Six in February

I read six books in February.

On the Up by Alice O’Keefe

The first but probably not the last book I’ll read on how difficult it is for young (and not so young) people to afford to buy, or even rent, somewhere decent to live in the UK in the 21st century.

Sylvia rents a flat on a council estate in London with her laid-back, minimum-waged, ‘not-quite-husband’, Ove, their toddler and baby. She’s the main breadwinner but while she is on maternity leave she finds out the quango she’s worked for is to be wound up. Sylvia yearns for a house like the one she was brought up in but all she and Ove could possibly afford (if she finds another job) is one that is virtually uninhabitable and only a minute’s walk from a motorway junction.

However, shockingly, compared to others on the estate, Sylvia is lucky in that she has choices, although they may not involve house ownership. When her block is scheduled for ‘redevelopment’ (ie into properties none of the current occupants could aspire to buying) the council tenants are told they will ‘probably’ be re-housed in the Greater London area, or failing that, Birmingham.

The estate occupants come together to protest the development, aided by a lawyer friend of Alice’s, knowing though that the eventual outcome is inevitable and they will all go their separate ways.

Number 1 Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li

Read on Kindle for book group.

‘The popular Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland has been serving devoted regulars for decades, but behind the staff's professional smiles simmer tensions, heartaches and grudges from decades of bustling restaurant life.’

Family businesses are a great subject for novels (and TV dramas). This is the first one I’ve read set in the world of Chinese restaurants and it was a fascinating glimpse into the fiercely hot and noisy kitchens and the people who own them and the people who work in them. Well-written, touching, funny and sad.

Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce

Inspired by agony-aunt columns in women’s wartime magazines. Mrs Henrietta Bird is agony aunt for a failing magazine called Woman’s Friend – but she’s not much help to anyone in these troubled times. For one thing she’d rather be out of the office lording it on various war-effort committees and for another she refuses to answer any questions that involve what she calls Unpleasantness; this includes: marital relations, pre-marital relations, extra-marital relations … you get the drift.

Her new assistant, sparky Emmeline, seeing the genuine dilemmas and unhappiness of some of the letter-writers, decides to write back herself. Alongside this, there is Emmeline’s life outside the office with her friend Marigold, known as Bunty, and her other job in the evenings on the fire-brigade switchboard.

I thought the ending took a bit of swallowing but I loved the idea and the characters, and the tone which was rather reminiscent of girls’ school stories.

PS don’t look at Amazon reviews before you read this; some of them have a big spoiler.

PPS here’s a blog post of mine which has snippets of bracing advice from yesteryear.

The Holiday by T M Logan

From a charity shop to whence it was speedily returned.

Four women go on holiday to an Italian villa to celebrate their fortieth birthdays; one is on her own and the other three are with their husbands and children. Kate suspects that her husband is having affair with one of her friends. We learn from the tagline that one of the party is a murderer.

I thought I was going to read a tense psychological thriller with lots of build-up, but absolutely nothing happened until three-quarters of the way through this 496-page book. Until then you have to plough through banal interactions between characters who were all, whether grown-ups or offspring, unpleasant/obnoxious/spoilt/terminally boring*. A pity, because the reason for Kate’s husband’s suspicious behaviour turned out to be unexpected and original.

*other opinions are available – the book was a Richard and Judy best-seller.

The Hiding Places by Katherine Webb

I am a fan of KW, especially of her first book The Legacy.

I got totally into this one. She beautifully conjures up rural Wiltshire in the early 1920s and the heartbreak of Pudding whose beloved elder brother Donald has come back badly damaged by the war. When Donald is accused of the murder of a very popular member of the community, Pudding and a newcomer to the village try to prove his innocence.

And then – then I began a new chapter and was totally baffled, could not work out what was going on, even wondered momentarily if the binder had got pages mixed in from another book. I read on but nary a glimmer of light did I see. Only after I looked at reviews from others who had a similar reaction did I understand that this wasn’t the promised twisty ending but that there had been a sleight of hand all the way through. Was it very clever or was it cheating? The jury is out.

Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill

The last, sadly, in the Dalziel and Pascoe police procedural series and it’s a corker.

It was a relief after the disappointments of the two books above to read one that did exactly what it said on the tin.

Five in June

I read five books in June.

A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin

Read for book group. Before she found her metier as a biographer (of eg Charles Dickens and, one of my heroes, Samuel Pepys) Claire Tomalin was a successful literary editor. That career would be enough for me to find her autobiography of interest as I worked in publishing in London around the same time (albeit not moving in the same circles … ) But her personal life is so interesting too, from a rather extraordinary childhood, to the death in Israel of her journalist husband Nick Tomalin, tragedies involving her children, and her second marriage to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.

Hello, My Name is … the Remarkable Story of Personal Names by Neil Burdess

Read on Kindle – but in retrospect it would have been better to have a print copy as it’s the sort of book which would be handy to have on a shelf to dip into. I am a little obsessed by names so any book on the subject is grist to my mill. This one covers first names – from Anglo-Saxon kings to today’s celebrity baby names – surnames and their origins, professional names, and the history of titles (Mr, Mrs etc). A good addition to my collection – even if I can’t put it on a shelf.

Looking for Charlotte by Jennifer Young

Read on Kindle. An excellent, gripping read (and I’m not just saying that because Jennifer is a fellow Capital Writer … )

Divorced and lonely, Flora Wilson is distraught when she hears news of the death of little Charlotte Anderson. Charlotte’s father killed her and then himself, and although he left a letter with clues to the whereabouts of her grave, his two-year-old daughter still hasn’t been found.

Flora embarks on a quest to find Charlotte’s body to give the child’s mother closure, believing that by doing so she can somehow atone for her own failings as a mother. As she hunts in winter through the remote moors of the Scottish Highlands, her obsession comes to threaten everything that’s important to her — her job, her friendship with her colleague Philip Metcalfe and her relationships with her three grown up children.

The English Girl by Katherine Webb

‘Secrets, feuds, passion and turmoil in 1950s Arabia.’ KW never writes the same book twice and her backgrounds are always fascinating. My favourite is The Legacy but I enjoyed this dual-narrative, inspired by the true story of an English woman who crossed the Empty Quarter, the world’s largest sand desert.

My Life by Annie S. Swan

Bought in Christian Aid book sale. Although virtually unknown today, in the first half of the twentieth century Annie S was a household name, finding fame as a writer of serials for The People’s Friend whose circulation at the time ran into many (many) hundreds of thousands. From fairly humble beginnings in the Scottish Borders she married a doctor and lived in London where she moved in some of the upper echelons of society – and doesn’t she like to tell us about it …

As a writer of PF serials myself (now on Kindle and in large-print in libraries ... ) I would have preferred less name-dropping and more on her writing process (as we would say now) and on her relationship with the publisher D C Thomson. But she does relate an incident where she was passing a shop and witnessed women coming out and turning pages of the magazine, desperate to find out what happened in the next instalment of her current serial. Ah well, one can only aspire.