The Blackhouse by Peter May

Peter May has set this story, the first in a trilogy, on the remote and rocky isle in the Orkneys where the Lewis chessmen were found. Made in Trondheim in the 12th century, these remarkable artifacts were likely buried beneath the Lewis peat by Norse traders on their way to Ireland. A brief reference to this find is one well-chosen detail in this layered and atmospheric tale.

As a young man, Fin Macleod escapes this harsh land with its suffocatingly rigid society, only to find himself back two decades later, once more at a crossroads in his life. Skillful use of sensory images evokes the remote isle of Lewis. Passing harled walls and pebbledash buildings hunched against the weather, we follow Fin into the suffocating primal room to gaze on the cracked ceiling and the gannet-shaped stain on the oft-painted anaglyptic wallpaper.

We catch the "old-fashioned" smell of Brut on the fawn suit jacket of the arrogant police inspector, and when May describes the guga hunt, find ourselves in the midst of a semi-secret ritual of male endurance and group identity that reaches back to the Middle Ages. Glimpses of mysterious cairns from WWII hint at the ultimate unknowability of history.

Tankers keep passing on the horizon, suggesting the changes that have shaken even this remote community on the wild North Atlantic, which is nevertheless deeply defined by ancient traditions. We learn that even now, after a funeral, "only men go to the burial place." We learn of the decline of the former industries due to the reduced numbers of wild salmon, as well as the fading fashion of the Harris tweed that was once the backbone of the island's economy. We also discover that Jardine, Matheson and Company financed the purchase of an entire Scottish island with the proceeds of the 19th century China opium trade.

We think we know the character of the ironically named "Angel" Macritchie; a sudden glimpse of his other side is both surprising and inevitable. Above all, May takes us deep into the mind of Fin Macleod, revealing the peaks and valleys, joys and regrets of this Glasgow detective's life. We hold our breath in hope and terrified anticipation as the author brings Fin face to face with cold realities that, as a younger man, he unsuccessfully tried to flee. This is a book about society, about history, and about individual psychology. May's skillful use of language makes it even more stunningly impressive.

Science and Spiritual Practices by Rupert Sheldrake

Like biologist Rupert Sheldrake's previous books, this is both interesting and practical. It's also more personal than his other works, providing glimpses of the man behind the ideas, and how he has evolved as an individual and a thinker. A self-described panetheist, Sheldrake meditates, chants, feels grateful, attends evensong and goes on pilgrimages. He speaks of his wife, Jill Purce, a sound healer, and describes his interest in morphic resonance, a topic he has dealt with in previous books.

The author, a biologist, loves trees and gardens and  maintains a strong connection to the natural world. To connect with forces greater than ourselves and to promote health and inner peace, he advocates spending time in nature and in silence.

In this context, he says the purpose of ritual is to connect those who partake in it "with the original event that the ritual commemorates, and also to link them with all those who have participated in the custom in the past." Significantly, "Rituals cross time, bringing the past into the present," allowing direct access to past time. In ritual, we intuit and feel the presence of the past. Places hold the resonance of memory, collective and individual.

Sheldrake likes to entertain unusual ideas, for instance, the possibility that the sun is conscious. He argues thus: "If the universe is more like an organism than a machine, then so is our galazy and so is our sun," whose patterns of electromagnetic activity "are much vaster and more complex" than that in our brains." While admitting he "cannot prove that the sun is conscious," he points out that neither can a skeptic prove it isn't, and states that "From a nondogmatic point of view, the consciousness of the sun is an open question." A conscious sun, suggests the scientist, "could modulate the entire solar system by choosing when and where to fire off solar flares and coronal mass ejections." Yet though such events have huge implications for our life on earth, the sun is one of the more-than-human aspects of nature that contemporary people habitually neglect.

The question of beauty is another conundrum. "From a panpsychist point of view, insects and other animals are aware and have minds that are capable of appreciating beauty. Our own minds share in a sense of beauty widespread in the animal kingdom, and many of the forms and colours that appeal to other animals appeal to us too." The idea of beauty makes us think of its source: is it in nature alone, or is there, as the Platonic tradition holds, "a transcendent mind beyond time and space...the ultimate source of all forms"? A view shared by traditional Christian, Muslim and Hindu is that "All the qualities we experience...are present in the mind of God...The whole of nature is a reflection of the creative mind that underlies all things."

Humans love music and it's good for our health. Christians sing in choirs and attend evensong, Hindus sing bhajans of devotion to gods and goddesses, and Sufis chant ecstatically. Sheldrake's wife, Jill Purce, taps into the power of sound in another way: she leads chanting and sound-healing workshops that draw on many cultural traditions including Mongolian and Tuvan. Music in its multifarious forms has been with us a long time: the oldest flutes were made 40,000 years ago, and undoubtedly singing preceded the invention of instruments.

