Ruth Badley's 3 favorite reads in 2024

• 2023
• 2024

I loved this book because it's not often you get taken 'behind the scenes' in an actor's life but this book takes you there, and so close that you can almost smell the green stage makeup that Judi Dench applied nightly ( and somewhat alarmingly, went back to her Stratford digs, still wearing) during the early stages of her distinguished career as one of the UK's great Shakespearian actors. The title is a brilliant reminder that Judi, for all her subsequent achievements and plaudits had bills to pay like any other jobbing actor and her down to earth approach and total lack of self-importance is what makes this book so very engaging.
Through a series of interviews and the subject's revealing anecdotes the reader learns how a gifted interpreter approaches a role, the laughs and tears inherent in the rehearsal process and the sheer fun she must be to work with. From the First Fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream to career defining performances as Titania in the same play, Lady Macbeth, Portia and many more., Judi Dench manages to cut through the academic theories and explain with clarity and much humour the thoughts that informed her most memorable stage performances. I learned more about the plays I thought I knew so well and much about this revered actor that refuses to take herself too seriously.

I loved this book because the author packs so many emotions into a relatively simple storyline and an unreliable narrator. On a car journey into the British countryside and a mission to revisit a former work colleague, we are taken inside the head of Stevens, a career butler with years of devoted service to a well- connected British aristocrat. Now nearing the end of his working life his recollections of specific episodes gradually reveal to the reader decades of repressed emotions, lost opportunities, regret, misplaced loyalty and the snobbery inherent in the British class system. The writing is exquisite, the scenarios are both heartbreaking and shocking but the ever present possibility and hope that Stevens will find what he is looking for at the end of his car journey keep you turning the pages.

I didn't expect to like a crime novel set in 1829 Iceland, and it is a slow burn but ultimately a gripping account of a woman’s part in the notorious murder of two men. Evocative, powerful writing brings to life the grim, reality of Icelandic life at the time and a society hugely judgemental of women. Family ties and relationships are fluid, life is precarious, held together by unforgiving religious dogma. All this is brought vividly to life through the author’s meticulous research of original documents and a deep knowledge and understanding of the culture and history.
I really enjoyed the complexity the author brings to Agnes, the woman at the heart of it all, the women who accommodated her in the months before her execution, and those who were changed by her presence amongst them. The author paints her as an entirely believable survivor of neglect, coercive control, brutality and cruelty. Beautiful writing and very effective to change the narrative point of view from Agnes to others caught up in the inevitable outcome. I’m not sure I could fall in love with Iceland, as the author confesses she did when researching this story. It rather makes me grateful I live at a different time and in a different place.