If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?
Little Me 1973
I had to think about this recently when reading Florence Knapp’s novel The Names, where a little boy’s life changes depending on what he’s named on the day. It reminded me that my mum did want to call me something else. Something that’s been a great comic story in our family. I was my mum’s first baby, so although she’d told staff she thought I was close to being born they didn’t agree and sent my dad home. It was the 1970s and things were very different. When my mum was proven right only an hour later they couldn’t get him back. My mum and dad lived in a caravan in the yard at the farm where he worked. So there wasn’t even a landline to call. So I was born just after midnight and it was just me and mum. First thing in the morning my Uncle went to the maternity home and was told that only the father could visit at the moment and he told them he was so they let him in. A while later my grandad turned up and did the same thing. By the time my dad managed to get a bus to the hospital my mum must have been the talk of the maternity ward.
My mum’s a huge Joni Mitchell fan and loved the song Little Green. She really wanted to call me that and as a teenager I was fairly scornful of this idea. I could imagine being called all sorts of awful nicknames. My mum was definitely a hippy but my dad was a very practical man, having been the army and farming so he wasn’t sold on this idea. They agreed on Hayley which means ‘from a nearby meadow’ and I never really thought about it again until reading the book. I decided to listen to the song on Spotify and it was just so beautiful. Written for a child she had when she was very young. She felt she was too young to be a mum and gave her up for adoption. The song is so full of the hopes a mother would have for their daughter:
“Just a little Green
Like thе color when the spring is born
There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little Green
Like the nights when the Northern lights perform
There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there’ll be sorrow.”
The book made me wonder whether I’d be a different person now had I been Little Green. Would I have been more confident? Perhaps I’d have been more comfortable in my creativity. Might I have written my book by now? How could I have failed with a name imbued with such hope?
Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?
This was a serendipitous prompt because I have been putting a post together for my Ten on Tuesday series about this subject. I’ve gone with books from primary school age first and this gives you a preview of what I’ll be writing about for the next few days. Many of my favourites were series and I think that’s because they came from a library. On Saturdays my dad played football and I would be dropped off in Scunthorpe with mum to shop and visit the library, a strange modern building with a glass pyramid lobby, not a great choice for a square overrun with pigeons. Mum always left me to make my own choices while she went upstairs to choose hers – on one occasion it was a Barbara Woodhouse training manual for dogs that our spaniel proceeded to rip into pieces, very pleased with himself. I’d have loved to hear that conversation with the librarian. I would choose my books, get them stamped (oh how I wanted a stamp) and then sit on a bean bag and start to read. We would travel across town to my grandma’s house on the bus and once I’d talked everyone to death I went through to the telly room and sat with grandad, who would be boiling himself next to the gas fire and watching either football or old black and white films. I would lie on the couch and read my books quietly until he wanted to check the pools. We used to watch the football results come in, my grandad swearing under his breath and me copying all the unusual club names like Leyton Orient or Heart of Midlothian. I used to take out five books every other Saturday and I would often finish a series, then start all over again with book one.
I think my favourite has to be Tove Jansson’s Moomin series and it is still something of an obsession. I collect Moomin crockery, particularly mugs and cake plates, but I also have Moomin jewellery, clothing and art around the house. I loved Moomin house and its magical Finnish surroundings. Moomintroll would always bring waifs and strays home, his parents always having enough to go round whether it was food, company or shelter that was needed. They also had buckets full of compassion and understanding for people. Little My was terribly bossy and bitey but there was room for her and her mother Mymble. Then there’s the Hemulen, a very learned gentleman who has a love of botany and can often be found shuffling around the gardens and beyond with his magnifying glass and notebook. For some reason he was always wearing a dress but nobody commented. The Snork Maiden is also a Moomin, but isn’t family. She comes and goes, mainly to see Moomintroll who she’s in love with, but she’s always worrying that she is too plump to be loved in return. Finally there’s Snufkin, Moonintroll’s best friend, who is a bit of a loner and loves to wander off and travel in the summer months. He shares a love of fishing with Moomintroll and although he doesn’t always understand Snufkin’s need to be alone he does respect it. All of these unusual people live under one roof and there’s always room. Moominmama and papa are wonderfully kind and never judgemental about their guests, they keep everyone fed and include them in their stories about various adventures. People talk about the personality types seen in Winnie the Pooh but the Moomins are it for me, I can easily fit anyone I know into one of these characters – my brother is a most definite Snufkin. They remain relevant today, particularly the Snork Maiden’s self-image and the Hemulen’s cross dressing. I only realised when I was older that I was lucky enough to have parents very like Moomintroll’s. I had a friend with a Mohican and very baggy Joe Blogg’s jeans who would stroll to my house with flowers he’d stolen from someone’s yard, or the graveyard, and announce to my mum that he’d come for tea and she always fed him. My brother and I constantly brought strays home, animals and people, and my parents were always there with food, a listening ear or some advice. I was living with Moominmamma and Pappa all along.
Reading the books over and over, certainly informed my own ways of dealing with people and might have a lot to do with my choice of career. In mental health, reserving judgment and accepting people as they are is vital in therapy. Now when I look at the books or buy something for my collection I get that feeling of nostalgia for my childhood and my family, whose way of being in the world meant we did live in Moomin House, it was just a bungalow in Lincolnshire rather than a blue tower next to a lake.
Look out for my childhood book blog in the next fortnight, or you can sign up and have every post sent to your inbox.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
Wow it’s so hard to come up with only three but I’ll give it a try. The biggest impact books can have is an emotional one and since I love books that are complex psychologically with deep, realistic characters that’s why I’m struggling to restrict myself. So I’ll do three of the most recent ones.
Ciara has recognised she needs to leave her husband due to his coercive control. Here in Ireland, she has no real support. Her family is Irish but live in London and despite her yearning to see her mum and sister the law states that she can’t take the children out of Ireland without the written permission of their father. Her only option is the housing office, present as homeless and hopefully get some emergency accommodation. As she meets other women in the same situation, she founds out that emergency and temporary have a very different meaning to the housing department. They offer her a temporary hotel room, but some women on the floor have lived there for a year so it’s going to be a long slog. This small double room with one bed and no view is the first place they’ve felt even remotely safe, even if they do have to go down a separate staircase so they don’t bump into tourists. Will Ciara have the strength to stay away and build a new life for herself?
This book blew me away last year. I was so engrossed in Ciara’s story that when I was at 50% of the way through I decided to sit for an afternoon and finish. No distractions like music or telly, just total silence and when I finished I sat in that silence and I could feel, bodily, every step of her emotional journey. My chest was tight, my breaths were shallow and I was holding myself so tightly I was sore. When I put it down I had to sit in silence for a while and just digest it all. It’s the story of a woman trying to leave a relationship that is tying her down and eating her alive. Everything she was before – bright, intelligent and full of life – has been worn away. Enduring her husband’s treatment, as well as having two children in four years, mean Ciara has had enough. She can see his behaviour as a pattern and despite being absolutely terrified she needs to find the strength to go.