Biologically, music promotes entrainment -- "People breathe together, makes sounds together, and move in synchrony. They come into a resonant, rhythmical relationship with the other members of the group." The author suggests a quick and easy way to demonstrate to yourself how different sounds vibrate in different parts of the body. Plug your ears with your fingertips, then chant single notes, one at a time, and observe how the vibrations move within your body.

Research has found choral singing to be very beneficial, since it "involves focused concentration, which reduces worrying." Singing in a choir also requires deep breathing, and provides social support, education and learning. Not to mention that being committed to choir practice is a good way to motivate oneself to get out and move. Music raises oxytocin levels, which "facilitates trusting behavior and reduces fear and anxiety." This is perhaps why it can be used to soothe agitated dementia patients. To combat feelings of disenchantment, Jill Purce advocates chanting.

Charles Darwin thought that song predated speech. Steven Brown and others have now proposed that both song and speech "arose from a common communicative system, 'musilanguage.' When they diverged, language became more important for exact communication, and music came to play a predominantly social role, to do with the bonding and unity of the group."

I love odd facts and obscure lore, so was delighted to learn the history of Anabaptists, with their return to the ancient practice of baptism by immersion -- the clue is in the name. Something else I'd been unaware of was that in most species, only the males sing. That includes not only birds, but amphibians like frogs and toads, some reptiles, and mammals including some mice and gibbons.
From this book I also learned that chimps travel some distance to pile stones under certain trees, which arguably constitutes ritual. Another odd fact is that oak trees, which were sacred to the Druids, are more often hit by lightning than other trees. Perhaps this was what caused Druids to revere them as the bridge between earth and sky. After all, lightning does quite literally connect the two realms.

One more surprise was that Muslims at Mecca circumambulate the Kabbah in a counterclockwise direction; this is different from the clockwise circumambulation that is carried out at most other places of pilgrimage.

As in his previous book The Science Delusion, Sheldrake criticizes mainstream science for failing to be open to possibilities. Instead, most mainstream scientists have embraced materialism, though it is a quasi-religion, filled with beliefs and assumptions. Materialists assume that consciousness "is nothing but the activity of brains" although this does not really explain the 'hard problem' of the nature of consciousness. Unlike current scientific materialism, religions are founded on the assumption that consciousness transcends the human level...all religions assume that consciousness is more extensive than brain activity. Plenty of food for thought here. Including the question of where that thought is taking place: is it in the brain or beyond it? By providing questions such as this to ponder, Sheldrake has created an absolutely fascinating book.

The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion

This refreshing tale of family life portays the challenges faced by working parents. But eleven-year-old Hudson is an unusual child, so Don and Rosie have to employ creative strategies to meet his unique needs.

Reading the book evoked smiles and laughter -- after all, few kids Hudson's age can employ cogent arguments to persuade educated and responsible parents to let them spend four weeknights in a bar.

The book also provided food for thought on some big issues. Should all babies should be vaccinated? Is a formal diagnosis of autism is a help or hindrance to the child receiving it? And why is it it that, to quote Rosie, "When men are in the majority, they make the rules; when they're in a minority they get special treatment."

I also learned some arcane but potentially useful information. For instance, in his famous poem If, Kipling's inducement to carelessly gambling all with only a 50% chance of success would today be considered "a personality fault that would warrant professional intervention."

Another startling revelation was the downside to a Porsche with a turbo body -- its width gives it a higher than average "susceptibility to parking damage."

Not since reading Laural Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate had I noted a recipe from a work of fiction -- until this novel provided the impetus to try "a 45% celeriac mash."

On the suspension of disbelief front, this deep question must be entertained "Can a naturopath also be a pscyhopath?"

Finally, Minh, the co-owner of the bar, weighs with some invaluable advice. When in a moment of crisis, Rosie is tempted to  quit her job, she says, "Do your best for yourself and your dreams and the world. Forget punishing your boss." Then smiles and adds, "I would say that. I'm a boss." Her words resonate all the more powerfully for the admission.

Black Milk by Elif Shafak

Feeling blue after the birth of her child, Elif Shafak discovers that "A depression can be a golden opportunity given to us by life to face head-on issues that matter to our hearts, but which, out of haste or ignorance, have been swept under the carpet."

