Category: Ten on Tuesday

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 ❤️📚

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten Of My ‘Must Buy’ Authors 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

To qualify that title I’d like to admit that I have far more must buy authors than ten, so this will come in two parts. I thought I’d share with you those authors I’ve been buying without even reading the blurb for years and how my interest started. These are authors I give shelf space to because only a real, solid book will do.

Unlike most people my first Alice Hoffman novel wasn’t Practical Magic and I’d never seen the film either. I was at university in the early 2000s as a mature student and I was reading a literary supplement one Sunday when I saw a review for her book Blackbird House, a collection of stories based around a farmhouse in Cape Cod. Each story builds a continuous narrative through the sense of this place and it’s residents from a lonely fisherman, to an orphan living with a disabled blacksmith and Violet who is a bookish farm girl raising a family through to the 1950s when her grandson brings his Jewish wife to the farm, having survived the Holocaust. From these stories we can see many of the themes that run through Hoffman’s work: magic realism, small towns, the Holocaust and women’s power. I followed this with Blue Diary, a very different tale of love and what we know about those closest to us. Now I pre-order as soon as I see a new book because I’ve never been completely disappointed by any of her work. I love her ability to weave magic into her tales, the lyrical and atmospheric way she creates a sense of place and the way she uses historical events. Here are my three favourites: 

Blue Diary – a wife is stunned as her picture perfect life falls apart, when her husband is arrested for the murder of a young girl.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things – Coralie Sardie wants to escape the Coney Island freak show where she grew up and performed as a mermaid for her tyrannical father.

The Marriage of Opposites – We’re whisked off to St. Thomas where a young woman embarks on a forbidden relationship and becomes mother to the impressionist painter Camille Pissaro.

My first Jodi Picoult was My Sister’s Keeper like a lot of other people. I read the book way before seeing the film and I was bowled over by how emotional I was about this little girl who didn’t want to be used as a donor for her elder sister anymore. Anna applies to the court for medical emancipation when she is told by her mother she will be donating a kidney to her sister Kate who has a form of leukaemia. I hated this mother who essentially neglects the emotional needs of her eldest and youngest children, because all of her attention is on keeping Kate alive. Anna was deliberately conceived as a donor, with her umbilical cord being used to harvest stem cells and for a while this works. Sadly Kate has relapses and while I was sad for her parents, I couldn’t believe the pressure being placed on this little girl as if her only use is as spare parts. The ending absolutely devastated me and I was so angry. While the novel has its faults I found myself unable to put it down and slowly I worked my way through everything else Jodi had written. Since her novel Nineteen Minutes I’ve been buying them as soon as they’re released. I’ve met Jodi on a couple of occasions and found her so friendly and willing to share her process and talk through the issues raised by her books, she now has the most banned novels in US school libraries because of those subjects. My favourites are: 

Plain Truth – an Amish community is shocked when a baby is found dead in one of their barns bringing the outside into their closed community and accusations to one of their young women.

Small Great Things – what happens when a couple who are white supremacists come into a maternity ward but refuse to have black nurse Ruth deliver their baby?

By Any Other Name – an incredible book that poses the question of whether Shakespeare’s plays could have been written by a woman, but submitted by a man. In the present day a female playwright enters a competition with an ambiguous name that disguises her gender.

I borrowed Patrick Gale’s book Notes on an Exhibition from the library and became engrossed in this story about a Newlyn artist and her family, not to mention a secret they’ve been carrying for many years. I love reading about artists, which was why I picked the book up but I also loved the dynamic in the family and how their mother’s mental health affected the everyone. I then looked out for his novels when browsing bookshops and read The Cat Sanctuary, a novel about an a photographer and her novelist lover Judith who live on a remote part of Bodmin Moor. When carrying out an assignment in Africa, Joanna meets Judith’s sister Deborah who is newly bereaved. She brings Deborah back to Bodmin and unleashes an emotional nightmare. I love how he constructs these deeply unhappy or flawed characters, showing us their layers and the reasons why they act as they do. I also enjoy the tension between his characters who live an alternative lifestyle and a society that isn’t very accepting. Having met criticism about his writing of women early in his career, I believe he has deliberately written from a female perspective and I enjoy the way he writes women. My favourites are: 

Notes on an Exhibition – Artist Rachel Kelly struggles with bi-polar disorder, having deeply creative manic episodes followed by deep lows. It’s a pattern that affects the whole family and when she dies she leaves a legacy of art and family secrets.

A Perfectly Good Man – 20 year old Lenny Barnes is paralysed in a rugby accident and makes the decision to end his life, in the presence of priest Barnaby Johnson. His death sets in motion a chain of events that lead us to explore what makes a ‘good’ man.

A Place Called Winter – Harry Cane is a husband, father and pillar of the community so when a love affair threatens that existence and potentially brings the police to his door he makes a decision. Abandoning his wife and child he signs up for the pioneer life in Canada.

My mum leant me Charity Norman’s 2012 novel After the Fall which I think might have been an Oprah book club pick that follows the aftermath of an accident in a family home. The Macnamara family live in a remote area of New Zealand on a farm and disaster unfolds one night when the five year old son Finn has a fall. He has fallen from the first floor verandah and has life threatening injuries, having to be airlifted to hospital. His mother Martha, explains to paramedics that he had a fall while sleepwalking, but when she arrives at the hospital she’s hit with a lot of questions she wasn’t expecting. Questions she isn’t prepared to answer. As the novel takes us back in time, we see that when they moved to this remote east coast of the North Island, it came to mean different things for each family member. For 16 year old Sacha it was the beginning of a nightmare that would drag in her whole family. I loved the psychology of the family members, their dynamics and how by trying to keep everyone safe and together, terrible things can happen. I talked about it with my sister-in-law who lives in that part of New Zealand and I’ve read every one of her novels since. A little like Jodi Picoult, Charity Norman writes about families and a societal issue they’re facing. Over the years she’s explored grandparents having to deal with the man who killed their daughter wanting to see his children, a family man who believes he’s transgender and how family members can be radicalise by a cult or the internet. She likes to mix people from very different backgrounds and put them in tough situations or show how a family deal with long held secrets. Her writing evokes so many emotions and my favourites are: 

The Son-in-Law – Hannah and Frederick are grandparents bringing up their three grandchildren. They witnessed their father Joseph kill their mother and he is about to be released from prison. Joseph lost everything that day, all he has left are his children who he’s not allowed to see. How will the family cope when their ordered lives are disturbed by the legal implications of their father’s release?

