Five in August

I read five books in August.

Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon

I so enjoyed Joanna Cannon’s first novel The Trouble with Goats and Sheep. This second novel did not disappoint; in fact I think I liked it even more.

Flo has fallen in her flat in the Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly. As she waits (she hopes) to be rescued she thinks about the mysterious new arrival at the Home, about her best friend Elsie, and about a terrible secret she’s been keeping almost all her life.

It takes a brilliant writer to have that as a premise and not make it a gloom-fest. Joanna Cannon pulls it off beautifully – you will actually laugh and cry, and the revelations about how Flo’s past and present have collided make it a real page-turner as well.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

I absolutely fell for Elizabeth Strout’s writing when I read Olive Kitteridge in May. Lucy Barton didn’t grab me quite so much but I still admired the structure and all the small details that made me feel I was right there. Lucy is in hospital for a prolonged but not life-threatening illness. She’s many miles away from where she grew up and the family from whom she’s become estranged. So when her mother turns up unexpectedly they have some talking to do.

Thorndon: Wellington and Home: My Katherine Mansfield Project by Kirsty Gunn

Acclaimed writer Katherine Mansfield grew up in Wellington, New Zealand – and couldn’t wait to leave it. And when she did she found she wanted to write about it. Kirsty Gunn grew up there too, to a family of Scots origin. She’s now based in the UK, writing, and teaching at the University of Dundee. When she got the chance, as a ‘Randell Fellow’, to go back to Wellington for a winter she didn’t at first jump at the chance – like Katherine Mansfield she had mixed emotions about her birthplace. But this little book came out of that time – staying in a 19th-century cottage in a street very near Mansfield’s old haunts, Kirsty Gunn explored the idea of ‘home’.

Why did I read this book? Well, watch this space.

Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton set out to go through the alphabet with her private investigator Kinsey Milhone. So it was very cruel that she died after she’d finished Y but before she’d written Z – and she left strict instructions that no one was to do that in her stead.

This 25th outing for Kinsey is, happily, the familiar mix of past and present mysteries and danger combined with her home life, such as it is. There’s her wonderful elderly landlord, Henry, and the diner with its almost uneatable Hungarian dishes run by Henry’s sister-in-law Rosie – Kinsey’s alternative to staying home and living on peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. In this book, though, there is the tantalising suggestion of a new direction Kinsey’s life might take. Sadly we’ll never know whether that happened or not. I will miss her – but I can always start at A again …

Too Marvellous for Words by Julie Welch

Perfect for grown-ups who can still remember great chunks of In the Fifth at Malory Towers. (Not just me … I met someone recently and the subject came up. I began to recite the song written by Darrell for Mary-Lou, as Cinderella, to sing in the school play, and my friend joined in: By the fire I sit and dream, and in the flames I see, picture of the lovely things that never come to me …ah, me).

However, moving on … Julie Welch’s memoir of boarding school in Suffolk in the 60s (billed as ‘the real Malory Towers’) does have its fair share of jolly japes and midnight feasts but in Julie’s case the school was a welcome escape from a home life that wasn’t very happy.

I don’t now, as I used to, wish that I could have gone to boarding school but I still love reading about those that did.

Seven in September

I read seven books in September.

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier

We’ve probably all heard the story of ‘Johnny Appleseed’ who scattered pips across America that grew into wonderful orchards seemingly without any further human intervention. But it turns out that growing apples is a great skill, that different kinds can be crossed to produce a different flavour/texture – and that drinking too much cider can have very dire consquences.

Once again Tracy Chevalier has chosen a fascinating subject to passionately pursue. Her (fictional) main character, Robert, moves on from the apple trees of his childhood to finding giant sequoias (even being involved in transporting some to Wales – this really happened ).

The research does rather overwhelm the story and I would have liked to follow Robert’s sister Martha too – but I do love learning something new in whatever form it takes and while I appreciated trees before I read this I’m definitely going to be hugging them now.

 

   

Twins,and what they tell us about who we are by Lawrence Wright

Yes, a bit of a random title for me – part psychology, part medical. When I read (and loved) Liane Moriarty’s novel Three Wishes, which is about triplets, she mentioned this book in her acknowledgements. So I thought I would read it, as a writing friend once pointed out to me that I am fond of having multiple births in my stories – lots of twins and the beginnings of a novel with triplets. Really don’t know why I do that … I’m trying to stop. 

