Spring at last

Reading notes & early Otto

Above is a photo from this date two years ago.  Not a single one of these daffodils is flowering yet. (Admittedly there wasn't a whole host fluttering and dancing in the breeze in the first place.  Cute puppy, though.)

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson.  Bound to win lots of lit prizes. I don't think it's spoiling the plot to say that Ursula, born in a well-to-do family in 1909, has a chance to be re-incarnated time after time, to change her life, not that she is aware of this phenomenon.  Or was she? Which was her real life?  You the reader can decided that for yourself. KA is a brilliant writer, and particularly good on the Blitz, amazingly vivid.  You have to concentrate on this book though. Having saved it for a 7-hr Eurostar journey I gave up and surrendered to the chatter.  It may even be too much if you are on your sickbed: you need all your wits about you, or at least I did.  Here's a link to her website.

Do read this novel.

The Paris Winter by Imogen Robertson.  Well-written, well-researched, a historical crime thriller.  Again it begins in 1909 but in a totally different milieu 'the dazzling joys of the Belle Epoche'.  The dark and dangerous side of Paris at the time is also brilliantly evoked, particularly the flood (you can google for photos of this event).  As for Maud, the impoverished and (eventually) vengeful main protagonist, I almost lost touch with her towards the end in the complications of the plot.  If you like Paris history with a good dose of intrigue and art, this is one for you.

"Maud Heighton came to Lafond’s famous Académie to paint and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris eats money. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling pleasures the city, Maud slips into poverty.

 Quietly starving and dreading another cold Paris winter, Maud takes a job as a companion to young, beautiful Sylvie Morel. But Sylvie has a secret: as addiction to opium. As Maud is drawn into the Morels’ world of elegant luxury, their secrets become hers. Before the New Year arrives, a greater deception will plunge her into the darkness that waits beneath this glittering city of light."

Bertie Plays the Blues by Alexander McCall Smith.  Always amusing and thought provoking.  I can never totally believe in his young things/young-married characters, so philosophical for their age-group, but they're charming, of course.  This is an Edinburgh-based book, so that's fun too. It could hardly be set anywhere else.

Dearest Rose by Rowan Coleman. I enjoyed this good romantic read. (A winner of an RNA award)
When Rose Pritchard turns up on the doorstep of a Cumbrian BandB it is her last resort. She and her seven-year-old daughter Maddie have left everything behind. And they have come to the village of Millthwaite in search of the person who once offered Rose hope.
Almost immediately Rose wonders if she's made a terrible mistake - if she's chasing a dream - but she knows in her heart that she cannot go back. She's been given a second chance - at life, and love - but will she have the courage to take it?

My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding  Interesting autobiography, but you need to be horsey/keen on the turf to appreciate it fully, as it deals with Clare's racing years.

Alps and reading

Early morning in the Alps

Happy Easter to all.

Back from ski holiday in one piece, though managed to hurt a finger on the Eurostar as it hurtled along! Two ski holidays?  Well, I didn't have a summer hols last year, you see. It was all to do with the family.

Reading
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie o'Farrell   Here is a Guardian review of this excellent novel.  I loved it and as soon as I had finished, began to read parts again.  I very seldom do this, but the language and the characterisation were so brilliant that I wanted to re-savour them.  I bought this for the Kindle and  I'll buy the paperback too eventually as it is one I want to keep.  It's not much to do with the heatwave of 1976, but it is helpful for a writer to set a book before the invention of mobile phones, for a start, and at a time when perhaps morals were more clear cut.  Or at least people pretended they were. That's the point of this novel about an Irish family with many secrets. Here's the blurb but I'm not sure it entirely does justice to the book which has nothing to do with greenfly:
It’s July 1976 and London is in the grip of a heatwave. It hasn’t rained for months, the gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he’s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta’s children – two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce – back home, each with different ideas as to where their father may have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.
Maggie O’Farrell’s sixth book is both an intimate portrait of a family in crisis, and the work of an outstanding novelist at the height of her powers.


Husband Missing by Polly Williams.  'Gina has only been married six months when her husband Rex goes on holiday to Spain and vanishes without a trace, tipping her dream new marriage into nightmare. As a frantic search gets nowhere, Gina is adamant that he's alive and vows never to give up hope. Speculation is rife: he's drowned at sea, lost his memory...or just walked away. Troubling stories start to emerge about Rex's past that are hard to square with the man she married. How well does she really know her handsome, charismatic husband? They'd fallen in love so quickly, so passionately, that the past had seemed barely relevant to either of them. Now an explosive secret threatens to rewrite the story of their love affair.' Good stuff, more of a chick lit mystery/holiday read/zippy contemporary novel, on-the-button.

