Category: Netgalley

#TheSafePlace #HodderandStoughton #NetGalley

Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks

Date: 20th August 2020

ISBN: 1529375096

Emily Proudman’s life is imploding. She’s lost her acting agent, job and home all in one day. Scott Denny also has a problem, one he doesn’t think he can fix. He is a wealthy and successful CEO but neither of these things can help him. Then he meets Emily and she is perfect. He takes her on for a summer job, as housekeeper for his rambling estate in the South of France. Emily thinks she has fallen on her feet and charmed by his wife Nina, and their unusual daughter Aurelia, she throws herself into her summer role. Yet all is not what it seems. The family have dark secrets and

if Emily doesn’t play her part, the summer and even her life could be in danger.

Nina is keen to have Emily there, so greets her enthusiastically when she arrives. The mansion is eerie but then so is Nina, who seems to be a quiet and obedient wife. Aurelia is more of a shock. She’s shy to the point of introversion, but that could be down to living in such a remote location. Communication with others seems to be frowned upon as there’s no phone line or internet connection. What if something goes wrong out here? Emily tries to use her time well in looking after Aurelia and even turning her hand to a bit of renovation, but she feels herself becoming little more than a companion to Nina, sometimes losing whole days drinking wine by the pool. Aurelia is difficult to get to know, she flinches if touched possibly down to the rare skin disease she has, but it felt more like she simply wasn’t used to physical affection. Her silence could be shyness, but Emily starts to feel that there is something odd about this girl and the problems she has.

This is a modern Gothic novel, with definite shades of Jane Eyre – the remote mansion, the stepdaughter, a slightly odd wife and a new, young housekeeper/governess. However, instead of the usual first person narration we get multiple narratives but how many of them are reliable? The cover jumped out at me, making me long for sunnier climates and a chance to explore – something that’s even more of a fantasy at the moment! I think the reader is lulled into this holiday feeling, alongside Emily. We know something is wrong here, so does Emily, but working it out, when instead you could lie by the pool with a cold cocktail and a good book, seems unnecessary. When the secrets are finally exposed, Emily might find it’s too late. The characters have more depth than appears at first. Although Nina might seem like the perfect rich man’s wife, there is something else going on underneath. There’s a brittle edge to her character that allows us to glimpse her fragile mental health. Even Emily, turns out to be more intelligent and resourceful than I gave her credit for at first.

When the secrets of Scott Denny and his estate are revealed weren’t too much of a shock. This isn’t one of those twists that makes you rethink the whole book, but nor did it disappoint. Scott reminded me of the estate owner in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw – working away a lot, only briefly at the estate and even then doesn’t really engage with his wife or stepdaughter. Furthermore, when it’s mentioned that Emily has briefly worked for Scott before I wondered whether their meeting was a coincidence or whether it was calculated. Perhaps Emily is the perfect person for this role? I think this was a great beach read and shows great promise for a debut author. I will be looking out for her future work.

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Before the novelist Emma Donoghue gained worldwide renown for her incredible novel Room, I was already a fan of her historical fiction such as Slammerkin and The Sealed Letter. Her brand new novel, The Pull of the Stars, is another well researched and immersive historical novel that concentrates on 3 days in 1918 Dublin. One cover of this novel is a beautiful depiction of an open silver pocket watch with tiny scratched drawings of the moon and stars. This watch belongs to our heroine Nurse Julia Power and those scratches have huge significance to her. Julia works as a midwife and every scratch represents a life lost on her watch; the lost mothers appear as full moons and the crescent moons are lost babies, either still births or those born too soon. The year is significant, because as wounded men return from the battlefield in France, they bring with them a new type of influenza. Named ‘Spanish Flu’, by 1918 it is a global pandemic and by its end it will have killed 6% of the world’s population. It is highly unpredictable, passing through some people with relatively few symptoms and killing others within hours. Due to a shortage of staff, Julia is left in charge of a small ward of pregnant women with flu. Some are full term and will deliver their babies, while others are mid- pregnancy, but affected by severe flu symptoms. Julia can run her ward with great efficiency, but not single handed, and into her world come two outsiders. Volunteer helper Bridie Sweeney is all mischief with bright red hair and a glint in her eye. Dr Kathleen Lynn is an intelligent and competent doctor, but is unfortunately on the run after taking part in an uprising against the King. Together, these three women must shepherd lives in and out of the world under extreme pressure and through their shared experiences lives will change in unexpected ways.