This quirky tale also deals with balancing motherhood and writing. Drawing from her Turkish heritage, Shafak posits the existence of an inner harem of tiny women. Each with a different perspective and personality, the various "Thumbelinas" quarrel and argue, making life difficult and confusing for their hostess. The only exception is the Sufi Dame Dervish, who points out that "we are all reflections of you," and favours a peace treaty among them. Yet this is not easy to achieve. "To be human...means to live with an orchestra of conflicting voices and mixed emotions," says Shafak.

At the onset of pregnancy, two new Thumbelinas arrive, shocking her into the realization that she's been suppressing them to the point of not knowing of their existence. To date, she has been focused on writing, which comes with its own exigencies, as she explains. "There is an idea buzzing in my head but just what it is I cannot tell until I put it in writing."

Trying to distract her from her maternal impulses, the dominant Miss Ambitious Chekhovian leads Elif to a Brain Tree, climbs on a branch and "pouts like a dictator assessing his people's intelligence before starting to lecture them." This is one of Shafak's many snide comments about politics. Indeed, she was taken to court while pregnant for words she had written in a work of fiction, though the charges were dropped at the request of the prosecutor.

After her daughter is born, postpartum depression arrives in the form of a bespectacled Djinni called Lord Poton. Like the tiny quarreling internal women, this character provides a certain humour. When she queries his non-traditional appearance, he informs her his kind have kept up with the times. No more lamps, and this genie watches his figure -- he visits the gym regularly.

Meanwhile, as the author negotiates the phases of pregnancy and then childbirth, we learn how other female authors have managed to cope with the drive to motherhood superimposed on the impulse to write. Some have struggled mightily to balance the demands of children and the life of the mind, some have decided to remain childless, and others have written on, without undue bother, through their childrearing years.

For a women, says Shafak, the issue of "permission to tell the story--be it personal or familial--is particular to women writers around the world." For me this claim resonated with truth.

Odd facts I learned from this book include the fact that George Eliot so despised the contemporary trope of "women's literature" that in 1856 she penned an article called "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," which classified and described the frothy, the prosy, the pious and the pedantic. Before reading Shafak's book, I was unaware that Eliot was buried in a special section of the cemetery reserved for dissenters -- in this case, the word "special" did not confer approval.

The author tells us a great deal about the personal lives and struggles of a host of women writers, from Jane Austen to Sophia Tolstoy to Alice Walker. In youth, Shafak admits, she had no interest in understanding the world, only in changing it. Having once cloaked herself in isms, she describes Japanese and Turkish feminists who preceded her, including Adalet Agaoglu and Sevgi Soysal. 

The meditation on mirrors was fascinating, too; I finally understood the old Turkish folk beliefs that the presence in Turkish homes of beautifully decorated silver-framed mirrors hung facing the wall.

Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill

This remarkable memoir, originally published in 1963, has been re-issued many times, most recently in 2011.

Time has not diminished the interest in the memories of Athill, who was born during a WWI zeppelin raid. Her life reflects the history she lived through. Engaged as a young woman in war time, she fell in love and got engaged to an RAF pilot. Posted to Egypt, he wrote to her at first ardently and frequently, then irregularly, then not at all. A final cold letter two years later asked her be release him to marry another. Then he was killed. Interpreting this youthful heartbreak as her own failure to be lovable undermined Athill's self-confidence for more than a decade. But this is not the focus of the memoir. Written in her early forties, it describes the small and varied things that gave her strength to recover a life of joy and optimism.

Though Diana Athill greatly enjoyed her work as an editor, she never thought of herself as a writer until a story came to her out of the blue. She wrote it out, sent it in to a contest, and won first prize -- five hundred pounds. This unexpected win proved a watershed moment -- she concluded she might we worth something after all.

Athill's temperament, joys, sorrows and maturing process are clearly reflected as she addresses the reader with a breathtakingly intimate frankness. Various evocations include a memorable holiday on Corfu and her description of the publisher's life. Revealing her hopes, fears and expectations for books on the Deutsch list, she deems some good, even though "they don't happen to interest me." Others she regrets accepting, feeling that they "will flop and deserve to flop."

Then there are the commercially motivated books -- needful for a small press that started on a shoestring and lived from hand to mouth. One of these she describes as "embarrassing," but "not actually pernicious." Wryly, she admits its redeeming feature: it is certain to make money.

Most important are her "darlings" -- few in number, written by the rare talents who come to light in each generation, these books "had to exist." They explain why she and others go into publishing, and why they love the work.

Athill expresses her love of literary art in the strongest terms. "...if artists did not exist, I cannot imagine that I would. I shall be grateful all my life to Andre Deutsch for having come to my party and steered me into a job in which I have been able to get to know a few of what seem to me by far the most real human beings in the world."