Remember Me – Emily returns to New Zealand to care for her father who has been diagnosed with dementia. As she tries to support him, so many memories of this place come back to her, including the disappearance of neighbour Leah Patrick who never came home from a hike.

Home Truths – Livia and Scott have a great life, good jobs and a nice home in Yorkshire with their two children. When Scott’s brother dies he desperately looks for someone to blame, falling down a rabbit hole of internet chat rooms, alternative medicine and conspiracy theories.

 

As regular readers will know I love a spooky gothic novel and Laura Purcell is an absolute master of the genre. I picked up her book The Silent Companions when it first came out, simply from reading the blurb in a bookshop. I love historical fiction and I also have a love of ghost stories. I do love horror, as you will see below I became a teenage fan of Stephen King, but I prefer it to be psychological and a slow creeping sensation rather than jump scares and blood. For example I love the short ghost stories of Susan Hill because they are atmospheric, ambiguous and unsettling. I fell in love as soon as I read this first Purcell novel which opens with Elsie Bainbridge in custody and awaiting her execution after burning down her house and being the only survivor. She is now mute, but a doctor at the prison suggests she write her story and we follow that narrative. We realise she was widowed and pregnant when she inherited the estate from her husband and was then in charge of the remaining servants and a diary from the 1600s written by an ancestor called Anne. Each narrative is fascinating and incredibly creepy. I had never come across the concept of silent companions before, but since I’m scared of masks, waxworks and ventriloquists dummies they were definitely perfect nightmare fodder. I have pre-ordered every book since and she doesn’t disappoint. 

The Silent Companions

Bone China – Louisa Pinecroft’s family has been wiped out by TB, but her father believes he can benefit the symptoms with sea air and conducts an experiment. At his Cornish home Morvoren, he houses prisoners with the conditions on the cliffs believing it will cure them. Years later, nurse Hester Why is engaged to work at Morvoren House to look after the now mute and paralysed Miss Pinecroft but she struggles to settle in this strange house with it’s strange servants and odd rituals.

The Shape of Darkness – Agnes is a silhouette artist struggling to make ends meet in Victorian Bath. When one of her clients is killed after leaving her house, then another, she engages a child who is a medium to root out their killers.

 

I LOVE this incredible author and she is quite a recent addition to my must buy list, but her books are just so strong. She writes stories about women, often facing huge changes in life who are touched by something supernatural. My first encounter was her second novel, The Lighthouse Witches, and I chose it after the reading the blurb on NetGalley. I was absolutely hooked. In a remote coastal area of Scotland stands a lighthouse where Liv moves with her two daughters. They’re warned by locals that this place was used for burning accused witches and might be cursed. However, Liv doesn’t believe in curses or witches for that matter. There is a strange, neglected child who turns up from time to time at the cottage and the lighthouse does have a strange energy, but Liv throws herself into her painting and pays it no mind. Yet only months later, her daughter Luna is the only one left. Twenty years later, Luna sister turns up out of the blue like nothing happened all those years ago. In fact she hasn’t aged or changed in any way. This is an extraordinary story, full of atmosphere and touching on the history of witches as well as other, strange and far-fetched tales. I went back and read her debut The Nesting and knew this author was for me. Each book is its own story and my favourite three are: 

The Haunting in the Arctic – In 1901 a woman wakes aboard ship, stolen away by crew looking for entertainment on their journey. Decades later the Ormen is a wreck and the only body aboard is mutilated and his cabin locked from the inside. In the present, urban explorer Dominique is travelling to the tip of Iceland to the resting place of the Ormen. However she won’t be exploring alone. Something is with her and it wants revenge.

The Lighthouse Witches

The Last Witch – Innsbruck in 1485 and wealthy wife Helena is keeping house and looking after the children, but when the family’s footman dies she finds herself accused of murder and being a witch. Imprisoned with six women, they use a witch’s totem to ask for help and unleash a spirit that may be more dangerous than their original fate.

 

I was loaned two historical fiction books by a friend back in the late 1990s, one being Katherine by Anya Seton which is a well known novel about a woman who lived in our area of Lincolnshire and became Queen, the second was a Phillipa Gregory book called The Wise Woman. There were some similarities in that our main character Alys was in love with a feudal Lord, far above her in status very like Katherine and John of Gaunt. Alys is left with nothing but her cunning and magical abilities when the nunnery she’s been sheltering in is destroyed by Thomas Cromwell’s soldiers and its funds diverted to Henry VIII’s treasury. When she falls in love she has to tread a very fine line, her powers will always be in demand but if her magic doesn’t bring the answers those in power want, she’s immediately in danger. Then her only choice will be between the fire and the rope. I found this gripping and being fascinated by the Tudors all my life I soon became drawn in to her Tudor series. Then her ‘cousins war’ series began and I started to learn even more about incredible women who have ended up in our Royal ancestry. Weirdly, after years of reading so much on these two adjoining periods, my mother started to research our ancestry and found we were related to Jacquetta of Luxembourg. Jacquetta is known as matriarch of the Woodville family and was the mother of Elizabeth Woodville who married Edward IV and grandmother to Elizabeth of York who was the mother of Henry VIII. it made me wonder if we’re drawn to certain things for a reason or whether, like Jacquetta, there is a little touch of witchery in us. It’s so hard to pick only three books but here are my favourites.