I found the novel so well grounded in time and place, with even the smallest details thought about from public information posters about the flu, to the drugs and methods used during childbirth, to the histories of each character and how their actions are so firmly based within their experiences of that period. Donoghue writes in the acknowledgements that her book is stitched together from facts and imagination. Dr Lynn was a real doctor in this time period, but also an activist and Sinn Fein politician who set up health facilities with her female lover. Barbaric practices such as the symphisiotomy and pubiotomy (unhinging or sawing through the pubic joint) were common in Ireland, even up into the 1980s. These were sometimes conducted without consent, and left women in agony with unstable pelvic joints, but capable of continuing to bear children – the usual recommended medical treatment at the time for women who had more than three Caesareans due to obstructed deliveries was a hysterectomy. This is still a cause for controversy in Ireland, where it is felt that hospitals run by the Catholic Church allowed their own ethos to come before women’s physical health and contemporary medical recommendations. The equipment on the wards, food shortages, porters with disfigurements from the battlefield, men with shellshock and political upheaval create such a rich background that the reader is pulled into era and firmly believes in this situation and these characters.

The Catholic Church looms large in the novel, especially regarding its attitude towards women. We see it in small ways through characters like night nurse Sister Luke and her harsh attitude towards some of the women, for their morals if they’re unwed and for any questioning of the church. She treats Bridie, who was brought up and still lives in a ‘home’ run by the nuns, as a slave who should feel beholden to the church for her upkeep. Decisions within the hospital are made by doctors but with adherence to church teaching and under the watchful eye of the parish priest. The controversy of the Magdalen Laundries is touched upon as one patient is back there for a second time and seen as beyond redemption by the nuns. Bridie fills Julia in on what it was like growing up in one of these institutions: being loaned out to work; physically abused; sexually assaulted by the nuns or worse ‘loaned out’ to a man for a period of time; the open pits where the dead babies were laid with no names and no markers. The belief that the mother’s sins are paid for by the child can be seen in the birth of Barnabas White. His mother was unmarried and he is born with a hare lip. When one of her patients dies and Julia readies her for burial she notices terrible marks where she has been burned and scarred all over her body in the care of the church.

Feminism is a strong theme in the novel, whether Donoghue is showing us what poverty and church are doing to women, or signalling hope for the future in certain characters. There is a feeling that this is both a national and personal turning point for women trying to shape their own future and making choices for themselves. Dr Lynn is a key figure because she is educated, political, professional and also a lesbian. Julia admires the doctor despite her status as a wanted criminal. She can see that female doctors could change obstetrics and women’s lives enormously by making the best and most compassionate medical choices, rather than moral judgements. Julia refers to the male doctor as a ‘butcher’ and the book doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the visceral reality of childbirth in the early 20th Century. These women are ravaged by poverty and sometimes on their twelfth birth, leaving them worn out shadows who can barely stand let alone make autonomous choices. Dr Lynn also represents a different type of sexuality, something that Julia has never thought of before, until Bridie tells her about the doctor’s private life. It opens a door for Julia, where lifelong companionship doesn’t have to come with regular beatings and endless child rearing. Julia is 30, still unmarried and has never been in love, until someone walks into her world and changes how she looks at things.

Bridie is also important because she never lets the darkness of her living situation and past cloud the here and now. She is spontaneous and gives Julia permission to live in the moment. The night they spend talking on the roof, under the stars, is a brief oasis of calm and friendship in a nightmare situation. They learn so much about each other, but also for Julia, who has been quite regimented in her life. Bridie brings out a playfulness and a sense that she can change and make her own choices. Julia marvels that, despite everything that has happened to her and from people she trusted, Bridie is still open and willing to give hope to others. She even has time for the porter, who Julia finds irritatingly cheerful and often inappropriate, and learns he has lost his whole family. Her generosity of spirit prompts Julia to make a bold and life changing choice of her own. Those final tense moments when we don’t know if Julia will be granted that new future she wants, are so hard to read, My heart was in my mouth as I was willing her on.

