Category: Ten on Tuesday

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten on Tuesday: Naughty Girls and Transgressive Women

Posted on by thelotusreaders

If you ask me why I’m always drawn to naughty girls and women who push the boundaries I’d have to look back to these four characters: Pippi Longstocking, Jo March, Jane Eyre and Anne of Green Gables. They might not seem particularly naughty at first glance but there’s definitely a streak of mischief, a need to push against what’s expected of young women, a blazing temper that’s hard to keep in check and with three of them, a yearning to do something more than the expected route of marriage and children. There’s an independence in each of them, three are orphans in fact, while the fourth is determined to play her father’s role while he’s away fighting in the civil war. Jo flouts the rules of dress, standing out amongst her sisters who are happy to adopt the corsets and heavy skirts of 19th Century American fashion. Jo feels like she can’t move in them, preferring to wear a plainer and more masculine form of dressing and avoiding all social occasions that involve dressing up. She also sells her long hair so that there’s money for Marmee to go to Washington to see their wounded father. Anne is a feminine girl but wants to outshine the boys at school with her mind, driven to be the best and go to university rather than staying home and marrying. She knows she needs something of her own to work towards whether it’s teaching or writing. Pippi is a dream of a character with her pigtails and an ahead of the curve tendency towards dopamine dressing. She lives with a horse and a monkey, something I’ve contemplated as a better option after my worst relationships! I think she is the genesis of my childhood dream to have a mansion with a separate room or outbuilding for each type of animal – dogs, cats, rabbits and of course hares, my spirit animal. Having a brother meant I was always climbing trees, making dens, reading while he fished and running through fields and woods with dogs. We had an immense amount of freedom, only going home at tea time or when I’d injured myself. Some of that care free nature left when I had a spinal injury and started secondary school in the same year.

Then there’s Jane Eyre, a moral character who shows incredible self-awareness around living within her own beliefs. She knew she couldn’t live with Rochester while he had a wife, not because of what others thought, but because of the type of woman she wanted to be. Similarly she refuses St. John Rivers’s proposal because she knows she can’t marry without love. When younger though, this sense of what was right got her into trouble as she stood up to her bullying cousin John, her Aunt Read and headmaster Mr Brocklehurst. She even tries to fight back against the servants when her Aunt asks them to lock her in the Red Room for a punishment. They want her to be less passionate and reactive, but although Jane learns to curb her temper there’s a lot going on under that quiet surface. The thing I shared most with Jo March and Anne of Green Gables was that I wanted to write. Jo scribbles in the garret, trying to sell her romances to the newspaper and writing plays for her sisters to perform. Anne is also influenced by romance, writing about handsome heroes and houses with gilded halls. Both are given advice about their writing that they don’t appreciate, in fact both have terrible tempers. Gilbert’s teasing of Anne infuriated her so much she smashed her slate over his head and made it quite clear his advice wasn’t appreciated when she first starts writing in adulthood. Jo and sister Amy had blazing rows and it was Amy’s ability to curb her irritability that won her a trip to Europe with Aunt March instead of Jo who couldn’t resist snapping back at the grumpy old woman. Instead she visits New York and meets Professor Bhaer who tells her to write about something she knows, leading to her book based around her sisters. Characters who move outside their social boundaries and expectations are so much more interesting and I think that’s why I’m drawn to books with women who are unexpected and live colourful lives. Here are some of the books I’ve loved that showcase women like this.

This brilliant historical novel, set in the 1920s, is inspired by the notorious all-female crime syndicate known as the Forty Elephants who operated out of the slums of south London.

Ruby Mills is ruthlessly ambitious, strikingly beautiful – and one of the Forty Thieves’ most talented members. The Forty Thieves were a real life band of pickpockets and thieves and Ruby has worked herself up to become one of the best, even working alongside male tricksters when their heists need a woman. Harriet Littlemore writes the women’s section in a local newspaper. She’s from a ‘good’ London family and engaged to an up-and-coming Member of Parliament – but she wants a successful career of her own. After witnessing Ruby fleeing the scene of a robbery, Harriet develops a fascination with the elusive young thief that extends beyond journalistic interest. As their personal aspirations bring them into closer contact than society’s rules usually allow, Ruby and Harriet’s stories become increasingly intertwined. Their magnetic dynamic, fraught with envy and desire, tells a compulsive, cinematic story about class, morality and the cost of being an independent woman in 1920s London. This book was absolutely fascinating and actually outshone another well known writer’s book set around the same time and in the same circles. It’s hard not to root for Ruby, even when she’s stealing.

Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl – I knew it at once! – that I had ever seen.’

This saucy, sensuous and multi-layered historical romance follows the glittering career of Nan King – oyster girl turned music-hall star turned rent boy turned East End ‘tom’. Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty’s dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins. I love Sarah Waters’s characters because they show us a different side of the Victorians from the accepted narrative. They show us that Victorian society was just as multi-layered as ours and their infamous sexual prudery was only skin deep. This book and the BBC adaptation caused quite a stir at the time, mainly for the sexual content, but what’s truly groundbreaking was the authors desire to place these women into a history that didn’t include them.

Margaret Mitchell’s page-turning, sweeping American epic has been a classic for over eighty years. Beloved and thought by many to be the greatest of the American novels, Gone with the Wind is a story of love, hope and loss set against the tense historical background of the American Civil War.  The lovers at the novel’s centre – the selfish, privileged Scarlett O’Hara and rakish Rhett Butler – are magnetic: pulling readers into the tangled narrative of a struggle to survive that cannot be forgotten. This is a great example of a character who is stubborn, defiant, arrogant and a rule breaker, who turns out to be exactly what her family needs at a time of upheaval. Scarlett is a spoiled girl and doesn’t turn into the sweet, passive Southern Belle her mother and sisters would have wished for. She’s filled with a rebellious spirit that with experience becomes a core of steel. This is a woman who doesn’t even hesitate to get what she wants, whether that’s a new dress, the attentions of someone else’s suitor or the business deal that will make her rich. She speaks her mind, curses and does business like a man. She never apologises either, happy to tread on toes if it gets her closer to her goal. I love the scene where she flouts the mourning rules at the charity ball and Rhett Butler makes a donation to dance with her. She’s been behind a stall, in her widow’s dress with legs twitching under her somber skirts. She can’t wait to dance and practically vaults over a table to do so. Yet it’s her ability to think and act like a man that saves her life and gives her the constant assurance that even though she’s lost everything, tomorrow is another day.

When Korede’s dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what’s expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This’ll be the third boyfriend Ayoola’s dispatched in ‘self-defence’ and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede’s long been in love with him, and isn’t prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other…

These two sisters are absolutely fascinating and challenge our perceptions of what women are capable of, as well as expectations around beauty. A female serial killer is rare in fiction and in life, but this challenges that expectation. Why can’t women be serial killers? Do they possess more empathy and restraint than men? There’s also a perception around beauty, something that goes beyond the bias that comes from desire. People who know the sisters make an assumption that Korede must be jealous of her sister and wish she had her beauty and charm. A difficult childhood and poor relationship with their father has brought them closer together and is the seed of their collusion now. It has given them the resilience and survival instinct that takes them across boundaries of what is morally and legally right. Their complex relationship and the dark humour of the novel made it a memorable story.

Ruth Patchett never thought of herself as particularly devilish.

Rather the opposite in fact – simply a tall, not terribly attractive woman living a quiet life as a wife and mother in a respectable suburb. But when she discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with the lovely romantic novelist Mary Fisher, she is so seized by envy that she becomes truly diabolic. Within weeks she has burnt down the family home, collected the insurance, made love to the local drunk and embarked on a course of destruction and revenge. A blackly comic satire of the war of the sexes, The Life and Loves of a She Devil is the fantasy of the wronged woman made real.

I utterly loved this book as a teenager and must have read it at least once a year since ( I have a very battered copy). Once transformed, Ruth has no boundaries and no mercy, her sole purpose in life is to gain revenge on her husband and his mistress Mary Fisher. She’s furious that they are having an illicit honeymoon in Mary’s coastal tower while she is big, clumsy and now saddled with two children and various unruly pets. Slowly she takes steps to right the wrongs she’s experienced, taking unexpected lovers, gaining money and even transforming herself on the outside through plastic surgery. She leaves her children at the tower for their father, plus an unruly dog. She even gets a job at the residential home where Mary’s mother is living. Using other people’s bedpans she fakes nightly incontinence so she loses her place and must be placed in a nursing facility or with Mary Fisher. There is something twisted but delicious about her revenge, especially that final description of the life she builds for herself on her own terms.