I was in a relationship like Ciara’s for four years, vulnerable from the death of my husband, I reached for what felt like safety, but was really control. I weathered the silences, withdrawals, rages, punishments and rare moments of calm that I didn’t realise was a cycle of abuse. The gradual withdrawal of friends and family, the breakages of things most precious to me, the arguments with his family I couldn’t understand, all started to wear me down. He told me I was overweight, undesirable when I was ill, nagging, controlling, not a team player. If I tried to be more desirable he rejected me because I was making a show of myself. I tried to get involved with his business, but had to be careful not to outshine him. He liked me to organise parties and BBQs but then raged that I’d taken the limelight. He even used my disability against me, saying he wasn’t attracted to me when my MS relapsed and questioning my symptoms, my need to use a blue badge. I’d never experienced a relationship so unsettling, swooping from happiness to despair in the space of a few hours. He kept telling me this is what a long term relationship was like, luckily I knew different. Then he did something that, if I accepted it, would have separated me from my family and left me utterly alone and exactly where he wanted me. Thankfully I had enough strength and family support to leave. I’m telling you this so you can understand how this book had such an emotional effect on me. When you’ve gone through an experience of abuse and coercive control it’s so hard to explain because like my disability it can’t be seen. The unexplained injuries and bruises of physical abuse are their own testament, but how do you describe being terrified of someone who doesn’t physically leave any sign of their abuse? When someone articulates your experience in this way, you feel seen and accepted. Ciara’s experience did that for me and I can’t thank Roisin O’Donnell enough for that.
In 1987 Cora is going to register the birth of her baby boy. His name has been settled on for some time. Cora’s husband has chosen his own name for his son, Gordon. But it wouldn’t be Cora’s choice. Cora’s choice would be something that doesn’t tie him so obviously to his father. She thinks Julian would suit him. Little sister Maia looks in the pram at her brother and decides he looks like a he should be called Bear. All of these options swirl around in Cora’s head. In this moment, Cora has the power to make a choice and it’s done. It can’t be changed. What would happen if she went with Julian or even Bear? In the short term Gordon would be furious. How bad would it be this time? Long term, would it change her baby’s character or path in life? That’s exactly what Florence Knapp does. The book splits into three narratives and we discover what happens to this whole family, depending on Cora’s baby boy’s name. We then move on seven years and meet Bear, a name that proves to be a catalyst for change. Or we meet Cora’s choice, Julian – the choice she hoped would break him free from domineering generations of Gordons. Although, what if he is called Gordon? Brought up by a cruel father to continue in the same mould perhaps? Or he might just break free from the shackles of his name. Each life is sparked by this one decision and it isn’t just Cora’s son’s story. This is the life of the whole family with all its ups and downs. It’s about how trauma shapes lives and whether love brings healing and hope to every version of who we are.
One of our family narratives is that mum wanted to call me Little Green after the Joni Mitchell song. Mum is definitely a hippy and Dad is definitely not. My whole life I’ve said ‘thank goodness for Dad’, as I ended up with Hayley Marsha Ann which felt unusual enough. However, when I read the lyrics of the Joni Mitchell song, it was just so beautiful. Written for a child she had when she was very young. She felt she was too young to be a mum and gave her up for adoption. The song is so full of the hopes a mother would have for their daughter:
“Just a little Green
Like thе color when the spring is born
There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little Green
Like the nights when the Northern lights perform
There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there’ll be sorrow.”
The book made me wonder whether I’d be a different person now had I been Little Green. Would I have been more confident? Perhaps I’d have been more comfortable in my creativity. Might I have written my book by now? How could I have failed with a name imbued with such hope? Each of the book’s three arcs has its share of joy and heartache as Cora’s potential children cope with the aftermath of that day in 1987. For Gordon the legacy of his father is perhaps the most damaging as Cora feared. Growing up in his father’s presence means he could pass on the misogyny passed down through all the Gordons in his ancestry. It damages his relationship with his mother as he can be used as a tool for his father to oppress Cora further or to spy on her behaviour. It will also affect his own relationships with women, both his sister and potential partners – his teenage crush on Lily becomes something that’s very hard to read, but it’s right to include it. The author depicts inter-generational trauma and how it can damage the next generation in different ways. Abusers can’t always break patterns and sometimes I was compelled to read on in sheer hope. Each narrative has its moments of emotion where you have to look up from the book and breathe for a moment. Just to take it in. However, one narrative broke me. I was reading quietly in the same room as my husband and I actually responded out loud. He had to give me a cuddle because I did have tears coming and I’m astonished by the writer’s ability to absorb to that degree. To make words into a flesh and blood person I can shed tears over and another who has the potential to become a monster.
At an isolated research station in Antarctica, biologist Laurel Salter washes dishes for a living ten hours a day, six days a week. She tells no one why she left her career, or why her marriage ended.
But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t outrun her past. When a strange light appears across the ice and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo, her former husband, Eli, won’t be far behind.
Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole, and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them – to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?
And this time, live it differently.
Once read, never forgotten, Under Story is a genre-defying exploration of the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love.
I can’t reveal too much about this one as it’s not published yet but I am constantly praising it because it’s the most extraordinary book I’ve read in years. I was quite simply blown away by this complex and beautiful story of science, loss and second chances. Our heroine Laurel is a scientist, studying fungus and how it grows but for some reason that isn’t clear at first, she’s on a research station in the Antarctic, away from her former husband Eli and without any fungus in sight. When she develops a fascination in the Arc that appears she thinks about its significance. When she becomes aware there is a matching basin underneath the water, her imagination is fired. Could this possibly be a portal? A gateway to a different world? She knows Eli won’t be far behind because she remembers his theory of the ‘duoverse’, the idea that at the moment of the big bang time and space was formed in two directions: our universe, the planets and the development of the world we know and in the other direction it’s complete opposite. I am not a scientist, in fact I barely have GCSE Biology, so I wasn’t aware of any background to this idea so could drift with it and enjoy two incredible minds exploring ideas.
