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.

Eight in July

 I read eight books in July.

 

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

Paperback, bought with the birthday book token that also bought Rodham (see below). I hadn’t heard of Lily King before but Writers & Lovers was on the same table as Rodham in Waterstones and I thought it looked my cup of tea. And it was, a complete afternoon tea in fact with jam and cream and a cherry on top. I’ll certainly be reading her four previous titles.

Casey Peabody is writing a novel, living in a gloried garage, waitressing, recovering from a relationship break-up. So Writers and Lovers encompasses her struggles and otherwise to write and her working life in the restaurant with characterful co-workers; she has non-sugary romances with the two new, very different, men in her life; she tries to come to terms with the recent death of her mother and to mend bridges with her ghastly father.

Glowingly endorsed by fellow writers such as Ann Patchett and Tessa Hadley, the book, to my mind, occupies the sweet spot between commercial and literary fiction. 

 

Midsummer Magic at Miss Moonshine’s Emporium by Authors on the Edge

Read on (ancient) Kindle but I shall get a paperback too because the map of Haven Bridge drawn by Livi Gosling looks lovely but not seen to best advantage in black and white. I do love a map at the beginning of a book, ever since my sister and I used to pore over the Toytown endpapers in our Noddy books. I love the covers of the three Miss Moonshine books too – they were done by one of the talented authors, Mary Jayne Baker.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first two outings for Miss Moonshine and on this evidence the series is going from strength to strength. The nine authors each have their own voice but the whole is made cohesive by their short stories all being set in the same place, the town of Haven Bridge, and in each story the amazing, time-travelling, Miss Moonshine sorts out everybody's problems.

 

Choose Me by Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver

Read on Kindle. Taryn is a clever girl whose single mother is struggling to keep her daughter at a prestigious university. Taryn’s planned thesis has attracted the attention of a prominent feminist academic; together they are going to rewrite classical myths. But while Taryn’s work is about reclaiming history from men, in her personal life she is clingy to the point of stalkery. When she finally realises that her relationship with Liam is finished she overly responds to the admiration of married professor Jack Dorian to the ultimate tragedy of them both.

 

A Village Murder by Frances Evesham

Read on Kindle. Promising characters and plot but ultimately unsatisfying in outcome. The sleuth, a retired cop turned publican, made leaps of connections and puttings of two and two together that the reader (this one, anyway) couldn’t see; plus, we hardly met, never mind got to know, the villain  – so there was no ‘I wonder … ’ moment followed by feeling clever that you’d cudgelled your little gray cells and come up with the answer.

 

The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves

Paperback from a charity shop. The latest case for Vera and one of the best, plus the title comes from my favourite poem, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost, not an original choice I know but it’s popular for a reason.

 

Hand-grenade Practice in Peking by Frances Woods

Reissued in this lovely edition by Slightly Foxed. Frances Woods spent a year at a language school in China in 1975-76; the book is based on the letters she sent home. So she was there at the very end of the Cultural Revolution and the end of the life of Mao Zedung – at a time when China was virtually closed to outsiders.

Funny, fascinating and jaw-dropping.

I blogged here about my own, much shorter but still funny, fascinating and jaw-dropping, visit to rural China in 2011.

And to read about China somewhere between those two dates I highly recommend Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler.

 

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Read in paperback for book group. I thoroughly enjoyed American Wife by CS in which she imagined the life of Laura, wife of George W Bush – the result, I promise, is much more amusing and touching than I know you are thinking it could possibly be …

In Rodham, as you can see from the cover, she imagines what would have happened to Hillary Rodham, to the US, and indeed to the world, if she hadn’t married the charismatic Mr Clinton.

It’s an entertaining and thought-provoking read.

 

I Know I Saw Her by E D Thompson

Read on Kindle. A really good psychological thriller. Alice’s quiet (quiet for a slowly revealed reason) home life is disrupted by new neighbours, and a game of cat and mouse is played out over one hot summer.

Eirin Thompson writes excellent women’s magazine stories; I look forward to seeing what she does next as her alter ego.

 

 

 

My Sister's Eyes

  

St Triduana (also known as Trøllhaena, Trodline or Tredwell) died in Restalrig, Edinburgh, a long way from her birthplace, at some point in the 3rd (or 4th or 5th) century AD.

 

Legend has it that she’d accompanied the party that bore the bones of Andrew the Apostle across the seas to the east coast of Scotland and the settlement that now bears his name.