A psychological thriller, When Nights Were Cold by Susanna Jones.  Not too scary but very interesting concerning as it does female climbers in the early 1900s, members of the Mountain Climbing society of their Oxford-type college.  Grace calls her friends by their surnames and they hide their long skirts before they start their climbs, first in Wales, then near the Matterhorn.  But, as is often foreshadowed in the time-shifting narrative, disaster strikes.  Well worth reading, bated breath and all that.

DVDs
Gave up on Vicky Christina Barcelona, despite the excellent cast (Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Sylvia Tietjens/Rebecca Hall)  Much, much too introspective and WoodyAllen-esque

Watched The Mother with Anne Reid and Daniel Craig - phew. Keep smelling salts to hand and see it on your own.  Not a family film.

Quick Reading Notes

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.  This is a terrific, compelling contemporary novel, one of the best I’ve read recently.  Its chick-lit cover is totally misleading as it deals with a serious subject: a young man is now a quadriplegic, having been injured in an accident.  A cheerful young girl has been hired by his mother to bring light into his life, but will she be enough?  Unsentimental but moving.  I was bowled over. Do read it.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, a best-selling, almost-impossible-to-put-down US thriller.  A terrifying read, told from two viewpoints. Amy is a seriously sarcastic NY girl having problems in Hicksville, but we soon begin to worry about her husband. On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick Dunne’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? As the cops close in ....

Sad non-fiction.  The Music Room by William Fiennes, author of The Snow Goose.

The story of his brother’s mental illness and their childhood in a castle.

Up Close by Henriette Gyland (Choc Lit) An unusual thriller/love story set in Norfolk. 

More good reads to come soon.

Happy Valentine's Day

Here's the cake a friend made for the village OAPs' tea party at my house today.

Chocolate hearts on each plate, in case you wondered. You might think I'm a domestic goddess despite myself, but have to confess all the food was made by others.

Happy New Year

Back from a family ski holiday in Meribel-Mottaret

A January picnic near Meribel Altiport

Mont Vallon from the apartment

As you can see, we had excellent snow and several days of sunshine. I never get tired of the breathtaking, spirit-raising mountain views even though we've been going to the same place for years.  As you can see the wolf sculpture in Courchevel above reflects the patterns of light and shade in the peaks.  (All photo credits Rory Vereker)

We discovered our next-door French neighbour in the chalet block is an Alpine Horn teacher - has to win a prize for an original profession.  As you may recall, Alpine horns are wooden and about 12ft long and are played by several chaps standing in a row.  If you search for Alpine horn you'll see what they look like.  Blogger is being moody about pictures today otherwise I'd include one.

Christmas scenes, past & present

Merry Christmas and a Happy and Peaceful New Year to all



Labrador Otto is Two

Official photograph of Otto after his second birthday.

Reviews:
A Half Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb.  A great read, original too. Luckily this author is young so we can expect many more good books.

1937. In a remote village on the Dorset coast, fourteen-year-old Mitzy Hatcher has endured a wild and lonely upbringing - until the arrival of renowned artist Charles Aubrey, his exotic mistress and their daughters, changes everything. Over three summers, Mitzy sees a future she had never thought possible, and a powerful love is kindled in her. A love that grows from innocence to obsession; from childish infatuation to something far more complex and even dangerous.

Years later, a young man in an art gallery looks at a hastily-drawn portrait and wonders at the intensity of it. The questions he asks lead him to a Dorset village and to the truth about those fevered summers in the 1930s ...

The Glass House by Simon Mawer (Booker shortlist, 2009)

Built high on a Czech hill, the Landauer House, commissioned by rich newlyweds Viktor and Liesel, is one of the wonders of modernist architecture in concrete and glass. But the idealism of  the 1930s that the house seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of World War Two gather. Viktor is a Jew and so, as Nazi troops enter the country, the family must flee.

Yet the family’s exile does not signify the end of this spectacular building. It slips from hand to hand, from Czech to Nazi to Soviet and finally back to the Czech state.

Based on the story of a real house, the Villa Tugendhat, this is a fascinating novel. Not suitable for a Christmas book for maiden aunts, probably.

At Sea by Laurie Graham.   Loved this one, an amusing witty writer.

Does any woman really know her husband? Enid has been married to the handsome, charismatic lecturer Bernard Finch for over twenty years. But after one fateful supper on board a cruise ship she starts to wonder, is Bernard quite what he seems? He always says life began when he met Enid. But Bernard has a past, and it’s threatening to catch up with him.

Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss.   If you have ever lived abroad, particularly with young children, you will empathise with this non-fiction account of the author’s year teaching at an Icelandic university.  I found it very interesting to learn something about Iceland, though began to tire of elves at one point.

