Six in October

 I read six books in October

 

Scottish Women Writers: 1800 to the Great War by Eileen Dunlop

Many of these novelists, playwrights, poets, memoirists and journalists were new to me.

Most have been forgotten, although not scientist and writer Mary Somerville (pictured on the cover) whose name lives on in the Oxford college named after her. But what about brave Charlotte Waldie and Christina Keith who, respectively, visited Waterloo and Flanders in the immediate aftermath of battle? Literary multi-tasker and brilliant businesswoman Christian Isabel Johnstone? And Emily Gerard, from whose travel memoir The Land Beyond the Forest Bram Stoker directly lifted the most blood-curdling elements of Dracula?

Eileen Dunlop has brought around thirty women writers into the light in this most readable book.

 

The Undercurrents by Kirsty Bell

Read for book group, non-fiction. Essentially, this is a history of Berlin by a half-Scottish, half-American writer who moved there around twenty years ago.

I have never been to Berlin but I found this excellently written book unexpectedly fascinating, taking in as it did town-planning, politics, wars, family life, delves into archives, feng shui – and an extraordinary kind of exorcism.

 

Well behaved Wives by Amy Sue Nathan

This was the free Kindle book from a selection for Amazon Prime members. I chose it because America in the 60s is generally a fascinating time to read about – especially the proscribed lives of women, sent back to the kitchen after the comparative liberation of the war years. (For example, I enjoyed this book a few years ago.)

Five women meet at a class for wives … advice on how to shut up and support your husband in his career basically. One of them, Ruth, is new to the area having just got married to a local man; she keeps quiet for a while about her college degree and her desire to be a lawyer.

The theme is hammered home to the detriment of any story, I felt, and each woman stands for some aspect of those proscribed lives (eg one suffers from domestic abuse), rather than being a rounded character.

<spoiler alert> a note at the end says that the book is based on the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States until her death in 2020.

 

Flowers in the Rain and other stories by Rosamunde Pilcher

Bought in charity shop (occupational hazard of volunteering in a branch of Shelter).

Rosamunde Pilcher’s world is both irritating and seductive. Most of these stories were published in the early 80s yet some of the characters are as if from an earlier generation. Women over 60 are always wise grandmothers; several of the girls get married aged 20.

But amid today’s uncertainty, it was comforting to sink into a world of homes belonging to the same family for generations, surrounded by gardens and beautiful scenery, to hear the Labrador’s bark of welcome, to know the happy ending is just a few pages away …

 

The Ghost of Gosswater by Lucy Strange

I loved two other books by this author, especially The Secret of Nightingale Wood which breaks your heart clean in two and puts it back together again. This gothic tale packs a huge punch too, so atmospheric and so well told, with a clarity and pace that might have been lost if written at greater length for adults.

 

The Dinner Lady Detectives by Hannah Hendy

I liked the idea and setting and the dinner ladies, Margery and Clementine, but there was confusion too – a lot of characters, some I thought superfluous to the story until the end … and mixed messages about the personality of the deceased, and about the ages and behaviour of all the characters. Also, a bit of a parallel universe school-dinner-wise considering this is set now – the ladies cook huge roasts of beef and chocolate pudding made with expensive dark choc. Not a turkey twizzler in sight.

 

… and a bit of

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly

I’ve read Little Women countless times and was thrilled to be able to visit the Alcott home, Orchard House, in Concorde, Massachusetts, some years ago. So I fell on this book at the Christian Aid book sale.

I was totally onboard with the premise that Jo had had a late baby girl and that her descendants were living in contemporary London and that a stash of letters by Jo March/Bhaer was discovered in their attic.

But I was sorely disappointed. The few ‘letters’ I read were okay but the modern story was hard-going – reams of unrealistic dialogue, and the fact that virtually no verb went unqualified. When I read (on p58) ‘ … where she was contentedly doing a crossword puzzle while the dishwasher hummed happily … ’ I stopped reading. A missed opportunity (unless you want to read about happy dishwashers).

 

Six in September

 I read six books in September.

 

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

Lars Mytting had a rather unlikely non-fiction bestseller in 2015 with Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way.

Wood plays a large part in this novel and the descriptions of it, and the art of the master craftsman, are glorious. The (very) intricate plot takes Edvard from a mountain farmstead in Norway to Shetland and the WW2 battlefields of France in his quest to unravel his family’s history; in particular to find out what happened to his parents when he was three and the nature of a very unusual inheritance.

 

The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman

The mixture as before and just as enjoyable.

 

Between Extremes by Brian Keenan and John McCarthy

Charity shop find. Two of my heroes – I’ve read both of their accounts of being kept hostage for years in Beirut and how their friendship there sustained them. One continuing fantasy they had when they were chained to a wall in a small dark space was that they set up a yak farm in Patagonia, the thought of the endless panoramas being the most appealing terrain they could think of.

And several years after their release they made it to South America, their friendship surviving despite their very different personalities (and some very hairy horse riding adventures). The yak farm remained a fantasy inevitably but they let the idea go not without regret, I felt; months of talking about it had helped to keep them sane and forward-looking.

 

Are We Having Fun Yet? by Lucy Mangan

I enjoy Lucy Mangan’s journalism and I loved her Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, so I looked forward to this, her first novel. It’s a story of family life, told in diary form. All mum Liz wants is some peace and quiet so she can read a book (and I can empathise with that … ); her husband and two small children have (unsurprisingly) different ideas.

I wasn’t as enthusiastic as the celebrity reviewers … I found Liz’s harping on her domestic ineptitude funny at first but ultimately repetitive and tiresome. Her three friends, and their endless pooling of grievances, all sounded the same. I did love Evie, her ‘five-year-old acrobat, gangster, anarchist, daughter’ though I’m not sure I’d want to be her mother.

A bit of a disappointment.

 

Mortification: Writers’ Stories of their Public Shame by Robin Robertson

So you want to be a famous writer? Well, Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Louis de Bernieres, Margaret Drabble, Roddy Doyle, AL Kennedy and others are here to tell you it’s not all beer and skittles (or champagne and adoring fans); on the contrary there are moments of deep humiliation and embarrassment. Some bring it on themselves (drink might be involved … ) and some have it brought upon them (dodgy hospitality, being mistaken for someone else, no one turning up to signing sessions … ).

 

The Toll-gate by Georgette Heyer

A thriller with a romance – and a male protagonist. What a comfort read she provides when comfort is needed.