 

She became known for curing blindness – even long after her death, evoking her name in prayer for eye ailments were said to effect a miraculous cure.

 

The gruesome side of her story is what has been passed down over these many years – what led to her being associated with blindness and the #MeToo resonance of that (plus ça change … ).

 

We’ll never know the truth of it all; at this distance that is impossible  – but what a gift for a writer to be able to fill in the gaps …

 

… which is a task I set myself to do in a short story called My Sister’s Eyes.

 

I entered the story to the Federation ofWriters in Scotland’s Vernal Equinox competition and was delighted to be placed third equal. Many thanks to them and congratulations to all the placed entries.

 

You can read all the adjudications and the entries here (or if you want to skip straight to My Sister’s Eyes it’s here).

 

Photo by Daniil Kuželev on Unsplash

 

 

NOTICE FOR EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS

Many thanks to those of you who opted to receive notifications of blog posts by email. Blogger is very unhelpfully discontinuing this service (‘in July’ so may already have done … ). To transfer to another email service involves signing up to Google Analytics which I have done but there is a password needed by Blogger that I cannot find. Online help forums shed no light (and it would appear I’m not the only one with the issue). If anyone can help please contact me via the comments.

Lovely email subscribers, I trust the situation will get resolved soon. (The list of names will remain after July.) In the meantime, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to check in with the blog every so often without a reminder.

 

 

Five in June

 I read five books in June.

 

The Private World of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge

I read a few GHs in my teens and then inexplicably she dropped off my radar until a couple of years ago when my enthusiasm was ignited by my friend Anne Stenhouse (no mean Regency writer herself); she kindly lent me this biography.

GH was extraordinary in that she seemed to despise her own writing and she never gave interviews or did signing sessions or author tours or anything required (pre-pandemic anyway) of big-name authors today. And she was a big name, with legions of fans, despite being so private and elusive; her forthcoming novels were serialised in Woman & Home for which she received £10,000 in the middle of the last century. 

It was so interesting to read of her attention to detail and accuracy – she kept dozens of notebooks with historical minutiae and also invented her own slang words, just one of the things that make her writing so dazzling.

 

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

‘When Sophy is sent to stay with her London relatives, she finds her cousins in quite the tangle. …
Fortunately, Sophy has arrived just in time to sort them all out – but Charles is eager to rid his family of her meddlesome ways. Has the Grand Sophy finally met her match?’

What do you think?

 

And now for something completely different:

 

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None meets Lord of the Flies at a wedding on a small island off the coast of Ireland. And the consequence was … murder and mayhem and revenge.

 

Your Blue-Eyed Boy by Helen Dunmore

Simone is in a very difficult situation. Formerly a lawyer in London who was able to take on badly paid cases close to her heart, she has now moved to a rural area to be a district judge – because her husband’s business is virtually insolvent and 75% of her salary will be going to pay debts and bank charges. He’s depressed (unsurprisingly) and they have two primary-school-age boys.

But the book opens with Simone in America twenty years earlier, in a relationship with an older man, a damaged Vietnam veteran – and as if she doesn’t have enough to worry about in the present day that relationship comes back to haunt her.

Helen Dunmore is (was, sadly) a wonderful writer (poet as well as novelist) and her descriptions are stunning. I loved this (the writing and the tension evoked) up until the end which – no spoilers – I felt a little disappointed by.

 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

This is a book lots of people seem to be talking about at the moment (and soon to be a TV series). In 1922 Count Alexander Rostov has been sentenced to indefinite house arrest by a Boshevik tribunal – or hotel arrest because he must spend the rest of his days in the Hotel Metropol, not in the grand suite he previously occupied but in an attic room.

But, the book blurb asks, can a life without luxury be the richest of all? How the Count passes his days (and months and years) makes for a delightful, if perhaps rather over-long, read.

 

NOTICE FOR EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS

Many thanks to those of you who opted to receive notifications of blog posts by email. Blogger is very unhelpfully discontinuing this service (‘in July’ so may already have done … ). To transfer to another email service involves signing up to Google Analytics which I have done but there is a password needed by Blogger that I cannot find. Online help forums shed no light (and it would appear I’m not the only one with the issue). If anyone can help please contact me via the comments.

Lovely email subscribers, I trust the situation will get resolved soon. (The list of names will remain after July.) In the meantime, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to check in with the blog every so often without a reminder.

 

 

 

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.