Susie Vereker - writer

The Unseen by Katherine Webb. Lady Audley's Secret

2012-01-23T17:39:00.007Z

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

2012-01-11T19:05:00.001Z

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.

Happy Christmas!

2011-12-23T09:52:00.001Z

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 :-)

Black Swan, Gillespie & recent reads

2011-12-11T12:50:00.015Z

I found the film Black Swan too gruelling, and can't think why one newspaper suggested the dvd as an 'ideal Christmas present for mums'. A well acted psycho-drama, almost a horror movie - it's unpleasant and painful to see a perfectionist ballerina falling apart. Fortunately I watched it alone, definitely a woman's film, imo, though here's an enthusiastic review by a man.

Much enjoyed Gillespie and I by Jane Harris, short-listed for the Galaxy Popular Fiction award etc. Again the author has chosen a Victorian narrator, this time a lively youngish spinster of independent means who befriends the family of a Glasgow painter with disastrous results. Do read it. I don't want to spoil the plot by recounting the story. Here's a review. I've now read both books by this Orange-shortlister and will certainly buy the next one. I particularly like the writer's dry sense of humour.

Emily Barr's The First Wife is set in Cornwall. Lily is almost unbelievably naive for a modern girl - it's easy to see why she falls head over heels for Harry. Here's the blurb.
'Lily is adrift and penniless after the death of the grandparents who brought her up. When she finds a cleaning job, she becomes preoccupied with the glamorous couple she never sees, but whose house she looks after every week.
When tragedy strikes, she suddenly finds herself getting close to dashing widower Harry. Yet she feels that things are not quite as they seem. Lily adores Harry, but cannot plan her future with him until she finds out more about his first wife.' A good light thriller/holiday read.

Winner of the Galaxy Award for the Best Crime/Thriller novel, the absorbing and original Before I go to Sleep by SJ Watson is scarier. Christine has lost her memory and lives with her patient husband, but doubts begin to worry her, her doctor and you, the reader. A gripping thriller. Do read it. I understand a film is in the offing and rights have been sold all over the world. SJ Watson, who works in the NHS, turns out to be a man and he writes exceptionally well from the woman's point of view.
'As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I'm still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me ...' Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine's life.'

A Vision of Loveliness by Louise Levene is a snapshot of the 50s-early 60s and does indeed evoke the period so well that the very few anachronisms take one by surprise. The main protagonist is a beautiful socially ambitious young girl on the make. All the characters are pretty unpleasant, but amusing with it. No 'nice girls' here. A social satire with witty writing, reminds me of Muriel Spark. I gather the novel was serialised on the radio on Book at Bedtime, and was long-listed for the Desmond Elliot prize. Here's a Telegraph review and here's the Independent's.

Bonfire of a bamboo chair that Otto ate when he was a puppy. He's now a relatively senior dog who wouldn't dream of chewing anything, much.

Otto's 1st birthday & late garden

2011-11-28T08:39:00.002Z

Otto yesterday

Otto is one today. Bold, black and beautiful, very well behaved indoors. Outdoors - well, he's still overenthusiastic and becoming more adventurous so much room for improvement.

Before the storm

Nerines in late September. Above, the blue plumbago looks good in the autumn

Notes on Books & Films

2011-11-20T13:45:00.002Z

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. The professional reviewers of this Booker prizewinning novella all admire it, and consider it a novel about flawed memories of the distant past. Yet the narrator Tony remembers with clarity all kinds of emotions about his repressed early 1960s youth when life was full of hope, frustrated sex and worries about class. This is all brilliantly described and I loved the middle part of this novel. But his memory turns out to be selective, and he's half forgotten a horrible letter he wrote.

Many lay readers, myself included, found the ending puzzling and possibly unsatisfactory. We read on in the hope of finding out why Adrian killed himself, but this is never convincingly explained. Two boys apparently commit suicide for a reason that seems unlikely. Depression is never mentioned. Perhaps many suicides are inexplicable, but surely they cannot be reduced to a mathematical equation?

Perhaps that isn't the point of the book. Better read it for yourself and see.

Other books worth reading: Rachel Hore's A Gathering Storm. Here's a review from the Independent.
Donna Tartt's The Secret History. It's especially creepy in that the reader can find herself almost complicit in a murder. Like Barnes's narrator, Richard feels socially out of his depths.
And do read Marian Keyes' Rachel's Holiday, if you missed it. Funny, sad, moving.

Film: absolutely loved Midnight in Paris, directed by Woody Allen. Scenic, funny and a happy way to pass the time. Here's a Guardian review.

The dvd of 172 Hours was gripping. A hiker falls down an isolated canyon in Utah and his arm is stuck under a boulder. Based on a true story and very well acted, it's a film worth watching.

Stonehenge & 29 canal locks

2011-11-16T09:07:00.001Z

Interesting trip to Stonehenge via Devizes where the Wiltshire Heritage Museum is full of interesting facts and artefacts from Stonehenge. Our friends had pre-booked a special access visit to go inside the great stone circle, a spooky experience on a winter evening. If you want to do the same here's the English Heritage website.

We'd also seen the astonishing flight of locks at Caen Hill, Devizes.
(29 locks in 2 miles). You have to operate them yourself so it must take an age to get up or down in your narrowboat.

The Thread by Victoria Hislop

2011-10-27T17:41:00.006+01:00

The Thread by Victoria Hislop

Set in Thessalonica in the early part of the 20th Century, this novel traces the history of a family and its neighbours through turbulent times in Greece: fire, two world wars, civil war, a coup d’etat and an earthquake. Here’s the blurb -

Thessaloniki, 1917. As Dimitri Komninos is born, a devastating fire sweeps through the thriving Greek city where Christians, Jews and Muslims live side by side. Five years later, Katerina Sarafoglou's home in Asia Minor is destroyed by the Turkish army. Losing her mother in the chaos, she flees across the sea to an unknown destination in Greece. Soon her life will become entwined with Dimitri's, and with the story of the city itself, as war, fear and persecution begin to divide its people.
As before, Victoria Hislop has given a modern character chapters at the beginning and end of a historical novel - here a young Anglo-Greek learns about his grandparents’ early life. This perhaps unnecessary literary-sandwich device reveals the fact that Dimitri and Katerina do marry eventually, but that doesn’t detract too much from what is an interesting story.
Again the research is excellent. Given the historical setting, the plot is inevitably complex, and this time Victoria has chosen to tell the story mainly through the eyes of Katerina, who becomes a talented seamstress. The young Katerina is a realistic, sympathetic character, and this made a difference to my enjoyment of the novel - I hadn’t been entirely convinced by the characters in The Return and The Island.
Having lived in Greece for four years and read Olivia Manning, Captain Corelli etc, I knew some of Greece’s recent history but I didn’t remember about the harrowing Greek-Turkish exchange of population that took place in 1923 and the preceding years, and I also found the steps that were taken to hide and preserve Jewish sacraments before WW2 touching and interesting.
I did have one problem. After some 30 years, I’ve forgotten most of the kitchen Greek I spoke, but nonetheless while reading The Thread I kept being distracted by the unnatural way the characters used each other’s names in dialogue - nominative instead of vocative(!) etc - but most readers won’t notice so I’m being pedantic.
Having found The Return somewhat of an effort to read, I wasn’t sure I was going to bother with VH’s next book, but this, while still a serious novel, has a lighter touch and I much enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone interested in Greece and modern European history in general. VH fans will love it, I'm sure.

The House of the Wind

2011-10-19T09:37:00.010+01:00

The House of the Wind, by Titania Hardie.

A legendary ruin. An ancient mystery. Will unveiling the past transform the future?
San Francisco, 2007. Madeline Moretti is grieving for her fiancé. Nothing brings her joy any more, and Maddie's grandmother, a fiery Italian, sends her to Tuscany to heal. Here, Maddie hears about the mystery of a ruined villa.
Tuscany, 1347. Mia hasn't spoken since her mother's death, and lives with her beloved aunt. One dark night, a couple seek refuge in their villa. Used to welcoming passing pilgrims, Mia is entranced by the young bride's radiance and compassion, but mystified by her reluctance to reveal even her name. Where has she come from, and why must her presence be a secret?
Centuries apart, both Mia and Maddie will be haunted by the myth of the young woman who walked unscathed from the ruins of the House of the Wind.

This is probably a suitable book for reading beside the pool in a Tuscan villa on a lazy summer holiday, or indeed on a winter cruise. It’s over 500 pages, densely written. Reading as I do late at night, I found it tough going at times and a list of characters might have been a help in the early stages. The author has obviously done a great deal of hard work and thorough research, but there was so much detail that I felt it slowed down the plot. (Do we need to know where Maddie parked? Actually I am interested in parking but...) It took me a while to become accustomed to jumping from medieval Italy to a legal firm in California and in the next chapter quickly back again, but the 14th century characters were fascinating and their world well drawn. For some reason, I didn’t become so captivated by the 2008 story, worthy though it was – the young US lawyer Madeline represented cancer patients against big business. Luckily the power of the wind seems to be on her side.

I’ve been to Tuscany so that helped me to visualise the Italian setting - I even googled the lovely Borgo Santo Pietro, and feel inclined to revisit the area now I've read this novel. If you go to central Italy, don't miss San Giminano (above), Assisi (St Francis), Ravenna (mosaics) and, most atmospheric of all, Siena. By the way, don’t drive to and try to park in Siena unless your relationship is very strong. Could be the beginning of the end!

Watts Gallery & The Observations

2011-10-13T12:52:00.004+01:00

If you live in the area or are interested in Victorian art, do visit the newly restored Watts Gallery, just west of Guildford. Quite apart from the artist's work, the gallery itself is an impressive and pleasing piece of sympathetic modern design. Esse Fox, the Virtual Victorian, has recently blogged about Watts so here's a link, and here's a piece in the Guardian. I hate to admit I had hardly heard of Watts before going to the gallery, but I loved the gigantic sculptures. They alone are worth the journey (which may need skilled navigation) You can also see the Watts Chapel nearby (arts and crafts and mishmash)
Photo credits - the Watts Gallery

Recent reading
While we're in the Victorian era: Much enjoyed The Observations by Jane Harris (shortlisted for the Orange Prize). Here's an Observer article/review.
Scotland, 1863. In an attempt to escape her murky past, young Bessy Buckley, the narrator, takes a job working as a maid in a big country house. But when Arabella, her beautiful mistress, asks her to undertake a series of bizarre tasks, Bessy begins to realise that she hasn't quite landed on her feet. For instance, why did the previous maid die? In revenge for what she reads in her mistress's secret notebook, Bessy plays a trick, with dire results.
Well researched, this amusing novel is necessarily sad in parts. I love Bessy's earthy voice. Well worth reading. Not as scary as Sarah Waters or as graphic as Michael Faber, but the book might not be suitable for the easily shocked elderly aunt or uncle.

Hinton Ampner again, 'Engleby' and 'Drowning Rose'

2011-10-02T12:22:00.004+01:00

Hinton Ampner in Hampshire is always worth a visit, though felt too hot (on October 1) yesterday. Interesting history too.

Recent Reading
Here's what the Observer thought about Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, which I've belatedly read. Engleby is a strange boy who feels out of place most of his life, leading to mental stress and a dark deed. A good book with telling descriptions of boarding school & university life and a troubled mind.

Much more amusing, but also touching on mental stress, a misfit, boarding school life and a dark event, was Marika Cobbold's Drowning Rose. Here's the blurb.

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.. Eliza Cummings, a ceramics restorer at the V&A Museum, is leaving work when she receives an unexpected phone call. Standing in the haze of the Christmas lights she hears a voice which draws her back twenty-five years – to the night Rose died. But why does Rose’s father want her to visit him? Why now?

Grief and guilt cast terrible shadows, but as this beautifully wrought story unfolds and the scene shifts from London to the fairy tale landscape of the Swedish countryside – and back in time to Eliza’s school days – we learn that generosity, humour and friendship can smooth over and restore even the most broken lives, and that some secrets can’t be kept hidden…

Do read it. Marika has an original, quirky way of writing, and her main character is appealing. We love the charming Eliza and want her to have a happier life. A clever, well-constructed novel, both light-hearted yet serious.

Dr Zhivago, 'You' by Briscoe, Conjuror's Bird

2011-09-15T21:41:00.004+01:00

Just watched the DVD of Dr Zhivago with Keira Knightly and Hans Matheson (2002). In a moment of nostalgia, I’d meant to order Omar Sharif (left, with Julie Christie) so was a little disappointed he didn’t show up. Anyway, despite my prejudices, I found this newer version good, well filmed, great scenery, interspersed with real footage of the Russian Revolution. However, neither the hero nor the heroine quite convinced me. Well, Lara did at first but she failed to age – then, come to think of it, Keira must have been very young in 2002. Sam Neill was excellent as the rich baddy Komarovsky, Lara’s seducer, with good British actors in the minor parts. (Amazon US gives the writers as Andrew Davies and Boris Pasternak, in that order).

Recent reading:

You by Joanna Briscoe. (Am not entirely sure about these fashionable one-word titles, because, for a start, you have to remember the author’s name too when searching for the book.) Anyway this author is strong on emotions and has a wonderful sense of place. Her Devon is Hardyesque – a lush rural backwater. Part of the action takes place in the 1980s, not that long ago, and I found some of the happenings unlikely – more milkmaids in trouble rather than late 20th-Century misses. The storyline is that in the past Cecilia had a schoolgirl crush on a teacher which got out of hand, but she still (in my view, unfairly) blames her mother for the consequences. The schoolgirl crush is brilliantly described, as are the intimate scenes – the language is interesting and original throughout - but eventually I felt I wanted to slap Cecilia, mired as she was in self-centred regret. That didn’t spoil my enjoyment of a good if rather complicated story. Here’s what the Guardian thought.

The Conjuror's Bird by Martin Davies
Despite being the leading expert in his field, Fitz has never written the great book on extinct species that everyone was expecting. Suddenly, a figure from his past reappears in his life. The beautiful Gabby wants him to help find The Mysterious Bird of Ulieta, which vanished over 200 years ago from the collection of the naturalist Joseph Banks. Spurred on to join the quest by his beguiling lodger Katya, Fitz finds that the only way to solve the puzzle is to unravel the mystery of Banks's affair with Miss B – who has disappeared from history as effectively as the bird he is hunting.

An original novel, two parallel stories. I enjoyed the story of Banks’s mysterious love affair perhaps more than the modern archive hunt. An interesting read rather than a page turner. If you google the Bird of Ulieta you can see what it looked like, a kind of brown blackbird. Here's a review.

Kew Gardens

2011-09-08T18:32:00.001+01:00

Artistically raked gravel in the Japanese garden, with the famous pagoda in the distance

The water lily house

We saw two fat lizards lurking in the Princess of Wales conservatory, as well as this fat fish

Better go and see this for yourself

Bronze by Hamo Thornycroft - the Sower

A long time ago we used to live next door to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, so I walked there nearly every day with my small children (entry was almost free). In fact, in those days I'd become rather irritated in the summer when it was full of other people. I'm sure there are many wonderful pix on the website, but above are only a few of the sights you mustn't miss.

The Return of Captain John Emmett

2011-08-29T14:34:00.011+01:00

The Return of Captain John Emmett, by Elizabeth Speller.