When the new teacher first arrives, Barbara immediately senses that this woman will be different from the rest of her staff-room colleagues. But Barbara is not the only one to feel that Sheba is special, and before too long Sheba is involved in an illicit affair with a pupil. Barbara finds the relationship abhorrent, of course, but she is the only adult in whom Sheba can properly confide. So when the liaison is found out and Sheba’s life falls apart, Barbara is there…

I think this might be a more controversial book now than it was when published. Here we have two deeply flawed female characters, one who is reckless and commits a crime, another who is obsessively jealous and frighteningly manipulative. Sheba starts working at a secondary school in London and meets Barbara, an older and strait-laced history teacher. When Sheba starts an affair with a pupil who is 15 years old, Barbara benefits from the fall out. Slowly becoming Sheba’s confidante and as gaining more and more control as the affair tears Sheba’s life apart. I didn’t like either of the women, but as a study of obsession this is hard to beat. Barbara is like a spider, awaiting her prey and spinning a web from the loneliness and longing she feels. This is a deeply unsettling page turner, I’ve read it several times now and it doesn’t lose its power. I’ve found it’s a more difficult watch than it is a read. Both Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench are excellent in the film adaptation but it’s the presence of the boy that disturbs. While reading we can convince ourselves that he is all the things Sheba tells us he is, the confident and experienced seducer. But when we see a boy who looks 15 playing the role it feels different, we can see that Sheba’s assessment of him could be her kidding herself and us that she’s not a predator.

‘I am not, at heart, a jumper. I think I knew all the time I was sizing up the bridge that the strong possibility was I’d attend my sister’s wedding’

Cassandra Edwards is driving home to her family’s Californian ranch to attend the wedding of her beloved identical twin, Judith. A graduate student at Berkeley, Cassandra is gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable – and hell-bent on making sure her sister’s wedding doesn’t happen. Around six months ago, Judith left the apartment they shared for Juilliard and ever since Cassandra has been having a long drawn out nervous breakdown. She’s been seeing a therapist called Dr. Mercer and had a clutch bag full of pills from her prescriptions of uppers and downers. She also seems to have an unquenchable thirst for brandy, but still arrives determined to make Judith see sense. With the twins alone for the first couple of days the truth of their co-dependency becomes clearer and Cassandra unravels. As her sister leaves to pick up her fiance at the airport Cassandra feels betrayed and isolated by her twin. Now she is alone with her thoughts and her pills. Maybe she can stop the wedding another way. This classic of twentieth-century American literature is a tragicomedy, offering witty conversation and a deep psychological study of two women finding it difficult to separate and make their own lives. Cassandra is hell bent on creating mischief but it’s more from her own loneliness and pain. This is stylish, witty and insightful and depicts a girl coming to terms with who she is and the only life she has.

Paul Sheldon used to write for a living. Now he’s writing to stay alive.

Misery Chastain is dead. Paul Sheldon has just killed her – with relief, with joy. Misery made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of bestsellers. And now he wants to get on to some real writing. 

That’s when the car accident happens, and he wakes up splinted and in pain, in the remote mountain home of his rescuer, Annie Wilkes. The good news is that Annie was a nurse and has pain-killing drugs. The bad news is that she has long been Paul’s Number One Fan. And when she finds out what Paul has done to Misery, she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it at all . . 

Annie Wilkes is one of the most feared villains in horror fiction, not only is she obsessive and dangerous – something we don’t expect in women – she’s a nurse, the epitome of the ‘caring’ female and often depicted as angelic. Annie is determined to do what’s in Paul’s best interests because only then can he write another Misery Chastain novel and undo the literary death he’s just given her. If Paul thought he’d had enough of Misery Chastain, he hadn’t met Annie Wilkes yet. Stephen King writes her so cleverly with little touches that make her seem repulsive: the smell of food constantly on her breath and her clothing, unexplained stains on her clothing and unwashed hair. She speaks to him in a kind of baby talk, using mispronounced or unlikely phrases that just sound odd. If Paul doesn’t turn out a new page or two each day she might fly into a rage and Paul has seen what Annie might do in a rage. Once when looking out the window after hearing voices he witnesses Annie run over a police officer with a lawnmower. Annie is horrifying, psychopathic and her mood swings are sudden. Yet every time we hear her shambling towards Paul’s bedroom door we’re glued to what she might do next!

I couldn’t list transgressive heroines without finishing on the iconic Lizbeth Salander, who started out in Stieg Larsson’s book The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This tattooed and pierced, leather clad, super intelligent young woman is an icon. Everything about her exterior is spiky but that’s a defense mechanism, if you look underneath there’s a pale, waif- like girl who’s had a lifetime of abandonment and abuse. Her struggle to fit into a society that puts us in boxes is actually a strength. She’s learned to cope alone, knowing that even where we’re supposed to belong – our family – doesn’t mean we’re safe. Even the very system that’s supposed to care and provide safety to children is corrupted. She trusts no one. She doesn’t even expect justice to come through for her and metes out her own punishment, with the same brutality she’s faced. She has learned when to fight and when to stay in the shadows. The only people she trusts are an online group of fellow hackers, who she never meets in person. Her relationship with journalist Blomkvist is not her usual pattern, but he doesn’t judge and slowly they develop enough trust to work together. She has reached a point through online security work and hacking criminals to be totally independent, leaving her dependent on no one. I find Lisbeth absolutely fascinating and will happily reread the first three books in this series again and again.

When I first found this book, before the television series, I was astounded that a woman had the bravery to live on her own terms as early as the Georgians. Anne Lister’s journals were so shocking that the first person to crack their secret code hid them behind a fake panel in his ancestral home. Anne Lister was a Regency landowner in Yorkshire, an intrepid world traveller … and an unabashed lover of other women. In this brilliant biography, author Angela Steidele uses Anne Lister’s diaries to create a portrait of a woman we had never seen before in fiction, never mind biography. The picture we usually have of Regency women is Jane Austen-esque, but this woman is both very much of her time in some ways and in others far ahead of it. Anne Lister recorded absolutely everything from the most intimate details of her numerous trysts, her plans to make her fortune by exploiting the coal seams under her family estate in Halifax and her reaction to the events of her time. Her love life had a labyrinthine complexity, but she was searching for a girlfriend to settle with. She wanted a woman could provide her with both financial security and true love, who also had the bravery to live in the unconventional and unapologetic way that Anne had chosen for herself.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

#TenOnTuesday: Ten Book With A Playlist

Posted on by thelotusreaders

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.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten On Tuesday: Ten Literary Deaths That Really Hurt

Posted on by thelotusreaders

*SPOILER WARNING*

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.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten On Tuesday: Ten Books Set Over One Day

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s amazing what can happen in a single day and these books can certainly attest to that. The beauty of every one of them is how much they can tell us about the world of their narrators in only 24 hours. Whether it’s a mother close to emotional collapse or a young woman who finds out it only takes one thing to go wrong and the whole city is against her. From startling events that happen once in a lifetime to the everyday and humdrum, lives can be changed in an instant.

Is this the best worst day of her life?
Once, Grace Adams was poised for great things. Now, she barely attracts a second glance as she strides down the street carrying her daughter’s sixteenth birthday cake. But behind the scenes, Grace’s life is in freefall. Her husband is divorcing her. Her daughter has banned her from her birthday party. And Grace has just abandoned her car in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Because Grace Adams has finally had enough. She’s sick of being overlooked and underappreciated, and she’s particularly tired of being polite. She’s about to set off on a journey to rediscover who she is, and confront the secret that has torn her family apart.What is that secret? You’re about to find out. ..

As Grace closes in on Lotte’s party, sweaty, dirty and brandishing her tiny squashed cake, it doesn’t seem enough to overturn everything that’s happened, but of course it isn’t about the cake. This is about everything Grace has done to be here, including the illegal bits. In a day that’s highlighted to Grace how much she has changed, physically and emotionally, her determination to get to Lotte has shown those who love her best that she is still the same kick-ass woman who threw caution to the wind and waded into the sea to save a man she didn’t know from drowning. That tiny glimpse of how amazing Grace Adams is, might just save everything.

Another book about a meltdown here – can you tell I’m peri-menopausal from my bookshelves?

Eleanor Flood knows she’s a mess. But today will be different. Today she will shower and put on real clothes. She will attend her yoga class after dropping her son, Timby, off at school. She’ll see an old friend for lunch. She won’t swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action – life happens. For today is the day Timby has decided to pretend to be ill to weasel his way into his mother’s company. It’s also the day surgeon Joe has chosen to tell his receptionist – but not Eleanor – that he’s on vacation. And just when it seems that things can’t go more awry, a former colleague produces a relic from the past – a graphic memoir with pages telling of family secrets long buried and a sister to whom Eleanor never speaks. This novel has bags full of empathy, humour and is just so smart too! It manages to tread the line of being entertaining, but also has something profound to say about life.

A landmark work of literary modernism, the novel is set in London and unfolds over the course of a single day as Clarissa Dalloway prepares to host an evening gathering. Through Woolf’s distinctive use of stream-of-consciousness narration, the story moves between the inner lives of multiple characters, including Clarissa and the troubled war veteran Septimus Warren Smith. Their experiences reveal themes of memory, identity, time, and the lingering effects of the First World War on British society. With its innovative narrative structure and psychological depth, Mrs. Dalloway remains a central work in twentieth-century literature. The novel continues to be widely studied for its exploration of consciousness, social life, and the rhythms of modern urban experience. I first read this book at university and I’m always astonished by how slight it seems, but it’s always stayed with me. In one day Woolf captures all the changes wrought by WW1, not just through Septimus but in the mix of people on the omnibus and the neurotic inner life of our main character.