The Virgin’s Lover focuses on the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, often misrepresented in films about Elizabeth. They were friends when she was a princess in exile, but now she is on the throne of England. Her advisors say she must marry. Robert Dudley is a powerful man and has quickly become the Queen’s favourite, but he isn’t welcomed by everyone and her closest advisor Robert Cecil views him as a problem. No courtier wants to be usurped by another, so maybe a foreign prince would be better? Elizabeth must put her kingdom first.

The White Queen is the story of Elizabeth Woodville who catches the eye of the future Edward IV while welcoming his army back from battle. They marry in secret, as Elizabeth’s lowly status and widowhood mean she wouldn’t be his advisor’s choice. Her beauty is captivating and we follow her rollercoaster of a life after Edward’s death as different factions war over the throne and her two sons are imprisoned and disappear from the Tower of London – a mystery unsolved to this day.

The White Princess follows Edward IV’s eldest daughter Elizabeth who has a difficult childhood often spent in sanctuary under Westminster. She is invited to court by her uncle Richard III and goes on to marry his conqueror Henry Tudor as a way of bringing the houses of Lancaster and York together. It’s an uneasy reign, but her second son is crowned Henry VIII.  

 

I’ve been reading Stephen King ever since I was a teenager. For a few summers my friend Cindy and me would spend some of our summer holiday in the Yorkshire Dales having time with her dad, his wife and her five year old half brother. I remember being so excited when I was 18 and drove us there in my own car for the first time. We’re both from the country so would spend our time wandering around the countryside with her dad’s dogs, visiting the pig farms where he worked and watching films or reading in the garden. It’s the only house where I ever had a genuine supernatural experience and it scared us out of our wits! I swear Cindy levitated off the floor onto the couch. Her step mum loved horror and while I don’t like gore, I do love a good ghost story. She would lend me Dean Koontz and James Herbert, but I fell in love with Stephen King. His writing was mesmerising and when I returned home I visited a second hand bookshop at our local antique centre to build my collection. I couldn’t believe how prolific he was and years later he’s still writing at an incredible rate. My first of his novels was Salem’s Lot and I thought it was a great modern vampire story – it made sense that a vampire would work with antiques. What’s so exciting about King is that he’s so prolific I haven’t yet read everything he’s written, so I have a few sitting on the bookshelves I can delve into when I have the time. My favourites are: 

The Shining – Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic struggling to write and takes a job as the winter caretaker of The Overlook Hotel. Once Mr Halloran has shown them the ropes it will be Jack, his wife and son Danny who has ‘the shine’ a psychic ability that’s very powerful. They’re alone in this isolated place so who are the twin girls standing in the corridor, or the people in masks going up and down in the lift and the woman in 217 – utterly terrifying. As Jack is drawn further in by the hotel and drink, can Danny use his shine to save them all?

Misery – one of the oddest things about this book is the accident King had not long after it was published, a car wreck in the snow that left him in the same position as Paul Sheldon. Paul had killed off his long term character Misery Chastain and he’s ecstatic, but Annie Wilkes isn’t. When Paul wakes up unable to move in Annie’s home, she’s very angry with him. She suggests that Paul write another Misery book and if he’s good, she’ll nurse him and keep him alive.

IT is a problematic novel but I have to admit I found it utterly terrifying when I first read it. Pennywise the clown has stayed with me forever and I don’t like circuses, clown masks or dummies. In Derry, Maine a group of children will have to battle a terrible evil. Bill’s brother is dragged into the sewer by a clown who has a red balloon as a calling card. Years later the whole gang must return and battle IT one last time.

 

Like most people I came to Joanne’s work when Chocolat came out and I borrowed it from the library after reading the blurb. I love the mix of food, magic and Vianne who is one of my favourite characters in fiction. That first book felt like a beautiful gift and I didn’t want to leave her world. Vianne is a strong and determined woman who uses her skills to add a little bit of spice to life and of course that magic is sprinkled into her confections. Her shop is like a warm hug, where there is always someone to talk to and a sweet treat to have alongside your coffee or hot chocolate. Vianne’s gift means she knows everyone’s favourites and she becomes the village’s therapist soon knowing all their secrets and troubles. The only person she can’t draw in with her beautiful window displays is the village priest, a born ascetic who hates watching Vianne bewitch his congregation by giving them what they crave. With Easter not far away, the battle lines are drawn. It’s no surprise that my favourites are all from this series, although I do have all her other titles too. I reread these books regularly and I think that’s the sort of book that should have shelf space.

Chocolat

Vianne – Sylvianne Rochas has just lost her mum and the wind blows her to the seaside town of Marseille where she finds a job in a local bistrot, with a room above. She convinces the owner to let her cook, using his late wife’s recipe book. When a new friend teaches her to make chocolates, she adds a whisper of chocolate spices to the recipes. However, she knows this isn’t forever, she has a few months till her child is born then she’ll be on her way again…

The Strawberry Thief- Vianne has settled in her chocolate shop but the winds of change blow frequently here. When the owner of the florist shop across from Vianne’s dies suddenly, he leaves a parcel of land to her youngest daughter Rosette and a confession to Reynaud, the priest. A new shop will open up in place of the florist, a mirror to Vianne’s and perhaps a challenge of sorts?