Our characters are fascinating, Eli and Laurel are a couple who were made for each other but their relationship is real and particularly devastating events crash into their lives but I never doubted their love for each other. It’s fascinating to watch their characters face the concept of the duoverse, not just whether it is a portal, but if it is what will their relationship look like there and will going backwards fix whatever tore them apart. I felt both were analytical and might even appear cold at times, but in the moments of heightened emotion we really see who these characters are and the deep wells of love they hold. Every world the author presents to us feels absolutely real even though it’s impossible. I was on tenterhooks wondering about the duoverse under the ice and if Lauren is right whether they’ll ever be able to return? I found myself wondering how this world would look as time scrolled backwards. I was genuinely scared for them but also full of admiration for their bravery. The mirroring is so cleverly done, showing how life always comes full circle and we’re often helpless at the end and the beginning, if we’re lucky enough to lead a full life. It might seem like science has sent them on this potential journey, but it isn’t. The totally unscientific emotion of love is what pushes them on, but also guilt, hope and desperation. Loss is a huge theme in the novel, something that always hits me in the heart due to my own losses: losing my late husband and three pregnancies I was deeply moved by how the author dealt with loss across the novel and how the scientific concept of a duoverse changes this experience. This novel was moving, profound, invigorating, deeply intelligent and so full of life. I kept thinking about the symbols of the cover, the circle and the tree, the same under the ground as they are over it. As Laurel observes:
“A line implies before and after; a circle says And then, and then…”
I didn’t realise I had this fear until around twenty years ago. I was 36 and my husband had died from complications with his multiple sclerosis. It had become so severe he couldn’t swallow or breathe properly. I had this realisation that I’d never been alone. From being around 16, I’d always had a boyfriend or partner. It was a fleeting thought I wrote in my journal and then forgot about. We’d had a busy house, what with carers and nurses and family popping in all the time. I struggled with the time that stretched out in front of me, used to a demanding caring role that included clearing lungs, tube feeding and constant turning to avoid pressure sores, there were now no demands taking up my day. I was at a friend’s house and she asked me if I’d stay for tea and I automatically said no, forgetting that I had nothing to come home for. No matter who I was with or where I went, the crushing silence when I reached home was unbearable. It was as if the air in the room was heavy and empty at the same time. His wheelchair, parked in the corner of the garage was unbearable to go past. I was relieved to be able to sleep all night but then started having nightmares. Waking suddenly, covered with sweat thinking I’d forgotten to get up and suction his lungs. Thinking he’d stopped breathing, then remembering that he had. I had dreams where I couldn’t find him and I was wandering in this dystopian nightmare of bombed out houses and twisted metal. I was turning over wreckage thinking I’d find him underneath but he simply wasn’t there. I could still hear him trying to clear his throat. I kept falling asleep in the day, then waking up unable to move but hearing noises that made me think someone was in the house. My brain bringing up intruders just so I felt less alone. A year later I met someone. It was someone I’d known a long time and trusted. I was magical thinking. That the universe had given me this person so I had something to be happy about. I was owed a happy ending, right? I thought it was the least the universe could do. So I made it perfect. I fashioned my own happy ending. Only to be left four years later feeling like I’d been in love with a ghost. The man I imagined myself in love with didn’t exist. Instead this controlling, insecure and abusive monster was living in my house and I couldn’t work out what had happened. Why had he changed? Like all abusers he started off charming, but if I was honest with myself I should have walked away at the six month mark, when the first red flag appeared, but I didn’t because I wanted us to be happy. Now I would have to learn how to be alone again. This time though I leaned into it. I relaxed into the sadness and anger, allowed myself to feel it. Now I know I can survive anything.
I listen to music all the time at home. I’m old enough to have a vinyl collection, cd collection and Spotify premium. Every so often we say that we must get rid of our cds and dvds (never the vinyl, especially since my other half has reconditioned his father’s old Bang and Olufson stereo from the 1980s). Then we look doubtful and say ‘what if the internet fails’, because I’m sure that at the end of civilisation the first thing we’ll reach for are his Duran Duran LPs and my 1990s collection. We all know how much music taps into our emotions and I know I’ve spent hours constructing playlists for specific celebrations or to document a particular year. So when a book comes with or inspires a playlist it does add to my emotional connection with the book. One of the most effective things about the adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book series is the atmospheric music and often that’s where we end up with these lists, others come from fans of the book who have looked for every piece of music mentioned in their favourite novel – something that particularly connects to romance novels it seems. Some authors actually make their soundtrack first, or make a playlist for each character as a way of familiarising themselves and feeling that character. Other books are set in the world of music so have official playlists or actual tracks written for featured band or artist in the narrative. Here I’ve added a mix of different playlist types and hopefully there’s one or two you’ll enjoy.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town – and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost…
This playlist is made by the author so should evoke some feelings and memories around the characters and mood of the novel.
Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
Eleanor is the new girl in town, and she’s never felt more alone. All mismatched clothes, mad red hair and chaotic home life, she couldn’t stick out more if she tried.
Then she takes the seat on the bus next to Park. Quiet, careful and – in Eleanor’s eyes – impossibly cool, Park’s worked out that flying under the radar is the best way to get by.
Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall in love. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you’re 16, and you have nothing and everything to lose.
Set over the course of one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is funny, sad, shocking and true – an exquisite nostalgia trip for anyone who has never forgotten their first love.
Again this is the author’s own playlist so should fit with these teenage loves.
Astrid Sees All by Natalie Standiford
New York, 1984: Twenty-two-year-old Phoebe Hayes is a young woman in search of excitement and adventure. But the recent death of her father has so devastated her that her mother wants her to remain home in Baltimore to recover. Phoebe wants to return to New York, not only to chase the glamorous life she so desperately craves but also to confront Ivan, the older man who wronged her. With her best friend Carmen, she escapes to the East Village, disappearing into an underworld haunted by artists, It Girls, and lost souls trying to party their pain away. Carmen juggles her junkie-poet boyfriend and a sexy painter while, as Astrid the Star Girl, Phoebe tells fortunes in a nightclub and plots her revenge on Ivan. When the intoxicating brew of sex, drugs, and self-destruction leads Phoebe to betray her friend, Carmen disappears, and Phoebe begins an unstoppable descent into darkness. “A new wave coming-of-age story, Astrid Sees All is a blast from the past” (Stewart O’Nan, author of The Speed Queen) about female friendship, sex, romance, and what it’s like to be a young woman searching for an identity.
This is a great 1980s soundtrack that has been curated by the author.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornsby
This one is a classic in the books about music category.
Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable break-ups? Rob does.
But Laura isn’t on it – even though she’s just become his latest ex.
Finding he can’t get over Laura, record-store owner Rob decides to revisit his relationship top hits to figure out what went wrong. But soon, he’s asking himself some big questions: about relationships, about life and about his own self-destructive tendencies. This is such a quick and engrossing read, funny and incredibly moving with a great film adaptation too.
This is a playlist made up from Rob’s playlist so you can get into his character while listening.
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Everybody knows Daisy Jones and the Six.
Their sound defined an era. Their albums were on every turntable. They sold out arenas from coast to coast.
Then, on 12 July 1979, Daisy Jones walked barefoot onto the stage at Chicago Stadium. And it all came crashing down. Everyone was there.
Everyone remembers it differently.
Nobody knew why they split. Until now . . .
This was such a smash hit, both the book and the tv series. This is original music created for the band and other tracks from that era gathered together by a clever fan. I listen to this one a lot.
The Flat Share by Beth O’ Leary
Tiffy and Leon share a flat Tiffy and Leon share a bed Tiffy and Leon have never met…
Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they’re crazy, but it’s the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy’s at work in the day, and she has the run of the place the rest of the time.
But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they still haven’t met yet, they’re about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rulebook out the window…
This playlist is a collection of music used in the tv series based on the book, it gives a great backdrop to these characters and really fits with the book.
The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton
A queen of punk before her time. A duo on the brink of stardom. A night that will define their story for ever.
Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and attitude, a Black punk artist before her time. Despite her unconventional looks, Opal believes she can be a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her one night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together.
In early seventies New York City, just as she’s finding her niche as part of a flamboyant and funky creative scene, a rival band signed to her label brandishes a Confederate flag at a promotional concert. Opal’s bold protest and the violence that ensues set off a chain of events that will not only change the lives of those she loves, but also be a deadly reminder that repercussions are always harsher for women, especially Black women, who dare to speak their truth.
Decades later, as Opal considers a 2016 reunion with Nev,music journalist S. Sunny Shelton seizes the chance to curate an oral history about her idols. Sunny thought she knew most of the stories leading up to the cult duo’s most politicized chapter, but as her interviews dig deeper, a nasty new allegation from an unexpected source threatens everything.
This is a great read. This is a soundtrack gathered from the era and the artists who would have been contemporaries of the characters, it really does take you back.
