Emily is a children’s illustrator, who spent her childhood in Hawke’s Bay but now lives in London. One evening she receives a call from her father’s neighbour, Raewynn, letting her know that his Alzheimer’s has progressed and he needs a little help. Despite both her brother and sister still living in New Zealand, Raewynn thinks Emily is the one best disposed to make the right decision. Emily’s father is well known in the area and is still known as Dr. Fitzgerald despite his retirement. He still lives on the family’s homestead with his two dogs and next door Raewynn and her son Ira who rents and farms the Arapito land. Until now they’ve managed to look after Dr. Fitzgerald, but trusting Raewynn’s opinion Emily decides to travel to New Zealand and check on her father.
When she arrives she knows all is not well. She realises her father has become very adept at seeming okay. He’s worked out which stock questions to ask when someone’s on the phone, using listening skills to let the caller think they’ve had a deep conversation. She thinks he’s rather like a magician, creating a Dr Fitzgerald who everyone knows and recognises, while underneath feeling confused, bewildered and frightened. As Emily spends time in her childhood home, memories rise to the surface: the unhappiness of her mother; her father’s distraction and avoidance of his family; the terrible state of Manu, Raewynn’s husband, who deteriorated and died from Huntington’s; the disappearance of Raewynn’s daughter Leah, who was lost on their range of mountains and has never been found. Emily was the last one to see Leah alive and the loss of this vibrant and beautiful girl still haunts the whole valley, including Emily’s father.
Norman writes about Alzheimer’s with knowledge and compassion. I spent some time working in nursing homes and Dr Fitzgerald is in the cruellest stage of his disease; he knows it is happening and he’s embarrassed, scared and exhausted from trying to appear like his old self. As Raewynn observes, it will be a blessing when he’s gone past this stage and reaches the place where he doesn’t remember his old self any more. It’s like watching the tide recede and as Emily settles in she can see this happening, layers and layers of what she recognises as her dad slowly drifting away towards the evening and then rolling back in the next morning when he’s at his most lucid. She can see the symptom of ‘sun downing’ as her dad becomes more anxious and confused in the evening. Then there are terrifying nights where he wakes screaming, doesn’t recognise her and can become violent. Then there are the family conflicts over care, as her brother and sister feel he would be better off in the ominous sounding St. Patrick’s where he’d be safe. Of course the other benefit to St.Patrick’s is that the house and land could be sold, meaning they would receive their inheritance. Emily doesn’t want to think her siblings are mercenary, but they have always stuck together and don’t have any interest in the land or the family’s long relationship with Raewynn and Ira who farm their land.
I had a huge soft spot for Raewynn, she feels like a real ‘earth mother’ type of woman and is a pillar of quiet strength. It takes a strong woman to come through the slow deterioration of her husband’s health, until he wasn’t the man she loved any more. She doesn’t complain and they all loved him fiercely, but those who know the family closely, know how much Manu’s illness took out of them all. For them to go through the loss of Leah only two years later seems unspeakably cruel. For Emily there is survivor’s guilt and her sadness for Ira, who was her best friend. Now there may be change coming, on the twenty year anniversary of her disappearance. Raewynn and Emily are interviewed, in the hope of jogging someone’s memory, that a change of allegiance might urge someone to talk, or that someone’s conscience finally forces someone to speak. In the meantime Emily is battling her siblings over her father’s wishes. Firstly, he gives her a living Will drawn up by his solicitor and much to her surprise, the person he wants to speak for him at the end, is Emily. It’s a revelation that her rather remote and unavailable father trusts her to do the right thing. It’s also a revelation that he’s been keeping a file of her memories in the box next to his bed, all the way back to her hospital baby bracelet. However, this isn’t the only revelation in the box and what Emily finds here will blow so many lives wide open.
This is what Charity Norman does best. She shows how relationship dynamics change and even break when something unexpected happens. Her characters are real, because they are so well constructed psychologically. Her sense of place is also incredible from the forbidding mountain range that backdrops the farm, to the bitter cold and the incredible micro-climate of a lush gully and waterfall hidden away. Oh how unbelievably emotional I felt at the end of this book, not just a lump in my throat, but actual tears. Yet I also felt such a feeling of ‘rightness’ that it ended the way it should. I was also deeply touched by the unique combination of Haka and bagpipes at Leah’s memorial. The New Zealanders I know seem to celebrate people for their unique traits and this memorial took me back to my brother in law’s funeral in Gisborne where a chainsaw and work boots adorned the coffin and the guttural roar of a stag heralded his departure. This writer is one of my favourites, because she understands the uniqueness of human beings, their incredible strengths and their hidden weaknesses. There is such emotional intelligence in this latest novel and it was my absolute pleasure to read it.
Meet The Author
Charity Norman was born in Uganda and brought up in successive draughty vicarages in Yorkshire and Birmingham. After several years’ travel she became a barrister, specialising in crime and family law. In 2002, realising that her three children had barely met her, she took a break from the law and moved with her family to New Zealand. REMEMBER ME is her seventh novel.
With every misfortune there is a blessing and within every blessing, the seeds of misfortune, and so it goes, until the end of time.
It is 1938 in China, and the Japanese are advancing. A young mother, Meilin, is forced to flee her burning city with her four-year-old son, Renshu, and embark on an epic journey across China. For comfort, they turn to their most treasured possession – a beautifully illustrated hand scroll. Its ancient fables offer solace and wisdom as they travel through their ravaged country, seeking refuge.
Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. His daughter is desperate to understand her heritage, but he refuses to talk about his childhood. How can he keep his family safe in this new land when the weight of his history threatens to drag them down?
Spanning continents and generations, Peach Blossom Spring is a bold and moving look at the history of modern China, told through the story of one family. It’s about the power of our past, the hope for a better future, and the search for a place to call home.
As they are torn from the only home he has ever known, Renshu’s mother Meilin, tells him stories from a scroll she has carried with them as their most precious possession. One story she tells is that of Peach Blossom Spring, a fisherman passes through a cave that becomes so narrow he can only just squeeze to the other side. There he finds a kind of Eden, with flowering peach trees and the all the wonders of nature. It’s a peaceful place, but eventually there is a dilemma to solve. Once he leaves this place, he cannot return. If he stays, he can never return to his old life. Meilin tells him the fisherman stays and builds a life in this new place, leaving everything that came before. The book is divided into sections from WW2 to the latter part of the 20th Century, as we follow events from China when Renshu is a little boy, to his middle age and the life of his daughter Lily in the USA. This structure shows how his early experiences shape the man he becomes, but also the parent he becomes and the daughter he shapes along with his wife Rachel. The author weaves together themes of identity, women’s history, politics and conflict, as well as inter- generational trauma so beautifully, yet all the while framing Renshu’s life through this ancient Chinese story that’s still relevant today.
I think that reading this while watching the horrific images of war in Ukraine, really brought the plight of Meilin and her son more vividly to life for me. That fear, the desperation of grasping what you can, then running with only the things you carry. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. The trauma and displacement these characters, and the real people who inspired them, went through fleeing from city to city as the war crept closer and the only option was escape to Taiwan. The author’s descriptions of fire bombed cities, cramped underground shelters, and the terrifying trip down the white waters of a narrow river in a deep ravine conveyed the panic and desperation of Meilin and her family. I found the descriptions of sheltering underground so claustrophobic, with that many people crammed into the space the air becomes limited and the bombs above so loud you can’t even think. I could imagine being a child in that situation, totally powerless and trying to make sense of what you’re being told – that the dark, cramped space that scares you more than anything is the only thing that might keep you alive. Renshu’s panic is described so well I felt it, so it was no surprise when these panics resurfaced in middle age. Renshu (or Henry as he becomes known) is a curious, intelligent boy who loses his father before really knowing him and is reliant on his Mum for his very survival. We read these early turbulent experiences through Meilin’s eyes and what stayed with me so strongly was her quiet strength. There are situations where it is impossible to have a voice, where all she can do is endure. Through her section of the books what stayed with me is that the price of war is very different for women than it is for men.