But I loved these stories about twins who were separated at birth (sometimes in the past, horrifically, deliberately separated as a scientific experiment) and who turned out to not only have eg the same mannerisms but who married wives with the same name, or who turned up to be reunited with their twin wearing the same colour and style of dress. About nature and nurture basically – absolutely fascinating. And the medical bit was too (did you know that twins can have different fathers?) … book now passed on to a young relative who has started midwifery training.

X by Sue Grafton

Bought in the wonderful Barter Books in Alnwick. This is the third last in this series about Californian private investigator Kinsey Milhone, which I have been blitz-reading over the last few months. This isn’t one of the best, a bit of a pot-boiler, and really it’s a follow-on story from W is for Wasted – so don’t make this the book you start your reading of the series. Otherwise you could start anywhere because the books, all 26 of them (I’ve still to read Y and Z is not out yet), are set in an unspecified year around the mid 1980s.

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

I’ve never read Judy Blume’s YA books – actually I’m not sure they were called that when they were first published, I think she probably invented the genre. But a friend passed this ‘for adult readers’ book on and I was intrigued to read it. It’s set in 1951 and based on a real series of tragic accidents that happened over one year in suburban New Jersey, where JB grew up. There are many wonderful characters, perhaps too many – some merited a whole book of their own. It’s a very interesting period to read about – I’ve read lots of fiction and non-fiction of post-war, still-food-rationed Britain when everything seemed rather gray and dreary, but America is the land of plenty; there are technological advances and women’s lives are changing. 

Christmas Under the Stars by Karen Swan

I’ve been meaning reading to read Karen Swan for a while – her covers look so enticing. But I was sadly disappointed. Four friends – two young couples – in the Canadian Rockies, an accident happens, and the book is about the fall-out. Great setting, great premise. But I didn’t like any of the four of characters – they simply didn't ring true for me – and one of them turns out to be so unhinged they seem to have strayed in from a different genre. And the title is a swiz – there are date headings throughout the book and it skips from 24 December to the 26th! There are good reviews online for this, KS’s eleventh novel, but there are also readers who think it not a patch on earlier titles. So maybe I’ll give her another go. Maybe.

Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

Read on Kindle. Short stories, some about the same characters, all single women and (the irony is deliberate) not awfully carefree or mellow. Loved, loved the characters, the settings and the dry humour. The New York Times described her writing as ‘Cheever mixed with Ephron’. That mix makes a very successful marriage …

Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny

Read on Kindle. When I finished her short stories I rushed out to buy KH’s novel (well, I downloaded and started reading it immediately). I don’t know when I’ve last read a book with such lifelike characters – they jumped straight off the page and I loved them all, yes, even the origami obsessives ...

There’s not much in the way of plot but who cares – this is a fly-on-the-wall, laugh-out-loud look at the 15-year marriage of Graham and Audra. He was previously married to ice-queen, humourless Elspeth. One of those people who light up a room, Audra could not be more different. She is much younger than Graham and he loves that she’s so gregarious and can talk to anyone – and does, at great length and speed, without filtering her thoughts (although he winces when the people sitting in front of them at a church wedding overhear her telling him some very (very) intimate information about the bride).

Graham and Audra have a son, Matthew, who has Aspergers, something they take in their stride although it’s not always easy. And sometimes Audra can be too friendly and hospitable, filling their house with waifs and strays, which is when Graham thinks nostalgically of the ordered, peaceful life he had with Elspeth

Throw in the New York setting as a bonus and I was completely hooked by this warm, funny and wonderfully written book.

Eight in May

I read eight books in May.

A Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell

I read this before I went to Scandinavia for the first time – a visit to Copenhagen at the end of May. Helen Russell, a journalist on a glossy, London-based mag, gave up her job and moved to Denmark for a year when her husband got a job in ‘Lego-land’, a small town in rural Jutland, around thirty miles from the Danish capital. She decided to try and find out if Danes are as happy as they are reputed to be. And they are: she asked people she met from all walks of life to rate their happiness on a scale of one to ten and no one fell below eight despite – or maybe because of – those long dark winters. 

Living there as a non-native wasn’t all hygge but there were compensations not least pastry sampling (in the name of research of course). I decided to follow her example ...

 Then I read:

The Runaway Bridesmaid by Daisy James

After finding her own boyfriend and her sister in a compromising position just before the latter’s wedding ceremony Rosie swaps her Louboutins for Wellingtons and flies from bustling New York to sleepy Devon to the house she’s been left by her aunt. Great fun – and see Daisy James’ latest title Sunshine after the Rain whose cover I previewed here.

