Five in June

 

I read five books in June.

 

Mrs Porter Calling by A J Pearce

‘A feel-good novel about the spirit of friendship in wartime Britain.’ The third in The Wartime Chronicles series – the fourth Dear Miss Lake has just been published. I love books set in the Home Front, books set in wartime London and books set in magazine publishing houses, so this ticked three boxes.

Obviously, in this time and place, the characters face very serious situations, but it’s all done with a light and delightful touch.

From her uncle, the eponymous Mrs Porter has inherited Woman’s Friend magazine – a cosy weekly which specialises in answering readers’ problems. But the glamorous and entitled Mrs P finds their problems ‘mis’ and dreary and makes the staff run Vogue-type articles on eg perfume that would cost the ordinary woman half a week’s wages.

 

The Glass Maker by Tracy Chevalier

Tracy’s books are always so interesting and informative because she researches such different subjects each time – Vermeer, trees, fossils, church kneelers and Victorian mourning to name but a few. This time it is glass making on the Venetian island of Murano: she visited there several times and tried her hand at this difficult skill (sadly, a skill and an industry that has been mostly overtaken by modern production methods).

The main character, Orsolo, and some of her family barely age over the five-hundred-year span of the story. This feat is explained by the ‘timelessness’ of Venice and is pulled off brilliantly. Told this way, you can see the history of glass making since the 1500s without having to meet a new set of characters every generation.

 

False Colours by Georgette Heyer

‘Gossip, scandal and an unforgettable Regency romance.’ The main character here is the dashing Kit, on leave from the diplomatic service – and he needs all his diplomacy skills to sort out the tangled lives of his extravagant mother and wayward twin brother, and his own feelings for that brother’s betrothed.

An enjoyable read if not one of my favourite GHs.

 

A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer

My first GH crime novel – and, sadly, my last. Set in the 1930s in a snowbound country house, the book has none of the sparkling writing and gorgeous characterisation I like so much in her Regency novels. (I was warned of this by diehard Regency fans ... ) 

The solution to the murder of the house’s owner was satisfying but, jings, it was a bit of a plod to get there.

 

Broken Threads by Michal Hussein

This memoir from the host of Radio 4’s Today programme details her ancestry, which includes an Irish grandmother and a grandfather who played a part in the bloody transition ‘from Empire to Independence’.

It’s fascinating – I wish, though, that I’d read it in print and not on Kindle because eg there are many names beginning with A and I would like to have been able to refer back easily to get a grip on them, plus the e-form is hopeless when a book has lots of reference notes.

Six in May

I read six books in May.

Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives by Lucy Mangan

A book about books – what’s not to like? I enjoyed Bookworm which covered Lucy Mangan’s childhood years of not wanting to do much else other than read (a girl after my own heart then).

Of course, though, adulthood does have its compensations – an income to buy books and a house (and a specially built ‘shed’ in the garden, of which I am very jealous)’) to put them in. Oh, and a husband who’s equally bookwormish, and a child who provides a reason to reread favourites and to find new ones.

So this book ranges wildly and wonderfully (as anybody’s reading material should) from Library Lion to 1990s bonkbusters such as Lace, to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with much (much) in between.

I had the pleasure of seeing her recently being interviewed under the auspices of the wonderful Toppings bookshop in Edinburgh and got this lovely signed copy.

 

 

Free, Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Read for book group. I knew next to nothing about Albania; it was so interesting to hear about its recent history through the eyes of Lea Ypi, born there in 1979 and now a professor at the London School of Economics.

Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was a difficult place to live in for many reasons – but it was Lea’s home and all she knew. But in December 1990 political upheaval meant everything changed. There was freedom at last which seemed wonderful to begin with but it came with many downsides for everybody and, for Lea, some startling family revelations.

Fascinating.

 

 

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Something extraordinary happens on a flight from Hobart to Sydney – an elderly woman called Cherry goes down the aisle telling each passenger (including children) and crew members when and how they are going to die.

Thereafter, the book focuses on some of these people and what effect their prediction has had on them (especially when they find out that some of the predictions have come true)  – and we find out Cherry’s very plausible backstory too. Riveting. I particularly enjoyed Leo’s and Ethan’s stories – Leo, the family man with a toxic boss, and Ethan, hopelessly infatuated with his rich, glamorous housemate. I still think about them actually …

 

April Lady by Georgette Heyer

Yay – the Christian Aid book sale was back this year in Edinburgh after a couple of years’ hiatus. Among my (very restrained) purchases were two GHs I’ve never read before. April Lady won’t go into my top five but it was very enjoyable all the same.

 

 

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

A joy to catch up with Jackson Brodie again.

