Recently I won a National Book Tokens competition and received an advance proof copy of a book. The book was No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy by Mark Hodkinson.
I had no idea what to expect. This was exacerbated by the fact that I literally hadn’t been expecting the book in the post – I enter lots of competitions on Caboodle (try it – you enter competitions and get points and occasional treats – there are no downsides!), and the email telling me I had won this particular competition had been consigned to the spam folder. So I was pleasantly surprised (as any bookworm would be) to receive an unexpected book-shaped parcel in the post.
The author was new to me. Reading an advance copy was new to me. It was my understanding that proof copies were sent to reviewers and other authors prior to the release of a book to generate some conversation and get some nice quotes for the cover. I suddenly felt a weight of responsibility. And as I glanced at the (as yet unadorned) front cover, the panicky thought arose: “I haven’t read Tolstoy either!”
I need not have feared – having read Tolstoy was not a prerequisite. The subtitle of the book was Memoirs of a working-class reader, and the title was a comment made (unkindly) to the young author by a bookshop owner. The book was described by the publisher as the author’s “love-letter to the written word”, and documented a youth punctuated by books in a place and culture where no-one was expected to be remotely literary.
The fact that I was sent this particular book at this particular time was serendipitous. My inner bookworm, which thrived in childhood, tends to start and falter these days as I get distracted by the demands of adulthood (and Netflix, of course). No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy recalled so energetically a love of books that I couldn’t help but be reinvigorated in my own delight of reading.
So I did enjoy the book. I finished it and was glad I had been sent it. I also had some issues with it.
An unfortunate hurdle was the chasm between the author’s life and my own. A boy growing up in Greater Manchester in the 1970s seemed a world away from my experience as a girl growing up in the 2000s in the Home Counties. I should emphasise that this need not have been a hurdle – we had the common ground of books! I was happy to look through a window into the different life of a fellow reader.
But the highlighting of the differences was uncomfortable. I was particularly unhappy about the way in which the narrative indulged certain attitudes and anecdotes. Perhaps the author felt that these stories were important contributors to his account – forming a picture of the time and place and culture. I felt that they were often unnecessary. Things that made my toes curl were related with playful humour and without challenge. It was an odd contrast to the serious theme of mental health that was threaded throughout the book.
Fittingly, the author observed a somewhat similar experience when encountering a literary movement from his parents’ generation:
A good deal of the appeal, however, was nostalgic. The principal characters all seemed to be, at the same time, both twenty and forty years old – burdened with energy and attitude but also already middle-aged and fixed in place. Much of it was dated: the sexual reticence, the deference to parents, the heavy industry, the schism between generations and the insularity of lives. I learned more about my mum and dad’s world than I did mine.
Mark Hodkinson – No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy
The book was well-written, and hardly needed proof-reading for errors (I only noticed a couple of typos). I only wish that it had been edited with respect to tone. It was a shame that a book that should have held universal appeal for keen readers was hampered by such avoidable discomforts.
Cryptic Meg 
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