1920. The Great War has been over for two years, and has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914. Following the death of his wife & baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become a recluse. The conflict continues to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when he is persuaded to look into the events that led to John Emmett’s suicide, Laurence is forced to revisit the darkest parts of the war. As he unravels the connections between Emmett, a group of war poets, and a hidden love affair, more disquieting deaths are exposed. Even at the moment Laurence begins to live again, it dawns on him that nothing is as it seems, and that some of those closest to him have their secrets.

This is a very good book, an elegy, a detective story, carefully researched, well written. I don’t think it is giving away too much to say it concerns the dreadful death by firing squad of a so-called deserter, a British officer, in WWI, and that Capt Emmett was a witness. It's also about the separate experiences of men and women after the war, and how only those women who had nursed could begin to understand something of what the men had been through.

It’s a serious novel obviously, gruelling at times, but please do read it. I'm only sorry I bought the Kindle edition, as I'd much rather have had the paper version - it's quite complicated and a book I want to keep. A Richard and Judy Bookclub top pick. Here’s a link to the author’s website, but don't watch the R&J interview until you've read the book. Here's a review from the Independent

It so happens that Elizabeth Speller is the niece of Susan Kennaway, the author of The Yellow Duster Sisters reviewed below just recently. (Elizabeth's mother was Susie's sister Gyll, the taller one on the cover) Elizabeth, too, has written a memoir, The Sunlight on the Garden, which fills in more of the background of this unusual eccentric family with its ducal upstairs and rural downstairs connections, along with sexual indiscretions, commercial riches and aristocratic rags. 'A family in Love, War and Madness' is the subtitle.

Some of her family have been afflicted by depression, including, a long time ago, the author herself. She writes bravely and eloquently on this subject in a chapter towards the end of the book, yet even then her wry sense of humour doesn’t desert her. It’s impressive that she finally becomes a mature student at Lucy Cavendish, Cambridge, and goes on to become the successful writer, academic and poet she is today. And she's charming too - I met her at the other Susie V's launch without really taking in who she was, and only bought The Return of Captain J Emmett at random because I sometimes agree with R&J.

The Yellow Duster Sisters

2011-08-22T14:41:00.005+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to the launch of The Yellow Duster Sisters by Susan Kennaway, who is married to my husband's cousin, so she's also Susie Vereker. (My father-in-law was one of 8 children so there's a wide age-range in the extended family.)
All sorts of interesting publishing luminaries attended including Alexandra Pringle of Bloomsbury, Adam Sisman, currently researching a biography of John le Carré, and Elizabeth Speller (of whom more soon), plus the news presenter Emily Maitlis, even more glamorous in the flesh than on TV. (Later: I now hear I missed meeting Lesley Garrett!)
Before she married a Vereker, the other Susie was the widow of the Scottish writer James Kennaway and author of The Kennaway Papers. She said she originally wrote the Yellow Duster Sisters for her grandchildren so they'd know about WW2 from a child's point of view and what happened in her family.

I've now read the book and found it a fascinating account of a disjointed and difficult wartime childhood, amusing and sad at the same time, well written and absorbing.

Here's the blurb. "1939. Nine-year-old Susie and her sister Gyll live in Watford and all week look forward to their Saturday shopping expedition to Woolworths, accompanied by their nanny Alice, to buy something nice for Mummy. But as war breaks out across Europe, Susie and Gyll are evacuated to Africa. Alone on a dusty continent, the sisters find little to like about their new way of life and get no sympathy from their guardians, especially a devout aunt who forces them to be in bed by six o’clock.

Feeling increasingly abandoned as the years pass and letters from home stop arriving, the sisters dream desperately of escape and cling fervently to their memories of idyllic England. When they do finally reach British shores, only a few weeks after D-Day, there is no one to meet them at Liverpool Docks. At their father’s new home in Gloucestershire, they find a strange woman living with him and gradually learn that their mother has moved away and joined the Polish army. Life only gets stranger when they are sent to Cheltenham Ladies College.

Wonderfully evocative, funny and charming, Susan Kennaway writes about the difficult challenges of growing up during the Second World War with rare honesty and insight. The Yellow Duster Sisters is a moving and unusual exploration of the often ignored, and often destructive, nature of shifting war-time family relationships."

Here's an article in The Daily Mail with photos from the book.

Denmark hols

2011-08-16T18:32:00.005+01:00

Just back from an interesting visit to Fanø Island, west coast of Jutland, Denmark, not that far from Legoland. Fantastic 16 km beach you can drive along, pretty scenery, delicious food but plenty of rain and wind. Didn’t matter because we walked and made sandcastles in the drizzle in a true Brit manner. We also visited museums, as you do, incl Hanne's Hus, a tiny Victorian cottage once owned by a fisherman and preserved in the style of the early 20th century with sand on the floor to soak up damp and dirt. We learned that women often wore six or seven long skirts to keep warm in winter. Must've got rather sandy too. Fortunately, our beachhouse in the dunes was comfortable and modern, a bit like Wallender's only bigger and tidier, with a place for everything and everything in its labelled place.

Decided I couldn’t face Stansted and Ry**air, so booked on efficient Cimber from Gatwick, more expensive but much less testing. Amazing not to have to wait for suitcases etc. Relations said the boat from Harwich had good activities for children, 16 hr trip though.

Above pics are of Sonderho village (pop 277) where we had an excellent dinner, exquisite food, carefully served at a picturesque resto

Daughters in Law & pup

2011-08-05T09:13:00.000+01:00

Daughters in Law by Joanna Trollope. JT is back on excellent form with this absorbing story of family life. You gasp at times and ask yourself if mothers-in-law can be that tactless and then I remembered that long ago mine was, though I dare say I was hypersensitive in those days.

Rachel is a matriarch and wants her sons and their wives around her, but not all the young wives want to dance to Rachel’s kindly and mostly well-meant tune. Do read it, it’s really very good. Here’s a Canadian review. I steered clear of the English ones as reviewers always seem compelled to mention Agas – this is the first time that JT has ventured back into the territory for years, but her books are about universal modern problems rather than those specific to the country living classes. There's usually a moral too: this time it is again that adult children should not be mollycoddled, and, of course, m-i-l's should not interfere. Indeed they should pull up their socks and find a new occupation. Brace up in general, in fact.

Mr Rosenblum’s List by Natasha Solomons was billed as comic, but in my view it is actually a tragedy and, I’m afraid, shameful. Shameful in that in the 1950s, despite his business success, Jewish refugee Jack Rosenblum was blackballed from all his local suburban golf clubs. So, determined to be a proper Englishman, he decides to move to the depths of the country and build his own golf course, mostly on his own. His poor wife is deeply unhappy but eventually, thanks to her cake-making, begins to fit in, perhaps too late. Here's what Dove Grey thought.

I’ve also re-read for the third or fourth time Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Once again I’m awed by the richness of his imagery (also the skill of his translator). It struck me this time that, as well as vivid descriptions of the S. American high society, the surprising characters and the dank hot Caribbean seaport, there are some not altogether savoury goings on in the book but it’s so well written one doesn’t even blink. (I write in euphemisms to avoid attracting unsuitable comments)

Above: See how grown up Otto is these days.

The River, Kingfishers Catch Fire, Sashenka

2011-07-26T17:24:00.001+01:00

The River (1951) by Jean Renoir (son of the famous painter) is a classic film that passed me by until I rented it the other day. Shot on location in Bengal, the photography is amazingly good for the period - I don't imagine many people had the least idea of what India looked like at that time. It's a coming of age story about a young girl's first crush, the plot isn't strong and the acting seems wooden. (I read afterwards that few of the actors were professionals.) Shame really, as I'm a fan of Rumer Godden's - it's based on one of her novels and she wrote or co-wrote the script. Despite the acting, I can see why the film made an impact when it first came out.

To reassure myself, I've just re-read Kingfishers Catch Fire , another of RG's novels (1953), and found it excellent, though not entirely pc. It's about a young widow who decides to live in the mountains in Kashmir, with disastrous consquences. Godden loves India, and I always find her worth reading.

I wasn't sure about Sashenka by Sebastian Montefiore. Fascinating and educational background - before, during and after the Russian Revolution - but the main protagonist is not an appealing young woman, so the author (famous historian but first-time novelist) set himself a difficult task.

July garden,My Last Duchess, & film: The Social Network

2011-07-17T12:20:00.003+01:00

The garden here in July. Some of the above roses have now been washed out by the rain and the wild sweet peas are not as bright, but the newish flower bed above is still quite jolly with some pink dascia now blooming in the middle.

My Last Duchess by Daisy Goodwin – an excellent holiday read. Maybe we've seen some of the plot lines before but it’s huge fun. I loved the characters and the Downton Abbey setting (most action takes place Upstairs rather than down). As a spoilt American heiress, brought up by a strict, social climbing mother, haughty Cora does not find life easy when she comes to England and marries a Duke. Dovegreyreader enjoyed it too.

Film – the Social Network. The story of the founding of Facebook by young geeks at Harvard. To work out what’s going on you probably need a young person with you to stop the DVD periodically and explain, or you could read up the plot on Wiki first, I dare say. You may possibly also need subtitles, as the actors speak extra fast gobbledegook. Good acting, an interesting film, not crucial viewing though.

'Afterwards' thriller. Puppy in the wild

2011-07-04T18:05:00.002+01:00

We have stunning wild flowers beside the fields near the house, with masses of bees, butterflies and other insects. Photos don't really do justice to the picture they make.

Otto and flax

Holly in July?

Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton

An excellent original thriller. This one is narrated by Grace, or rather by her spirit. She and her teenage daughter Jenny have been seriously injured in a fire at school and both lie unconscious in hospital. Question is, who started the fire and are they still trying to harm Jenny? Grace is addressing her husband (who, of course, can’t hear her) and she’s wandering around with Jenny’s equally invisible spirit, while they and the police try to work out what happened. So it’s an unusual structure but one fairly quickly gets used to it. I admit I guessed who dunnit about half way through but that didn’t matter. While the thriller element was gripping, I enjoyed the analysis of family life and what Grace learns about herself and her feeling for others. Not a comfortable one to read. It stayed at the back of my mind all day, and I was relieved to finish it. (Don't let the disembodied narrator put you off - I'm the down to earth type but I found it credible enough for the purpose.)

Flamingos and historical Japan

2011-06-15T14:51:00.003+01:00

Flamingos at Coton Manor Gardens - do see their website for more garden pictures and link to an appearance on Gardener's World. (No more of my own pics as my camera battery ran out at the wrong moment.) Their wildflower meadow features on BBC1 regularly as a pause filler with added dancing children, by the way.

Last weekend I also went to the Althorp Literary Festival (held at the home of the late Princess Diana) and heard Simon Sebag Montefiore talk about his new book, Jerusalem. Sounds fascinating.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. Be transported to a place like no other: a tiny, man-made island in the bay of Nagasaki, for two hundred years the sole gateway between Japan and the West. Here, in the dying days of the 18th-century, a worthy young Dutch clerk arrives to make his fortune. Instead he loses his heart.
Step onto the streets of Dejima and mingle with scheming traders, spies, interpreters, servants and concubines as two cultures converge. In a tale of integrity and corruption, passion and power, the key is control - of riches and minds, and over death itself.

I was interested to read about this period of history where Japan, fearing Christianity, had shut itself off from the rest of the world and was living in complete isolation, apart from the tiny trading island of Dejima. This novel is long and complex with lots of characters (fortunately there is a list at the back) Quite hard work for the reader but ultimately worth it. A slight quibble: I did have doubts about the middle section where the Japanese heroine is kidnapped by a baddy and taken to an evil mountain monastery, with samurai sword fights and shades of the Handmaid’s Tale. This detracted faintly from the all too credible events in Dejima.

Here's a Guardian review.

Puppy, wild daisies and The Breaking of Eggs.

2011-05-30T18:56:00.001+01:00

The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell
Separated from his family as a child when the Nazis invaded Poland, Feliks has spent his life producing a travel guide to Iron Curtain countries for Western readers. However, following the collapse of Communism in 1989 and the imminent retirement of his long-term publisher, Feliks finds himself tipped into a maelstrom which he cannot avoid. As he journeys for the first time to America to sell his travel guide there, Feliks is reunited with his half-brother, Woodrow, who no longer considers himself a Pole but rather an American and nothing more. Feeling his own alien status ever more acutely, Feliks has a growing desire to discover the fate of others from his past. Embarking on a journey that takes him back to his Polish hometown, to a long-lost love and to the bewildering landscape of a newly reunified Germany, Feliks is forced to confront the truth about his family's and his own past and to question everything he once believed. I chose this novel at random in Waterstones (B3GOF) because I thought it was set in Paris but Paris hardly comes into it all. As the blurb says, it's a late life journey for the narrator, a leftist intellectual 61-year-old Pole, interested in politics rather than people, who begins to thaw as the book progresses. I learnt a good deal I had forgotten about wartime and post-war European history. It really is an excellent novel, please read it and don't be put off by the dry-sounding protagonist and subject matter.

Films (a girly contrast)
I remember being rather disappointed by the novel The Jane Austen Book Club, so didn't expect much of the DVD but it turned out fun with interesting characters. A good evening in for middle-aged females.
But I am struggling with the film of Eat, Pray, Love, despite Julia Roberts.

The Crimson Petal and the White

2011-05-26T15:50:00.000+01:00

I thought Romola Garai and, in fact, all the cast were terrific in the TV version of The Crimson Petal and the White, a story of Victorian hypocricy and how an intelligent prostitute, Sugar, climbed a few steps up the social ladder. Her gentleman lover, William Rackham, turned out to have a mad wife and feet of clay. It was billed as a dark story about low life that Dickens could only hint of. Indeed Michael Faber, the author of the original novel, said some of his research uncovered events too sordid to write about, but this is a full-on book and he does include some graphic scenes that made me blink.
It took me a while to read the 850 page book (good price on the Kindle). What I'd missed in the TV version is that William Rackham genuninely loved his wife - and there was more room for insights into Agnes's character and the upstairs downstairs contrasts of the rich and poor, privileged and deprived/depraved. What seemed much too long were Henry Rackham's religious ravings and, sometimes, Mrs Fox's good deeds. Sugar on the other hand was a fascinating girl - Michael Faber manages write convincingly from the female point of view, not a skill shared by all male writers. I admired his writing style, original and fluent, sometimes speaking to the reader directly.
If you have a broad mind and patience, do read this book but don't give it to your maiden aunt or staid uncle for Christmas.
Here's a review of the TV version and here's another one that expresses some of what I felt.

"Room"(novel) & puppy update

2011-05-20T14:37:00.003+01:00

Otto is nearly six months old. His behaviour has much improved, though he's still over-enthusiastic about other dogs and people. I read in the handbooks that he is approaching the dog teenage years and hence stroppiness. We shall see. Now he's allowed out of the kitchen (supervised!) he spends a lot of time sleeping on my toes when I'm at the computer or watching TV, and I'm rather enjoying this cosy sensation.