Autumn reads around the world

Quick book list

The Light Between the Oceans, by ML Stedman

Gripping, unusual, set mostly on a lighthouse off Western Australia, a bestselling first novel by an Australian lawyer now living in London. Tom, traumatised after WW1, takes a job as lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, 100 miles off the coast where he hopes that the emptiness will bring him peace. After many miscarriages his wife hears a baby's cry and discovers a dead man and a baby in a washed up dinghy by the lighthouse. She feels her prayers have been answered. Her husband is not so sure.  The ensuing tragedy is inevitable. Well written, haunting.

Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville

Another Australian historical novel, this time set in New South Wales.  I discovered this was the third book in a series about early settlers in Australia. Fascinating stuff.  An illiterate but intelligent rich girl Sarah is born in 1816, her father an ex-convict who’s made good in the new colony of Australia. Three hundred acres, a fine stone house, William Thornhill is a man who’s re-invented himself. He never looks back, and Sarah grows up learning not to ask about the past.

 Her stepmother calls her wilful, but handsome Jack Langland loves Sarah and she loves him. What could go wrong? But there’s a secret in the Thornhill family. It comes out, as secrets will, and casts a long chill shadow over life in the Hawkesbury valley.

Click on Kate Grenville’s website for more details. She’s won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and has been shortlisted for the Booker.

Thursdays in the Park by Hilary Boyd

Nice to read a book with a goodlooking grandmother as heroine. Most of the North London protagonists seemed to have had Issues with a capital I and, again, dark secrets. The writer has been a marriage guidance counsellor and has written several non-fiction books on health related subjects, parenting etc, so knows about these things. (Bargain on the Kindle.)

The Forgotten Waltz by Ann Enright. 

Well written but, trouble is, the heroine, embroiled in an illicit affair, is not an appealing character, nor is her lover, so I lost patience with them all. The Irish setting is interesting though. Here’s a Guardian review.

The Road Back by Liz Harris.  Published by the small indie women's fiction publisher, ChocLit. ( Good price on the Kindle). The unusual setting draws one into the romance. When Patricia accompanies her father on a trip to Ladakh, north of the Himalayas, in the early 1960s, she sees it as a chance to finally win his love. What she could never have foreseen is meeting Kalden – a local man destined by circumstances beyond his control to be a monk, but fated to be the love of her life. Despite her father’s fury, the lovers are determined to be together, but can their forbidden love survive?

Queen Victoria's retreat and recent reads

Osborne House, Queen Victoria's holiday home on the Isle of Wight is well worth a visit.  A charming 'family palace' with a relatively cosy atmosphere and attractive gardens. More lovely pics on the English Heritage website.

Michaelmas daisies in my garden - they grow more or less wild.
 Not quite as tidy as Queen Victoria's garden, I admit.

Quick book list

I much enjoyed Ghastly Business by Louise Levine. However, be warned, the brilliantly funny black humour, including graphically described post mortems, might not appeal to everyone. 

1929. A girl is strangled in a London alley, the mangled corpse of a peeping Tom is found in a railway tunnel and the juicy details of the latest trunk murder are updated hourly in fresh editions of the evening papers. Into this insalubrious world steps Dora Strang, a doctor's daughter with an unmaidenly passion for anatomy. Denied her own medical career, she moves into lodgings and begins life as filing clerk to the country's pre-eminent pathologist, Alfred Kemble. Dora is thrilled by the grisly post-mortems and the headline-grabbing court cases and more fascinated still by the pathologist himself: an enigmatic war hero with bottle-green eyes and an air of sardonic glamour - the embodiment of all her girlish fantasies. But Dora's job holds more than a few surprises.’

The writer has a witty turn of phrase, but it’s quite a bleak novel in many parts - a scene with green blotting paper made me wince more than the autopsies, and the frivolous attitude to the death of another character jarred.  But I do recommend the novel, if you are not of a delicate turn of mind.

Missing Persons by Nicci Gerrard.

When Jonny went missing everything changed. His mother's heart is full of terror and sadness instead of joy. His father's study overflows with newspaper cuttings and profiles on missing people instead of the academic texts that were there before.

His sister, once carefree, now carries the weight of the world on her shoulders.

His bedroom at home remains untouched and ready for his return. A place is set for him at the table on Christmas day each year. His birthday is always celebrated; unopened gifts for him gather dust. The hands on the clock continue to move forwards and yet Jonny hasn't returned. Where is he?

A good read, more character based than the Nicci French thrillers that the author writes with her husband.  Felt annoyed with the entire family in the end.

The Love of my Life by Louise Douglas.  One couldn’t entirely sympathise with the femme fatale heroine, but this proved to be a good read too (well written, not as depressing as it sounds and a bargain on the Kindle at 89p)

Olivia and Luca Felicone had known each other nearly all their lives, but when they fell in love as teenagers and eloped to London, they broke the hearts of those closest to them.  When Luca is killed in a car accident Olivia abandons her job and returns North to where Luca has been buried in Watersford, just to be close to him – even though she knows she will not be welcomed by his family. Luca’s married twin brother, Marc, is experiencing a loss as painful as Olivia’s. Their desolation draws them into a dangerous affair.