The existence of this book confirms the genius of Mrs Dalloway. Inspired by the novel and told in three sections to reveal each woman’s day, this book won a Pulitzer and was made into an Oscar-winning film. The Hours. In 1920s London, Virginia Woolf is fighting against her rebellious spirit as she attempts to make a start on her new novel. A young wife and mother, broiling in a suburb of 1940s Los Angeles, yearns to escape and read her precious copy of `Mrs Dalloway’. And Clarissa Vaughan steps out of her smart Greenwich village apartment in 1990s New York to buy flowers for a party she is hosting for a dying friend. Moving effortlessly across the decades and between England and America, this exquisite novel intertwines the stories of three unforgettable women. It has such atmosphere, deeply melancholic but also creating moments of beauty that can make life worth living.

Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going. The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: is it time to take it all apart? This novel is a brilliant debut and could be seen as an interesting companion piece to the last two novels, just in a post-modern world. The author shows us the micro-aggressions young, black women encounter every day and how averse to feminism our white male culture is years before Louis Theroux and the manosphere.

Wow! This is a searingly raw story, simmering with righteous anger and injustice, and I’ve never forgotten it. Set on a boiling hot summer’s day, you can almost smell the tarmac and diesel fumes. You can hear the traffic noise and feel the agitation and impatience of people trying to get to work without exchanging a word with anyone else. It’s too hot to breathe let alone exchange a friendly word. I had the unnerving experience of reading our heroine’s thoughts  and hearing my own words. During the day from hell that Em was experiencing, it felt like some of my own thoughts and frustrations were running round her head. They just need awakening. My age is more in line with the Amazing Grace Adams – who had her own walk of rage, fuelled by love. However, Em’s voice is a millennial war cry that becomes a national phenomenon in the space of a day. As she leaves her landlord’s bed that morning she expects to look smart for work, especially since she has a HR meeting and expects to be offered a permanent role after completing three months maternity cover with great results. Finally she’s catching an evening flight back home to Spain for her little sister wedding. Her actual day is a complete clusterfuck! 

I loved how the author wrote about the othering of women’s bodies and its natural bodily functions. There’s a disgust conveyed by men that women buy into and internalise. The shame of being caught out by a period in a public place must be a lot of women’s worst nightmare. When I read it I physically cringed on Em’s behalf. It was interesting that this was the point she meets Rose, who simply accepts this woman she’s just seen cleaning herself up and having to pee outdoors without judgement. Em is also trying to avoid – sweat, sore armpits and foot blisters – they’re all unladylike and shouldn’t be seen. It feels like society is keen to erase so much of us, it’s a wonder we don’t disappear. Rose is the furious feminist voice in the novel and she’s like a mentor to Em, listening and giving frank advice where needed plus the odd political rant here and there. She is her own woman and lives life on her terms. Could Em ever be like that? Brutally honest and horribly tense this is an incredible feminist thriller not to be missed.

I read this when it was first released in the early 2000s and I couldn’t stop going back to the opening page because it’s a beautifully lyrical opening to a novel about the humdrum of everyday life on one street in the North of England. Ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence – street cricket, barbecues, painting windows… A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. That this remarkable and horrific event is only poignant to those who saw it, not even meriting a mention on the local news, means that those who witness it will be altered for ever. This is an incredible first novel that evokes the histories and lives of the people in the street to build up an unforgettable human panorama. It has such resonance and does something I absolutely love, recognising that the extraordinary is in the ordinary.

I love this character’s name so much it went in my little book of names. I give them to pets or the textile sculptures I collect, most of them are hares. So far there’s Irving Finkelstein – a very dapper owl, Razzle-Dazzle Rita who’s a hare, trapeze artist and burlesque performer alongside Sweet Suzie the squirrel. There’s Amish Jeffrey (strange beard), Hips McGee, Fern Fitzsimmons, Maud Buckle and more. My Lillian Boxfish hasn’t arrived yet.

Lillian Boxfish is no ordinary 85-year-old. On her arrival to New York in the 1930s she took the city by storm, working her way up from writing copy for Macy’s department store to become the world’s highest paid advertising woman. Now, alone on New Year’s Eve, her usual holiday ritual in ruins, Lillian decides to take a walk. After all, it might be her last chance. Armed with only her mink coat and quick-witted charm, Lillian walks, and begins to reveal the story of her remarkable life. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, Lillian meets bartenders, shopkeepers, children, and criminals, while recalling a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak. Based on a true story, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk paints a portrait of an extraordinary woman walking through the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, the Mad Men era, the AIDS epidemic and even further. It reinforces how much one life contains and the value of other people’s stories.

Saturday, February 15, 2003. 

Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon, stands at his bedroom window before dawn and watches a plane – ablaze with fire like a meteor – arcing across the London sky. Over the course of the following day, unease gathers about Perowne, as he moves amongst hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors in the post-9/11 streets. A minor car accident brings him into confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive man, who to Perowne’s professional eye appears to be profoundly unwell. But it is not until Baxter makes a sudden appearance at the Perowne family home that Henry’s earlier fears seem about to be realised…

This book held me in suspense till the very last page. Through each character’s narrative we come to know them and their place in this story as precisely as if they were cogs in a machine. Its portrayal of how we collide with each other in our daily lives shows what a small part of the world we are and conversely how important to each other.

This is an utterly charming book from Persephone Press, dedicated to finding forgotten works by women writers and publishing with end papers of the era. In this whimsical story Miss Pettigrew a governess sent by an employment agency to the wrong address, where she encounters a glamorous night-club singer, Miss LaFosse who is the sort of woman Miss Pettigrew has only seen in Hollywood films. Over the course of 24 hours she is surprised to find that, when given the freedom to find her own opinion, she is as strait laced as her religious father would have hoped. This revelation will change her life.

‘The sheer fun, the light-heartedness’ in this wonderful 1938 book ‘feels closer to a Fred Astaire film than anything else’ comments the Preface-writer Henrietta Twycross-Martin, who found Miss Pettigrew for Persephone Books. The Guardian asked: ‘Why has it taken more than half a century for this wonderful flight of humour to be rediscovered?’ while the Daily Mail liked the book’s message – ‘that everyone, no matter how poor or prim or neglected, has a second chance to blossom in the world.’ Maureen Lipman wrote in ‘Books of the Year’ in the Guardian: ‘Perhaps the most pleasure has come from Persephone’s enchanting reprints, particularly Miss Pettigrew, a fairy story set in 1930s London’; and she herself entertained R4 listeners with her five-part reading. India Knight called Miss Pettigrew ‘the sweetest grown-up book in the world’. This is a delightful escape read of a woman blossoming through a chance encounter.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten on Tuesday: Ten Of My Favourite Opening Lines 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Openings are tricky things. They can make or break a book. As we browse bookshops and pick up unknown titles they have three chances to grab my attentions: the cover, the blurb and the opening lines. More often than not it’s the opener that grabs me, if I read a few lines and want to keep reading then I know it’s for me. It can be a showy first line, something that punches you in the gut or enticing, giving you a glimpse of what’s coming but not too much. Here I’ve gathered just a few of my favourites, old classics and up to date lines that simply won’t let go.

“Several years after the war, during the mid-afternoon hour I generally put aside to fantasize about setting fire to my manuscript and disappearing into the countryside to raise goats, I received a book in the post.”

I’ve enjoyed all Alix Harrow’s work since Ten Thousand Doors of January but I love this opener from her latest novel. She manages to summon up a feeling that’s perhaps common to all writers, but I’ve definitely felt it. She captures that self doubt we feel when the words just don’t come out right, or in my case when they come but aren’t perfect every time. We’ve all had human moments of wondering whether to just leave everything behind and start a smallholding in Wales. I have one every time I watch the news! This is a narrator of with a sense of humour and when I read this I was happy to join them in their journey.

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

This is an incredible opening line. I read this while at university when my tutor recommended it, knowing I was interested in bodies that were ‘othered’. It had sat on the shelves for years, but this time I opened it and I was grabbed from the outset. This is a narrator who has gone through something life changing and I wanted to know their story. The way it’s written as a basic fact, with dates and places gives us the medical viewpoint but I knew there’d be much more beneath the surface. I wanted to read about how they’d come to this decision, what difference it made in their life and how it was received by family and friends. What we get is several generations of background history that moulds this family alongside the narrator’s journey.

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”

I love this opening. It has intrigue and magic and a sense that this circus isn’t for everyone, it’s for those who happen to find it. It’s ‘appearance’ suggests all sorts of possibilities – time travel, other dimensions, hallucinations.. There’s also a hint of danger and darkness. What happens when you enter? What if it disappears with you in it? The stage is set for adventure.

‘The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other . . .’

Wow! This is quite the opening. Close the book and buy it immediately. My head is already full of questions – why and who is shot? What made the narrator pull the trigger? What’s a normal week for this person and what could have possibly happened in that week to get to this point? It also tells us something about the narrator, the way they state a violent act as if it’s almost incidental to the story – we’ll get to the shooting, but first let me tell you about my week. Brilliant.