The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead
A band on the brink. A love worth playing for.
When record executive Theo meets the Future Saints, they’re bombing at a dive bar in their hometown. Since the tragic death of their manager, the band has been in a downward spiral and Theo has been dispatched to coax a new – and successful – album out of them, or else let them go.
Theo is struck right away by Hannah, the group’s impetuous lead singer, who has gone off script in debuting a new song-and, in fact, a whole new sound. Theo’s supposed to get the band back on track, but when their new music garners an even wider fan base than before, the plans begin to change-new tour, new record, new start.
But Hannah’s descent into grief has larger consequences for the group, and she’s not willing to let go yet… not for fame or love.
This is a book I wasn’t sure I would like but I loved it. This is a playlist curated by the author and really puts you in the mood.
Mix Tape by Jane Sanderson
You never forget the one that got away….
Daniel was the first boy to make Alison a mix tape.
But that was years ago and Ali hasn’t thought about him in a very long time. Even if she had, she might not have called him ‘the one that got away’; after all, she’d been the one to run.
Then Dan’s name pops up on her phone, with a link to a song from their shared past.
For two blissful minutes, Alison is no longer an adult in Adelaide with temperamental daughters; she is sixteen in Sheffield, dancing in her skin-tight jeans. She cannot help but respond in kind.
And so begins a new mix tape. Ali and Dan exchange songs – some new, some old – across oceans and time zones, across a lifetime of different experiences.
Until one of them breaks the rules and sends a message that will change everything…
I love this book, it takes me back to my teens and my very own Daniel who was a musician and used to spend hours snuggled up with me just listening to vinyl all night. The music is specific to the book and the BBC series wasn’t a bad adaptation either.
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation – awkward but electrifying – something life-changing begins.
Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can’t.
I adore these characters. This playlist is made up of music that soundtracked the BBC series and fits the book beautifully.
Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.
I have a moment every morning, especially on these sunny days when I’m sleeping with the windows open, where I hear our cat Dolly greeting the neighbours. In the rescue centre when they let her out to meet us she walked up and down the corridor, peeping in at all the other cats and saying hello. Now she does it with the neighbours. We live in an 18th Century ‘yard’ a short pedestrian lane with just four houses – the old bakers, the cobblers, the workers cottage and the farmhouse. She stalks up and down, with her tail like a question mark, trilling her hellos to everyone she sees. Usually getting a tummy tickle here and there. I know it’s time to get up and those first moments of walking into the kitchen to my cats is the best start to the day. First Maximus, the stoic tuxedo and only boy, who sits proudly on the kitchen table looking as if he’s above such things, but always drops his head to have a forehead bump. Then Minka, our newest and smallest addition who’s barely a year old but had three kittens twice her size. She winds her tail round my legs and all the furniture waiting for kisses and if they don’t come soon enough, she throws herself at your feet with her tummy in the air. Then finally Dolly barrels through the cat flap, not even slowing down, and fills the house with her chatter. She likes to touch noses but also wants to let you know she’s starving and hasn’t been fed for at least a month. We call her the Moomin. Sitting with my tea on a warm morning, they all follow me out eventually after stuffing their faces and lounge in the sun.
We know what we’re getting with Eve Chase, usually an ancestral home or a family with big secrets and here we get both. We’re introduced to Mimi Mott, interior designer and fashion icon who is in London preparing for an exhibition and auction of some of her oldest belongings. Jo is a journalist, desperate for a break and responds to an advert for an assistant to help Mimi with her exhibition artefacts. Once Mimi has chosen an object, Jo will talk to her about it and then write some copy for the exhibit. She and Jo click immediately and she’s set to work straight away. However, Jo had her reasons for wanting this job and if Mimi finds out what they are and who Jo is she could be in a lot of trouble. She would also be in trouble with her grandmother who has no idea what her new job entails or who it’s with. As she treads this tightrope we’re taken back into the 1960s and Mimi Mott’s past.
When Mimi picks an object for the auction, and she and Jo talk about it, it’s easy to see how much it affects Mimi and conjures up memories of the past. She has always known how much power there is in objects from the moment she picks up a piece of crystal from a chandelier at Rushwood and the interior designer, Whipple, encourages her to hold it up to the light and take it in. It holds all the colours of Rushwood within it. Each of Mimi’s fabric or wallpaper patterns has its genesis there, from the plants tended by her family to the objects inside Rushwood and even her trip to the seaside with Lawrence Caswell, heir to the estate. Mimi knows why we keep objects and I understood this so deeply because my house has the chesterfield leather chairs I used to sit in at my friend Nigel’s house, the first antique ginger jar my late husband and I bought to start a collection, a snow globe of New York from my 40th birthday trip and a little stone bird by my bed, part of a matching pair I shared with my friend Kathryn before she died. Mimi gets this human connection with the items we use to decorate our homes. Her auction will show the thread linking each piece to its place in her memory, though everyone thinks Mimi has forgotten her family, she didn’t forget what happened that summer, she has immortalised it through her life’s work. This is a great summer read, full of secrets, family rifts and a bit of romance too.
a mountain village in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Gino, a troubled young man, realises that his childhood sweetheart Franca can give his life the happiness and stability he needs. They seem made for each other, and move to a remote house in the countryside – but there is something in Franca’s past that haunts Gino. Descending into pathological jealousy and resentment towards a married man who had been Franca’s lover, Gino is unable to stop himself imagining the worst, and embarks on a violent path that has catastrophic consequences. This was compelling due to the complexity of Gino’s character. It couldn’t have been a better read for a counsellor and if I had a trainee who wanted to understand the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy concept of negative automatic thoughts I’d get them to read this book. Everything Gino experiences is filtered through a faulty lens. Whether this is innate or a result of constantly feeling like a disappointment is hard to tell. At the moment he has it all, but in his mind it’s already unravelling. The house needs a lot of work, but could be a secluded haven for a family. Gino hears that something strange happened to Franca’s aunt during the war and starts to wonder about it, could an event like that leave something in the house like a mood or a feeling? Is the house unlucky in some way? To be transparent about her past Franca tells him about an affair she had with one of her father’s friends. Although outwardly he seems to accept this confession, inwardly it becomes a nagging concern he can’t shake off. Everything about Gino screams of a paranoid personality disorder, his mistrust of others and ability to twist innocent encounters into personal slights and grudges are classic symptoms. It could stem from his experience growing up with a much loved local hero for a father, but he has stopped listening to others and his behaviours become more extreme, including hallucinating that his baby son is talking to him. This book has emotional depth and complexity, tension and action alongside some incredibly surreal moments too. I would definitely read this author again.
Smallie adj. |smal·lie| Definition: Caribbean (informal). Describing or relating a person from a small island; a small islander.
In 1961, nineteen-year-old Lucinda Brown travels to England in search of her son’s father, Clarence Braithwaite, who left Barbados to join the British army. But aboard the ship to Southampton she meets a man named Raldo who offers her a glimpse of a new life, a freer life. Bound by the memory of her son waiting at home, she chooses Clarence – realizing too late that war has made a stranger out of him.