Otto's triumph

Otto won third prize at the Village Flower Show for the dog with the waggiest tail.  Here is his yellow rosette.  We decided to save the obedience competition until next year.

Holiday Reads

The Cornish House

First of all, I must tell you that lovely Liz Fenwick is an RNA friend of mine but I bought her book with my own money, so no strings attached!

When artist Maddie inherits a house in Cornwall shortly after the death of her husband, she hopes it will be the fresh start she and her step-daughter Hannah desperately need.
Trevenen is beautiful but neglected, steeped in history. Maddie is enchanted by it and determined to learn as much as she can about its past. As she discovers the stories of generations of women who've lived there before, Maddie begins to feel her life is somehow intertwined within its walls.
Still struggling with her grief and battling with Hannah, Maddie is unable to find inspiration for her painting and realises she may face the prospect of having to sell Trevenen, just as she is coming to love it.
And as Maddie and Hannah pull at the seams of Trevenen's past, the house reveals secrets that have lain hidden for generations.

The Cornish House is a good holiday read, not chick lit (though there is a handsome hero or two) as it deal with serious matters - the heroine Maddie is a widow, with quite a few problems. No money, as often happens, but worse an astonishingly rude teenage stepdaughter, Hannah. Hannah’s vile behaviour can be explained, as not only has her father recently died of cancer but her own mother deserted the family when Hannah was a child. There are numerous others strands to this complicated plot, but the hope that Maddie would finally be able to cope with and become close to Hannah drew me on into the novel. I was also intrigued by Maddie’s investigations into her Cornish birth family (she was adopted as a baby).

Liz Fenwick’s love of Cornwall is clear and many people enjoy a ‘dilapidated country house with a history’ novel. I know I do.

Monday to Friday Man by Alice Peterson (only 20p on Kindle) was a pleasant amusing read, more chicklit than the above. The Bridget-Jones heroine has a lot of charm, though I couldn't fall for the true-love hero who wore a hat all the time, even indoors. Seemed a ridiculous affectation, or was there some reason for it that I missed?
There is a touching subplot about a disabled sister.

The Making of Us by Lisa Jewell. Slightly unlikely but interesting plot about siblings all sired by the same sperm donor. Lisa is a good writer, getting under the skin of different characters, and her fans will enjoy this one. 'Lydia, Robyn and Dean don't know each other - yet. They live very different lives but each of them, independently, has always felt that something is missing. What they don't know is that a letter is about to arrive that will turn their lives upside down. It is a letter containing a secret - one that will bind them together, and shows them what love and familyand friendship really mean...'

I've only just found my way back to Old Blogger. Don't know how long I'll be able to. Lots more books to report on soon.

Olympics and reading notes

Aren't the Olympics terrific? Even our terminally gloomy downbeat journos haven't found much to complain about. It's so good to see healthy polite young people having a great time. (Blogger has changed again, can't find how to post photos as the usual icon is not there. And Blogger has decided off its own bat that I need comment moderation, so sorry Nan and Jane that it has taken me a couple of months to realise this.)

A big gap to fill. I’m never going to be able to report fully on all the books I’ve read since I last blogged so here are a few notes on the highlights, in no particular order.

I find I buy more books than ever now that I have a Kindle as I don’t feel guilty about adding to the groaning shelves around the house.

First two books featuring a mentally unhinged woman

Tideline by Penny Hancock, a gripping psychological thriller with wonderful, evocative descriptions of Greenwich. R & J choice. A good read. The main protagonist behaves very badly, but one begins to sympathise with her delusions.

The Mistress’s Revenge by Tamar Cohen. Here the main protagonist has lost touch with reality because her long-term lover has ditched her. She moans a great deal, but with such a dry witty turn of phrase that you almost forgive her. Despite her long-term partner and two children, she’s so fixated on her affair with her ghastly ex-lover that she becomes more and more involved with his wife and daughter. The ending was unexpected, so that’s good.

If Morning Ever Comes, an early book by Anne Tyler, before she got into her stride.

Not nearly as good as her more mature novels but interesting for the devoted fan.

Night Waking by Sarah Moss. Again wonderful descriptive writing, this time of the Inner Hebrides where the main protagonist and her vague ineffectual husband, both somewhat over-precious academics, are living on a small island. She is meant to be writing, while her husband counts puffins. The antithesis of a domestic goddess and struggling to cope, the self-pitying heroine is in need of a visit from Supernanny as one of her children, toddler Moth (short for Timothy, in case you wondered) doesn’t sleep much and the older child is obsessed by death and destruction. Moth is amusing and any mother will recognise his antics with a shudder. I enjoyed it, but don’t read this if you have no children because it may either bore you or put you off for life. On the other hand the rest of us can think, well, I wasn’t perfect but at least I managed better than Anna. Along with the modern story, we read about infant mortality through the eyes of a Victorian nurse unable to communicate with the Gaelic-speaking island women. Sounds grim but it was in fact evocative and interesting. Here's a Guardian review.

