Lucy Eyre

An eccentric boy takes the Moon for a late evening stroll. (That’s the Moon, not any old moon). The Moon is an uncommunicative but loyal companion. I love Alison Jay’s old fashioned cracked-glaze illustrations: round-bellied animals and buildings with faces. The china is always Spode. Her attention to detail is flawless: a small moment in one scene (a dancing dog on a dish) might be the star of the next page.
Evie (23 months) and I are also big fans of her ‘Welcome to the Zoo’, ‘Christmas Time’ and, especially, ‘Alphabet’. But I always push for ‘I took the Moon for a walk’ at bedtime. It’s better than ‘Alphabet’ at such moments, because it has actual words to read: otherwise the tired parent has to work hard and make conversation about the drawings. Luckily it’s never very difficult to find something to say when an Alison Jay book.
The rhythm of this Moon poem is so calm and satisfying that I’ve not yet minded reading it over and over. My husband even claims that a line borders on Waitsian (as in Tom): ‘while the neighbourhood dogs made a train-whistle choir’. This might be overdoing it, but you take your bedtime story pleasures where you can (or which more, or rather less, below).
My favourite verse:

We danced ‘cross the bridge where the smooth waters flow.
The Moon was above and the Moon was below,
And bright in between them I echoed their glow
When I took the Moon for a walk.

Like all good bedtime stories, it ends with most of the characters asleep, during which the Moon ‘thanked me by sharing its sweet sleepy light’. The quiet ending is another reason for choosing it over Jay’s ‘Alphabet’ which ends with two people and several other animals riding a large zebra’.

Close to the other end of the ‘please choose this one’ bedtime reading scale is anything featuring Maisy. Maisy must be the most subversive character for tiny children. She’s clearly a toddler, and enjoys doing the same things as they do: dressing up, riding her tricycle, playing with toys. And yet she lives ALONE in an enormous house. She even cleans the kitchen floor.
She goes on holiday with no one but Cyril the Squirrel for company, yet when they get to their hotel she takes her toy panda to bed with her. And then she writes postcards home?!? Her best friends include a crocodile and an elephant, but she has a pet cat. Again: what?!?
The oddest Maisy story is one about bathtime. Tallulah (a duck) arrives, hoping to play tennis. Maisy can’t because it’s time for her bath. Just as she’s climbing in, Talullah turns up again. Hasn’t she got the message? Yes, she has: without a word, she rips off her clothes and joins Maisy in the bath. Maisy has a very good social life indeed.
These books are alchemy for little ones. They can’t get enough of her freaky home-alone toddler-householder lifestyle. Good for Lucy Cousins, problematic for the rest of us.

Reading a Stephen King: this an unexpected result of getting a Kindle. I’ve heard that eReaders have boosted the sales of romance novels: people can read them on public transport without being exposed by those tell-tale covers. The other unlikely material I’ve read on the Kindle is the first two volumes from the George R.R. Martin Song of Ice and Fire series (A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings). Just typing the titles makes me confused: why am I reading books with dragons and medieval battles?

Because they’re good reads. In the context of the Kindle, not page turners but button-pressers. (As an online comment in the Guardian noted, in response to negative posts about Stephen King’s latest: I love it when people say that writers who make bajillions in sales are doing something wrong.) Seeing John Lanchester –whose pieces in the London Review of Books I always turn to first – list it as a ‘guilty pleasure’ in his books of the year, makes my pleasure far less guilty.

The Kindle is very suited for long, linear stories – not so good for anything where you’d want to refer back to a previous chapter, or a map. It makes 11.22.63, which clocks in at 700 pages, cosy rather than daunting. You simply press the page-turn button and watch as the scale at the bottom of the screen counts up from 1% to 99% read. More importantly, you don’t have to carry struggle to hold them up in bed or squeeze them into your hand luggage.

I’m not actually daunted by long books, though I do hate carrying them around. I was distraught when I reached the end of A Suitable Boy: I’d have happily spent another 200 pages with its characters. (But I also know someone who sliced their copy in half to make it manageable. Yes, she does now use a Kindle.) When I got into the Patrick O’Brien Aubrey-Maturin novels, it was a relief to know there were 19 of them. I could devour them at two sittings without worrying that I’d come to the end too soon.

I recently met Vikram Seth who told me he was writing a sequel, to be called A Suitable Girl, about finding a wife for Latha’s grandson. I don’t know if this is true – he’d been enjoying free champagne at a book launch – but I do hope so. I was equally thrilled to hear that the putative sequel to Wolf Hall is in fact going to be two sequels. I love Mantel’s writing, and this book in particular. Incidentally, I also know someone who read Wolf Hall on his iPhone – not Kindle, not even an iPad He must have a good memory because most people I know consulted the character list every few pages. A testimony to the relentless power of this book, as much as his determination.

A surprising one for me to be reading – and enjoying. I have never read a Stephen King novel, and never thought I would. Horror either puts me off or gives me nightmares. (His brilliant primer, On Writing, is another matter).
I was swayed to read it by the rave review that Mark Lawson gave it in The Guardian. From which we also learn that it’s his 54th work of fiction. The mind boggles.

Everyman Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, is persuaded to use the ‘rabbit-hole’ to 1958 that the local diner owner, Al, has discovered in his storeroom. Al passes on to Jake, as a dying man’s request, his mission to live in the past for 5 years until he is able to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK.

I’m a sucker for some time-travel puzzling and King has some enjoyable details about the mechanics of the business. Jake can take things from the present to the past, so Al has saved him some useful 1950s dollars. Every trip through the rabbit hole, whether two hours or two years, lasts only two minutes in the present. Whenever Jake enters the rabbit-hole, the past is reset. This means that if he were to kill a putative murderer (not necessarily Oswald – there are others) while visiting the past then return to the 2011 diner, the man would be back to his living state is Jake were to step into 1958. So, if the job was worth doing, it will need to be done again.

King uses a common, successful device in fiction – the alien visitor. Jake has to learn how to dress, talk and behave in a world that is familiar but distinctively unlike his own. He must to assume a new identity, and buy appropriate clothes. There is widespread racism and non-stop cigarette smoking, but better food and – apart from the murderers he feels a responsibility to stop – people are generally nicer to each other.

The book is compelling, miss-your-bus-stop stuff. And of course you want to know whether he will manage to stop Oswald killing Kennedy – and if, indeed, he’ll find out whether it was definitely Oswald who shot him, thus disprove reams of conspiracy theories. And, if Kennedy will survive, how will King re-imagine the future when (and if) Jake returns to 2011?

It definitely falls on the ‘readability’ end of the debate activated by the latest Booker prize jury. But Stephen King doesn’t let words get in the way of a good story. Which is sometimes just what you need.