Category Archives: 4

March 24, 2025 · 11:09 am

The Bee Sting – Paul Murray

The Bee Sting – Paul Murray

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.

A review.

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March 14, 2025 · 3:51 pm

The Loom of Time – Robert D Kaplan

The Loom of Time – Robert D. Kaplan

One of the women in my book club mentioned this book and as I thought I should be better informed about the Middle East, I decided to read it.

Here’s the blurb …

A stunning exploration of the Greater Middle East, where lasting stability has often seemed just out of reach but may hold the key to the shifting world order of the twenty-first century

The Greater Middle East, which Robert D. Kaplan defines as the vast region between the Mediterranean and China, encompassing much of the Arab world, parts of northern Africa, and Asia, existed for millennia as the crossroads of empire: Macedonian, Roman, Persian, Mongol, Ottoman, British, Soviet, American. But with the dissolution of empires in the twentieth century, postcolonial states have endeavored to maintain stability in the face of power struggles between factions, leadership vacuums, and the arbitrary borders drawn by exiting imperial rulers with little regard for geography or political groups on the ground. In the Loom of Time, Kaplan explores this broad, fraught space through reporting and travel writing to reveal deeper truths about the impacts of history on the present and how the requirements of stability over anarchy are often in conflict with the ideals of democratic governance.

In The Loom of Time, Kaplan makes the case for realism as an approach to the Greater Middle East. Just as Western attempts at democracy promotion across the Middle East have failed, a new form of economic imperialism is emerging today as China’s ambitions fall squarely within the region as the key link between Europe and East Asia. As in the past, the Greater Middle East will be a register of future great power struggles across the globe. And like in the past, thousands of years of imperial rule will continue to cast a long shadow on politics as it is practiced today.

To piece together the history of this remarkable place and what it suggests for the future, Kaplan weaves together classic texts, immersive travel writing, and a great variety of voices from every country that all compel the reader to look closely at the realities on the ground and to prioritize these facts over ideals on paper. The Loom of Time is a challenging, clear-eyed book that promises to reframe our vision of the global twenty-first century.

It is clear that Kaplan has spent a lot of time travelling in the Middle East (over a number of years), thinking about it and researching it. Although it was recently published, it was before Trump’s second presidency, which I think will have a profound impact on world politics.

I thought about anarchy and autocracy and how the latter might be preferred. There is information about the history – country by country – the revolutions, the ethnic groups, and the religions.

A review

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March 10, 2025 · 12:22 pm

There’s No Coming Back From This – Ann Garvin

There’s No Coming Back From This – Ann Garvin

This was either a kindle daily deal or a prime monthly read from 2023. I finally ended up listening to it on Audible.

Here’s the blurb …

It seems lately that Poppy Lively is invisible to everyone but the IRS.

After her accountant absconded with her life savings, newly bankrupt Poppy is on the verge of losing her home when an old flame, now a hotshot producer, gives her a surprising way out: a job in costumes on a Hollywood film set. It’s a bold move to pack her bags, keep secrets from her daughter, and head to Los Angeles, but Poppy’s a capable person—how hard can a job in wardrobe be? It’s not like she has a choice; her life couldn’t get any worse. Even so, this midwesterner has a lot to learn about the fast and loose world of movie stars, iconic costumes, and back-lot intrigue.

As a single mom, she’s rarely had time for watching movies, she doesn’t sew, and she doesn’t know a thing about dressing the biggest names in the business. Floundering and overlooked, Poppy has one ally: Allen Carol, an ill-tempered movie star taken with Poppy’s unfiltered candor and general indifference to stardom.

When Poppy stumbles upon corruption, she relies on everyone underestimating her to discover who’s at the center of it, a revelation that shakes her belief in humanity. What she thought was a way to secure a future for her daughter becomes a spotlight illuminating the facts: Poppy is out of her league among the divas of Tinseltown.

Poppy must decide whether to keep her mouth shut, as she’s always done, or with the help of a scruffy dog, show the moviemakers that they need her unglamorous ways, whether the superstars like it or not.

At first I found reading this uncomfortable, Poppy had terrible self-esteem, her life was falling apart, and she was trying to keep everyone happy. However, I gradually started to warm to her – the one thing she did was to keep trying, putting one foot in front of the other, making it through each day. And she grew as a character to understand the emotional baggage from her childhood and to put her needs first.