Recent reading

There's been much publicity for Emma Donohue's Room, shortlisted for the Booker and the Orange, recommended by the TV Book Club, highly praised by both serious and popular critics, bloggers too. However, I wasn't sure I wanted to read it as I knew it was inspired by events like the Friztl case, where a young woman was imprisoned in a cellar for years. In this novel the narrator Jack, aged just 5, lives in a locked room 11x11 with his adored mother and is accustomed to his strange narrow life as he knows no other. When Old Nick, who he's never met, comes to the room most nights Jack goes to bed in Wardrobe and shuts the door.
The scenario is brilliantly imagined, even more so is the child's reaction to the outside world, when they reach it. Though I personally found Jack's voice irritating, distracting and inconsistent - especially to start with, as his vocabulary veers between that of a two-year-old and an articulate adult - I became accustomed to it and didn't want to put the book down. Telling it from a child's point of view softens - some might say sanitises - the harsh story and makes it almost palatable, but I didn't find it an enjoyable read. Original, very clever, well researched, yes. Enjoyable no, but then how could it be, dealing with such a difficult subject.

Here is what Emma Donohue says about Jack's language and here's an Observer review.

Lazy Lasagne & Winkworth Arboretum.

2011-05-08T18:21:00.000+01:00

I confess this is last year's wisteria as this spring it has been so dry that the show has been disappointing. At last after two rainless months we've had a deluge, thank goodness.

Above photos of Winkworth aboretum must be credited to the National Trust as, what with all the puppy's gear, I forgot to take my camera. We were just a bit too late for the bluebells and even the azaleas but it's a lovely place for a day out, lots of hilly walking, and you can take dogs on leads. Tea room not very exciting but we found a pub on the way home, one that welcomed dogs too. (How my life has changed) We should probably have splashed out for the Winkworth trees guide to more fully appreciate the rarity of some of the specimens.

Recipe for Lazy Lasagne. Ingredients: fresh lasagne pasta (dried wd do), light crème fraîche, grated cheddar, tin chopped tomatoes, minced beef, red onion, garlic, fresh or dried herbs to taste, courgettes, grilled aubergines if desired, passata (sieved tomatoes).
Grease large gratin dish and add layers of chopped tomatoes & herbs (oregano or mixed), lasagne, fried mince & onions with garlic & herbs & passata, layer of finely sliced courgettes, plus grilled aubergine slices if desired, layer of lasagne on top, then layer of crème fraîche topped with thick layer of grated cheese. Bake in moderate oven for half an hour or until top is brown & pasta cooked. Keeps warm well. You could leave out the mince and add more tomatoes, courgettes & aubergines for vegetarians. Saves all the faff of making a cheese sauce and seemed lighter.
If you want to know about the accents è is Alt +0232 and î is Alt + 0238. Can't remember how I know that but there must be a list somewhere on yr computer. Must be in Help somewhere. Listed here too.

Lilac and The Far Pavilions

2011-05-03T17:12:00.006+01:00

Top photo shows the new dog fence, keeping Otto in the back garden, which seems to have fitted in quite well. Wisteria this year isn't as good as usual, maybe it's the drought.
I'm always glad when the beech hedge above comes into leaf.

DVD The Far Pavilions, 1984, with Ben Cross, Christopher Lee, Rosanno Brazzi. Good stuff about the British Raj fighting wars in mid-Victorian times on the North-West Frontier of what is now Pakistan - ring any bells? It's a lavish production shot in India and Wales (?), including numerous extras, even elephants, but seemed slow-moving compared to modern dramas. I wasn't entirely convinced by the main actors, particularly the one who played Anjuli, so I think it would probably be better to read the original 1978 novel by MM Kaye, if you haven't already.
It's a good dramatic plot about a young white man brought up as an Indian who is torn between two or three worlds: the stuffy Raj, his regiment and his Indian friends (Omar Sharif plays his adopted father). Now an Army officer, the hero is in love with a half-Indian princess, who with her sister, is about to be married to a lecherous old Rana. So their romance is doomed on all counts.

Puppy and Spring again

2011-04-26T14:22:00.001+01:00

Belated Happy Easter from tropical England. We had a houseful of visitors including Blackberry the cat, who made it clear with tooth and claw that he did not wish to meet a dog, ever. So Blackberry stayed in the front part of the house and garden, while Otto kept to the back, his usual domain. It's possible that Otto is thinking of a career as a builder's mate as he's keen on bricks, logs and flints which he piles up in a heap on the lawn. Better than chewing the door frames, I suppose. He was also keen on retrieving pingpong balls unfortunately. Meanwhile, lying in the sun on the front porch, Blackberry kept aloof from all the sports, human and animal.

Smiled a lot while reading The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, a short novel about what happened when the Queen suddenly became a keen reader. Here's an excellent Guardian review. A suitable book for the Kindle as it is subtly amusing rather than complicated. Do read it.

Pup tries cat door, spring garden, K. Atkinson

2011-04-14T17:23:00.002+01:00

I was not sure about Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. If I'd read it quicker, I might have appreciated it more but I've been so exhausted at bedtime I've only been reading a few pages on the Kindle and dropping off. That's another thing, on the Kindle it's more effort to look back to remind yourself what's happened and who is who than it is in a real book. Anyway, this is a good complicated crime novel in a quirky well-written Atkinson way, but as the Guardian reviewer says much of the book is backstory rather than forward energy and I don't know that I'm entirely absorbed in Jackson Brodie's past life. If you've never read Kate Atkinson before, don't start with this one. If you are a fan (as I am) then you will like it, perhaps with a few reservations. Here's the Guardian review and here's the Telegraph's

Puppy, daffodils & Danish thriller

2011-04-04T16:27:00.007+01:00

Otto looks rather grown-up in the second pic, don't you think? He's much admired - people stop me in the road and ask about him. Behaviour improving slightly, though he's still super-enthusiastic and thrilled to bits to see everyone even if they've only gone out of the room for 15 minutes.

Book news:

there's to be a new biog of John le Carre according to the Telegraph He had an interesting life, so should be worth reading.

Television

Deeply missing the Danish thriller, The Killing, on Saturday nights. Look forward to the next series. Have started on Spiral - French policier about a female detective, but as yet it doesn't rock my socks or touch my heart. The Danish series depicted the homelife of the main protagonists which helped with credibility and so, however murky and quirky the plot at times, we did believe, and we wholly sympathised with the ordinary couple, Pernille and Theis, who tried to carry on despite their daughter's murder. And we cared that DCI Sarah Lund's single-mindedness about the crime meant that she might lose her lover and temporarily her son. And many of us fancied politician Troels too, with his high ideals and sculptured cheekbones. (Never thought I'd be interested in the candidates for mayor of Copenhagen.) Of course there was also the intellectual stimulus of guessing who dunnit over 20 episodes. If you missed out on The Killing, do get hold of the DVD.

Twitter fans of the Sat night BBC4 TV subtitles thriller are also bemoaning the lack of Lund woolly jumpers in Paris.

Ski holiday

2011-03-30T18:30:00.005+01:00

I only took one photo on holiday but, as you see, the view from the Méribel-Mottaret flat balcony is so stunning you don't need another - nature reserve in the foreground, Mt Vallon behind. We had brilliant sunshine every single day and every lift was open, though the snow became mushy and slushy on the bottom runs as the day wore on and we often came down the last leg in the télécabine (but don't tell anyone.) My companions were excellent fun and luckily skied the same sedate pace as I did all over the 3 Valleys. My children can hardly contain their mirth when I tell them the others called me a 'streak of blue lightning on skis' as I'm a tortoise by family standards. Still, I now feel invigorated. So lovely to ski in Spring sunshine for a change. I gather from agent there are bargain prices now.
Because of all the skiing, subsequent exhaustion and then lots of chat, I only read one book -
One Day by David Nicholls. Brilliant witty writing - I kept thinking how I wish I'd written that sentence. Trenchant depictions of scenes from modern life - you recognise some of them immediately, e.g. the overdone wedding. However, there wasn't a lot of plot and the male character was deliberately unappealing. Maybe there's been too much hype, but I felt a smidgin of disappointment towards the end.

Otto went to stay with his mother and sister, and no doubt had a lovely time. He's grown again and grown up a bit. Perhaps he'll become the Perfect Puppy after all. We're starting a new lot of classes next week.

Perfect puppy again, with quick reviews

2011-03-17T17:15:00.003Z

Don't even think about it, Otto.

Otto waits in the corner underneath the hob waiting for me to drop something when I'm cooking. He's not helping his Perfect Puppyhood: on Tuesday he broke a mug of cold tea and drank it. Yesterday I discovered he was tall enough to reach up and eat half a smart leather glove which I'd left on the kitchen table.

Film

Interesting German film - the Wave. About a teacher who tries to demonstrate autocracy and succeeds too well.

Book

Re-read The Ladies' Man by Elinor Lipman. Amusing and sharp-witted social satire.

Hare with Amber Eyes & Tiger Mother

2011-03-10T17:24:00.003Z

Just read two books on Kindle and found it a pleasant experience. However, I should like to have had a paperback of the non-fiction The Hare with Amber Eyes as I could then check back to the family tree and the photos which were too small in an electronic version. Using a set of Japanese netsuke as a link, potter Edmund de Waal traces his family history and tells us how Jewish traders, the Ephrussi from Odessa, became rich, grand and cultured bankers in Paris and Vienna, but then Hitler came to power. Full of memorable characters, it's a must read for anyone interested in art history and indeed European history.
Here's a Guardian review.

Like many Western (and Chinese) readers I was stunned and appalled by Prof Amy Chua's ambitious parenting techniques when I read The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Her daughters were not allowed to play with other children as they had to practise the piano and the violin almost all day long from the age of 5. Only straight As were acceptable in proper subjects and they were removed from school during art classes as Amy considered this a waste of time. Unrelenting and unrepentant, Amy's redeeming features are that she has a good sense of humour and likes dogs (for whom she is not ambitious) and her daughters are highly successful, charming and still love her. Though none of us would dream of going to Amy's seemingly insane lengths, it makes an interesting read. Allison Pearson reckons some contemporary British mothers might need a bit more tiger in their tank.

Puppy & South Riding

2011-03-06T22:45:00.003Z

Otto has grown enormously, behaviour a bit patchy.

South Riding
Much enjoyed the TV version though had the feeling they changed and added a few things at the end. I recently read the original novel by Winifred Holtby, good but rather long-winded for my liking with too many characters and too many viewpoints. The actors did a brilliant job of bringing them to life. Not sure if Robert Carne's love of horses, his land and his mad wife was fully developed though. (Others in the Cornflower reading group enjoyed the book more than I did.)
Later: On reflection, the problem with the book as far as I was concerned was that none of the characters was particularly appealing. In the book Miss Burton appeared earnest and priggish (apart from the Moment in Manchester) and the author writes some scenes so dispassionately that the reader judges the events at a distance, rather than being particularly involved. I believe WH was attempting to emulate Middlemarsh, but I remember caring much more about Dorothea and Lydgate than the characters in South Riding. That's why for me the TV adaptation was more successful as Sarah was depicted as a real heroine.

Perfect Puppy - Not

2011-02-19T17:57:00.002Z

Now have to barricade kitchen sofa with chairs. Good that my tatty kitchen furniture is 30 years old. Had been thinking of replacing 70s pine table, glad I didn't bother. Had to remove ancient rattan bamboo chair as it must be extra tasty, despite anti-chew spray. Bought lots more toys from pet supermarket, but they don't seem to be as interesting as sticks and fir cones, today's newspaper and, of course, shoes. Puppy school going OK, but as you see there is quite a bit of room for improvement before Otto becomes the Perfect Puppy of the training manuals. Took him for his first short walk down to the duck pond today, very exciting, he thought.

Wolf Hall

2011-02-17T17:01:00.005Z

A long haul, reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, but I'm glad I persevered. It deals with most of Thomas Cromwell's life ending, rather to my surprise, after the execution of Thomas More in 1535 with Anne Boleyn still on the throne as Henry's second Queen. Wolf Hall is actually the name of the Seymours' house which hardly features in the novel - but HM feels it's an apt name for Henry VIII's court. Apt indeed. It's hard to reconcile the artistic achievements of the age with, for example, executions for treason and the frequent burning of heretics at the stake especially those who wanted to read the Bible in English. I hadn't quite taken in that such 'heretics' were racked and burned on the orders of the great Thomas More.This novel redresses the balance in favour of Thomas Cromwell, who is usually depicted as a calculating villain in dramatisations, particularly, as far as I remember, A Man for All Seasons.
At the beginning of the novel, fortunately, we are given a list of the numerous characters. Obviously one wouldn't forget people like the King and his Queens, but I found I needed the memory check for some of the others.
The novel is told in the present tense, which I don't always care for, but have to admit that it added immediacy. One felt one was there in Tudor times in Cromwell's house, and that the characters didn't know what was going to happen next even if you, the reader, did. But what did irritate me was the fact that the author almost always referred to Cromwell as 'he', rather than by his name, so one had to keep reading back to see which 'he' she meant. This quirk, plus all the characters and time-changes - and my general exhaustion with pup at present - contributed to making this 650-page epic a slow read. But I admire the author's tour de force and indeed I ended up much admiring Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son who rose to high offices of state. Will I read the sequel, yes I will, even though I know it will end badly.
Here's a Guardian review.

Quick links - romantic, funny or serious

2011-02-10T13:50:00.001Z

The short list for the Romantic Novelists' Association awards has now been published. Congratulations to all. I enjoyed Jan Jones's Fortunate Wager and Christina Courtenay's Trade Winds, and look forward to reading others. Besides the Romantic Novel of the Year, there are awards for Historical novels, Comedy and shorter Romance.
Over 200 books were submitted for the Romantic Novel of the Year. The shortlist of six titles have been selected by a panel of 85 readers from the general public. The winner will be chosen by three independent judges – Amanda Craig, author and book reviewer; Foyle’s War actor and contributor to the blog Vulpes Libris, Jay Benedict, and fiction buyer for Waterstone’s, Janine Cook. The shortlist, in alphabetical order by author name, is:

To Defy a King Elizabeth Chadwick, Sphere
The Golden Prince Rebecca Dean, HarperCollins
Kissing Mr Wrong Sarah Duncan, Headline Review
The Jewel of St. Petersburg Kate Furnivall, Sphere
Amazir Tom Gamble, Beautiful Books
The Last Letter From Your Lover JoJo Moyes Hodder & Stoughton

TV: Absolutely loved the One Ronnie and Harry Enfield sketch about the blackberry, apple and dongle. Laughed until tears ran down my face. If you haven't seen it do watch.

On a serious note, here is a moving and inspiring clip about a man with no arms or legs who achieves amazing things.

King's Speech and shopping with Otto

2011-02-06T13:48:00.002Z

Quick link to interesting Daily Mail article about the making of the King's Speech and how they tried to get the period detail right in various locations. I agree with Logue's great aunts who said he'd never have called the Duke of York by his Christian name.

Pup and I went to Pets supermarket today. Great success. He was so nervous at first that I put him in a trolley with his rug where he was much admired by all the fellow shoppers. Owing to all this socialising, we took a long time finding, among other things: new toys, anti-chew spray, outdoor plant anti-animal spray, and, most useful, a mega-heavy ceramic water bowl for Otto who liked to take his stainless-steel bowl to bed, spilling his drinking water all over the room. He enjoyed all the attention in the supermarket and was fascinated by the live hamsters. Short of a real hamster, the most successful toy I bought seems to be a rubber ball that squeaks. No, I'm not spoiling him, honestly. (He's now trying to eat the anti-chew spray bottle)

Puppy and flowers

2011-02-02T22:30:00.007Z

Otto in chewed bookcase, books having been removed from lowest shelf!

