Five in April

I read five books in April.

 

Brave Hearted: The Dramatic Story of Women of the American West by Katie Hickman

Most people have heard of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her pioneering family, from the Little House on the Prairie books and the loosely based TV series in the 70s.

In this fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking book, Katie Hickman tells us about other women in the days when ‘America’ was still expanding its territory – whether they were wives, mothers or daughters in pioneering families, missionaries, poker players, sex workers, madams, bar owners, African Americans in search of freedom from slavery or displaced Native Americans (the last two is where the heartbreak happens and the resonances down the years are inescapable).

‘Brave hearted’ scarcely begins to cover the courage of all these women.

I’ve previously read KH’s book Daughters of Britannia:The Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives, also recommended.

 

 

Burial of Ghosts by Ann Cleeves

A standalone title, first published in 2003. (How prolific is Ann Cleeves? Incredibly is the answer!)

Lizzie, brought up in care, receives an unexpected legacy of £15,000 from a man she had a holiday fling with – but there are strings attached.

 

 

Overkill by Vanda Symon

The first book featuring Constable Sam Shepherd. I bought it and three subsequent titles in the series in a charity shop because they are set in South Island, New Zealand, which I love to read about, and also because Sam(antha) is described as being feisty. I anticipated a Kinsey Milhone or V. I. Warshawski with gorgeous NZ scenery.

Well, all four books will be returned to the charity shop, three of them unread. For ‘feisty’ read ‘irritating’, ‘needy’ and ‘complete pain in the posterior’. She thinks she’s the only one who can sort anything out (she can’t) and the lip she gives senior officers (while being suspended from duty) would surely see her dismissed in real life. Disappointing (if you haven’t guessed that already).

 

 

The Republic of Love by Carol Shields

The much-missed Carol Shields in fact.

A reread. Not one of my favourites of hers (Happenstance and Larry’s Party taking that slot) but she’s always a pleasure to read. If you like Anne Tyler (and if not why not?) you will like Carol Shields.

Rather incensed to see the strapline on the big online retailer: ‘a charming chick lit novel’ – even when it was published in 2003 that would have been a misleading description; it should certainly be updated now.

Fay is a commitment-phobe (as we say in the 2020s) and in any case thrice-married late-night-radio host, Tom, does not seem like a good bet. She has plenty to keep her busy with her research into mermaids for the Folklore Society and with worrying about her parents’ long and apparently happy marriage.

But there’s the inconvenient fact that for both herself and Tom it was true love at first sight …

 

 

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie

This appealed to me when it first came out and I wish I’d read it before going to an Edinburgh Book Festival event with the author last year.

I’ve read it now. It’s told in two voices – each one a 15th-century female mystic: Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich. Although not much is known about their lives (which Victoria Mackenzie has imagined most vividly), it is documented that the two did meet each other and that both had visions – or ‘shewings’.

Margery – mother of fourteen children, cried a great deal in public following her visions of Christ on the cross, leading to support from a few people and condemnation from many, including her husband. She wrote a book (or probably dictated it) – astonishingly, the manuscript was missing for six hundred years and found in a cupboard in an English country house in 1934.

Julian (she took a saint’s name) lost her husband and child to the plague and so decided to be an ‘anchoress’, the term for a female hermit. As it would be dangerous for her to live the life a male hermit could (ie in a cave or other isolated place), she had herself bricked up in a room attached to a church in Norwich. There was a curtained window where the necessities of life were passed to and fro to/from a devoted maid whose face Julian never saw. People came to her for guidance; again she couldn’t see them, only hear them.

She also wrote a book, thought to be the first book in English by a woman that has survived.

Imagine being bricked up … yet, this is the person whose optimistic words have lasted down the centuries: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Four in February

I read four books in February.

 

Fallen Angel by Chris Brookmyre

Amanda is delighted to be asked, out of the blue, to be a summer nanny in a villa in Portugal for the Temple family – a former actress, a famous professor, their children and grandchildren. She soon realises though that there are dark undercurrents to do with the disappearance of another grandchild in this place sixteen years earlier.

Excellently told (of course) and with a massive twist I didn’t see coming.

 

All Adults Here by Emma Straub

I remember enjoying an ES book a few years ago, although can’t remember which one. This, her latest, though was tiresome – more a series of anecdotes about the mostly unpleasant characters than a novel with a plot. ‘Funny and uplifting’ the strap line says; I found it to be neither.