Meilin does not even have time to process the loss of her husband, and has to live under the charity and protection of her brother- in -law. Even though he constantly tells her that they are family and it is his pleasure to look after them, she knows his wife does not feel the same way. She’s uncomfortable and thinks of returning to her own family, but in the chaos of conflict how does she know they’re even alive? The risks she takes to be independent from her husband’s family are huge and they don’t always pay off. I was particularly affected by the ordeal she endures while trying to sell their family scroll – the only thing of value they have left. Yet she’s resourceful, always looking for work and a roof over their heads, working hard to keep Renshu safe and financially provided for. All the sacrifices she is making for him, to go to a good school and university, are clouded by the painful realisation that every step of her effort will take him further away from her. She must be lonely, especially when the companionship and support she receives from other women is broken when their men slowly return. She learns to rely on herself instead of others, especially men who always want something in return and curtail her freedom. She only relies on her brother-in- law where she knows his government connections will help Renshu get to school in America. Yet she doesn’t take any of his offers for herself, of marriage and she never asks for anything from Renshu either. In the 1970s when President Carter wins the US election, then officially recognises the communist government of China, it’s Renshu who worries about bringing her to the US. In fact when they realise there’s a mix up in his own official paperwork, Meilin is quietly resigned to living out her days in Taiwan. She doesn’t seem angry at the ‘mistake’ made by her brother-in-law, even though I felt it was a deliberate ploy to keep her close by. All she asks is for Renshu to plant an orchard, but it will take several years for him to fully understand her meaning.
The settings are so incredibly full of life and it was fascinating to compare Renshu’s surroundings in China and Taiwan with his new home in America. I experience synaesthesia and I found the settings of Shanghai and Taiwan an overload on the senses. In fact when Renshu reached his lodgings in America it felt like a sudden silence as if I’d gone deaf. Renshu himself has to go outside and marvel at the quiet of his empty street with everyone inside their homes. Compared to Meilin’s visit to market, filled with people, vendors shouting, the colour and variety of produce, it seems to lack colour and life. I saw one place in colour and one in black and white. I wondered if the noise and bustle had simply followed on from the noises of war for Renshu, but in his first months in the US it is simply the sound of home. He might have experienced less culture shock in a bustling city like New York or Chicago, but in the mid-west it must have felt like the colour and music had been drained from the world. However, quiet doesn’t necessarily mean safe and there are insidious dangers in an anti-communist America of the 1950’s with McCarthyism in the air. Renshu’s Uncle has given him a contact in America who warns him of the dangers of seeming too sympathetic to his home country and it’s politics. He suggests he stick to Henry, the Western name that Renshu chose on a friend’s advice, but also to avoid gatherings with other Chinese students. Anything anti-Communist could see him in trouble with the government at home, whereas anything pro-Communist might mark him out as trouble to the American authorities. So, even as Henry, he is walking a tightrope, constantly on alert and perhaps missing out on friendships that might have made him less alone. His regular listening to Chopin in the university library is an expression of his emotions, he feels an affinity with the music as if it articulates something he can’t as yet.
In this epic story the author has beautifully portrayed inter-generational trauma, something that can’t be escaped no matter how many oceans you put between you and your past. There is a psychological theory that society’s seemingly expanding mental health issues are caused by trauma from as far back as the early Twentieth Century and is a legacy of two world wars. Men who went to war became distant and emotionally closed off fathers, a problem that then passes to another generation who don’t know how to be affectionate, emotional and available. The effect of that stiff upper lip mentality of the 1940s can be seen in a generation’s rebellion of the 1960’s. Just as the author describes the giant destructive force of the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, trauma creates a shockwave that rapidly spreads outward affecting everyone in its path. It takes a strong person to stand up and say I will not pass this trauma on to my children. Renshu is traumatised by war. His existence started with minute to minute thinking, the mind fully occupied with the basic needs of food, shelter and safety. Never in one place for long, Meilin and Renshu are powerless and can never really stop to enjoy any period of good fortune, because they know it can be taken away from them again in a click of the fingers. Meilin understands this. She sees that her boy has struggled to move fully away from that short term thinking – he has been able to have some aspirations though and the relative luxury of safety, a constant income and roof over his head, a long and happy marriage. Yet she sees that he still struggles to trust it all. This is why Meilin tells him to plant an orchard, because a man who plants an orchard knows there will be a tomorrow and that he will still be in the same place, watching them grow.
Meet The Author
Melissa Fu grew up in Northern New Mexico and now lives near Cambridge, UK, with her husband and children.With academic backgrounds in physics and English, she has worked in education as a teacher, curriculum developer, and consultant. Melissa was the regional winner of the Words and Women 2016 Prose Competition and was a 2017 Apprentice with the London-based Word Factory. Her work appears in several publications including The Lonely Crowd, International Literature Showcase, Bare Fiction, Wasafiri Online, and The Willowherb Review. In 2019, her debut poetry pamphlet, Falling Outside Eden, was published by the Hedgehog Poetry Press. In 2018/2019, Melissa received an Arts Council England, Developing Your Creative Practice grant and was the David TK Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia.
We bloggers like lists. Every year we list our favourites, then we list the books we most anticipate for the following year and to an extent that can dictate what we read. When we leave ourselves some gaps in the TBR to have a breathing space, browse and pick up what we fancy we can find unexpected gems. That’s what happened with Flamingo, the latest novel from Rachel Elliot and it really is a gem. I don’t know if I can find the right words to express how much I loved this book and why. I knew, just a few pages in, that it was going to be a joy to read. In split time frames, narrated mainly by Eve and Daniel we hear the story of two families who once lived next door to each other. Eve, and her six year old son Daniel, move in next door to Leslie and Sherry who have two daughters Rae and Pauline, and some ornamental flamingoes on their front lawn. Eve isn’t used to making friends because she and Daniel move around a lot, but for some reason Eve feels compelled to make an effort. She goes to a specialist off-licence to find just the right bottle of sherry as a witty present to take to her new neighbour. Sherry is delighted and immediately welcomes the wandering pair into her home. That summer is the happiest Eve and Daniel have ever had, as they are enveloped by this wild, eccentric and loud family – Eve uses the word rambunctious to describe them. Then Eve and Daniel leave and all the colours seem to bleach out of the world. We then meet Daniel as an adult, wandering and broken. Deeply affected by some kind words and affection from a woman in a public library, he decides to return to where he was happiest. He stands at Sherry’s door and it feels like coming home, but where is Eve and what is the real story underneath the fragments Daniel knows.
It’s disconcerting to read a character’s narration, and feel as though the author has opened up your head and borrowed your thoughts. That’s how I felt when reading Eve’s sections of the novel. I have a jumble of thoughts and ideas all at once, and I’ve learned that I need periods of quiet to counteract the amount of stimulation I have. If I go to London for the day and see a show, its exhausting and it can take a couple of days to quiet the jumble of sights, sounds, and inspiration. In fact it was using journal writing to process these thoughts that inspired me to use writing therapy in my practice as a counsellor. For years I thought everyone had my ‘busy brain’. When Eve visits the off—licence and meets the owner, Franklin, they have a shot of rum togther and she’s intoxicated by his shop, the coloured glass, the smells, the guitar playing and the wall of paintings in a back room. Eve notices all these things in seconds and Franklin asks if she likes the place.
“She tells him she likes it. It’s sort of hypnotic, like being in a chemists and a bar and a gallery all at once, and also sort of like being in church somehow, not that she ever goes to church, not that she’s religious, not that she ever goes to church, but a tiny old church in France maybe, not that she’s ever been to France”.
I loved the way the author expresses the speed of Eve’s thoughts and speech, where they come out too quickly for punctuation and you know she would have to take a deep breath at the end. I recognised it straight away, because it was me when I get enthusiastic and excited about something. In fact I sounded similar when telling my partner how much I loved the book. I know when I’m doing it, because it usually makes people smile. We learn so much about who Eve is from that one quote. I loved her enthusiasm, her eye for colour and her ability to make things. Sherry marvels when she mends Rae’s cords, by sewing a patch of Wonder Woman underneath the tear. Rae’s reaction is pure joy and Sherry is astounded that Eve has thought of such a thing, but to Eve it’s normal. She simply knew the cords needed mending and she had remembered that Rae loved Wonder Woman. It’s these little bursts of creativity and thoughtfulness that make her so endearing as a character. It probably stood out to me because I have just embroidered denim jackets for my stepdaughter’s birthdays – one of Frida Kahlo and one of Alice in Wonderland. What’s so special to Rae is that Eve has seen her, listened, and created something she would love.