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy.”

One of the most famous opening lines in literature and often quoted in articles like this but I just couldn’t leave this out. I love this so much I have it on a tote bag. I love its immediacy and charm. Cassandra Mortmain’s view of the world is captured in these few words. We know she loves to write and is doing this directly to us. It also tells us something about the chaos of the household if the only place to write is to sit on the draining board with your feet in the sink. She’s trying to create in the chaotic, bohemian and busy family household, something all women writers can identify with. I want to spend time with this narrator immediately.

“Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before.”

This is one of my favourite novels of all time and this opening is both intriguing but tempered with a warning. In one sentence we know that this isn’t the London we think we know – in a literary or historical sense. It’s saying this book won’t tell the usual Victorian society story, you’re going to journey into those hidden areas rarely seen or written about. This is a place to be aware, it’s gritty, dangerous and you might easily get lost. Even though there’s danger, you still want to follow this narrator into their world. It also hints that our narrator is wise to the pitfalls of this place, this is their kingdom and there’s pride in their ability to survive there.

 

“The play—for which Briony had designed the posters, programs, and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper—was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.”

This incredible opening from Ian McEwan tells us everything we need to know about Briony, the crux of this heartbreaking story. It tells us that Briony is clever and multi-talented – she hasn’t just written a play she has single handedly designed promotional material, a ticket office and the tickets. Then she sits down for two days and writes a whole play, becoming so engrossed in her project she forgets to eat. It tells us Briony is determined, obsessional and perhaps a little bossy. She likes to tell stories, but she also likes to control how they’re told.

“Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the étagère.”

In her debut novel, the super talented Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie references the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, firmly setting herself into the tradition of Nigerian literature. Achebe’s account of colonialism in a Nigerian community shows how white men used the Christian religion to destabilise a village, until eventually greed dismantled their home, their culture and their traditions. It’s an important comparison to this modern family in a 20th Century Nigeria, where our narrator’s father is determined to uphold Christian values in his family and remain head of the household. Jaja’s small act of rebellion shows that their father has a temper, but the breaking of the figurines foreshadows the destruction of their family unit. This is just the beginning act in their family’s breakdown and is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their abusive father, but instead of showing his power it hints at how fragile his regime actually is.

“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”

This was one of the first books I loaned from the public library and that first line set me up for a lifetime of twists and cliffhangers. I’m listening to the voice of a girl who was potentially my own age and from the cover I assumed she lived on a farm like I had. This opening question suggests Fern’s father was doing something outside his normal routine, something that didn’t make sense to her. It brings in a terrible sense of foreboding – having lived on a farm I was aware of eating animals, but you didn’t need an axe to kill a chicken or a goose. I was scared and a bit confused by it, but I had to know.

‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’

“That was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.”

When my friend Elliot loaned me this book at secondary school these first lines blew me away. What language were they speaking? This was English but not as I knew it. The words were all in the wrong order and felt stilted. I wondered if I’d be able to understand what was going on. He advised me to just keep reading and let the language wash over me and he was right, in a few pages it simply clicked. These lines tell us we’re possibly somewhere in the future and Alex is merely setting the scene, introducing his friends and telling us about the weather. This is a typical introduction, done in a totally atypical way and it’s brilliant.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten on Tuesday: Ten Books About Mediums and Fortune Tellers

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Belfast, 1914. Two years after the sinking of the Titanic, high society has become obsessed with spiritualism, attending séances in the hope they might reach their departed loved ones.

William Jackson Crawford is a man of science and a sceptic, but one night with everyone sitting around the circle, voices come to him – seemingly from beyond the veil – placing doubt in his heart and a seed of obsession in his mind. Could the spirits truly be communicating with him or is this one of Kathleen’s parlour tricks gone too far?

Based on the true story of Professor William Jackson Crawford and famed medium Kathleen Goligher, and with a cast of characters including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, The Spirit Engineer conjures a haunted, twisted tale of power, paranoia and one ultimate, inescapable truth… I found this atmospheric, mysterious and completely fascinating.

Paris, 1866. When Baroness Sylvie Devereux receives a house-call from Charlotte Mothe, the sister she disowned, she fears her shady past as a spirit medium has caught up with her. But with their father ill and Charlotte unable to pay his bills, Sylvie is persuaded into one last con.

Their marks are the de Jacquinots: dysfunctional aristocrats who believe they are haunted by their great aunt, brutally murdered during the French Revolution.

Sylvie and Charlotte will need to deploy every trick to terrify the family out of their gold – until they experience inexplicable horrors themselves.

The sisters start to question if they really are at the mercy of a vengeful spirit. And what other deep, dark secrets threaten to come to light…? I loved the genuinely scary scenes in this novel, the setting and the differences between these two sisters.

‘Now you know why you are drawn to me – why your flesh comes creeping to mine, and what it comes for. Let it creep.’ 

Visiting a grim London prison as part of rehabilitative charity work, upper-class suicide survivor Margaret Prior is drawn into the Victorian world of enigmatic spiritualist and inmate Selina Dawes and is persuaded to help her escape.

From the dark heart of a Victorian prison, disgraced spiritualist Selina Dawes weaves an enigmatic spell. Is she a fraud, or a prodigy? By the time it all begins to matter, you’ll find yourself desperately wanting to believe in magic. I love Sarah Waters and the way she writes LGBTQ+ characters back into history, this brought to life the reality of a women’s prison and how class determines women’s lives as much as gender. This was unsettling and like a great thriller you’re never quite sure who is being honest and who is manipulating the outcome.

In the slums of 19th-century New York.

A tattooed mystic fights for her life.

Her survival hangs on the turn of a tarot card.

Powerful, intoxicating and full of suspense. *The Knowing* is a darkly
spellbinding novel about a girl fighting for her survival in the decaying
criminal underworlds.

Whilst working as a living canvas for an abusive tattoo artist, Flora meets Minnie, an enigmatic circus performer who offers her love and refuge in an opulent townhouse, home to the menacing Mr Chester Merton. Flora earns her keep reading tarot cards for his guests whilst struggling to harness her gift, the Knowing – an ability to summon the dead. Caught in a dark love triangle between Minnie and Chester, Flora begins to unravel the secrets inside their house. Then at her first public séance, Flora hears the spirit of a murdered boy prostitute and exposes his killer, setting off a train of events which put her life at risk. This is a fabulous debut novel full of colourful historical detail and showcasing an utterly alternative 19th Century existence.

Viola has an impossible talent. Searching for meaning in her grief, she uses her photography to feel closer to her late father, taking solace from the skills he taught her – and to keep her distance from her husband. But her pictures seem to capture things invisible to the eye . . .

Henriette is a celebrated spirit medium, carrying nothing but her secrets with her as she travels the country. When she meets Viola, a powerful connection is sparked between them – but Victorian society is no place for reckless women.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, invisible threads join Viola and Henriette to another woman who lives in secrecy, hiding her dangerous act of rebellion in plain sight. I was incredibly moved by this story of transgressive love and the fascinating world of spirit photography. Viola has all the naivety of a daughter brought up with religion and it takes Henriette’s boldness for her to try new experiences. I loved the author/‘s use of liminal spaces as places of freedom and how found family can allow that freedom to grow.

England, 1925. Louisa Drew lost her husband in the First World War and her six-year-old twin sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Newly re-married and seven months pregnant, Louisa is asked by her employer to travel to Clewer Hall in Sussex where she is to photograph the contents of the house for auction.

She learns Clewer Hall was host to an infamous séance in 1896, and that the lady of the house has asked those who gathered back then to come together once more to recreate the evening. 

When a mysterious child appears on the grounds, Louisa finds herself compelled to investigate and becomes embroiled in the strange happenings of the house. Gradually, she unravels the long-held secrets of the inhabitants and what really happened thirty years before… and discovers her own fate is entwined with that of Clewer Hall’s. This is the perfect book if you enjoy gothic mystery, historical detail and very spooky twists and turns.

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London’s orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists…

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize, Hilary Mantel’s supremely suspenseful novel is a masterpiece of dark humour and even darker secrets. This ghostly story is full of menace but also very dark humour. It’s endlessly inventive with all the atmosphere you’d expect from this incredible writer.

How do you solve an unsolvable murder? Ask the victim…

In January 1986, newly-engaged Marnie Driscoll is found dead in her parents’ kitchen. With no witnesses, it seems as though the circumstances of her death will remain a mystery.

Six months later, high-flying Detective Inspector Andrew Joyce’s career takes an unexpected detour when he finds himself unwillingly transferred to an obscure department within Greater Manchester Police, known as the Ballroom. The Ballroom team employs unorthodox methods to crack previously unsolved cases, and Joyce, a sceptic by nature, must find a way to work with Peggy Swan, a reclusive ex-socialite with a unique talent: she can communicate with the dead.