I did enjoy all of the movie-making references – I have always been fascinated by costumes – the continuity issues, etc.

There’s a hint of romance, but mostly this is women’s fiction. There are witty moments (and I think it would make a good film), but also some moments with emotional depth. And now I know how to pronounce Milwaukee like a mid-westerner!

A review

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February 14, 2025 · 2:46 pm

Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter & Me – Lorilee Craker

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.

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February 5, 2025 · 2:20 pm

Camille’s Bread – Amanda Lohrey

Camille’s Bread – Amanda Lohrey

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.

A review

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February 3, 2025 · 4:43 pm

The Bad Bridesmaid – Rachael Johns

The Bad Bridesmaid – Rachael Johns

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.

A review.

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February 1, 2025 · 5:55 pm

Dusk – Robbie Arnott

Dusk – Robbie Arnott

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?

A review

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January 18, 2025 · 10:52 am

Offshore – Penelope Fitzgerald

Offshore – Penelope Fitzgerald

The theme for my book club this time is Rivers. I loved There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak and I will definitely talk about that novel, but I wanted to read something else as well. I googled novels about rivers and this came up. I have read and watched The Book Shop, so this was the perfect choice.

Here’s the blurb …

Penelope Fitzgerald’s Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames, with an introduction from Alan Hollinghurst.

Offshore is a dry, genuinely funny novel, set among the houseboat community who rise and fall with the tide of the Thames on Battersea Reach. Living between land and water, they feel as if they belong to neither…

Maurice, a male prostitute, is the sympathetic friend to whom all the others turn. Nenna loves her husband but can’t get him back; her children run wild on the muddy foreshore. She feels drawn to Richard, the ex-RNVR city man whose converted minesweeper dominates the Reach. Is he sexually attractive because he can fold maps the right way? With this and other questions waiting to be answered, Offshore offers a delightful glimpse of the workings of an eccentric community.

As I haven’t read the introduction yet, I might be missing some of the more literary or subtle points.

I stayed in Battersea on my recent trip to London, and suffice to say this stretch of the Thames has been gentrified.

This is one of my photos – from the Chelsea side of the river

I would call this an ensemble novel, no one major character or view point. For a short period of time we follow the lives of a small house boat community – the boats (apart from one) are all a bit battered as are the people by life and circumstances, but they are kind and look out for each other.

The writing is beautiful, evocative of the place and time, insightful, and, at times, witty.

Here are some of my favourite quotes

And each one of them felt the patches, strains and gaps in their craft as if they were weak places in their own bodies.

I’m afraid I can’t claim to know much about knitting

Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness.

She was still at the RSM then, violin first study, and she fell in love as only a violinist can.

A review

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January 7, 2025 · 3:06 pm

Molly – Rosalie Ham

Molly – Rosalie Ham

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’.

And all we need in this life is a single friend

A review.

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January 4, 2025 · 5:38 pm

Gallant V E Schwab

Gallant – V.E Schwab

I enjoyed The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, so when I saw this in our Audible library I decided to listen to it. It’s quite short – under ten hours.

Here’s the blurb …

Sixteen-year-old Olivia Prior is missing three things: a mother, a father, and a voice. Her mother vanished all at once, and her father by degrees, and her voice was a thing she never had to start with.

She grew up at Merilance School for Girls. Now, nearing the end of her time there, Olivia receives a letter from an uncle she’s never met, her father’s older brother, summoning her to his estate, a place called Gallant. But when she arrives, she discovers that the letter she received was several years old. Her uncle is dead. The estate is empty, save for the servants. Olivia is permitted to remain, but must follow two rules: don’t go out after dusk, and always stay on the right side of a wall that runs along the estate’s western edge.

Beyond it is another realm, ancient and magical, which calls to Olivia through her blood…

I enjoyed this – the author clearly has a fascination with death. One thing that bothered me about the plot, was that no one told Olivia why she shouldn’t go beyond the wall. I know it is to the keep the plot moving forward, but I dislike it as a plot device.

The writing is very good, and the premise is creative and interesting. The characters are fabulous – I particularly like Edgar.

A review.

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