I Remember Nothing and other Reflections. Essays about life from the late Norah Ephron who is always worth reading.

The Importance of being Kennedy by Laurie Graham. Told from the point of view of one of the Kennedy family maids, this is an amusing and poignant novel from another witty writer. Rose Kennedy comes out badly and it is the brilliant Kick who suffers.

I’m always interested in the way Laurie Graham mixes fact and real life. But Kick’s story, like Princess Diana’s, is more dramatic than fiction.

I'll read more books by the above interesting authors.

Scarecrows Competition

In a nearby village they've had a scarecrow competition. About 50 lifesize figures are dotted about on the verges - amusing and surreal. Fear they will have been drowned out today.

Jubilee Village

Otto, White Lie and Pilgrimage

I was fascinated by The White Lie by Andrea Gillies. Unusual, interesting characters, but perhaps somewhat unlikely and perhaps rather too long. She’s very good at descriptive writing but there is a lot of it. A great many jet-black lies are told by this remote, dysfunctional, upper-crust Scottish family and, though I wasn’t always entirely convinced at first, I found myself swept slowly along by the story, so much so that eventually I became so absorbed I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

I couldn’t find a way of enlarging the family tree on the Kindle, so I made one of my own from the Look-Inside page on Amazon and after that I found it easier reading. (Previously there was a tendency to come to a halt and say now who the hell is Rebecca.)

There was a kind of closure at the end – but in real life the ending would lead to new drama, I suspect. Anyway, judge for yourself.

I enjoyed the Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce very much at first but eventually began to get annoyed with Harold (particularly when he gave away his soap powder). On reflection I realise I was taking the story too literally – I am of a practical nature and it worried me that he was walking across England along the main roads, without a map, or change of clothes. But of course one shouldn’t worry about the day-to-day details. It’s a modern and indeed unlikely pilgrimage, allegorical, like Bunyan’s, spiritual but not religious. Some Buddhist monks have to live as simply as Harold, without possessions, I remembered.

Though I found it sentimental at times in the second half, it is a book worth reading. The nurse at the hospice told Harold that his former friend Queenie, dying of cancer, was hanging on until he arrived, but another question is would one want to hang on in her particular circumstances. So, yes, food for thought. Here's a Guardian review.

(It's not a solemn book, by the way, despite the subject matter. In fact it's often amusing, with subtle satire.)

Ninepins and The Lovers of Pound Hill

"Ninepins is an isolated former tollhouse, standing high on a bank beside a waterway in the Cambridgeshire fens. Since her divorce, Laura has lived there alone with her 12-year-old daughter, Beth. Below the bank in the garden stands the old pumphouse which she rents to student lodgers. But this year’s lodger is different: Willow is seventeen, and in local authority care. Battling down her reservations, Laura takes her on.
Do Willow’s strangenesses and her troubled past make her a threat to Laura and, especially, to Beth? What were the circumstances surrounding the act of arson which led to Willow being taken into care?
Ninepins traces a mother’s fears for her daughter and her struggles to decide whether Willow is vulnerable or dangerous – or perhaps a bit of both"

Set beside a dark steep-sided almost threatening Fenland lode or waterway, this novel is in turn more serious than Rosy Thornton’s previous books, but even more enjoyable. It explores the relationship between a single mother and her daughter. Now that Beth is finding her feet at secondary school she wants to hang out with her new hip friends, but unsurprisingly Laura is reluctant to let her have as much freedom as she demands, particularly as the new friends seem scary and undesirable.  Should Laura be paying more attention to the enigmatic unhappy Willow, deeply admired by Beth? I read far into the night to find out.  While not exactly a thriller, not exactly a romance, it explores problems that affect many of us - when to let go.
Booksplease has written an excellent review. Here is Rosy's website.

