Five in June

 

I read five books in June.

 

Mrs Porter Calling by A J Pearce

‘A feel-good novel about the spirit of friendship in wartime Britain.’ The third in The Wartime Chronicles series – the fourth Dear Miss Lake has just been published. I love books set in the Home Front, books set in wartime London and books set in magazine publishing houses, so this ticked three boxes.

Obviously, in this time and place, the characters face very serious situations, but it’s all done with a light and delightful touch.

From her uncle, the eponymous Mrs Porter has inherited Woman’s Friend magazine – a cosy weekly which specialises in answering readers’ problems. But the glamorous and entitled Mrs P finds their problems ‘mis’ and dreary and makes the staff run Vogue-type articles on eg perfume that would cost the ordinary woman half a week’s wages.

 

The Glass Maker by Tracy Chevalier

Tracy’s books are always so interesting and informative because she researches such different subjects each time – Vermeer, trees, fossils, church kneelers and Victorian mourning to name but a few. This time it is glass making on the Venetian island of Murano: she visited there several times and tried her hand at this difficult skill (sadly, a skill and an industry that has been mostly overtaken by modern production methods).

The main character, Orsolo, and some of her family barely age over the five-hundred-year span of the story. This feat is explained by the ‘timelessness’ of Venice and is pulled off brilliantly. Told this way, you can see the history of glass making since the 1500s without having to meet a new set of characters every generation.

 

False Colours by Georgette Heyer

‘Gossip, scandal and an unforgettable Regency romance.’ The main character here is the dashing Kit, on leave from the diplomatic service – and he needs all his diplomacy skills to sort out the tangled lives of his extravagant mother and wayward twin brother, and his own feelings for that brother’s betrothed.

An enjoyable read if not one of my favourite GHs.

 

A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer

My first GH crime novel – and, sadly, my last. Set in the 1930s in a snowbound country house, the book has none of the sparkling writing and gorgeous characterisation I like so much in her Regency novels. (I was warned of this by diehard Regency fans ... ) 

The solution to the murder of the house’s owner was satisfying but, jings, it was a bit of a plod to get there.

 

Broken Threads by Michal Hussein

This memoir from the host of Radio 4’s Today programme details her ancestry, which includes an Irish grandmother and a grandfather who played a part in the bloody transition ‘from Empire to Independence’.

It’s fascinating – I wish, though, that I’d read it in print and not on Kindle because eg there are many names beginning with A and I would like to have been able to refer back easily to get a grip on them, plus the e-form is hopeless when a book has lots of reference notes.

Six in June

I read six books in June.

No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby

I adored this book – it was the runner-up in the Comedy Women in Print Award in 2021, for an unpublished novel.

It’s 1895. Violet, aged 28, lives with her father in Hastings who worries that she will never find a husband. She is certain she doesn’t want to get married but what she does want is to find out what happened to her mother who disappeared ten years earlier.

Very soon she regrets employing a private detective as he seems to have his own agenda and she takes matters into her own hands. One thing leads to another, and another – the comedy comes when the reader catches on to situations of which Violet is unaware, and to her innocence (as befits a respectable Victorian unmarried woman) about the facts of life (and her curiosity on the subject).

Violet is delightful, someone it would be great fun to be friends with. The era and the setting are immersive and the resolution to the mystery unexpected.

Read this on Kindle but will be purchasing a paperback too. I hope very much that we will hear more of Miss Violet Hamilton. 

 

Reader, I Married Him edited by Tracy Chevalier

A book of twenty-one commissioned short stories inspired by Jane Eyre and what fabulous collection it is. The authors took the prompt and ran with it in all directions; they include Tessa Hadley, Helen Dunmore, Jane Gardam, Elif Shafak, Evie Wyld, Audrey Niffenberger and Lionel Shriver.

Two of my favourites were: one where you gradually realise that the narrator is Wallis Simpson; and a heart-breaking tale featuring Jane’s childhood friend Helen.

 

The Book Lovers by Emily Henry

I’m not on TikTok but am aware that Emily Henry is extremely successful as a result of being recommended on it. I see from looking at her other titles that her thing is romance with booky themes. This one, for example, has a relationship between an editor and a literary agent, both of them hustling New Yorkers, who find themselves in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, very far from their comfort zone.

Well, what’s not to like? There was great banter and some lovely writing. I will be reading more Emily Henry.

(Bookshops/books and romance are definitely ‘a thing’ at the moment; I read a book with the same title in April.)

 

Three Junes by Julia Glass

An appropriate title to read in June … a Christian Aid Book Sale purchase. The ‘three Junes’ span a decade and purport to depict ‘the life and loves’ of a Scottish family, the McLeods.

I didn’t think they came across as particularly Scottish (whatever that means) and not much of the story actually takes place in the family home in Dumfries & Galloway. The characters are not given equal weight – most of it belongs to Fenno, gay, in Manhattan during the Aids epidemic.