Joyce soon discovers that Marnie’s death, initially dismissed as an opportunistic act of violence, actually seems to be a carefully orchestrated murder. It will take both Joyce’s skill as an investigator and Peggy’s connection to her new ghostly charge to navigate the web of secrets surrounding the case and bring closure to Marnie’s tragic story before the killer can strike again. I love this series, with the author recently releasing the third in the series. This has Northern wit, gritty crime and an exceptional character in Marnie. Apart from Marnie these ghostly goings on are sinister and dark in places, so when added to a new DI with family secrets it really does compel you to read on.

When the women in the Sparrow family reach thirteen, they develop a unique ability. In young Stella’s case, the gift, which is both a blessing and a curse, is the ability to see a person’s probable future. Stella foresees a gruesome murder, and tells her charming, feckless father about it, but it is too late – the murder has already been committed and suspicion falls on him. 

Hoffman unlocks the caskets of family life and the secret history of a community in this magical story about young love and old love, about making choices – usually the wrong ones – about foresight and consequences, all suffused with the haunting scent of roses and wisteria, and the hum of bees on a summer evening. I love the way Hoffman combines mundane every day life with magical events so skilfully you never question it. She draws you into these lives and her setting with all the enchantment of a fairy tale.

A grieving woman . . .
Yorkshire, 1890. Forced to exchange her childhood home for her uncle’s vicarage after a tragic loss, Olwen Malkon finds herself trapped between her aunt’s cruelty and the sinister advances of her cousin.

A troubled past . . .
When Olwen finds herself afflicted by strange dreams of a woman from a distant past, whose fate is overshadowed by menace and betrayal, those around her are determined to dismiss them as hysteria – except the local doctor, John, with whom she develops a connection.

A long-buried secret . . .
As the visions intensify, they begin to mirror reality, threatening to expose chilling secrets. What dangers lie ahead for Olwen, and does the past hold the key to her own future…?

This is the perfect mix of history and the supernatural as the character’s become connected through time. Olwen’s troubled present seems to change her into a conduit for an Anglo-Saxon woman, but her new power to see the past leads to concerns for her welfare in the present. This is really engaging and absorbed me completely.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten on Tuesday – Ten Books I Bought For The Cover Alone 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Well, as usual with me, this has turned from a quick and simple share of beautiful book covers into a wealth of research on symbols in art. I noticed a few common symbols as I was photographing these beautiful books and realised exactly why I’d ended up buying them. Book covers are an absolute art form and I do have certain ones as posters or cushions at home, particularly early 20th Century examples with an art nouveau or art deco feel to them. The symbolist art movement emerged towards the end of the 19th Century and moved away from realistic depictions to using symbols that would express certain emotions or communicate hidden meanings. This is exactly what a book cover is supposed to do, somehow in art form it must communicate to the buyer in a single image what that book is about. Realistic book covers that depict characters or a scene from the story don’t seem to do it for me and often I’m totally put off by depictions of people. I’d noticed a long time ago, when I first dipped my toe in bookstagram and didn’t know a flat lay from a spredge,that I couldn’t complete bookstack challenges that focused on cover because my books don’t often have pink, blue or bright covers, they’re more likely to be dark, bold and full of gold lettering. They also have certain symbols in common. That’s not to say I’ve looked and consciously thought about it, they’re symbols that have subliminally communicated something about the book that has forced me into picking it up. Here are ten examples. 

I love this stunning cover. I bought this second hand and didn’t mind the creases because the front was so beautiful. Perfume focuses on a character who is born with no smell. Everyone has their own distinctive smell, it’s why other people’s houses smell different to our own. This is a combination of personal scent, but also our animals, the detergents we choose, the scented candles and our cooking smells. However, no one can smell Jean Baptiste Grenouille and it makes people uncomfortable around him. His wet nurse says that her children smell like normal human children but she can’t smell Jean-Baptiste at all. He must be a child of the devil. When he’s older, he realises his own sense of smell goes beyond the normal. He can’t just smell the general disgusting stench of a city in the 18th Century, he can separate it into hundreds of strands each one subtly different from the next. Then he meets a young woman with a scent that is so intoxicating, he deems it the scent of true beauty. How can he replicate that scent? What follows is the quest of a man possessed by perfume and the lengths he will go to in order to obtain the essence of this young woman. I was drawn to the cover because of the beautiful floral pattern of either roses or peonies and the memento more of a human skull. The red ribbons that weave in and out of the flowers symbolise passion, love and intense emotion. Ribbons are worn by young girls and the red can also be seen as a symbol of wealth. The ribbon is caught at the bottom of the cover in pair of ornate silver scissors, which symbolises the cutting of ties but in a way that’s final. These symbols of beauty and death perfectly encapsulates Suskind’s story and obviously appealed to my love of rather decadent and horrific stories. 

When I saw this displayed on a table in a small bookshop I was drawn to pick it up immediately. The beautiful blue floral background is striking and the bold red/orange silhouette of St. Basil’s Cathedral told me it must be set in Russia. The two women on the cover are almost identical, except one has slightly lighter hair and they both have porcelain white skin. This depiction screams ‘uncanny’ at me straight away. Are they dolls or living women? This brings with it all those connotations of twinning, doppelgängers and the horror of old porcelain dolls. It also evokes childhood nostalgia and when I read a prologue that started like a fairy tale I knew I’d picked up the right book for me. Our main character Rosie faced a terrible trauma in her childhood when her father and sister were killed, bringing an ended to a childhood dominated by her mother’s storytelling. In fact, all Rosie has of her family is her mother’s notebook where her handwritten tales seem to hide a deeper meaning. While a student at Oxford she decides to travel back to Moscow and research her ancestors, finding a devastating family history spanning the revolution, the siege at Leningrad and Stalin. She also finds a young woman called Tonya, described as being pretty as a porcelain doll whose actions span across the century. 

This was a book I picked up in my local bookshop while browsing and was Jessie Burton’s debut novel. This continues the theme of dolls, with a cover depicting a miniature household with what look like cut out people in blue and white, against the colours of the interiors. This is more historical fiction, with our main character Petronella Oortman being a real Dutch woman whose husband gifted her a miniature replica of their own house. Called cabinet houses at the time, this one is displayed at the Riijksmuseum in Amsterdam and seeing it in person is on my bucket list. The cover gave me a feeling of a stage set, a house where everyone has their set roles and expectations. However, they are only paper cut outs suggesting these traditional roles are flimsy and perhaps not what they seem. I researched the symbolism of doll’s houses and they suggest a doll-like existence, the facade of a traditional and happy family. Its size conveys claustrophobia and secrecy. So this cover definitely fits with our story, which follows Petronella into the first months of her marriage to wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt in the 18th Century. Petronella receives small parcels, meant to contain miniatures for her house, but they also contain miniature people – replicas of the residents and their servants. As Petronella starts to uncover the secrets within her new family she feels as if the miniaturist knows the truth and holds their future in her hands. This is a great mystery and commentary on the societal expectations of 18th Century Amsterdam and its wealthier residents. 

This beautiful burgundy, pink and gold cover called to me across a crowded bookshop, it’s ornate but with a darkness running underneath. The nightingale is a motif that is carried on inside the book and while I knew birds signify freedom and flight I was sure the nightingale had a specific meaning. For me they bring up a memory of leaving church after midnight mass, in the crisp, dark early hours. In the garden of the manse were a lot of trees and as clear as anything in the stillness came this beautiful birdsong. It was a magical moment that Christmas morning because I’d never heard one before. Nightingales symbolise artistic expression which is a freedom of sorts and they apparently symbolise love, particularly of an unrequited or melancholy kind. There’s a sense of yearning in its symbolism that could be interpreted as lost love. This cover was simply made for me. The story is set in the 16th Century in Roumania’s Carpathian Mountains, where a countess gives birth to an illegitmate daughter. The girl is given to a peasant family and brought up in one of the villages surrounding her mother’s castle. Boróka has been protected, but around her fifteenth birthday word is sent that castle representatives are looking for a new intake of serving girls. Unable to refuse, her father watches Boróka taken from the only home she has known to serving at Cachtice Castle, the home of her mother. It’s a cruel life and she is terrified of the countess who is said to murder young girls. When plague comes to the castle, these two women are thrown together and become closer. Sadly though, Countess Bathory is a marked woman, whose wealth threatens the king. As she’s accused of killing hundreds of girls and named the Blood Countess can she trust the women who are close to her? This reads as a dark fairy tale but unbelievably has a basis in fact with the Countess known as the most prolific female serial killer of all time. 

I’m a sucker for stars, city skylines and vintage train travel and this has all of them combined. I picked this up knowing nothing about the author or her writing, but it couldn’t have been more apt. As many of you know I am interested in disability and how it’s written about in fiction, so I was really excited to read the blurb when I got home and find that the heroine has a disability. This isn’t a surprise considering that both circuses and fairgrounds signify the ‘other’ in fiction. If you consider its overlap with travellers, showmen and women, freak shows it attracts people who want or have to live outside the norms of society. This makes them such thrilling characters. This cover with its steam train suggests a specific time and history, but also journeys whether physical or emotional. The circus element brings showbiz, glitz and glamour, but also magic and adventure. Visually the city skylines, particularly Paris, are always shorthand for romance but they mean much more in this novel. It’s 1938 and Lena has not really found her place in the World of Wonders circus that travels Europe by steam train. Even with a famous illusionist for a mother, Lena yearns for a different sort of magic – the world of science and medicine. She’s the total opposite of running away with the circus, but she feels the limitations of her wheelchair. Then Alexandre arrives bringing some wonder and magic to Lena’s life for the first time. Outside the circus world though, Europe is darkening and war will shatter everything. I definitely judged this debut novel by its cover and I wasn’t disappointed. 