Donoghue is a master storyteller. Her characterisations, even those of minor characters like Julia’s brother, are so detailed even down to their rich inner lives, Here in 1918, she has laid bare the horrors of a different battlefield, one that women have been fighting in since time began. I was startled by the depiction of a pandemic, whilst in a pandemic. There were so many things about the handling of the pandemic that echoed through the ages. The flimsy suggestions for home cures, jaunty government posters that in one breath downplay the severity of the flu, then in another place blame on the patient for not being strong minded or fit enough to escape infection all resonated with me today. Mainly the book left me astounded by the strength and determination of my fellow women. These women faced a backdrop of poverty, persecution, a world war and a pandemic yet were still bringing new life into the world. Reading these accounts of childbirth, it astounded me that when at their lowest ebb, they pick up their babies and immediately give more: sustenance, nurturing and love. It is also a miracle that in these circumstances, amidst so much death and loss, a moment of love can grow,

#ThePhoneboxAtTheEdgeOfTheWorld #NetGalley

I fell in love with this absolutely beautiful book and have immediately gone out to buy a copy for my collection. I’m a widow, so a book that addresses love and loss so eloquently speaks to me emotionally. It is devastating, but also uplifting and life enhancing at the same time.

The Japanese tsunami in 2011 is something that has lived long in my memory, maybe because it was captured so comprehensively through filming on mobile phones and CCTV. I remember staring at the TV screen in a strange mix of awe and horror. It was the first time I had fully comprehended the power of such a huge tidal wave. I had always thought a tsunami was exactly like the painting by Hokusai where a single huge wave sweeps over the coastline then stops. I have lived next to the River Trent for my whole life, and my father who is a land drainage engineer showed me a large Aegir one autumn and explained that a tsunami is like a huge wall of water that doesn’t stop. Seeing the footage from Japan really brought that home to me as whole coastal towns were simply washed away in a series of waves reaching up to 128 feet high and encroaching up to 10 km inland. I think I watched it so many times because I couldn’t comprehend the enormity of the disaster. This author took this event and brought it down to a human level, so we can see the effect of this life changing disaster on the Japanese people, but also show us that heartbreak and loss is universal.

Yui is living the terrible aftermath of the tsunami where she lost both her daughter and her mother, her past memories and hope for the future wiped out in a moment. As she tries to make sense of this loss, she carries out day to day life quietly and on the surface, keeping her deepest feelings within herself. It’s like living under a veil or fog where people can’t reach you. Whilst doing her radio show she hears about a man who keeps a telephone box in his garden, where people can go and say the things they need to say to lost loved ones. She wonders if this could really console people, to speak down a disconnected phone line and let those unspoken words go into the ether? Could it console her? If she had the chance to speak, what could she say to her daughter?

She travels out to the garden at Bell Gardia, but can’t bring herself to go inside. However, she does meet a man who has and spoke to his late wife, who died leaving him with a young daughter, Hana. He explains that he gets to tell her about the plans he has for their daughter as well as normal everyday things he was so used to telling her. This is one of the things many bereaved people miss, that ability to come home and share your day with someone. The silence can be deafening. So, instead of using the telephone, Yui travels to Bell Gardia every month and meets Takeshi for lunch. He becomes the person she chats to as they share their grief and their hopes for the future. Slowly they start to message each other back in Tokyo, just little messages about their day and how they’re feeling. They become each other’s person, the one they touch base with every day. However, this brings its own complexity, because feelings are starting to grow between the two of them. Their fledgling relationship is so tender and fragile. Falling in love during grief is so complicated. Love lifts our heart and makes us hopeful, while grief makes us look back and brings sorrow. The heart is being pulled into two directions at once. There’s a strange survivor’s guilt on both sides; Takeshi is developing tender feelings for a woman who is not his wife, while Yui is starting to feel attached to a young girl who is not her daughter.

Inbetween this beautiful story are interludes that seem unrelated to the main story. However, they are integral to the experience of the tsunami. These are washed up fragments of people’s lives appearing in the narrative, in the same way that debris from the tsunami washed up as far as North America years later. Some of them belong to Yui – parts of a book she once bought Hana, a list of her favourite Brazilian music. There are also receipts, descriptions of clothing, random memories that remind us this is not just two people’s experience. There are millions of other stories out there, just as tender and full of sorrow.

This is a beautiful, moving meditation on love and loss. The story is tentative, even the dialogue is delicate. It’s like a fragile piece of lace, held together by tiny threads, but creating a beautiful whole. If you’re looking for action and plot twists this isn’t your book. At times it’s like reading poetry. However, if you have ever lost someone you will find common experiences and universal feelings about life moving on. Simply a stunning piece of writing that I will treasure.

