Transit by Rachel Cusk — I’m reading the trilogy and marvelling at Cusk’s spare writing, her storytelling through the withdrawn narrator letting the other characters form the foreground whilst she emerges from the gaps in their stories. A new writing.
Chasm by Dorothea Tanning — picked this up at the Tate Modern when I didn’t have anything with me to read. Gothic, haunting, makes you feel queasy at times, great descriptions of the arid, empty desert and the odd people that inhabit it.
Fates and furies by Lauren Groff — didn’t hugely enjoy it, though well written. The two main characters were too white and privileged for me. Even their issues were masked by their easy access to money and brilliance—at every turn where there was something raw and painful, they were either wealthy enough or brilliant enough to make it go away. Perhaps another way of saying it was that they were implausibly lucky/skillful; one is failing at being an actor, falls asleep and becomes a brilliant playwright. Didn’t buy it.
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McCrystal et al. — very good. Like a history of my time at HMRC, and made me think about the areas to I want to grow in workwise.