I read about this in the Open Book newsletter – and it seemed like the perfect novel to take on holiday.
Here’s the blurb …
It’s never too late to reinvent your life
Audrey Lamont has happily devoted herself to family life for the best part of 40 years, but lately she’s become aware that she lost herself somewhere between ‘I do’ and the weekly shop. Worse, her academic husband Simon has found time for romance – just not with Audrey. Feeling invisible to everyone, even herself, she flees to her aunt’s home in rural France. While waiting for her sudden absence to spark a change of heart in Simon, Audrey finds solace in the charms of the French countryside and the company of her aged aunt and a cast of eccentric Bretons. But soon Audrey discovers going AWOL might do more than save her marriage, it might change her life …
Audrey’s Gone AWOL is a funny and beautifully observed story about losing yourself, finding yourself, and discovering joy.
I enjoyed it. A book about a mature heroine re-discovering her life after raising a family. And she goes to France and meets a cast of quirky characters (I want it to be made into a film so I can see Lilou’s outfits.). It is easy to read, well-written and has things to say about being a wife and mother (and the differences between how older women are viewed In France and Australia).
I kept seeing this novel everywhere and I finally decided to buy a copy.
Here’s the blurb …
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and inhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave – only to discover that the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister conman, a stalking panther, a lusty as each inhabitant confronts the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
In his transcendent fourth novel, Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason delivers a magisterial and highly inventive tale brimming with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment, to history and to each other. It is not just an unforgettable novel about buried secrets and inevitable fates, but a way of looking at the world.
This novel has an interesting premise and structure. First, it’s about a place. We meet all of the people who live in this place over time. From the very first white settlers to sometime in the near future. Second, all of the various accounts are told in different ways; a written history for posterity, ballads, almanacs, medical notes, letters to a friend, etc. I found it compelling (maybe not the ballads), but all of the other sections were well-written and moved the story along. It is also a bit mystical – there’s hauntings. It also has an environmental message; we see the forest slowly destroyed by various pests and diseases, and then global warming is the last nail in the coffin for several trees.
I listened to this one in preparation for the next TV series.
Here’s the blurb …
What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don’t remember they’re secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good? These are the questions River Cartwright must ask when his grandfather, a Cold War–era operative, starts to forget to wear pants and begins to suspect everyone in his life has been sent by the Service to watch him.
But River has other things to worry about. A bomb goes off in the middle of a busy shopping center and kills forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates
Something happens very early in the novel, which made me think I might be done with the Slow Horses novels, but I pushed on, and it was fine. High body count, but would you expect anything else?
As someone who has issues with food and weight, I was interested in reading this one. I read Conquering Fat Logic by Nadja Hermann last year and I found it very liberating. I realised I was in charge of my weight – no excuses.
Here’s the blurb…
Roth began exploring emotional eating in her bestseller When Food Is Love. Now, two decades later, here is her masterwork: WOMEN FOOD AND GOD.
The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. No matter how sophisticated or wise or enlightened you believe you are, how you eat tells all. The world is on your plate. When you begin to understand what prompts you to use food as a way to numb or distract yourself, the process takes you deeper into realms of spirit and to the bright center of your own life. Rather than getting rid of or instantly changing your conflicted relationship with food, Women Food and God is about welcoming what is already here, and contacting the part of yourself that is already whole—divinity itself.
This book covers emotional eating (my big downfall), why we do it and how we can stop it. I found it confronting and enlightening.
A Needle in the Right Hand of God – R Howard Block
I am going to Bayeux this year – I was meant to go in 2020, but that wasn’t to be, so this is the year. I am very keen to see the Bayeux Tapestry (and yes I know it’s not a tapestry).
This is the latest of several books on the tapestry that I have read.
Here’s the blurb …
The Bayeux Tapestry is the world’s most famous textile–an exquisite 230-foot-long embroidered panorama depicting the events surrounding the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is also one of history’s most mysterious and compelling works of art. This haunting stitched account of the battle that redrew the map of medieval Europe has inspired dreams of theft, waves of nationalism, visions of limitless power, and esthetic rapture. In his fascinating new book, Yale professor R. Howard Bloch reveals the history, the hidden meaning, the deep beauty, and the enduring allure of this astonishing piece of cloth.