These parts of the novel, where the characters connect, are its strength and it was no surprise to find out the author is also a psychotherapist. Rae is an introvert and Eve has seen and understood. She knows from Rae’s shining face that she loves the cords but understands the that Rae doesn’t want to be effusive about it, because it just isn’t her.
‘It’s her way to play things down; she is naturally reserved, understated or so it seems. Her mother, who expresses every emotion with intense theatricality, who takes up all the space, calls her eldest daughter the quiet one, as if this quietness is a kind of fragility – not a powerful act of disobedience and unruliness’.
Sometimes, in a house of very loud voices, whispering is the only way to be heard. Rae’s head is crammed with thoughts and it takes an awful lot of effort to keep them in sometimes and Eve has seen a kindred spirit in her.
Daniel is also a fascinating and the dynamic between him and his mum, suggests there’s more to their back story than meets the eye. He has an anxiety around people that concerns Eve and she is protective. Before they go to Sherry’s house for the first time, she prepares him for the social interaction. She wants to prepare him, but she also wants to be careful and avoid her own anxiety rubbing off on him. She explains that this is a thing people do, take a gift to their new neighbours and introduce themselves properly. At Sherry’s door she stands back with a reassuring hand on Daniel’s shoulder and talks about the ornamental flamingoes on the lawn. She tells him their collective noun is a flamboyance of flamingoes, a little game they play together. Eve is so surprised when Sherry opens the door and her boy walks straight in – ‘shy little Daniel stepping towards a stranger.’ Eve doesn’t seem to realise that Daniel is struggling with the impermanence of their lives; they have moved every year since Daniel was born. This was another thing I could identify with since we moved six times before I was in secondary school. I know how difficult it was to walk into a new classroom and see thirty pairs of eyes looking at you. Eve has a map on the kitchen wall and from time to time would simply close her eyes and pop a pin in it to choose their next destination. When she gives Daniel the chance to choose, it’s too much and his imagination runs haywire: what if there are monsters where he chooses? What if its horrible? What happens to their home? Will strangers take their things?
‘Trouble was she hadn’t left it up to chance. She had left it up to a six year old boy, who already hated that map on the wall. In some homes a map would evoke an atmosphere of learning, open-mindedness; lets be aware of the world, there are more places than home. But for Daniel it triggered fear and a sense of transience; always on the go, never know when’.
There are so many touching moments in the book I can’t possibly list them all, but the budding relationship between the boy Daniel and Sherry’s husband Leslie is just so moving. The confidence he gets from time spent with Leslie (who is not a girl) playing cards and learning to swim is obvious. When Leslie leaves the broken fence down so Daniel can appear from his garden and scare them at the window it feels different from other places they’ve been. Daniel blooms with this unconventional extended family and describes it to his Aunty as like having two homes. I was dreading the map coming out again. We meet adult Daniel at a crossroads in life physically and emotionally. As their tenancy ends on their flat, Daniel’s girlfriend Erica decides this is a good time to reassess their relationship and leaves. Instead of picking himself up, Daniel seems unable to cope with this double loss and ends up walking the streets with a rucksack and only a ceramic sheep for company. When he turns up at Sherry’s door she is blown away by the man he’s become, like a ‘matryoshka’ where she can see the boy inside the man and the woman inside the boy. I loved this description because it beautifully describes the ever changing selves inside us, but also the effect of previous generations and incarnations of who we are. Daniel is carrying so much more than his rucksack, but also the baggage of being left behind by the women in his life, the loss of this family where he felt at home and the original secret, the one that always compelled Eve to move them on, from place to place. Can this family, once again, give Daniel the space to heal and process a lifetime of hurt?
This is a slow burn novel, told in fragments like half forgotten memories and with such beauty it could be a poem. The writer conveys perfectly how certain people can hold space for and heal wounds in each other. Even if they’re only with us for a short time. In light of recent events it’s important to remember that to live fully we must connect with each other. The book shows humans in their best light and at their most powerful, when showing love and accepting others for who they are. When Daniel is a child he is taught that flamingoes are not actually born pink, but attain their colour through their diet. Their beauty comes from what’s put into them and humans are the same – we are the sum of what we are fed from parents and caregivers right through to a kind woman in a library acknowledging Daniel’s suffering. Through Daniel, and Rae to an extent, there’s an acknowledgment of how painful this life can be, but that healing and change is possible. I was enchanted by this story and it will keep a special place in my heart.
In the garden, there were three flamingos. Not real flamingos, but real emblems, real gateways to a time when life was impossibly good. They were mascots, symbols of hope. Something for a boy to confide in.
Meet The Author
Rachel Elliott is the author of WHISPERS THROUGH A MEGAPHONE (2015, Pushkin Press, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016) and DO NOT FEED THE BEAR (2019, Tinder Press). Her third novel, FLAMINGO, was published on 3 Feb 2022 by Tinder Press and is out now in hardback, ebook & audiobook. She is also a psychotherapist.
‘Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.’
Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth. But the sisters’ campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe’s darkest history and sends them back to roots they’d much rather forget . .
My Thoughts
The second phone call came a few days after the first. ‘Tell me, Nadezhda, do you think it would be possible for a man of eighty-four to father a child?’
I love this unexpected question early on in the novel, coming from Nadezhda’s elderly father out of the blue. It’s not the sort of question I’d expect from my father, but as our narrator Nadezhda points out, her father is always straight to the point and when he’s in the grip of a big idea never bothers with small talk or enquiries about her health. My mum read this first and told me I needed to read it. Within a couple of pages I knew why, Nadezha’s father was an elderly Ukrainian engineer, widowed for several years, with a penchant for tractors and straight talking. I was laughing out loud within pages, I couldn’t believe Marina Lewycka had conjured this man out of her imagination, especially since he was sitting on my sofa reading his daily paper.
My father-in-law came to live with us in Spring 2004. The plan was that he would spend summers with us and winters in New Zealand with his other son and family. My husband’s family were from Poland, relocated as children from Poland to England, his father escaped from a labour camp in Siberia. So, not exactly the same story as Nadezhda’s father, but his speech, mannerisms and preoccupations were eerily similar. I should just say that my father-in-law would have been horrified to be propositioned by a woman thirty years his junior. He wore his wedding ring until the day he died, at least twenty years after his wife was killed in a car accident. We didn’t always see eye to eye. However, some of the things that drove me insane when we lived together, became rather endearing and even downright hilarious with time. Blunt speech was a trademark of his, to the point of seeming rude in some cases. Yet, when told someone was offended by his comment, he would say ‘but it was correct, yes?’
One favourite lunch party dissolved into disbelief and giggles when he addressed his godson’s wife and suggested she might be more comfortable sitting on his chair than the kitchen stool since she had a ‘much larger’ bottom than him. He was bewildered by the reaction, believing he was being chivalrous by offering her the dining chair and because she did, in fact, have a much larger bottom. I realised this was a preoccupation of his when he came to visit us proffering a carefully cut out article from his daily paper for me. The subject was scientific research that found women with larger bottoms had longer lives than apple shaped women who stored fat round their middle. He was very happy with his discovery, humming away to himself in the kitchen, as my father and I shut ourselves in the bathroom laughing uncontrollably so we didn’t offend him. I hadn’t realised he was very appreciative of this body type until he asked me to look up the journalist Victoria Derbyshire. He had been listening to her on the radio for some time, but had never seen her in person and despite his son being the director of the media lab at a university he wasn’t up to speed with using the internet yet. I showed him her photograph and he shrugged his shoulders mournfully saying he’d expected her to be a much rounder woman in general but specifically with a ‘much bigger bottom.’ It dawned on me that he felt this was a compliment, something he thought was vital to his idea of female beauty.
He also had a way of making even the most positive things sound like a problem. At a fancy dress party my husband and I threw at home, he watched me working all day to put together a buffet for the guests. Finally, just before people started arriving, he asked if he could take a picture of the buffet table. My husband seemed to think he was impressed by the spread, but his face seem to suggest he was inwardly struggling with what to say. Finally he sighed deeply and said ‘but so much food, how can one possibly choose?’ Later, I received in the post a printed copy of his photograph of the food, showing me that it was important to him. After learning more about his family struggles during the war, and the death of his brother as they were hiding in the Siberian forests, I understood more deeply his utter disbelief at so much choice when weighed against the constant hunger he remembered feeling. Nadezhda tells us about her father’s specialty of ‘Toshiba’ apples – chopped Bramley apples nuked so thoroughly in the microwave they became apple sauce. This was a speciality of my father-in-law with apples that were so hot, they were still cooking in the desert bowl half an hour later. If he wanted to cool food he had a brilliant idea. My brother-in-law had been living. with his father for many years. He was a tree surgeon and had built what they called ‘the cage’ attached to the back of the house. This was a dog run, padlocked and used as a store for chainsaws and other equipment. Any food that needed to cool was placed in the cage on an upturned tree stump, open to the elements on all sides, but sheltered by a roof and away from foraging animals. This made perfect sense in practice, but always caused questions at the dinner table from guests baffled by the instruction ‘fetch the pie from the cage’.
