The Global Forest: 40 Ways Trees Can Save UsDiana Beresford-Kroeger Particular Books, £9.99
The Irish-born author of this deceptively slim compendium of arboreal lore and climate-change wisdom is a mould-breaking botanist, researcher and gardener in Canada, where she has spent most of her adult life. Diana Beresford-Kroeger understands how trees work, from the inside out – or, rather, the microscopic level up. She also loves them to bits. It’s a rare combination that, added to the book’s unusual structure – 40 short essays or meditations, with wry titles such as A Handful of Nuts, The Sexual Revolution and Smile, Monkey, Smile – means you can be reading one minute about the rhamnose sugar complex in the mature fruit of the elderberry and the next be plunged into full-blown mysticism. Beresford-Kroeger is a serious ecoactivist who is at the centre of several large woodland-regeneration projects and a lot of plant-based medical research. Her book is informative, inspirational and a treasure for anyone who loves trees.
Arminta Wallace
Wish You Were Here
Graham Swift
Picador, £7.99
Jack Luxton is the quiet owner of a caravan park on the Isle of Wight. He comes from a farming background, occasionally wears Hawaiian shirts and takes regular sun holidays. So why is he holed up at home with a shotgun, waiting for his wife to return? This latest novel from the Booker winner deals with the fallout after the death of Jack’s brother in Iraq and features many themes familiar from Swift’s previous work, such as family, secrets and landscapes. The story unfolds in loops and shifting narratives, Jack’s dark and somewhat strange past gradually coming to light. It’s a slow read, however, and it all feels a bit insular at times, but there are fascinating details about the military and their interaction with family, and many lovely observations, such as “the weight and strain” felt by Jack’s wife from all the kettles filled over the course of their lifetimes.
Sorcha Hamilton
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Amy Chua
Bloomsbury, £7.99
I am grateful to Amy Chua for briefly shutting up one of my own spoilt sprogs, who whinged when I insisted on some small moment of domestic sense: that she change out of her school uniform before eating chocolate. Amid bitter whines of “You’re so mean” I grabbed Chua’s book and read out some of her child-rearing rules: no sleepovers, no playdates, no TV or computer games, no grades lower than A. And there’s more. Much more. My daughter was stunned. Then she declared: “You’re mean. She’s evil.” That was pretty much the western reaction when Chua published this memoir of applying strict Chinese child-rearing methods to her American-Chinese daughters, with mixed results. Actually, I think Chua is tongue-in- cheek a fair amount of the time, and she is as honest about the failures of her regime as its many impressive successes.
Mary Feely
Other Lives But Mine
Emmanuel Carrère
Serpent’s Tail, £11.99
This is an extraordinary book about ordinary people. For six months the French writer Emmanuel Carrère deliberately wrote about what frightens him most, “the death of a child for her parents and the death of a young mother for her husband and children”. Having witnessed a tsunami in Sri Lanka take a four-year-old out to sea and, shortly after, the death from cancer of his sister-in-law Juliette, Carrère sets out to record how the families survive and how they grapple with the nature of illness and catastrophe. At Juliette’s funeral, he meets Étienne, a one-legged judge who, with Juliette, had tirelessly worked for truth and justice in the French courts. Carrère, intrigued by Étienne’s passion, senses he has found a guide to Juliette’s story. The result is a gripping discourse on the execution of justice and the injustice of illness. Carrère’s strength as a storyteller is not only to engage us in the story but also make us reflect on our own lives. An emotional and beautiful read.
Maureen White
Running With the Kenyans: Discovering the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth
Adharanand Finn
Faber, £14.99
Searching for the secret of Kenya’s phenomenal proficiency at long-distance running, Adharanand Finn transplants his family to Iten, a Kenyan town of 4,000 inhabitants, 1,000 of them professional runners. Here he learns that there are many ingredients to success: children running several kilometres to and from school; the effect barefoot running has on strength and form; high-altitude training. But perhaps the most important factor is the key role of running in Kenyan culture. The athletes in Iten are impoverished, but good performances in races in Europe or the US can earn them enough money to buy land, raise cattle or found schools, so their lives are entirely devoted to their training. Finn himself bravely trains with these world-class athletes and finally runs a Kenyan marathon (after the helicopters have herded the lions off the course). His book is both an interesting work of research and a moving personal story of a British family immersing itself in another culture.
Colm Farren
