Category Archives: 4

September 21, 2023 · 5:43 pm

A Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks

A Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks

I read this years ago – probably when it was first released – and I know I enjoyed it and I consider it to be my favourite Geraldine Brooks novel. When I saw it as an audio book (read by the author) on Borrowbox, I had to re-visit it.

Here’s the blurb …

An unforgettable tale, set  in 17th century England,  of a village that quarantines itself to arrest the spread of the plague, from the author The Secret Chord  and of March , winner of the Pulitzer Prize 

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna’s eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a “year of wonders.”

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England,  Year of Wonders  is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing “an inspiring heroine” ( The Wall Street Journal ), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read.

It’s extraordinary how little of this novel I remembered. It is also very interesting to read this in a Covid (post-covid) world. This village isolates itself so as not to spread the plague, they move church services to outside and stand at a distance from each other – that’s all very familiar.

It’s beautifully written with lots of lovely period detail (but blended into the story). I particularly enjoyed all of the domestic details and the herb remedies. There is also a lot of death (from the plague and otherwise), religion ( was the plague god’s judgement for their sins), selfishness and superstitions.

A review

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August 23, 2023 · 3:16 pm

Happy Place – Emily Henry

Happy Place – Emily Henry

I have become a keen Emily Henry fan, so I was waiting for this one to be released. Here is the blurb …

Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.

They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.

Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.

Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?

I do like a second chance romance.

This is a fun, well-written story about two people finding their way when things get tough (a bit of a sunken cost thing going on – not about the relationship).

This novel also has one of my favourite quotes

Like even when something beautiful breaks, the making of it still matters

A review

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August 22, 2023 · 12:18 pm

Geneva – Richard Armitage

Geneva – Richard Armitage

This was in Mr H’s audible library and I like both Richard Armitage and Nicola Walker, so I thought I would give it a go.

Here’s the blurb …

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sarah Collier has started to show the same tell-tale signs of the Alzheimer’s disease as her father: memory loss, even blackouts. So she is reluctant to accept the invitation to be the guest of honour at a prestigious biotech conference – until her husband Daniel, also a neuroscientist, persuades her that the publicity storm will be worth it. The technology being unveiled at this conference could revolutionise medicine forever. More than that, it could save Sarah’s life.

In Geneva, the couple are feted as stars – at least, Sarah is. But behind the five-star luxury, investors are circling, controversial blogger Terri Landau is all over the story, and Sarah’s symptoms are getting worse. As events begin to spiral out of control, Sarah can’t be sure who to trust – including herself.

I do read the odd thriller/crime, but it is not my favourite genre. I found this one fascinating; the chapters were from different perspectives, which meant, firstly, they could be unreliable narrators and secondly you could only learn what they knew. It was a good structure for the novel (I wonder if you write things in order and then move things around?). I am not going to spoil it for anyone, I will just say I did not think the story would end the way it did.

This was a fast-paced, modern novel and it was a real page turner (If I had been reading it – I get finding jobs to do, so I could listen).

A review

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August 19, 2023 · 4:04 pm

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies – Alison Goodman

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies – Alison Goodman

Miss A, who works in a book store, told me all of the ‘Old Ladies’ were buying this book and she thought I might like it. She was right.

Here’s the blurb …

A high society amateur detective at the heart of Regency London uses her wits and invisibility as an ‘old maid’ to protect other women in a new and fiercely feminist historical mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Alison Goodman.

Lady Augusta Colebrook, “Gus,” is determinedly unmarried, bored by society life, and tired of being dismissed at the age of forty-two. She and her twin sister, Julia, who is grieving her dead betrothed, need a distraction. One soon presents to rescue their friend’s goddaughter, Caroline, from her violent husband.

The sisters set out to Caroline’s country estate with a plan, but their carriage is accosted by a highwayman. In the scuffle, Gus accidentally shoots and injures the ruffian, only to discover he is Lord Evan Belford, an acquaintance from their past who was charged with murder and exiled to Australia twenty years ago. What follows is a high adventure full of danger, clever improvisation, heart-racing near misses, and a little help from a revived and rather charming Lord Evan.