This is one of my favourite books of all time and here I’m showing my precious folio society copy of the novel. I did originally buy the book in my local Waterstones. I walked in and saw the cover across a crowded room. There’s a reason that Etsy and other sites have so much art and gifts inspired by the artwork of this book. The monochrome cover with its stylised Victorian style pair of illusionists is stunning, but this copy is another level! The red sleeve has a simple ticket on the cover indicating the Cirques de Reves and the colours chosen – deep red, black, white and gold – are so stylish. The circus theme suggests wonder, spectacle and a temporary escape from a dreary everyday world. It’s a place where social norms are challenged, where male and female performers have equal status and even the laws of physics are challenged. Our narrator at the beginning notes that a circus has appeared where there was nothing and this copy definitely indicates something magical and secretive. The suggestion of secrets sets the reader slightly on edge, wondering if there is something more to this place than meets the eye. Are the magical illusions a trick or real magic? What power do these illusionists hold? This delicious edition is the perfect package for such a wondrous and dark story. 

This is one of the most beautiful books I own and I was drawn to pre-order this debut for its spredges alone! There are so many symbols on this cover and I’m always drawn in by flowers, which have a language of their own. Here there are stunning purply blue violets that signify modesty, faithfulness and spiritual wisdom – qualities you might find in the ideal wife. Pineapples are prominent too representing hospitality and welcome, but they’re also a social signifier. If your host is serving pineapple they are definitely wealthy. Peacocks are one of my favourite symbols and have meanings ranging from beauty and immortality to vanity. However, the eye of the peacock’s tail feather was thought to represent the ‘all-seeing’ eye of God. The white cloak on our maiden is the bridal colour associated with innocence and sexual purity. All these symbols combine to tell us so much about this book, where Lady Christian has been arrested for the murder of her lover James Forrester. Newspaper headlines are screaming out Adulteress! Whore! Murderess! Of course now that Kate Foster is releasing her fourth book we know that appearances are rarely what they seem, but when I ordered this I had no idea what to expect. The cover gives up the story of a woman married to someone determined to show their wealth and status, with items including Christian herself. Christian’s own vanity and her history of growing up in a family of women financially dependent on James Forrester, creates a backdrop more complicated than those headlines suggest. Through the peacock symbolism we can imagine the tension between her character and the power of the church, its teachings written by men and used by men to control women. This is a beautiful cover that’s so well thought out and represents the novel perfectly. 

Drawn again to circuses, I bought this copy of Nydia Hetherington’s first book from Goldsboro Books and is a signed edition. Again the circus imagery caught my eye, but focusing completely on the high wire brings other elements into play. Once on the tightrope, the funambulist is there alone dependent on their own skill and judgement. A young girl out on that wire alone put across a feeling of loneliness, but also self determinism. Her ability is what pays the bills and keeps her under the circus’s protection, but she seems alone and vulnerable. The highwire itself is a metaphor for life, how risky it is and how much courage it takes to keep going. It’s also associated with artistic expression and this midnight blue cover with gold botanical surround certainly suggests opulence and wonder. I wasn’t surprised that our heroine was abandoned at the circus, so her life is as precarious as her art. Our opening is written from a child’s point of view watching her mother perform in the big top and becoming spellbound by the colour of her costume, the fear and excitement of the audience. Our heroine is haunted by an incident where a child was snatched from the circus and she tells her story through folklore, circus legends and reality. This is a beautiful book and a great debut from this author who has released her second novel, Sycorax, earlier this year. 

This author wasn’t totally new to me, I’d read one of her books before, but this beautiful cover sold this book before I’d read a word of the blurb. The stunning blue and white spredges are reminiscent of Dutch porcelain and the girl depicted on the front is a beautiful painting. On the blue and white background is a painting of a young girl by Noah Saterstrom and she seems young with her hair in bunches. She wears a red dress with belled sleeves and the depiction is different to what we’re used to in photographs and selfies, there’s no pout and no smile. She gazes out at the painter, very direct and with a serious expression. Her hands rest in her lap, together but empty. The novel references this portrait heavily and the girl is Maeve, one of our own main characters, when she’s ten years old. There’s a wallpaper background and there is a base of flowers next to her, suggesting a wealthier house, perhaps the Dutch House of the title. I have to say at this point that my attraction to this book could be personal. I looked around a Dutch house around twenty years ago, when I was moving back up north after four years in Milton Keynes. It was a cottage, dating from the 15th Century with the characteristic overhanging gables and curved lines. I didn’t buy it, it was too small, but I found out years later that we had some Dutch ancestry most likely from the workers who came to Lincolnshire under the engineer Vermuyden to dig the waterways that drained the land. Even weirder my dad has spent most of his life as a land drainage engineer in the county and we’ve lived at pumping stations that bring in water for farmers who need to irrigate crops and let out water when the land is under the threat of flooding. This may explain my draw to this cover but I’d also noticed the swallows on the wallpaper. Swallows are such a popular motif, particularly in tattoo art and now on clothing. They symbolise love, loyalty and homecoming because they’re a migrating bird. This is perfect for a story heavily based within one house and the lives of Dan and his older sister Maeve who grew up there. 

I picked this novel up at Barter Books in Alnwick. It’s a special edition copy and is signed, but it was the cover that grabbed me. Again it has the colour scheme I love, black and gold with hints of jewel-like green and blue. The scrollwork to the front cover is in the shape of a Greek vase with keys, letting us know that this is a book with secrets. The spredges are blue Greek vasesThe huge magpie is all this cover needs and there are so many parallels between the bird and the story of Pandora. Magpies are always seen as omens or messengers and in England there’s a balance in how their skills are viewed – the rhyme that goes one for sorrow, two for joy explains this. Similarly Pandora is described as ‘beautiful evil’ suggesting the same duality of purpose. Magpies bring change for good or bad, but across the world they represent curiosity and mischief. We see them as drawn to shiny things and even as thieves, keeping hoards of treasure in their nests. Scandinavian folklore also links them with witches and playing tricks, something I’ve noticed myself when I’ve had a ginger cat. Both my cats Chester and Baggins were plagued by magpies who shouted at them and would even pair up to peck their tails. Of course the consequences of curiosity are high and Dora Blake has a feeling about a vase that turns up in the antiquities shop that once belonged to her parents. It’s 1797 and Dora now lives there with her uncle, developing her skills in the hope of becoming a jewellery artist. Dora thinks there’s something suspicious about her uncle and she calls in an antiquarian scholar called Edward Lawrence to check out the vase. She sees it as a way of escaping her uncle and Edward sees the vase as the key to his academic career. What he discovers upends everything Dora has believed about her life and her family, leaving her asking whether some secrets are better left buried. 

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten on Tuesday: Ten Feel Good Books for Stress Awareness Month. 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

When it feels as if the world has gone to hell in a handcart we need books that absorb us into another world, that distract us, or teach us how to cope. We want something gentle maybe? A feel good novel or something that makes us laugh out loud. So I’ve compiled a list of books that have helped me over the years from those that have given me inspiration or suggestions on how to cope – the best one? Get a small dog. Often we need something nostalgic or an old favourite to sustain us, or perhaps something with a hint of magic. I think we all need just a tiny sprinkling of hope. 

This is a lovely, heartwarming read. It’s about being broken and trying to put ourselves back together. Sometimes we need another person to help us, a spark of friendship and a chance to learn from each other. Here’s the blurb…

Two people. 

Simon Sparks hides in plain sight – his astonishing gifts locked deep inside himself, as he dreams of lost potential and extraordinary tomorrows.

Jodie Brook hides behind what you think of her – a single mum who can barely make ends meet. But her dreams are filled with the education she always wanted and discovering a better life for her and her son.

One life.

When Simon and Jodie’s lonely worlds collide, it upends everything. But as it becomes clear they have so much to learn from each other – Jodie can show Simon how to rejoin the world, and Simon can help Jodie prepare for her greatest challenge yet – they begin to realise that life could be so much more.

