Ten in February (1)

 I read ten books in February. Five of them are here, five in the next post.

 

A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

It’s seven years since ML’s last book was published, a very long but worthwhile wait and its timing turned out to be perfect for me. I picked my copy up click and collect from The Edinburgh Bookshop in the afternoon and had my first vaccine a few hours later. I didn’t feel fluey the next day but just a bit ‘wabbit’ as we say in Scotland, the perfect excuse to put my feet up with coffee and toast and marmalade to hand – and a new book to read.

ML lives in Kingston on Thames now but grew up in Northern Ontario, Canada; all her books are set there (with a foray to London in one of them, of which more later) and the landscape is as much a character as the people.

A Town Called Solace, set in 1972, is told from three perspectives. Precocious Clara, aged seven, has taken up vigil by the window in case she misses the return of her adored older sister Rose who has run away. Liam moves into the house next door (unaware that he is being observed by Clara); he has mysteriously been left it in the will of a woman he barely remembers from his childhood. The third perspective is that of Elizabeth, Liam’s benefactor, as she lies dying.

No less a person than Anne Tyler says of Mary Lawson: ‘Each of her novels is just a marvel.’ I can only agree so I had to have a reread then of two of her previous ones.

 

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

When I read this, her first novel, almost twenty years ago, I knew that it was a keeper, a book to literally hug to myself. 

It is about so much more but primarily it’s a story about siblings, particularly the relationship between Kate and Matt. In the rural farming community of Crow Lake the Morrison children – Luke and Matt in their teens, Kate aged seven and toddler Bo – are orphaned. Offers of help from far-off relatives would mean splitting the family up; clever Luke and Matt sacrifice their ambitions to keep the family together. The story is narrated by Kate, twenty years on, a zoologist, now living in Toronto and feeling emotionally distant from the family who once were her whole world.

I loved the book so much I didn’t dare to read it again in case it wasn’t as good as I remembered – but having dared I found that it had only improved over time.

 

Road Ends by Mary Lawson

This is her third book. I will reread her second, The Other Side of the Bridge, soon but I skipped to this one because fleetingly we meet Luke and Bo again from Crow Lake.

This is mostly Megan’s story though. Her mother keeps having baby boys (six when the story opens); she loves babies but loses interest in them when the next one comes along. Megan, the only girl and an incredibly practical one, keeps the household clean and fed but she has told her mother that when the latest baby is on his feet she will be leaving.

She ends up in London (in the 1960s, a planet away from small town Ontario) where her practical skills are put to use running a hotel. But back home things are disintegrating – and there’s yet another baby boy.

 

Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford

First published in 1933 and reissued. Told through illustrated letters, it's a delight with all the period detail. Hilary, from Edinburgh, finds work in London in the book department of (a thinly disguised) Selfridges. She writes home to her parents and doctor fiancé. 

I took against said fiancé because a) he was called Basil, a name that should be reserved for TV foxes, and b) he wasn’t at all supportive of her wanting to work for a year before their wedding; plus he refers to twenty-seven-year-old Hilary as ‘my dear child’. So I was glad that <spoiler alert> there was someone nicer waiting in the wings.

What I mainly liked though was hearing about the work of the book department, not just selling books from the shelves but sending out books on subscription – recording readers’ likes and dislikes on a complicated card index system.

 

Slow Horses by Mike Herron

Described as ‘the best thriller of the last decade’ by The Times. The ‘slow horses’ are a crew of men and women who, for various reasons (alcoholism, fouling up a mission etc) have been banished from actively working in the Intelligence Service to pen push in Slough House in a seedy part of London. But none of them joined the service to pen push and when the opportunity comes to be ‘spooks’ again they take it.

Terrific; really great characters and great writing. This is the first in a series and I’d love to read the others.