Six in September

I read six books in September.

There’s no coming back from this by Ann Garvin

I got a book by this author a few months ago, I thought you said this would work, one of my monthly free e-books courtesy of Amazon Prime. Enjoyed it (love a road trip book). In this one, single-mom Poppy has to earn money fast to make sure her daughter can go to college but when, through an ex-boyfriend, she gets a job in the costume department on a major movie it seems she’s bitten off more than she can chew. Fast-paced fun.

 

Don’t forget to write by Sara Goodman Confino

Another author I’ve acquired after reading a free e-book. This one is set in the 1960s. I loved it.

‘When Marilyn Kleinman is caught making out with the rabbi’s son in front of the whole congregation, her parents ship her off to her great-aunt Ada for the summer. If anyone can save their daughter’s reputation, it’s Philadelphia’s strict premier matchmaker’.

 

Murder among the roses by Liz Fielding

An excellent cosy crime, the first in a series, set in the Cotswold town of Maybridge.

‘Abby is horrified to discover the bones of a baby buried under a rose bush. It’s in the garden of her soon-to-be ex-husband Howard’s family home.’

 

The Easternmost House by Juliet Blaxfield

The author lives in, yes, the easternmost house in England, on the Suffolk coast – but for how long who knows? I’d imagined erosion would happen slowly, an inch a year maybe, but no, sometimes a foot of land disappears overnight.

Beautifully written and a lovely book in itself, a soft paperback with flaps and an illustration and a poem or quote at the beginning of each chapter.

 

The Easternmost House by Juliet Blaxfield

One of the most depressing books I’ve ever read (and I speak as someone who is currently reading Demon Copperhead). It was a shock given that I adore EMD’s Diary of a Provincial Lady books and regularly reread them, enjoying her wry humour.

The exact time for this one is not spelt out but probably early Edwardian.

Cosseted only child Monica is eighteen but has no agency – her mother determines what she will wear, eat, who she can be friends with, even when she should get up in the morning. Monica acquiesces because she is just about to come out as a debutante. Maybe she’ll get a proposal from someone wonderful at her first ball! Or if not, well, as long as she gets engaged and soon to someone – ‘any husband is better than none’.

On reading the Afterword in the Virago edition I think this is meant to be a parody of life for girls in the upper echelons in that era but I found no humour in it. Well, except maybe at the end when, shockingly still a spinster in her mid-twenties (having got herself talked about), our Monica accepts the offer of marriage from an old (old) family friend and on their wedding day she hopes fervently that she will give him a son – I’m pretty sure she has no idea how that will be achieved …

Why depressing? Well, thinking about the stifled lives women lived of course, but also listening to the news more than a hundred years later – are we going to have to go back to having chaperones for girls to keep them safe?

 

Think of me by Frances Liardet

I loved We must be brave, not just the story but Frances Liardet’s writing. And so it was with her new one.

‘James Acton has come to the village of Upton to begin again. As his grief over the death of his wife eases, he hopes to find new purpose as the vicar of this small, Hampshire parish, still emerging from the long shadow of the war.’

I was some way into when it began to dawn on me that some characters from We must be brave are here too which added extra enjoyment.

 

Seven in April

 I read seven books in April.

 

Jeannie’s War by Carol MacLean

A couldn’t-put-down family saga set in Glasgow in 1939 and, yippee, the first in a series called The Kiltie Street Girls.

The first Girl is Jeannie Dougal who lives with her widowed mother, wayward teenage sister, Kathy, and small brother and sister – except that the younger two are currently evacuated to Perthshire and the fate of older brother Jimmy who is in the army is constantly on her mind. Jeannie has become engaged to the handsome and comparatively well-off Arthur Dunn but comes to realise how overbearing he is.

In the munitions factory she makes friends with three girls whose lives become entwined with hers and with her family.

The Second World War shows no sign of falling from popularity as a background for novels. (Last month I read A Wartime Secret, this month We Must be Brave, see below, and I have The Watchmaker’s Daughter lined up.) I look forward to hearing more from Kiltie Street.

 

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan

Vaseem Khan was the keynote speaker at the Scottish Association of Writers conference this year, and a very entertaining one he was too. I bought this book, the first in a series, and asked him to sign it. I told him I was going to read it first … but I’d like it signed for my brother who has been to India on business many times and he wrote a very nice personal message inside. Brother was delighted (and yes, I told him I’d sneaked a read). Terrific characters (two- and four-legged) and a great plot.

On the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra discovers that he has inherited an elephant, an unlikely gift that could not be more inconvenient. For Chopra has one last case to solve ...

 

The Sentinel by Lee Child with Andrew Child

The first book written by the two brothers. More of the same – violence and mayhem and our hero walking off into the sunset having sorted it all out with more violence and mayhem.

 

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Original take on the spy novel. In 1940, Juliet Armstrong, alone in the world and just eighteen, is recruited to MI5. Mundane typing and dangerous liaisons follow – and an unexpected ending – told in Kate Atkinson’s brilliant writing.

 

The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon

Best-known as the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, Mark Haddon turns his attention here to short stories. Apparently he wanted to experiment with writing styles and genres but not commit these to a whole novel.

So the first story, for example, is about the collapse of a pleasure beach pier and it’s told by an omniscient narrator who observes the scene before, during and after – the innocent holiday makers, the deaths, the injuries, the traumas, the heroism. Not something you’d want sustained – as a reader or a writer – in a longer piece but the effect is stunning (if grim) here.

In fact all the stories are dark and disturbing and only too memorable – I wanted to, but couldn’t stop thinking about The Island, based on Greek mythology, long after I finished reading it.

 

We Must Be Brave by Frances Liardet

‘Domestic stories of women’s lives in wartime are common in genre publishing but rarer in literary fiction.’ began the Guardian’s review of this book.

It’s 1940; Southampton has been bombed and homeless civilians arrive in busloads in the village of Upton. Childless Ellen Parr and her much older husband, Selwyn, help them to find beds for the night – and Ellen realises that among them is a small, unaccompanied girl. Pamela ends up staying with them for some years until … no spoilers.

Then there’s Ellen’s riches to rags back-story, her uncompromising friend Lucy who just walks off the page, and much else woven into the fabric of Upton over the years – the novel finishes in 2010.

I won’t read it all again (so little time so much to read …) but when I finished it I did go back and revisit the passage where Ellen and Selwyn first literally bumped into each other. For various reasons it was an unlikely match but that meeting very believably set the tone for their happy relationship.

 

The Nighwatchman by Louise Erdich

Read for book group. Set in 1953 in the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. Thomas Wazhuhk, a prominent member of the Chippewa Council is extremely worried by the US government’s proposed new ‘Emancipation Bill’ which threatens the rights of Native Americans.

The book also follows Pixie who supports her family financially but wants, somehow, to get to Minnesota to find her missing sister.

The author, an enrolled member of Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for this book. It’s a gripping read and opened up a world I knew almost nothing about.