Category Archives: Recommended

February 6, 2023 · 3:07 pm

A Wreath for the Enemy – Pamela Frankau

A Wreath for the Enemy – Pamela Frankau

I am not sure where I first heard of this novel, Back listed podcast maybe? Anyway, I only took one paper book and my Kindle on holiday with me. So once I had finished the paper book I had to find something on my Kindle and this seemed appealing.

Here’s the blurb …

In my youth…I had an overwhelming passion to be like other people. Other people were a whole romantic race, miles beyond my reach. Not now. I don’t really thnk that they exist, except in the eye of the beholder.’ When Penelope Wells, precocious daughter of a poet, meets the well-behaved middle-class Bradley children, it is love at first sight. But their parents are horrified by the Wells’ establishment- a distinctly bohemian hotel on the French Riviera- and the friendship ends in tears. Out of these childhood betrayals grow Penelope, in love with an elusive ideal of order and calm, and Don Bradley, in rebellion against the phillistine values of his parents. Compellingly told in a series of first-person narratives, their stories involve them with the Duchess, painted and outre; the crippled genius Crusoe; Crusoe’s brother Livesey, and the eccentric Cara, whose brittle and chaotic life collides explosively with Penelope’s.

It was really good. It’s like I Capture the Castle and Tender is the Night, quite the revelation I don’t know why I didn’t read it earlier (and it’s ridiculously cheap on Kindle).

A review

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January 23, 2023 · 2:45 pm

The Netanyahus – Joshua Cohen

The Netanyahus – Joshua Cohen

A dear friend gave me this book for chirstmas. I didn’t know anything about it all, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I loved it.

Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian – but not an historian of the Jews – is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, THE NETANYAHUS is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics – ‘An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Incident in the History of a Very Famous Family’ that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

It’s first person narration (which I always like) and the language is rich, I had to stop and look words up all the time. Also, I was intrigued by jewish history; was the Spanish Inquisition lead by the monarchy and not the church to reduce the power of the nobles? I even looked on Wikipedia to find out how Israel was formed after World War Two.

A review

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January 16, 2023 · 4:50 pm

Love Marriage – Monica Ali

Love Marriage – Monica Ali

At first, for some reason, I wasn’t that keen on reading this one and then a friend, whose taste aligns with mine, suggested it. And I am glad because I really enjoyed it.

Here’s the blurb …

In present-day London, Yasmin Ghorami is twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-born father), and engaged to the charismatic, upper-class Joe Sangster, whose formidable mother, Harriet, is a famous feminist. The gulf between families is vast. So, too, is the gulf in sexual experience between Yasmin and Joe.

As the wedding day draws near, misunderstandings, infidelities, and long-held secrets upend both Yasmin’s relationship and that of her parents, a “love marriage,” according to the family lore that Yasmin has believed all her life.

A gloriously acute observer of class, sexual mores, and the mysteries of the human heart, Monica Ali has written a “riveting” (BookPage, starred review) social comedy and a moving, revelatory story of two cultures, two families, and two people trying to understand one another that’s “sure to please Ali’s fans and win some new ones” (Publishers Weekly).

It’s about human connection and relationships in all their different forms; mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, siblings, friends, lovers, colleagues and along the way there is casual racism and overview of the failures of the NHS, Islamophobia and psychotherapy.

It’s beautifully written, very easy to read. The characters are nuanced; troubled, selfish, kind, generous, unhappy and happy.

A review

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January 11, 2023 · 2:01 pm

The Whalebone Theatre – Joanna Quinn

The Whalebone Theatre – Joanna Quinn

A friend mentioned that she had enjoyed this novel, so I reserved it at the library and my turn came around quickly, I think someone else is now waiting for it. This was great, so much detail.

Here’s the blurb …

A transporting, irresistible debut novel that takes its heroine, Cristabel Seagrave, from a theatre in the gargantuan cavity of a beached whale into undercover operations during World War II—a story of love, family, bravery, lost innocence, and self-transformation.

“The Whalebone Theatre is absolute aces…Quinn’s imagination and adventuresome spirit are a pleasure to behold.” —The New York Times

One blustery night in 1928, a whale washes up on the shores of the English Channel. By law, it belongs to the King, but twelve-year-old orphan Cristabel Seagrave has other plans. She and the rest of the household—her sister, Flossie; her brother, Digby, long-awaited heir to Chilcombe manor; Maudie Kitcat, kitchen maid; Taras, visiting artist—build a theatre from the beast’s skeletal rib cage. Within the Whalebone Theatre, Cristabel can escape her feckless stepparents and brisk governesses, and her imagination comes to life.

As Cristabel grows into a headstrong young woman, World War II rears its head. She and Digby become British secret agents on separate missions in Nazi-occupied France—a more dangerous kind of playacting, it turns out, and one that threatens to tear the family apart.

I found it compelling, there is so much going on – family relationships, theatre, country house between the wars, world war 2, art, french resistance, …

It was beautifully written, despite being long I never thought it could do with an edit (very unusual for me).

If you love big, meaty, with lots of themes historical fiction, then this book is for you.

