Five in August

I read five books in August.

 

Table for Two by Amor Towles

Some (quite long) short stories and a novella from the author of A Gentleman in Moscow, The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, all of which I loved.

My favourite of the short stories was the first one ‘The Line’, set during the aftermath of the Russian revolution. A peasant farmer and his much more ambitious wife leave the country and move to the city. He (delightful man) spends his days queuing for basic essentials, first of all for themselves and then keeping the place for others – and where one particular ‘line’ leads I don’t want to spoil for future readers.

It was such a joy in the novella Eve in Hollywood to catch up with Evelyn Ross from Rules of Civility, a young woman for whom the word ‘indefatigable’ might have been coined. Now we know what happened to her when she didn’t get off that train … and all her subsequent adventures including befriending Olivia de Havilland and besting a corrupt officer of the law.

 

The Clock Winder by Anne Tyler

Continuing my re-reading of Anne Tyler (hmm, same initials as Amor Towles: is this a coincidence?? Should I change my name?).

 

Murder in my Backyard by Ann Cleeves

First published in 2014 (and republished I guess because of the success of Vera/Shetland). The second in a series featuring Inspector Ramsay.

‘No one in Heppleburn has a bad word to say about Alice Parry . . . but here she is, murdered in her own backyard on a bitter St. David’s Eve.’ Inspector Ramsay investigates.

 

Homemaker (Prairie Nightingale Book 1) by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare

‘When a former friend and devoted mother vanishes, a confident homemaker turned amateur sleuth follows an unexpected trail of scandals and secrets to find her.’

The scandal involved a pyramid-selling scheme and the culprit seemed so predictable I read on expecting a twist …

Whatever else she is, Prairie Nightingale is not a ‘homemaker’ although she says homemaking is something she’s ‘very, very good at.’ Instead of getting alimony as such in her divorce settlement from her perfectly decent husband (who asked what was for dinner once too often), she asked him to pay for staff – an office manager, a chef, a gardener and whatnot else to look after her and their two teenage girls – oh, and her very supportive ex-mother-in-law lives in the granny flat.

So our Prairie has all the time in the world to waft around playing detective and make sanctimonious speeches about the patriarchy to anyone who’ll listen.

 

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Is ‘meta’ the right word here? Anyway, the book features characters from some previous books of Elizabeth Strout’s – Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge. Although I thought My Name is Lucy Barton was terrific, I was less enamoured when Lucy got together, parted, got together again … with the tiresome William. In this book she’s still divorced from him but they are living together in Maine. Olive Kitteridge (the first eponymous book about her is one of the best-written I have ever read) lives nearby in a care home and the reason I bought this book was to catch up with her.

Fortunately, in my opinion, William is mostly off-stage until the end which wasn’t the conclusion I was hoping for …

 

 

Seven in February

 I read seven books in February.

 

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Love a road trip book, love an American road trip book, love an American road trip book set in the 50s. So, job done, Mr Towles – and you delivered on the premise in spades.

A young man and his much younger brother (Billy, one of the most precocious but delightful child characters ever, sees the world through his book of classical heroes) set out from Nebraska with the intention of driving to California to see if they can find their long-gone mother. However, they acquire some unexpected passengers and things very much do not go according to plan. Adventures aplenty, good and bad, ensue.

Manages to be both screwball and quite dark with gorgeous writing – I adored it.

 

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Another favourite genre, the Depression in America, not sure why it appeals so much – perhaps because it was such a testing time and so much good writing has come out of that adversity.

This is Amor Towles’ first book and, again, I loved it.

‘On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate New York City jazz bar trying to stretch three dollars as far as it will go. But a chance encounter with the handsome banker at the next table changes everything, opening the door to the upper echelons of New York society and a glittering new social circle.’

 

 

 Home/Land by Rebecca Mead

A memoir.  In 2018, British-born New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead moved back to London, with her husband and son, after thirty years in New York. It’s a culture shock for all of them. She reflects on her career in America (and one of the reasons they left – the outcome of the 2016 election), her childhood and family history. I found it absorbing.