 

This Could be Everything by Eva Rice

19990s Notting Hill. February Kingdom is still traumatised after a family tragedy when an escaped yellow canary appears to help her. Many musical references (she is Tim Rice’s daughter after all) that didn’t mean anything to me but that didn’t matter; I got the gist, and loved the story and the writing. It was a little reminiscent of one of my favourite books, I Capture the Castle.

 

Back When We Were Grown Ups by Anne Tyler

I’d read this before but never owned it so pounced on it when it came into the charity shop I do some volunteering in (sorting books; buying some of them is an occupational hazard).

Stepmother/grandmother Rebecca is the heart of her late husband’s family, the one who runs the family business, the one who pours oil on many troubled waters. But what, she’s begun to wonder, would her life have been like if she’d married college sweetheart Will, if Joe hadn’t appeared and swept her off her feet. Tentatively, she makes contact with Will … but is he the same person from all those years ago? Is she?

There is no one like Anne Tyler and that’s a fact.

 

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 …

 

 

Six in July

I read six books in July.

 

The Lady in the Park by David Reynolds

I enjoyed David Reynold’s travel memoir The Road to Brownsville (and have yet to read his family memoir Swan River) so I was interested to see that he’d written a cosy-ish crime novel featuring Max, a retired CID inspector, as a private investigator; Max’s sidekick as it were is his observant six-year-old grandson which worked really well.

 

‘When a woman is found unconscious on a ping-pong table in Peckham's Warwick Gardens, it looks like a case of mistaken identity. Why would anyone want to injure this popular local mum of six?’ Danny spots a vital clue in CCTV footage.

 

I look forward to the next outing of this duo.

 

 

Long Story Short by Victoria Walters

Hmmm. Wasn’t keen despite its literary agent/book publishing background.

 

 

Wycliffe and the Tangled Web by W. J. Burley

When I was in Orkney in the summer we passed a hall with a jumble sale, raising funds for the RNLI, and couldn’t resist going in. It was a jumble sure enough … after a good rummage the cousin I was with found a dress for a couple of pounds that she was delighted with. The ladies running it were so lovely and chatty I wanted to buy something so (last of the big spenders) I paid 50p for this tangled tale. I quite enjoyed it, and its Cornish setting, but I couldn’t really believe in the victim, a very troubled teen called Hilda.

 

So, as a palate cleanser as it were, I reread Clock Dance by the peerless Anne Tyler.

 

 

 

The Cliff House by Christopher Brookmyre

A take on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – a hen party on small island goes very very wrong. Brilliant.

 

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

My first Sebastian Barry but definitely not my last. What a staggering feat – to sustain the voice of teenage Irish-born Thomas McNulty, driven to emigrate to the United States after the death of his family in the potato famine. After signing up for the army, Thomas and his beloved friend, ‘Handsome John Cole’, fight in the Indian Wars and the Civil War, both viscerally described, and gain and lose comrades along the way. When they think they have finally settled down to farm life, the past comes back to haunt them.

Seven in January

 I read seven books in January.

 

Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour of the Bookshops of Britain 

by Robin Ince

Signed copy, a lovely Christmas present.

When Robin Ince’s stadium tour with Professor Brian Cox was postponed because of the pandemic he decided, as you do, to go on a bookshop tour, by public transport.

As well as giving talks (customized to each venue) he bought books either in the shops or adjacent charity shops, and was given books as gifts – leading to lugging heavy loads around on buses and trains. What an enviable way of spending time …

Here’s a flavour: ‘Edinburgh probably represents my highest per-day date of book purchases of any city I visited. I won’t list my favourite purchases, but rather the one I most regret leaving behind.’

 

French Braid by Anne Tyler

Pleased to have a hardback version (from Waterstones’ hardback half-price sale).

When her children grow up and leave home then, inch by inch, their artist mother Mercy does too. But family life turns out to be inescapable …

I got very involved with all the characters who we follow at various stages of their lives and was frustrated by some gaps and unfinished stories – but, hey, it’s Anne Tyler; she’s forgiven.

 

Friday’s Child by Georgette Heyer

Delightful heroine (called Hero) and her marriage of convenience to the dashing Lord Sherry, on whom she’s always had a crush. Not-really-a-spoiler – the book ends with one of my favourite Heyer scenarios: a chase through the darkening countryside and a showdown in an inn.

