Five in October

I read five books in October.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Women’s Prize, a world best-seller – Demon needs no accolades from me but I’ll give them anyway.

Apparently Barbara Kingsolver had finished a novel and wondered what to write next. While in London she visited the Charles Dickens Museum in London and was inspired to follow the structure of David Copperfield and write a version for the late 20th/early 20th century. Demon (a ‘variation’ of his name, Damon) Copperhead (red hair) is the child of a teenage, drug-addicted, single mother … don’t want to give spoilers so I’ll just say that his life gets worse before it gets better.

Demon’s home territory (also the author’s), Appalachia, was and is in the grip of the opioid epidemic that has ruined so many lives. The book is not for the faint-hearted (and it’s almost 600 pages) but it is so worth the effort. It follows the structure of its predecessor and many of the names are similar but you don’t need to have read D Copperfield to appreciate it.

It has its funny and its tender moments amidst the darkness, and wonderful characters – Angus and Tommy are two of my favourites from all the books I’ve ever read.

I found to begin with I could read only fifty pages at a time; it was such an intense experience. But I raced through the last two hundred, eager to follow Demon’s extraordinary young life.

An amazing act of literary ventriloquism.

 

Godmersham Park by Gill Hornby

 And now for something completely different … I loved this author’s Miss Austen, a fictional account of the reasons why Jane Austen’s beloved sister Cassandra burnt their correspondence.

 Here, she revisits Austenland (that crowded country … ) with an imagining of the life of a real person, Anne Steele, who tutored Jane Austen’s nieces and nephews, the children of her well-off brother Edward Knight. Hard to believe it’s not true. ‘Anne’ is such a well-realised character and her relationship with her employer’s sister Jane is delightful.

 

One Day I Shall Astonish the World by Nina Stibbe

 Like many people I thoroughly enjoyed Love From Nina, the real letters sent by the author to her sister back home in Leicestershire during the time (in the early 1980s) she was employed as a mother’s help in fashionable Camden, where she met many famous people of whose existence she had never heard before – for example, Alan Bennett used to frequently pop in at supper-time and the event would be pithily reported by young Miss Stibbe.

 So I had high hopes of this novel which came adorned with excited quotes from many big-name authors testifying to its side-splittingness. 

 Reader, I did not crack a smile, not once. It’s billed as ‘the ebb and flow of female friendship over half a lifetime’. But Susan only has one friend, the toxic Norma. She also has a not very happy marriage and a difficult daughter. More a tragedy than a comedy if you ask me.

 

Ruth Robinson’s Year of Miracles by Frances Garood

 Musician Ruth (35) had plans to go travelling with her best friend but now she’s discovered she’s pregnant by her lovely colleague Amos – who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth, or at least the face of social media, and is uncontactable.

 Her disapproving religious parents suggest she go and stay with her twin uncles until the baby is born. Perhaps it’s not very original to say that a book has ‘quirky’ characters but I think the epithet is appropriate here – the uncles, the cleaner and her family, the animals, and oh yes, the Virgin Mary who puts in an appearance.

 

Bluethroat Morning by Jacqui Lofthouse

 I was attracted to this book in a charity shop because of its title – I believe that it means that time of the morning equivalent to twilight in the evening, the point between dark and light.

 Anyway, about it’s Harry Bliss, in his fifties. His much younger wife, Alison, took her own life six years earlier – she was a very famous model turned writer. He’s still being hounded by the press, by one reporter in particular. He decides to search for the reasons for the suicide and is accompanied on that quest by a colleague’s student daughter who is rather obsessed with dead Alison’s glamour. An affair ensues between them, very much encouraged, indeed initiated by the girl … but still –  it left a bit of a nasty taste.

 Described as a ‘literary thriller’. I’d agree with the first word but not the second. Disappointing.

 

Death at the Three Sisters by Jo Allen

The Three Sisters is a run-down spa on the edge of a lake. A young member of staff comes to a grisly end – why would anyone want to kill her?

Number 10 in the DCI Jude Satterthwaite detective series set in the Lake District. As usual, a satisfying mystery plus an update on Jude’s private life.