Otto likes to collect shoes, welly boots, his bowl, his ball and his toys so that there's hardly any room in his bed. He's obviously practising retrieval. We've been to our first puppy socialisation class, quite amusing. The main thing he seems to have learnt is how to bark.

My Christmas-present amaryllises (above) are blooming and (below) I was given these charming and unusual flowers over a week ago.

Just started reading Wolf Hall. I fear it will take me a while as I keep falling asleep, maybe due to my early starts with the puppy or....

Puppy again

2011-01-28T13:10:00.004Z

Eating leaves

Otto has already eaten the corner off my kitchen bookcase. Hope he can digest wood. He is less shy and demure today than he was at first. Vet says he is a lovely healthy pup (of course).

Regular-guest Blackberry resting at Christmas. Amazing that a relatively small cat manges to occupy half the sofa, three cushions and the TV guide. I suspect he won't be as enthusiastic about Otto as everyone else is.

New Labrador Puppy

2011-01-26T13:06:00.005Z

Here is Otto, 8 weeks old. He's a bit confused at the moment, having just left his mother, brother and sisters.
He's now having a siesta after a large lunch. I was so excited this morning about his arrival that I forgot to have breakfast - a very unusual omission. Perhaps he will be good for the figure. I expect I'll bore you to bits with photos of him.

Royal brides

2011-01-24T18:14:00.001Z

Just a quick post to give a link to European royal brides past and present http://tinyurl.com/6a67k5q I haven't heard of half of the princesses, but the dresses are smashing. Bridegrooms vary.

Films

2011-01-22T10:51:00.006Z

Very busy preparing for the arrival of a new puppy next week and it has just occurred to me I haven’t blogged much lately. Here are some quickie film reviews.

The King’s Speech, excellent, loved it, though I dare say Lionel Logue wasn’t quite so bold and informal with the Duke of York in real life. As a child in the 1950s I remember that the only celebrities were the Royal Family and Winston Churchill, all held in great respect. I even owned books about 'The Little Princesses'. Was amused to see Karen from Outnumbered as Princess Margaret. Well cast, as were all the actors, except possibly Wallis who appeared too strapping. The Australian who played Edward VIII looked exactly like him. Colin F and Geoffrey Rush brilliant. Helena was good too.

The Blues Brothers, dvd. Great fun, great music, it has stood the test of time.

Harry Potter latest. Good magic but too long for me. I became a little bored during the teenage angst scenes beside Scottish lakes, but then I’m not the target audience.

I hired the romantic comedy Heartbreaker because Anglo-French friends said it was funny and I try to watch a French film occasionally so I don’t lose touch with the language completely. Have to say that it wasn’t very good though. Don’t bother with it. The hero/anti-hero wasn’t even handsome. Pity.

The Hand that First Held Mine

2011-01-09T13:03:00.009Z

The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell

The fifth book from the award-winning author of 'After You’d Gone' is another delight, weaving together the stories of two women who have never met but whose destinies are linked by secrets, deception and love. Maggie’s skill is to draw the reader into her characters’ lives, while gradually revealing the relationship that binds them. A compelling portrait of motherhood

Two intertwined strands to this novel, a ‘past affecting the present’ narrative. Absolutely loved the storyline about the 1950s-60s heroine Lexie who has unsuitable affairs and becomes a famous journalist. The modern heroine, a Finn married to an Englishman, was well drawn but she’s a new mother and her story focuses on the joys and problems of a new baby, and how this affect both parents. When I read it I kept thinking yes, brilliant, that’s how new babies are and that’s how an isolated mother would feel. But ultimately newborns are mostly only fascinating to their parents and I felt Elina’s story was not as absorbing as Lexie’s. Obviously the Costa judges must disagree as the book has won the Best Novel prize 2010.

Should you read it? Yes, do please, as Maggie O’Farrell is a brilliant lyrical writer, but it’s probably not a book for chaps. Here is a Guardian review.

Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey

2011-01-03T11:12:00.004Z

The great house Wentworth Woodhouse is in Yorkshire and was surrounded by 70 collieries employing tens of thousands of men. It is the finest and largest Georgian house in Britain and belonged to the Fitzwilliam family. It is England's forgotten palace which belonged to Britain's richest aristocrats. "Black Diamonds" tells the story of its demise: family feuds, forbidden love, class war, and a tragic and violent death played their part. But coal, one of the most emotive issues in twentieth century British politics, lies at its heart. This is the extraordinary story of how the fabric of English society shifted beyond recognition in fifty turbulent years in the twentieth century.

Charting the rise and fall of an English dynasty, this is a fascinating non-fiction read. The author delves into an extraordinary family and charts the near demise of a great house. Truth in this case certainly is stranger than fiction. Well-researched, absorbing and informative, it deals with a part of early twentieth English history I knew little about and which I believe still affects us today. I strongly recommend it, do please read it if you are even faintly interested in English history - a little US history too, even a member of the Kennedy family, the beautiful but tragic Kick, is involved.
Here is a Telegraph review.

Country house Secrets & settings

2010-12-29T22:35:00.012Z

Hothouse Flower by Lucinda Riley. A good long read, another upstairs-downstairs past-present book set around a country house in Norfolk (popular county at the moment), plus well described visits to Thailand. Timelines: 1939 and present day. I liked the historical part very much. Was sometimes distracted by the convoluted plot twists at the end, and by the way the Thai women said Ka in the middle of an English sentence, which seemed unlikely to me. But that’s too picky and not many readers will know Thai language customs, or indeed maybe customs have changed. Also I’ve used one of the plot twists myself in a past novel so am not in a position to question. Was also confused by the fact that Jasmine never knew she was adopted but if, as we are told, she was the image of her mother then she must have been conspicuous in a gardener’s cottage in Norfolk. But let’s not worry about a few minor details. As I said, it is a good undemanding holiday read and as it is in Sainsbury’s it should sell well. Obviously the publishers are marketing it as Kate-Mortonesque as the covers are similar. As far as I can gather, the author used to write under the name of Lucinda Edmonds and before that she was a successful actress.

Here we have a 'new' cover genre, it would appear. CountryhouseSecrets-Lit Revisited? Must say, I rather like it. Last night I dreamed I went to Thornfield Hall again...

Happy Christmas

2010-12-20T17:18:00.000Z

My door-wreath entirely made from stuff from the garden, though confess I spent too much on a real tree for the house. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Here's a link to a fun modern digital version of the Nativity via You Tube, Facebook, Twitter etc.

More book reviews in the new year. Thanks very much for all the comments and page views. See you soon.

Romantic Novel of the Year longlist

2010-12-16T17:02:00.003Z

To Defy a King by Elizabeth Chadwick (Little, Brown - Sphere)
The Good, the Bad and the Dumped by Jenny Colgan (Little, Brown - Sphere)
The Golden Prince by Rebecca Dean (HarperCollins)
Sons and Daughters by Margaret Dickinson (Pan MacMillan)
Kissing Mr. Wrong by Sarah Duncan (Headline)
A Perfect Proposal by Katie Fforde (Random House)
The Jewel of St. Petersburg by Kate Furnivall (Little, Brown - Sphere)
Amazir by Tom Gamble (Beautiful Books)
The Island by Elin Hilderbrand (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Queen of New Beginnings by Erica James (Orion)
The Way to a Woman’s Heart by Christina Jones (Little, Brown - Piatkus)
I Heart Paris by Lindsey Kelk (HarperCollins)
His Last Duchess by Gabrielle Kimm (Little, Brown - Sphere)
Christmas Eve at Friday Harbour by Lisa Kleypas (Little, Brown - Piatkus
The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes (Hodder & Stoughton)
Virgin Widow by Anne O’Brien (Mira)
Ten Things I Love About You by Julia Quinn (Little, Brown - Piatkus)
The Search by Nora Roberts (Little, Brown - Piatkus)
The Legacy by Katherine Webb (Orion)
Hope Against Hope by Sally Zigmond (Myrmidon

The winner will be named on Monday, March 7th 2011 at a champagne reception at The Royal Horseguards, Whitehall Place London, apparently.

The winner is usually announced at the RNA's annual lunch, so we'll see what happens. I enjoyed The Legacy by Katherine Webb, not read any of the others yet.

The Other Family by Joanna Trollope

2010-12-14T15:22:00.005Z

"Chrissie always believed that Richie had loved her for all the 23 years they’d been together, loved their three daughters, their London house and their happy existence. But if she really was the love of his life, why had he never given her the security of marriage? That belonged, still, to Margaret, back in Newcastle where Richie had started off as a musician, before he became famous. Margaret and her son Scott never saw Richie these days. They were his other family, not mentioned but always in Chrissie’s mind. And then, suddenly and shockingly, Richie dies, and Chrissie and the girls have to learn to manage without him. The presence of the other family becomes, all at once, impossible to ignore – not least because they are involved in Richie’s will. Old resentments, and feelings of abandonment and loss, have to jostle with the practicalities of money and property... "

Joanna Trollope likes to write about modern issues. This time it's a question of what happens when a chap doesn't marry the mother of his 3 daughters (aged about 22, 20,18 and still at home). Richie's daughters have been oversheltered - in fact, family life revolved around him and his music - and now he's dead they have to manage without him, while coming to terms with his will which leaves some precious possessions to his original family and Family 2 short of money. I felt that JT was back on form (hadn't enjoyed her last few books quite as much as I expected) and the dilemmas struck me as realistic and written from the heart. Only trouble was Chrissie, who had managed Richie's musical career, became rather tiresomely jealous and self-centred, and Margaret in Tyneside seemed too reserved to get to grips with. In the end all wobbly lips became suitably stiffened and the characters resolve to move on, all except the lovely cat who was quite happy with the status quo. Worth reading if you like JT which a lot of us do.

The Glass Palace

2010-12-09T17:40:00.002Z

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh.
This long epic novel, set in Burma, India and Malaya, spans a century from the fall of the last King of Burma, through the second world war to modern times. Focusing mainly on the early 20th century it explores a wide range of issues, including some of the darker sides of British colonialism. I admired the scope of this book, though have one or two small reservations. For instance, it seemed to me that some of the younger characters became obscured by their historical context. Apparently it took five years to write and there is indeed a great deal of excellent research, some of which could possibly have been pruned to make the novel slightly more digestible. Not too much heavy going though. It begins as a kind of love story but ends with more political-historical issues as Indian officers start to question why they are fighting for the British in WW2. We follow the changing fortunes of an extended Indo-Burmese family and learn about King of Burma, ignominiously exiled by the British, we also learn something of the rubber trade, and WW2 in Malaysia. It is not as spirited as Ghosh's more recent works - the brilliant Sea of Poppies concentrates more on characters - but I found The Glass Palace absorbing, enlightening and informative. A good choice for a serious book group or anyone interested in pre-war SE Asia. Glad I read it.

World Book Night 5 Mar 2011

2010-12-03T10:40:00.002Z

Over the weekend of 5 Mar 2011 one million books will be given away by an army of passionate readers to members of the public across the UK and Ireland – and you could be one of them! (let's hope it has stopped snowing by then.) Go to the website to find out more. Here's the World Book Night website and here's a Guardian link.

The following books have been chosen. I've read about a third or more of them, better get on to the others. Sounds as if it wd be a good deal for book group organisers. Probably the Blind Assassin is my favourite, I also love Kate Atkinson, oh and Miss JB. Half of the Yellow Sun, v. interesting. I must have read All Quiet on the Western Front at some point in my life. Definitely loved The Spy who Came in from the Cold at the time. What's your favourite?

Kate Atkinson - Case Histories
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
Alan Bennett - A Life Like Other People's
John le Carré - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
Lee Child - Killing Floor
Carol Ann Duffy - The World's Wife
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Seamus Heaney - Selected Poems
Marian Keyes - Rachel's Holiday
Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Ben Macintyre - Agent Zigzag
Gabriel García Márquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
Yann Martel - Life of Pi
Alexander Masters - Stuart: A Life Backwards
Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Toni Morrison - Beloved
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun
David Nicholls - One Day
Philip Pullman - Northern Lights
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
CJ Sansom - Dissolution
Nigel Slater - Toast
Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Sarah Waters - Fingersmith

Beech trees, bench and Baltimore

2010-11-23T19:15:00.002Z

The bench that was painted Kermit green hasn't faded that much but I've got used to it.

Recent Reading
Much enjoyed Anne Tyler's new novel, Noah's Compass. 'Wise, gently humorous, it's about a schoolteacher, forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life. Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching, never much liked the job so early retirement doesn't bother him. What does bother him is that he has lost the memory of what happened the first night after he moved into his spare, efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up a day later in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.'
Apart from the hospital scene, this is another novel about the gentle minutae of ordinary life. Two wives gave up on Liam and he doesn't seem to connect strongly with his daughters. He's is a quiet man who doesn't expect or give much, but he's interesting all the same. Amazing how Anne Tyler writes so brilliantly about unexceptional events. She's like Jane Austen in that sense though obviously current day Baltimore is different from C18 Bath. I'm sure people will read Anne Tyler in centuries to come.
I don't know if this new novel would appeal to the young but it appealed to me. Here's a Guardian review.

Avatar and Snowman

2010-11-14T12:23:00.010Z

Film

I’d forgotten I’d ordered the DVD of Avatar. Did I really want to watch a teenagers’ sci fi film, I wondered, however many Oscars it had won and even if it had grossed more than Titanic? Well, Sigourney Weaver is in it, of course, and actually it was rather good, though too long. Plot is that baddy military people from Earth have invaded a distant planet because it has huge deposits of a precious mineral but the peaceful locals don’t like the soldiers. (Geddit?) The vaguely human-looking locals, the Na’vi, are extra tall, blue and beautiful, and the forests are full of strange, mostly frightening creatures. The blue people plug their tails into plants in order to communicate with them, as you do. (We understand that the Na'vi represent Native American Indians and similar aboriginal people as they use bows and arrows.) The goody Earth scientists have infiltrated the Na’vi by creating look-alike avatars and wandering around in these blue avatar bodies while their own bodies lie in a scanner. Hope you are with me so far. Anyway despite the over-lengthy battles, I actually enjoyed the film and recommend it as family entertainment for anyone over 7 and under 70 - young children might find it too scary and the older viewer too StarTrekky. I’m told it’s best in 3D - the special effects are terrific. I expect everybody except me saw it months ago.

Recent Reading
Just finished The Snowman by Jo Nesbo. It’s about a serial killer and I confess I worked out who dunnit fairly early on, but then began to doubt. It’s a clever intricate book and, having once visited Oslo, I was able to recognise some of the setting. Will I read any more Jo Nesbo? No, though it was gripping in parts, inevitably there were too many degrading violent killings for my liking. Also your granny might not approve of the somewhat joyless adultery. I don’t really go for police-based crime fiction, come to think of it. If you do, you’ll probably like it.