Nadezhda’s father is proud of his late wife’s ability to forage and preserve food to last into the winter season. There is a pantry of store bought supplies, boxes of preserves and fermenting alcohol under the bed, plus a deep freeze full of vegetables and individually portioned meals. Everything labelled and rotated by date.
The only way to outwit hunger is to save and accumulate, so that there is always something tucked away. […] What she couldn’t make had to be bought second hand. If you had to get it new, it had to be the cheapest money could buy, preferably reduced or a bargain. Fruit that was on the turn, tins that were dented, patterns that were out of date, last year’s style. It didn’t matter, we weren’t proud, we weren’t some foolish types who wasted money for the sake of appearance, Mother said, when every cultured person knows what really matters is what’s inside.’
It took three visits for me to work out that what I thought was a kitchen island, in Aleks’s kitchen, was actually a deep freeze with a loose work top laid over it. When he was out we looked in it to find portioned meals labelled by Jez’s mother who had died ten years previously. I thought it was grief that kept the freezer lid closed and it was in part. It was also a survival instinct of someone who had known hunger and that those closest to you, the people you depend on, could be taken from you without warning. All starting with a terrifying knock on the door. Aleks’s father was in the Polish military, shot by the Russians and his family marched to a Siberian labour camp. By the time they escaped and joined the Resistance in a forest camp there was only Aleks and his mother left alive. Behind the comic elements of her book, the author is telling a similar story of political fanaticism, social upheaval, hunger, displacement and terrible loss. I was more understanding when I he told me about his conversation with my sister -in-law who had just bought a property in New Zealand. Apparently, he was most impressed by how quickly his son had ploughed up the tennis courts and planted potatoes.
The part I find most sad, both in the book and for my father-in-law, is that the homeland they crave and hold in their hearts and minds no longer exists. Alek would have been ten when he left Poland, but the Poland he left isn’t there waiting for him. Nadezhda’s father talks at length about a Ukraine that was forty or even fifty years ago. He wants to save one person from the tyranny of communism and give them the freedom of a life in this country. In his head he imagines tyrannical politicians controlling the people, but also the Pastoral beauty of his home country. He will rescue Valentina and in return she will bring to him the Ukraine of his youth with golden wheat fields, lush forests and flowing rivers. Nadezhda who has visited more recently remembers concrete tower blocks and polluted rivers full of dead fish. She tries to tell him that the people are no longer noble peasants, they are consumers longing for Western designer goods. Within weeks of them marrying Valentina has insisted on her own car – ‘not just any old car either. Must be good car. Must be Mercedes or Jaguar at least.’ She also wants second car, for when she’s in the Ukraine. Then it’s the cooker, three rings are not working, but ‘it must be prestigious cooker, must be gas. Must be brown.’ When Nikolai objects because the brown one isn’t on offer, she won’t let it go. He wants her to have ‘crap cooker’ because he is ‘no good meanie’. In the meantime Nadezhda starts to ask for legal advice on her father’s behalf, because there must be a divorce and they can’t bear the thought of this woman owning half of their mother’s things.
I thank the Lord we never had a Valentina to contend with. We sometimes hoped he would find someone, to ease the loneliness and take his head out of the past. The wardrobes full of his mother’s furs and Hanna’s side of the bed, left as if she’d be coming back any moment. We simply didn’t understand each other. If my friends came round it was my welcome break from the care routine – my husband had MS and he was on palliative care – a space to unload a bit, but I couldn’t do that if my father-in-law was also pulling up a chair and joining in. Although I did have it easier than my sister-in-law who found he was in the room when she was on all fours in labour. We had long conversations on the phone where we would both complain that he found us too loud, too opinionated and in my case, a bit too Northern. She would complain that he never shared any praise or positive thoughts about her and I felt exactly the same. I did realise though that he was telling other people – I would tell Jenny that he was proud of her mothering skills and the way she was bringing up his grandsons. She would tell me that he was amazed at the strength I had to keep going, to look after Jerzy every day and not panic if things went wrong. I found that Alek and I bonded more after my husband died, with a shared grief and on his part an understanding and gratitude for the years I spent nursing ‘his boy’. He would ring me every Sunday morning until his eyesight failed him and I missed those calls so much when they were gone. Even now, when I think of him stroking the back of my head as I told him how his son died, it brings a lump to my throat. Every time I read this book it’s a bittersweet experience. It makes me laugh still. I think of all those funny stories and the times we shared, even the hard parts when we didn’t get along. I would do them all again just to spend time with this incredible man. As for Nadezhda and her father Nikolai, I won’t ruin the ending, but there are more twists and turns along the way. For me, every time I pick this book up, I get to spend a little more time with an incredible man who I miss every day.
I’ve been reading Kate Mosse since Labyrinth all those years ago and I’m always impressed by the level of detail and knowledge of French history she weaves into her books. Every detail is considered and you have the impression straight away that you’re in safe hands. In The City of Tears she combines her fictional narrative with fascinating real events focusing on the Catholic and Huguenot conflicts of the 16th Century. This is the second book in the Burning Chambers series and I did choose to go back and read the first book. However, due to Mosse’s ability to immerse you in her world, I think this could be read as a stand alone novel. It continues the adventures of Minou Reydon-Joubert and Piet Reydon, characters caught up in a period beset by complicated religious and political wars. Mosse walks the tightrope between these warring factions carefully, illustrating that there is honour and corruption on both sides, but keeping the focus on the family at the centre of these conflicts.
We return to the Languedoc region of France and the wars have now raged for ten years. It’s May 1572 and Minou and Piet travel with their two children, Marta and Jean Jacques, to Paris for the royal wedding of Charles IX’s sister, Catholic Marguerite de Valois, and Protestant Henry III of Navarre. This wedding has the political and religious benefits of uniting both Catholic and Protestant factions, so could mark the start of peace, but it’s a fragile accord. Piet’s old acquaintance Cardinal Valentin (Vidal) is in Paris too, but he’s now an enemy, unbeknownst to Piet he has a plan to kill all important Huguenots during the celebrations. The terrible violence that follows was known as the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and thousands of Huguenots were murdered. Seven year old Marta is separated from her parents in the chaos and goes missing. It’s a parent’s worst fear, but unable to find her, Minou and Piet have to flee the city without her. The pair are devastated as they cross the border and make their way to safety in Amsterdam. I loved the way Mosse depicted the strain this decision places on the couple’s relationship. They have managed to ensure the safety of their two year old son, but are filled with guilt for leaving their daughter behind.
Minou and Piet only return to France twelve years later after hearing of a woman who bears a resemblance to Minou. Could it be Marta? They have to take a chance and search for their daughter, but danger is still everywhere. They don’t know that family enemy Vidal is there, with his collection of fake relics, that he intends to use with the ambition of gaining power and position. He believes Piet is in possession of a stolen relic and is driven by bitterness and revenge. His evil nature and conviction he is carrying out God’s work, is beautifully offset by Minou who is a strong willed and opinionated woman doing the best for her family rather than a religion. Piet is also more logical and open-minded, he’s a Huguenot by religion, but doesn’t believe there is only one way to God, particularly when religious difference is used as an excuse to oppress and murder. The couple’s return has raised the tension and jeopardy for all their friends and family, and Mosse delivers some suspense filled twists and turns where the hunted and hunter just miss each other.