One ordinary day at a time…

Sometimes the old ones really are the best and I’m always instantly soothed by one of these books, mainly for me the first two that focus on the March sisters as they grow up and choose their way forward in life. Yes, I know exactly how they’re going to turn out but that means there are no nasty surprises and I can just luxuriate in the sisters, their hobbies and passions, the warmth of their home and their generosity as a family. The March family are not without their trials, with their father away at war, sickness and loss and heartache but these are character building and the girls always look forward with hope. I can’t believe there’s a reader out there who hasn’t seen one of the films or read these books when they were younger so I won’t do the blurb. All you need to know is these books are funny, hopeful, romantic and everyone has a favourite sister. Beware of doing those quizzes that tell you which March sister you are. I wanted Jo but got Amy and that put a real dampener on my day! 😂😂

I’ve been following Dr Brené Brown’s work for around 12 years now and often used it in my counselling practice. I could have taken any of the books because they’re all helpful, but this is the one I started with. One of the biggest barriers to success and connection in my life has always been perfectionism. I’ve failed at things before I’ve even started because I wanted my work to be perfect. I even went to university with the aim of getting a first, because anything less would have felt like a failure. A chronic illness and disability has taught me that I can’t work in the way I want to. I have to work in short bursts and sometimes it I have to accept it’s a day to rest and work, chores and everything have to take a back seat. It’s a hard lesson. Reading this book helped me to accept my imperfections and realise admitting them to friends and family would bring us closer. Brené Brown tells us about her own struggles with perfectionism and it’s like reading the words of a close friend. Under this chatty style is a serious academic, with many years of research behind her. I never felt lectured but I did learn. I came away feeling like we’d had an honest, in-depth conversation where she showed her own vulnerability. I would advise reading it through, then go back to it with a notebook and pen, working through the tasks and applying them to your life. This really did create change in my life and allowed me to relax about being a messy, imperfect human.

Many of you have probably read Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild or watched the Reece Witherspoon film of the same name. It chronicled her decision to walk eleven hundred miles up the West Coast of America from the Mojave Desert, through California and into Washington State. This wasn’t something she normally did, but life’s circumstances had brought her to breaking point. Her mother died suddenly, her family seemed to fall apart and her own relationship totally broke down. She knew she needed to do something drastic, otherwise addiction could completely take over her life. This one of those survival stories where just getting up every day and walking and the nature around her began the healing process. This is a later book, compiled from the online anonymous agony aunt Cheryl became afterwards. Using the name Sugar, she tackled so many different problems with empathy but also a deep understanding of how it feels to be at rock bottom. Having down to earth advice from someone who’s been on the same journey is so powerful. Somehow it comes across as down to earth, genuine and caring, while also avoiding bullshit. This is a great book to dip in and out of when you’re feeling a bit low. In fact I recommend creating a pile of books by the bed for this very reason, books where you can read one section, a poem or a letter for those mornings when you need that boost.

This book is an absolute beauty and was a total surprise too! I picked it up in a second hand bookshop because it had an octopus on the cover and I read these lines:

Who am I, you ask? My name is Marcellus, but most humans do not call me that. Typically, they call me that guy. For example: Look at that guy—there he is—you can just see his tentacles behind the rock. I am a giant Pacific octopus. I know this from the plaque on the wall beside my enclosure.

It went from a maybe to a must buy in a couple of sentences. Our main character is Tova Sullivan whose husband died and ever since she’s worked as the night cleaner at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Ever since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat over thirty years ago keeping busy has helped her cope. One night she meets Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium who sees everything, but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors – until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late… This book is heartwarming, original and so clever. Being inside the mind of Marcellus just made me smile and still does whenever I have a re-read. This book stays by my bed because I know it will always bring me joy.

I may be cheating here because this is more of a genre than an individual book, but I simply had to add it to this collection. There’s a reason streaming channels fill their schedules with Jane Austen adaptations, with a new Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility on their way soon, and it’s because they’re a joy to watch. Especially if they put one on opposite the endless football. These are gentle, witty and romantic stories with the hope of a happy ending. Of course you’ve probably already read Austen, so what next? Reach for an Austen inspired book. My three choices are inspired by Pride and Prejudice and involve all of the characters we are so familiar with. Eligible relocates P&P to a wealthy New York neighbourhood and the present day. The Other Bennett Sister tells a familiar story from the perspective of the middle Bennett sister Mary, something of a joke in the original, here Mary starts to enjoy life and it’s glorious. Finally there’s last year’s take from Rachel Parris, which keeps all the wit and romance of the original but our heroine is Lizzy’s best friend Charlotte Lucas, last seen accepting the proposal of the seemingly dreadful and ridiculous Mr Collins. What’s great about these books are the new plots, different perspectives on characters you know well, witty interesting women and yes, a touch of romance too. There’s the comforting feeling of knowing this world but also the unexpected joy of seeing it anew.

This book was a gift from my mum, after my husband died. Having been his carer for the final year of his life I hadn’t just lost the person I loved but I’d lost my purpose, the thing that occupied almost all of my time. Before he died I was ‘on’ day and night, except for the two nights we received nurses paid for by the NHS. Occasionally Marie Curie had a cancellation and I was offered care for the night and I jumped at it. He couldn’t move, eat or swallow so had a feeding tube in his stomach. He had primary progressive MS and it even affected his breathing, so he needed someone awake at all times.

This is a really honest and powerful memoir from Bel Mooney, mixing personal stories with literature, history, and inspiration. This book tells the story of her rescue dog, Bonnie, and how she rescued Bel when her world fell apart. She writes about the very public break-up of her 35-year marriage to Jonathon Dimbleby who fell in love with an opera singer. Not long afterwards the other woman was diagnosed with terminal cancer, leaving Bel’s ex- husband devastated and needing support. Bel covers six turbulent years from when she first acquired Bonnie from a rescue home, through this personal heartbreak and disappointment. It also shows the joy and companionship a dog can bring at a very difficult time. It inspired me to get my dog Rafferty who lived through some very difficult times with me and only died around four years ago. I can honestly say if I hadn’t picked him up on New Years Eve 2007 I might not even be here. Bel has now found happiness in a new life, with her Maltese at her side all the way. She writes about transformation, about healing then picking yourself up and attacking life. It’s also about celebrating the good parts of life, much as a dog always celebrate your return, even from the shortest trip. This is such an engaging story and I suppose my dog and this small book saved my life.

In my teenage years, our holidays were always spent in North Wales at a holiday let owned by an elderly gentleman called Ted. It was a large secluded farmhouse not far from the coast and we’d originally found it in a brochure. But Ted liked us and knew my parents had no money, she he’d let us stay for a whole week for £50. We’d stay in the front of the house and Ted would live in the small living space at the back that had probably been a piggery at one point. There was an adjoining door and at breakfast he would appear like a magic trick from the pantry. He was ever the gentleman, full of stories from the RAF and looked like the BFG, just smaller. Every year I would aim for the bookshelves and grab a compilation of James Herriot stories. I would read them laid on the lawn or by the river while my brother fished. I still find them some of the funniest and most uplifting stories I’ve ever read. I defy you not to laugh out loud when reading the ghostly monk who wanted a particular lonely road, perfect for terrifying a vet who’d had a call out at 3am. Or the angry cat Tristan and James are conned into collecting from an elderly lady, only for it to escape from its box on the return trip. As James tries to concentrate on the road while this black streak whirls around the car, causing Tristan to shout:

“The bloody thing’s shitting Jim. It’s shitting everywhere”.

Or the disastrous night he first takes Helen out to a dance, and tries to drive through a flood. They return to her farm with James soaked from the knees down and with ruined shoes. He then has to attend a dance with crinkled trousers and her father’s old dancing slippers that have bows on! The animals are amazing and I love reading about the bond between animals and their owners, even some of the farmers are more attached to their livestock than we might think. This is another one that’s great for keeping next to the bed when some cozy humour is needed.

This lovely novel from indie publisher Orenda Books has all those feel good words attached to it – heartfelt, life-affirming, hopeful. I can honestly say it is all of those things. Our hero, Robin Edmund Blake is halfway through his life.
Born in 1986, when Halley’s Comet crossed the sky, he is destined to go out with it, when it returns in 2061. Until that day, he can’t die. He has proof.

With his future mapped out in minute detail, a lucrative but increasingly dull job in the City of London, and Gemma to share his life with, Robin has a plan to be remembered forever. But when Robin’s sick father has one accident too many, the plan starts to unravel. Robin must return home to the tiny seaside town of Eastgate, learn to care for the man who never really cared for him, and face the childhood ghosts he fled decades ago. Desperate to get his life back on schedule, he connects with fellow outsider Astrid. Brutally direct, sharp-witted and a professor at a nearby university, she’s unlike anyone he’s ever met. But Astrid is hiding something and someone from Robin.
And he’s hiding even more from her. I loved this book because I could relate to Robin, hit by one of those life circumstances that come out of the blue. He and his dad are awkward and don’t really know how to talk to one another. Robin is equally awkward with the characters, avoiding them if he can manage it. He’s dealing with a huge life change and seeing the person who brought you up becoming helpless is a difficult thing. An old friend gets Robin out of the house and out on a bike, taking in the scenery he remembers from being a child. Then there’s Astrid who is like no one he has ever met. When I finished this book I had a huge smile on my face and I’d read it again tomorrow.

