Five in February

I read five books in February.

 

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Read for book group. Winner of the Booker Prize 2024. A short book but you need to savour every single poetic sentence so it’s not a quick read. It imagines life on a space station through the eyes of six astronauts – two women, four men; two Russians, one American, one Italian, one Japanese, one English – as they orbit around the earth seeing their home countries so far below. Wonderful. I want to read it again.

 

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

And now for something completely different … Various people had recommended this who-dunnit series featuring Detective Hawthorne – and Anthony Horowitz himself. This is the fifth title.

It’s a great conceit that only he (also author (amongst many other titles) of the story-within-a-story Magpie/Moonflower Murders books) could pull off.

A newcomer to a gated community in a very desirable area of London has been found dead, shot through the neck with a crossbow. He’s made himself very unpopular to everybody so there is no shortage of suspects.

 

Visiting Miss Austen by Angela Pearse

‘Felicity Fitzroy is delighted when she receives an invitation from her good friend Jane Austen to visit her in Bath. Despite living in domestic bliss in Derbyshire, Felicity craves excitement and a trip to the lively spa town sounds like the perfect cure.’

But Felicity and the niece she is chaperoning soon find themselves in peril …

Great fun.

 

Probably Nothing by Lauren Bravo

I enjoyed this author’s first novel Preloved (which I heard about on Joanne Baird’s blog). Probably Nothing is blackly funny. 

Bryony’s had a brief fling with Ed – nothing serious on her part; in fact she’s about to break it off.

But <spoiler alert>when Ed, who’s allergic to wasps, dies of anaphylactic shock, she finds that he has had a different view of their relationship and his loud and loving family embrace her as one of their own. As her own family situation is unhappy she’s torn between enjoying the affection and attention, especially from Ed’s mother, and telling them the truth. (Oh, and she’s a hypochondriac, hence the title.)

 

Wavewalker: A Memoir of Breaking Free by Suzanne Heywood

Actually for March’s book group meeting – I’m ahead of myself.

When Suzanne Heywood was seven, her parents announced that they were going to take her and her brother and sail around the world for three years.

Ten years later … Suzanne, having more or less educated herself but has no formal qualifications, applied to Oxford and got in.

In between was a life of terror and privation – terror, for example, at being in the Indian Ocean hurled from wave to wave (think A Perfect Storm) and privation from being often hungry because supplies or money had run out.

Her parents were more interested in each other than in their children and considered Suzanne difficult for wanting any other way of life.

Astonishing. 

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