I felt like I was in the hands of a master storyteller here. Mosse is able to bring historical fiction to life, and really makes the reader care about the lives of people long gone. She delivers the drama at such a pace, her characters barely have time to draw breath. The depth of her research is truly impressive, even if sometimes I found myself having to read very carefully so I didn’t become confused – but that’s my failing, not hers. The family are so well drawn I truly cared about their outcome and the dynamics between them are written with emotional intelligence. The character’s emotions feel so real and add depth to an already absorbing story. My heart broke for Minou at the loss of her daughter, and I was so invested in her grief that I couldn’t see how she would adjust to living without her. The strain they were under and the constant danger they’re in added an intensity to Minou and Piet’s relationship that was so romantic. Mosse’s incredible skill is to make the reader care about and feel a connection with people who lived in the 16th Century. They are so different to us in dress, daily life and beliefs but the themes of family, parenthood and loss are so universal that they cross the centuries. It will be interesting to see where these fascinating characters go next.
Check out the other reviews from these great bloggers:
Meet The Author
Kate Mosse is a number one international bestselling novelist, playwright and non-fiction writer. The author of eightnovels and short story collections –including the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchreand Citadel) and Gothic fiction The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter, which she is adapting for the stage –her books have been translated into thirty-eightlanguages and published in more than forty countries. She is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a regular interviewer for theatre & fiction events. Kate divides her time between Chichester in West Sussex and Carcassonnen in south-west France.
I spent a lovely escapist couple of days reading about this interesting family of women all at a crossroads in life. Julia, great-grandmother and owner of the beautiful Wisteria House in the village of Rushbrook, has died. She has left behind four generations of women: grandmother Cherry who was a model in the 1960’s; mother Maggie, the redoubtable owner of a food PR company; daughter Rose who is a new mum and volunteers at the local homeless charity; finally there’s Gertie, three years old and the apple of everyone’s eye. Aside from great-grandmother Julia’s death and Gertie’s birth, this is a family facing a lot of change. Maggie is still mourning the death of the love of her life, husband Frank. It’s been a couple of years now, but both Maggie and Rose miss him every day. Maggie also faces change at work, as her apprentice has absconded taking some of the business with her. Rose has struggled with grief, but her job is giving her more confidence even though she cares and gets involved more than she should. Cherry is organising a party to celebrate her husband’s retirement, something she’s very good at. Mike is an artist and photographer, retiring from teaching and looking forward to spending more time travelling with Cherry. They just need to finish the sale of Cherry’s childhood home at Wisteria House, but Cherry sees something at the party that changes her mind and sets in place a new plan for all the women of the family.
The Swan is Rushbrook’s public house and has been a family haunt for as long as they can remember, from Cherry’s teens to recent family celebrations with her mother. In fact, even though they live in Avonminster, this village is very important to the women. Rose was particularly close with her great-grandmother and when she’s feeling anxious closes her eyes and imagines the smells of the roses in her garden. In fact Gertie is even named after two of her favourite roses from the garden at Wisteria House. The Swan has become run down since the landlord’s wife has been ill and on an impromptu visit he tells Cherry he’s going to sell The Swan. Cherry has just completed on Wisteria House and partly because of Mike’s party, but also because she wants to take on a project for herself, she buys the pub on impulse. She knows she can make it work, but what will Mike think? Also, how will she do this on her own? With both Maggie and Rose at a crossroads too, they decide to help and all three women uproot themselves and move to the boathouse behind the pub. Soon all three are busy: Cherry with the refurb; Maggie in the kitchens; Rose in the gardens. Can this team of women make The Swan a success?
I found this book a delight from start to finish, so uplifting and full of formidable female characters. Cherry is a ray of sunshine and I enjoyed going back to the 1960’s to her meeting with Mike. They’re a lovely couple who have been devoted to each other for years, but as they both face changes and keep secrets from one another, they might be looking at a different relationship going forward. Maggie is a force of nature, hard working and full of ideas for the menu. She’s also coping with complicated feelings, that pull between missing the person you’ve lost while also becoming excited about moving forward with your life. She’s attractive and dynamic so isn’t short of attention from men, but finds dipping her toe in the water more complicated than she expected. I loved Rose, she has such a big heart and is stronger than she imagines. Her move to Rushbrook is something of an escape from overstepping the boundaries with a homeless client. Rose’s story arc is uplifting and joyful, especially her struggles to understand anxiety and live with her negative inner voice. She also has a tiny hint of romance for good measure.
One of the most powerful aspects of this novel is the inter generational relationships, so it was interesting to read this alongside my Mum. These women are wonderfully open with each other, they give each other support both emotionally and to succeed in life. Their support for Rose as she becomes a young single mum is crucial to Gertie being the carefree little soul she is. I know this because my parents, especially my Mum, did the same for my brother as he became a father at 17. I know that the way my mum helped bring up my niece and nephew, has been the inspiration and example for my niece now that she’s an incredible mum to two small boys. People think it’s instinctive, but I can see both my parents in the way she plays with her boys and encourages their development. We are in the lucky position of having four generation of family and I love seeing my dad playing football with his great-grandsons.
I have a similar, very open relationship with my mum and now I’m older we really are friends. People are often surprised when I say my parents would be the first names I’d put on any party list and my mum comes to my book club, workshops and we go to meditation together. Then I sit back and watch how she nurtures the younger members of these groups, particularly those who struggle with depression or social anxieties. In the same way, I enjoyed reading about the effects these women have on the residents of the village, particularly the lovely Chloe. They provide work for some, start unexpected friendships with others and give the inspiration for some to make changes of their own. They really are a force for good and I was hoping they could make the pub a success, that it would become a community hub for the village and that Cherry and Mike would find a way to assimilate The Swan into their relationship. These relationships are underpinned by an incredibly picturesque village, wonderful descriptions of interior designs and stunning gardens that feed all the senses. This is a gem of a book, full of hope and with a great sense of fun. I loved reading and discussing it with my mum too. I found myself smiling all the way through and at the end I felt like I’d been on a lovely weekend away.
Meet The Author
Veronica Henry has worked as a scriptwriter for The Archers, Heartbeat and Holby City amongst many others, before turning to fiction. She won the 2014 RNA Novel of the Year Award for A Night on the Orient Express and is a Sunday Times bestselling author of over twenty books. Veronica lives with her family in a village in north Devon and can often be found cooking up the perfect seaside feast. Find out more at veronicahenry.co.uk or follow her on social media: @veronica_henry @veronicahenryauthor @veronicahenryauthor
‘The cargo door opens. It opens incrementally. It falls forward, away from us, into foreign day. There are men down there, stevedores in hi-viz and hardhats shouting to one another. I rotate the ignition to halfway, to check for evidence of light. The instrument panel flashes and falls still. There are chains. There is shrieking of iron like gates of hell. Then this fluorescence gradually floods the floor between rows and creeps towards us and feels warm.’
As soon as I read these lines, following Paddy as he and his lorry emerges from the ferry and out into the light, I knew the writing was going to be spectacular and that this was a poet’s novel. Paddy is travelling from England to France, with his stowaway daughter in tow. It’s hard to explain, but this is a book that manages to be both bitter and beautiful. There’s a bleakness to Paddy’s existence, but such a richness in the language used to describe it. It feels bang up to date too, despite the fact no pandemic is mentioned, the author captures a sense of unreality that is all too commonplace these days. The feeling that the world we know and understand has gone, and we are plunged into something other, like Alice down her rabbit hole. We Are Not In The World is an apt title indeed. We follow Paddy on his mundane journey, punctuated by graphic brief encounters and interactions with his daughter Kitty. However, we are also taken into Paddy’s memories of the past and into his relationships, which are largely disastrous. This is an intelligent rendering of psychological damage wrought within families. His marriage is broken, his brother is more successful than he is and there is a complex, almost Oedipal, relationship between him and his mother – also named Kitty. His daughter is wild and rebellious, and in another nod to Paddy’s mother, she wears her gran’s mink coat at all times.
This is not an easy read, but the right readers will love it. Having searched out some of the author’s poetry, it’s clear that the novel touches on some of the same themes. Family and sibling rivalry are represented in Paddy’s relationship with his brother. There’s a jealousy of his apparent successes, but Paddy has still made him the godfather of his daughter. There’s a sense that family is inevitable and no matter how much we wish to escape it we can’t. Separation is explored too – separateness from the land where he grew up, from family and even from his own self. There’s a sense of wanting to be home, but not being able to and the feeling of homesickness that pervades Paddy’s daily existence. He describes it as like a ‘low level virus’ that he permanently lives with. To me it felt like a low-level depression, one that would drop under the radar of most GP’s charts, but is debilitating nonetheless. There’s a numbness in Paddy. He’s on auto-pilot in his daily life, only living in his head until an interaction jolts him out of his memories. The separateness he describes is something I’ve felt when depressed or going through grief. I was physically in the world, but felt no connection to my surroundings or other people. It was like looking at the world through glass.