My final choice is not a novel or a self-help book, in fact it’s more pictures than words. My mum’s copy of this book was kept on a recipe stand in the living room and was turned to each month as if it was a calendar. There was no point keeping a book this beautiful on a shelf, it needed to be seen. I fell in love with it and tried to convince myself I was an Edwardian lady in a floaty frock, flitting around the forest drawing ferns and butterflies. I copied her illustrations and did my own, even taking the book into school to do a project on it when I was around ten. Edith Holden’s original diary is filled with a masterful paintings and observations chronicling the English countryside throughout 1906. It’s one of the few true records of the time in print, the handwritten thoughts and paintings contained in The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady transport readers to a more refined, romantic, and simpler time. Her poetry and illustrations bring the reader back to a time in which propriety, civility, and an appreciation for the natural world reigned. It feels like a souvenir of a bygone era but it’s also a calming touchstone. I grew up surrounded by land, in a very agricultural county and I loved recording the plants and insects or birds I had seen, although my illustrations of butterflies and flowers were probably the most successful. It’s a charming book and even now a copy sits on the sideboard in my hall, open to the right month. It’s the perfect book to flick through, or read the quotations she has placed next to her sketches and lines of poetry. I feel completely in a different world when I look through this book, because it’s a powerful reminder of a gentler time, my own childhood and nature combined.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten On Tuesday: Ten Second Hand Books On My TBR

Posted on by thelotusreaders

So here’s a book blogger admission for you. I recently did an interview with another blogger on my reading habits and I admitted to having seven bookcases in the house, all organised according to genre: books for work, thrillers and crime, romance, my bought tbr, my biggest bookcase has historical fiction, horror and gothic, classics and contemporary literature and there are two glass display cases of special editions. I have a trolley with my main tbr from publicists and authors, but I also have a little pink trolley with my secondhand tbr (yes there are a few stacks on the floor here and there). So now you know my darkest book secrets I thought I’d share some of those second hand books.

Nottingham, 1827. Mary Reddish, a young housemaid unjustly committed after defying her employer’s advances, must navigate the brutal treatments of the county asylum while trying to prove her sanity. Meanwhile, Ann and Thomas Morris, the asylum’s matron and director, struggle to uphold humane practices against outdated medical methods that haunt the institution.

As Mary forms an unlikely alliance with a fellow patient, she finds herself at the centre of a battle between compassion and cruelty that will determine the course of her life – and the future of the asylum itself.

Inspired by real events that took place at England’s first publicly funded asylum in Nottingham, The Unravelling of Mary Reddish shines a light on the brutal reality of mental health care in Georgian Britain.

Celebrated writer and historian Maria Graham must make the treacherous voyage from Brazil to London to deliver her latest book to her publisher. Having come to terms with the loss of her beloved husband, Maria is now determined to live her life as she pleases, free from the smothering constraints of Georgian society.

For a woman travelling alone it’s a journey fraught with danger, and as civil war rages around her, the only ship prepared to take Maria belongs to roguish smuggler Captain James Henderson. Onboard, all is well until Maria makes two shocking discoveries – the first a deadly secret, the second an irresistible attraction to the enigmatic captain.

With Henderson on a journey of his own and determined to finally put his life of crime behind him, he and Maria grow ever closer. But can Henderson escape his illicit past or will the scandalous secret he’s hiding ruin them both?

THE NEXT WORDS HE WRITES COULD BE HIS LAST . . . 

Austria, 1938: The Vienna Writers Circle meets at Café Mozart to share hopeful stories during a hopeless time.

But when the Nazis take over, everything changes. With their Jewish families’ now under threat, the writers hide using false identities, their stories becoming their only salvation.

Then a local policeman begins a dangerous mission to help them. But he faces conflicts of his own: having declared his love for a beautiful Romani-gypsy girl, Deya Reynes, he fears that she too will be sent to her death.

When all they have left is courage, will they survive?

Yorkshire, 1979

Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South.

Because of the murders.

Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn’t an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv’s mum stopped talking.
Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all?

So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things down their street. People they know. People they don’t.

But their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighbourhood, within their families – and between each other – than they ever thought possible.

What if the real mystery Miv needs to solve is the one that lies much closer to home?

London, 1893. When Cora Seaborne’s controlling husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness. Along with her son Francis – a curious, obsessive boy – she leaves town for Essex, in the hope that fresh air and open space will provide refuge. 

On arrival, rumours reach them that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming lives, has returned to the coastal parish of Aldwinter. Cora, a keen amateur naturalist with no patience for superstition, is enthralled, convinced that what the local people think is a magical beast may be a yet-undiscovered species.

As she sets out on its trail, she is introduced to William Ransome, Aldwinter’s vicar, who is also deeply suspicious of the rumours, but thinks they are a distraction from true faith. 

As he tries to calm his parishioners, Will and Cora strike up an intense relationship, and although they agree on absolutely nothing, they find themselves at once drawn together and torn apart, affecting each other in ways that surprise them both. The Essex Serpent is a thrilling and unforgettable novel of intrigue, love, and the many forms it can take.

Cloaked in absence, the Travelling Man comes calling . . . 

NYPD cop Charlie Parker returns home one evening to a brutal scene – his wife and daughter violently murdered, their faces removed and their bodies displayed in macabre poses: the work of the Travelling Man.

Numb from guilt and desperate for distraction, Parker becomes embroiled in the case of a missing woman. As the investigation spirals, Parker learns that this disappearance is merely the latest development in a tale of injustice and cruelty.

All the while, the Travelling Man haunts him . . .

1859. Edward Scales is a businessman, a butterfly collector, a respectable man. He is the man Gwen Carrick fell in love with. Seven years later he is dead and Gwen is on trial for his murder. Set in a world caught between the forces of Spiritualism and Darwinism, The Specimen explores the price one independent young woman might pay for wanting an unorthodox life.

You are about to discover the secrets of The Quick –

But first, reader, you must travel to Victorian England, and there, in the wilds of Yorkshire, meet a brother and sister alone in the world, a pair bound by tragedy. You will, in time, enter the rooms of London’s mysterious Aegolius Club – a society of the richest, most powerful men in England. And at some point – we cannot say when – these worlds will collide. 

It is then, and only then, that a new world emerges, a world of romance, adventure and the most delicious of horrors – and the secrets of The Quick are revealed.

Maud Heighton came to Lafond’s famous Academy to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris eats money. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling joys of the Belle Époque, Maud slips into poverty. Quietly starving, and dreading another cold Paris winter, Maud takes a job as companion to young, beautiful Sylvie Morel. But Sylvie has a secret: an addiction to opium. As Maud is drawn into the Morels’ world of elegant luxury, their secrets become hers. Before the New Year arrives, a greater deception will plunge her into the darkness that waits beneath this glittering city of light.

‘You should have been a detective. If there’s one thing the last year has proved, it’s how good you are at finding things out. Things that are buried so deep nobody even thinks twice about them. The sort of things that turn people’s lives inside out once they’re exposed.’

Meet Tony Hill’s most twisted adversary – a killer with a shopping list of victims, a killer unmoved by youth and innocence, a killer driven by the most perverted of desires. 

The murder and mutilation of teenager Jennifer Maidment is horrific enough on its own. But it’s not long before Tony realises it’s just the start of a brutal and ruthless campaign that’s targeting an apparently unconnected group of young people. 

Struggling with the newly awakened ghosts of his own past and desperate for distraction in his work, Tony battles to find the answers that will give him personal and professional satisfaction in his most testing investigation yet . . .

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten On Tuesday: Ten Literary Quotes for Hope in Spring

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I know I’m not the only person struggling with what’s happening in the wider world at the moment and locally to be honest, as strategic parts of our city are being covered in flags in order to intimidate. There’s some sort of march most weeks and I’m constantly waiting to be annihilated by whichever geriatric white man loses his mind first! So sometimes the only thing to do is concentrate on your own little bubble, do the things you love that bring you peace, switch off the TV and shut it out for a while. I was thinking about this post and the things that make me happy, inspire me and keep me going. Of course first and foremost that’s literature, but I also love taking photographs of my surroundings. So, bearing in mind we had the spring equinox at the weekend, I thought I’d share with you some of my favourite hopeful literary quotes and photographs that make me happy. Hope you find them inspiring too.

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

From The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

“Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.”

From Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

That sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all”

From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

‘I am no bird and no net ensnares me: I’m a free human being with an independent will.”

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

From Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.”

From Dracula by Bram Stoker

“I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”

From Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

“Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.”

From The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

“Your sorrow will become smaller, like a star in the daylight that you can’t even see. It’s there, shining, but there is also a vast expanse of blue sky.”

From Survival Lessons by Alice Hoffman

“What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them! Yet my town acquaintances look upon it as imprisonment, and I don’t know what besides, and would rend the air with their shrieks if condemned to such a life. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find my happiness so easily. I believe I should always be good if the sun always shone, and could enjoy myself very well in Siberia on a fine day. And what can life in town offer in the way of pleasure to equal the delight of any one of the calm evenings I have had this month sitting alone at the foot of the verandah steps, with the perfume of young larches all about, and the May moon hanging low over the beeches, and the beautiful silence made only more profound in its peace by the croaking of distant frogs and hooting of owls?”

From Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Armin

See you next week ❤️📚