Bloch opens with a gripping account of the event that inspired the Tapestry: the swift, bloody Battle of Hastings, in which the Norman bastard William defeated the Anglo-Saxon king, Harold, and laid claim to England under his new title, William the Conqueror. But to truly understand the connection between battle and embroidery, one must retrace the web of international intrigue and scandal that climaxed at Hastings. Bloch demonstrates how, with astonishing intimacy and immediacy, the artisans who fashioned this work of textile art brought to life a moment that changed the course of British culture and history.
Every age has cherished the Tapestry for different reasons and read new meaning into its enigmatic words and images. French nationalists in the mid-nineteenth century, fired by Tapestry’s evocation of military glory, unearthed the lost French epic “The Song of Roland,” which Norman troops sang as they marched to victory in 1066. As the Nazis tightened their grip on Europe, Hitler sent a team to France to study the Tapestry, decode its Nordic elements, and, at the end of the war, with Paris under siege, bring the precious cloth to Berlin. The richest horde of buried Anglo-Saxon treasure, the matchless beauty of Byzantine silk, Aesop’s strange fable “The Swallow and the Linseed,” the colony that Anglo-Saxon nobles founded in the Middle East following their defeat at Hastings–all are brilliantly woven into Bloch’s riveting narrative.
Seamlessly integrating Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Byzantine elements, the Bayeux Tapestry ranks with Chartres and the Tower of London as a crowning achievement of medieval Europe. And yet, more than a work of art, the Tapestry served as the suture that bound up the wounds of 1066.
Enhanced by a stunning full-color insert that includes reproductions of the complete Tapestry, A Needle in the Right Hand of God will stand with The Professor and the Madman and How the Irish Saved Civilization as a triumph of popular history.
This book covers European history around the time of the conquest, prior to the conquest and up to the First Crusade. The author has a theory that the First Crusade is the second Norman Conquest and that the tapestry looks forward to the Crusade. He writes about the ‘tapestry maker’ and what might have been the sources for the design and motifs. I need to read it with images of the tapestry, so I can gain a better understanding. This had a wider view than the previous books I had read; The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry – Musgrove and Lewis, and The Bayeux Tapestry Carolina Hicks.
From the bestselling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both.
Andy’s story wasn’t meant to turn out this way. Living out of a suitcase in his best friends’ spare room, waiting for his career as a stand-up comedian to finally take off, he struggles to process the life-ruining end of his relationship with the only woman he’s ever truly loved.
As he tries to solve the seemingly unsolvable mystery of his broken relationship, he contends with career catastrophe, social media paranoia, a rapidly dwindling friendship group and the growing suspicion that, at 35, he really should have figured this all out by now.
Andy has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend’s side of the story.
Warm, wise, funny and achingly relatable, Dolly Alderton’s highly-anticipated second novel is about the mystery of what draws us together – and what pulls us apart – the pain of really growing up, and the stories we tell about our lives.
At first it reminded me of High Fidelity (all that moaning), but it grew on me. We have the break up from two different points of view – Andy for the first two thirds and then Jen for the last third. I enjoyed Jen’s section, Andy’s not so much. Mainly because he was annoying not anything to do with the writing. All of the action is happening at the end of 2019 and I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to them in 2020? Andy was planning on taking a show to Edinburgh (was that even possible during the pandemic) and Jen quit her job and was going to travel (also not very likely).
This is my first novel by Rachael Johns. I haven’t read anything else because I thought she wrote outback or bush romance, which is not my thing. However, the blurb for this one appealed to me.
Here is the blurb …
A feelgood romantic comedy by Australia’s bestselling romance writer, ideal for fans of Emily Henry and Marian Keyes.
Named after a famous fictional character, librarian Bridget Jones was raised on a remote cattle station, with only her mother’s romance novels for company. Now living alone in Fremantle, Bridget is a hopeless romantic. She also believes that anyone who doesn’t like reading just hasn’t met the right book yet, and that connecting books to their readers is her superpower. If only her love life was that easy.
When handsome Italian barista Fabio progresses from flirting with love hearts on her coffee foam to joining the book club she runs at her library, Bridget prays her romance ‘curse’ won’t ruin things. But it’s the attention of her cranky neighbour Sully that seems to be the major obstacle in her life. Why is he going to so much effort to get under her skin?
