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.

 

Five in August

I read five books in August.

Penintent by Mark Leggatt

When brilliant Edinburgh lawyer Hector Lawless is approached by his boss with a highly sensitive case that reaches from one of Edinburgh’s most exclusive private schools to 10 Downing Street, he relishes the chance to bring true evil to justice. But the commission is not what it seems …

A (sadly) very timely thriller which, at the time of writing, has been longlisted for the prestigious McIlvanney Prize, Bloody Scotland’s annual award for the best Scottish crime book of the year.

Of extra interest if you know Edinburgh and its environs but still thrilling if you don’t.

 

A Home from Home by Veronica Henry

A modern nod to Romeo and Juliet. ‘Dragonfly Farm has been a home and a haven for generations of Melchiors – arch rivals to the Culbones, the wealthy family who live on the other side of the river. Life there is dictated by the seasons and cider-making, and everyone falls under its spell.’ A fun read although the ending seemed rushed.

 

Happy Place by Emily Henry

I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I did Book Lovers. I thought it was overly long and the ending took a bit of swallowing; also the group of friends in their ‘happy place’ was so tight knit that this reader felt she was being kept at arms length.

But the promise of a beach cottage in Maine is always going to reel me in and EH’s dialogue is once again terrific.

 

A Keeper by Graham Norton

‘It’s not a crime novel,’ said the person who passed this on to me. So I started it in bed about half past ten, expecting to be lulled to sleep by a charming Maeve Binchy-esque story. And indeed there were echoes of much-missed Maeve and the writing was terrific but, far from being lulled, I was still turning the pages at midnight, my heart pounding at what was unfolding. 

I will say no more – read it for yourself – and I’ll definitely read more of Graham Norton’s books but I’ll start them well, well, before the witching hour.

 

The Borrowers by Mary Norton

I always preferred stories about real children when I was a child myself but one exception was The Borrowers. My sister and I both adored the first book (didn’t know at the time that there were anymore) and spent hours making a kind of Borrower village with our dolls’ house, Noah’s ark and constructions made from toilet roll cardboard and anything else that could be pressed into service.

So I grabbed this omnibus when I saw it in a charity shop. I delighted again in their ingenuity – Pod using a hatpin to scale the curtain, for example – and still find it hard to believe (as I try to find a paper clip or that little pencil I could swear I just put down) that they don’t exist … (do they??)

I enjoyed the further adventures of Pod, Homily and Arrietty (and there are dark and heart-stopping moments amongst all the lovely details) but the first one will always be closest to my heart.

 

Seven in July

I read seven books in July.

 

 

The Shell House Detectives by Emylia Hall 

Ally Bright, retired and recently widowed, and a young ex-cop, Jayden Weston, satisfactorily solve the mystery of a young man found dead at the foot of a cliff near their village on the Cornish coast. An unlikely but excellent duo of (semi-) amateur sleuths plus some lovely writing. Book 1 in a new series; would definitely read more.

 

 

Doors Open by Ian Rankin

A standalone IR title, a crime caper really – a heist of Scotland’s National Gallery pictures from its overflow store which is open once a year on Doors Open Day. Good fun, especially for Edinburghers I think.

 

 

 Fool for Love by Eloisa James

A Regency novel: ‘Lady Henrietta Maclellan longs for the romantic swirl of a London season. But as a rusticating country maiden, she has always kept her sensuous nature firmly under wraps – until she meets Simon Darby.’ Interestingly, Eloisa James is a Professor of English Literature in New York.

 

Touch not the Cat by Mary Stewart

I thought I had read all Mary Stewart’s books but this one caught my attention at the Christian Aid Book Sale this year. Not my favourite (which is Airs Above the Ground) because I wasn’t that keen on the rather supernatural element here – the family whose members can speak to each without words. But otherwise it’s vintage Mary Stewart. (I couldn't find a picture of mine – the cover isn't nearly as nice as this one.)

‘Touch not the cat bot [without] a glove’, by the way, is the motto of the Scottish Clan Chattan, to which, courtesy of my maiden name, I belong.

