I read seven books in April.
Recently I heard an interview with a novelist
who specialises in ‘issue’ books. I read about six of them before giving her up a few years ago.
She was asked which came first (when she was thinking of her next book) the
character or the issue, and she replied, as if it was a no-brainer, oh, the
issue. I realised why I’d stopped reading her books – because although I can
remember the issues her main characters had I can’t remember anything else
about them.
Liane Moriarty’s characters all have lots of issues – as do
we all, that’s life, but they are never flagged up as such. Triplets Lyn, Cat
and Gemma are the protagonists in
Three
Wishes – LM is terrific on this sibling relationship. Loved it – not
quite as much as
The Last Anniversary reviewed
here, but lots. I’ve bought
The Hypnotist’s Love Story and, her
latest,
Truly, Madly, Guilty, but am
putting off reading them because then I’ll have finished all the books she’s
written to date and I don’t know how long the wait will be for the next one …
And while I’m having a wee rant about ‘issues’ I was cross and upset to read that a new version of Anne
of Green Gables is being filmed for Netflix. Called Anne with an E it tells the ‘real story’ of ‘a more troubled’ Anne and
will be concerned with ‘trauma, bullying and being an outsider’ in the ‘hard,
gritty, scrappy’ life she apparently would have had in Prince Edward Island in the late
1800s.
Leaving aside the fact that Anne is a fictional character …
I think we can read between the lines that her life, certainly before she came
to Green Gables, was what we would now call dysfunctional, but the whole point
of her delightful character is that despite her bad start in life she’s never
self-pitying, never thinks of herself as a victim. Quite the opposite in fact. Grrr.
I won’t be watching.
N is for Noose
V is for Vengeance
After reading U is for
Undertow last month I went on three further crime sprees with private
investigator Kinsey Milhone. The next one is available, called merely X, and then only two more to come in
this very enjoyable series.
Read on Kindle. Psychological suspense novels promising a twist are
the in-thing just now. I didn’t see the twist coming that was revealed about
two-thirds of the way through this one but it made sense when I put my Kindle
down for a few minutes and thought about it – very clever. The twist on the
very last page though – perhaps someone could explain it to me?
Read on Kindle. Another psychological one. I wasn’t sure
about the slightly magical (or were they?) elements in this one but otherwise I
thought it was a great page-turner (if you can say that about an e-book) and I liked the Cornish setting.
The Whale Boat House
by Mark Mills
This is the first book I’ve read by this author but it won’t
be the last. It’s set in Long Island just after the Second World War and begins
with the dead body of a beautiful young socialite being caught in a fisherman’s
net. Long Island is just beginning to be the weekend/holiday destination for
rich New Yorkers who build large houses, a contrast to the homes of the
permanent residents. Some Amazon reviewers thought the author shoehorned too
much of his research on the lives and work of the fishermen into the story but
I liked all the detail and I think it’s good to learn something while being
entertained.
