Five in September

I read five books in September.

 

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

I’m a big fan of Lissa Evans’ Second World War trilogy – Old Baggage, Crooked Heart, and V for Victory – so was keen to read her latest novel set just after the war.

Dimperley is an unattractive and crumbling stately home which houses returning soldier sons and evacuees who never left – and the matriarch who insists on standards being kept up no matter what. Witty and profound like the trilogy although, in my opinion, not quite as good. I’ve never (yet) read her Their Finest Hour but I loved the film made from it. Their Finest (why did they drop the Hour?) has a brilliant cast including Bill Nighy.

 

 

Killing Floor by Lee Child

When I saw this in a charity shop I thought, ooh a Jack Reacher I haven’t read and it’s the very first one! And so I continued to think, until I was more than three-quarters of the way in when something rang a bell loudly … No point in telling you the plot because clearly they’re all the same. … J

 

 

When skies are dark and murky, thank your stars you’re not a turkey wrote a school friend in my autograph book (remember those?). Well, thanking my stars I’m not a turkey doesn’t help for more than maybe a second. What does help is returning to childhood favourite reading. Jennings books still make me laugh, especially Our Friend Jennings in which his best friend Darbishire acquires a false moustache through a small ad in a magazine and is convinced that it makes him completely unrecognisable. To make the most of it, the boys collaborate on writing a play about … a man with a moustache.

Similarly, in Jennings’ Diary, when he writes teachers’ and fellow pupils’ names backwards, our hero is positive that no one sneaking a look at his diary will crack the code.

 

And from the delightfully ridiculous to the sublime ...

 

Clear by Carys Davies

I really love Carys Davies’ writing, so spare and sharp, so clear in fact. This, her third novel, follows her hugely successful collections of short stories (in particular do check out the title story in The Redemption of Galen Pike).

Clear is set in 1843, encompasses: a seismic moment in Scottish religious history, the Highland Clearances, an island with one remaining inhabitant, a lost language, a late marriage, an unexpected relationship … all coming together in a tale other writers would take three times as long to tell.