Category Archives: Rating

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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July 12, 2023 · 4:05 pm

Babel Tower – AS Byatt

Babel Tower – AS Byatt

I am still listening to the Frederica Potter series of novels, this one is number three. These novels have so much going on – there is stories within stories. There is the plot of the novel and then there is bits of Babel Tower (a novel written by one of the characters) and there is another story written by yet another character. The novels are full of literary, scientific and art references. The characters are articulate.

Here’s the blurb …

Babel Tower follows The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life in tracing Frederica Potter, a lover of books who reflects the author’s life and times. It centers around two lawsuits: in one, Frederica — a young intellectual who has married outside her social set — is challenging her wealthy and violent husband for custody of their child; in the other, an unkempt but charismatic rebel is charged with having written an obscene book, a novel-within-a-novel about a small band of revolutionaries who attempt to set up an ideal community. And in the background, rebellion gains a major toehold in the London of the Sixties, and society will never be the same.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed reading these novels – I remember waiting impatiently for the final one to be released. They’re interesting; there are a variety of characters of all sorts (weird, clever, violent, angry, kind, mad) and I think it gives the reader an insight into life in the 1960s and 70s as a clever and ambitious woman.

It’s also about language and its slipperiness.

A review

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July 11, 2023 · 6:34 pm

The Wind Knows My Name – Isabel Allende

The Wind Knows My Name – Isabel Allende

A friend lent me this novel. I wouldn’t have read it otherwise – I read something by her years ago and wasn’t that taken with it. However, I really enjoyed this one, so I am glad I read it.

Here’s the blurb …

This powerful and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea weaves together past and present, tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in the United States in 2019.

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler was six years old when his father disappeared during Kristallnacht—the night their family lost everything. Samuel’s mother secured a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to the United Kingdom, which he boarded alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz, a blind seven-year-old girl, and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. However, their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination she created with her sister back home.

Anita’s case is assigned to Selena Duran, a young social worker who enlists the help of a promising lawyer from one of San Francisco’s top law firms. Together they discover that Anita has another family member in the United States: Leticia Cordero, who is employed at the home of now eighty-six-year-old Samuel Adler, linking these two lives.

Spanning time and place, The Wind Knows My Name is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers—and never stop dreaming.

This is a novel about child refugees; a small boy fleeing Germany, a young girl and her dad leaving El Salvador, a mother and daughter also leaving El Salvador. It’s about acts of cruelty (both thoughtless and deliberate) and acts of kindness. It is about families – biological and the ones we make for ourselves. But, at its heart, it is about the strength of the human spiriit.

A review

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July 1, 2023 · 2:32 pm

Love By Design – Elizabeth Everett

Love by Design – Elizabeth Everett
My new book bag (it’s from Redbubble)

This was a mothers day gift from the lovely Miss A. I have already read A Perfect Equation and was keen to read more of Ms Everett’s work.

Here’s the blurb …

You couldn’t design a better hero than the very eligible and extremely charming Earl Grantham. Unless, of course, you are Margaret Gault, who wants nothing to do with the man who broke her youthful heart.

Widowed and determined, Margaret Gault has returned to Athena’s Retreat and the welcoming arms of her fellow secret scientists with an ambitious plan in mind: to establish England’s first woman-owned engineering firm. But from the moment she sets foot in London her plans are threatened by greedy investors and–at literally every turn–the irritatingly attractive Earl Grantham, a man she can never forgive.

George Willis, the Earl Grantham, is thrilled that the woman he has loved since childhood has returned to London. Not as thrilling, however, is her decision to undertake an engineering commission from his political archnemesis. When Margaret’s future and Grantham’s parliamentary reforms come into conflict, Grantham must use every ounce of charm he possesses–along with his stunning good looks and flawless physique, of course–to win Margaret over to his cause.

Facing obstacles seemingly too large to dismantle, will Grantham and Margaret remain forever disconnected or can they find a way to bridge their differences, rekindle the passion of their youth, and construct a love built to last?

I would describe this novel as a grown-up romance; Margaret is independent and self-reliant, she is not looking to be rescued or swept off her feet. In this series, the women are scientists, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, etc who want to participate in the world. Having said that, there are still traditional romance elements; the hero is an earl, Margaret is beautiful.

