Five in May

 I read five books in May.

 

Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny

This is Katherine Heiny’s second book of short stories. I’ve been waiting for it and it did not disappoint. Inevitably some appealed more than others but all had the writing style I’ve come to love after reading her two novels Standard Deviation (three times so far) and Early Morning Riser (twice). 

 

The Crystal Crypt by Fiona Veitch Smith

A fun read with a 1920s amateur sleuth Poppy Denby. The sixth in a series but the first I’ve read. Here she is asked to investigate the mysterious death of an up-and-coming female scientist in an Oxford laboratory known as the Crystal Crypt.

 

 

Christmas is Murder by Val McDermid

Hardly seasonal, I know, but I bought this very pretty copy in the Christian Aid Book Sale and just got stuck in to this ‘festive collection of chilling tales’.

 

The Villa in Italy by Elizabeth Edmondson

I paid my first visit to Italy (Sicily) in February so the country is on my radar. Four people, previously unknown to each other, have been mentioned in the will of a woman, of whom none of them have ever heard. They have to spend time in her villa to find out why. I did keep reading to find the solution – but the reasons the legatees were brought together were convoluted and the whole thing pretty unlikely, but hey, that’s fiction for you.

 

 

Far Off in Sunlit Place: Stories of the Scots in Australia and New Zealand by Jim Hewitson

Another Christian Aid Book Sale purchase and a book I’ve wanted to read since it first came out many years ago. I’ve read other, academic, books on the fascinating subject of the Scottish diaspora – this one, while undoubtedly involving a great deal of research, is at the popular end of the history scale and extremely readable.

Seven in August

 I read seven books in August.

 

Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn

Non-fiction. Cal Flyn visited places which humans have vacated for one reason or another – eg Chernobyl; the island of Monserrat (because of volcanic activity); the no-go buffer zone in Cyprus; and a strange sea that comes and goes in California. Nature has reclaimed all of the places to a great or lesser extent. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, when collective farms in Estonia were abandoned, a staggering 500,000 hectares of forest had taken over by 2010 which is very good news for the planet on the carbon front.

Two sites closer to (my) home were of much interest: the abandoned island of Swona off the north coast of Scotland which is a living experiment in how cattle behave when they stop being domesticated; and the shale bings, legacy of coal mining in West Lothian, where no end of plant life can be found now including two rare orchids.

Cal Flynn doesn’t shy away from the bad news around climate change but it was heartening to have these flashes of hope.

 

A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

See July … impossible to choose a top five of GHs as it turns out because this one is right up there too. Unusually, the heroine is plain and plain-spoken and much of the book takes place in the countryside with talk of new farming methods rather than balls and beaux.

 

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny

Read when it came out in April 21 and it was a joy to read it again, not for the last time I’m sure. I’ve read her first novel Standard Deviation three times and just thinking about it makes me want to make that four. Check them out!

 

Fabulous Nobodies by Lee Tulloch  

I had never heard of Fabulous Nobodies until I read this article praising it by Marian Keyes and before you could say ‘look, missus, there are already xx books on your to-read pile’ I’d nipped online and bought it.

It reminded me in some ways of The Dud Avocado, a book I am fond of, although it is set in New York in 1983 instead of 1950s Paris. Reality Nirvana Tuttle (known as Really) is fashion obsessed and desperate to be a trendsetter, to be ‘somebody’ – sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. Entertaining and oddly sweet.

 

The Bridge Ladies by Betsey Lerner 

I’ve been dipping in and out of BL’s The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, (bought in a charity shop, not for this price). She’s been an agent as well as an editor so very well qualified to write it, although not everything translates to this side of the pond (and publishing has changed so much since 2010).

She mentioned her memoir and, yes, my fingers went walking online again. Her mother played bridge with the same friends for over fifty years. When Betsey comes back from New York to live where she grew up, she gets to know the ladies better and asks them about their lives, especially their young lives, so different from her own.

I very much enjoyed that aspect – the ladies and their families, living in a post-war Jewish community in Connecticut – but when Betsey takes up bridge too and goes to classes so that she will be a worthy player, she lost me. I can only hope that playing bridge is more interesting than reading about it.