 

The Village of Lost and Found by Alison Sherlock

‘Scandal-hit party girl Lucy Conway needs to leave London fast, so she packs her bags and escapes to the sleepy village of Cranbridge to take care of her beloved Uncle Frank.’

 

Blurb your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Enthusiasm by Louise Willder

Bought with my Bookshop.org voucher. Fab. How are we persuaded to buy/read the books we do? Louise Willder (who’s written 5000 blurbs) tells of the tricks of the publishing trade and discusses among much else what she sees as the best and the worst blurbs of all time.

 

Talking of Jane Austen by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G. B. Stern

Bought in the Christian Aid Booksale last year. Published in 1943. Two writers, famous in their day, discuss most eruditely a writer unsung in her day but now one of the world’s most known and beloved.

 

The Art of Falling by Danielle Mclaughlin

When Danielle Mclaughlin won the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in 2019 her story ‘A Partial List of the Saved’ was available online and I thought it was terrific. Since then she has published a story collection Dinosaurs on Other Planets and I should have bought that instead of this, her first novel, which left me cold.

I can understand, of course, that it’s stressful for Nessa having problems at home and at work but my understanding is of the situation not of the effects on the character who, with the rest of the cast, I did not believe in never mind care for. There was much that didn’t add up – eg Luke was said to be ‘very fond of Eleanor’ when to my recollection they hadn’t met.

It’s interesting that an author who I thought wrote brilliantly about relationships (and much else) in her short story failed to convince me about any of the relationships in a much longer piece.

Seven in November

 

I read seven books in November.

 

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

I wonder what it is that draws Anne Tyler to write so often about men who are misfits in various ways (see also below).

In this book, Micah, devoted to his own routines, is trying to navigate his way through the world and the people around him: his loving but overwhelming family, his girlfriend whose hints about living together he fails to pick up – and the boy who turns up wondering if Micah is his father.

This is her twenty-third and latest book, with a new one coming soon to celebrate her 80th birthday.

 

Celestial Navigation by Anne Tyler

Here we have a wholly convincing portrait of shy, reclusive Jeremy whose paper collages are much sought after by art collectors. But his world changes when a beautiful runaway wife turns up at his mother’s boarding house.

 

Lily White by Susan Isaacs

It’s a long time since I read a Susan Isaacs book and it was a pleasure to reacquaint myself with her style in what the New York Times called ‘a big, fat, happy feast of a book’.

‘Meet Lily White, Long Island criminal defense lawyer. Smart, savvy, and down-to-earth, Lee can spot a phony the way her haughty mother can spot an Armani. Enter handsome career con man Norman Torkelson, charged with strangling his latest mark after bilking her out of her life's savings. As the astonishing twists and reverses of the Torkelson case are revealed, so too is the riveting story behind Lee’s life.’

 

  

Miss Austen by Gill Hornby

Based on a literary mystery that has long puzzled biographers and academics – why did Jane Austen’s only sister Cassandra burn her letters?

‘Miss Austen’ is Cassandra in old age seeking out that correspondence and recalling her life with her beloved Jane, their five brothers and their parents. Gill Hornby gives Jane some brilliant lines of dialogue.

The explanation is very convincing – it could be the truth. What comes over (in fictional form but chimes with biographies I’ve read) is how fond the Austen family were of each other and what fun they had together. Delightful.

 

The Mitford Murders: Nancy Mitford and the Murder of Florence Nightingale Shore

by Jessica Fellowes

The first in a series featuring the Mitford sisters as sleuths. The author is the niece of Julian ‘Downton Abbey’ Fellowes and it would appear she is equally acquainted with the upper echelons of society. I quite enjoyed this mystery with lively young Nancy, harking back to the Golden Age of detective stories – but at the end there was a note about the unsolved brutal murder of the real-life Florence Nightingale Shore (god-daughter of her famous namesake). Making her murderer in the book also a real person who was never charged with the crime seems rather a tasteless thing to do.

 

Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson

Thought by many to be the best thriller ever written. I haven’t read enough to make that judgement but it was cracking and I’m still thinking about it weeks later. I was transported to the depths of a Siberian winter and through a plot that I gave up trying to keep get a grip on and just enjoyed the ride.