With the help of her close friends and the colourful characters who frequent her library, Bridget decides to put both men to the test by finding just the right books to capture their very different hearts. She soon discovers that not all romances start with a meet-cute, but they might just end in happily ever after…
Written by Australia’s most beloved romance writer, The Other Bridget is a delightfully uplifting book about books, and a gorgeous celebration of the power and pleasure of romance novels throughout the ages.
There is so much to like about this novel. It is set in Fremantle (it is always nice to read about local places), it’s about reading and working in a library. There are a lot of book recommendations that I wish I had made a note of as I was reading (or if there was a book list at the end of the book along with the book club questions). It’s the classic ‘enemy to lovers’ trope (think Pride and Prejudice), which is one of my favourites. That and ‘friends to lovers’ (think Emma). It is witty, but with some depth.
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller – Italo Calvino
I read about this in Once Upon a Prime by Sarah Hart and reserved it from the library (it was a bit of a sprint to finish it before it had to be returned).
It has an interesting construction – story within story within story, and I was intrigued by each one, only to have them break off (which was the point I think).
Here is the blurb …
Italo Calvino’s masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book’s central character.
Based on a witty analogy between the reader’s desire to finish the story and the lover’s desire to consummate his or her passion, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino, of course, are constantly and comically frustrated. In between chasing missing chapters of the book, the hapless readers tangle with an international conspiracy, a rogue translator, an elusive novelist, a disintegrating publishing house, and several oppressive governments. The result is a literary labyrinth of storylines that interrupt one another—an Arabian Nights of the postmodern age.
Because the story is lots of disjoint stories it is quite hard to know where you are when you pick up the book again after a pause. Not a good book to read when you have a spare five minutes.
I found each of the stories to be quite gripping, even the titles are good, and put together they make a good opening paragraph for another story.
This novel is for readers (and writers), it’s about the joy of reading, the frustration of the story being interrupted and finding other readers with whom to discuss your reading. Plus it puts reading and literature at the heart of a global conspiracy.
I have read all of Trent Dalton’s works. I thought Boy Swallows Universe was fabulous.
I listened to this one, which might have been a mistake, because I think there were illustrations in the paper version? I am not sure.
Here’s the blurb …
Bighearted, gritty, magical and moving, Lola in the Mirror is the irresistible new novel from international bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies , Trent Dalton. ‘Mirror, mirror, on the grass, what’s my future? What’s my past?’ A girl and her mother are on the lam. They’ve been running for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in the kitchen with the knife in his throat. They’ve found themselves a home inside an orange 1987 Toyota HiAce van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River – just two of the 100,000 Australians sleeping rough every night. The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you’re on the run. But the girl has a dream. Visions in black ink and living colour. A vision of a life as a groundbreaking artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen ‘Lady’ Flora Box. A life of love with the boy in the brown suit who’s waiting for her in the middle of the bridge that stretches across a flooding and deadly river. A life far beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there’s only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person’s name is Lola and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can sometimes ever do. She must look in the mirror. A big, moving, blackly funny, violent, heartbreaking and beautiful novel of love, fate, life and death and all the things we see when we look in the mirror. All of the past, all of the present, and all of our possible futures. ‘Mirror, mirror, please don’t lie. Tell me who you are. Tell me who am I.’
Trent Dalton is very good at dialogue, I love the conversations the characters have. The body count is high in this novel (and it’s not always the people you want it to be). It is very grim.
I have had a kindle version of this for a while, I do like a book that encourages taking it easy.
Here’s the blurb …
Any given day brings a never-ending list of things to do. There’s the work thing, the catch-up thing, the laundry thing, the creative thing, the exercise thing, the family thing, the thing we don’t want to do, and the thing we’ve been putting off, despite it being the most important thing. Even on days when we get a lot done, the thing left undone can leave us feeling guilty, anxious, or disappointed.
After five years of searching for the secret to productivity, Madeleine Dore discovered there isn’t one. Instead, we’re being set up to fail. I Didn’t Do the Thing Today is the inspiring call to take productivity off its pedestal—by dismantling our comparison to others, aspirational routines, and the unrealistic notions of what can be done in a day, we can finally embrace the joyful messiness and unpredictability of life.
For anyone who has ever felt the pressure to do more, be more, achieve more, this antidote to our doing-obsession is the permission slip we all need to find our own way.
This book is good for anyone who gets a bit obsessed about their to do list, or their routine (I am guilty of that – although I do need a bit of structure in my day). We all only have 24 hours a day and we need to prioritise them to suit ourselves and not the rest of the world.