 

The Swallow’s Flight by Hilary Mackay

A welcome sequel to The Skylarks’ War with as wonderful a cast of characters as you could meet anywhere. For children of all ages.

 

Arabella by Georgette Heyer

Arabella, daughter of a Yorkshire vicar, is brought to fashionable London by her mother’s friend to enter the marriage market. Despite her new surroundings, her vicarage upbringing keeps coming to the fore as she intervenes in the lives of those less fortunate … (as you can see from this cover – shades of The Water Babies). Unwittingly, she attracts the attention of wealthy and elegant Mr Beaumaris who is undoubtedly the catch of the day.

Despite the money and the immaculate attire though, our hero has a strong sense of the absurd. He is aware that other men strive to dress like he does (he’s an ‘influencer’ of his time) so, three days in a row, he sports a dandelion in his buttonhole and is amused to watch his followers scramble over themselves to do likewise.

A total delight.

Ten in May

 I read ten books in May.

 

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny

Regular readers will know I love Katherine Heiny’s first novel, Standard Deviation, so much that I have read and twice reread it since it came out in 2017. So that was a very hard act to follow – but she’s done it again and I look forward to my first reread of Early Morning Riser soon. Here’s what some others have said about it:

‘Gorgeous. Very, very funny in a knowing wry way but so tender, so beautiful. I loved all the characters.’ Marian Keyes

‘Warm, witty, touching – and frequently hilarious’ David Nicholls, author of Sweet Sorrow

‘You put the book down and feel glad to be alive’ India Knight, Sunday Times

 

The Long Hot Summer by Kathleen McMahon

‘The MacEntees are no ordinary family. Determined to be different to other people, they have carved out a place for themselves in Irish life by the sheer force of their own personalities. But when a horrifying act of violence befalls television star Alma, a chain of events is set in motion that will leave even the MacEntees struggling to make sense of who they are.’

Cleverly told from nine points of view.

 

Then, in need of distraction, I took to crime.

I used to work in London for the publishing company who published Ruth Rendell (I met her once) and I have copies of most of her books. I embarked on a galloping reread of six of them, picking up one as soon as I’d finished the one before.

The first five feature Inspector Wexford, one of my favourite fictional detectives, and the last is a standalone.

Hadn’t reread them for a good few years. The plots have stood the test of time and her writing is terrific (in Murder Being Once Done London comes alive as much as any of the characters) but my goodness how much the world has changed since the 1960s/70s. Technology of course and attitudes, but it’s particularly hard to believe that back then there were streets of grotty bedsits in areas of London like Notting Hill, now only affordable by the mega rich.

 

The Speaker of Mandarin

 

Murder Being Once Done

 

The Best Man to Die

 

Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

                                                               

                                                          Wolf to the Slaughter

 

                                                             The Secret House of Death

And still on a crime spree:

Remain Silent by Susie Steiner

The third book (after Missing, Presumed and Persons Unknown) featuring DI Manon Bradshaw (and her complicated personal life, so best to read them in order). Here she is investigating the death of a young Lithuanian man who was a migrant worker in a horrible chicken factory. His fellow workers are frightened to talk about it. Manon’s colleague, Davy, goes to Lithuania to find out more about the dead man.

A satisfying police procedural, with heart. And worth reading alone for the laugh-out-loud scene when Manon tears into the unfaithful husband of her best friend.

 

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

I could hardly tear myself away from this story of a mysterious death in the Australian outback. Told from the point of view of the dead man’s brother, it’s a tale of old and new family secrets played out in a relentlessly hot and dangerous landscape.

 

 

 

 

 

Seven in September

I read seven books in September.

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier

We’ve probably all heard the story of ‘Johnny Appleseed’ who scattered pips across America that grew into wonderful orchards seemingly without any further human intervention. But it turns out that growing apples is a great skill, that different kinds can be crossed to produce a different flavour/texture – and that drinking too much cider can have very dire consquences.

Once again Tracy Chevalier has chosen a fascinating subject to passionately pursue. Her (fictional) main character, Robert, moves on from the apple trees of his childhood to finding giant sequoias (even being involved in transporting some to Wales – this really happened ).