The only thing Paddy seems to look forward to is some sort of homecoming. He looks at the family home of Tír na nÓg as both a rose-tinted past and a future redemption. Situated on a shingle beach in Ireland, it feels like his chance of happiness or at least a respite from the homesickness that plagues him. Can it be a place of things coming full circle? A completion of this endless mental push and pull between past and future. It feels like a pipe dream, far removed from the reality he’s in and the way he thinks about certain family events, referred to by him and Kitty as ‘the thing we never mention.’ There are times when I wondered if Kitty was real, or whether her birth from the hiding place of his bunk behind the cab was purely metaphorical. I had moments of confusion, moments of being unsure how these fragmented memories and feelings fit together. I was even unsure of what was real and what was imagined occasionally. However, I loved the feelings it induced in me and the sheer beauty of the prose. There’s a haunting quality to the novel that will stay with me. It was a reading experience that I let wash over me, rather like listening to an opera or viewing a beautiful painting. This is for those readers who like their novels to be strange, and bleak, but beautiful at the same time.
Published by Doubleday 18th February 2022
Meet The Author
Conor O’Callaghan is originally from Dundalk, and now divides his time between Dublin and the North of England. His critically acclaimed first novel Nothing on Earth was published by Doubleday Ireland in 2016.
Just look at the colour and variety of my first anticipated reads collection. Aren’t they beautiful? I’ll be posting a few of these over the next couple of weeks because there are just so many great novels coming in the New Year. These are the books on my wish list and my NetGalley planner for next year. I still can’t believe how lucky I am to get early access to books and every year I say I’m not going to read, or buy, as much. Yet I always do. Enjoy the recommendations and I apologise in advance if your TBR list gets longer. ❤️📚
Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter by Lily Pook.
I was lucky enough to be sent a beautiful proof copy of this book so I’m looking forward to reading this before it’s debut in March. Set in 1886, at Bannin Bay, we meet the Brightwell family who have sailed from England to make their new home in Western Australia. Ten-year-old Eliza knows little of what awaits them on these shores beyond shining pearls and shells like soup plates – the things her father has promised will make their fortune. Ten years later and Charles Brightwell, now the bay’s most prolific pearler, goes missing from his ship while out at sea. Whispers from the townsfolk suggest mutiny and murder, but headstrong Eliza, convinced there is more to the story, refuses to believe her father is dead, and it falls to her to ask the questions no one else dares consider. But in a town teeming with corruption, prejudice and blackmail, Eliza soon learns that the truth can cost more than pearls, and she must decide just how much she is willing to pay – and how far she is willing to go – to find it. I love reading about women who step beyond the expectations of their society so Eliza sounds like my sort of character. The early reviews promise adventure and ambition, but also grief and loss. Sometimes, personal tragedy is a huge motivator and Eliza sounds both determined and willing to put herself in danger to discover the truth. There’s also that fascinating backdrop of empire and whether British settlers are pioneers or invaders.
Coming in March 2022 from Mantle.
Notes on an Execution by Dayna Kukafka.
Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits the same fate he forced on those girls, years ago. Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood.
But this is not his story.
As the clock ticks down, three women uncover the history of a tragedy and the long shadow it casts. Lavender, Ansel’s mother, is a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation. Hazel, twin sister to his wife, is forced to watch helplessly as the relationship threatens to devour them all. And Saffy, the detective hot on his trail, is devoted to bringing bad men to justice but struggling to see her own life clearly. This is the story of the women left behind. Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes On An Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our cultural obsession with crime stories, and asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the minds of violent men. I am interested in this concept, because it is the driving force behind why we are fascinated with true crime stories and dramas about serial killers. The question in all of our minds is ‘why’ and often crime fiction helps us with those questions – maybe it’s soothing to have that narrative played out in a world where the killer is always stopped, whether by capture or being killed himself. It helps us make sense of murder, when in real life we often never find out why and the crime seems so pointless.
Published in March by Phoenix Publishing.
The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson.
The longer the marriage, the harder truth becomes . . .
When a book has glowing reviews from novelists like Marian Keyes and Sarah Waters you have to take notice and this looks like a cracker. Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art – the first in many decades – and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good. His three children will be there: beautiful Leah, always her father’s biggest champion; sensitive Patrick, who has finally decided to strike out on his own; and insecure Jess, the youngest, who has her own momentous decision to make. And what of Lucia, Ray’s steadfast and selfless wife? She is an artist, too, but has always had to put her roles as wife and mother first. What will happen if she decides to change? For Lucia is hiding secrets of her own, and as the weekend unfolds and the exhibition approaches, she must finally make a choice. The Exhibitionist is the extraordinary fifth novel from Charlotte Mendelson, a dazzling exploration of art, sacrifice, toxic family politics, queer desire, and personal freedom. This sounds like a must read to me, since the relationship dynamics in families are fascinating from a counsellor’s perspective. I’ve just been granted early access to this title from NetGalley so keep an eye out for my review coming soon.
Published 17th March by Mantle.
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson.
‘We can’t go to the island, Bryon. We don’t really know what we’re getting into . . .’
Eleanor Bennett won’t let her own death get in the way of the truth. So when her estranged children – Byron and Benny – reunite for her funeral in California, they discover a puzzling inheritance. This debut novel already has the backing of Oprah Winfrey who is turning it into a series right now. First, comes a voice recording in which everything Byron and Benny ever knew about their family is upended. Their mother narrates a tumultuous story about a headstrong young woman who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder, a story which cuts right to the heart of the rift that’s separated Byron and Benny. Second, a traditional Caribbean black cake made from a family recipe with a long history that Eleanor hopes will heal the wounds of the past. Can Byron and Benny fulfil their mother’s final request to ‘share the black cake when the time is right’? Will Eleanor’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever? I’m looking forward to introducing this book to my own book group and making a black cake to try when we meet again.
Published Penguin 3rd Feb 2022
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
I had to share a huge photo of this stunning cover art for Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s novel Take My Hand. I had my request in for a review copy very early on this one, before the cover was available. A nurse at the Family Planning Clinic in Montgomery Alabama, Civil Townsend is passionate about putting choice into women’s hands. She brings the option of birth control to their doorsteps, and with it the right to determine their own destinies. Or so she believes. When she is assigned to administer birth control to two school-age Black girls, the Williams sisters, who live off an old unpaved road in a shack without running water, Civil can’t help but feel uneasy. She grows close to the family and becomes fiercely invested in their well-being. And then she makes a shocking discovery: the girls have been involuntarily sterilized. Civil is horrified that such a terrible mistake could have taken place, and vows to get to the bottom of it. She soon learns that this is no isolated event but a pattern, far more serious than she could ever have imagined, targeting poor Black women. Could her clinic be responsible? Had she and her fellow Black nurses been complicit? No matter how ugly, Civil is determined for the truth to be brought to light. Based on true events, Take My Hand brims with hope, compassion, and the burning pursuit of justice. I picked this so early because, for those who don’t know, I have a disability and have researched the eugenics movement for both my undergraduate and now my masters degree. This movement, with its origins in the late Victorian period, gathered pace in the early twentieth century both in Europe and the USA. It developed fully into the horrors of the Holocaust, but very few people know of it’s extent in this country and the USA, as a reason to institutionalise and sterilise people with disabilities and those from minority ethnic backgrounds. Literature that explores this dark moment in history is very important to me and I’ll be begging people to read this over the next few months.
Published by Phoenix May 2022.
Again Rachel by Marian Keyes.
Every blogger I know loves Marian Keyes and the Walsh family are clearly characters who thousands of readers have taken to their hearts.