Remembrance Day

2010-11-11T11:19:00.001Z

In memory also of my late mother who was born on 11.11.18. (photo E.Sussex CC)

Novel: Cutting for Stone

2010-11-07T16:48:00.001Z

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is a long intricate epic set mostly in Ethiopia.
“A sweeping novel–an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.
Destined to be doctors, Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between an Indian nun and a British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Forced to flee the country, Marion makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at a New York City hospital. …An unforgettable journey.”

I was fascinated by this novel, especially about the boys’ life at the hospital in Ethiopia in the 50s-70s. The orphaned twins are raised by two remarkable, sympathetic Indian doctors and have to face a country in turmoil. It’s easy to read except that we are spared no details of surgical operations, and the squeamish may have to skip a page or two every now and then. I certainly did, but I wasn’t tempted to skip anything else in this 600+ page book. It isn’t often that doctors have time to write so intimately and passionately about their profession and that adds a genuinely interesting dimension, as does the author’s brilliant descriptions of the colours, sounds and smells of Ethiopia.

Though larger in scope in that it encompasses civil war and exile, it reminds me of one of the longer John Irving novels. If I have a criticism it is that the ending, though appropriate and satisfying, seems to depend on too many coincidences, as if the author was determined that everything and every one should come full circle.

An excellent, unusual, gripping book. Obviously it deals with serious subjects but it’s not solemn or preachy. Do please read it if it sounds like your cup of tea.
Here's a Time's review.

November walk

2010-11-01T17:59:00.003Z

Can you see the dragon sitting on the wall above. I didn't spot it at the time I took the photo - must be magic left over from Hallowe'en?

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

2010-10-29T18:01:00.004+01:00

"An ancient bridge collapses over a gorge in Peru, hurling five people into the abyss. It seems a meaningless human tragedy. But one witness, a Franciscan monk, believes the deaths might not be as random as they appear. Convinced that the disaster is a punishment sent from Heaven, the monk sets out to discover all he can about the travellers. The five strangers were connected in some way, he thinks. There must be a purpose behind their deaths. But are their lost lives the result of sin? ... Or of love?"
I'd never read the short classic, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, until we discussed it in the Cornflower bookgroup recently. Despite the blurb, I don't think it was really about the bridge or the monk. Rather it is more of an essay about love in all its forms, including Brother Juniper's intellectual love of God. It seems to me to be particularly about the dangers of different kinds of obsessive love: maternal, fraternal, avuncular, dutiful love, even the love of social climbing.

As for the tragedy itself, the innocent young died along side the elderly in the random way these things happen, despite Brother Juniper’s attempts to prove a celestial plan. Apparently Thorton Wilder was inspired to write the book because of a theological argument with his strict Calvanist father, but using Brother Juniper's investigation as a framework didn't work for me. However, I enjoyed reading about Peru as a C18 Spanish colony, the posturing of the Viceroy and his snobbish court, and the six or seven main character studies, including the Abbess and the actress, and Clara.

I did like the style and the flavour too, in that one had the illusion one was reading the novel in Spanish. I usually enjoy books that transport me to a different world and this one did. Not everyone in the group felt the same, but I found it both interesting and moving.
The novel won the Pulitzer prize in 1928. A good choice for bookgroups as it's short and there's plenty to talk about.

Mid Society Bride, last rose and the Jackal

2010-10-24T15:54:00.006+01:00

Was interested in the BBC 2 Wonderland: High Society Brides last week, 20 Oct. Inevitably some brides were happy ever after, some not. Worth watching on iPlayer if you missed it and you like seeing life in a different era. All the girls had featured on the frontispiece of Country Life in their pearls, people like the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, then Henrietta Tiarks. She's still beautiful, but different.

Here's my engagement photo, a mid-soc bride. I think I made it to The Belfast Telegraph!

Before that on 20 Oct BBC2 showed a scary kidnapping story in Bolivia, This World: Hostage in the Jungle, about a female politician held hostage for about six years. She's such an articulate sophisticated woman, I don't know how she coped.

More random news. There's going to be a new promotion for 'forgotten' or unappreciated mid-list literary authors, Fiction Uncovered http://bit.ly/coBaSa

Last rose of summer and all that.

DVD: I reckon the 1973 film of The Day of the Jackal, set in 1963, has withstood the test of time. Great movie with a young Edward Fox as the emotionless assassin hired to kill General De Gaulle. A-how-he-nearly-done-it. Frederick Forthsyth wrote the book, tense gripping stuff.

'A Week in December' by Sebastian Faulks

2010-10-19T18:53:00.005+01:00

Blurb: 'London 2007. Over seven days, we follow the lives of seven characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and, a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. The novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life. Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book. ..'

Must say I loved this sophisticated satirical Dickensian novel. Other reviews were mixed. Here's The Telegraph. I only hope the nation isn't quite as amoral as depicted. If you don't understand hedge funds, futures, the recent banking crisis and matters of that ilk you might have more of a clue after reading this book. John Veals, the financier, is a vile automaton and the lit critic convincingly horrible. The author also has a go at the book(er) prize world, modern art and even modern canapés - all of which made me smile in recognition. Not sure the footballer really worked out as a character and I didn't entirely believe in the tube driver, also the other women (minor characters) were embarrassingly silly. Slight anti-climax at the end. All the same, you should definitely read this sparkling book.

Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton

2010-10-10T18:23:00.003+01:00

I found Rosy Thorton’s new book Tapestry of Love an absorbing read. It took me a couple of chapters to adjust to the pace - it's gentler than the average hectic modern novel at first, but increasingly I found myself drawn into Catherine's charmingly down-to-earth French rural world. Here’s a blurb “A ..story of how a woman falls in love with a place and its people: a landscape, a community and a fragile way of life. A rural idyll: that's what Catherine is seeking when she sells her house in England and moves to a tiny hamlet in the Cévennes mountains. With her divorce in the past and her children grown, she is free to make a new start, and her dream is to set up in business as a seamstress. But this is a lonely place when you're no longer just here on holiday. There is French bureaucracy to contend with, not to mention the mountain weather, and the reserve of her neighbours, including the intriguing Patrick Castagnol. And that's before the arrival of Catherine's sister, Bryony.” As the story moved quietly along, I had time to appreciate the wonderful descriptions of the scenery and the people, and to get to know sensible Catherine, who is not patronising towards her farming neighbours, who automatically puts others first and who does not protest at the behaviour of her pushy sister. With attention to detail, like her heroine, Rosy Thornton writes well and movingly about family relationships, loss and love.

The novel attracted numerous positive reviews in blogland, e.g. at LitLove. If you would like any of the Cévenne recipes in the novel, just contact Rosie via her website, and she’ll send you a list of them. Luckily for me she sent me both the book and the recipes. Among others, I particularly fancied the thought of raspberries with raspberry liqueur. And she gives substitutes for ingredients like wild boar that might be tricky to source in Hampshire.

A Thriller - 'Sister' by Rosamund Lupton

2010-10-07T22:32:00.004+01:00

Pic of sunny garden today. Above lower - You can just see some delicate nerines flowering among all that pink shrubby salvia. It has taken the nerines five years to appear - I reckon I planted them too deep originally. I've learnt since that the bulbs should have their necks above the ground. Nerines are mostly greenhouse plants apparently and even the hardy one needs a sheltered spot outdoors. The salvia itself looked dead for months after last cold winter but as you see it isn't. I'm cheered by these late flowering plants, aren't you?

Recent reading
Sister by Rosamund Lupton. Another Richard and Judy choice, another good read, this thriller is told in the form of a letter by Beatrice to her missing sister, as in We Need to Talk About Kevin - not that there is any connection between the two apart from the format. Here's the blurb. 'Nothing can break the bond between sisters ...When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the circumstances surrounding her sister's disappearance, she is stunned to discover how little she actually knows of her sister's life - and unprepared for the terrifying truths she must now face. The police, Beatrice's fiance and even their mother accept they have lost Tess but Beatrice refuses to give up on her. So she embarks on a dangerous journey to discover the truth, no matter the cost.'
It's difficult to write about it without giving away the plot, but it is to do with gene therapy and cystic fybrosis, something I know a little about, but not much. Rosamund's husband is a doctor, apparently, so she was able to research hospital procedures. I had a vague suspicion who dunnit but didn't guess the denouement. Well worth reading. It's been a big seller, as 'literary crime'.

Tamara Drewe - film

2010-09-30T16:58:00.003+01:00

Tamara Drewe (15) with Gemma Arterton, Tamsin Greig, Dominic Cooper
With a nod to Far From the Madding Crowd, this is an amusing bucolic frolic starring Gemma as a raunchy young journalist returning to the Dorset village of her birth to sell her late mother’s house. Three men fall in love with her, a poor but handsome handyman (Gabriel Oak obviously), a rock drummer (Sgt Troy) – the third bloke bears no resemblance to Mr Boldwood, as you will see. The film is partly stolen by two appallingly behaved bored schoolgirls, one of whom is ‘in love with’ the rock star. Much bad language and plenty of rumpy pumpy but not too graphic. The Telegraph found a moral vacuum in the film but the Guardian and Indy enjoyed it. I agree with both viewpoints. Downtrodden Tamsin’s faithless husband is a smugly successful crime author and she runs a writers’ retreat in their idyllic farm, providing endless opportunity for satire. I gather it is an adaptation of the cartoon-novel of the same name by Posy Simmonds. Lovely scenery, witty comedy with some tragedy, worth seeing or wait for the DVD.

Books and mushrooms

2010-09-22T09:32:00.005+01:00

A desk made from books in the Netherlands. More here

There have been endless discussion about e-books in the Book Trade digests. Both current new books and backlists are going out as ebooks. For instance, you can now buy all Joanna Trollope's fiction on e-books from Random House, not that I need to as I have them all in the flesh, as it were. More here. Have you bought an e-book reader? Having been Luddite at first, I think I'm tempted.

If you want to read about poor Nicholas Evans (Horse Whisperer) whose kidneys were wrecked when he ate poisonous mushrooms, see the Daily Mail article for pictures of the rare mushroom which is found in pine forests in Scotland (much more common in Scandinavia.)

Romantic Novel Poll and Amelia

2010-09-17T09:04:00.001+01:00

ROMANTIC NOVELISTS' ASSOCIATION Press Release
The Best Love Story of the Last 50 Years

'Linda Gillard's book Star Gazing topped a poll to find the most romantic novel of the last 50 years. She beat Barbara Taylor-Bradford's classic book, A Woman of Substance and Trisha Ashley's Every Woman for Herself, who were both runners-up. The poll was organised by Woman's Weekly in conjunction with the Romantic Novelists' Association and the awards were presented at a champagne breakfast by best-selling author and Chair of the RNA, Katie Fforde.' Many congratulations, Linda. Linda was a Transita author too so am basking at a distance in her reflected glory!

Here is the longlist: A Horseman Riding By, A Woman Of Substance, An Absolute Scandal - Penny Vincenzi, Bridget Jones' Diary, Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett, Chocolat, Consider The Lily Elizabeth Buchan, Every Woman For Herself Tricia Ashley, Light A Penny Candle, Miss M and Me Jemme Forte, Penmarric - Susan Howatch, Possession, Riders, Scarlet Ribbons - Emma Blair, Someday, Somewhere Eileeen Ramsay, Star Gazing - Linda Gillard , Tell It To The Skies Erica James

Far Pavilions, French Lieut's Woman, The Island, Labyrinth

The Nearness Of You - Mike Hutton, The Nonesuch - Georgette Heyer

The Other Boleyn Girl, The Rector's Wife - J Trollope, The Shell Seekers, The Tamarind Seed - Evelyn Anthony, Tilly Trotter, Touch Not The Cat - Mary Stewart

Film

I order DVDs so far in avance from Love Film that when they actually arrive I've forgotten all about them. Sometime this is a good surprise, occasionally not. But we did much enjoy Amelia, the life of Amelia Earhart starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere. I remembered that Amelia was a pioneer of early flying, the first woman across the Atlantic etc, but fortunately I didn't remember much more, so this film was all the more gripping. Hilary Swank actually looks rather like Amelia and is well cast. Do watch it. I'm not giving any links as the less you know in advance the better.

Swedish Connections: Girl who played with Fire and a historical romance.

2010-09-10T18:59:00.009+01:00

I wanted to love the film of The Girl who Played with Fire (in Swedish with subtitles) but maybe I wasn't in the mood, maybe it tried to encompass too much of the plot, maybe there were too many characters, maybe the book was just so long and intricate that inevitably much of the sutbtleties were lost on screen. I worked out which character was who and why they were doing what they did, but I'm not sure anyone who hadn't read the books would have had a clue what was going on. One of the many things I liked about the novels was the detail about Salander hacking blithely into everyone's computers, but that was glossed over somewhat in the film. I did think that Noomi was good, a fascinating face, the other actors were fine, but there wasn't much time for character development and somehow Salander's concern for the trafficked girls was also missing. It will be interesting to see what Hollywood makes of it all - even more subtleties lost, I suspect, while concentrating on violence'n'sex and Volvo car chases.

Had a problem finding the film in the first place as I thought m'computer said it was on in Basingstoke but I'd failed to notice that my 'favourite Vue cinema' had mysteriously changed itself to Fulham Road, London, so we had a wasted trip and tour of B'stoke multi-storey car park (an experience in itself, maybe they should set a film there.) So next evening we tried Winchester, lovely cinema, but roads mysteriously closed on the way home due to night road works and hence long detours. Maybe that's what made me feel so jaded. Can't stand people who tailgate along country roads in the dark - could have been that tall blond Swedish pyschopath after us.

In contrast, earlier last week I was cheered by the interesting Swedish background of Christina Courtenay's historical romance Trade Winds, with a suitably sexy and swashbuckling Scottish hero and sympathetic unusual heroine. Well-researched and a good read - I wish her and her publisher Choc Lit every success.

American reading

2010-09-06T18:24:00.009+01:00

The Help by Kathryn Stockett.. Brilliant, amusing, page-turning, and also frightening and shocking in its description of the casual racism in the American South in the 1960s. Here's a blurb. 'Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver. Some lines will never be crossed. Aibileen is a black maid: smart, regal, and raising her seventeenth white child. Yet something shifted inside Aibileen the day her own son died. Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is the sassiest woman in Mississippi. But even her good cooking won’t protect Minny from the consequences of her tongue. Twenty-two-year-old white Southern girl Skeeter returns home with a degree and a head full of hope, but her family will not be happy until there’s a ring on her finger. The three women are drawn together and begin a dangerous project.' Do read it, please.

To Kill a Mockingbird. A re-read of the famous Pulitzer prizewinning novel on the same subject, set in 1930, published in 1960. At first I hesitated with the Southern dialect, but soon became absorbed in this moving book. Gregory Peck starred in the film and kept coming into my head. Maybe I'll hire the DVD. How brave it was of Harper Lee to write the book at the time.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. Didn't get along with this one quite so well. The writing is brilliant, almost too showy, in that one is distracted from the story by the sparkling style. I liked the middle where the student heroine becomes part-time nanny to a beautiful mixed-race baby adopted by a white couple, but somehow I prefer a novel with more narrative drive. A coming of age story that many have others have praised, though, and it was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Just had a quick flick through the reviews - the critics seem to have admired it more than we ordinary readers do.

Cooking salmon and the Bouncy Castle

2010-09-01T07:58:00.005+01:00

Somewhat exhausted after son's wedding anniv party held here which included 22 children and their parents, hence bouncy castle above, star guest.

