Six in May

I read six books in May.

Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives by Lucy Mangan

A book about books – what’s not to like? I enjoyed Bookworm which covered Lucy Mangan’s childhood years of not wanting to do much else other than read (a girl after my own heart then).

Of course, though, adulthood does have its compensations – an income to buy books and a house (and a specially built ‘shed’ in the garden, of which I am very jealous)’) to put them in. Oh, and a husband who’s equally bookwormish, and a child who provides a reason to reread favourites and to find new ones.

So this book ranges wildly and wonderfully (as anybody’s reading material should) from Library Lion to 1990s bonkbusters such as Lace, to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with much (much) in between.

I had the pleasure of seeing her recently being interviewed under the auspices of the wonderful Toppings bookshop in Edinburgh and got this lovely signed copy.

 

 

Free, Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Read for book group. I knew next to nothing about Albania; it was so interesting to hear about its recent history through the eyes of Lea Ypi, born there in 1979 and now a professor at the London School of Economics.

Albania, the last Stalinist outpost in Europe, was a difficult place to live in for many reasons – but it was Lea’s home and all she knew. But in December 1990 political upheaval meant everything changed. There was freedom at last which seemed wonderful to begin with but it came with many downsides for everybody and, for Lea, some startling family revelations.

Fascinating.

 

 

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Something extraordinary happens on a flight from Hobart to Sydney – an elderly woman called Cherry goes down the aisle telling each passenger (including children) and crew members when and how they are going to die.

Thereafter, the book focuses on some of these people and what effect their prediction has had on them (especially when they find out that some of the predictions have come true)  – and we find out Cherry’s very plausible backstory too. Riveting. I particularly enjoyed Leo’s and Ethan’s stories – Leo, the family man with a toxic boss, and Ethan, hopelessly infatuated with his rich, glamorous housemate. I still think about them actually …

 

April Lady by Georgette Heyer

Yay – the Christian Aid book sale was back this year in Edinburgh after a couple of years’ hiatus. Among my (very restrained) purchases were two GHs I’ve never read before. April Lady won’t go into my top five but it was very enjoyable all the same.

 

 

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

A joy to catch up with Jackson Brodie again.

A painting has apparently been stolen from the Yorkshire home of a deceased woman but her unpleasant offspring are reluctant to involve the police. Our hero, rather reluctantly, takes on the case – which leads to a stately home, an array of characters straight from the Golden Age of crime writing, and a Murder Mystery Weekend. Hope that’s not the last we see of JB – I’m still cross that the television series was cancelled.

You can’t see from the image but my copy (also purchased in Toppings but this time the St Andrews branch) has sprayed black edges, a special edition for independent bookshops.

 

 

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers

After I read Small Pleasures by CC a few years ago, I read through her backlist of six books, one after the other.

Shy Creatures, her latest, is terrific. Set in the 1960s, in the environs of Croydon, it was inspired by the true story of a man discovered in a house he hadn’t left in forty years – a man with wild hair and beard and an astonishing talent for art.

Helen, an art therapist (embroiled in an affair with a charismatic married colleague in the psychiatric hospital) becomes entangled in the man’s mysterious past.

Nine in October

 I read nine books in October.

 

House of Glass by Hadley Freeman

When she was a small child, in the early 80s, American-born Hadley Freeman’s parents and paternal grandmother took her to Paris where some of her father’s elderly relatives lived, the one and only time she saw them. Much later, when her grandmother died, she found a shoebox of photographs and keepsakes that led her to research those relatives’ lives which had begun in Poland. Hounded out in a pogrom they fled to France where they were safe – until the 1930s and the rise of Nazi-ism. And the rest, as sadly we know, is history.

This is an amazing feat of detective work and piecing together all the back stories to bring her ancestors to life – and comes up to the present day when she meets distant cousins her own age and feels they already know each other.

The ties that bind.

 

A Dry Spell by Clare Chambers

I said last month that In a Good Light was my favourite of Clare Chambers’ backlist and so it was until I read this one.

‘In 1976 four students took a trip to the desert. Now the repercussions of that fateful summer are coming back to haunt them.’

We drove down to London in October to visit family. We’d hardly started our return journey when we encountered a traffic jam (on the M25 if you’re the sort of person who likes to know these things) and four hours later we were only three miles. I wasn’t one of the drivers and was very grateful for my Kindle and for Clare Chambers whose characters removed me to another place and kept me very good company.

 

Bright Girls by Clare Chambers

Having read Small Pleasures and then all Clare Chambers’ backlist I only had one more title of hers to go – this contemporary and very enjoyable YA novel of two sisters, very different in personality, who have to go and stay with a relatively unknown aunt in Brighton for the summer because their home has become too dangerous to stay in.