The Coffee Shop Book Club – various authors including Jojo Moyes, Ian Rankin, Tracy Chevalier, Jenny Colgan, Tessa Hadley and Val McDermid.

Christian Aid book sale. Short stories. I knew I hadn’t read the book before so couldn’t understand why the stories seemed familiar until I twigged – duh, the clue is on the cover – that they were first published in Woman & Home to which I had a subscription for a while.

I particularly liked As The Time Draws Near by Eowyn Ivey. Piper returns to Alaska to scatter the ashes of her daredevil father ‘Red’ Robertson. I really loved Ivey’s writing and look forward to reading her novel The Snow Child which has been on my Kindle for ages.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Read for book group. Becoming a vegetarian is apparently a very subversive act in South Korea and the fallout from one young woman making this decision is told here from three viewpoints (none of them hers). Several of the group admired some aspects of the writing but only one was very enthusiastic about the book … which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.

I is for Innocent and O is for Outlaw by Sue Grafton

Yes, another Kinsey Milhone gumshoe blitz.

There was an interesting To the Reader note in O is for Outlaw which clarified the timeline of the books – or rather lack of timeline. The books: are sequential but Miss Milhone is caught up in a time warp and is currently living and working in the year 1986, without access to cell phones, the Internet, or other high-tech equipment … You’ll find few, if any references to current movies, fads, fashions or politics.

Famously, Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series is written in ‘real time’. The plus side of this meant that Rankin could set books around topical subjects such as the G8 summit in Edinburgh; the downside of course was that Rebus got older and so eventually had to retire.

As Sue Grafton planned from the outset in the mid 80s to write twenty-six Kinsey Milhone books I guess she had to make an early decision about how she was going to handle time and thought she wouldn’t have wanted Kinsey to age too much (plus her lovely landlord Henry who’s in his 90s clearly would not survive a further twenty-six years however good his gene pool). Hats doffed to her for pulling this off so successfully.

Since I’ve read so many Kinseys on the trot I notice (from a writerly perspective) that when a character is mentioned for the first time, however minor they are, we are always told what they are wearing in some detail, maybe not a technique that would work for everybody but effective here. Observing clothes would be part of Kinsey’s quick summing up of a person perhaps because she is supremely uninterested in what she herself wears – jeans and a black turtleneck being her uniform.

A quick Google tells me that in the US a ‘sport coat’ is what we in the UK call a sports jacket – but it sounds much more dashing.

And courtesy of a rescheduled flight and an unexpected four-hour train journey I was able to – yes, let’s hear it for the Kindle – bring my monthly total to eight with these two corking books:

The Daughters of Red Hill Hall by Kath McGurl

A dual time-line novel (a device this author has made her own I think). Each story had a connection with Red Hill Hall –in earlier times a family’s stately home and now a hotel. The parallels were cleverly done and I enjoyed both the historical and the contemporary strands.

Felicity at the Cross Hotel by Helena Fairfax

Of which I shall say nothing for the moment, except do go and buy it and look out for an interview with Helena Fairfax here in early July.

Seven in April

 I read seven books in April.

Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty

Recently I heard an interview with a novelist who specialises in ‘issue’ books. I read about six of them before giving her up a few years ago. She was asked which came first (when she was thinking of her next book) the character or the issue, and she replied, as if it was a no-brainer, oh, the issue. I realised why I’d stopped reading her books – because although I can remember the issues her main characters had I can’t remember anything else about them.

Liane Moriarty’s characters all have lots of issues – as do we all, that’s life, but they are never flagged up as such. Triplets Lyn, Cat and Gemma are the protagonists in Three Wishes – LM is terrific on this sibling relationship. Loved it – not quite as much as The Last Anniversary reviewed here, but lots. I’ve bought The Hypnotist’s Love Story and, her latest, Truly, Madly, Guilty, but am putting off reading them because then I’ll have finished all the books she’s written to date and I don’t know how long the wait will be for the next one …

And while I’m having a wee rant about ‘issues’ I was cross and upset to read that a new version of Anne of Green Gables is being filmed for Netflix. Called Anne with an E it tells the ‘real story’ of ‘a more troubled’ Anne and will be concerned with ‘trauma, bullying and being an outsider’ in the ‘hard, gritty, scrappy’ life she apparently would have had in Prince Edward Island in the late 1800s.

