Culture Street

The Tiger: A true story of vengeance and survival by John Vaillant
Simon Winchester said, ‘Read it and be afraid. Be very afraid.’ I did and I was and I still am. The Tiger is a riveting, close-up narration of the pursuit of an injured and enraged man-eating tiger by a bunch of trackers in Russias’s Far East in the 1990s. It works as a thrilling adventure embedded into a moving account of the plight of tigers over the past century. It makes you scared of the cats but more scared of the humans. And it makes you want to take some responsibility for what happens next. Check out this website.

H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
Another story about a human and an animal locked into a hand-to-claw struggle for survival, power, mutual understanding, and something like love. This memoir of a woman processing her grief at the loss of her father by training a goshawk called Mabel jumped deftly, like the bird, into my top five books. For its humble seeking of what it is to be human (and mortal); for its gentle depiction of the fierce animal; and for its wry humour and sheer life force.

Just Kids by Patti Smith
Man, can this woman write. I would read her account of a dental procedure, but this is another memoir driven by grief and the existential questions it throws up. It’s about sexuality, art, ambition (and what constitutes success), and, perhaps most of all, it is about the richness of friendship. So affectionately does she write that we come to love Robert Mapplethorpe too, and wish we could get stoned with them both in the faded glamour of the Chelsea Hotel circa 1970s.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf
This novel is close to perfect. With spare and lovely Hemingwayesque prose, it tells a simple story about small-town life in America’s mid-west where there is no hiding from basic human cruelty – or kindness. There are several narrative threads, and the fate of two farming brothers who take in a pregnant teenager are the subject of a sequel, Eventide. But if I had to pick one book I would most like to have written, Plainsong would be it. R.I.P. Haruf and thank you for this masterpiece.