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 October

I read six books in October.

 

The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre

A mystery jointly investigated by a Scottish Miss Marple-type and a hardboiled Los Angeles cop? What a perfect mash-up! But then … this unsuspecting reader got caught up in pretty outlandish scenarios such as a volunteer-run library in rural Perthshire being stormed by gun-toting policemen … It’s a gripping read with some of Mr Brookmyre’s trademark humour. I enjoyed it and am still thinking about it but don’t ask me to explain the plot (wee hint: if you like video games you might be able to get your head round it).

 

I is for Innocent by Sue Grafton

Californian PI Kinsey Milhone is hired to re-investigate the case of a man accused of murdering his rich wife  – a crime for which a court has already acquitted him.

 

Same As Ever It Was by Claire Lombardo

I thought Claire Lombardo’s last (and first) book The Most Fun We Ever Had was amazing and I looked forward to reading this one. I still think her writing is brilliant and her characters seem so real – but I didn’t enjoy this one so much.

Now, I know that you don’t have to like a character for them to make good reading but here the intolerant and judgmental protagonist, Julia, is not the most congenial person to spend 492 pages with. Through flashbacks, however, we discover reasons for her wariness around other people and why, when she’s determined not to form friendships with her peer group, she’s happy when an older woman, Helen Russo, befriends her. But that friendship has consequences …

Lucky Julia, though, she’s married to Mark, ‘the nicest man on earth’ – and he really is devoted to her (no twist in the tale there).

They have two children, sweet, laid-back Ben who’s 24, and teenager Alma who’s a pain in the •••t. For example, when Julia croons in baby talk to her miniature daschund, Alma admonishes her mother, saying ‘Don’t police her emotions!’ And when Julia waves politely in thanks for a courtesy by a fellow driver, Alma rolls her eyes: ‘God, Mum, do you even know that man?’

But there you go – I wouldn’t have felt so annoyed by Alma if she hadn’t come over as a real person.

I’ll definitely read Claire Lombardo again.

 

 

The Mission House by Carys Davies

Reading this book means, sadly, that I am currently up-to-date with Carys Davies’ novels (following West and Clear). Unlike those two, which are set in the 19th century, this is contemporary (emails etc) – although, being set in a ‘mission house’ in India it does have a historic flavour to it.

Hilary Byrd, a middle-aged man, an English librarian, has always found life a little difficult. He takes himself to India and ends up at a mission house on a hill station in South India where he is taken in by the Padre and his adopted daughter Priscilla. But tensions are brewing down in the town which spell trouble for the mission house …

A wannabe country and western singer and a rescued horse provide some light relief. As ever, Carys Davies’ writing is spare yet colourful and compulsively readable.

 

Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang 

Non-fiction, read for book group. To quote from the blurb: 'This is a book about the coming of age of four women born in China in the 1980s and 1990s, in a society about to transform beyond recognition.'

The author, born in China, became a financial journalist and is now a Labour MP in England. Absolutely fascinating.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

These many posts I’ve compiled on books I’ve read have never included any science fiction until now … although The Ministry of Time has also been described as comedic, literary, romantic and (unsurprisingly) genre-defying. It is all of these things. Oh, and time travel.

What sold it to me, though, was the inclusion of a real-life Victorian polar explorer, Commander Graham Gore. Polar exploration is a subject I’m fascinated by and here was such a massively different take on the subject.

Gore is on the point of death, on a failed expedition in the Arctic in 1847, when he is snatched and taken to a time in our near future. He’s part of an experiment – the others (all fictional) include, for example, a soldier who would have died on the Somme if he hadn’t been ‘rescued’. Each of the rescued is housed with a civil servant to learn all about the new era they have found themselves in – not just the technology but changed attitudes and world orders; they have a lot of history to catch up on.

As our female narrator’s relationship with the dashing Commander changes and she gets involved in the lives of the others who have landed here from the past, she begins to wonder what exactly the government is hoping to gain from the experiment and if it’s as benign as she’d been led to believe.

I couldn’t put it down. Perhaps hard-core science-fiction readers are less enamoured with it, I don’t know, but if you’re soft-core then I heartily recommend it.

Seven in January

 I read seven books in January.

 

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

A few weeks ago Waterstones had a three-day sale in which every single hardback was half price. I restricted myself to two, one of which is this book of articles and essays. I loved her first such volume This is the story of a happy marriage which includes a long and wonderful memoir of her life as a writer.

In this new book more than one essay concerns AP’s friendship with a woman (met through Tom Hanks – jealous, moi?) who, while she is still virtually a stranger, and a seriously ill one at that, ends up living with AP and her doctor husband during the first lockdown.

Years ago I read AP’s Bel Canto but for some reason I’ve never read her other novels; must remedy that.

She is much to be admired also for the bookshop she opened in Nashville when otherwise the city would be without one.

 

I like a bit of a crime spree in January. So I read these three:

 

Death in the Mist by Jo Allen

The seventh and perhaps the last (hope not) book in the Jude Satterthwaite series, set in the Lake District. The novel murder method might put you off camping …  Excellent.

 

Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre

Journalist Jack Parlabane is looking to redeem himself with a scoop, and a doctor on trial for the murder of her husband might provide one. The outcome was one I certainly didn’t see coming. Terrific.

 

Skeleton Road by Val McDermid

The third, and the only one I hadn’t read, in the Karen Pirie cold case series. With the investigation reliving the horrors of the Balkan war in the 1990s it was a harrowing read; for me there was just too much history/backstory.

 

China in the Morning by Nicholas Wollaston

A charity shop purchase – my copy doesn’t have this nice jacket. Nicholas Wollaston visited China in 1960 when very few outsiders were allowed in. He found a population which seemed to be happy with their lives in Mao Zedong’s Communist Party state – one urban student couldn’t wait for her turn to be selected for the ‘privilege’ of being sent to work the land with the peasants. The ‘Great Chaos’ of the Cultural Revolution was yet to come.

His onward trip to Vietnam is also here – again he was there at a time prior to seismic events in that country.

 

Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley

Married couples Alex and Christine, and Lydia and Zachary, have been friends for years. Christine and Zachary were once an item and Lydia holds a candle for Alex. Each couple has a grown-up daughter, one sensible, one a mess. Their lives are as entwined as they have been since they were students but (not a spoiler) Zachary dies suddenly. Old grievances emerge when Christine invites the grief-stricken Lydia to stay with them for as long as she wants.

Tessa Hadley notices everything about her characters and their surroundings – for example, she describes in forensic detail the items in artist Christine’s studio. So it is easy to visualise it all but I didn’t care for any of the self-absorbed characters (although dead Zachary sounds as if he was jolly company).

I enjoyed The Past, the only other TH novel I’ve read, but the jury is out on this one.

 

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

Read for book group. Winner of the Palestine Book Award.

Nahr has been confined to the Cube: nine square metres of glossy grey cinderblock, devoid of time, its patterns of light and dark nothing to do with day and night. Journalists visit her, but get nowhere because Nahr is not going to share her story with them.

The world outside calls Nahr a terrorist, and a whore; some might call her a revolutionary, or a hero. But the truth is, Nahr has always been many things, and had many names.

How Nahr came to be imprisoned in ‘the Cube’ is told in flashbacks. A disturbing read, obviously, but there are some bright spots too – her relationship with her mother and her grandmother, her mother’s embroidery, her love of dance and some delicious-sounding meals.