Leaving aside the fact that Anne is a fictional character … I think we can read between the lines that her life, certainly before she came to Green Gables, was what we would now call dysfunctional, but the whole point of her delightful character is that despite her bad start in life she’s never self-pitying, never thinks of herself as a victim. Quite the opposite in fact. Grrr. I won’t be watching.

N is for Noose

V is for Vengeance

W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

After reading U is for Undertow last month I went on three further crime sprees with private investigator Kinsey Milhone. The next one is available, called merely X, and then only two more to come in this very enjoyable series.

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

Read on Kindle. Psychological suspense novels promising a twist are the in-thing just now. I didn’t see the twist coming that was revealed about two-thirds of the way through this one but it made sense when I put my Kindle down for a few minutes and thought about it – very clever. The twist on the very last page though – perhaps someone could explain it to me?

In Her Wake by Amanda Jennings

Read on Kindle. Another psychological one. I wasn’t sure about the slightly magical (or were they?) elements in this one but otherwise I thought it was a great page-turner (if you can say that about an e-book) and I liked the Cornish setting.

The Whale Boat House by Mark Mills

This is the first book I’ve read by this author but it won’t be the last. It’s set in Long Island just after the Second World War and begins with the dead body of a beautiful young socialite being caught in a fisherman’s net. Long Island is just beginning to be the weekend/holiday destination for rich New Yorkers who build large houses, a contrast to the homes of the permanent residents. Some Amazon reviewers thought the author shoehorned too much of his research on the lives and work of the fishermen into the story but I liked all the detail and I think it’s good to learn something while being entertained.

Six in March

I read six books in March.

Rules: Things are Changing at the Little School by the Sea Jenny Colgan

A few years ago I read a book called Class by Jane Beaton and loved it – Malory Towers for grown-ups. I thought about it off and on but couldn’t remember the title. Then the other month it was revealed that ‘Jane Beaton’ was actually Jenny Colgan who in the meantime has become a humongously successful romantic novelist (and as Jenny T. writes Dr Who books). There will be six books in this series – the first one has been repackaged as Class: Welcome to the Little School by the Sea and this is the second. It was good to catch up with Maggie, a teacher in the school on the south coast of England but originally from Glasgow, the other teachers and the girls. (But I do think ‘the Little’ is currently being very overused in book titles.)

Diplomatic Baggage:Adventures of a Trailing Spouse by Brigid Keenan

Brigid Keenan was/is a journalist and former Times fashion editor. In the late sixties she married ‘A.’ who became an EU diplomat and as a result the couple lived in various parts of the globe such as India, Trinidad and Kazakhstan. Fascinating anyway to read about the different lifestyles – but as BK can be very funny and self-deprecating I really enjoyed this. I loved her story of the event that started as a po-faced official banquet but took a different turn when the President of Kazakhstan, after a few drinks, suddenly took off his jacket and asked her to dance – just him and her, in front of two hundred guests...

Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit

Read for book group. A book of emails between English journalist Bee, and May, an academic living in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein. They were originally in touch so that Bee could write an article but kept up a correspondence which was eventually published to help raise money to bring May and her husband to England. Brings home what living in a war-torn country is like day-to-day … May was in danger every time she stepped outside her house and not always safe inside it. Recommended (but don’t expect a lot of ‘talking about Jane Austen’, I think she was mentioned once.)

Losing it by Helen Lederer

Millie is a writer, middle-aged, single mother, overweight. Her only child, the more serious-minded Mary, is doing research in Papua New Guinea. I enjoyed the part where Millie visits her daughter – their relationship needs a lot of work – wished there had been more of that.

Millie’s behind with her mortgage and owes money to a loan company so when she gets the chance, through a magazine editor she works for, to earn £20,000 if she loses three stone she jumps at it (or would if she could jump). What follows are her efforts to do that – exercise, colonic irrigation, trying and failing to say no to a giant Toblerone etc …

U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton

Haven’t read any in this private investigator series for a long time. This was a corker – what an achievement to keep up such a high standard for so long. I see that V, W and X are now available so must catch up with those. Mine is a hardback copy, bought for £3.00 in the Amnesty Bookshop, Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh – and thence I shall return it, pointing out that the only one on Amazon is priced at £32.97.

The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

I’ve read three other Liane Moriarty books and loved each one (see Big Little Lies review here) more than the last. The Last Anniversary – set on the wonderfully named Scribbly Gum Island, just off the coast of Sydney, Australia – has a very original family secret (or at least the way the secret's been kept is probably unique) and, as usual with LM, a cast of characters you really feel you know and are very sorry to leave. I’ve just started Three Wishes … watch this space.