Category Archives: Rating

August 19, 2024 · 8:46 pm

The Glassmaker – Tracy Chevalier

The Glassmaker – Tracy Chevalier

I am always going to buy Tracy Chevalier’s novels. My favourite is still A Single Thread, but I have liked them all.

Here’s the blurb …

Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives learning to handle.

Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime.

Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss.

The beads she creates will adorn the necks of empresses and courtesans from Paris to Vienna – but will she ever earn the respect of those closest to her?

This had an interesting structure with time. Chevalier used the metaphor of skipping a stone over water to explain the way time worked in this novel. The rest of the world might skip 100 years, but Orsola and the people close to her only aged 8 years. In this way, we could witness the evolution of glassmaking from the 1400s to now.

I enjoyed this novel, but the end felt quite melancholic. Orsola was grappling with ideas of Tourism and Making. Is she adding to the world’s problems by making things that no one really needs? But surely there is a place for beautiful things? And tourism? Good or bad? All that air travel?

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August 13, 2024 · 3:38 pm

Career of Evil – Robert Galbraith

Career of Evil – Robert Galbraith

I have very much enjoyed listening to this. I watched the first two series of C.B Strike, so I have been picturing the actors as I have been listening.

Here’s the blurb …

When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg.

Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible – and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.

With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them…

A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, Career of Evil is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives. You will not be able to put this book down.

I haven’t got much to say about this novel. It was a really enjoyable crime novel, and I didn’t pick the culprit. There is a lot of what I think of as world building – I felt like I was walking the streets of London, going to the office on Denmark Street, etc. It adds to the enjoyment of the novel for me.

Now to watch the the third series.

A review.

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August 11, 2024 · 12:53 pm

Enlightenment – Sarah Perry

Enlightenment – Sarah Perry

This is my favourite novel (so far) this year. I am glad it has been long-listed for the Booker Prize. I have read other Sarah Perry novels – The Essex Serpent (which I loved and the TV series), After Me Comes the Flood (not my favourite), and Melmoth.

Here is the blurb …

Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley are fellow worshippers at the Bethesda Baptist chapel in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of love. Thomas falls for James Bower, who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century female astronomer Maria Veduva, said to haunt a nearby manor, and whose startling astronomical discoveries may never have been acknowledged. Inspired by Maria, and the dawning realisation James may not reciprocate his feelings, Thomas finds solace studying the night skies. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love? Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan, a fellow sixth former who represents a different, wilder kind of life. They are drawn passionately together, but quickly pulled apart, casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas. In time, the mysteries of Aldleigh are revealed, bringing Thomas and Grace back to each other and to a richer understanding of love, of the nature of the world, and the sheer miracle of being alive.

I loved this book. The talk of physics and comets, but also God and grace, the nature of time, and human connection. It is beautifully written and the descriptions are superb – I could see Grace’s outfits, and the comet dress, and the little church (with the sea drenched Harmonium). The characters were complex and their situations intriguing.

Some of my favourite quotes…

Everything still happens within me – how else can I make sense of time? How else can I explain that I am lonely, and never lonely – that I despise my friend and miss her – that James Bower causes me the worst pain I ever knew, and no pain at all?

It was small, strange, curtailed and poor, but every day made new by the beauty she detected in torn table linen, dying stems of forecourt carnations, silk ribbons sold for a pound in charity shop baskets: she was free to think as she liked, to say what she liked, to do as she pleased…

I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I’ve been faithless, devout, indifferent, ardent, diligent and careless; full of hope and disappointment, bewildered by time and fate or comforted by providence – and all of it ticking through me while the pendulum of my life loses amplitude by the hour.

A review.

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August 8, 2024 · 2:47 pm

The Glovemaker – Ann Weisgarber

The Glovemaker – Ann Weisgarber

My mother-in-law lent me this one (we often exchange books). Here’s the blurb …

In the inhospitable lands of the Utah Territory, during the winter of 1888, thirty-seven-year-old Deborah Tyler waits for her husband, Samuel, to return home from his travels as a wheelwright. It is now the depths of winter, Samuel is weeks overdue, and Deborah is getting worried.

Deborah lives in Junction, a tiny town of seven Mormon families scattered along the floor of a canyon, and she earns her living by tending orchards and making work gloves. Isolated by the red-rock cliffs that surround the town, she and her neighbors live apart from the outside world, even regarded with suspicion by the Mormon faithful who question the depth of their belief.

