Ten in February (1)

 I read ten books in February. Five of them are here, five in the next post.

 

A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

It’s seven years since ML’s last book was published, a very long but worthwhile wait and its timing turned out to be perfect for me. I picked my copy up click and collect from The Edinburgh Bookshop in the afternoon and had my first vaccine a few hours later. I didn’t feel fluey the next day but just a bit ‘wabbit’ as we say in Scotland, the perfect excuse to put my feet up with coffee and toast and marmalade to hand – and a new book to read.

ML lives in Kingston on Thames now but grew up in Northern Ontario, Canada; all her books are set there (with a foray to London in one of them, of which more later) and the landscape is as much a character as the people.

A Town Called Solace, set in 1972, is told from three perspectives. Precocious Clara, aged seven, has taken up vigil by the window in case she misses the return of her adored older sister Rose who has run away. Liam moves into the house next door (unaware that he is being observed by Clara); he has mysteriously been left it in the will of a woman he barely remembers from his childhood. The third perspective is that of Elizabeth, Liam’s benefactor, as she lies dying.

No less a person than Anne Tyler says of Mary Lawson: ‘Each of her novels is just a marvel.’ I can only agree so I had to have a reread then of two of her previous ones.

 

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

When I read this, her first novel, almost twenty years ago, I knew that it was a keeper, a book to literally hug to myself. 

It is about so much more but primarily it’s a story about siblings, particularly the relationship between Kate and Matt. In the rural farming community of Crow Lake the Morrison children – Luke and Matt in their teens, Kate aged seven and toddler Bo – are orphaned. Offers of help from far-off relatives would mean splitting the family up; clever Luke and Matt sacrifice their ambitions to keep the family together. The story is narrated by Kate, twenty years on, a zoologist, now living in Toronto and feeling emotionally distant from the family who once were her whole world.

I loved the book so much I didn’t dare to read it again in case it wasn’t as good as I remembered – but having dared I found that it had only improved over time.

 

Road Ends by Mary Lawson

This is her third book. I will reread her second, The Other Side of the Bridge, soon but I skipped to this one because fleetingly we meet Luke and Bo again from Crow Lake.

This is mostly Megan’s story though. Her mother keeps having baby boys (six when the story opens); she loves babies but loses interest in them when the next one comes along. Megan, the only girl and an incredibly practical one, keeps the household clean and fed but she has told her mother that when the latest baby is on his feet she will be leaving.

She ends up in London (in the 1960s, a planet away from small town Ontario) where her practical skills are put to use running a hotel. But back home things are disintegrating – and there’s yet another baby boy.

 

Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford

First published in 1933 and reissued. Told through illustrated letters, it's a delight with all the period detail. Hilary, from Edinburgh, finds work in London in the book department of (a thinly disguised) Selfridges. She writes home to her parents and doctor fiancé. 

I took against said fiancé because a) he was called Basil, a name that should be reserved for TV foxes, and b) he wasn’t at all supportive of her wanting to work for a year before their wedding; plus he refers to twenty-seven-year-old Hilary as ‘my dear child’. So I was glad that <spoiler alert> there was someone nicer waiting in the wings.

What I mainly liked though was hearing about the work of the book department, not just selling books from the shelves but sending out books on subscription – recording readers’ likes and dislikes on a complicated card index system.

 

Slow Horses by Mike Herron

Described as ‘the best thriller of the last decade’ by The Times. The ‘slow horses’ are a crew of men and women who, for various reasons (alcoholism, fouling up a mission etc) have been banished from actively working in the Intelligence Service to pen push in Slough House in a seedy part of London. But none of them joined the service to pen push and when the opportunity comes to be ‘spooks’ again they take it.

Terrific; really great characters and great writing. This is the first in a series and I’d love to read the others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven in December

I read seven books in December.

Shall we Dance? by Maggie Alderson

There’s always something very glam about Maggie Alderson’s novels and this one is no exception. She is a fashion journalist after all. Here, the main character, Loulou, has a vintage clothes shop in Primrose Hill and is the sort of person who wears high-heeled wellingtons to music festivals. 

Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie

I read every Agatha Christie, most more than once, when I was young (those long winter nights on the farm … ). When our parents downsized, my sister and I divided the collection between us.

I remembered The Secret Adversary as one of my favourites, very exciting – it’s the first Tommy and Tuppence story. I was looking forward to seeing the recent TV adaptation but was sorely disappointed. Why move it to the 1950s? Why rewrite the story to such an extent? Why make Tommy such a buffoon?

As my husband had never read any Agatha Christie (I know – weird) I pressed The Secret Adversary and N or M? on him (these had fallen to me in the share-out) and he liked them so much that he asked for more.

So I bought him two more Tommy and Tuppences, Partners in Crime and By the Pricking of my Thumbs, 1970s Fontana editions.

He liked those too and I reread PiC myself when he finished it. It’s a book of short stories, some very far-fetched but, hey, this is the queen of crime. She gets away with it as far as I’m concerned. Unlike the TV producers.

The Road to Little Dribbling More Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Bill travels around Britain (well, England mostly, apart from North Berwick, Ullapool and Cape Wrath), describing his journeys in his witty, informative and often caustic way.

The Lost Woman by Gilly Stewart

Read on Kindle. Set in the Scottish Highlands. Catherine McDonald is trying to turn her family’s home into a hotel but a missing hill-walker brings unwanted attention to the area and some of her family are less than enthusiastic about her plans. Good read, with a great sense of place – as usual from this writer.

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson

Bought in second-hand bookshop, published in 2003. I could not agree with the title more and had every hope that this American author and I would be kindred spirits. Alas no.