Back in the long ago nineties, Rachel Walsh was a mess. But a spell in rehab transformed everything. Life became very good, very quickly. These days, Rachel has love, family, a great job as an addiction counsellor, she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive trainers.But with the sudden reappearance of a man she’d once loved, her life wobbles.She’d thought she was settled. Fixed forever. Is she about to discover that no matter what our age, everything can change? Is it time to think again, Rachel? What I love about Marian Keyes is her ability to write what seems like a light, humorous book, that’s actually full of meaning and true life experience. Yes, the Walsh family are witty and fun to be around, but their relationships with each other are deep, complex and full of love. It takes an incredible writer to have this lightness of touch coupled with an incredible understanding of human nature. Keyes writes with such emotional intelligence that I pre-order all her books these days. This one is close to my heart, because after leaving an abusive relationship I spent six years as a single woman. I did counselling, meditation and felt settled and sorted in life when someone came along and convinced me to make big changes for love. We’ve now been together for three years and I’m stepmom to two girls I love with all my heart. Life doesn’t stand still for long and it sounds like I might really resonate with Rachel’s place in life. Can’t wait!
Published Michael Joseph Feb 2022.
Reputation by Sarah Vaughan.
Reputation: it takes a lifetime to build and just one moment to destroy.
I devour thrillers, especially if I’m struggling with my multiple sclerosis and end up laid in bed or on the chaise langue in the living room. I find them easy to read and incredible addictive and I’ve been known to read two and start a third in one weekend. I’ve read Vaughan before so had an eye on this coming out months ago. Emma Webster is a respectable MP. Emma Webster is a devoted mother. Emma Webster is innocent of the murder of a tabloid journalist. Emma Webster is a liar. The early buzz on this one is great, as you can see below, and it’s already been optioned for a Netflix series so I’m going to make sure I read it before that airs.
#Reputation: The story you tell about yourself. And the lies others choose to believe…
‘A terrifically entertaining legal drama and an unsettling cautionary tale for any woman considering entering politics’ Louise Candlish
‘Tense. Gripping. And bang up to date. This is a rollercoaster of a book’ Imran Mahmood
The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang.
‘A gorgeous and gripping literary mystery. . . reflecting themes of family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream. . . A masterpiece’ JEAN KWOK
I have to say again that I love the cover of this book. It looks like something from the 1930’s and has all the cute appeal of a Mabel Lucy Atwell print which often featured dogs. For years, the residents of Lake Haven, Wisconsin ignored the whispered troubles about the Chao family, if only to keep eating at the best restaurant in town. But when tyrannical patriarch Big Chao is found frozen to death in the family’s meat freezer, scandalous events force the community to turn its attention to the three Chao sons.Dagou is the presupposed heir to the business, did he want to inherit sooner rather than later? Ming is an accomplished city lawyer, determined to sever ties with Haven’s Asian community once and for all. For years, the residents of Lake Haven, Wisconsin ignored the whispered troubles about the Chao family, if only to keep eating at the best restaurant in town. But when tyrannical patriarch Big Chao is found frozen to death in the family’s meat freezer, scandalous events force the community to turn its attention to the three Chao sons.Dagou is the presupposed heir to the business, did he want to inherit sooner rather than later? Ming is an accomplished city lawyer, was he determined to sever ties with Haven’s Asian community once and for all? James is the young, naive college student, who is only just learning of his family’s past, surely he can’t be to blame? When the family’s dog mysteriously disappears, and Dagou ‘Dog Eater’ Chao is held on trial for his father’s murder, the Chaos’ turbulent history spills into the public eye, while a small town looks on in disbelief. This is an inventive comic mystery about the undercurrents of an unfortunate death and a timeless tale of distrust, judgement and condemnation.I have a wickedly dark sense of humour and love reading about dysfunctional families so this novel caught my eye for more reasons than the cover, but I will admit that I love it so much I’d frame it and put it on the wall.
Published by One, Feb 2022.
A Terrible Kindness by Joe Browning Wroe.
When we go through something impossible, someone, or something, will help us, if we let them . . .
When Joanna Cannon, Sophie Hannah and Marian Keyes are telling you to read a book, it’s at least worth a look. I’m lucky and have a proof of this to read over the next few weeks so look out for my review. I didn’t know a lot about the Aberfan disaster, because it happened before I was born. It was one of the first huge news stories that my mum remembers taking notice of when she was 13. My understanding of what happened came from The Crown where we saw the children heading off to school like any other morning, only to end up buried beneath a massive landslide from the coal mine that employed most of them heir fathers. It was utilised to show the Queen’s inability to feel empathy. Her reaction was contrasted with that of Princess Margaret’s husband Lord Snowden, who was moved to go straight to Aberfan and help, much like our main character in the novel. It is October 1966 and William Lavery is having the night of his life at his first black-tie do. But, as the evening unfolds, news hits of a landslide at a coal mine. It has buried a school: Aberfan. William decides he must act, so he stands and volunteers to attend. It will be his first job as an embalmer, and it will be one he never forgets. His work that night will force him to think about the little boy he was, and the losses he has worked so hard to forget. But compassion can have surprising consequences, because – as William discovers – giving so much to others can sometimes help us heal ourselves. I absolutely love the sound of this book and personal journey this character must go on as he attends to those who have died, mostly children. It won’t be an easy read, but is apparently very hopeful and uplifting too.
Published by Faber and Faber Jan 2022.
Look out for Part 2 of my preview list on Thursday.
There are just so many books coming out next year that I’m really looking forward to reading, with some really gorgeous cover designs too. I. Lucky enough to have early access to all of these bar two, so I’ll be reading and reviewing in the coming weeks. Keep your eyes peeled and get some of these crackers on your TBR list.
House of Fortune by Jessie Burton.
I fell in love with Burton’s debut novel The Miniaturist at first page and I am in awe of her imagination and skill. As other readers of the novel will know, many questions remained unanswered at the end of the story, and while I don’t mind books having loose ends, when I heard a sequel was coming I let out a little squeal. We are still in the golden city of Amsterdam, but now it is 1705. Thea Brandt is turning eighteen, and she is ready to welcome adulthood with open arms. At the city’s theatre, Walter, the love of her life, awaits her, but at home in the house on the Herengracht, all is not well – her father Otto and Aunt Nella argue endlessly, and the Brandt family are selling their furniture in order to eat. On Thea’s birthday, also the day that her mother Marin died, the secrets from the past begin to overwhelm the present.
Nella is desperate to save the family and maintain appearances, to find Thea a husband who will guarantee her future, and when they receive an invitation to Amsterdam’s most exclusive ball, she is overjoyed – perhaps this will set their fortunes straight. And indeed, the ball does set things spinning: new figures enter their life, promising new futures. But their fates are still unclear, and when Nella feels a strange prickling sensation on the back of her neck, she remembers the miniaturist who entered her life and toyed with her fortunes eighteen years ago. Perhaps, now, she has returned for her . . . I can’t tell you how excited I am to find out how Nella is getting on. Maybe the mystery of who the miniaturist is, and what they want, might be solved?
Published by Picador 7th July 2022
Sundial by Catriona Ward
When writers like Alex Michaelides and Emma Stonex are giving rave reviews of a book, it’s always worth a look. Last year’s novel, The Last House on Needless Street, was incredibly unusual and original. That alone would make me want to look at Ward’s second novel.
You can’t escape the desert. You can’t escape Sundial.
Rob fears for her daughters. For Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. For Annie, because she fears what Callie might do to her. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice.
Callie is afraid of her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely. To tell her secrets about her past that both disturb and excite her. And Callie is beginning to wonder if only one of them will leave Sundial alive…
Published by Viper 10th March 2022.
Insomnia by Sarah Pinborough.
In the dead of night, madness lies…
Emma can’t sleep. CHECK THE WINDOWS. It’s been like this since her big 4-0 started getting closer. LOCK THE DOORS. Her mother stopped sleeping just before her 40th birthday too. She went mad and did the unthinkable because of it. LOOK IN ON THE CHILDREN. Is that what’s happening to Emma?
WHY CAN’T SHE SLEEP?
This is an absolutely brilliant domestic noir that keeps you on the edge of your seat to the very end.
Published by Harper Collins March 31st 2022.
Absynthe by Brendan P. BelleCourt.
The Great War has been over for years, and a brave new world forged. Technology has delivered the future promised at the turn of the century: automata provide, monorail trains flash between mega-cities, medicine is nothing short of magical.
Liam grew up poor, but now working for one of the richest families in Chicago, he reaps the benefits of his friendship with the family’s son and heir. That’s why he’s at Club Artemis. It’s a palace of art-deco delights and debauchery, filled to bursting with the rich and beautiful – and tonight they’re all drinking one thing. Absynthe. The green liquor rumoured to cause hallucinations, madness, even death.