 

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

‘Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman sit across from each other every day . . . and they hate each other. Not dislike. Not begrudgingly tolerate. HATE. Lucy can't understand Joshua's joyless, uptight approach to his job and refusal to smile. Joshua is clearly baffled by Lucy's overly bright clothes, quirkiness, and desire to be liked.

Now they're up for the same promotion and Lucy, usually a determined people-pleaser, has had enough: it's time to take him down. But as the tension between Lucy and Joshua reaches its boiling point, it's clear that the real battle has only just begun . . .’

Described as ‘Charming, self-deprecating, quick-witted and funny’ by the New York Times, with which I agree. I see that it’s going to be a film – I wonder how that will work as so much of the story is inside Lucy’s head.

 

To all appearance, dead by Liz Filleul

I know of LF as a fellow women’s magazine writer. When she happened to mention in an interview that she’d written two cosy crimes set in the world of ‘GO’ books (Girls’ Own, eg the Chalet School series), I was very intrigued.

Goodness, I knew from some online GO forums that there are some keen collectors out there but if this is to be believed some of them will stop at nothing … great fun.

 

Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholl

On the aforementioned visit south we visited Sir Winston Churchill’s house at Chartwell. In the grounds there was a second-hand bookshop with an honesty box and luckily I had some change with me to buy this.

Charlie has just left school. He is at a loose end and hates his home situation – his mother has left, taking his sister, and he lives with his morose dad. The last thing on his mind is Shakespeare … but when he meets and fancies Fran he gets involved in a production of Romeo and Juliet. She is Juliet; he is not Romeo.

The book certainly improved my knowledge of the play too. I loved this line especially:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day / Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

 

Family Album by Penelope Lively

A family of six children with a there-but-not-there father and a rather monstrous mother who wishes they were still little and who turns a blind eye to anything that doesn’t suit her view of things eg the behaviour of Paul the eldest, and the parentage of Clare the youngest.

Told in alternate viewpoints by the siblings, it’s cleverly constructed but as there is no principle character and no over-arching plot I found it all rather unengaging.

 

Love All by Elizabeth Jane Howard

And the same goes for this one, from another literary grande dame. I have liked other titles of hers especially The Beautiful Visit and Something in Disguise and loved the Cazalet Chronicles but this, her last novel, left me cold. Same structure as Family Album in being told by different characters but some of whom only made fleeting appearances and were never seen from the point of view of others. None of them get a happy ending.

It didn’t help that Persephone – a lovely name when you see it written down although I can see it’s a trifle cumbersome to say – is known as Percy which does not look lovely written down. And she was such a wet hen; I didn’t believe in her at all. In fact the only character who did seem to be made of flesh and blood was the child Harriet. Disappointing.

 

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

Crime to finish with – this one is in the Karen Pirie series of cold-case solving. Ultimately, the plot seemed very far-fetched but VD keeps you turning the pages so I’ll forgive her.

 

Eight in September

 I read eight books in September.

 

Dear Reader by Cathy Retzenbrink

Read on Kindle. Yay, a book about books; what’s not to like. My favourite of the genre is Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm but what I loved particularly about this one was the behind-the-scenes glimpses of working in bookshops and Cathy Retzenbrink’s successful bookselling career before a family tragedy led her to become a writer.

 

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

Read for bookgroup. As you will have seen if you read last month’s post I am on a Clare Chambers jag at the moment. This is her latest one, published last year after a ten-year gap, which has been so successful that her backlist has been reissued.

Set in 1957 in smoggy suburban London, it’s about Jean, a journalist on the local paper who is asked to follow up a letter from a reader, Gretchen, who claims that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth.

No spoilers except to say that Jean’s life is changed as a result of meeting Gretchen and her family. Clare Chambers conjures up so well Jean’s small world, the aforementioned smog and the general grimness of life in just-post-ration Britain, with an edge of sharp black humour.

 

Back Trouble by Clare Chambers

Read on Kindle. ‘On the brink of forty, newly single with a failed business, Philip thought he'd reached an all-time low. It only needed a discarded chip on a South London street to lay him literally flat. So, bedbound and bored, Philip naturally starts to write the story of his life.’

Another bittersweet novel from CC.

 

In a Good Light by Clare Chambers

Read on Kindle. My favourite backlist CC (so far, I still have A Dry Spell to read; it is ready and waiting on my Kindle).

Esther’s life, living with her adored older brother, Christian, has become mundane until there are repercussions from her happy but eccentric childhood. I loved all the characters especially Donovan, one of the waifs and strays Esther’s parents were fond of collecting.

 

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith

I suppose I must have eaten and slept and thrown the odd word to my other half between the Friday evening I started this and the Sunday afternoon when I finished but that was all a blur; for the time it took to read 1073 pages I was completely absorbed in the world of Cormoran Strike and Robin. A corker to end all corkers.

 

Death in the Woods by Jo Allen

Read on Kindle. The sixth outing for Jude Satterthwaite and this engaging series set in the beautiful Lake District.

