I have been a Katie Fforde fan for a long time – some are better than others.
Here’s the blurb …
It’s 1968 and it’s cold when Felicity arrives in London to stay with her mother, improve her English, do a secretarial course – and meet a suitable man.
She is already missing her home in Provence and her father and his new wife and their extended family. But it’s only for a year she tells herself – and then she can go back to France and do what she really wants and become a painter.
And then she bumps into Oliver who is quite the most interesting young man she has ever met. He lives on a barge for one thing and has a selection of jobs including looking for hidden treasures along the shores of the river Thames.
In a word he’s a mudlarker – and before long Felicity is mudlarking too. She is also pursuing her dreams and painting scenery for Oliver’s actor friends.
But is Oliver a Suitable Man of whom her mother will approve? Felicity knows she will not …
Love, tangled relationships, and a real life adventure lie at the heart of Katie’s Fforde’s heart-warming new novel.
This is not one of my favourites. I liked the two heroines, but I found the situations contrived, particularly the bit about Violet having to help Henry so that he could get a position at Oxford. And Felicity and Oliver’s falling out over the mudlarking incident seemed unrealistic.
Having said that, its cosy, warm and a bit retro, all things I like.
This is the selection for my four times a year book club. I really wanted There are Rivers in the Sky, but someone else had thought it too slow.
As you can see, I put in lots of post it notes (mostly just quotes I liked – I enjoyed the way the author put words together).
Here’s the blurb …
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under?but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.
Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil?can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written?is there still time to find a happy ending?
This was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2023 and won the Nero Book Award for Fiction in 2023.
It had a very interesting structure. Each of the family members (Cass, PJ, Imelda and Dickie) have a section, and these sections have different punctuation styles. For example, Imelda has no punctuation, just capitals which I took to be the start of a new sentence. And then, in what I am calling the second section, they each get another section, but now it’s in second person (still the same punctuation style).
This is the story of a family imploding – Cass, the daughter, is drinking too much and not studying for her A levels, PJ’s section is heart-breaking – he is wearing too small shoes because he knows they have no money, and who is he talking to on the internet?, Imelda married Dickie while in the throws of grief for his brother, and Dickie is hiding his true desires even from himself.
In the final section they all end up in the woods (it reminded me of the musical Into the Woods where everyone has to go into the woods
[ALL] Into the woods without delay But careful not to lose the way Into the woods, who knows what may Be lurking on the journey? Into the woods to get the thing That makes it worth the journeying
[STEPMOTHER & STEPSISTERS] Into the woods to see the King [JACK] To sell the cow
[BAKER] To make the potion [ALL] To see To sell To get To bring To make To lift To go to the Festival! Into the woods! (To see, to sell, to get, to bring) Into the woods! (To make, to lift, to go to the Festival) Into the woods, into the woods (To see, to sell, to get, to bring) Into the woods, into the woods (To make, to lift, to go to the Festival) Into the woods Then out of the woods (To see, to sell, to get, to bring) (To make, to lift, to go to the Festival) Into the woods Then out of the woods And home before dark!
Although will they all be home before dark?
The writing is beautiful, here are some of my favourite quotes
The Crisis had transformed Main Street into a mouthful of cavities.
When he smiled his handsomeness exploded into a million pieces of miraculous light. It was like being showered in radiant shrapnel.
As if Frank’s speed and his kicks and his ideal physique were just another part of him Like the enormous coat and the enormous car and the enormous house with its breakfast room and its sessile oak forest and its piano that no one played
[…] it was like drinking lightening, very slowly, from a wine glass.
Alas, rights are – as indeed people say of children themselves – only ever on loan to us. Where they become sufficiently inconvenient to the powerful, those rights can be revoked in an instant.
That’s quite appropriate for our times.
Yet sleepwalking was possible now as it had never seemed before. The world was made with this kind of life in mind, he came to realise. The world was a machine designed to sustain and perpetuate this kind of life – adult life, normal life.
It took me a long time to finish this novel, and while I liked it, it’s not going to be one of this year’s favourites – I still think we should have read There are Rivers in the Sky.
I don’t tend to read poetry, but I would like to change that. Having heard of Mary Oliver, I thought this might be a good place to start.
Here’s the blurb …
In A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life’s work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. In these pages, Oliver shares the wonder of dawn, the grace of animals, and the transformative power of attention. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her adored dog, Percy, she is ever patient in her observations and open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments.
Our most precious chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver opens our eyes to the nature within, to its wild and its quiet. With startling clarity, humor, and kindness, A Thousand Mornings explores the mysteries of our daily experience.
I set myself the goal of reading one poem per day, but I found myself reading more. These are beautiful atmospheric and evocative.
From Hurricane
It was the wrong season, yes, but they couldn’t stop. They looked like telephone poles and didn’t care. And after the leaves came blossoms. For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.
From In our woods, sometimes a rare music
Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone.
And one for the current times, The Morning Paper
Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition is the best for by evening you know that you at least have lived through another day) and let the disasters, the unbelievable yet approved decisions, sock in.