Back in London, Gus can’t stop thinking about her unlikely (not to mention handsome) comrade-in-arms. She is convinced Lord Evan was falsely accused of murder, and she is going to prove it. She persuades Julia to join her in a quest to help Lord Evan, and others in need—society be damned! And so begins the beguiling secret life and adventures of the Colebrook twins.

This is part regency romance and part action and adventure. Our heroines Augusta and Julia are mature – 42 (no less), which I think is a good thing. Think of the novels of Georgette Heyer mixed with an adventure story (where things don’t always go to plan) and along the way we learn some history – most of it quite awful (the virgin cure? mental asylums for women – locked up because their guardians (husbands, brothers, fathers) found them annoying). Our hero, Lord Evan, is on the run after returning to England before completing his sentence for killing someone in a duel (I am sure there will be more about that in a later novel). The way they all meet is brilliant, but no spoilers here. The language is very heyeresque and the world building (creating regency England) is well done.

This is a fun, fast-paced romp.

A review

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August 7, 2023 · 8:29 pm

Lessons – Ian McEwan

Lessons – Ian McEwan

I have had this book in my tbr pile for a while and then I saw I could get the audio version (this version)from Borrowbox, so I did that.

Here’s the blurb …

When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines’s life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother’s protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade.

Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life.

Haunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means—music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past?

Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man’s lifetime.

This is what I think of as a ‘cradle to grave’ narrative – we follow Roland through most of his life, and get some history and politics into the bargain. It’s a long novel and it covers territory that I think would appeal to baby boomers (because they would have lived through similar times). Some of the tangents didn’t really work for me, I wanted to continue with the main story. However, it is a compelling story and I wanted to know what would happen to Roland, Lawrence (and even Miss Cornell).

A review

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August 6, 2023 · 8:30 pm

Behind the Seams – Esme Young

Behind the Seams – Esme Young

This was given to me as a gift, and as a fan of The Great British Sewing Bee, I was very keen to read this book.

From adventures at Central Saint Martins to The Great British Sewing Bee , go behind the scenes of Esme Young’s amazing life…

At age five, Esme was asked to write in her notebook, but instead, she filled it with drawings – the only way she knew to express herself. At seven, when it was discovered she was partially deaf, she found refuge in her sketchbooks. Shortly after, Esme made her first garment and a passion for sewing and designing was born. As a teenager, she made her way to London where her creative journey truly began.

Living in a squat with other young creatives, Esme made the most of her time; studying at Central Saint Martins, launching a clothing line called Swanky Modes with three friends and £50 each, watching Notting Hill Carnival with David Bowie, and altering a dress for Cher. The ’90s saw a career move into costumes for films, where she designed outfits for Trainspotting , Bridget Jones’s Diary and The Beach , before she moved onto the small screen herself.

A celebration of a creative life lived differently, Behind the Seams is a reminder that it’s never too early, or too late to pick up a needle and start stitching in a new direction.

This was great, so much that I didn’t know or expect. From the sewing bee, I knew about her work at Central Saint Martins, but nothing about the rest of her career. And what an amazing career it is; fashion and costume design, fabulous collaborations.

The driving impulse seems to be to say yes (almost all the time) to all opportunities.

If you’re interested in textiles, fashion, sewing, pattern cutting or the sewing bee, then this book will interest you.

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August 1, 2023 · 6:21 am

The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese

The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese

I had about this novel at book club and I bought a copy as a gift, which came back to me so I could read it too – perfect gift.

Here’s the blurb …

A stunning and magisterial new epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret.
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. The family is part of a Christian community that traces itself to the time of the apostles, but times are shifting, and the matriarch of this family, known as Big Ammachi—literally “Big Mother”—will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life. All of Verghese’s great gifts are on display in this new work: there are astonishing scenes of medical ingenuity, fantastic moments of humor, a surprising and deeply moving story, and characters imbued with the essence of life.

A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

I read Cutting for Stone – a few years ago and enjoyed it, so I was keen to read this one. It is quite the epic, over 700 pages, but, unusually, I didn’t think it could do with some editing. It’s beautifully evocative. The settings, the characters, the family “condition” where every generation someone (or multiple people) drown were intriguing and compelling. At its heart it’s about love and family.