A series of copycat suicides, prompted by a mysterious online blogger, causes DCI Jude Satterthwaite more problems than usual, intensifying his concerns for his troublesome younger brother Mikey. Along with his partner Ashleigh O'Halloran and a pyschiatrist he tries to find the identity of the malicious troll.

A distressing subject, beautifully handled.

 

The Keeper of Happy Endings by Barbara Davis

Read on Kindle. I think this was the free book I chose as a perk of being an Amazon Prime member (to which I signed up inadvertently a year ago … ).

The worlds of two people collide in 1980s Boston – Rory (Aurora) in her 20s, grieving the loss/lack of news of her kidnapped medic boyfriend in Africa, and Soline with a past in war-torn France that she’d rather forget.

I wasn’t mad on the writing (a bit repetitious) but I did like the story and shed a wee tear or two at the end.

 

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

Hadback from charity shop. The fifth (and long overdue but she has been writing other novels) outing for one of my favourite fictional detectives, Jackson Brodie (played by Jason Isaacs on TV in a series that inexplicably got axed). As with the first four, Kate Atkinson gives us several strands of story and ties them up miraculously.

Eight in August

 I read eight books in August.

 

Learning to Swim by Clare Chambers

Read on Kindle. I much enjoyed hearing Clare Chambers’ book Small Pleasures on Radio 4 and will be reading it for a forthcoming book group meeting. So I was keen to read her backlist. Learning to Swim starts when Abigail is a schoolgirl; she’s from a suburban what-will-the-neighbours-think sort of family, enthralled by her new friend Frances’ bohemian lifestyle and by her brother Rad. There’s a parting of the ways and then years later an unexpected encounter.

CC is so good on life’s little embarrassments, so good on detail and hitting the nail right on the head. I didn’t want it to end.

 

The Editor’s Wife by Clare Chambers

Read on Kindle. I was less enamoured of this one, written in the first person by a male narrator, but it was still an enjoyable read. Christopher (another product of a suburban, unambitious family) is writing a novel and he has been taken under the wing of an editor, Owen, and his wife Diana.

What I did love was all the booky chat – Clare Chambers began her working life as a secretary at Andre Deutsch when the legendary Diana Athill was at the editorial helm so she knows the London publishing scene as it was thirty or so years ago. And ‘the editor’s wife’ is called Diana … interesting …

 

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

I stayed up very late to finish Jane Harper’s first two books The Dry and The Lost Man a few months ago. This one has the same protagonist as The Dry. Aaron Falk is investigating a company for financial fraud and then gets caught up in a nightmare scenario. The company has sent two groups of staff members (one male team, one female) on a bonding exercise in the Australian wilderness. Of the five women only four make it back … and the missing one is Falk’s whistle blower. Engrossing.

 

The Survivors by Jane Harper

I’d not long finished the above book when I found JH’s newest book in hardback in a charity shop. What luck, although it means I am now up to date with all her titles. Unlike the others, this one is not set on mainland Australia but in a small coastal town in Tasmania. When a girl is found murdered on the beach bad memories are stirred up of another young girl who went missing years earlier.

Hope’s she’s working hard on a fifth book.

 

The Lark by E Nesbit

Found in a charity shop – didn’t know she wrote books for adults. This edition is in the Penguin Women Writers series. Enjoyable enough, frothy, but very dated and, frankly, unbelievable. Two young girls (orphan school leavers) have been diddled out of their inheritance by their guardian although they do have a house to live in. Somehow they make money by selling posies of flowers from their garden gate, enough for them to employ a char lady and a gardener …

 

Searching for Caleb by Anne Tyler

I have not read all Anne Tyler’s books and I used to have others that for some reason I gave away. So I’m trying to build up a full set. This one was first published in 1996. Great stuff (as usual).

Duncan Peck is a restless man, always on the move. His wife, Justine, is a fortune teller who can't remember the past. Her grandfather, Daniel, longs to find the brother who walked out of his life in 1912 never to be seen again. All three are taking journeys that lead back to the family's deepest roots …

 

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

Recommended by a friend. I took a while to get into it and I didn’t love it but it was a very thought-provoking read.

The Miltons are a powerful old New York family, the kind that runs the world. And in 1935, they do. For generations, Kitty and Ogden Milton revel in their own utopia, a small island they own off the coast of Maine, but it cannot last.

Across the generations, we see the Milton myth slowly unravel. In 1959, two strangers enter their circle, forcing each member to question what their family stands for. Then by the 21st century, the money has run dry, the island is up for sale, and their granddaughter is about to uncover disturbing evidence about her family's wealth.

 

The Complete Short Stories by Ian Rankin

His two previous collections in one volume with an extra bonus story. Every one a gem. He lives near me; I saw him in the street yesterday and thought of telling him … but the moment passed.