I read seven books in November.
I love reading (and using ... ) cookery/baking books; don't usually mention them here – making an exception because this lovely
book (bought with the last of a birthday book token) has 100 recipes that the
Australian-born author and blogger has written and road-tested, inspired by
food references in her favourite books. They all sound delicious and very
doable, not in the least gimmicky. If you are looking for a Christmas present
for a book-loving cook look no further.
I liked this first novel a lot – it’s ‘uplit’, the same category
as, eg, Needlemouse and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
(also first novels as it happens; look forward to all their second ones). Susan
is in her mid forties, a workaholic living on her own with
no outside interests (apart from seeing a friend-with-benefits once a week) and
a toxic relationship with her brother. She has a complete lack
of self-awareness which is funny and sad at the same time. An unplanned pregnancy
and the revealing of family secrets after the death of her mother turn her
carefully managed life upside down.
I’m a bit puzzled by how this book is
presented, in its title, wintry cover and promotion banner beginning ‘Warm your
heart this Christmas … ’ None of these, to my mind, give a true indication of
what the book is like.
The incident that happened ‘one winter
morning’ in England was offstage and a year before the story begins. It was the catalyst for Evangeline (‘Genie’) going to New Zealand where most of
the book is set. Genie is there during the month of December, one of the
hottest times of the year on the other side of the world, and Christmas barely
gets a mention.
I wasn’t keen on Genie (perhaps it was the
way she came over in the first person, present tense voice). Her little sister
Tui was delightfully drawn though and there was a great sense of place – I
enjoyed, vicariously, revisiting Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand.
When I was a child and got new books only
at birthdays and Christmases and from additions to the folding bookcase that
was the school library (we weren’t anywhere near a public library), I read them
immediately.
Nowadays I’m spoilt for choice – I can buy books
for myself in print or digital from bricks-and-mortar and online bookshops, or
I can borrow from Edinburgh’s Central Library, fifteen minutes’ walk away. I
can acquire them from second-hand or charity bookshops or buy and get them
signed at events; even get out-of-copyright titles free from Project Gutenberg.
So there is always a tottering to-be-read
pile; I wouldn’t go back to my previous state but I know I’ll never recapture
the total joy I used to feel at embarking on
a book I’d never read before.
Bright
Lights and Lies was bought at a book launch four
years ago and only now fished out of the pile. And well
worth the wait it was too – a YA set mostly in Glasgow, a sweet romance between
Finn and George (Georgina) with some very gritty subjects along the way, such
as drug addiction and police corruption.
And having enjoyed that Gill-Marie Stewart
it was great to be able to whiz over to the TBR pile for the first in her new
series Galloway Girls. That one was
bought at the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference a mere four months
ago. Again, a sweet romance plus difficult subjects for the protagonists to
tackle, set in beautiful Galloway in south-west Scotland. Lily is a terrific
character because she’s so well rounded; she just walks off the page, as do all
the other teenagers and adults.
Short stories. I loved CS’s first four
novels especially The American Wife and Sisterland; I was disappointed
however in her fifth, Eligible, a
bleak modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice. So I was interested to read this, her first short story
collection. In several of the stories she references and skewers current
American politics, one of her favourite themes as evidenced in The American Wife (an imagined life of
Laura Bush – yes, really, and far funnier than you’d expect).
She’s good too on the perennial theme of
meeting your high school nemesis; that’s in A
Regular Couple. The secret game (that gives the book its title) played by Julie
and Graham, married to other people and who meet through their children, is
embarrassingly misconstrued by Julie; in Plausible
Deniability it’s Libby who thinks her relationship with her brother-in-law
is other than it is.
‘You won’t want these stories to end,’ said
Reese Witherspoon no less.
Read for book group, these are short
stories which were published after the writer’s untimely death in 2017. The
subjects and themes are wide-ranging and include: a teenager, abandoned by her
parents, gives the book its title; a young man caught in a storm while on a
boat to Sweden meets a mysterious girl; the last days of John Keats; two women from very different backgrounds have an unusual night out; a young mother is left with her unpleasant mother-in-law while her husband goes exploring; and much more. She's such a wonderful writer.
