The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

I expect this will cause a lot of book club discussion and win some awards. It’s certainly very accomplished, quality writing, good sense of place and time. We follow the fortunes of prostitute Angelica Neal, ex-siren of Mrs Chappell’s bawdy house, who has ambitions to go it alone as a great courtesan since her protector, the duke, has died. Meanwhile, Jonah Hancock a canny shipping merchant is dismayed to find himself handed a curiosity in the form of a dead ‘mermaid’ instead of his returning ship and cargo. Of course, the clue is in the title, and these two eventually form a partnership, but how they get there is a series of mis-steps. The bawdy house is well portrayed, as we see inside the lives of these girls, in a world where women are possessions whether wives or whores, and I did feel for Angelica as she tries to overcome her circumstances. The real mermaid when it makes an appearance is intriguingly there but not there, which is clever. Although she speaks to us intermittently, which is where the book wanders into magical realism. I always want to know at the end of a historical novel, whether there is any basis in truth – was there a ‘mermaid’ doing the rounds of Georgian London, which started this idea – but we’re not told. Along the lines of The Essex Serpent, so if you liked that give it a go.

Wilding by Isabella Tree

I hardly ever read non-fiction, but found this in my mum’s local Waterstones. It’s all about the area where I grew up, a beautiful area of West Sussex in South East England: the ‘hammer pond’ mentioned is where we used to go for family walks, the village names, Shipley, Henfield, Partridge Green resonate with me. When Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell took over the land that his family had farmed for generations, Knepp, they were convinced that modernisation was the answer. They spent heavily to bring the farm up to speed, but still teetered from year to year, never really making it pay. Eventually, horribly in debt, they had to admit it was over and a new idea began to emerge. Wilding. It all began with an ailing oak tree, adrift on a tiny island of grass amidst their ploughed fields. As they began to understand that they had caused the sickness, by removing any connectivity the tree had with the surrounding surface soil that nurtured it, a bold plan emerged: stop farming and let the land go back to nature, introducing free-roaming cows, deer, rootling pigs, to make a livelihood. I rarely read non-fiction, am not an eco-warrior and know nothing about farming, but Isabella Tree walks us through the steps to what Knepp has become – a beacon of bio-diversity and returning rare breeds. Turtle doves, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies have appeared from nowhere and started breeding. Scientists and ecologists alike have been shocked at how fast the habitat can return to sustaining all types of rare and almost extinct species, from fungus, to otters. Time and again, when there appeared to be a problem with some particular plant or breed running out of control, another unforeseen event – weather, predator – would remove the problem without intervention. The message is clear. It’s not too late, there is hope. But it will take a political will to roll this benefit out to a wider sphere. Knepp, after all, has benefitted from various countryside grants. Isabella Tree challenges our preconceptions of the countryside we love, manicured, tidy, a vista of rolling hills and golden squares waiting to be harvested, with the occasional picturesque hedgerow. An idyllic sort of countryside that we think is timeless, but in fact is quite recent. Wilding on the other hand, makes things messy. Like life.

Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Much acclaimed, this is a complex story set in the modern day American South. But the old horrors resonate still, and Jesmyn Ward has chosen to represent some of the main characters as ghosts, still interacting with the living. Those who met a violent end cannot rest and wander nearby trying to find peace and resolution. Many of these were the results of lynching, hence the ‘unburied’. Uncomfortable and at times a difficult read, it is nevertheless a story of a family, told from the points of view of a teenage boy Jojo, his young mother Leonie, and Richie, a ghost boy from the past whose story interweaves with the family. The story centres around the family waiting for Michael, Leonie’s boyfriend and Jojo’s dad, to be released from Parchman prison. Leonie has never met Michael’s parents because they are white and have painful history with her family. Leonie is a terrible mother, neglecting to feed her children on the long ride to Parchman, so Jojo is his baby sister Kayla’s carer, she clings to him screaming ‘Jojo, Jojo’ if they are parted. There is violence, drugtaking and a carelessness towards the children which is distressing, but there is love too in this tale. The strong, fierce love of Jojo for his sister is a core running through the story, and in turn his grandfather’s love for him. He has been raised by his grandparents and dreads the return of his father. But there is also something his grandfather has taken a lifetime to tell, and Jojo is not sure he wants to hear it. Beautiful, evocative, the ghosts are creatively written and unnerving, and you care very deeply for Jojo and the outcome. The prose doesn’t drag and Jesmyn Ward tells a story which is ultimately full of tenderness.