 

I had to mention a crime series here because they’re often the series we end up collecting and I promise you I do have many other crime authors I follow avidly. Back in 2012 I bought my first house and lived alone for the first time in my life. It was following a bad break up and I was looking forward to having my own peaceful little haven. I bought a little barn conversion in a village that was a dead end, cut off by the river. I soon realised this was a fascinating village of friendly and eccentric people who really made me feel welcome. Not long after I arrived, an elderly lady and her daughter moved in across the road and because both me and the mum had health problems we were at home a lot. Jane called me over not long after they moved in to go through their books. They’d had shelves built in the new conservatory and both of them had a huge collection, so they were letting go of any extra copies. She guided me towards Elly Griffiths and I became a huge fan almost instantly. I fell utterly in love with archaeologist Ruth Galloway – who I imagine as a red haired Ruth Jones – because she’s most definitely the sort of woman I’d love to be friends with. She’s intelligent and well read and has that slightly dishevelled feel of a woman who knows her brain and her soul are the most important parts of her. She’s a little overweight and her hair never does what she wants it to. I can definitely relate. Her work and all of the history behind it is fascinating and has lead her to friends like Cathbad, the local druid and medicine man. Each case has its own twists and tension, often taking in local Norfolk history. Then there’s Ruth’s personal life running alongside and her incredible chemistry with DI Nelson who I imagine as Phillip Glenister. I love Ruth’s isolated home on the salt flats, always looking out to sea and giving her the peace and quiet she craves. The series has now ended and I will miss Ruth because she has slowly become part of my life for the past 14 years. 

The Crossing Places – the first in the series has Ruth called in when a child’s bones are found on the Norfolk coast. Could they be the bones of a child who went missing ten years ago or are they much older. DCI Nelson has received cryptic anonymous letters ever since that ten year old case, could this find bring closure? When another child goes missing Ruth may have to face the fact she’s in danger.

The Night Hawks – Night Hawks are a group of detectorists who comb Norfolk beaches for treasure, but this time they’ve found a body. Ruth is interested in the treasure – a hoard of Bronze Age weapons – but Nelson wants her opinion on the body. It turns out to be a local man just released from prison. He’s also working a double suicide/ murder at Black Dog farm, where according to local legend there’s a spectral hound that appears before you die. As Ruth supervises a dig for bones, she finds the skeleton of a huge dog.

The Last Remains – the final book in the series finds Ruth preoccupied with her personal life and the potential closure of her department at the university. She’s called in when a cafe renovation reveals a walled up skeleton in King’s Lynn. The body is of a young student who went missing in the 1990s from a course run by Ruth’s old tutor and where her friend Cathbad was also a student. Cathbad, weak from his brush with Covid, goes missing and it’s a race against time to find him and the killer.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten on Tuesday: Ten Favourite Scenes From Classic Literature

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Cathy’s Ghost At The Window – Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Those Brontë girls did like a haunting. I can’t join the debate on the latest Wuthering Heights adaptation as I’ve not bothered to see the film yet, but I’m not keen on the lurid colours or on Margot Robbie as Catherine. Catherine is a little wild thing, she tramps about on the moors in all weathers and is muddy, dark and moody. Barbie she is not. I don’t know how far this adaptation goes into the supernatural aspects of the novel, but I love it when that plays a part. The 1970’s adaptation with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff shows both of them with wild, knotted hair and covered with dirt. Heathcliff tries to dig Cathy up after her burial and her ghost lures him back to Wuthering Heights where he’s shot by Hindley so they can haunt the moors together. It completely throws away half of the book but the casting and their portrayal of these characters is as close to my impression of them both as I’ve ever seen. The only truly supernatural scene in the novel is thrillingly creepy and occurs as Mr Lockwood, who has come to visit his new neighbours, is stuck at Wuthering Heights overnight due to a storm. He’s placed in a bedroom where Catherine Earnshaw’s name is carved into the bed and the wind is buffeting the trees outside. When he first wakes he thinks a branch is tapping at the window, so he opens the latch:

“ I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch, instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in – let me in!’

‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself.

‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw. twenty times for Linton), – ‘I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!’

As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel, and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes; still it wailed.

‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.”

Thrillingly creepy!

Lucy Has Tea With Mr Tumnus – The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Mr Tumnus is a delightful fellow and as a child I desperately wanted to find my way into Narnia so we could be friends. In fact I had an hilarious conversation with a friend where she heartily agreed that she’d like to meet Mr. Tumnus – but the James McAvoy version. She didn’t have tea in mind either! I was horrified. I just wanted to have crumpets in front of the fire with him. I did have a wonderful elderly friend for several years who had a big antique filled Victorian house and a ‘gentleman’s club’ decor. He wore brocade smoking jackets, brooches and had curly blonde hair like a cherub. He would have me round for tea and I loved his comfy wingback armchairs and the various clocks ticking away. I felt so cozy there. I still have his chairs in my study and still get that feel when I sit in them to read.

“And really it was a wonderful tea.  There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake.  And when Lucy was tired of eating the Faun began to talk.  He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest.  He told about the midnight dances and how the Nymphs who lived in the wells and the Dryads who lived in the trees came out to dance with the Fauns; about long hunting parties after the milk-white Stag who could give you wishes if you caught him; about feasting and treasure-seeking with the wild Red Dwarfs in deep mines and caverns far beneath the forest floor; and then about summer when the woods were green and old Silenus on his fat donkey would come to visit them, and sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run with wine instead of water and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on end.  “Not that it isn’t always winter now,” he added gloomily.  Then to cheer himself up he took out from its case on the dresser a strange little flute that looked as if it were made of straw and began to play.  And the tune he played made Lucy want to cry and laugh and dance and go to sleep all at the same time.”

