The Effect Of Brexit On My Reading

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Let's take in a bit of book keeping, or rather book borrowing first. This was the latest borrowed from Sully library yesterday.

John Lewis-Stempel - The Secret Life Of The Owl

If Twitter is any judge then there are a lot of fans for this book. If it's first twenty seven pages are any judge I'm not going to be one of them.

Anyway back to the title of this post.

I've finished An Island Parish (A Summer on Scilly) by Nigel Farrell and am becoming conscious how on almost every book I'm reading that's set in Britain/Europe, no matter when it was actually written that Brexit is becoming a factor in my reading of it. For whilst it's not changed my reading habits, the referendum result has altered the way I approach some books.

I have previously in this blog remarked on the way Brexit has destroyed the genre of Brits emigrating to some part of the EU to start a new life. And also how C S Forester's Hornblower novel presents an imagine of Britain as some sort of perfection and anything "foreign" as at best weak and at worst evil. Thus obviously appealing to people whose opinions make me move to the opposite direction even more.

Also noticing that when reading a book by an author of a remaining EU state that I'm consciously hoping that I like it. Doesn't I stress mean that I will like it, just that I'm trying to give it a fair wind.

And this is effecting even innocuous books like Mr Farrell's tome.

Let me say first that I didn't really like this book and I don't think that I would have liked it in 2008 when it was published. The Scilly Islands are close to Cornwall. And I what think I was getting here is a sort of literary Doc Martin. Expounding a cliche that anything on the South West of Britain is  full of eccentrics but at least you'll get stunning scenery.

But I borrowed this book the first thought that occurred to me was that this was a rabid Brexiteer's idea of a travelogue, now that free movement across the EU was going to be consigned to history.

And these eccentric characters? Well obviously I don't know where they are now but in the book the vet is German and two of the assistants working on particular businesses are Poles. At time of writing their future in the UK is not certain.

EU funding for the area is also mentioned. Do you think that a Conservative administration will invest the money the EU did in the long term? Think again. It would appear from the vantage point of someone who's never lived there that in the short term at least the islands are in trouble. Only time will tell.

So I should curse Brexiteers on many things. Including the effect it's had on my reading.

Until the next time.