Books we thought we’d read in lockdown - and what we’re actually reading

Kiley Reid

Last lockdown we were determined. We were going to learn a language, do more yoga, get running and read that mammoth classic novel that sits, accusingly, on the shelf. Well, now it’s cold (no running), we can’t actually go on holiday until next year (maybe we needn’t start the Italian just yet), we’ve hidden the yoga mat so that we don’t have to think about it and we’ve achieved a new level of self-knowledge. War & Peace is out, Jilly Cooper’s The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous is in. Here our writers tell us what they thought they’d read in lockdown - and what they’re actually going to read. 

Stalingrad/Such a Fun Age

There I was, boasting to all and sundry that I was finally going to embark on Stalingrad, Vasily Grossman’s monumental prequel to his masterpiece, Life and Fate, about the horrors faced by a panoramic cast in Soviet Russia  during WW2. But I’m afraid that after slogging through 100 pages of this 1,000-page doorstopper, I’ve put it down. My fingers are now fondling the cover of Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age, a story about a black babysitter apprehended for supposedly kidnapping her young white charge. Almost everyone else I know has already read it and raved about it. Katie Law

Middlemarch/Because of the Lockwoods

Buoyed with arrogant delusions of my capacity for reading door stopper novels after plodding through The Mirror and the Light, I foolishly assumed that lockdown was the right time to embark on Middlemarch. I spent the first 300 or so pages hating awful Mr Causabon before putting it down to ‘give myself a break’ (that was in May). This time my ambitions are different. Indie bookshops need our support more than ever in lockdown 2.0. Persephone Books, home to grey-jacketed reprints of books by neglected women authors, is my spiritual home - it’s also where I discovered the work of Dorothy Whipple, who wrote compulsively readable family sagas in the inter-war years. I’ll be ordering - and inevitably racing through - Because of the Lockwoods, her penultimate novel, to complete my set. Katie Rosseinsky

Wolf Hall/The Sisters

During the first lockdown I thought I’d finally face my shame and read Wolf Hall all the way to the end. I’d previously tried and failed, but I refused to accept that I was in the minority who didn’t ‘get’ Hilary Mantel. She’s won the Booker Prize twice! (though not this year - she didn’t make the shortlist). Then the book supply chain went willy nilly and there was no way of getting a copy; I thanked my stars from heaven. I’m making no such sadistic reading goals this time: instead I’m heading full throttle and guilt-free into Mary S. Lovell’s chunky biography of the Mitford Sisters for some posh vintage gossip courtesy of the original tribe of It girls. Jessie Thompson

Martin Amis

Pale Fire/Inside Story

My nemesis is Nabokov’s Pale Fire. It is genius – according to other people. Each time I defeatedly return it to the bookshelf, I see William Boyd on the back cover, assuring me it’s “one of the most brilliant and extraordinary novels ever written.” Who wants to miss out on one of the best novels, ever? Not me. But I’m not keen on making myself feel dim during lockdown, so instead I’ll turn to his literary son of sorts, Martin Amis, to try his “last big novel”, Inside Story. Amis may be unfashionable and snobby (and short) but he makes me laugh – unintentionally, sometimes, but it still counts. David Ellis

The Years of Lyndon Johnson/Agatha Christie (any of it) 

What better way to try and understand the farce that has been American politics this year than to go back and learn how it came to this? In the first lockdown I bought Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson. It is quite a commitment at four volumes, perfect for hunkering down. I am still on volume one, and now that I am glued to the fallout of the American election on CNN I don’t see how I will make much progress. There’s no doubt that it is a masterpiece, elegantly written and rich in detail but I can’t see myself finishing it, especially not now that I have rediscovered Agatha Christie – much better distraction from reality. Susannah Butter

Queen's Birthday Honours List 2020
Bernadine Evaristo
PA

Girl, Woman, Other/Ghosts

I planned to read Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other over lockdown, but somehow I couldn’t embark on its 500 pages. I was expecting its tales of domestic abuse and female struggle to be too dry and worthy for the bleakness that was lockdown 1.0, and was put off by talks of its disorientating punctuation. Instead, I reached for lightness: the escapism of Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times, the familiarity of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the hopefulness of Matt Haig’s Reasons To Stay Alive. This time, I’ve learnt my lesson: I’m 30 pages into Dolly Alderton’s first novel Ghosts, which though heartbreakingly relatable in parts (who could have predicted ghosting would worsen during a pandemic?), feels like the fictional equivalent of sharing a bottle of Sauvignon with a friend. The story’s familiarity is already so delicious I’m (almost) tempted to bail on my socially-distanced tinnies in the park tomorrow evening. Except that would contradict the message of the book: never let a book, a man or a night-in get in the way of female friendship. From the reviews I’ve read of Evaristo’s Booker Prize-winner (friends say it’s actually funny and super readable), maybe hers and Alderton’s messages aren’t so different after all. Katie Strick

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