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January 4, 2023 · 4:12 pm

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals – Oliver Burkeman

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals – Oliver Burkeman

This is my book club’s choice for January. It is an extraordinary book, I am not sure I would describe it as time management that makes me think of spreadsheets and stopwatches.

Here’s the blurb …

The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.

As someone who has an over-flowing ‘to do’ list, I found this book refreshing and inspiring. I have already tried to implement some of the suggestions: more patience (things will take as long as they take), fewer goals (I think I am down to five life goals now) and I have deleted social media apps from my phone. I need to read it again because you don’t really take everything in the first time.

A review

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December 26, 2022 · 2:36 pm

Shrines of Gaiety – Kate Atkinson

Shrines of Gaiety – Kate Atkinson

I like all of Kate Atkinson’s novels – here’s a previous review – and I found this one compelling.

Here’s the blurb …

London 1926. Roaring Twenties.
Corruption. Seduction. Debts due.

In a country still recovering from the Great War, London is the focus for a delirious nightlife. In Soho clubs, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.

There, Nellie Coker is a ruthless ruler, ambitious for her six children. Niven is the eldest, his enigmatic character forged in the harsh Somme. But success breeds enemies. Nellie faces threats from without and within. Beneath the gaiety lies a dark underbelly, where one may be all too easily lost.

This novel was beautifully written (and researched). It’s all about London night life of the 1920s, everyone is trying to have a good time after the deprivations of the war. But it is also about the seedier elements of the nightlife; the crime, the drugs and the girls (who seem disposable).

This is definitely one of my favourite books for the year.

A review

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November 21, 2022 · 6:53 pm

Lucy By the Sea – Elizabeth Strout

Lucy by the Sea – Elizabeth Strout

I do like Elizabeth Strout’s writing and I was super keen to read this one.

Here’s the blurb

A poignant, pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown–and the love, loss, despair, and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart.

With her trademark spare, crystalline prose, Elizabeth Strout turns her exquisitely tuned eye to the inner workings of the human heart, following the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic.

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea.

Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart–the pain of a beloved daughter’s suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.

This is the first novel I have read with Covid references. It definitely catches the confusion that happened in March 2020. This continues Lucy and William’s story, so I think you do need to have read the previous two. If you enjoyed those, then you will enjoy this one.

A review

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November 12, 2022 · 3:37 pm

In Love with George Eliot – Kathy O’Shaughnessy

In Love with George Eliot – Kathy O’Shaughnessy

I picked this up from the book exchange at Floreat Forum and then it languished on the ‘tbr’ shelf for sometime. Then I came across a free audible version, so I listened to it.

Here’s the blurb …

Marian Evans is a scandalous figure, living in sin with a married man, George Henry Lewes. She has shocked polite society, and women rarely deign to visit her. In secret, though, she has begun writing fiction under the pseudonym George Eliot. As Adam Bede’s fame grows, curiosity rises as to the identity of its mysterious writer. Gradually it becomes apparent that the moral genius Eliot is none other than the disgraced woman living with Lewes.

Now Evans’ tremendous celebrity begins. The world falls in love with her. She is the wise and great writer, sent to guide people through the increasingly secular, rudderless century, and an icon to her progressive feminist peers — with whom she is often in disagreement. Public opinion shifts. Her scandalous cohabitation is forgiven. But this idyll is not secure and cannot last. When Lewes dies, Evans finds herself in danger of shocking the world all over again.

Meanwhile, in another rudderless century, two women compete to arrive at an interpretation of Eliot as writer and as woman …

Everyone who has thrilled at being shown the world anew by George Eliot will thrill again at her presence, complex and compelling, here.

This book had a very interesting structure. It has two different time periods, George Eliot’s time and a contemporary time. For the sections set in George Eliot’s time, the author has used letters and diaries and then fleshed out the story. In the modern section, we have a George Eliot scholar writing a novel about George Eliot. It’s fascinating. I have read a biography of George Eliot (for My Victorian Literary study group), so I knew the bare bones of her story, but I enjoyed this fleshing out of her character (and the other characters like George Lewes, etc). There are a few echoes in the modern story to Eliot’s story, but I won’t give anything away.

A review

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November 7, 2022 · 6:59 pm

The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman

The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman

This was languishing in my ‘to be read’ pile until a friend offered to lend me her copy. I finally dug it out and read it and I am glad I did, it’s lots of fun.

Blurb …

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?

We don’t really know the person who gets brutally murdered and then the next person that gets murdered we don’t really like, so this is not a disturbing read at all. It’s well-written and fun, and I didn’t guess the murderer (which is unusual for me).

A review

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November 1, 2022 · 8:58 pm

The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding – Holly Ringland

The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding – Holly Ringland

I finished reading this, it was lovely. Esther can be annoying, but I suspect that is a trauma response and besides an annoying character doesn’t mean the writing is poor. It was well researched, I want to visit the Faroe Islands.

This novel is about female relationships; sisters, mothers and daughters and friends. It’s about bodily autonomy, and marking your body with tattoos and myth and fairy tales.

A review

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