Dracula’s Brides Seduce Jonathon Harker – Dracula by Bram Stoker

When I was at university, presentations were the bane of my life. I absolutely hate public speaking. I decided to look at sexuality in Dracula and spoke for twenty minutes with video clips and a portfolio to discuss four scenes in the novel: Lucy’s 3 suitors all give her blood; Van Helsing and the suitors visit the crypt to kill Lucy and stop her undead wanderings; Dracula tries to seduce Mina; my favourite scene though is when Dracula’s brides try their best to corrupt Jonathon Harker on his visit to Transylvania. I love the drama of this scene and how interesting it is that the fantasy of one man and several women was alive and well at the end of the 19th Century. It is Dracula who stops the women, making it quite clear that Jonathon is his – bringing some interesting sexual ambiguity. Does he wish to seduce Jonathon or kill him? The three brides are a parallel to Lucy Westenra’s three suitors, there to show her insatiable sexuality in contrast to the angelic Victorian ideal, Mina. I remember back to the 1990s and the Keanu Reeves version of Jonathon Harker with one of the brides played by the stunning Monica Bellucci. I used this for my presentation and managed to impress a couple of goth students who thought I was pretty boring up till then.

“I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The fair girl went on her knees, and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited – waited with beating heart.”

The Costume Ball at Manderley – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

My favourite scene in one of my favourite books of all time is when the terrifying housekeeper Mrs Danvers really shows her hatred for the second Mrs de Winter. Having planted the idea of a costume ball in her head, Mrs Danvers also makes the suggestion that she should look at the paintings on the long gallery for inspiration. There is a beautiful portrait of one of her husband Maxim’s ancestors, Lady Caroline de Winter, in what looks like an 18th Century dress. Mrs de Winter is so excited, she sends for a copy and even tells Maxim she has a surprise. Yet when she appears at the top of the stairs, with Maxim waiting below, everyone who looks up gives a gasp of disbelief. His sister Beatrice even says the name ‘Rebecca’. At the last costume ball held at Manderley, Rebecca had worn the very same thing. There can now be no doubt in her mind that Mrs Danvers meant this to divide them. Their confrontation takes place in the wing of the house that she’s forbidden to enter, Rebecca’s rooms filled with the sound of the sea.

“You’ve done what you wanted, haven’t you?” the heroine says. “You meant this to happen? Didn’t you?” The replies are both defensive and obsessive, accusing her of trying to take Rebecca’s place when no one can and reminiscing about her former employer in a way that borders on love. She says Maxim will always love Rebecca because “she had all the courage and spirit of a boy.” She talks about their evening routine, how she would brush her hair and shows how sheer her lingerie and nightwear were. She was so perfect every man loved her – Maxim, Frank Crawley the estate manager and even her own cousin Jack Favell. She drove them mad with jealousy but ‘it was all a game to her.” She came to ‘Danny’ and laughed at them all. There are definitely sapphic overtones here, but as Mrs de Winter looks out of the open window her voice changes and becomes soft and suggestive. “Why don’t you go? … He doesn’t want you, he never did. He can’t forget her… It’s you who ought to be dead, not Mrs. de Winter.” As they look down to the terrace, way below; Mrs. Danvers urges her to jump, to end it all on the stones below. “There’s not much for you to live for,” she insists, “Why don’t you jump now and have done with it?” Her voice is hypnotic and the heroine looks down and considers jumping. Suddenly, a bang signals a ship that’s run aground in the cove and she’s shaken out of her trance. This is such a creepy and emotionally manipulative scene, adapted perfectly in the 1940s Hitchcock version of Rebecca with the perfect Mrs Danvers.

The Letter Scene – Persuasion by Jane Austen

Oh I do love this one of Jane Austen’s novels and the letter scene is one of the most romantic in all literature. After having his proposal refused by Anne Elliot, on some terribly bad advice from a friend, her suitor joins the Navy. He returns several years later and they are once again thrown into each other’s company. Anne is a little like Jane Eyre, in that her family think her plain and insignificant. She does not expect to get married now. When she and Captain Wentworth meet again they talk but there’s a reserve between them and although Anne knows her feelings haven’t changed she assumes his interest is in the younger ladies of their party. In a small gathering of people in Bath, Wentworth sits down at a desk in the corner and begins to write a letter. When he leaves Anne is surprised to find it’s for her and she could not have guessed the contents. *swoon*

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in 

F. W. 

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.  

The Kiss – A Room With A View by E.M.Forster

This beautiful scene in A Room With A View is one of the most romantic moments in all literature for me and it all starts with a mixed group going to see a view. Our heroine Lucy Honeychurch is with her chaperone Charlotte, a rather strait laced character who is surely one of the most annoying women in fiction. Joining them are the novelist Eleanor Lavish, Mr Beebe who is a vicar and another clergyman who lives in Florence and is giving directions. Much to the disgust of Charlotte, Mr Beebe has also invited George Emerson and his father who they meet at dinner in their pensione. They committed a huge sin in Charlotte’s eyes of offering to swap rooms with the ladies, after overhearing Lucy complain they don’t have a view. The Emersons are of unknown origin and George has a job with the railways, definitely not the sort of people the Honeychurches would usually associate with. There is an argument because one of their drivers has brought along his girlfriend. They are flirting together and he has placed his arm round her, keeping her close. The Florentine vicar insists they stop and the girlfriend must walk behind because their behaviour is unseemly. Mr Beebe objects, surely they are doing no harm. This exchange is there to signal where the line is for different classes of people, the young couple are acting completely normally, but stiff Edwardian etiquette deems it unsuitable in the presence of a young woman like Lucy. When Eleanor and Charlotte are sitting in a field, gossiping, Charlotte becomes aware that Lucy is listening and suggests she look for Mr Beebe. With her rudimentary Italian Lucy asks the driver whether he knows where the gentlemen are and he directs her towards a field full of flowers:

“She wandered as though in a dream, through the wavering sea of barley, touched with crimson stains of poppies. All unobserved, he came to her…There came from his lips no wordy protestations such as formal lovers use. No eloquence was his, nor did he suffer for lack of it. He simply enfolded her in his manly arms…”

This scene in the Merchant Ivory adaptation, with Helena Bonham Carter as Lucy and the late Julian Sands as George is depicted in a field of poppies and the chemistry is off the charts.