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Three women make their way across New Zealand’s North Island in this debut novel. During this time they will explore their relationship with each other, and the island’s colonial history. Our unnamed narrator has a complicated relationship with Llana her on/off girlfriend, Ashi her best friend and even with herself. She’s battling on all fronts and is struggling with the legacy of an abusive ex-boyfriend and on top of everything her period is late.

There are a lot of threads to follow in this debut and it takes a talented writer to keep them all relevant. I think on the whole she succeeds and where problems become a bit entangled or lose focus it is a deliberate case of art imitating life. Lives are messy. I wondered if the author was also trying to give the reader some idea of how it feels to be in the narrator’s head. It’s very telling that our narrator doesn’t have a name. She could name herself, but doesn’t, and that absence is important. Does the narrator feel invisible in her own life? We can tell from her narration that she is low in self-esteem and the ugly way she presents her world suggests self-loathing. If she doesn’t name herself she doesn’t exist and maybe she doesn’t want to. Her disgust is evident in the imagery of dirt and decay from stains to bodily functions.

She even depicts New Zealand in a very different way to the usual myth of a paradise filled with exceptional landscapes, freedom, relaxation and a slower pace of life. Instead she sees human’s contribution to the country like a cancer. Humans are almost parasitic, eating away at the beauty we know exists. This could be linked to the colonial heritage, an important thread in the novel. I read Post-Colonial Literature in my final year at university so I’ve come across NZ authors and Maori creation myths so it was interesting to see this modern Pakeha perspective. The author is embarrassed that she can’t use Maori place names and is having to use ‘white colonial’ substitutes. She feels guilt about making homes on stolen land. She even takes lessons in ‘the reo’ the Eastern Polynesian language spoken by Maori people. In the course of the novel she learns her own family were more involved in the New Zealand wars than she realised. This prompts an exploration of inheritance and whether we take on ancestral guilt.

The relationships of the present are equally strained and there is a claustrophobia about being stuck on a road trip, with the same people in a confined space. Something we can possibly all relate to at the moment in lockdown. The weather doesn’t help, with frequent rain keeping them all confined. There is also a triangle forming as our narrator is in a very tenuous relationship with Llana, but Llana seems very taken with our narrator’s best friend Ashi. I found it hard to like any of them so couldn’t really invest in their relationships, but I did get a creeping sense that after all the contemplation and simmering tension, someone might explode!

I did enjoy the author’s use of language though and there are flashes of something really special. Her description of the ‘Bach’ is so vivid I can see it. The description of the town of Levin is humorously vicious; ‘everywhere daytime TV can be seen, through pulled lace curtains’. The town’s population is ageing rapidly and the nursing homes are described as dead ends that it’s easier to die in, than live with. She also uses unusual descriptive phrases that are really powerful, such as ‘people clot in the waiting rooms’. This description of the local hospital takes blood imagery and uses it to show how overcrowded the hospital is, how slow the ageing population are and the impression is they’re blocking up the system. It’s like the life-force of the place is slowing down and choking it. This shows skill and a distinctive style that would make me want to read future novels by the author.

My sister-in-law is from Gisborne, one end point of this road trip, and I will be buying her a copy to ask her opinion, as she works solely with the Maori communities, I’m looking forward to chatting with her and reading further work from an interesting debut author.

I love reading Jasper Fforde because you find yourself catapulted into a parallel universe that’s often completely absurd. When that universe involves the neighbours being 6ft talking rabbits and the reader has a five foot white rabbit greeting guests at the front door it’s a match made in heaven. I have been fascinated with these beautiful creatures since I was six years old. We lived in the country and Dad worked on a farm. One evening I was just getting out of the bath, being dried by Mum, when Dad walked in with a tiny leveret he’d found on the edge of a field. It was the softest thing I had ever felt, and Dad let me hold him and keep him warm, while he found a suitable pen to pop him into until he’d recovered. From then on I have loved all long eared creatures and my favourite book of early childhood, The Velveteen Rabbit, still holds a special place in my heart. So, this book was on one level a charming, satirical story, but one with a darker undercurrent pertinent to the current times we live in and a past we must never forget.