Nearly fifty years later, Lucinda receives a letter from the Home Office that threatens to tear her world apart. Her children rally together to prove her legal arrival, and to do so they must track down an elusive man from her past, a man she wanted to love but instead lost, a man who now holds the key to her family’s future. Raldo . . . An exhilarating and expansive tale of a family thrown into collision with the Windrush scandal, Smallie shows just how easily the past can spill into our lives, even when – especially when – we think we’ve closed the door on it.
I’m not going to write too much about this because I haven’t written my full review yet, but I loved it. I couldn’t stop reading and I found the writing incredibly inspiring and unique. The dual timelines worked well and I loved the generation gap shown in Lucinda’s timeline and her children’s fifty years later, they haven’t known racism the way Lucinda has and the Home Office letter is their first sense of real powerlessness against the state. This is a must- buy novel.
“You give a girl a taste of fresh air and then you take it away—she’ll grow fierce and wild to get it back.”
Oxford, Mississippi, 1933.
Eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Ever since her beloved mother failed to come home last Christmas Eve, she’s been one of the ‘unadoptable’ girls at the town’s orphanage, where she fights each day to keep her wits sharp and her spirit unbowed.
When she meets Birdie, a young woman who has come to Oxford determined to remind her socialite sister of the impoverished family she left behind, for the first time in a long while it seems someone else might care about Meg’s future. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie begins to suspect her sister’s charmed life may be founded on a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman haunted by loss who has been pushed to the brink with nothing left to lose. Drawn together by circumstance, they find unexpected kinship among a disreputable, determined band of women.
But in a town steeped in hypocrisy, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences …
Again, I haven’t written my full review for this book, mainly because there’s so much I want to say! Kathryn Stockett has done it again. I can see this on the big screen and it will be brilliant. I fell in love with Meg and Birdie, but also the women who form a team to get Birdie’s in-laws out of the mess they’re in. This book has so much to say about female strength, friendship and adaptability in terrible circumstances. Every character is so well drawn I could see them. I know a lot about eugenics and its history in the US and this is an important book right now, going against where Christian Nationalist policy is taking the country. It shows the damage that can be done when someone lives the rigid rules of religion rather than the actual message of love given in the Bible. Often those who want the appearance of goodness, will do anything to keep it. Birdie finds that friendship and loyalty can be found in the most unusual circumstances and with people you never expected. There’s tragedy and brutality but also lightness, humour and so much love. Brilliant.
So those are my favourites this month and here are some hopefuls for June’s reading list. Happy Reading ❤️📚
“When Mark died I thought I’d start seeing him around more..”
From that fascinating opener this book becomes so many things: a meditation on grief; a witness to the AIDS crisis in 1984 New York City; a community’s anger at the gentrification of the East Village; a ghost hunt led by a company called Manhattan Remediation. Renata is a young dyke-about-town who has the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS. So, when her best friend Mark dies, she assumes she’ll see him again. There’s no way Mark wouldn’t give her a chance to say goodbye, would he? But to her disappointment – and increasingly, her concern – Mark doesn’t appear. Renata has other problems, too. A mysterious, police-like force has begun ridding their East Village neighbourhood of anything abnormal or inexplicable. At first, she’s sure they’re scam artists, but it becomes clear they’re actually trapping ghosts. With her band of lovably eccentric pals and lovers, Renata is determined to fight back against the erasure of her friends’ memories and the sanitizing of her beloved New York.
Renata is our narrator throughout and I felt a kindred spirit in seconds. Her expectation of seeing her friend Mark seems odd at first reading, but when I realised he had died without her and she hadn’t known for a few days I was so sad for her. Mark is clearly the most important person in her life, they shared a living space when either one of them wasn’t sleeping at a lover’s place and it seems unthinkable that she wouldn’t have known. That she wouldn’t have felt it. That the sky didn’t cave in. When people say life goes on this is exactly what they mean – everything carries on as normal while you feel like a shrieking banshee. However, for Renata there’s an added element to this disbelief. She can see dead people. In fact she’s being plagued by the ghost of their friend Francois, who she definitely doesn’t want in her flat. So why hasn’t Mark appeared? It’s hard to accept that the powerful and deep emotions you share with someone have suddenly become one sided. I remember thinking when my husband died, we were so close, how can that line of communication be cut? Years later, a chance encounter with a medium left me questioning again, she definitely had Jerzy’s turn of phrase, his humour and tendency to flirt with the furniture, but why was he talking to her and not me? Renata and Mark had a complicated relationship, they each had lovers, but they did have times when they slept together. There was no possessiveness in life, but in death I could understand Renata’s desire to have him to herself.
I was reminded of Jill in the TV series It’s A Sin and the deep connections the residents of the pink palace had with each other. When her best friend Ritchie starts to deteriorate badly, his family take him back home and cut him off from the people who have lived with him. It’s devastating when Jill travels to his childhood home, only to be told by his mother that Ritchie is already dead. The author picks up on this in the novel, the families unable to live with their child’s sexuality rushing in near the end to claim them. This could be out of love, but is also a way of cutting them off from their community, not wanting the stigma of AIDS to touch their family. Some families quickly and quietly arranged funerals for their children without the people who loved them for who they truly were, often citing the cause of death as cancer so the neighbours didn’t know. I was a teenager at the start of the AIDS epidemic here in the UK and I remember feeling genuine fear. The government leaflet had a gravestone on the front with ‘don’t die of ignorance’ carved on it. I even remember a bizarre telethon type event called First AIDS, presented by comedians and DJs telling us which sexual acts were most risky, how to prevent contracting the virus and how to put a condom on. I was thirteen and I honestly believe that it informed by sexual behaviour from the offset – I was known by my friends in later years for two methods of contraception at all times and I’m sure that was down to how frightening it felt back then. There was enormous stigma and prejudice, but because I lived in a quiet village in a rural county it felt somewhat removed from me. Even though I had an Uncle who was obviously gay in hindsight, we never really talked about it. Reading this and knowing that, a few years earlier than First AIDS, death was a daily reality in the gay community of the East Village really made me realise how far behind and out of touch we were.
The author skilfully switches tones from crushing reality, to horror and even humour at times which I really enjoyed. She doesn’t spare the realities of a death from full blown AIDS, in particular she tells us the story of Francois who is haunting her apartment. He is an angry ghost, throwing and pushing things, always making a noise and creating a horrible atmosphere, even before he appears. When he does he is known to vomit, pee on the rug and often lets out a terrible scream. Francois was a teacher, but when he started losing weight and sores were appearing on his face he was asked to leave because ‘his face was scaring the children.’ She details the secondary illnesses that would kill someone with the HIV, the lymphoma or other types of cancer or infection like pneumonia. Then there’s the encephalopathy and dementia. It’s no surprise, when we hear François’s story, that his ghost is angry. She talks about the guilt she feels for wanting him to die quicker, to stop his suffering. Renata’s mother, who never let on that she had the same gift as her daughter, said that spreading salt in the corners of problematic rooms helped soak up the negative energy, so she’s been trying baths with mineral salts but it hasn’t helped. There is some comedy in Francois as well as fear and it’s Renata’s irritation with him that made me smile. She knows she can’t live with him, but what to do? Another theme within the book is the gentrification of the neighbourhood, with talk of landlords trying to remove tenants in rent controlled apartments so they can renovate and earn more from a new one. A company called Manhattan Remediation are mentioned, claiming to be able to remove ghosts or entities from apartments. It’s discussed as a possible link to gentrification, a way to ‘clean up’ the neighbourhood. This is a proud community that wants to keep its history and its ghosts. When Francois finally pushes Renata to the edge she calls them and like the fourth emergency service Dr Silverman arrives with a faraday cage. Could this be the answer?