A painting has apparently been stolen from the Yorkshire home of a deceased woman but her unpleasant offspring are reluctant to involve the police. Our hero, rather reluctantly, takes on the case – which leads to a stately home, an array of characters straight from the Golden Age of crime writing, and a Murder Mystery Weekend. Hope that’s not the last we see of JB – I’m still cross that the television series was cancelled.

You can’t see from the image but my copy (also purchased in Toppings but this time the St Andrews branch) has sprayed black edges, a special edition for independent bookshops.

 

 

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers

After I read Small Pleasures by CC a few years ago, I read through her backlist of six books, one after the other.

Shy Creatures, her latest, is terrific. Set in the 1960s, in the environs of Croydon, it was inspired by the true story of a man discovered in a house he hadn’t left in forty years – a man with wild hair and beard and an astonishing talent for art.

Helen, an art therapist (embroiled in an affair with a charismatic married colleague in the psychiatric hospital) becomes entangled in the man’s mysterious past.

Six in August

I read six books in August.

 

Long Island by Colm Toibin

The sequel to Brooklyn. It’s now 1976. Eilis and her husband Tony and their two children live in Long Island, in the same cul-de-sac as Tony’s parents and two brothers. A marriage crisis sees Eilis going back to Ireland and her mother’s house in Enniscorthy for her first visit in twenty years.

No further spoilers. It was such a pleasure to revisit these characters and Colm Toibin’s writing about them. I had the privilege of hearing him talk about the book at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year (frankly, I could listen to him read the telephone directory). He said he’d loved the film of Brooklyn to the extent that he took some characteristics that Domhnall Gleeson gave to Jim, and brought them out in Long Island.

And that gorgeous lyrical writing? The minute he’s written anything flowery or introspective he deletes it … and pares down and pares down … 

 

A Coronet for Cathie by Gwendoline Courtney

I love to reread my favourite girls’ books. One I know almost off by heart is Elizabeth of the Garrett Theatre by GW and several others of hers are a nostalgic read too. I’d never read this one; it seemed unavailable but has just been reissued by the wonderful Girls Gone By Publishers.

Teenage orphan Cathie learns that, following the death of a previously unknown relative, she is now a duchess and has a castle to live in … The book then turns into more of a school story. Cathie manages to avoid having her lineage known when she attends a day school some distance away – that certainly sorts out the snobs from the nice girls!

And continuing on the comfort reads, a couple of L M Montgomerys – The Story Girl and The Golden Road with their bewitching story-spinning heroine Sara Stanley.

 

 

Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer

Unmarried at thirty, wealthy Annis Wychwood defies convention and sets up her own household in Bath. She unexpectedly finds herself in loco parentis to seventeen-year-old Lucilla whose guardian is the much-gossiped about rake Oliver Carleton.

 

Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

I’m not that keen on ghost/slightly supernatural stories except if they’re written by Diane Setterfield … Her Once Upon a River is wonderful, even better than this one..

Here, William Bellman kills a rook with a catapult when he’s ten and thereby alters the course of his life. Rising from poverty to become a very rich businessman entirely through his own astonishing acumen, when his child is dying he enters into a kind of pact with the mysterious Mr Black.

Apart enjoying the story, I learnt many things from this book especially about rooks and the over-the-top mourning clothes and accoutrements the Victorians went in for. Highly recommended.

 

 

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.

Six in September

 I read six books in September.

 

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

Lars Mytting had a rather unlikely non-fiction bestseller in 2015 with Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way.

Wood plays a large part in this novel and the descriptions of it, and the art of the master craftsman, are glorious. The (very) intricate plot takes Edvard from a mountain farmstead in Norway to Shetland and the WW2 battlefields of France in his quest to unravel his family’s history; in particular to find out what happened to his parents when he was three and the nature of a very unusual inheritance.

 

The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman

The mixture as before and just as enjoyable.

 

Between Extremes by Brian Keenan and John McCarthy

Charity shop find. Two of my heroes – I’ve read both of their accounts of being kept hostage for years in Beirut and how their friendship there sustained them. One continuing fantasy they had when they were chained to a wall in a small dark space was that they set up a yak farm in Patagonia, the thought of the endless panoramas being the most appealing terrain they could think of.

And several years after their release they made it to South America, their friendship surviving despite their very different personalities (and some very hairy horse riding adventures). The yak farm remained a fantasy inevitably but they let the idea go not without regret, I felt; months of talking about it had helped to keep them sane and forward-looking.

 

Are We Having Fun Yet? by Lucy Mangan

I enjoy Lucy Mangan’s journalism and I loved her Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, so I looked forward to this, her first novel. It’s a story of family life, told in diary form. All mum Liz wants is some peace and quiet so she can read a book (and I can empathise with that … ); her husband and two small children have (unsurprisingly) different ideas.