 

The Boy Who Loved Books by John Sutherland

A biography/memoir by the Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College. His distinguished title and career belie his beginnings which were poor both financially and emotionally. His mother, widowed when he was a small boy, was a wonderful character but not a wonderful mother, and time spent farmed out to an unpleasant aunt in Edinburgh left him with a bad impression of the city although he did return to teach in the University.

Luckily, he discovered books. Unfortunately, he also discovered that he had a great capacity for alcohol. In the second half of the book I’d have like more about the former and less of the latter.

 

Found in a Bookshop by Stephanie Butland

I adored Lost for Words which came out in 2017 and featured Loveday Cardew, a troubled young woman whose refuge is the second-hand bookshop she works in. In Found in a Bookshop we meet her again – and now she’s inherited the shop. But, a big but – it’s 2020. No one can come in. She hits on the idea of a ‘book pharmacy’ – people can tell her, and her assistant, Kelly, what ails them emotionally and they will give a list of recommendations. Chosen titles can be posted or (cautiously) delivered.

Some customers are given more space than others such as the elderly devoted couple George and Rosemary.

For many years to come, I’ve no doubt, there will be novels set in the pandemic years. One written so close to the event has an authenticity and was a raw, perhaps understandably rather overwrought, reminder of that time. I liked it well enough (especially the books lists) but I didn’t adore it.

 

 

The Pear Affair by Judith Eagle

A delightful story aimed at the 9+ age group which, I’ll let you know, includes me ….

'When Penelope Magnificent's awful parents tell her they're taking a trip to Paris, she surprises them by begging to go along.’ 

Her ulterior motive is to look for her much-loved former au pair Perrine (‘Pear’) and there follows adventures both above and below ground in the French capital.

Serial news!

 

The Saturday Scribblers was serialised in The People’s Friend in 2021 and is now available on Kindle.

 

It’s set in the fictional town of Ashbridge in the north-east of England:

 

Jess’s advertisement on the library notice board has brought four ‘scribblers’ to her writing class. On Saturdays for the next few months Tina, Clarissa, Madeleine and Neil sit round Jess’s table and get to know each other – and more about themselves. One of them is not a beginner; one decides to have a career change; another discovers an unexpected talent for romantic-novel-writing; and two of them find real-life romance.

 

I really enjoyed writing this serial and so I set my new one in Ashbridge too. Footsteps in Ashbridge is not centred around the writing class but features Lou, Neil’s sister and a minor character in The Saturday Scribblers, and her colleague Sarah, a primary teacher new to the town.

 

The first instalment was in the issue dated 29th July 2023.

 

 

 

 

 

Six in June

I read six books in June.

No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby

I adored this book – it was the runner-up in the Comedy Women in Print Award in 2021, for an unpublished novel.

It’s 1895. Violet, aged 28, lives with her father in Hastings who worries that she will never find a husband. She is certain she doesn’t want to get married but what she does want is to find out what happened to her mother who disappeared ten years earlier.

Very soon she regrets employing a private detective as he seems to have his own agenda and she takes matters into her own hands. One thing leads to another, and another – the comedy comes when the reader catches on to situations of which Violet is unaware, and to her innocence (as befits a respectable Victorian unmarried woman) about the facts of life (and her curiosity on the subject).

Violet is delightful, someone it would be great fun to be friends with. The era and the setting are immersive and the resolution to the mystery unexpected.

Read this on Kindle but will be purchasing a paperback too. I hope very much that we will hear more of Miss Violet Hamilton. 

 

Reader, I Married Him edited by Tracy Chevalier

A book of twenty-one commissioned short stories inspired by Jane Eyre and what fabulous collection it is. The authors took the prompt and ran with it in all directions; they include Tessa Hadley, Helen Dunmore, Jane Gardam, Elif Shafak, Evie Wyld, Audrey Niffenberger and Lionel Shriver.

Two of my favourites were: one where you gradually realise that the narrator is Wallis Simpson; and a heart-breaking tale featuring Jane’s childhood friend Helen.