Pip Meets Miss Havisham – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

There’s no shortage of unusual and tragic women in Dickens but Miss Havisham is an absolutely glorious creation. That first meeting, when Pip is only a child is one of the best entrances in literature and I don’t need to add anything.

“In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see. She was dressed in rich materials—satins, and lace, and silks—all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on—the other was on the table near her hand—her veil was half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.

“But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the round figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone.”

“Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could.”

The Wedding Eve Dream – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Mr Rochester’s courting of his employee, the governess Jane Eyre, is certainly unorthodox and in a modern context throws up so many concerns – the deceit, manipulation, blowing hot and cold, not to mention disguising himself as a gypsy to tell her fortune. Very odd indeed. But all that is nothing when we learn of his treatment of Bertha Mason, his imprisoned and allegedly insane wife. On the eve of their wedding, Jane is ignorant of all this and is going to sleep with her dress and veil hung on the wardrobe, ready for the morning. When she wakes it is still night but candle is lit and someone is in the room.

“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell… Fearful and ghastly to me—oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments… This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow fur­ rowed; the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes.”

There’s so much to take apart in this incident from Bertha being without the normal garments a proper woman would wear. She is unkempt and the words used, such as ‘blackened’, ’discoloured’ and ‘savage’, can be debated by post-colonial students for hours. There’s also an interesting doubling going on, is Bertha a version of what the young, passionate Jane could become if she doesn’t keep her feelings in check? She mistakes her for the Vampyre, recently written about by Polidori, but this is the culmination of several haunted or violent incidents at Thornfield Hall. Strangely, Mr Rochester thanks God that Jane did not come to any harm. However, the visitor did take her veil and tore it completely in two. This was no dream.

Angel and Tess at Stonehenge – Tess of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Tess is such an awfully tragic tale and it drives me crazy that she isn’t better supported by her family, when they are the ones who put her in the path of creepy Alec D’urberville in the first place. Even worse, by terrible quirk of fate, when she gets a second chance with Angel Clare and decides to tell him about her past it doesn’t go to plan. She writes everything in a letter and slips it under his door the night before the wedding. She assumes he’s seen it and they marry, but we know the letter has been hidden under a mat at the door. When he hears the truth he leaves, so Tess feels she has no choice but to go back to Alec for protection. I would love to give Angel Clare a slap or two. The final scene, where Tess and Angel are reunited but fleeing from the law, they rest at Stonehenge. Setting aside everything that happens afterwards, I find this scene devastating. Tess is a woman abused and brought low by men. Her life has been so tragically hard and sad she feels that all she deserves are those few hours of happiness she has spent with Angel.

“He heard something behind him, the brush of feet. Turning, he saw over the prostrate columns another figure; then before he was aware, another was at hand on the right, under a trilithon, and another on the left. The dawn shone full on the front of the man westward, and Clare could discern from this that he was tall, and walked as if trained. They all closed in with evident purpose. Her story then was true! Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon, loose stone, means of escape, anything. By this time the nearest man was upon him. 

“It is no use, sir,” he said. “There are sixteen of us on the Plain, and the whole country is reared.” 

“Let her finish her sleep!” he implored in a whisper of the men as they gathered round. 

When they saw where she lay, which they had not done till then, they showed no objection, and stood watching her, as still as the pillars around. He went to the stone and bent over her, holding one poor little hand; her breathing now was quick and small, like that of a lesser creature than a woman. All waited in the growing light, their faces and hands as if they were silvered, the remainder of their figures dark, the stones glistening green-gray, the Plain still a mass of shade. Soon the light was strong, and a ray shone upon her unconscious form, peering under her eyelids and waking her. 

“What is it, Angel?” she said, starting up. “Have they come for me?” 

“Yes, dearest,” he said. “They have come.” 

“It is as it should be,” she murmured. “Angel, I am almost glad—yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!” 

She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved. 

“I am ready,” she said quietly.”

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I blame Lewis Carroll for so many things – my fascination with weird looking birds, taxidermy, anthropomorphic animals and my collection of hares. I have dodos, Alice tea sets, several hares including a bespoke Mad March Hare complete with Victorian dress, top and pocket watch, and a five foot white rabbit who stands in the hall. The tea scene is definitely my favourite and it doesn’t require explanation. Just to say, the pictures underneath are from an Alice themed afternoon tea at The Sanderson hotel in London. Utterly brilliant afternoon and less grumpy than this one:

“There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. “Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,” thought Alice; “only, as it’s asleep, I suppose it doesn’t mind.”

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: “No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming. “There’s plenty of room!” said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.

“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.

“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” said Alice angrily.

“It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,” said the March Hare”.

Posted in Ten on Tuesday

Ten on Tuesday: Ten Books With Incredible Twists 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

There are so many books billed as having killer twists these days that this should be an easy list to produce. What I wanted to do was focus on books that genuinely made me do a double take, where I went back a couple of pages to make sure I’d read it correctly. These are twists I absolutely didn’t see coming and made my jaw drop or conjured up huge emotions. They’re the sort of twists that have you recommending the book to everyone and it’s no surprise that quite a few have been adapted for film or television streaming services. As the ‘twist’ is usually reserved for crime fiction and thrillers I’ve added some that are historical fiction, love stories and sci-fi to mix things up a little. There are no spoilers here, just a synopsis and why you should read it if you haven’t already. Enjoy.

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl’s imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone. I remember going to see this at the cinema and people standing up and clapping at the end. It’s a rare thing to see in the cinema but it was so spontaneous. Similarly, if you’ve read the book I don’t think you can be anything but devastated by the twist. I first read this at university as part of my post-modern literature course and I loved the characters as well as Briony’s innocent but life-altering mistake. It’s amazing how differently we interpret things as children, especially the complexities of human relationships. Robbie and Celia will have their lives turned upside down as Briony tells us about that day that altered the course of all their histories. We follow their lives and how the consequences continue to affect all of them. This twist is not of the usual kind, it is emotional and devastating.