I wasn’t as enthusiastic as the celebrity reviewers … I found Liz’s harping on her domestic ineptitude funny at first but ultimately repetitive and tiresome. Her three friends, and their endless pooling of grievances, all sounded the same. I did love Evie, her ‘five-year-old acrobat, gangster, anarchist, daughter’ though I’m not sure I’d want to be her mother.

A bit of a disappointment.

 

Mortification: Writers’ Stories of their Public Shame by Robin Robertson

So you want to be a famous writer? Well, Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Louis de Bernieres, Margaret Drabble, Roddy Doyle, AL Kennedy and others are here to tell you it’s not all beer and skittles (or champagne and adoring fans); on the contrary there are moments of deep humiliation and embarrassment. Some bring it on themselves (drink might be involved … ) and some have it brought upon them (dodgy hospitality, being mistaken for someone else, no one turning up to signing sessions … ).

 

The Toll-gate by Georgette Heyer

A thriller with a romance – and a male protagonist. What a comfort read she provides when comfort is needed.

Seven in August

 I read seven books in August.

 

Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn

Non-fiction. Cal Flyn visited places which humans have vacated for one reason or another – eg Chernobyl; the island of Monserrat (because of volcanic activity); the no-go buffer zone in Cyprus; and a strange sea that comes and goes in California. Nature has reclaimed all of the places to a great or lesser extent. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, when collective farms in Estonia were abandoned, a staggering 500,000 hectares of forest had taken over by 2010 which is very good news for the planet on the carbon front.

Two sites closer to (my) home were of much interest: the abandoned island of Swona off the north coast of Scotland which is a living experiment in how cattle behave when they stop being domesticated; and the shale bings, legacy of coal mining in West Lothian, where no end of plant life can be found now including two rare orchids.

Cal Flynn doesn’t shy away from the bad news around climate change but it was heartening to have these flashes of hope.

 

A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

See July … impossible to choose a top five of GHs as it turns out because this one is right up there too. Unusually, the heroine is plain and plain-spoken and much of the book takes place in the countryside with talk of new farming methods rather than balls and beaux.

 

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny

Read when it came out in April 21 and it was a joy to read it again, not for the last time I’m sure. I’ve read her first novel Standard Deviation three times and just thinking about it makes me want to make that four. Check them out!

 

Fabulous Nobodies by Lee Tulloch  

I had never heard of Fabulous Nobodies until I read this article praising it by Marian Keyes and before you could say ‘look, missus, there are already xx books on your to-read pile’ I’d nipped online and bought it.

It reminded me in some ways of The Dud Avocado, a book I am fond of, although it is set in New York in 1983 instead of 1950s Paris. Reality Nirvana Tuttle (known as Really) is fashion obsessed and desperate to be a trendsetter, to be ‘somebody’ – sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. Entertaining and oddly sweet.

 

The Bridge Ladies by Betsey Lerner 

I’ve been dipping in and out of BL’s The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, (bought in a charity shop, not for this price). She’s been an agent as well as an editor so very well qualified to write it, although not everything translates to this side of the pond (and publishing has changed so much since 2010).

She mentioned her memoir and, yes, my fingers went walking online again. Her mother played bridge with the same friends for over fifty years. When Betsey comes back from New York to live where she grew up, she gets to know the ladies better and asks them about their lives, especially their young lives, so different from her own.

I very much enjoyed that aspect – the ladies and their families, living in a post-war Jewish community in Connecticut – but when Betsey takes up bridge too and goes to classes so that she will be a worthy player, she lost me. I can only hope that playing bridge is more interesting than reading about it.

 

The Swallow’s Flight by Hilary Mackay

A welcome sequel to The Skylarks’ War with as wonderful a cast of characters as you could meet anywhere. For children of all ages.

 

Arabella by Georgette Heyer

Arabella, daughter of a Yorkshire vicar, is brought to fashionable London by her mother’s friend to enter the marriage market. Despite her new surroundings, her vicarage upbringing keeps coming to the fore as she intervenes in the lives of those less fortunate … (as you can see from this cover – shades of The Water Babies). Unwittingly, she attracts the attention of wealthy and elegant Mr Beaumaris who is undoubtedly the catch of the day.

Despite the money and the immaculate attire though, our hero has a strong sense of the absurd. He is aware that other men strive to dress like he does (he’s an ‘influencer’ of his time) so, three days in a row, he sports a dandelion in his buttonhole and is amused to watch his followers scramble over themselves to do likewise.

A total delight.