When a desperate stranger who is pursued by a Federal Marshal shows up on her doorstep seeking refuge, it sets in motion a chain of events that will turn her life upside down. The man, a devout Mormon, is on the run from the US government, which has ruled the practice of polygamy to be a felony. Although Deborah is not devout and doesn’t subscribe to polygamy, she is distrustful of non-Mormons with their long tradition of persecuting believers of her wider faith.

But all is not what it seems, and when the Marshal is critically injured, Deborah and her husband’s best friend, Nels Anderson, are faced with life and death decisions that question their faith, humanity, and both of their futures.

I really enjoyed this novel and, unusually, I didn’t think it needed editing. For me, it was about moral dilemmas and what to do when neither outcome is good, but one outcome is slightly better for you, but much worse for the other party? What makes a person good?

I also enjoyed learning a bit about the Mormons in Utah, how they moved around to avoid persecution, but also, for some, to avoid the domination of the church in their lives.

There’s also a bit of a woman question – if women don’t have children, then what is their purpose?

A review

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August 6, 2024 · 3:27 pm

Long Island Compromise – Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Long Island Compromise – Taffy Brodesser-Akner

I am not sure why I wanted to read this one, I can’t remember when it first came to my attention. I am glad it did though because it’s a fabulous novel.

Here’s the blurb …

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives’ tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.

This novel reminded me of Jonathan Franzen’s writing: American family, unattractive and a bit lost. It’s also a bit Mayer of Casterbridge where one event can ripple on affecting future years and generations. It is beautifully written and compelling (it was quite the page-turner for me).

A review.

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August 5, 2024 · 2:04 pm

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara Comyns

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead – Barbara Comyns

I have wanted to read Barbara Comyns for a while and then I listened to a Slightly Foxed podcast about a Comyns biography and I was even keener. I found this one as an audio book from Borrowbox.

Here’s the blurb …

This is the story of the Willoweed family and the English village in which they live. It begins mid-flood, ducks swimming in the drawing-room windows, “quacking their approval” as they sail around the room. “What about my rose beds?” demands Grandmother Willoweed. Her son shouts down her ear-trumpet that the garden is submerged, dead animals everywhere, she will be lucky to get a bunch. Then the miller drowns himself . . . then the butcher slits his throat . . . and a series of gruesome deaths plagues the villagers. The newspaper asks, “Who will be smitten by this fatal madness next?” Through it all, Comyns’ unique voice weaves a narrative as wonderful as it is horrible, as beautiful as it is cruel. Originally published in England in 1954, this “overlooked small masterpiece” is a twisted, tragicomic gem

This was more like a novella – I think it was about 4 hours. And yet, there is so much packed in it. The characters – the horrible Grandmother, selfish son, put upon maids. The scene setting is fabulous – the sodden garden, various animals floating in the flood. It’s funny, but also terribly sad, and despite the seemingly happy ending does anyone get what they want?

A review.

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August 1, 2024 · 3:07 pm

Sally on the Rocks – Winifred Boggs

Sally on the Rocks – Winifred Boggs

I came across this in one of the many bookstores that we visited in London (Foyles, Hatchards, Daunts, Waterstones). The cover appealed to me (yes the cover does influence my decision).

Here’s the blurb …

When her bohemian life in Paris falls flat at the beginning of the First World War, Sally Lunton returns to the care of her guardian in Little Crampton to find a husband. With some encouragement from the local busybody, she makes a play for Mr Bingley, the bank manager, although she has a rival in Mrs Dalton, a widow with a young daughter to raise. These two ladies form a quiet alliance, recognising that the prize isn’t really worth fighting over but respecting the other’s pursuit of financial security. Sally aims to win but is distracted by her unsettling emotions for a soldier tortured by his experience at the Front. This entertaining novel is full of acute and humorous observations of male and female attitudes to love and marriage. Sally is a spirited heroine, who is determined to settle into a comfortable life now that she is in her early thirties. But in securing her future, Sally must also face her past.

This is a fabulous novel. Sally is a charming, witty heroine, Miss Maggie Hopkyns is officious and evil, Mr Bingley pompous, but then unexpectedly sympathetic. This novel shines a light on the double-standard women faced – the man gets married and has a family, while the women is an outcast.