 

Georgette Heyer: The Biography of a Best Seller by Jennifer Kloester

The second biography I’ve read of this amazingly prolific, clever, witty and very reclusive writer (‘the Queen of Regency romance’) whose novels have been beloved by four generations (so far) of readers.

She had to keep writing – she was the breadwinner of the family much of the time including supporting her two brothers plus she and her husband had a standard of living they didn’t want to give up – so she seemed to dismiss her work as a means to an end. She refused to be interviewed, even have her photograph on book jackets. On the other hand she took endless trouble to get historical details right.

A complicated and perhaps, despite this terrific book, ultimately elusive lady.

Eight in August

 I read eight books in August.

 

Learning to Swim by Clare Chambers

Read on Kindle. I much enjoyed hearing Clare Chambers’ book Small Pleasures on Radio 4 and will be reading it for a forthcoming book group meeting. So I was keen to read her backlist. Learning to Swim starts when Abigail is a schoolgirl; she’s from a suburban what-will-the-neighbours-think sort of family, enthralled by her new friend Frances’ bohemian lifestyle and by her brother Rad. There’s a parting of the ways and then years later an unexpected encounter.

CC is so good on life’s little embarrassments, so good on detail and hitting the nail right on the head. I didn’t want it to end.

 

The Editor’s Wife by Clare Chambers

Read on Kindle. I was less enamoured of this one, written in the first person by a male narrator, but it was still an enjoyable read. Christopher (another product of a suburban, unambitious family) is writing a novel and he has been taken under the wing of an editor, Owen, and his wife Diana.

What I did love was all the booky chat – Clare Chambers began her working life as a secretary at Andre Deutsch when the legendary Diana Athill was at the editorial helm so she knows the London publishing scene as it was thirty or so years ago. And ‘the editor’s wife’ is called Diana … interesting …

 

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

I stayed up very late to finish Jane Harper’s first two books The Dry and The Lost Man a few months ago. This one has the same protagonist as The Dry. Aaron Falk is investigating a company for financial fraud and then gets caught up in a nightmare scenario. The company has sent two groups of staff members (one male team, one female) on a bonding exercise in the Australian wilderness. Of the five women only four make it back … and the missing one is Falk’s whistle blower. Engrossing.

 

The Survivors by Jane Harper

I’d not long finished the above book when I found JH’s newest book in hardback in a charity shop. What luck, although it means I am now up to date with all her titles. Unlike the others, this one is not set on mainland Australia but in a small coastal town in Tasmania. When a girl is found murdered on the beach bad memories are stirred up of another young girl who went missing years earlier.

Hope’s she’s working hard on a fifth book.

 

The Lark by E Nesbit

Found in a charity shop – didn’t know she wrote books for adults. This edition is in the Penguin Women Writers series. Enjoyable enough, frothy, but very dated and, frankly, unbelievable. Two young girls (orphan school leavers) have been diddled out of their inheritance by their guardian although they do have a house to live in. Somehow they make money by selling posies of flowers from their garden gate, enough for them to employ a char lady and a gardener …

 

Searching for Caleb by Anne Tyler

I have not read all Anne Tyler’s books and I used to have others that for some reason I gave away. So I’m trying to build up a full set. This one was first published in 1996. Great stuff (as usual).

Duncan Peck is a restless man, always on the move. His wife, Justine, is a fortune teller who can't remember the past. Her grandfather, Daniel, longs to find the brother who walked out of his life in 1912 never to be seen again. All three are taking journeys that lead back to the family's deepest roots …

 

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

Recommended by a friend. I took a while to get into it and I didn’t love it but it was a very thought-provoking read.

The Miltons are a powerful old New York family, the kind that runs the world. And in 1935, they do. For generations, Kitty and Ogden Milton revel in their own utopia, a small island they own off the coast of Maine, but it cannot last.

Across the generations, we see the Milton myth slowly unravel. In 1959, two strangers enter their circle, forcing each member to question what their family stands for. Then by the 21st century, the money has run dry, the island is up for sale, and their granddaughter is about to uncover disturbing evidence about her family's wealth.

 

The Complete Short Stories by Ian Rankin

His two previous collections in one volume with an extra bonus story. Every one a gem. He lives near me; I saw him in the street yesterday and thought of telling him … but the moment passed.