenings in front of the fire.