 

Sue has grown up among petty thieves in the dark underbelly of Victorian London, with her adopted mother, Mrs Sucksby, who is a “baby farmer”. One day they are visited by a confidence trickster known simply as “Gentleman” who has a devious plan for their consideration: he is trying to romance Maud Lily, a young naive lady who is heir to a fortune on the condition that she marries. She lives in a large house in the country and works as a secretary of sorts for her uncle. He is protective and keeps her close, so to be successful they must infiltrate the house. He proposes that Sue becomes Maud’s personal maid and once she is settled, gain the young woman’s trust. She must then convince Maud to take up an offer of marriage from a suitor named Richard Rivers, the ‘Gentleman.’ Once they have eloped he will declare Maud as mentally incompetent and commit her to an asylum taking charge of her inheritance. For her part in this plot, Gentleman promises Sue a reward.

At first their plans work well, but it isn’t long before Sue begins to have doubts. She is growing fond of Maud and realises she is not in love with Rivers at all. Actually Maud is terrified of him. Sue begins to fall in love with Maud herself, charmed by her innocence and lack of guile. It seems her feelings are returned, but as the girls consummate their relationship on the eve of Maud’s secret wedding, Sue doesn’t known how to stop the plan. The author splits the story between the two girls and there’s absolutely no warning of the huge twist that’s about to come. This is a brilliant novel from Sarah Waters with an audacious twist that’s one of the best in literary fiction.

 

Alicia Berenson seems to lead a charmed life. She’s a famous painter and her husband is an in-demand fashion photographer. The couple live in a smart house overlooking the park in a desirable area of London. Yet, one evening, when her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion campaign, Alicia shoots him five times in the face. Since that day she has never spoken another word.

Alicia’s refusal or inability to talk turns this domestic tragedy into public property and casts Alicia into notoriety. Her art prices go through the roof, and she is known as the silent patient, hidden away from the tabloids at the Grove, a secure forensic unit. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist and he has waited a long time for an opportunity to work with Alicia. He is determined to get her talking again and unravel the mystery of why she murdered her husband becomes an all consuming search for the truth…. I still love this book years on and I’m very excited to see the film when it comes out. This twist was so good I actually swore out loud! I know that a book has me in its grip when I respond out loud. The author plays on the readers’ expectations of the characters in a clever way. If you haven’t read this yet where have you been?

 

From the outside, Emma has the dream life – a loving husband, a beautiful house, two gorgeous children.

But something is keeping Emma awake.

Scratching at her sanity at 1am.

She’s tried so hard to bury the past, to protect her family. But witching hour loves a secret – and Emma’s is the stuff of nightmares …

This is such a great read and I remember shouting about it a lot. I wasn’t surprised when it was adapted for television. The way Emma disintegrates over the course of a few days is shocking, but believable. Until now Emma has prided herself on being a competent solicitor, very organised and together. I was desperate to find out what happened in their childhood and why her sister Phoebe popped up at this moment. I did feel there was an element of her not processing her childhood trauma. She’s locked it away in the back of her mind, but Phoebe’s appearance and advice that she should visit their mother seems like the trigger that unlocks these memories. What the author does, very cleverly, is muddy the waters; just as I was starting to think Emma was having a breakdown, other things start happening. Her young son keeps creating a strange macabre drawing of a terrible memory that haunts Emma. How could he know? Who has told him this happened? Her dictated letters have turned into a mumbled series of numbers when her secretary plays back the dictaphone. Added to these seemingly inexplicable events the author throws in a number of outside stresses At work she is trying to avoid the advances of a client, his ex-wife confronts Emma over losing custody of their boys. It becomes hard for the reader to see which events can be explained away, which are normal daily obstacles made worse by Emma’s severe sleep deprivation and which are incredibly strange. I was never fully sure what was real and what was imagined or who was to blame. This twist is so clever because the author uses our psychological knowledge and our expectations of thrillers to keep us looking elsewhere. Very clever indeed.

Memories define us.

So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love – all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story.

Welcome to Christine’s life.

I can’t believe this book is 12 years old this year! It was also S.J. Watson’s debut novel. Christine wakes up every morning with no memory of her life, helped by the notes her husband leaves for her to find she tries to navigate life where every day is finite and nothing is retained. One day a strange doctor visits with what he says is a private journal she has been writing while they work together. It is the first sign we have that not everything is at it seems and for Christine, the terrifying thought that she cannot trust the person she’s supposed to feel safe with. This is a very creepy and unsettling novel and the tension is stretched to breaking point because we know that as night draw in Christine will soon go back to sleep and lose everything she has learned. I felt like this was more of a slow release twist, but the horror definitely builds towards the end and I was completely engrossed. Again it was no surprise that this was picked up by a film company and the film is pretty good too.

 

Our narrator Fern Dostoy is a writer, one of the ‘big four’ novelists of the not too distant future. This is a future where the Anti-Fiction Movement’s campaign to have all fiction banned has been successful. It was Fern’s third novel, Technological Amazingness, that was cited as a dangerous fiction likely to mislead and possibly incite dissent in it’s readers. She had created a dystopian future where two major policies were being adopted as standard practice. To avoid poor surgical outcomes, only patients who are dead can have an operation. Secondly, every so often, families would be called upon to nominate one family member for euthanasia – leading to the deaths of thousands of elderly and disabled people. All fiction authors, including Fern, are banned from writing and the only books on sale are non-fiction. The message is that fiction is bad for you. It lies to the reader giving them misleading ideas about the world and how it’s run. Facts are safe, but of course that view is limited to those supplying the facts. AllBooks dominated the market for books until it became the only bookshop left, state sanctioned of course and only selling non-fiction. From time to time they hold a book amnesty where people can take their old, hidden novels to be pulped. Fern now cleans at a hospital and receives unannounced home visits from compliance officers who question her and search her house to ensure she’s not writing. Added to this dystopian nightmare are a door to door tea salesman, an underground bedtime story organisation, a mysterious appearing and disappearing blue and white trainer, re-education camps for non-compliant writers and a boy called Hunter. All the time I was reading about this terrible new world, I was taking in the details. and trying to imagine living in it. I also had an underlying sense that something wasn’t quite right with this story. When this twist comes it is astonishing, gut wrenching and reduced me to tears. An incredibly well written book about facts that is all about feelings.