As part of my contribution to the catering, I bought a 2.7 kg whole salmon - even the shopping was tricky as tried 4 or 5 local supermarkets who said either there was not enough time to order (Waitrose) or they wouldn't have one (everybody else except Morrisons who only promised giants) but then on Thursday I found two great fish sitting on the counter at my local Tesco's. Reader, I chose the pretty one.

Had to cut it in half to cook, one half in my own fish kettle and one in my neighbour's. I dimly remembered a foolproof poached-salmon if-eating-cold recipe but had thrown away my old tattered Katie Stewart cookbook, so had to check internet. Question was (1) do you boil the water before you put the fish in, then bring back to boil, simmer for a couple of minutes, take off heat and let it cool in liquid for several hours. Or (2) do you bring the water slowly to the boil with fish already in the fish-kettle/pan, then immediately take it off the heat and let it cool in the liquid. I chose the latter and it worked fine. I then had another panic about the numbers invited so also bought a whole huge fillet and this too poached beautifully by method 2. Also at last minute had to borrow enormous plate from neighbour as reassembled whole salmon measured 24 inches. Disguised joins and neck bits with cucumber and frilly lettuce, scattered more about, and the result was one of my rare domestic goddess moments. Phew. (You can borrow fish kettles from Waitrose and Morrisons, by the way, and I think next time it would be more restful just to buy the whole fillet even if it isn't quite as spectacular as a whole huge fish.)
Later: good news, had not thrown Katie Stewart Times cookbook away after all. Just found it in four or five pieces in one of my bookshelves where I keep old cookbooks (funny that - trouble is, my organizational systems are hit and miss) Her method for cold salmon is 'Fill any pan with sufficient cold water to cover fish, remove it before bringing water to boil, add salmon, bring back to boil and boil hard for exactly two minutes, cover with tight-fitting lid and leave for 12 hours or until quite cold. This works for any size of salmon or salmon cut.'

Fascinating Aida and films

2010-08-25T17:00:00.004+01:00

I don't know if you've ever been to a show by Fascinating Aida but they're very witty in a sophisticated but sometimes rude and raunchy feminist way. Here's an amusing video about flights to Ireland for 50p which, surprise, surprise, turn out to cost a bit more. Now I wonder which airline they can be thinking of? The star Dilly Keane is the sister of one of my friends, so I feel vicariously proud of her talents. Does contain strong language, sorry.

Films
Watched The Remains of the Day and enjoyed it just as much the second (third?)time. In a lost world pre-WW2, Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) is a perfect English butler, efficient, self-effacing, almost religious in the practice of a profession where everybody knows their place in the hierarchy. He is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him - oblivious, for instance, of his naive aristocratic employer's political leanings. Stevens is also unaware of his own feelings for the housekeeper Mrs Kenton (Emma Thompson) The novel by Kashuo Ishiguro won the Booker prize.

Up in the Air did star George Clooney which was a plus, but otherwise it seemed a fairly forgettable film. George travels around the US firing people 'for businesses who don't have the balls to do it themselves.' Finally it dawns on him that this isn't a wonderful career.

Garden washed out but in the occasional dry period the new flower bed looks quite jolly.

Battle of Basing reenacted Aug 28 weekend

2010-08-22T11:18:00.003+01:00

Visited the site of Basing House today which has just been reopened after restoration thanks to a lottery grant. Click for the history of the house. There is to be a reenactment of the battle this coming weekend, details on website.
As there is so little left of the house itself (see aerial photo) it is an archaeological site that's perhaps more interesting historically than visually, but there are helpful ~~signs~~ interpretation boards, and the great barn has an atmospheric audio guide to the battle with sound effects. The knot garden is attractive too. The museum isn't open yet so we were given free tickets for another visit. Worth going if you live in the area or if you are especially interested in the English civil war. (photo credits Hampshire County Council)

Recent reading

2010-08-09T16:29:00.006+01:00

Cornfields and my August garden. I've always loved geraniums since our time in Geneva where they are taken very seriously.

Many thanks to LindyLouMac in Italy for her review of Tropical Connections, and for taking the trouble to post it all over the place. So very pleased she enjoyed it.

Just finished an interesting novel by Judith Lennox, The Heart of the Night, set in WW2, partly in what is now Poland and was then East Prussia. Have decided I now rather like historicals about this period. As one might expect from Judith, the research is thorough but she doesn't overwhelm us with it. A good read. Long, and suitable for reading in bed over a number of evenings.

Whereas I am exhausted with the Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. This seems to be a series of philosophical essays, along with thoughts about Anna Karenina, tied loosely together by a minimal plot. Much of the book is narrated by an intellectual concierge in a smart Paris block who hates everybody except a charming rich Japanese gentleman and a Portuguese cleaning woman. The rest of the musings are by an unlikely 12-year-old girl who also despises everyone French, even the cats. Just when you hope there is going to be some sort of movement in the story, the author enquires What is the purpose of Art? It's an intelligent but so far negative book. Is it a novel? Not really. I haven't finished it yet but I'm not confident anything much will happen. It has sold very well in France and some people love it. Here is a positive review, and here's a less enthusiastic one.

Evening Balloon

2010-08-03T19:25:00.005+01:00

Do you worry about your virtual friends as well as your neighbours? I do. For instance, what has happened to Cheshire Wife? Why hasn't she posted for ages?
I feel I have a split life, as ever. There's family life, village life, Hampshire lady life (I do try with my garden & even play bridge now and then), novelist's life and then there is e-life. I see people making friends on Twitter but if they actually met would they have anything in common, I wonder? I think I would get on OK with several bloggers because we could always talk about reading 'n all. Have you ever become face to face friends with a virtual friend?
I wish the internet had been invented when I was a diplomat's wife because then I wouldn't have felt so isolated at times.
Sorry, random thoughts rather than a considered post.
Here's a link on the subject, thanks to Liz Fenwick and Twitter (which I'm not very good at.)

Summer read

2010-07-31T20:09:00.012+01:00

Read a gripping thriller, The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse. I understand this has been featured on the TV Bookclub, so there you go, must be OK. Should you need another recommendation here is a review from the Independent (contains spoiler). I much enjoyed the novel. Trouble is, I became so involved that I read until 1a.m., skipping through the later chapters because I was anxious about the heroine. This is a pity as Lucie W is a good writer and so I probably missed some interesting descriptive writing.

Much of the book is set on the (even) quieter western end of the Isle of Wight in winter. I have visited the I of W fairly frequently and agree about its old-fashioned charms, though I think the heroine was unfair in describing Cowes as having dusty dress-shops with demure mannequins. Believe me, Cowes shopping is the height of trend compared to most seaside places.

Reverting to the plot: Course afterwards I thought why didn't the besieged heroine just call the police, but maybe that would've been explained if I'd read the book more slowly. Anyway they might not have believed her, as so often happens in fiction. The Guardian described it inaccurately as modern D du M, but I'd say it was more Nicci French, only scenic.

Walking - went for an excellent walk around the river at Itchen Abbas. So beautiful. Charming to see kids paddling and even cycling (new idea?) in the river.

Gardening. Not great this year. Friend said it's amazing you manage to make your garden look so good on your blog. Backhanded, I thought.

Tropical Connections

2010-07-26T10:43:00.002+01:00

Tropical Connections is now out in the USA in paperback. Glad to say copies were sold at the RNA Conference too.

I was given or bought some good women's fiction at the Conference: Starting Over, by Sue Moorcroft (interesting original hero and heroine), A Single to Rome by Sarah Duncan (great setting, excellent chick lit), and another one set in Italy which I enjoyed Other People's Secrets by Louise Candlish. This featured some middle-aged characters, with darker family problems.

I've just started an Elizabeth Bowen. How writing styles have changed. She, the author, sits back and gives her opinion of the characters. Also the print was so small in those early paperbacks, wasn't it. Strange to think that books can be almost the same price as birthday cards these days.

Normandy part 2

2010-07-19T17:46:00.002+01:00

Back to our Normandy trip. Rouen is holding an Impressionist Art Exhibition. (Click on Anglais if this link appears in French.) Ends 26 September, check website for opening days and times.

We saw some stunning Pissarros (as above.) I was also rather taken by the work of Leon Lemaitre, left. You can google some more of his pictures, but the originals are much more impressive than on line. The details of people struggling through the rain touched me.

If you're anywhere near, it's an exhibition worth visiting, though the gallery is right in the middle of this large and busy city so it may be a dodgy drive.

Greenwich Conference

2010-07-12T18:58:00.009+01:00

Fantastic action-packed weekend at the RNA Conference at the former Royal Naval College, Greenwich, see reports on the RNA blog. All the numerous talks I attended were inspiring, including a bracing one by Joanna Trollope who disapproves of pink girly book covers. I dare say a lot of us do, but They who pay the piper call the tune. Fun to gossip with writing friends in such lovely surroundings (the conferences are held annually at uni campuses - not often quite that glamorous.)

Taking an break from intellectual pursuits, I decided to walk to the Royal Observatory, bit daunting as the afternoon was very hot, the path crowded and, it turned out, uphill. Too many tourists around to have space to take a photo apart from the first above which looks more or less North along the 0 degrees meridian of longitude. On the horizon, you can see the 02 millennium dome to the right and the office towers of Canary Wharf to the left, with the historic white naval college buildings just beyond the dry grass of the park. I'll definitely go back at a less hot, less crowded time of year.

From Waterloo station, I arrived via the macho modern Canary Wharf and the slightly quaint Docklands Light Railway, but decided to take the scenic hydrofoil taxi along the Thames on the return - hence the photo of the Tower of London all wrapped up.

Feel very happy now back in peaceful rural Hampshire.

Northern Normandy Part 1

2010-07-05T17:48:00.009+01:00

Just back from a brilliant trip to France, the area between Dieppe and Rouen. Surprisingly pleasant ferry from Newhaven. Due to its early departure, stayed night before in the Premier Inn (vg) and ate at the Brewers Fayre (!). Not at all bad.

Wonderful hidden chateaux and manor houses in Northern Normandy, all with luxuriant gardens. Exactly where they all were is rather a blur in my mind as we were driven around by hospitable Anglo-French friends, but I managed to find some websites to go with the photos.

Above the glorious Chateau de Herbouville, with its impressive mixed vegetable and flower garden all designed in little squares and diagonals. It's open afternoons in July-August. Below roses at St Marguerite sur Mer, which has a memorial to allied soldiers who died in the abortive Dieppe Raid of 1942 under Lord Lovat.

The Chateau de Miromesnil above, birthplace of de Maupassant, has a magnificent park with English-style walled garden.

Parc de Moutiers below was designed by Lutyens, with a Jekyll garden, but sadly it was closed when we passed. We did see the nearby church perched above the sea at Varengeville sur Mer.

Lots of unbelievably delicious food, of course, including juicy oysters bought at the quayside. Apparently the lack of an R in the month doesn't matter as regards these particular oysters.

I've often visited the western half of Normandy to see the WW2 beaches and the Bayeux tapestry, and Monet's garden further south (it's all in my novel Paris Imperfect!), so it was interesting to see this verdant, unspoilt, uncrowded area. Of course, Rouen was pretty busy, more on that city and art next time.

Summer fields and books

2010-06-24T19:01:00.003+01:00

Books
Death comes to the Archbishop
It is some years since I read Willa Cather and I couldn’t remember much about her. I feared at the start that this priestly travelogue might not be that interesting, but very soon changed my mind and became involved in the astonishingly long and brave journeys. I'm afraid I had to look out the atlas to see where New Mexico was and then I googled Albuquerque and the mountainous pueblos, and so the novel gave me an insight into a world I knew nothing about.
But it wasn’t exactly a novel, more of a series of stories and anecdotes, simply but movingly told.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Amazing book, a rough guide to science, erudite and well written. I find my mind glazing over during some chapters about atoms and particle physics (and have to admit Einstein is beyond me) but e.g. those on volcanoes and earthquakes are fascinating. Don't read this book if you are a worrier because he says we could easily be destroyed by a random meteor like the dinosaurs. Even if meteors continue to miss us, Yellowstone Park, which is one enormous volcano, could one day errupt and finish us off. Tokyo is due a major earthquake but even if you don't live there earthquakes can happen absolutely anywhere. Moral appears to be eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die. This book will take me ages to read, but maybe I'll just dip in and out.

Tennis
Can't do much at the mo as am busy watching Wimbledon, with a bit of football now and then. Just recovering from the Mahut/Isner match.

Kristin in French, JG Farrell's Troubles, hydrangea

2010-06-18T18:14:00.003+01:00

Novel
Just finished reading Troubles by JG Farrell (published 1970 and winner of the ‘Lost’ Booker prize)
‘Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland - to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancée he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. The Major's engagement is short-lived, but, for want of anywhere else to go, he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Surrounded by gentile old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer. So hypnotic are the faded charms of the Majestic, the Major is almost unaware of the gathering storm. But this is Ireland in 1919 - and the struggle for independence is about to explode with brutal force.’
Actually there’s not as much as I expected about the Troubles, it’s more about the blinkered, narrow world of the Anglo Irish dying of muddled ennui in this dying hotel, (though the author does anchors us with clippings of what’s happening in the rest of the world). I loved so many of the brilliantly written funny descriptions it’s hard to single them out but Farrell is strong on cats and pigs as well as humans. If I have a criticism it is that the Major is an awfully limp sort of main protagonist and you long for him to do something, anything. But maybe he, the hotel and its crazy owner, are deliberately used as symbols of isolated decline. If you’re interested in the period and like comic tragedy, it is worth reading. I can't say how accurate it is historically and I hope readers don't assume all the Anglo Irish of the day were like JG Farrell's Edward Spencer. To me, the world depicted doesn’t have the immediacy of, say, Molly Keane (MJ Farrell), but then she was writing about people she knew well. By the way, I don't remember her characters being so distant from or anti the locals – whereas many of JG Farrell’s are vile, upper class John-Bull caricatures, like the frightful planters he depicted in The Singapore Grip. But at least the Major is sympathetic to the plight of the Irish.
I thought The Siege of Krishapur was JGF’s best book (despite the silly memsahibs). Sad he died so young.

Film
'I've loved you so long.' (Il-y-a longtemps que je t'aime) Watched a gritty DVD over the last two nights - too bleak to watch all at once. Kristin Scott Thomas plays a woman just released after 15 years in prison, a brilliant performance, in French with subtitles. Here's a good Times review. I thought the denouement threw up a hole in the plot, but it didn't spoil this moving, totally unsentimental film about the healing power of family affection.

Media
Alexandr Orlov, the meercat, is writing his Simples family history, to be published in time for the Christmas market. (Non UK residents should know this is a semi-cute advertising character.) Apparently the book will tell how Alexandr's family moved from Africa to Moscow.

Flax, film and my cousin Rachel

2010-06-10T12:00:00.003+01:00

I was a little late is photographing the blue fields of flax/linseed. I've only just discovered, by the way, that they are the same thing. I often forget to take my camera with me so I miss perfect shots and a week later the magic scene has faded or the flowers have dropped. Perhaps it was the hot dry weather that caused the late Spring flowers to disappear so quickly this year. Am busy sweeping up the wisteria petals every day.