I don’t need to name the countries, ours among them.
What keeps us from falling down, our faces to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?
Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter & Me – Lorilee Craker
I am a super-fan of L. M. Montgomery. I have read all of the books (by her and about her), seen the various adaptations, completed a cross stitch, and visited Green Gables (and given that I live in Australia that is quite the journey). I also like a book memoir – for example this one, or this one, or this one. This book was perfect for me.
Here’s the blurb …
A charming and heartwarming true story for anyone who has ever longed for a place to belong.“Anne of Green Gables,” My Daughter, and Me is a witty romp through the classic novel; a visit to the magical shores of Prince Edward Island; and a poignant personal tale of love, faith, and loss.
And it all started with a simple question: “What’s an orphan?” The words from her adopted daughter, Phoebe, during a bedtime reading of Anne of Green Gables stopped Lorilee Craker in her tracks. How could Lorilee, who grew up not knowing her own birth parents, answer Phoebe’s question when she had wrestled all her life with feeling orphaned—and learned too well that not every story has a happy ending?
So Lorilee set off on a quest to find answers in the pages of the very book that started it all, determined to discover—and teach her daughter—what home, family, and belonging really mean. If you loved the poignancy of Orphan Train and the humor of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, you will be captivated by “Anne of Green Gables,” My Daughter, and Me. It’s a beautiful memoir that deftly braids three lost girls’ stories together, speaks straight to the heart of the orphan in us all, and shows us the way home at last.
This was beautifully written – very heartfelt. I enjoyed how the personal bits interleaved with the Anne of Green Gables bits. It’s about finding family (biological and chosen), and making peace with life’s difficulties.
I bought this one in Tasmania (Hobart). I wanted something by a Tasmanian author and I had previously read The Labrinth, so I was familiar with her work.
Here’s the blurb …
After too many nights of takeaway pizzas, Marita wants just one year off to look after her daughter, Camille. then she meets Stephen, a public servant in the complex process of reinventing himself, training as a shiatsu masseur. As their relationship grows, so does the drama of parenting Camille, in this elegantly crafted, warmly appealing novel of contemporary Australian life.
This was a very thoughtful book about relationships; with one’s self, with a romantic partner, parenting, step-parenting, and friendship. It is also about compromise or the lack of compromise.
Stephen is very rigid in his views of the best way to live. He is trying to find ‘poise’ and he thinks it is to do with the body and the body’s energy – how you feed it and how you treat it. He thinks words are the enemy. Marita, on the other hand, is all about words. She has a personal project where she records people talking (telling stories etc.) and then she listens to them and tries to rework them into some kind of prose. Stephen finds Camille’s love of trashy white bread horrifying (all that dead white flour) and is always trying to improve their (Marita and Camille) diet.
Here’s a quote that sums it up for me
In bed that night, Stephen ponders the question of cake. It’s that nurturing hysteria again. Eve took the apple from the Serpent and she’s been making up for it ever since by feeding everyone cake. But when we bake flour it becomes oxidised and oxidation is the Ling process, the beginning of death … of rust, and breaking down. Once again this is a strong materialist position, of the kind Sanjay had warned him against. Of late, he has modified his thinking on this and is inclined to argue now that it’s not the cake as such but what goes into it, the quality of the energy, which includes not only the character of the ingredients but the energy of the cook as well. Marita believes it to be the other way around – what is important is not the reality but the idea.
It’s beautifully written with a visceral sense of place. The minor characters are fabulous and add heft to the story.
I found this at the Launceston airport and read half of it on the flight home. I enjoyed The Other Bridget, and I had been waiting for this one to be released.
Here’s the blurb …
When serial dater Winifred Darling – Fred – is asked to be the maid of honour at her mother’s sixth wedding, she’s determined to do everything in her power to stop it. As the author of a forthcoming book called 21 Rules for Not Catching Feelings, she knows better than most about the perils of falling in love. On arrival at the island wedding destination, Fred is delighted to discover that the groom’s hot muso son Leo is just as set against the wedding as she is. Together, they come up with ‘Operation Break-Up’ to prevent their parents from making what they believe will be a catastrophic mistake. But as Fred and Leo get to know each other better, their unexpected feelings for each other create further complications, and Fred is forced to rethink her own rigid rules about romance and family. Maybe not every relationship has to play by the book, and could Fred become the star in a romcom of her own? A heart-warming friends-to-lovers romance about the magic and mayhem of weddings – and what happens when everything you thought you knew about love is turned upside down.
I do like a friends-to-lovers romance. I live in Perth, so I enjoyed all of the references to Perth and Fremantle (and I could appreciate the very long flight to London!). It is witty, well-written, and I like the fact that Fred is a ‘player’ and Leo wants to find true love (just flipping the stereotype around a bit).
The Other Bridget is still my favourite, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
I was going to Tasmania for a holiday and I wanted to read a Tasmanian author (I think Robbie Arnott is from Launceston). I read The Rain Heron, so I was familiar with his work.