Cole is the perfect husband: a romantic, supportive of his wife, Mel’s career, keen to be a hands-on dad, not a big drinker. A good guy.

So when Mel leaves him, he’s floored. She was lucky to be with a man like him.Craving solitude, he accepts a job on the coast and quickly settles into his new life where he meets reclusive artist Lennie.

Lennie has made the same move for similar reasons. She is living in a crumbling cottage on the edge of a nearby cliff. It’s an undeniably scary location, but sometimes you have to face your fears to get past them.

As their relationship develops, two young women go missing while on a walk protesting gendered violence, right by where Cole and Lennie live. Finding themselves at the heart of a police investigation and media frenzy, it soon becomes clear that they don’t know each other very well at all.

Wow! This blows your eyes wide open. I warn you not to start reading at night, unless like me you have a total disregard for the next morning. If I wasn’t reading this, I was thinking about it. I loved the way the author put her story together, using fragments from lots of different stories and different narrators. Just when we get used to one and start to see their point of view, the perspective shifts. I thought this added to the immediacy of the novel, but also reflected the constant bombardment of information and misinformation we sift through every day, with transcripts of radio shows and podcasts, Twitter threads and TV interviews. All give a perspective or commentary on the casual misogyny and violence against women that almost seems like the norm these days. It felt like a merry-go-ground of opinion, counter argument and trolling. Sometimes you’re left so twisted around you’re not sure what you think any more. I would believe one narrator, but then later revelations would blow what I thought right out of the water. It made me ask questions: about the nature of art and its ethics; about whether all men truly hate women; to what lengths do we go to protest; when is enough, enough? This controversial story was one of my reads of 2024 and I still think about it.  

I didn’t expect a twist in a love story, but this is part love story and part mystery. Imagine you meet a man, spend seven glorious days together, and fall in love. And it’s mutual: you’ve never been so certain of anything. But after this whirlwind romance, he doesn’t call. You’ve been ghosted.

Your friends tell you to forget him, but you know they’re wrong – something must have happened, there must be a reason for his silence. What do you do when you finally discover you’re right?

Sarah met Eddie by chance on a country road while she was visiting her parents. She still thinks Eddie just might be the one. Could the Eddie she met really be a heartless playboy who never intended to call? Did Sarah do something wrong? Or has something terrible happened to him? Instead of listening to friends and writing this off as a one night stand, Sarah begins to obsess and is determined to find the answer. Every clue she has comes to a dead end and she is in danger of completely losing her dignity. As her time back home in the UK starts to run out, Sarah looks for clues to track Eddie down. What she hears is confusing her further. His friend doesn’t give the simple answer, that Eddie has moved on, but gives her a warning; if she knows what’s best for her, she needs to stop looking for Eddie. I never expected the twist in this story and all the time I was convinced of Sarah’s sense of ‘rightness’ to their meeting. As the months pass though, will she have to move on with her life? This novel is fully of emotion and the different ways life’s troubles affect us. It has everything you would expect from a romantic novel but with a healthy dose of realism and a smidgen of hope.

 

Marissa and Mathew Bishop seem like the golden couple – until Marissa cheats. She wants to repair things, both because she loves her husband and for the sake of their eight-year-old son. After a friend forwards an article about Avery, Marissa takes a chance on this maverick therapist who lost her licence due to her controversial methods.

If Avery Chambers can’t fix you in ten sessions, she won’t take you on as a client. She helps people overcome everything, from anxiety to domineering parents. Her successes almost help her absorb the emptiness she feels since her husband’s death.

When the Bishops glide through Avery’s door, all three are immediately set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.

The authors use alternate perspectives to drip feed details of this couple’s relationship and the events leading up to Marissa’s infidelity. It is compelling and really captures the intricacies of counselling a couple and the need to read body language and expression, not only of the person who’s speaking but their partner. I loved how therapy progressed the issues within the marriage, which are always somewhat different to the presenting issue. This was a clever thriller that showed just how complex we are psychologically.

 

If you feel like delving into a classic this could be for you. The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. He’s been engaged as a drawing master for the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Sir Percival Glyde’s new wife and they’re often accompanied by her sister Marian. Walter slowly becomes drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival and his ‘charming’ and rather eccentric friend Count Fosco, who keeps white mice in his waistcoat pocket and enjoys both vanilla bonbons and poison. The novel pursues questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism, known as sensation fiction. This book is the Victorian equivalent of our psychological thrillers, but could just as easily be described as crime or mystery fiction and even has a feminist slant. Be sure to take note of every small occurrence because the novel is plotted so precisely that everything has a meaning. Again we’re dealing with men’s attitudes and behaviour towards women, but Marian is more than a match for any man and is one of fiction’s first female detectives. I love a gothic novel and this has everything from ghostly encounters, to stately homes and damsels in distress. I believe this book is the inspiration for so many detective novels and its category of ‘sensation fiction’ is very apt because it employs a twist I’ve read variations on ever since.

A few more unusual twists:

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

Life of Pi by Yan Martel

Fight Club by Chuck Palhaniuk

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

.