A review

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July 25, 2023 · 5:01 pm

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone – Benjamin Stevenson

Everyone in my Family has Tried to Kill Someone – Benjamin Stevenson

I needed a new audible book, so I scrolled through my husband’s audible account and selected this one. My new way of selecting is to choose the first thing that appeals to me. The audible book is narrated by Barton Welch.

Here’s the blurb …

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate.

I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

Have I killed someone? Yes. I have.

Who was it?

Let’s get started.

EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE

My brother

My stepsister

My wife

My father

My mother

My sister-in-law

My uncle

My stepfather

My aunt

Me

I had seen this book in various book stores, but for some reason had been a bit dismissive. That was a mistake, I really enjoyed this novel. And, the ending, which I won’t spoil, was unexpected. This novel has a lovely chatty style, with a classic Poirot type reveal at the end. The audible narration is fabulous.

If you like crime or detective stories, then I think you will enjoy this novel.

A review

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July 20, 2023 · 5:16 pm

A Whistling Woman – AS Byatt

A Whistling Woman – A S Byatt

The last of the Frederica Potter series. I enjoyed this one more than number 3 (Babel Tower).

Here’s the blurb …

The Booker Prize-winning author of Possession delivers a brilliant and thought-provoking novel about the 1960s and how the psychology, science, religion, ethics, and radicalism of the times affected ordinary lives. 

“Rich, acerbic, wise…. [Byatt] tackles nothing less than what it means to be human.” — Vogue

Frederica Potter, a smart, spirited 33-year-old single mother, lucks into a job hosting a groundbreaking television talk show based in London. Meanwhile, in her native Yorkshire where her lover is involved in academic research, the university is planning a prestigious conference on body and mind, and a group of students and agitators is establishing an “anti-university.” And nearby a therapeutic community is beginning to take the shape of a religious cult under the influence of its charismatic religious leader.

A Whistling Woman portrays the antic, thrilling, and dangerous period of the late ‘60s as seen through the eyes of a woman whose life is forever changed by her times.

These novels are full of detail and information, which I love. I read a review where someone was complaining about the description of clothes, but I love that. These novels are rich in description, literary allusions, science, etc.

A review

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July 13, 2023 · 12:29 pm

Mrs Gaskell and Me – Nell Stevens

Mrs Gaskell and Me – Nell Stevens

I first heard of Nell Stevens on the Backlisted podcast – they were discussing Mrs Gaskell’s North and South (one of my favourite books – and there is a fabulous television adaptation). And this sounded right up my alley – I have already read something similar about George Eliot, and there was My Salinger Year, not to forget My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead. Now I need someone to write one about Austen.

Here’s the blurb …

In 1857, after two years of writing The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell fled England for Rome on the eve of publication. The project had become so fraught with criticism, with different truths and different lies, that Mrs Gaskell couldn’t stand it any more. She threw her book out into the world and disappeared to Italy with her two eldest daughters. In Rome she found excitement, inspiration, and love: a group of artists and writers who would become lifelong friends, and a man – Charles Norton – who would become the love of Mrs Gaskell’s life, though they would never be together.

In 2013, Nell Stevens is embarking on her Ph.D. – about the community of artists and writers living in Rome in the mid-nineteenth century – and falling drastically in love with a man who lives in another city. As Nell chases her heart around the world, and as Mrs Gaskell forms the greatest connection of her life, these two women, though centuries apart, are drawn together.

Mrs Gaskell and Me is about unrequited love and the romance of friendship, it is about forming a way of life outside the conventions of your time, and it offers Nell the opportunity – even as her own relationship falls apart – to give Mrs Gaskell the ending she deserved.

I enjoyed both stories – Mrs Gaskell’s and Nell’s. I had no idea that Mrs Gaskell was in love with a man who was not her husband. I have always pictured her as a religious women who lived through some tragedies (didn’t her son die young?). Both Nell and Mrs Gaskell were longing for me who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) return their feelings. It’s about keeping going when you can’t have what you want and you don’t know what to want instead.

A review

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