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The Book Doctor is in the house

Bookhugger’s mystery medic is back to answer more of your cries for help – just what should you read next after you finish a book you have loved?

Angela came in to the surgery to ask:

I have just read Tell it to the Bees by Fiona Shaw, loved the period it was set in (the 1950s),and the storyline about a secret love affair between two women, very emotionally charged and moving. Could you recommend something similar?

There are a plenty of great books around set in the 1950s:

Let’s start with The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as ‘Lily’ in Lima in 1950, when she arrives one summer out of the blue, claiming to be from Chile but vanishing the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris, where she appears as the enchanting ‘Comrade Arlette’, an activist en route to Cuba, and becomes his lover, albeit an icy, remote one, who denies knowing anything about the Lily of years gone by. Whoever the bad girl turns up as – whether it’s Madam Robert Arnoux, the wife of a high-ranking UNESCO official, or Kuriko, the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman – and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. Gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse – does Ricardo ever know who she really is? The answer is as unclear as what has become of Ricardo himself, a lifelong expatriate shadowed by the sense that he is only ever drifting. In Mario Vargos Llosa’s beguiling new novel, the strange bedfellows of good and bad turn out not to be what they appear.
We head to Ireland in Annie Dunne, by Sebastian Barry. Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful part of Wicklow in late 1950s Ireland. All about them the old green roads are being tarred, cars are being purchased, a way of life is about to disappear. Like two old rooks, they hold to their hill in Kelsha, cherishing everything. When Annie’s nephew and his wife are set to go to London to find work, their two small children, a little boy and his older sister, are brought down to spend the summer with their grand-aunt. It is a strange chance of happiness for Annie. Against that happiness moves the figure of Billy Kerr, with his ambiguous attentions to Sarah, threatening to drive Annie from her last niche of safety in the world. The world of childish innocence also proves sometimes darkened and puzzling to her, and she struggles to find clear ground, clear light – to preserve her sense of love and place against these subtle forces of disquiet. A summer of adventure, pain, delight and ultimately epiphany unfolds for both the children and their elderly caretakers in this poignant and exquisitely told story of innocence, loss and reconciliation.
Also set in the 50s is The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan. ‘Has our family got secrets?’ ‘Every family has, Gwenni. Big secrets, small secrets, silly secrets, bad things we want to hide . . . ’ Young Gwenni Morgan has a gift. She can fly in her sleep. She’s also fond of strawberry whip, detective stories and asking difficult questions. When a neighbour mysteriously vanishes, she resolves to uncover the secret of his disappearance and return him to his children. She truthfully records what she sees and hears: but are her deductions correct? What is the real truth? And what will be the consequences – for Gwenni, her family and her community – of finding it out? Gwenni Morgan is an unforgettable creation, and this portrait of life in a small Welsh town on the brink of change in the 1950s is enthralling, moving and utterly real. Mari Strachan’s debut is a magical novel that will transport you to another time and place.
Staying in Wales, we have a book both set and written in the 1950s, One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard. This simple novel tells of one boy’s journey into the grown-up world. By the light of a full moon our narrator and his friends Huw and Moi witness a side to their Welsh village life that they had no idea existed, and their childish innocence is exchanged for a shocking introduction to the horrors of the adult world. First published in Welsh in 1961, Philip Mitchell’s translation, the first complete translation in English, captures all the vibrancy of Prichard’s magnificent prose. In this new edition Jan Morris and Niall Griffiths explain why this remains one of the Britain’s most significant and brilliant pieces of fiction.
Lastly, we stay with the decade but shift continents, to America, in Andrew Sean Greer’s The Story of a Marriage. It is 1953 and Pearlie, a dutiful housewife, finds herself living in the Sunset district of San Francisco, caring not only for her husband’s fragile health but also for her son, who is afflicted with polio. Then, one Saturday morning, a stranger appears on her doorstep and everything changes. All the certainties by which Pearlie has lived are thrown into doubt as she struggles to understand the world around her, most especially her husband, Holland. The Story of a Marriage portrays three people trapped by the confines of their era, and the desperate measures they are prepared to take to escape it.

Taking the other half of your question – titles with illicit lesbian relationships are not that hard to find. Some choice examples:

In A Married Woman, by Manju Kapur, we meet Astha. Astha has everything an educated, middle-class Delhi woman could ask for – a loving husband and affluent surroundings – and yet is consumed with a sense of dissatisfaction. She begins an extra-marital affair with a younger woman, the widow of a political activist and jeopardizes everything.
Lesbian sexual tension abounds in Sarah Hall’s dystopian vision The Carhullan Army. The state of the nation has changed. With much of the country now underwater, assets and weapons seized by the government – itself run by the sinister Authority – and war raging in South America and China, life in Britain is unrecognisable. Most appallingly, in this world of scant resources and hard industrial labour, the Authority insist all women should be fitted with contraceptive devices. In The Carhullan Army, Sister, as she is known, delivers her story from the confines of a prison cell. She tells of her attempts to escape this repressive world and her journey to join the commune of women at Carhullan, a group living as ‘unofficials’ in a fortified farm beyond the most remote Cumbrian fells. The journey is a challenge, but arrival is only the beginning of her struggle.
Lastly, we have Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes.This extraordinary novel documents the lives of Americans and Europeans in Paris in the decadent roaring twenties. Now recognised as a twentieth-century classic, the influence of Djuna Barnes’s novel has been, and continues to be, exceptional.

Moving on, Sheila asks:

I’ve just – reluctantly – finished One Day. What can you recommend next?

Romantic comedy, weird romance, however you characterise One Day, there’s no doubt it’s a hard act to follow. The Book Doctor recommends:

The Bird Room by Chris Killen, an offbeat tale of sex and relationships. “Alice is at work. Alice thinks I’m at work. I’m not at work. I’m trying to guess the password to her email account . . .” When Will meets Alice, he can’t believe his luck. She’s smart, sexy and, much to Will’s surprise, in love with him. Alice brings meaning to his urban existence. But true love never came easy and soon devotion leads Will to something darker. The Bird Room is a candid, funny and joyous portrait of love and desire in the modern age.
If you haven’t read it already, don’t forget to look at Nicholls’ previous books, especially Starter for Ten, recently made in to a film. It’s 1985 and Brian Jackson has arrived at university with a burning ambition – to make it onto TV’s foremost general knowledge quiz. But no sooner has he embarked on ‘The Challenge’ than he finds himself falling hopelessly in love with his teammate, the beautiful and charismatic would-be actress, Alice Harbinson. When Alice fails to fall for his slightly over-eager charms, Brian comes up with a foolproof plan to capture her heart once and for all. He’s going to win the game, at any cost, because – after all – everyone knows that what a woman really wants from a man is a comprehensive grasp of general knowledge…
And lastly, for an unusual tale, try Lowboy, by John Wray. In the tunnels beneath New York a young man is missing. With each passing minute he heads deeper underground, further from the world of light and reason and closer to the moment of his great surrender. Above ground Ali Lateef of the NYPD is assigned the case. The boy’s mother Violet is reluctant to help and Emily, Lowboy’s girlfriend and only confidante, appears to have vanished too Can Lateef find Lowboy before it’s too late?