A review.

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July 31, 2024 · 4:34 pm

You Are Here – David Nicholls

You Are Here – David Nicholls

This was a Mother’s Day present. I have read some of Nicholls novels (Starter for Ten, Us, One Day). I loved Starter for Ten, but found Us and One Day just too sad.

Here’s the blurb …

Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way . . .

Michael is coming undone. Adrift after his wife’s departure, he has begun taking himself on long, solitary walks across the English countryside. Becoming ever more reclusive, he’ll do anything to avoid his empty house.

Marnie, on the other hand, is stuck. Hiding alone in her London flat, she avoids old friends and any reminders of her rotten, selfish ex-husband. Curled up with a good book, she’s battling the long afternoons of a life that feels like it’s passing her by.

When a persistent mutual friend and some very unpredictable weather conspire to toss Michael and Marnie together on the most epic of ten-day hikes, neither of them can think of anything worse. Until, of course, they discover exactly what they’ve been looking for.

Michael and Marnie are on the precipice of a bright future . . . if they can survive the journey

I loved this book, it was delightful. The characters were great and the dialogue witty.

A review

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July 30, 2024 · 2:15 pm

Essex Dogs, and The Wolves of Winter – Dan Jones

Essex Dogs, and Wolves of Winter – Dan Jones

I listened to these one after another (narrated by Ben Miles – such a nice voice). I received Essex Dogs for my birthday (possibly more than 2 years ago) and then it came up on Borrowbox and I decided it was time.

Here’s the blurb to Wolves of Winter

The epic sequel to Essex Dogs, continuing the New York Times bestselling historian’s trilogy of novels following the fortunes of ten ordinary soldiers during the Hundred Years’ War.

For the Dogs, the war has only just begun. Caught up in the siege of Calais, in the midst of a brutal eleven-month blockade of a small port on the French coast, the band of brothers known as the Essex Dogs are no longer blindly walking into the unknown. But the men still have more questions than answers about what faces them – and why.

What are they really fighting for? And why does the king care so much about taking such a small French town?

Soon, their journey will reveal who really wants this war to last for a hundred years. And as the battle rages, they hear the first, faint, chesty rattle of a natural disaster that is sweeping towards the Dogs and their world . . .

Spanning the siege city built outside Calais’ walls, to the pirate ships patrolling the harbour, and into the dark corners of oligarchs’ houses, where the deals that shape—and end—lives are made, this captivating and brutal story brings the 1300s effortlessly to life.

I have one of Dan Jones’s history books (Power and Thrones), which I enjoyed and as I really like historical fiction, and medieval history these two novels were perfect for me.

The world did come alive – in all of its filth, illness and violence, I had no idea Prince Edward was such a knob. I had quite a romantised idea of the Black Prince. The writing is engaging with lots to hold your interest and the characters are well-written. It’s witty and moving and made me think about how these big battles are mostly forgotten. And there is the money men behind the power manipulating everything (some things never change). I am looking forward to the third novel.

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July 29, 2024 · 2:37 pm

The Group – Mary McCarthy

The Group – Mary McCarthy

I bought this novel in London – Waterstones Piccadilly maybe? I do like a story about young women set in New York in the 20th Century (Rules of Civility, The Best of Everything)

Here’s the blurb …

Written with a trenchant, sardonic edge, The Group is a dazzlingly outspoken novel and a captivating look at the social history of America between two world wars. “Juicy, shocking, witty, and almost continually brilliant.”–CosmopolitanAward-winning Mary McCarthy’s most celebrated novel follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates, known simply to their classmates as “the group.” An eclectic mix of personalities and upbringings, they meet a week after graduation to watch Kay Strong get married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives — traveling to Europe, tackling the worlds of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City. Through the years, some of the friends grow apart and some become entangled in each other’s affairs, but all vow not to become like their mothers and fathers. It is only when one of them passes away that they all come back together again to mourn the loss of a friend, a confidante, and most importantly, a member of the group.

This novel was published in 1963 (and was on the New York Times best seller list for almost two years). It must have created buzz or a bit of a scandal – there was pre-marital sex, affairs (apparently it was banned in Australia). I found it fascinating.

The Guardian has a fabulous review with quotes from various women writers (AS Byatt, Claire Tomalin, Hilary Mantel) with their thoughts on The Group.

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