Books and Film
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier. This is a beautifully written semi-Gothic psychological thriller. Not sure why it was considered a romance. I must have read it at school but didn’t remember a thing about it luckily as I was gripped this time and could hardly bear to put it down. I admire the way the plot, with its unreliable young male narrator, unfolds layer by carefully confusing layer and we are left unsure as to who is the villain. We don’t even see Rachel very clearly as her character is distorted by Philip’s emotional viewpoint. Sally Beauman in her introduction considered this to be a feminist novel depicting a (Victorian?) woman at the mercy of men with money, and in turn they are victims of her charms. A very interesting and impressive book. I’ll probably read it again fairly soon and make notes.

I'd been looking forward to the DVD of Les Visiteurs, about a time-travelling knight who appears in modern France and quite naturally does not behave in a politically correct manner. This is absolutely hilarious, I told the family, but none of us found it nearly so amusing the second time around. Ah well.

On the other hand, I am enjoying Small Island by Andrea Levy much more on a second read. The difference, and I hate to admit this, is that the TV film brought it to life for me.

Recent reading

2010-05-29T17:28:00.009+01:00

The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier. Professor Joy Harkness has had a successful career so far, but her private life is so private she has very few friends in New York or elsewhere. She’s offered a brilliant job at Amherst College in the depths of the Massachusetts countryside where she rashly buys a derelict Victorian house. I liked 48-year-old Joy. Her slow transformation from dry long-divorced childless WASP professor to warm, much more outgoing woman is told in the first person with self-deprecating humour but, for me, the novel leans slightly too much towards solemn life-craft at the end. And sometimes maybe there’s a little too much detail about paint colours. Was a bit worried about the (robin's egg) blue ceilings.

So Joy is a feminist who has failed, so far, to connect to her female side and she learns it’s OK to care about clothes and wallpaper(!), and, more important, be part of a community. Against her instincts, she finds she can cope with looking after other people’s children and even a dog. As far as potential lovers are concerned, she meets some randy profs and one unusual treasure of a handyman who teaches her to value craft and style - style is a feature in the book. In turn she tries to improve his life and wrest him away from his mother. I was kind of disappointed that the novel ended so suddenly. I enjoyed it a lot though, loved the characters and setting, and looked forward to its company every evening. Here are some links. Diane Meier, Women Over 40 Rock (?) Moral of the story is: it is never too late to bloom, but, you know, maybe I appreciated the book more because I didn't think about its earnest themes and messages while I was reading.

Cheated by posting last year's garden pics

A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve. I enjoyed the descriptions of life in Kenya in the 1970s, especially the mountain climbing, but, trouble is, I didn't much care for the rather tiresome main character nor her doctor husband. There's a misleading quote on the back of the book which implies it has a thriller element, but it doesn't. It's about a marriage with problems and in the end I didn't mind what happened to the protagonists.

The Chaemleon's Shadow by Minette Walters. Picked this up second-hand. An interesting psychological thriller. A good read - and topical, I'm sad to say - but parts of the denouement were distressingly sordid. Minette is bound to be gritty, of course. Here's a blurb 'Having received severe head injuries in Iraq, Lt Charles Acland cuts all ties with his former life and moves to London. Disfigured and alone, he sinks into a private world of anger, guilt and paranoia. But then he attracts the attention of local police investigating three murders.'

Wisteria, lilac, peony and drama

2010-05-22T15:50:00.003+01:00

Blind panic at 7.15 pm last Wednesday. Just before I was due to go out with girlfriends, I realised my wallet wasn't in my handbag. Quickly ransacked house, could not check my car as son had taken it to the station (of course if it was there, the car would be broken into, I reckoned gloomily) Returned at midnight, searched car, no wallet, so I tossed and turned all night. I'd last used it at the village shop at midday that day but knew they would have rung me if they had found it on the counter. Where the XXXX was it and how many cards would I have to cancel? Wd have to borrow cash etc etc. Rang shop at five past eight next morning. Owner said that a delivery man had just that second handed it in. So I must have stupidly dropped it and it had sat unnoticed outside the village shop on the ground for 20 hours. There's only space for about four cars in this next-to-street parking and people usually amble up and down the village all day. Shop owner said she always knew it was quiet on Wednesday afternoons here.
Restores one's faith in human nature.

Film: Life is Beautiful

2010-05-18T17:12:00.014+01:00

Film: Life is Beautiful (1997, in Italian with subtitles.) This is has been called a Holocaust comedy and, as such, I found it mystifying but ultimately moving, thanks to the brilliant child actor and, of course, history. The first half set in Tuscany is clownish banana-skin comedy. Apparently Roberto Benigni, writer, director and star, is much loved in Italy, but to me his is a silly rather than witty humour that doesn’t translate. Perhaps he’s the Italian version of a 50s cheeky chappie or born again Charlie Chaplin.

Story is that before the second world war, Jewish Benigni goes to Arezzo, works as a waiter, opens a bookstore, marries a beautiful upper-class girl. This is all told with farcical jokes and fast-paced slapstick - you feel you are watching Laurel & Hardy.

Five years on, we discover they now have a child of four. Then the family is arrested and taken to a German camp, so the mood changes completely. But the father persuades the child that the camp is all a great game where people who say they are hungry lose points and the winner will get a tank. I admit that the plot is ingenious in this respect, and the film improves. The ending is half happy, half very sad.

Should you watch it? Well, perhaps you should, but I’d skip most of the first half.
Here’s a review. Some people love this film, some say it diminishes those who suffered. Many say it depends on how you feel about Benigni, but I reckon it is saved by the wide-eyed child who, as I said, is both convincing and appealing without being saccharine. The film won three Oscars and other awards, which was why I chose it at random from the DVD rental company without knowing what it was about.

Typical country scene with not-so-typical history

2010-05-11T19:11:00.007+01:00

Last Monday bank hols we had intended to visit the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum north of Chichester but when we got there eventually (having entered the wrong coordinates and unfairly blamed our bossy new SatNav lady), we discovered the rest of the world was visiting too because there was some sort of an event with tractors and steam rollers. So wimpishly I backed out from the packed car park and visited the famous West Dean gardens instead next door. So glad we did so as it was fantastic, a beautiful and relatively peaceful park with amazing restored Victorian greenhouses just full of gorgeous plants (see pic of specimen). The series of walled gardens are a veg growers dream and the apple trees were shaped into globes and hoops which made me all the more conscious of my unkempt trees here which, incidentally, are blossoming wildly at the mo, so it will be apple crumble for lunch next winter as usual.

Where was I? Oh yes, in order to avoid death duties Edward James, the former owner of the house, left much of his fortune to the West Dean Foundation which was to be an educational foundation for the creative crafts and you can, for instance, do a course in metal work or painting there. The house itself looks conventional enough but its owner was far from conventional as you'll see if you click on the links. Amazingly, in complete contrast to this charmingly typical large English estate, he created a Surrealist sculpture park in the Mexican jungle, Las Pozas. For more history of West Dean click here

More photos to follow eventually. Stuck on camera at present. Photo credits West Dean.

Garden & Mr Chips

2010-05-02T17:26:00.003+01:00

The moving 2002 version of Goodbye Mr Chips was almost ruined by the ridiculous amount of ads on ITV3 last night. Martin Clunes was excellent in the title role and I liked the actress who played his wife. Couldn't think why she was so familiar then it dawned on me she was Miss Ruby from the drapers in Candleford (as in Lark Rise To...)

Have just re-read the original Mr Chips novel which is so short it is almost a short story. In this sympathetic film the producers have added much, including a storyline about bullying which must still seem realistic to those chaps who went to public schools as recently as the 1960s. Mr Chips himself was born in the mid 1800s and dies as a very old man in the 1930s. Of course I wept, despite the ads and despite the fact I've seen various film versions before.

Many of the outdoor locations were shot at the school my sons attended, so that made it all the more interesting for us.

Garden blooming at last though fear have lost a few plants in the cold.

Books, Gardens and Tom Jones

2010-04-25T09:47:00.017+01:00

Garden: Yesterday we visiting Houghton Lodge gardens near the charming small town of Stockbridge, Hampshire, with its posh shops and galleries. Houghton Lodge has three alpacas and a trout stream, an old walled garden with ancient knarled espalier fruit trees and a hydroponicum. A beautiful unusual old house, once a fishing lodge. Here's their website, which explains about hydroponics - growing plants without soil. At Houghton some of the flowers are in white gutters hanging from the greenhouse wall and apparently city dwellers should be growing their own veg in one of these special systems in future (Hm?) Incidentally, I learned that orchids are in transparent pots because their roots like the light.

Reading. Just finished Small Wars by Sadie Jones. It's a tense story set in Cyprus in the 50s and has, she reckons, resonance with current wars. Hal is a typical Army officer of the day, it seems at first. His beautiful wife Clara and the twins accompany him to Cyprus, where atrocities on both sides of the conflict start to have an effect on the closeness of their marriage. Here's a review.

Sadie Jones doesn't shy away from describing bloody battles and indeed much of the narrative is from Hal's point of view. The book is well researched. She does get some tiny details of e.g. military etiquette wrong and I think it is brave of her to write about a war and a period that many alive will still remember.

I used to know a great many traditional Army officers and, on reflection, I'm not entirely sure that Hal would behave as he did. A good if harrowing read, but not quite as gripping as The Outcast. I'll definitely read her next book.

Saw Tom Jones at the film club. The DVD was somewhat blurry, but I still enjoyed the young Albert Finney. Animal lovers might find its rollicking hunting scene too gory. Eating scenes great fun and full of gusto, of course.
Must admit the village hall seats are agony if it's a long film like this one. Better on the sofa perhaps, with Tom?

Spring & Cooking

2010-04-17T17:42:00.011+01:00

Spring at last. Isn't it wonderful?

Cooking at the mo as family etc here this weekend. Decided to try Jamie Oliver's Chicken Tagine. Sainos supermarket lady saw me examining the displayed cookbook and explained they had Moroccan preserved lemons in stock, phew, and the prog had only aired the night before. Bought said lemons at vast expense but to me they tasted not v.exciting. Cd've saved myself £4 by adding lemon juice. We'll see what the final deeply authentic dish tastes like. I had to watch the recipe on Channel Four 'catch-up' in order to check the ingredients, but basically you rub and marinate the chicken with cumin, coriander seed and ginger, and some olive oil for 2 hrs, fry chicken, fry onions and garlic too, add chicken stock, pinch of saffron, plus stoned olives and 3 small preserved salted lemons. I also added aubergines because I had some around, and stoned dates because another recipe suggested them. Then you simmer the whole lot slowly for 1 1/2 hrs. I didn't buy Jamie's latest book, Jamie Does Spain, Italy, Morocco, Sweden Greece & France, because I have 50 cookbooks, but maybe I will in the end, because he is such a good original simple cook.
It was fascinating watching him go around the Marrakech market collecting tiny slices of various ingredients in his stew pot/tagine and then taking the pot to the baker's oven (or bathhouse-stove embers?) to be cooked. I approve of main courses that can be prepared in advance like tagines, which sound so much more glamorous than stew.
A week later: Yes the recipe was a great success. I do think the preserved lemons added an unusual taste which made it different but still delicious. Went down very well with the family. Next day we had a drinks party in the sun. For this event I'd ordered some of the food from Waitrose Entertaining and made the rest. Fortunately the young helped prepare and serve, and then they sat down and ate an enormous lunch. Took me a week to recover from all this catering and excitement.

Film, books, TV and, yes, the garden

2010-04-09T18:47:00.010+01:00

Enjoyed the film, An Education. A clever young schoolgirl learns more than she bargains for from an attractive older man who turns out to be even dodgier than she thinks. Set in the early sixties, with good atmosphere. Kind of a comedy, but more of a cautionary tale. 'Jenny' is so anxious to escape from suburbia that she goes along with his wiles. Excellent, convincing acting all round. The film was based on a memoir by the journalist Lynn Barber, whose unsophisticated parents must have been charmed and even more conned by the chap than their daughter. By the way, it's clear she went to a school (Lady Eleanor Holles, Hampton) that expected more from girls than most did in those days. Here's an interview with LBarber, but don't read it before you have seen the film.

Recent Reading

The Colour by Rose Tremain. 'In the mid 1800s Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from Norfolk to New Zealand in search of new beginnings and prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When the unpleasant Joseph finds gold in the creek he is seized by a secretive obsession with the supposed riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others are violently rushing to their destinies.' Eventually Harriet attempts to find him and we learn why Joseph was so keen to leave England in the first place.

I thought this was a terrific novel, do read it. Must now look out for more books by Rose Tremain.

Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall is a first novel told from the unreliable viewpoint of an unhinged young woman. Kitty has lost a baby and hasn’t recovered her mental balance. She’s sympathetic and I found it an interesting read.

I’m probably the only person in the world who isn’t crazy about Isabel Dalhousie and The Sunday Philosophy Club. Alexander McCall Smith’s writing is charming as ever, but I never quite believe in Isabel as she sounds so old and fusty for her age. And I was annoyed by her actions in visiting a bereaved mother in such a tactless and intrusive manner.

I love Edinburgh, but wasn't convinced by the storyline of Doors Open by Ian Rankin, so put it down. Perhaps it just isn't my thing. Don't suppose he will mind.

Enjoyed a nostalgic wallow with Frank Sinatra last week on TV. And we all roared with laughter at Outnumbered last night. Those children are so scarily real and hilarious.

Delighted that Spring has sprung at last. I keep pottering round the garden seeing what has survived the winter, still have fingers crossed about one or two shrubs and not sure about the 'hardy' dahlia yet.

Happy Easter

2010-04-04T11:17:00.000+01:00

Happy Easter. Not exactly a host of golden daffodils or anything else today. Spring very late this year in Hampshire.

Will report on books read and films seen soon when coast clearer.

Tropical Connections paperbk available

2010-03-28T16:26:00.001+01:00

The paperback edition of Tropical Connections is now available, current best price at WH Smiths, but Book Depository deliver free world wide.
Art historian Claire takes a job on an obscure tropical island, cataloguing Buddhist art, and finds her new exotic surroundings both fascinating and challenging. Her personal life becomes confused too – ex-pat banker Howard loves her, but she falls for elusive Australian Drew. Then she becomes involved with the darker side of island life and finds herself in some danger.
This is a novel about independence and interdependence, about women who have or achieve a certain courage in a different world.

US Booklist Review "As in her previous books, Vereker expertly explores a world of tight-knit British expatriates as well as the hazards and joys of a single woman abroad."

Freaky film and an absorbing ghost story

2010-03-22T12:24:00.006Z

It's a pity the new Alice had some frightening chases and scary creatures otherwise it would be suitable for younger children. Helena Bonham Carter is wonderfully wicked as the Red Queen, young Gwyenth-lookalike Maria Wasikowska (Australian with convincing Brit accent) was good as Alice and I loved Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat. There seemed too much of Mad Hatter Johnny Depp and not enough of all the clever computer generated animals.
Somehow or other it turned into Lord of the Rings, and not as funny as we hoped. I wouldn't go out of your way to see it.