The Lovers of Pound Hill by Mavis Cheek
Mavis Cheek fans should enjoy this comedy about a young archaeologist who turns a staid English village upside down. I can’t say I became involved with all the many (sometimes unlikely) characters but Mavis Cheek can be amusing, of course. The squire & his wife had attitudes from another era, but maybe there are such people still around."When archaeologist Molly Bonner arrives in the village, she creates quite a stir. With her determined manner and alluring looks, she sets off a wave of intrigue. Nobody knows exactly what she’s up to, but Molly is a girl on a mission: to discover the truth behind Lufferton Boney’s much-loved and most notorious resident, the giant (and slightly obscene) Gnome, a fertility symbol etched into the face of Pound Hill. As she works her way into the villagers’ hearts, Molly needs to keep one step ahead as she pursues the secret that only the Gnome can reveal….
;more "

The Last Summer

The Last Summer by Judith Kinghorn

“A haunting story of lost innocence and a powerful, enduring love. Clarissa is almost seventeen and it is the beginning of a golden summer of 1914 - and the end of an era. Deyning Park is in its heyday, the large country house filled with the laughter and excitement of privileged youth preparing for a weekend party. When Clarissa meets Tom Cuthbert, the housekeeper’s son home from university, she is dazzled. But ambitious, clever Tom is inevitably an outsider….   As Tom and Clarissa's friendship deepens, the wider landscape of political life around them is changing, and another story unfolds. Soon the world - and all that they know - is rocked by war.”

The vast social changes that took place during WWI seen from the viewpoint of a young woman, Clarissa, in love with an unsuitable boy she cannot have. A sweeping love story against a sweeping background.  With shades of Gatsby and Atonement, set in the Downton era, this carefully researched debut novel has had excellent reviews  Now out in paperback.

Quick reports

The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan.  Though I saw much to admire in this recreation of Shakespeare's early life, I kept getting stuck. Maybe I need to wait until I go on holiday so I can give it my full attention.  Others have loved it including Adele Geras and SheReadsBooks.

The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell, a black, black comedy set in a Glasgow housing estate.  The children keep their parents’ deaths a secret and try to get on with their lives.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen & other films

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Watching this enjoyable mild comedy won’t make your pulses race but it’s a pleasant way to spend an evening.  Am a fan of both Ewan McGregor and Kristin Scott Thomas and they’re both excellent in this scenic movie.  A few extra plot twists have been added to the novel by Paul Torday but not too much to its detriment.  The desert/wadi scenes are shot in Morocco, not in the Yemen itself, but we saw an optimistic advert from their Tourist Bureau beforehand.

The Last Station (dvd) features Tolstoy’s dying years.  Rather a long-winded and inevitably gloomy film, but educational.  Helen Mirren, elegant in long gowns, Christopher Plummer and James McAvoy star.

More or less coped with The Guard, an Irish detective movie dvd.  Passable, but bad language a bit wearying.

The Help (new on dvd) was a good movie, particularly well cast, I thought. Inevitably they had to omit some of the details in the book (e.g. there wasn’t much about Skeeter’s romance) and I'm glad I read it first.  Maybe the film also toned down some of the scariest racial tensions where you were seriously frightened that Skeeter and the maids would be attacked.

And is that what happened in the end, the cosy scene with Skeeter’s mother?  Must find my copy and re read.

I’m afraid I didn’t finish watching Nightwatching.  Too diffuse for me.

Much enjoyed the classic 84 Charing Cross Road, the 1986 film of a more or less true story. In 1949 Helene Hanff, an impoverished American writer, can't find the out-of-print books she wants in America so she writes to Marx & Co, antiquarian book dealers in Charing Cross Road, London. A charming and increasingly warm correspondence springs up over the years between Helene and the bookseller, so that eventually she even begins to send all the staff Christmas parcels.  Here's a Telegraph piece about it.  Anne Bancroft (the former Mrs Robinson) and a suitably repressed Anthony Hopkins star.
A young Judy Dench plays his wife. Nothing much happens but it is a lovely film.

Otto plays croquet (plus reviews)

Alpine view again. Back from ski holiday in Meribel Mottaret, wonderfully sunny and uncrowded.

Just finished another book by Katharine McMahon, The Season of Light.  Set in Paris and southern England during the time of the French Revolution, it's about a serious-minded young English girl in love with a French revolutionary lawyer.  Unwisely she travels back
to Paris and puts herself in great danger. I feared from the first chapters that it was going to be a bodice ripper, but the opposite is true, it's a long, well-researched and informative novel about the period.

Elizabeth Buchan's Daughters proved a thought-provoking read. Like Joanna Trollope she examines modern family structures in an interesting way, but perhaps EB is gentler with the foibles of her characters. The three daughters were particularly well portrayed. As for the kindly mother/stepmother, JT would probably have told her to brace up. 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that all mothers want to see their daughters happily settled. But for Lara, mother to Maudie and stepmother to Jasmine and Eve, realising this ambition has not been easy. With an ex-husband lost to a mid-life crisis, and late blooming developments in her own love life to contend with, Lara has enough to worry about.... But when she begins to fear that Eve is marrying a man who will only make her unhappy, Lara faces the ultimate dilemma.'
(EB is amusing about the elaborate preparations for a modern formal wedding - read them and shudder just a little.)