Peter Knox is a single dad who works with the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce, an organisation policing the law as it pertains to our bunny friends. The world has undergone a Spontaneous Anthropomorphic Event. Now rabbits live alongside humans, but they are treated differently and have a different set of laws to their human counterparts. Most live in colonies together, known as living ‘within the fence’. These are countryside based zones with restricted movement, and although they’re free to come and go, this did made me think of my local gypsy community who live in a settled campsite on the edge of town. However, some live side by side with humans in town. In fact Peter’s own neighbour is a rabbit. Some live a more wild lifestyle, continuing the rabbit code of settling disagreements with duels and abusing the lethal cocktail dandelion brandy. Peter is one of few people who can tell the difference between settled rabbits, and their more problematic counterparts. In fact, his first love at university was a rabbit called Connie. When he bumps into her, the old feelings rekindle and as the attitude towards rabbits starts to turn he may find himself having to choose which side of the fence to be on.

The darker undercurrent comes from a Prime Minister, who isn’t as keen on the bunny population. He’d like to round them up and take them to a huge facility in Wales, known as the Mega Warren. It’s being sold as a great place to live, where all rabbits can feel safe and protected. His political party is named UKARP which stands for UK Anti Rabbit Party, so rabbits are suspicious of his motives. He simply wants segregation and this is the first step. In a great parallel to some of our current world leaders he is hopelessly inept and reliant on advisors and scary PR people as his henchmen. Fforde is making a thinly veiled criticism of the current political climate, with fake news and disinformation spread amongst the population. There is a worrying need to control and watch the rabbits abs a determination to see them as other. It can be a very dark satire in places and if we think back to other attempts to control and corral those seen as different the results are mass extermination,

Fforde is very clever not to let the book dip into something dystopian and dismal. There’s witty dialogue that made me smile to myself, and there are even some laugh out loud moments too. He pokes fun at our Britishness and our terribly polite use of understatement, as well as some political acronyms worthy of The Thick of It. This is a truly inventive read from an original writer with a great sense of humour,

This was an incredibly thoughtful and sensitive book, focused on family and emotional connections. So, it was a perfect read for a therapist to delve into. In Clapham, based in the Hudson Valley, we meet the family matriarch Astrid. Her story starts with a dramatic fatal accident as Astrid witnesses someone hit by a car, while on her way to the hair and beauty salon. Astrid knows the victim and experiences a weird mix of emotions, because it is someone she thinks about a lot, but really doesn’t like very much. She goes on to the salon where her friend Birdie is ready to comfort her, revealing that they are much more than friends. Slowly we are then introduced to the rest of Astrid’s family and the various dynamics within their relationships.

We meet Astrid’s granddaughter Cecelia, who is facing a big change as she moves towards her grandmother. Cecelia is almost expelled from school and Astrid’s son Nicky is sure that New York is not the best environment for his daughter. His wife Juliette is a dancer and they need to be based in the city, so they decide to send Cecelia to live with Astrid up state. Elliot, the older sibling, is married to Wendy and they’re coping with the birth of twin sons. The middle sibling, Porter, would love to have a baby but doesn’t have a man – well not one she should have. She’s occupied mainly with her goat farm but lives in the valley closer to Astrid.

Each individual family unit has its own issues, but I was most invested with Astrid herself and Cecelia. I loved that Astrid had a loving relationship with Birdie and the focus of embracing your sexuality and your true self, without judgements is very close to my heart. Cecelia has a lot of her grandmother in her. She doesn’t always do the right thing with regard to school and rules, but she has an innate sense of justice and is usually doing the wrong thing on someone else’s behalf. She makes a true friend in August and would always stand up for her, which becomes very important when August reveals she’s transgender. Often Cecelia is more mature than others in the family. For Astrid, the accident she witnesses is a catalyst for her to re-evaluate life and some of her decisions, especially towards her children. She decides to open up about her choice of life partner in Birdie. She also thinks about decisions she’s made or behaviour she’s had towards her children, and starts making apologies. She wonders whether she was too hard on them, and whether they’ve become good people as adults.

Having grown up in a small village I understand the dilemma each sibling has felt on whether to stay in the valley or whether they’re only seen as successful if they get out to the big city like Nicky. All of the siblings were real and well rounded characters who could have easily populated their own novel. The author is clearly a keen observer of human nature. She’s very perceptive too as it’s almost as if she can read people’s thoughts. These characters have a rich inner life! She really throws issues and problems at them too, only some of which their mother is aware of. Yet the tone of the novel remains bright and lively, which is an incredible skill. My only criticism is that I think a more focused book on just Astrid and Cecilia’s storylines might have worked better, especially considering the contrasting societal pressures when Astrid was younger. This was an intelligent and absorbing read, full of psychological insight and wisdom.