I’d like to have, for example, seen Dennis, bad-boy turned award-winning chef and family man, up close rather than through the eyes of others.

Strangely, the last ‘June’ focused on a hitherto unmet character, not a member of the family …. I wanted to like this but it all seemed rather oblique.

 

 Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger

I read and really enjoyed The Newlyweds by this author and so recommended her new novel (which I hadn’t read at the time) to my book group. Don’t know what they thought of it yet because I ended up not being able to attend the meeting.

And I don’t know what I think of it … it was – unexpected. One reviewer said it was 'Middlemarch meets Bridget Jones’ Diary'. Were we reading the same book?

Last month for the book group we read Lessons in Chemistry – this one could have been called Lessons in Physics. I don’t have the kind of mind to understand black holes and the decaying universe but fortunately I know someone who does and I shall be passing this on and asking for a explanation in words of one syllable.

 

My Life in Houses by Margaret Forster

Margaret Forster and her husband Hunter Davies had the same beginnings, brought up in council houses in Carlisle, and they met at school. Both were very clever and began, in their early twenties, to make their livings as writers.

By the time they were thirty they were earning so much (Margaret principally from her novel Georgy Girl which was made into a film) that they had to go and live in Portugal for fourteen months to avoid the Labour government’s punitive income tax.

Margaret (now sadly gone to the big house in the sky) remembers her life through the houses she has lived in, including the family home in Hampstead (bought for £5000 in 1962, with a sitting tenant) and holiday homes (at different times) in Portugal and the Lake District.

All financed from their writing and good on them… not that I’m jealous or anything …

 

 

My Life (maybe) – according to the books I read in 2017

Describe yourself

Vinegar Girl

How do you feel?

Lost for Words

Describe where you currently live

The Whaleboat House

If you could go anywhere where would you go?

The Road to Harmony

Your favourite form of transportation is

The Christmas Train

Your best friend is

Hester and Harriet

You and your friends are

Rainy Day Sisters

What’s the weather like?

Autumn

Favourite time of day

At the Edge of the Orchard

If your life was a book

The Child that Books Built

What is life to you?

Standard Deviation

Your fear

Big Little Lies

What is the best advice you have to give?

Chin Up, Chest Out, Jemima!

Thought for the day

I Found You

How would you like to die?

Terms & Conditions

Your soul’s present condition

A Red Herring Without Mustard

This is a fun idea I saw first on Portobello Book Blog:

https://portobellobookblog.com/2017/01/01/my-life-according-to-books-i-read-in-2016/

Patchwork Pieces

I have yet to finish the patchwork quilt I began in 1975 (one day … ) but I am fascinated by patchwork that other people do and I like reading about it – in fact (all those wonderful patterns, their origins and their makers) and in fiction.

The fifth book I read in February was:

The Aloha Quilt (Elm Creek Quilts Novels)

Jennifer Chiaverini

A Christian Aid book sale purchase from last year.

There are umpteen other titles in this series. I’d read them to find out more about patchwork patterns but not for plot or characterisation. The story was so wrapped around the subject of patchwork that any action seemed like a token gesture, and the people were there principally to relay the history of/how to make Hawaiian patchwork – which sounded gorgeous, pity there were no pictures of it apart from the cover.

My favourite novel in which patchwork plays a part (in fact, one of my favourite novels ever) is (the late lamented) Carol Shield’s Happenstance which I’ve just finished re-reading. Its format is original – it’s in two parts, one from the wife’s point of view and one from the husband’s, each printed a different way up from the other; it doesn’t matter which one you read first but it’s fun if you re-read it to try it the other way round.

Brenda, wife of Jack and mother of two, is making a name for herself as a quilter and leaves her family in Philadelphia for a few days to attend a prestigious craft fair in Chicago, during which time she wins a prize, loses an expensive new raincoat and is almost unfaithful. Jack is left to hold the fort, the fort being complicated by the unexpected arrival of his oldest friend, by the near-suicide of a neighbour, by a crisis at work, and by a snowstorm.

Quaker patchwork featured in The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier. I heard Tracy talk about the book at the Edinburgh Book Festival – she said she took a patchwork class as part of her research and loved it so much she’s carried on doing it.

I’ve just spent a lovely weekend at the Scottish Association of Writers Annual Conference. Author Linda Gilliard was one of the guest speakers/adjudicators and I had the pleasure of sitting next to her one lunch-time. She is a hybrid author – partly traditionally published and partly (and successfully) self-published. I bought one of her books that I hadn’t read before called House of Silence.

Summed up as ‘Rebecca meets Cold Comfort Farm’ the blurb includes:

‘When Gwen discovers fragments of forgotten family letters sewn into an old patchwork quilt, she starts to piece together the jigsaw of the past … ’

Really looking forward to reading it.

I’d love to write a story involving patchwork – but I can only hope it won’t take as long to finish as my quilt; not sure I’ll be around in forty years time ...