 

The Book Lovers by Emily Henry

I’m not on TikTok but am aware that Emily Henry is extremely successful as a result of being recommended on it. I see from looking at her other titles that her thing is romance with booky themes. This one, for example, has a relationship between an editor and a literary agent, both of them hustling New Yorkers, who find themselves in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, very far from their comfort zone.

Well, what’s not to like? There was great banter and some lovely writing. I will be reading more Emily Henry.

(Bookshops/books and romance are definitely ‘a thing’ at the moment; I read a book with the same title in April.)

 

Three Junes by Julia Glass

An appropriate title to read in June … a Christian Aid Book Sale purchase. The ‘three Junes’ span a decade and purport to depict ‘the life and loves’ of a Scottish family, the McLeods.

I didn’t think they came across as particularly Scottish (whatever that means) and not much of the story actually takes place in the family home in Dumfries & Galloway. The characters are not given equal weight – most of it belongs to Fenno, gay, in Manhattan during the Aids epidemic.

I’d like to have, for example, seen Dennis, bad-boy turned award-winning chef and family man, up close rather than through the eyes of others.

Strangely, the last ‘June’ focused on a hitherto unmet character, not a member of the family …. I wanted to like this but it all seemed rather oblique.

 

 Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger

I read and really enjoyed The Newlyweds by this author and so recommended her new novel (which I hadn’t read at the time) to my book group. Don’t know what they thought of it yet because I ended up not being able to attend the meeting.

And I don’t know what I think of it … it was – unexpected. One reviewer said it was 'Middlemarch meets Bridget Jones’ Diary'. Were we reading the same book?

Last month for the book group we read Lessons in Chemistry – this one could have been called Lessons in Physics. I don’t have the kind of mind to understand black holes and the decaying universe but fortunately I know someone who does and I shall be passing this on and asking for a explanation in words of one syllable.

 

My Life in Houses by Margaret Forster

Margaret Forster and her husband Hunter Davies had the same beginnings, brought up in council houses in Carlisle, and they met at school. Both were very clever and began, in their early twenties, to make their livings as writers.

By the time they were thirty they were earning so much (Margaret principally from her novel Georgy Girl which was made into a film) that they had to go and live in Portugal for fourteen months to avoid the Labour government’s punitive income tax.

Margaret (now sadly gone to the big house in the sky) remembers her life through the houses she has lived in, including the family home in Hampstead (bought for £5000 in 1962, with a sitting tenant) and holiday homes (at different times) in Portugal and the Lake District.

All financed from their writing and good on them… not that I’m jealous or anything …

 

 

Five in May

 I read five books in May.

 

Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny

This is Katherine Heiny’s second book of short stories. I’ve been waiting for it and it did not disappoint. Inevitably some appealed more than others but all had the writing style I’ve come to love after reading her two novels Standard Deviation (three times so far) and Early Morning Riser (twice). 

 

The Crystal Crypt by Fiona Veitch Smith

A fun read with a 1920s amateur sleuth Poppy Denby. The sixth in a series but the first I’ve read. Here she is asked to investigate the mysterious death of an up-and-coming female scientist in an Oxford laboratory known as the Crystal Crypt.

 

 

Christmas is Murder by Val McDermid

Hardly seasonal, I know, but I bought this very pretty copy in the Christian Aid Book Sale and just got stuck in to this ‘festive collection of chilling tales’.

 

The Villa in Italy by Elizabeth Edmondson

I paid my first visit to Italy (Sicily) in February so the country is on my radar. Four people, previously unknown to each other, have been mentioned in the will of a woman, of whom none of them have ever heard. They have to spend time in her villa to find out why. I did keep reading to find the solution – but the reasons the legatees were brought together were convoluted and the whole thing pretty unlikely, but hey, that’s fiction for you.

 

 

Far Off in Sunlit Place: Stories of the Scots in Australia and New Zealand by Jim Hewitson

Another Christian Aid Book Sale purchase and a book I’ve wanted to read since it first came out many years ago. I’ve read other, academic, books on the fascinating subject of the Scottish diaspora – this one, while undoubtedly involving a great deal of research, is at the popular end of the history scale and extremely readable.