I was really interested in the community Renata lives in and her job at the vintage shop. She also has other friends who help her sit Shiva for Mark – a Jewish week of mourning where the bereaved stop their daily activities and focus on grieving. Renata’s friends cover the mirrors and prepare food and they talk about their memories. This is a stark contrast to her visit with Mark’s lover Patrick where there is tension and anger on both sides and I was glad she had a loving community around her. The author has captured the resistance and pride of the gay community when they’re coping with stigma and suspicion. The warmth and empathy they show each other is moving. This is such a powerful subject and really succeeds as a piece of queer history in New York City, especially since most US deaths from AIDS occurred in NYC and San Francisco. It really embodies the fear and paranoia of that time perfectly, but also depicts a community of people for whom sex may be fluid but love is plentiful and loyalty is strong. For individuals already stigmatised by their sexuality and estranged from families, this community is their found family and those ties are unbreakable. As Renata observes, if the strength of her grief alone could compel Mark to appear then he would. The addition of Renata’s psychic abilities is a genre-bending idea that mostly works really well and accentuates how lost and confused she feels. I felt her need to keep living too, even though the pull of the dead is so strong. The way she relates her personal grief to the reader, in a time of unprecedented loss, is the strongest part of the book.
This week’s ten are the fictional deaths that really affected me emotionally and why, so if you haven’t read the above books be aware that I will be revealing who dies and the twists that led there if there are any. I’ve been reading about death a lot this month and it’s probably not been the easiest month for that sort of read. 19 years ago on the 25th May I became a widow at the age 34. My husband and I married just six weeks after meeting and I uprooted my whole life to be with him. He had progressive multiple sclerosis and unfortunately died from aspiration pneumonia only seven years later. I’m so grateful for the years I had with him though. They were not easy, two people in a house with a disability is tough and made tougher by a stupid system that deemed me too sick to work but well enough to provide two thirds of the 24 hour care he needed in the last couple of years. Having exhausted myself, I was relieved that he wasn’t suffering and that I had time to look after myself. I was glad to lose the illness (although I still have it) but it took a few months for the loss of the person to hit me, so hard that I felt hollow. So, deaths in fiction do tend to hit me hard and I’m going to start with a YA novel with a character who was so like my husband Jerzy it made me smile as it ripped my heart out.
This story of two terminally ill teenagers is such a quick read, but it lasts a long time in your heart. Augustus Waters was so like Jerzy, just younger. He’s charismatic, positive and almost glows with that special something that makes others look up to him and listen to what he says. When he meets Hazel at a support group she finds him handsome, intelligent and brimming with positivity about his own outlook, having had a brush with osteosarcoma that led to the amputation of his leg. Their love is almost instant and the poignancy is that their first love could be their last. Augustus wants to do something heroic and it’s a quality Jerzy had in spades. Even from his wheelchair he went tall ship sailing, scuba diving and before the MS had played rugby for his county and London Irish. He had that sparkle I could feel in Gus and that undefinable something that made others want to be near him. Gus is a romantic, both in this beautiful love he has for Hazel and in his attitude to his illness. His outlook attracts other patients and keeps them going, so his death, when it comes, feels impossible and like a betrayal. How can someone as bright and beautiful as this do something as ordinary as die. It heightens the relentless nature of the disease and the human condition – no matter how great, how loved or how heroic we are, we all die in the end.
We all experience a book in different ways because we read it through the filter of our own experiences and emotions. I haven’t met anyone who finds Jay Gatsby’s death as sad as I do. Gatsby is another romantic and he truly believes that to win Daisy all he needs is wealth and status, he never doubts her love. He’s been clinging to his feelings for Daisy, thinking she has been doing the same. Finding out she’s married to Tom Buchanan and lives out on Long Island, he moves in across the water and waits. His next door neighbour Nick, who is also Daisy’s cousin, gets her to visit his house for tea and finally they are in the same room. Gatsby shows her his home and his wealth, thinking that now she must see there are no obstacles in their way. However, the Buchanans are ‘old money’ and despite Tom’s drinking, aggression and cheating with Myrtle from the gas station, he’s still the ‘right sort’, whereas Gatsby’s wealth is from dubious sources and even though hundreds of people attend his grand parties he’s probably one of the loneliest characters in fiction. The terrible accident that occurs as the group race back from the Plaza Hotel has been building slowly in the background. When Gatsby takes the blame for hitting Myrtle with his car, even though Daisy was driving, it’s the beginning of the end. Myrtle’s husband, who has been driven mad with jealousy over her affair, will seek revenge. It comes as Gatsby waits for Daisy’s call, hoping she’ll leave Tom and be with him. She never calls, but the waiting Gatsby doesn’t know this as he’s floating face down in the pool, dead from gunshot wounds. What’s devastating is the yearning, the hope and our knowledge that Daisy and Tom have already left, having got away with murder and seemingly untouched by the deaths of their lovers.
David Nicholls writes relationships and emotions like no one else and when I first read this back in the early 2000s I spontaneously burst into tears. For me this line is up there with the most devastating in fiction:
“Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.”
It’s so utterly final. All the things we’ve read about her on previous St Swithin’s Days that made both us and Dexter fall in love with her are gone. It makes us realise that it’s not just her presence that’s gone, but her love for Dex and all their little relationship jokes and rituals. No one else will understand Dex like Emma did. The author builds up our expectations for this couple for so long and they spend long periods apart, mainly for Dex to get his shit together and realise that what they have is love. So their time together was so brief and we grieve that, the loss of all they were going to do, such as start a family as they were discussing at breakfast. Before she gets on her bike and rides off into the path of a lorry. I’ve seen so many people on forums complaining about her death and how it doesn’t serve the plot or purpose of the novel. Her death is the purpose of the novel, it’s sudden and brutal, leaving everything unresolved and that’s how people die sometimes. Nicholls is showing us what happens what happens when we don’t take risks and waste time, life is fragile and can be snuffed out at any moment. It brings a gut punch of reality to the romance and it’s a line I’ll never forget.
Sometimes, death occurs out of sight or when the author has distracted us with other things. Kate Atkinson’s book Life After Life is a masterpiece and probably one of my favourite books of all time, but this sequel following her younger brother Teddy absolutely floored me. As with Ursula in Life After Life, we see the events of the 20th Century through the eyes of Teddy and his family. Too young for WW1, we know Teddy survives the ‘Spanish Flu’ and goes on to meet his wife Nancy, then has life interrupted by WW2 where he serves in the RAF as a crew member on Halifax Bombers. He then goes on to have a steady life, the suburbs and a steady marriage that’s more everyday companionship than a grand passion. They have one daughter, Viola, who struggles when Nancy does of a brain tumour. Ted gives her his time and keeps a steady job as a schoolteacher, but their relationship is never easy. It is only the close relationship with his granddaughter that proves to be an easier and more loving relationship. As he grows older Viola chooses a nursing home for Teddy, where he spends his time reminiscing. However, in a meta fictional twist, Teddy remembers his final bombing mission in 1944 where his plane was shot down and he hands the final parachute to his fellow crew member, sacrificing his own life. Teddy died and all that we’ve seen of his life since then, is fiction. This ending brings home the waste of war and the endless possibilities in life that he missed out on are utterly heartbreaking.