If you enjoy romance and romantic comedies, than this novel is for you.

A review

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June 27, 2023 · 5:07 pm

The Curfew – T M Logan

The Curfew T M Logan

I heard about this on Jen Campbell’s booktube – in particular the audio version read by Richard Armitage. Surprisingly, it was available on Borrowbox.

Here’s the blurb …

Your son said he was home. WHY DID HE LIE?

It’s time to preorder the brand new up-all-night thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Richard and Judy pick The Holiday, now a major TV Drama.

I should have known something was wrong. I should have sensed it. Felt it in the air, like the build-up of pressure before a thunderstorm, that heavy, loaded calm.

The curfew
Andy and Laura are good parents. They tell their son Connor that he can go out with friends to celebrate completing his exams, but he must be home by midnight.

The lie
When Connor misses his curfew, it sets off a series of events that will change the lives of five families forever.

The truth?
Because five teenagers went into the woods that night, but only four came out. And telling the truth might mean losing everything…

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

First, T M Logan writes excellently about teenagers and being a parent of teenagers and how things change over time. Secondly, Richard Armitage is a fabulous narrator.

The plot is a little bit predictable, but how it all gets discovered is not. It’s quite the page turner – some of Andy’s actions (he’s the dad) annoyed me (quite a few of the things he did just made things worse).

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June 22, 2023 · 3:11 pm

Threads of Life – Clare Hunter

Threads of Life – Clare Hunter

This book has been in my pile for quite some time. I have read Embroidering Her Truth, I think this one just got buried under the pile of new books. Eventually I listened to it.

Here’s the blurb …

A globe-spanning history of sewing, embroidery, and the people who have used a needle and thread to make their voices heard 

In 1970s Argentina, mothers marched in headscarves embroidered with the names of their “disappeared” children. In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. 

Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story. 

It is split into 16 chapters (each chapter is the theme by which the needlework is discussed):

  • Unknown
  • Power
  • Fraility
  • Captivity
  • Identity
  • Connection
  • Protect
  • Journey
  • Protest
  • Loss
  • Community
  • Place
  • Value
  • Art
  • Voice

For example, embroidered banners are discussed in the Protest chapter (mining unions, the women’s suffragette movement)

If you are at all interested in social history and/or textiles, then you will find this book fascinating and inspiring. The research is impressive, but not overwhelming. And there are some personal anecdotes as well, which I always enjoy.

A review

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June 9, 2023 · 3:24 pm

Hello Beautiful – Ann Napolitano

Hello Beautiful – Ann Napolitano

This one was recommended by a friend whose taste is impeccable. I put myself in the queue at the library and it arrived surprisingly fast.

Here’s the blurb …

An emotionally layered and engrossing story of a family that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it’s a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her family; she is inseparable from her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a future different from the expected path of wife and mother; Cecelia, the family’s artist; and Emeline, who patiently takes care of all of them. Happily, the Padavanos fold Julia’s new boyfriend into their loving, chaotic household.

But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable loyalty to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?

Vibrating with tenderness, Hello Beautiful is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what’s possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.

I thought this novel was beautifully written, warm and generous, but I think it could be edited – there were times where I felt like I was (essentially) reading the same thing.

A review

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June 8, 2023 · 2:41 pm

Still Life – A S Byatt

Still Life – A S Byatt

After listening to The Virgin in the Garden I was keen to continue this series and downloaded this one from Borrowbox.

Here’s the blurb …

From the author of The New York Times best seller Possession , comes a highly acclaimed novel which captures in brilliant detail the life of one extended English family-and illuminates the choices they must make between domesticity and ambition, life and art.

Stephanie Potter gives up a promising academic career to marry Daniel Orton, while her sister, Frederica, enters Cambridge, and her brother, Marcus, begins recovering from a nervous breakdown

This one is a bit sadder than the first – Byatt does write grief well, but it still has all the lovely art and literature references. And I love how we get snippets from several characters’s view points – Alexander, Stephanie, Marcus and, of course, Frederica.

I am looking forward to the next one Babel Tower, which is also on Borrowbox.

A review

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