The Somnambulist by Esse Fox is a Victorian Gothic novel, atmospheric, original and well researched. 'Some secrets are better left buried... When seventeen-year-old Phoebe Turner visits Wilton's Music Hall to watch her Aunt Cissy performing on stage, she risks the wrath of her mother Maud who marches with the Hallelujah Army, campaigning for all London theatres to close. While there, Phoebe is drawn to a stranger, the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels, who heralds dramatic changes in the lives of all three women. When offered the position of companion to Nathaniel's reclusive wife, Phoebe leaves her life in London's East End for Dinwood Court in Herefordshire - a house that may well be haunted and which holds the darkest of truths... '
A TV Book Club choice. Click to hear Esse talking about her book.

Quickie book suggestions for Mothers' Day

For young parents:
Are We Nearly There Yet, by Ben Hatch (a long journey around Britain with toddlers)

The Playgroup by Janey Fraser (lots of angsty mums - amusing)

For John Buchan Fans (will review at more length)
William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise

For feminists - Victorian divorce scandal
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue. Here's a Guardian review

I particularly enjoyed The Crimson Rooms by Katherine McMahon.
"Evelyn is a young woman who has defied convention to become one of the country's pioneer female lawyers. Living at home with her mother, aunt, and grandmother, Evelyn is still haunted by the death of her younger brother James in the First World War. Therefore when the doorbell rings late one night and a woman appears, claiming to have mothered James's child, her world is turned upside down. Evelyn distrusts Meredith at first, but also finds that this new arrival challenges her work-obsessed lifestyle. So far her legal career has not set the world alight. But then two cases arise that make Evelyn realise perhaps she can make a difference. The first concerns woman called Leah Marchant whose children have been taken away from her simply because she is poor. The second, Stephen Wheeler - a former acquaintance of Daniel Breen, her boss - has been charged with murdering his own wife. It is clear to Breen and Evelyn that Wheeler is innocent but he won't talk. After being humiliated in court, Evelyn is approached by a dashing lawyer called Nicholas Thorne. She is needled by his privileged background and old-fashioned attitudes, but despite being engaged, he cannot seem to resist sparring with this feisty young female. In the meantime, Meredith makes an earth-shattering accusation about James. With the Wheeler case coming to a head, and her heart in limbo, Evelyn takes matters into her own hands. "

Perfect Puppy, The Paris Wife & other fiction

Otto has been for his annual check up and is in 'superb condition' and very fit according to the vet.  Below: Otto a year ago.

Much enjoyed The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, a fictionalised account of Hemingway's first marriage to an upper-crust American, Hadley Richardson. (Here's a Guardian review.)  If you've seen Midnight in Paris, you will recognise the scenario.  Having read and admired Hemingway a long time ago, I found it interesting that he drew his characters from among his hard-drinking, deep-thinking, free-living literary friends.
'Set during a remarkable time, the same period as Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises, the novel captures the voice of Hadley as she struggles with her roles as a woman—wife, muse, and mother—and tries to find her place in the intoxicating world of Paris in the twenties.'

I was impressed and moved by My Dear I wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young. (Here's a review from the Independent.)  An R&J choice.
'Set on the Western Front, in London and in Paris, MY DEAR I WANTED TO TELL YOU is a novel of love, class and sex in wartime, and how war affects those left behind as well as those who fight. While the men fight for country, survival and their own sanity in the trenches of Flanders, Nadine and Julia do what they can at home. Beautiful, obsessive Julia and gentle Peter are married: each day Julia goes through rituals to prepare for her beloved husband's return.  From different social backgrounds, Nadine and Riley, only eighteen when the war starts, want to make promises - but how can they when the future is not in their hands?'
The title is taken from a standard letter handed out to wounded men to write to their families 'My dear, I wanted to tell you that I have been wounded in the leg/arm/head and am at hospital in..... etc.'
I will definitely buy the sequel. Do read this one.

The Apothecary's Daughter by Charlotte Betts

'It is 1664. Susannah Leyton has grown up in her father’s old apothecary shop in bustling Fleet Street. She's a skilled student of the apothecary’s craft, but everything changes when her father remarries and she is caught in a battle of wills with her step-mother. She is desperate to escape.

When she receives a proposal of marriage from handsome and charming Henry Savage, she believes her prayers have been answered.  But her new husband is a complex and troubled man and married life is not what she expected. Lonely and sad, Susannah longs for love.

As the plague sweeps through the city, tragedy strikes and the secrets of Henry’s past come back to haunt them.'  
A well-researched, atmospheric novel and a good, easy read.

The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott would be suitable for readers interested in the history of vaudeville/variety shows in Canada before the First World War. This 500pp novel has clearly been meticulously researched, but, for this reader, too much of the research has been included. Despite the good descriptive writing, I found I couldn't become involved with the characters or the plot, due perhaps to the fragmentary style.