Recent reading: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters was atmospheric and gripping, but not quite as frightening as I expected. Set in 1947, it's a gloomy story of a decaying mansion in the middle of Warwickshire, a family and indeed a whole class in decline, narrated by a solemn young doctor whose mother used to be a nursemaid at the house. I have my views but I wasn't sure who dunnit, who instigated the polstergeist, if there was one, but almost everybody came to a bad end. This is the first Sarah Waters I've brought myself to read for a while because I found Fingersmith too violent. As Gok said in the TV Book Club, there are no lesbians or sex scenes in this novel. It's very well written, of course, with wonderful descriptions of the Miss-Havisham house, and I'm still thinking about it. An interesting interview here at A Work in Progress. Sarah Waters said she wanted to write about class as much as a haunted house.

Pure Passion Awards Lunch

2010-03-17T16:51:00.008Z

Just recovered from a great party - a wonderful lunch, just like the Oscars only less longwinded. Here's an extract from the Press Release: 'The Romantic Novelists' Association (RNA) marked their 50th Anniversary by honouring two of the world's best-selling and much-loved authors, Maeve Binchy and Joanna Trollope, with Lifetime Achievement Awards for their contributions to this ever popular genre. The winners were announced yesterday at the RNA's Pure Passion Awards lunch at the Royal Garden Hotel, hosted by critic and TV personality Barry Norman, with RNA Chairman, Katie Fforde (above).

The RNA's Romantic Novel of the Year and Love Story of the Year awards, highly respected within the publishing industry, were also presented. In honour of the 50th Anniversary, several new awards were introduced this year, including the Romantic Film of the Year, The Romantic Comedy Award and The People's Choice Award.

Winner of The Romantic Novel of the Year 2010, which recognises the best of the year's novels exploring the "deep mysteries of the human heart", is Lucy Dillon's Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts. The perfect story for our nation of dog lovers, the story focuses on the romantic sequence of events that occurs when abandoned strays are matched with new owners, whose lives become interwoven.

The RNA Romantic Film of the Year, celebrating the finest adaptation from a romantic novel to a film released in the UK during 2009, was selected by the public via www.lovereading.co.uk. The winner was An Education, by Lynn Barber (above, with Barry Norman). The film was scripted by Nick Hornby.'

More about the awards here. Photos by Kate Hardy. The shoe below was worn by Bex Leith. In case you think it might have become a worrying sort of party, I should add she only put it on the table at the request of the photographer, Stella Sykes.

Flowers, films and a book

2010-03-11T12:19:00.009Z

Joined Love Film DVD rental but then couldn’t think what I wanted to see. Any recommendations? Here’s what’s come so far, rather enjoyed them both:

Miss Pettigrew lives for a Day – fun, silly and frothy, an elegant period piece set in the 1930s. Amy Adams plays a Marilyn-Monroe type cabaret singer with three lovers – she’s ditsy but adorable. Plainish, middle-aged Miss Pettigrew, starving and desperate for a job, becomes her social secretary and tries to sort her out - a bedroom and nightclub farce-with-a-heart.

Another costume drama: The Duchess. Keira plays Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire to Ralph Fiennes’s Duke. A scenic film full of 18th Century atmosphere. We learn there were three people in the bright young aristocrat’s marriage, which kind of reminds us of the life of her descendant, the hapless Princess Diana. The film of Amanda Foreman’s book.

Recent reading: The Truth about Melody Browne by Lisa Jewell. Enjoyed this a lot – an original novel. Melody lost her memory when she was nine after a fire, and ran away from her parents when she was 15 and pregnant. But were they her parents? Following a chance visit to a hypnotist show, fragments of her memory begin to return.

After I’d finished I felt that some of the plot twists were pretty unlikely but so absorbing was the story it didn’t matter.

Encouraging comments about Paris Imperfect from Sweden. They thought Renee Zellweger should play Clio in a film, but I don't think I see her in the role. Would love to have these casting worries.

(At last my Christmas presents are flowering, the four-bloom amaryllis is not just a bulb but a be-good to-yourself because you're worth it, Finest M&S bulb. Have invested in a white orchid too, as you see. If you click on the pics, the flowers look fantastic, she says modestly.)

Wire creatures and recent reading

2010-03-03T19:09:00.000Z

Do look at these wonderful wire sculptures by Laura Antebi here. Scroll through the website for the pics. You will instantly desire one. I can't remember who highlighted her work recently but thank you.

Recent reading
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940 Pulitzer prize) Moving, interesting and eminently worthwhile, but, while I admire his prose and wonderful descriptions, I found the novel tough going at times because of all the transliterated Mid-western dialect, and, of course, the sad story. You’ve probably read it but if you haven’t here’s a blurb. “Set during the Great Depression, it traces the migration of a desperately poor Oklahoma farming family to California and their subsequent hardships. The work did much to publicize the injustices of migrant labour.” I only hope that the Joads’ terrible struggles don’t have any resonance with immigrant workers in Europe today.

A major contrast: to my surprise I enjoyed Rosamunde Pilcher’s Winter Solstice much more the second time I read it. Almost nothing happened but there’s an excellent description of a lovely town in the NE corner of Scotland. I liked her comfortable characters too.

Before that, another, more demanding world: I reread Kasuo Ishiguro’s intriguing novel When We Were Orphans. Here’s a blurb for this one: "Christopher Banks has dedicated his life to detective work but behind his successes lies one unsolved mystery: the disappearance of his parents when he was a small boy living in the International Settlement in Shanghai. Moving between England and China in the inter-war period, the book encompasses the turbulence and political anxieties of the time and the crumbling certainties of a Britain deeply involved in the opium trade in the East." He’s a fascinating writer but I never exactly believe in Ishiguro’s strange characters – they seem to be more of medium for examining moral dilemmas than real people.

Correct Publication Date paperback Tropical Connections

2010-02-26T12:06:00.004Z

The correct publication date for Tropical Connections trade paperback (slightly larger than ordinary ones) is March 30th not March 1st as given on some on-line booksellers. The Book Depository say 25% off at the moment but, as they have wrong date, they may not hold this price for longer than 3 days. So if you were kindly thinking of buying it, best price might be found by pre-order now from them here.
Later Mar 1: Now, as I feared, Bk Depository is showing out of stock (tho it hasn't been published), but I now find it can be ordered here from WHSmiths at 24% discount, no postage charge if you collect in store when available or spend more than £15.

More info on right or by clicking About Susie Vereker's Books for reviews.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

2010-02-22T18:59:00.002Z

A moving and distressing film, this is a Nazi concentration camp story seen through the eyes of an innocent eight-year-old German boy. Bruno's military father is sent to be Komandant of a strange farm in the middle of nowhere, as the child believes. Missing Berlin, the lonely Bruno sneaks out of the stark house and, wandering through the woods, discovers another little boy of his age behind the barbed wire of the 'farm camp'. Sitting on opposite sides of the fence, they become friends. Most of the scenes take place in Bruno's house and we see his beautiful mother falling to pieces when she realises what is happening at the camp, but Bruno doesn't understand the whispering. And his little Jewish friend doesn't understand why his father has disappeared.
Excellent convincing acting from all concerned. A very good film indeed. Here is a review from The Times. I haven't read the book. Don't think I could now. Perhaps we should all see this kind of film or read this kind of book periodically to make us realise how lucky we are that all some of us have to worry about is what to cook for dinner.

My funny Valentine

2010-02-14T08:25:00.002Z

Long, long ago I met a handsome Englishman on top of a mountain in Switzerland. I was skiing with a group of friends and he was a Foreign Office chap on leave from a posting in Thailand, it turned out. He took me out to dinner in a gentlemanly sort of way (see pic in nightclub) and skied with me next day, patient with my lack of skill on the slopes. Then, four days after I'd met him, completely out of the blue, he proposed on February 14th. I later discovered he'd intended to ask me to marry him overlooking the Rhone valley only I fell off the draglift on the way up, so he'd had to wait, nerves jangling, until we were just above the village. I was so utterly astonished I nearly fell over again.
What happened next? Well, it's a long story.
Typically, my husband of 34 years didn't actually know it was Valentine's Day.

Pure Passion at the RNA

2010-02-11T11:57:00.004Z

The shortlist for the Romantic Novel of the Year has now been announced.
• Passion, Louise Bagshawe,
• Fairytale of New York, Miranda Dickinson,
• Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts, Lucy Dillon,
• A Glimpse at Happiness, Jean Fullerton
• The Glass Painter’s Daughter, Rachel Hore,
• The Italian Matchmaker, Santa Montefiore
See more on the new RNA website here (and click on link to RNA blog on right of this page) where you will also see the shortlisters for the Rom Com of the Year and the Love Story of the Year, and more.
Jan Jones's Fair Deception is shortlisted for the latter. I've recently read her Fortunate Wager, a cracking read. It's a modern Regency, kind of Jane Austen meets Dick Francis with a bit more passion - properly suppressed, of course. Really good fun.
I'm looking forward to attending the 50th Anniversary RNA lunch where all the winners will be announced.
(The pic shows my latest orchids - the small white ones are hard to capture in a photo as they're so delicately pretty. One of my old ones has now been flowering for six months.)

Cirque du Soleil

2010-02-08T15:49:00.003Z

Wonderful (if expensive) afternoon at the Albert Hall to see the Cirque du Soleil's Varekai. Still-photos can't do justice to the atmosphere, the energy and pace of the choreography, the music, the lighting, costumes and special effects of this sleek, theatrical circus. The skill and bravery of the beautiful acrobats made us hold our breath and 'By Jove' and 'Golly' were heard all round.

Do go and see the Cirque du Soleil at least once in your lifetime if you can. Here's an article about it.

Loved the Albert Hall too - first time I've been inside. Only slight disappointment its Cafe Consort where indifferent food was somewhat indifferently served. Perhaps Sunday was a bad day. Also don't drink anything before you go to a show, by the way, as there are massive queues for the Ladies lavatories, despite modernisations. Not sure why architects never seem to get the hang of this problem.

Dean Spanley - a must-see movie

2010-01-31T15:26:00.009Z

Last week the film club showed Dean Spanley. A charming, unusual and oddly moving film set in England just after the Boer War, with no romance, sex or violence. Brilliantly acted by Peter O'Toole, Jeremy Northam and Sam Neill, to name the main performers, but all of the small cast were excellent. If I tell you it is about a churchman, Dean Spanley, who believed he used to be a dog in his previous life you'll fear it is fey or sentimental, but the opposite is true. It also deals delicately with grief and with the father/son relationship in those days of extra-stiff upper lips.
Peter O'Toole gives a master performance as a curmudgeonly sarcastic old man - he has some brilliantly amusing lines.
Do get the DVD. It's a tragi-comedy but ultimately a feel-good film - for grown-ups, by the way, as most of it would go over children's heads. Here's a review.

(photo credit Norwich Cathedral where some of the scenes were set in this Anglo-NZ production. Here's more about the locations)

Geneva and recent reading

2010-01-28T14:12:00.008Z

Well, that was encouraging. An unknown reader has just rung me up out of the blue and said how much she enjoyed An Old-Fashioned Arrangement. She used to work in Geneva and absolutely loved the city, and hence the novel. (Photo by Nick, also a former resident.) I asked how she got my number and she said she lived in this area. Kind of her to make the effort to say nice things, I thought.

Recent reading:
Esther’s Inheritance by Hungarian writer Sandor Marai was written in 1939. Perhaps I should have known more about him as it would have helped me to understand this novella. Spinster Esther is almost Chekhovian in her passivity as she waits in her bare but valuable house, knowing she will be swindled by the man she loves. Formerly married to her dead sister, the charming Lajos is a scoundrel but somehow everyone is powerless against him. An interesting and unusual book. Here’s a review if you would like to know more.

I was gripped by The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. A short novel, it’s about an encounter where a quiet American (we’re not sure who he is) meets the Pakistani narrator in an obscure district of Lahore. We learn how the views of the narrator, originally a successful financier in the USA, have changed over the years. Of course I don’t go along with everything the protagonist says about the West but, in my opinion, it’s a book that everyone should read. Here’s a more highbrow review.

Finished The Singapore Grip, by JG Farrell (1978). Phew. A long novel which I kindly gave to someone else for Christmas and borrowed back. Handy that. I always think it's polite to let the receiver of the gift read it first.
Set in Singapore just before the Japanese invasion, and featuring class and racial divisions of the period, it was obviously thoroughly researched. We see the complex situation from several viewpoints, including those of colonial businessmen, soldiers, diplomats and their ‘ladies’. I don’t so much like the initially jocose style in which was written, as it didn’t seem appropriate for the seriousness of the subject. Most of the Brits come out badly, particularly the grand planter expats who had been ripping off the locals for years apparently. The author has woven in real characters with fictional ones. Fortunately he’s fairly kind about the real people, even if it would appear some were not up to the job that faced them. It wasn't a glorious period in British history but the book is worth reading if you are interested in SE Asia.

Susie Vereker - writer

The Unseen by Katherine Webb. Lady Audley's Secret

New Year Good Wishes

Happy Christmas!

Black Swan, Gillespie & recent reads

Otto's 1st birthday & late garden

Notes on Books & Films

Stonehenge & 29 canal locks

The Thread by Victoria Hislop

The House of the Wind

Watts Gallery & The Observations

Hinton Ampner again, 'Engleby' and 'Drowning Rose'

Dr Zhivago, 'You' by Briscoe, Conjuror's Bird

Kew Gardens

The Return of Captain John Emmett

The Yellow Duster Sisters

Denmark hols

Daughters in Law & pup

The River, Kingfishers Catch Fire, Sashenka

July garden,My Last Duchess, & film: The Social Network

'Afterwards' thriller. Puppy in the wild

Flamingos and historical Japan

Puppy, wild daisies and The Breaking of Eggs.

The Crimson Petal and the White

"Room"(novel) & puppy update

Lazy Lasagne & Winkworth Arboretum.

Lilac and The Far Pavilions

Puppy and Spring again

Pup tries cat door, spring garden, K. Atkinson

Puppy, daffodils & Danish thriller

Ski holiday

Perfect puppy again, with quick reviews

Hare with Amber Eyes & Tiger Mother

Puppy & South Riding

Perfect Puppy - Not

Wolf Hall

Quick links - romantic, funny or serious

King's Speech and shopping with Otto

Puppy and flowers

Puppy again

New Labrador Puppy

Royal brides

Films

The Hand that First Held Mine

Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey

Country house Secrets & settings

Happy Christmas

Romantic Novel of the Year longlist

The Other Family by Joanna Trollope

The Glass Palace

World Book Night 5 Mar 2011

Beech trees, bench and Baltimore

Avatar and Snowman

Remembrance Day

Novel: Cutting for Stone

November walk

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

Mid Society Bride, last rose and the Jackal

'A Week in December' by Sebastian Faulks

Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton

A Thriller - 'Sister' by Rosamund Lupton

Tamara Drewe - film

Books and mushrooms

Romantic Novel Poll and Amelia

Swedish Connections: Girl who played with Fire and a historical romance.

American reading

Cooking salmon and the Bouncy Castle

Fascinating Aida and films

Battle of Basing reenacted Aug 28 weekend

More summer reads

Recent reading

Evening Balloon

Summer read

Tropical Connections

Normandy part 2

Greenwich Conference

Northern Normandy Part 1

Summer fields and books

Kristin in French, JG Farrell's Troubles, hydrangea

Flax, film and my cousin Rachel