Here’s the blurb …
In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there’s far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they’re forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.
This is set in Australia because there are kangaroos, but I couldn’t say where. I laughed about the pumas being imported to hunt something else introduced, but preferring to eat the sheep instead – very Australian, cane toads anyone?
The descriptions of the landscape are magnificent, and I particularly enjoyed Iris’s connection to the highlands (her sense of peace and stillness).
The conflict between pastoralists and nature, pastoralists and the first people is a feature of this novel, but not in an overt manner (we’re not being beaten over the head here).
It does have an ambiguous ending, but I am imagining everyone happily living in Brazil.
Some quotes
And perhaps it was this mixture of wine and song; perhaps it was the hours spent in the company of cold mountains and still water, perhaps it was her lingering awareness of the ghostly grove surrounding the tavern; perhaps it was because she was momentarily free of Floyd, while knowing he was safe; perhaps it was the fatigue at the end of a hard day; perhaps it was all of it combined that made Iris lean back on her stool and feel a thin but taut connection to these things that were new to her, that were bright and strange, that she did not understand.
But it was not a claustrophobic feeling; there was pleasure in moving through it all, as if she was slowly discovering the right way – or perhaps just her way – to move through an old world.
She felt like a broom had been pulled through her, stiff bristles raking her straight, clean, her mind filling with a sense of unhurried purpose.
That last one in particular! How good is he at putting words together?
This was my book flood book. I have read The Dressmaker and scene the movie (Kate Winslet is fabulous – best Australian accent I have heard).
Here’s the blurb …
It’s 1914 and Molly Dunnage wants to see at home, at work and in underwear.
Her burgeoning corsetry business is starting to take off, thanks to some high-profile supporters. She’s marching with Melbourne’s suffragists for better conditions for women everywhere. And her family – her eccentric, confounding, adored father and aunt – are turning their minds to country retirement.
But as the clouds of war gather and an ominous figure starts skulking in the shadows of her life, Molly’s dreams begin to falter. Then, when true love drops out of the sky and into her arms, her hopes for her life and the world are entirely upended.
With the dark humour, richly detailed settings and vividly drawn characters we’ve come to expect from Rosalie Ham, this prequel to the international bestseller The Dressmaker is an unforgettable story of hopes lost, love found – and corsets loosened.
From The Dressmaker, we know the end of Molly’s story, so I was interested in the start. Her family (father and aunt) are delightful, but life is tough, and despite being talented and ambitious, things don’t go well for Molly. I was captivated by the story – the descriptions of poverty, but also joy and comfort, the corsets and costumes, the suffragette movement, the lovely Leander, the flamboyant Horatio, and finally the small mindedness and cruelty of rural Australia. Rosalie Ham is a great writer and this shows a slice of Australia in the early twentieth century just prior to World War One.
This quote really stuck with me, I have a friend who always says ‘you just need someone to love you’.
I have a paper copy and an audible version of this novel – in the end I listened to it.
I have to say I think the cover is misleading – there wasn’t frolicking in the water.
Here’s the blurb …
Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it’s now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They’ll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea… and it just might work.
Emma hadn’t planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.
It’s supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma’s toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they’re suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected–including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?
I enjoyed this novel, it has more heft than you would expect from the cover. It’s witty, well-written, and moving. It touches on some serious issues – abandonment and mental illness, but does so in a respectful thoughtful manner. And Justin is a fabulous hero.
As I read and enjoyed The Offing, I was keen to read this one.
Here’s the blurb …
Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras – from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage – their dreams, desires, connections and communities.
This is definitely experimental – each section is written in a different style.
The first part is like the image above, plus there are quotes from (genuine) history books – that are ordered in a way that keeps the story moving.
There’s a section that’s in second person, a play, a diary, and contemporary fiction.
I think it’s successful, an alternative history of Durham Cathedral through the eyes of some of the people involved in its long history.
The writing is beautiful, here are some of my favourite quotes;
Down there, getting grubby on the bed of waxen leaves. Drunk on the flavour. Dizzy on the fist of it. Sweaty in the grip of it. Biting on the bone of it.
Sanctury is granted and the Galilee bell rung to mark the moment, and the seeker then made to wear a robe that bears the yellow sign of our Cuthbert sewn onto one shoulder to show the world the generosity of our saint who offers his home without judgement. The fugitive is then given quarters and food and the time in which to pray for forgiveness, give confession and make peace with himself, then say farewell to the city, for then he is made to leave and guaranteed safe passage by a chaperone acting on the king’s orders.
He made this for you, over many hours, days, many weeks, maybe. You have never before been given something that serves no purpose other than to express – what exactly? Love? His love for you?
Counting imposes a system of order and breaks the day into increments. Counting is a form of control. It is calming, like prayer.
I was a little bit disappointed it the ending. I wanted more for Michael, but I guess that is the point, events (history) moves inexorably forward. This is a fabulous book, full of great detail, characters and descriptions. Written (successfully) in a variety of styles.