Atonement is one of those novels that shows a death doesn’t need to be witnessed to be devastating. We have no doubt that our young narrator Briony Tallis will be a writer, in fact we have the evidence of her play that she’s written, made costumes for, cast the children of visiting friends and become a formidable director. It’s a warning to the reader that Briony is very much in charge of this story as we go back to the Tallis country house where her older sister Cecilia has returned from university. So has Robbie their young gardener. We realise as adult readers what transpires that weekend when Robbie sees Cecilia soaking wet after diving into the fountain for a piece of broken vase. Viewing through Briony’s eyes, casts a different light on it because she’s too young to understand desire and love. Confused by the pair’s secret meeting in the library that evening she comes to the conclusion that Robbie is hurting her sister, so when a terrible crime is committed she suggests it might have been Robbie. He is subsequently taken to prison then sent on to fight in France at the outbreak of WW2. We then see the fractured moments the unexpected couple snatch together over the years and their estrangement from Briony who tore them apart with a lie. Then at the very end, the rug is pulled from underneath us. An elderly Briony is interviewed about her career as a writer and she shares why she wrote a book featuring her sister and Robbie, to give them the happy ending she took away from them in real life. In truth Robbie died alone in a bombed out house at Dunkirk and Cecilia was killed when a V2 hit Balham underground station. I remember being shell shocked and heartbroken for some time.
In typical Hardy fashion, Tessa’s whole life is dependent on fate from the time her drunken father suggests they might be related to a wealthy family: the d’Urbervilles of the title being a more upmarket version of their own Durbyfield. Assured of their wealth, Tess is dressed up and sent out on an errand, to claim kinship with these distant relations and hopefully secure some money to replace their recently deceased horse. He has gifted his daughter on a plate and her life feels cursed from that point on. Her cousin Alec d’Urberville is charming, he doesn’t claim her as kin but he does promise her a living on his estate. Once there the other workers, jealous of Tess’s beauty, don’t warn her about Alec. Subsequently, Tess is raped, setting motion a terrible chain of events that follows her to the inevitable end. Tess is hung as a murderess, but as if that isn’t bad enough her husband Angel Clare – who is an absolute let down – watches from a hill above the town in the early hours with her sister. They are watching for the black flag to be raised above the prison to show her sentence has been carried out, They then walk away hand in hand, as if he has simply replaced one sister with another. Not only did I finish this book angry about the injustices of Tess’s life, but I was devastated by Angel’s faithlessness. Not only does he abandon her on their honeymoon for something that was never her fault, but the minute she is dead replaces her with a younger and more biddable model. I was left equally sad and furious,
We are in a British dystopia in Never Let Me Go. Kathy is in her early thirties and her growing up years in the school of Hailsham are an idyllic memory. The pupils were secluded and brought up to believe they were of great importance for the country’s future. However, when fellow pupils Tommy and Ruth come back into her life, other memories start to resurface. Hints of discord come to the surface as she wonders whether there was more to Hailsham than met the eye, a mysterious or even dark purpose behind their isolation. As her feelings for Tommy begin to deepen into love she imagines their future. When the truth emerges in a clinical brutality they desperately try to find a way out of their fate. I found this book devastating. The silences that characterise the friend’s lives, the horror of the thing that’s unsaid but known. We want there to be a heroic arc, a triumph over the system of sanitised violence, but the acceptance of who they are and the value placed by that system on their autonomy and their lives has been drilled into them. There’s an absence where rage and injustice should be burning. I felt that rage and injustice for these characters and as Kathy moves towards her assigned fate I felt utter despair.
There’s a moment in the film Silver Linings Playbook where Bradley Cooper’s character is so disgusted by A Farewell to Arms that he wakes up his parents for a rant and then throws it out of the window. That’s how I felt about My Sister’s Keeper. I’d read and loved Plain Truth, so much so that when I finally met Jodi Picout on her book tour for Sing Me Home, I got her to sign it as well. Then came the book that seemed to go stratospheric and became a (terrible) film of the same name. Anna was born thanks to genetic pre-diagnosis implantation and although she isn’t ill, she has undergone endless medical procedures and operations her whole life. The whole purpose of Anna being born was for her to be a living donor for her sister Kate who has had a lifelong struggle with leukaemia. She was created as a bone marrow donor and up until now has never questioned it, but teenagers tend to rebel in some way and Anna is intelligent and has done her research. She no longer wants to donate but at the moment her medical choices are controlled by her parents. However, if she can get a court to emancipate her from that parental control, she can make her own medical choices. This is a typical Jodi Picoult ethical and legal dilemma and it’s such a compelling story. I was furious particularly with Anna and Kate’s mother who seems not to understand Anna’s need to make independent choices and sees it as selfish, so wrapped up in losing her eldest daughter she hasn’t noticed she’s already lost Anna. The death that happens at the end of this book was devastating, unexpected and totally unfair and not only made me sob but left me deeply angry with the author’s choices. Then I figured that if an author could make me feel that deeply about a character she was probably very talented.
In this incredible novel, Boyd takes introduces us to Logan Mountstuart and we follow the rollercoaster of his life as he traverses the 20th Century. Usually inserted into key moments of history in a rather Forrest Gump way, but more successful. Born in 1906 and written as a disjointed autobiography, it traces his interesting heritage and his education at a Norfolk private school followed by Oxford. Logan plans to be a writer, but life events intervene sending him off course and takes in the Bloomsbury set, the 1930s in Paris, World War II, the New York art scene and the Baader Meinhoff gang. All the time Logan drifts through postings, jobs, relationships and even some very murky goings on with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Logan is far from perfect, he makes mistakes and questionable choices but he’s also witty, intelligent and human. He’s something of a womaniser until he meets Freya, the love of his life and finally he feels something more than lust and the thrill of illicit sex. When he looks back over his long life, a lonely man in his eighties, in a grotty flat and eating the cheapest food he can find, it is but a fleeting moment of true happiness. Her loss is something he can’t recover from. Similarly the death of his aging dog is quietly devastating, leaving him utterly alone. As the book closes I felt grateful to have spend a lifetime with this rather unusual, imperfect and lonely man and to think of his death alone in that flat was only bearable if we hope that Freya is waiting there to meet him.
I’m a lifelong Stephen King fan and this has to be up there as one of his best books, released in one large volume in 1996. I read it the same year and was deeply affected by the years our narrator Paul Edgecombe spent working at Cold Mountain Petitionary on Death Row. He tells his story from his present day residence in a local care home as an old man. The story is about a series of strange, unexplained events surrounding a black prisoner called John Coffey – a giant, mountain of a man jailed for the rape and murder of two young white girls. In a row of serial killers, John is a gentle giant of a man who proclaims his innocence telling Paul he was only found near the girls because he was trying to help them. This claim gains more credibility when Paul suffers a terrible urinary tract infection and John touches him with a healing hand, removing the pain and taking it into himself. It’s a feat he repeats spectacularly when the twisted and sadistic guard Percy stamps on a pet mouse John has lured into his cell and called Mr Jingles. Paul witnesses John breathe life back into Mr Jingles, although the feat exhausts him. Paul and the other guards become convinced of John’s innocence, even busting him out of jail for the night to heal the prison warden’s wife who’s dying from cancer. As the execution date comes closer, the guards weigh the responsibility of killing an innocent man. I love the mix of reality, horror, the evil inside human beings and those moments of magic realism and wonder. By the time it was John’s turn to become the dead man walking I was in tears.