 

The Watchmaker’s Daughter by Dianne Haley

I had an all too short holiday in Austria this month: three nights in Vienna – and one in Salzburg where we went on a Sound of Music tour. So when I was thinking what to read on the plane and thinking of the plot of the Sound of Music I remembered I’d bought this for my Kindle when it came out. It seemed an appropriate read and it turned out to be a terrific one. I’ve now downloaded the two sequels.

It’s a WW2 Resistance novel (another of my favourite genres) but with a difference – this one is set in Switzerland. The country was technically neutral but, with occupied France just across the border, life is precarious. Valérie helps the French resistance by smuggling messages with her father’s watch deliveries and hiding refugee children in his workshop – all the time worrying about her boyfriend Philippe who is in the army. Tense and exciting.

 

 The People on Platform 5 by Clare Pooley

On holiday is when I do most of my Kindle reading. This was next up, an easy but satisfying read. No one speaks to anyone else on their daily commute from south London – until an event forces a disparate group of people into contact and relationships which will change all their lives.

 

 The Road Towards Home by Corinne Demas

I think this was the free book I chose one month through Amazon Prime. More America, east coast this time … Noah, in his seventies, has moved to ‘an independent living community’ but it feels more like a prison to him. A newcomer, eccentric Cassandra Joyce, turns out to be someone he knew fifty years earlier. Noah invites Cassandra to his ramshackle Cape Cod cottage out of season, and realises he would like their relationship to move up a level.

 

 A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin

And, started on the plane journey home, and completed later, the latest Inspector Rebus. He’s retired now but when it looks as if his daughter might be arrested for murdering her partner he hurries to the far north of Scotland to carry out his own investigations which see him, amongst other things, visiting a WW2 prisoner-of-war camp and a stately home. Meanwhile back in Edinburgh his ex-colleagues may have some information to help him. Terrific.

Five in June

 I read five books in June.

 

The Private World of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge

I read a few GHs in my teens and then inexplicably she dropped off my radar until a couple of years ago when my enthusiasm was ignited by my friend Anne Stenhouse (no mean Regency writer herself); she kindly lent me this biography.

GH was extraordinary in that she seemed to despise her own writing and she never gave interviews or did signing sessions or author tours or anything required (pre-pandemic anyway) of big-name authors today. And she was a big name, with legions of fans, despite being so private and elusive; her forthcoming novels were serialised in Woman & Home for which she received £10,000 in the middle of the last century. 

It was so interesting to read of her attention to detail and accuracy – she kept dozens of notebooks with historical minutiae and also invented her own slang words, just one of the things that make her writing so dazzling.

 

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

‘When Sophy is sent to stay with her London relatives, she finds her cousins in quite the tangle. …
Fortunately, Sophy has arrived just in time to sort them all out – but Charles is eager to rid his family of her meddlesome ways. Has the Grand Sophy finally met her match?’

What do you think?

 

And now for something completely different:

 

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None meets Lord of the Flies at a wedding on a small island off the coast of Ireland. And the consequence was … murder and mayhem and revenge.

 

Your Blue-Eyed Boy by Helen Dunmore

Simone is in a very difficult situation. Formerly a lawyer in London who was able to take on badly paid cases close to her heart, she has now moved to a rural area to be a district judge – because her husband’s business is virtually insolvent and 75% of her salary will be going to pay debts and bank charges. He’s depressed (unsurprisingly) and they have two primary-school-age boys.

But the book opens with Simone in America twenty years earlier, in a relationship with an older man, a damaged Vietnam veteran – and as if she doesn’t have enough to worry about in the present day that relationship comes back to haunt her.

Helen Dunmore is (was, sadly) a wonderful writer (poet as well as novelist) and her descriptions are stunning. I loved this (the writing and the tension evoked) up until the end which – no spoilers – I felt a little disappointed by.

 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

This is a book lots of people seem to be talking about at the moment (and soon to be a TV series). In 1922 Count Alexander Rostov has been sentenced to indefinite house arrest by a Boshevik tribunal – or hotel arrest because he must spend the rest of his days in the Hotel Metropol, not in the grand suite he previously occupied but in an attic room.

But, the book blurb asks, can a life without luxury be the richest of all? How the Count passes his days (and months and years) makes for a delightful, if perhaps rather over-long, read.

 

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