I read seven
books in July.
Read on Kindle.
I am a fan of Anne Stenhouse’s Regency novels (read my interview with her here)
– Mariah’s Marriage and Bella’s Betrothal preceded this one. Daisy’s
Dilemma picks up a character from the first book – which is great because Daisy
is the sort of girl about whom you find yourself wondering what she might do
next.
This has all
you want in a Regency novel – a heroine with a mind very much her own, a hero
made of flesh and blood, and a villain. It also has an intricate plot that
takes the reader from the great family house in Grosvenor Square to the London docks –
with a dash of Scots mist thrown in. Do find out more for yourself.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Blogged about To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set A Watchman here.
There was a
plethora of reviews right away after the publication of this book. I gathered
that some of them were adverse, and some a lot of hot air, and decided not to
read any of them in advance, if at all. Well, I loved GSAW – mostly. It was
wonderful to see Jean Louise Finch all grown up and to revisit Maycomb. I can
see though why Harper Lee’s editor suggested going away and writing a book
through the eyes of six-year-old ‘Scout’ because many of the scenes in GSAW are
flashbacks to the childhood of this ‘juvenile desperado, hell-raiser
extraordinary’. Hers was a story that had to be told.
The last few
chapters are less like a novel and more of a very long argument between Jean Louise and
her father Atticus about the relaxation or not of segregation. As for Atticus
taking the opposing view – well, this is a novel that might never have seen the light of day
(controversy surrounds the circumstances of its publication); Harper Lee made Atticus’
views quite different in To Kill a
Mockingbird. Let us remember him from that (looking like Gregory Peck of
course).
Read on Kindle.
An award-winning writer, Jackie was in the Edinburgh Writers’ Club for a couple of years before moving
to France so I was interested to read her enjoyable book of four short stories, one of
which is a fictionalised account of that move, and was a runner up in the
Society of Women Writers & Journalists Life-Writing Competition. The second
is also set in France and inspired by a painting. The third – perhaps not a
typical ‘beach read’ – has a character receiving a cancer diagnosis and the
fourth is about a teacher trying to interest a class in Jane Austen. Find out
more about Jackie, her short stories and novels, here.
An Inspector
Wexford – except that he is now retired but gets involved anyway in the murder of the
local vicar. Excellent, almost as good as my favourite Wexfords A New Lease of Death and The Speaker of Mandarin. Very sad to
think there won’t be any more.
Read on Kindle. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von
Arnim was published in 1923 and made into a film in 1991 with a cast including
Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright, Jim Broadbent and Josie Lawrence.
This is a contemporary
version, set in an island off Maine. The location immediately attracted me (I
have a thing about American places/names) and the thought of vicariously
pitching up there to stay in an idyllic cottage for a month was very enticing. But I was disappointed when the ‘cottage’ –
like all the others on the island – turned out to have about twelve bedrooms
and was flimsily built (only for summer use; you’d freeze there in the winter).
Some of the
characters were unappealingly modern such as the financial whizz who wondered how the
island might be ‘monetized’, and there was a lot of faffing over cell phone
signals (something lucky E von A didn’t have to worry about) but it must have
been fun to follow a blueprint of someone else’s plot; it was quite fun to
read.
Marilynne
Robinson wrote Housekeeping,
published in 1980 and later made into a film by Scottish director Bill Forsyth.
There followed a
long gap before Gilead was published
in 2004. It won the Pulitzer Prize. It will not be everyone’s cup of tea but I
loved it. It’s one long ‘letter’, from a Presbyterian minister, John Ames, in 1950s Iowa (in the fictional town of Gilead) to
the son of his old age; he knows he will not live to see the boy grow up. One of his preoccupations is his namesake, the wayward son of his oldest friend, whose unexpected visit home is testing for everybody around him.
I read it when
it came out. I later acquired the two sequels Home and Lila. As I am
very much looking forward to seeing Marilynne Robinson at the Edinburgh Book
Festival I reread Gilead and will
read the other two straight after.
Yay! Book
Festival time of year! Can’t wait.