A whole chapter was devoted to a true crime book about murder by baseball bat. After reading it she apparently got anxious about her young son playing baseball, and about the possibilities of other sporting paraphernalia being used as weapons. I could win worrying competitions but I’ll skip that one.

I knew we weren’t on the same planet reading-wise though when she was indifferent to /dismissive of two of my very favourite books.

Housekeeping, subsequent Pulitzer prize-winner Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, was ditched after a few pages as ‘too slow’.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson was newly published when Sara Nelson read it. She found it ‘pretty close to cliché’ and suspected it would be ‘ignored or even trashed’ by other reviewers. Well, perhaps it’s mean of me to, ahem, crow, but with the benefit of hindsight I know that Crow Lake got brilliant critical reviews, became a best-seller and a beloved book for many people, and that it won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the McKitterick Prize among other accolades.

But each to their own … in the lists at the back of the book there are a few titles I hadn’t heard of that I'll look out for. Maybe we might even agree over some of them.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Read on Kindle. I bought this because I read that it was one of Anne Tyler’s top ten books. It’s contemporary, set in a small town in Colorado, and follows various characters and how they are linked to each other.

I appreciated it more than liked it, I think. The characters stayed in my mind but I found the almost reportage style of writing distancing.

People We Love by Jenny Harper

This is the fourth title in Jenny Harper’s very successful Heartland Series of ‘strong women under pressure’, set in a fictional town in East Lothian, Scotland. Here, Artist Lexie is back in Hailesbank, living with her parents, as they all try to come to terms with her brother’s fatal accident. ‘An engaging and delightful read,’ as Alexander McCall Smith says on the cover.

I’m very pleased to have been interviewed by Jenny Harper about writing serials, and about The Ferryboat (my People’s Friend serial now available as a large-print library book which I might possibly have mentioned before):

http://jennyharperauthor.co.uk/kate-blackadder-celebrates-serial-success/

@harper_jenny

Eight in August

I read eight books in August.

Home by Marilynne Robinson

In Seven in July I said I’d reread Gilead, the first of three novels set in the early fifties in the small American town of that name and I was about to read the second two, before seeing the author at the Edinburgh Book Festival.

Although it was a thrill to see Marilynne Robinson, her Book Festival talk entitled The Restless Reader was intellectually about three feet above my head. Her novels need concentration but are more accessible.

To recap, Gilead is a kind of letter from John Ames, an elderly Presbyterian minister, to his little boy.

Home is written from the point of view of Glory, daughter of John Ames’ oldest friend – and sister of Jack, the black sheep of the family. Glory has come home to Gilead to take care of her father; the unexpected arrival of Jack – the brother she adores but feels she doesn’t really know – is like an unexploded bomb in their lives.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Lila is John Ames much younger wife – they’re an unlikely but very believable couple. Having met Lila slightly offstage in Gilead and Home we now find out about her extraordinary childhood in the dustbowl of the American Depression and the highways and byways that led her to the town of Gilead and to John Ames.

When I finished Lila I felt like going back and reading the others again because all three are so cleverly (and beautifully) written that they can be read in any order. Maybe one day – so little time, so much to read. 

Road Ends by Mary Lawson

One of my top ten ever books is Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake. Road Ends is also set in Ontario, Canada, where the author grew up (aren’t books amazing? They can take your mind anywhere, without queuing or worrying about losing your passport) and in London.

Megan, only girl in a family of brothers, leaves the town in the backwoods, fed up of being the dogsbody at home; her mother floats around, interested only in the latest baby, and her father shuts himself away and reads about faraway places. The story moves between Megan and her new life in London, and the family she leaves behind (ML is particularly good on sibling relationships) – and other folk in the town including, to my joy, two characters from Crow Lake. Go! – no passport required.

Paris in Love by Eloisa James

I’ve moved vicariously from Ontario to France now and this is a lovely account of a couple – she American, he Italian – and their two children spending a year (for various family and work reasons; they usually live in New York) in Paris. Eloisa James wrote Facebook posts about their stay (lots of mouth-watering food descriptions) and these are collected here with some additions.

Eloisa James is the writing pseudonym of Professor Mary Bly, Professor of English Literature at Fordham University in NY. Under her pen name she writes best-selling Regency romance novels. Naturally, having read Paris in Love I was intrigued to read her fiction – more anon.

Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell

Christian Aid Book Sale purchase. AT was a mega-seller in her day (the thirties) and some of her books have been republished by Virago Classics. I was underwhelmed by her Christmas at High Rising, a collection of inter-linked short stories, but gave this ‘sparkling comedy’ a go anyway and was rather charmed by it – set in an English country house presided over by amusingly irritating Lady Emily.

Night Birds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken

Christian Aid Booksale purchase. Back to America with this one. I’d never read this classic children’s book before and on a day when I was feeling fluey it was the perfect book to get lost in. Fabulous title, fabulous characters, fabulous writing and a fabulous – in more ways than one – plot.

The Sender by Toni Jenkins

Abby, Kat, Pattie and Tessa, four women from Edinburgh, Glasgow, York and Cambridge respectively, all with their own problems and heartaches. Each of them has her own story here, the linking factor being a mysterious card giving comfort and encouragement to the recipient, together with an invitation to meet by St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh on a certain date. The mystery as to who the first sender could be draws the reader along, but each of the stories is good in its own right with a great cast of characters; I was sorry to leave each one but immediately got involved in the next. I didn’t guess who the first sender was; the revelation was a satisfying surprise.

Living the Dream by Celia J. Anderson

Read on Kindle. Strange things happen to Vita on her holiday of a lifetime – she never thought that meeting her late mother would be on the agenda. An American road-trip with a difference.