I don’t usually like romance novels, but I do love Rosie Walsh’s novels. That might seem strange when often her novels are categorised as romance, but for me there’s much more to them than the more formulaic romances I see. Rosie Walsh creates such complex characters, facing heart-wrenching situations. This is definitely the case for our narrator Carrie Cole who’s a surgeon by profession, but since the premature birth of her twins has been more focused on home life. She and her husband Robin live in a draughty cottage on the moors, with a small ‘Roof’ (AirB&B) holiday let next door in the old piggery. Robin works in the world of medical philanthropy, matching investors to areas they can support medical causes and this is how the couple met. Nearby, her Dad lives with his wife Nicola, but he’s recently been struggling with dementia and may need to move into a home. Both Carrie and her sister Maya have a complex relationship with their mum, who is an international activist and charity worker. Carrie has been feeling the urge to return to work and has put out feelers with her old mentor Yanika about what steps she would have to take in order to level up to the required standard. There’s an event coming up for Roof hosts in Sweden, where Yanika works and they discuss meeting up for a conversation. She could do both in one trip. Carrie has never left the children overnight, although she knows they’re perfectly safe with Robin, in fact he gives her his blessing in the form of a generous booking of a lovely hotel near to the venue. Carrie had been looking at cheaper Roof accommodation, when a familiar name and face appeared on the screen. All of a sudden Carrie’s mind sweeps back to her twenties, where she’s dancing barefoot on a Thai beach with her new husband, Johan, mere moments before Thai police swarmed the beach with guns and arrested him. Carrie knows that Johan was sentenced to twenty years in a Bangkok prison, so how can he be in Sweden hosting a beautiful lakeside retreat?
There were so many questions I wanted to ask during this novel, as Carrie’s narrative follows her present and a deeply traumatic past that she thought was buried, This is a love story but it’s also a mystery, as we see how the couple met when he came into the hospital with a trauma patient he’d helped. He travelled with them into the hospital. Carrie’s connection to him is immediate, but it’s incredibly deep and even though she knows she can’t pursue anything with him, she can’t stop thinking about him. Slowly, through flashbacks we piece together their story and I was devastated for both of them. Carrie pieced herself together after Johan’s court case with the help of her family, particularly her mother who had flown out to Thailand to use her influence and local contacts. Over time Carrie has hardened her heart towards Johan, feeling both betrayed and abandoned by him. Abandonment is a big deal for Carrie and her sister, after they were removed from their mother’s care as children when her advocacy and activism were so absorbing she’d overlooked their safety. Since then Carrie and Maya lived with their father who had a more stable home life. Both girls show signs of abandonment issues and a tendency to self-medicate their feelings. Carrie doesn’t eat when stressed and Maya has issues with alcohol, both of them display displacement activity like cleaning madly when they’re in distress. Robin has proved himself to be a safe harbour for Carrie and she calls him her rock. However, she can’t deny that she wants to know what happened to Johan and the urge to see him is stronger than she expected. I could understand why she needed this, to have someone ripped from your life in this way is devastating, but even worse would be the questions: was Johan really trafficking drugs? If not why did he plead guilty? How did he end up back in Sweden and when? Lost love is painful enough but when you’re left unsure of what was real there’s no sense of closure, Can Carrie meet with Johan and get her answers without her carefully balanced life back in the UK imploding?
I really understood Carrie and I believed in her love story with Johan. Their connection leaps off the page like a flame and never goes out. I also had so much time for Robin, who is an incredibly supportive husband and dad. I was willing Carrie to be honest with him and explain why she still needed the answers. Carrie’s inner voice is so powerful that I believed in her utterly. She has the problems of every working mum who has gone through a traumatic pregnancy with incredibly premature twins and all the ailments that come alongside that. Her little boy still struggles with asthma and her instinct to be with them is a definite response to her mother’s inability to put her and Maya first. Carrie doesn’t want her children to ever doubt her love and commitment to them, but that has come at a high price for her own goals. Perhaps she’s even denied a strong part of who she is – that drive and ambition to the best doesn’t just disappear. She berates herself for thinking about Johan, telling herself she’s very lucky and has everything she needs, but does she? I loved how the author gave Carrie room to ask questions of herself and her closest relationships. Is there a part of her that chose to hide away after the birth of the children? Although she loves the feeling of being cared for and supported, where does caring end and control begin? In some ways her pursuit of Johan and the answers isn’t about her feelings for him, but her feelings for herself and the person she was when they met, I loved how Johan called her Carrie Cole, as if only her full name could encompass all the things she is. Part of me wanted their love to still be there, but the more rational part of me knows that long term relationships and parenthood are tough. Often what we long for in past relationships is a fantasy, one that doesn’t include vomit on the rug, temper tantrums and a Dad that’s slowly losing his sense of reality. Can Johan really be all that Carrie sees through her younger, love filled eyes?
Once the questions start there’s no stopping this complex tale from unravelling and the tension builds as we realise there’s so much that Carrie doesn’t know. As Johan realises that Carrie truly knew nothing from their final moments in front of the courthouse in Bangkok he’s he’s confused. Has she really only just found out a week ago when she looked for accommodation in Sweden? He asks why nobody told her. But who should have told her? Who in her protective and much loved inner circle has been keeping secrets? Can she cope with another betrayal? The answers, when they came, were totally unexpected.. Nothing here is exactly as it seems, for both us and Carrie. What happened on her wedding day in Thailand created a huge scar across her timeline, with her life divided into before and after as if severed from each other, Now she knows there were tiny unseen strands of connection and the cut was never as clean as she thought. Despite telling herself, ever since that day, to make decisions with her head could her heart and her gut have been right along? This really was a heart-breaking love story, with so much depth and emotion for the reader to relate too. I was rooting for Carrie, both with her ambitions to return to work and her personal life. I felt an affinity with her discovery that she had allowed herself to become small and knew that only time alone, recovering and accepting the truth would help her make the right choices. Yet there was still an impulsive and romantic part of me hoping that love would find a way.
Out in June 2026 from MacMillan
Meet the Author
Rosie Walsh is the internationally bestselling author of two novels, the global smash hit THE MAN WHO DIDN’T CALL, and – new for 2022 – THE LOVE OF MY LIFE, a heart-wrenching, keep-you-up-all-night emotional thriller, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and stayed in the German top ten for several weeks.
Rosie Walsh lives on a medieval farm in Devon, UK, with her partner and two young children, after years living and travelling all over the world as a documentary producer and writer.
The Man Who Didn’t Call (UK) / Ghosted (US) was her first book under her own name, and was published around the world in 2018, going on to be a multimillion bestseller.
Prior to writing under her own name she wrote four romantic comedies under the pseudonym Lucy Robinson. When she isn’t parenting or writing, Rosie can be found walking on Dartmoor, growing vegetables and throwing raves for adults and children in leaking barns.
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