The research does rather overwhelm the story and I would have liked to follow Robert’s sister Martha too – but I do love learning something new in whatever form it takes and while I appreciated trees before I read this I’m definitely going to be hugging them now.

 

   

Twins,and what they tell us about who we are by Lawrence Wright

Yes, a bit of a random title for me – part psychology, part medical. When I read (and loved) Liane Moriarty’s novel Three Wishes, which is about triplets, she mentioned this book in her acknowledgements. So I thought I would read it, as a writing friend once pointed out to me that I am fond of having multiple births in my stories – lots of twins and the beginnings of a novel with triplets. Really don’t know why I do that … I’m trying to stop. 

But I loved these stories about twins who were separated at birth (sometimes in the past, horrifically, deliberately separated as a scientific experiment) and who turned out to not only have eg the same mannerisms but who married wives with the same name, or who turned up to be reunited with their twin wearing the same colour and style of dress. About nature and nurture basically – absolutely fascinating. And the medical bit was too (did you know that twins can have different fathers?) … book now passed on to a young relative who has started midwifery training.

X by Sue Grafton

Bought in the wonderful Barter Books in Alnwick. This is the third last in this series about Californian private investigator Kinsey Milhone, which I have been blitz-reading over the last few months. This isn’t one of the best, a bit of a pot-boiler, and really it’s a follow-on story from W is for Wasted – so don’t make this the book you start your reading of the series. Otherwise you could start anywhere because the books, all 26 of them (I’ve still to read Y and Z is not out yet), are set in an unspecified year around the mid 1980s.

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

I’ve never read Judy Blume’s YA books – actually I’m not sure they were called that when they were first published, I think she probably invented the genre. But a friend passed this ‘for adult readers’ book on and I was intrigued to read it. It’s set in 1951 and based on a real series of tragic accidents that happened over one year in suburban New Jersey, where JB grew up. There are many wonderful characters, perhaps too many – some merited a whole book of their own. It’s a very interesting period to read about – I’ve read lots of fiction and non-fiction of post-war, still-food-rationed Britain when everything seemed rather gray and dreary, but America is the land of plenty; there are technological advances and women’s lives are changing. 

Christmas Under the Stars by Karen Swan

I’ve been meaning reading to read Karen Swan for a while – her covers look so enticing. But I was sadly disappointed. Four friends – two young couples – in the Canadian Rockies, an accident happens, and the book is about the fall-out. Great setting, great premise. But I didn’t like any of the four of characters – they simply didn't ring true for me – and one of them turns out to be so unhinged they seem to have strayed in from a different genre. And the title is a swiz – there are date headings throughout the book and it skips from 24 December to the 26th! There are good reviews online for this, KS’s eleventh novel, but there are also readers who think it not a patch on earlier titles. So maybe I’ll give her another go. Maybe.

Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

Read on Kindle. Short stories, some about the same characters, all single women and (the irony is deliberate) not awfully carefree or mellow. Loved, loved the characters, the settings and the dry humour. The New York Times described her writing as ‘Cheever mixed with Ephron’. That mix makes a very successful marriage …

Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny

Read on Kindle. When I finished her short stories I rushed out to buy KH’s novel (well, I downloaded and started reading it immediately). I don’t know when I’ve last read a book with such lifelike characters – they jumped straight off the page and I loved them all, yes, even the origami obsessives ...

There’s not much in the way of plot but who cares – this is a fly-on-the-wall, laugh-out-loud look at the 15-year marriage of Graham and Audra. He was previously married to ice-queen, humourless Elspeth. One of those people who light up a room, Audra could not be more different. She is much younger than Graham and he loves that she’s so gregarious and can talk to anyone – and does, at great length and speed, without filtering her thoughts (although he winces when the people sitting in front of them at a church wedding overhear her telling him some very (very) intimate information about the bride).

Graham and Audra have a son, Matthew, who has Aspergers, something they take in their stride although it’s not always easy. And sometimes Audra can be too friendly and hospitable, filling their house with waifs and strays, which is when Graham thinks nostalgically of the ordered, peaceful life he had with Elspeth

Throw in the New York setting as a bonus and I was completely hooked by this warm, funny and wonderfully written book.