Otto's triumph

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

Perfect Puppy, The Paris Wife & other fiction

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

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

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

The Apothecary's Daughter by Charlotte Betts

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

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

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

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

Otto's 1st birthday & late garden

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

Puppy, wild daisies and The Breaking of Eggs.

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.

Perfect puppy again, with quick reviews

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.