The Unseen by Katherine Webb. Lady Audley's Secret

The Unseen by Katherine Webb
England, 1911. When a free-spirited young woman arrives in a sleepy Berkshire village to work as a maid in the household of The Reverend and Mrs Canning, she sets in motion a chain of events which changes all their lives. For Cat has a past - a past her new mistress is willing to overlook, but will never understand . . .This is not all Hester Canning has to cope with. When her husband invites a handsome young man into their home, he brings with him a dangerous obsession...
During the long, oppressive summer, the rectory becomes charged with ambition, love and jealousy.

In 2011 Leah, a journalist visiting Belgium, is shown the body of a man who has lain in the ground since the First World War, but who is he and what do the letters he carries mean?


A gripping read with some excellent writing and fascinating characters. Former suffragette Cat, the maid with intelligence and ideas above her station, is particularly strong, Hester, too, is sympathetic as a more traditional young Edwardian woman married to a pallid young man. The vicar and his guest are interested in proving the existence of fairy spirits from another world, with disastrous consequences. Do please read it, and whatever else Katherine Webb writes. In this book she has tackled some strong underlying issues while writing a good story,
A Richard and Judy choice. (By the way, I think the pb cover has a white figure on it - can't be sure as I bought an ebook)

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1868) I  enjoyed this melodramatic Victorian novel, the characters and insights into attitudes of the day. 

Lucy Graham, a poor governess of unknown circumstances wins the heart of the rich Sir Audley. When Sir Audley's nephew comes to visit with his friend George, George goes missing, and the book quickly turns into a kind of action-packed detective story.

Various random minor points struck me: there’s a lot of ‘telling’ and long descriptions in a Victorian novel; plot points were heavily foreshadowed; the trains worked amazingly well in those days – the hero fair zipped about; early in the book Lady Audley was clearly marked as a baddy as she didn’t like dogs; the apparently lazy hero, in contrast, was obviously a goody because he adopted stray mongrels, though it wasn’t clear who looked after them when he was busy detecting; the child was unceremoniously dumped in a boarding school without protest at the age of 5.  I thought perhaps Mary Elizabeth Braddon didn’t know much about children but I see she had 6 and wrote about 80 novels.  But she may have had more freedom of action than Lady Audley. For further discussion of this book see the Cornflower Book Group  

New Year Good Wishes

The new year brought sudden sad news to many of us in the RNA with the death of Penny Jordan, an unusually kind and lovely person, who while writing hundreds of books, managed to encourage so many new writers. This amaryllis is for her.  She was a tireless worker and one thing I'm sure she'd want is for us to move on, so we are all now trying to do so.

I've done a lot of reading and walking recently but not much else.  However, one of my new year resolutions is called The Daily Bowl. Organised people should skip to the next para but if, like me, you have numerous little bowls scattered around the house containing a button, coins, a needle threaded with black cotton, bent paper clips and odd pearl earrings, then you will understand my spasmodic desire to sort them out.  Not hugely ambitious but I feel good when I can tick one off.

Recent Reads

Snowdrops by AD Miller. Fast-paced story about an expat in Moscow who sacrifices his judgement and self-respect - his honour, if you like - to please a dubious but sexy young woman.  An excellent read. You keep shrieking, no don’t trust him/her. Miller is a good writer who paints a convincing but no doubt much exaggerated picture of corrupt modern Moscow and the long Russian winter (probably true about the winter) Do read it.

When God was a Rabbit didn’t appeal to me so much. If you are worried by the title, then the book probably won’t appeal to you either but many others loved it.

I did enjoy The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas.  Her best recent book, in my opinion. I was interested in her vivid and obviously authentic descriptions of Ladakh and Kashmir, perhaps because I’ve visited - coughs modestly - the foothills of the Himalayas myself. Admittedly I went to Sikkim, the north-eastern end of India, and admittedly on a guided-tour bus rather than by trekking or some other hearty method, but there must be a few similarities. I was so interested that I looked up Leh on the map and am amazed that missionaries lived in such a harsh, high-altitude and remote place. Also fascinated by the descriptions of Srinagar, now so near to the disturbed border.  At first this novel is a peaceful travelogue but then suddenly there’s tragedy and I ended up, a few nights later, reading until after midnight.,

I don't have many pictures of the Sikkim and Darjeeling holiday in 2003 as my luggage containing the camera was lost for 10 days (long story) but here's a couple.

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas and best wishes for 2012 to everyone.

After this mild autumn the garden is so different from last year.  We have a rose about to bloom, some campanula, and the shrubby pink salvia is still in flower.

Otto the dog found a hole in the hedge through to the neighbours, so that had to be plugged. He's obviously becoming more adventurous in his teenage years - just as sweet-natured though. He seems to have occupied most of my year :-)