While the gilded youth sip the viridescent liquid, their brave new world is crumbling beneath its perfect surface. Their absynthe is no mere folly. Some it kills, others it transforms. But in Liam something different has taken place. A veil has lifted and he can see the world without its illusion – and it isn’t the perfect world the government want the people to believe. As soon as I read the premise of this novel I was hooked and I’ve just been accepted on NetGalley I’m itching to get to it.
Published – Head of Zeus 9th Dec 2021
Outside by Ragnar Jónasson.
Four friends. One night. Not everyone will come out alive . . .
In the swirling snow of a deadly Icelandic storm, four friends seek shelter in a small abandoned hunting lodge. Miles from help, and knowing they will die outside in the cold, they break open the lock and make their way inside, hoping to wait out the storm until morning.
But nothing can prepare them for what they find behind the door . . .
Inside the cabin lurks a dangerous presence that chills them to their core. Outside, certain death from exposure awaits. So with no other option, they find themselves forced to spend a long, terrifying night in the cabin, watching as intently and silently as they are being watched themselves.But as the evening darkens, old secrets are beginning to find their way to the light. And as the tension escalates between the four friends, it soon becomes clear that the danger they discovered lurking in the cabin is far from the only mystery that will be uncovered tonight. Nor the only thing to be afraid of . . .
I love Nordic Noir and this author builds his literary worlds so carefully and his characters are multi-dimensional, complex and real. Once I’m a few chapters in it feels so real to me that I’m utterly immersed. This appeals to my psychologist brain. I’m dying to dissect these characters and their dynamic as they are trapped together.
Published by Michael Joseph 28th April 2022.
Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare.
I’ve been waiting to see what Louise Hare would write next after loving her novel The Lovely City. This looks like a fantastic second novel and I adore that cover too. Opening in London in 1936, Lena Aldridge is wondering if life has passed her by. The dazzling theatre career she hoped for hasn’t worked out. Instead, she’s stuck singing in a sticky-floored basement club in Soho and her married lover has just left her. She has nothing to look forward to until a stranger offers her the chance of a lifetime: a starring role on Broadway and a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary bound for New York. After a murder at the club, the timing couldn’t be better and Lena jumps at the chance to escape England. Until death follows her onto the ship and she realises that her greatest performance has already begun. Because someone is making manoeuvres behind the scenes, and there’s only one thing on their mind…Murder.
Miss Aldridge Regrets is the exquisite new novel from Louise Hare, the author of This Lovely City. A brilliant murder mystery, it also explores class, race and pre-WWII politics, and will leave readers reeling from the beauty and power of it.It’s next on my TBR so I’ll be reviewing soon.
Published by HQ 28th April 2022.
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley.
Welcome to No. 12 Rue des Amants. This book has been popping up all over #BookTwitter and I feel very privileged to have an early copy. I love a good thriller, it tends to be the genre I go to when I’m very busy with my MA or just have a lot on at home. For some reason, that I’m not prepared to look at too closely, I find thrillers relaxing. This one is set in a beautiful old apartment block, far from the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower and the bustling banks of the Seine. Where nothing goes unseen. And everyone has a story to unlock. Our characters are the watchful concierge, the scorned lover, the prying journalist and the naïve student. But there’s also an unwanted guest. Something terrible happened here last night. A mystery lies behind the door of apartment three.Only you – and the killer – hold the key . . . I’m sure I’m going to be bleary eyed one morning from reading this till 2am.
Published by Harper Collins 3rd March 2022.
Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E Cooney
Nothing complicates life like Death. I noticed this book about two months ago and begged the publisher for a proof! Sometimes I have no shame. As soon as I read the short blurb I knew I wanted to read it and I’m excited at the thought that this is only the first in a new series. Lanie Stones, the daughter of the Royal Assassin and Chief Executioner of Liriat, has never led a normal life. Born with a gift for necromancy and a literal allergy to violence, she was raised in isolation in the family’s crumbling mansion by her oldest friend, the ancient revenant Goody Graves. When her parents are murdered, it falls on Lanie and her cheerfully psychotic sister Nita to settle their extensive debts or lose their ancestral home―and Goody with it. Appeals to Liriat’s ruler to protect them fall on indifferent ears… until she, too, is murdered, throwing the nation’s future into doubt. Hunted by Liriat’s enemies, hounded by her family’s creditors and terrorised by the ghost of her great-grandfather, Lanie will need more than luck to get through the next few months―but when the goddess of Death is on your side, anything is possible. I am always surprised by the amount of fantasy I read and while I don’t consider myself an expert on the genre, out of the books I love, a good third are fantasy novels. I’m hoping this one might join them.
Published by Solaris 14th April 2022.
The Unravelling by Polly Crosby.
This one is coming very soon, in early January in fact, since the publication date was pushed back from this year. I fell completely in love with her writing when I finally read The Illustrated Child a few months ago. The only reason it didn’t make my books of the year was because I was so late reading it; it was published in 2020. My anticipation for this one has been building and I hope to get to read it over the Christmas holidays. Also when the author of The Binding gives a book a great review, I know I’m going to love it.
’Like a surreal cabinet of curiosities – haunting, eerie, evocative’ Bridget Collins, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Binding
When Tartelin Brown accepts a job with the reclusive Marianne Stourbridge, she finds herself on a wild island with a mysterious history. Tartelin is tasked with hunting butterflies for Marianne’s research. But she quickly uncovers something far more intriguing than the curious creatures that inhabit the landscape. Because the island and Marianne share a remarkable history, and what happened all those years ago has left its scars, and some terrible secrets.As Tartelin pieces together Marianne’s connection to the island, she must confront her own reasons for being there. Can the two women finally face up to the painful memories that bind them so tightly to the past?
Published by HQ 6th Jan 2022.
The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont.
I’m currently writing a review for this interesting novel and I can honestly say it’s a cracker. I loved the mix of factual events and fictional story, as well as the way the novel veered from historical, to romance and to murder mystery. You won’t want to put it down.
In 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. Only I know the truth of her disappearance. I’m no Hercule Poirot. I’m her husband’s mistress.
Agatha Christie’s world is one of glamorous society parties, country house weekends, and growing literary fame. Nan O’Dea’s world is something very different. Her attempts to escape a tough London upbringing during the Great War led to a life in Ireland marred by a hidden tragedy. After fighting her way back to England, she’s set her sights on Agatha. Because Agatha Christie has something Nan wants. And it’s not just her husband. Despite their differences, the two women will become the most unlikely of allies. And during the mysterious eleven days that Agatha goes missing, they will unravel a dark secret that only Nan holds the key to . . .The Christie Affair is a stunning novel which reimagines the unexplained eleven-day disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926 that captivated the world.
Published by Mantle, 20th Jan 2022.
Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu.
I have to say that the cover of this beautiful proof sung out to me when it dropped through my letterbox. This is one of those novels where I’ve already pre-ordered the finished copy even though I have this one. It’s quite simply stunning.
With every misfortune there is a blessing and within every blessing, the seeds of misfortune, and so it goes, until the end of time.
It is 1938 in China, and the Japanese are advancing. A young mother, Meilin, is forced to flee her burning city with her four-year-old son, Renshu, and embark on an epic journey across China. For comfort, they turn to their most treasured possession – a beautifully illustrated hand scroll. Its ancient fables offer solace and wisdom as they travel through their ravaged country, seeking refuge. Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. His daughter is desperate to understand her heritage, but he refuses to talk about his childhood. How can he keep his family safe in this new land when the weight of his history threatens to drag them down? Spanning continents and generations, Peach Blossom Spring is a bold and moving look at the history of modern China, told through the story of one family. It’s about the power of our past, the hope for a better future, and the search for a place to call home.
Published by Wildfire 17th March 2022.
The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman.
This is my current read and it’s not surprising that I’m enjoying it, since Hoffman is one of my favourite authors. The Owens family started their literary lives in Practical Magic as we followed orphaned sisters Sally and Gillian as they are sent to live with their eccentric aunts Jet and Franny. There are rumours about the aunts. They live in a crooked house on the edge of town, with a well-stocked herb garden and a light above the door that alerts local women to when they are available for consultation. This might be for women’s health problems, but more often for reasons of love. This is ironic since the Owens women are born in a genetic line that’s cursed in the pursuit of love. Every woman in the family has tried a way round the curse, but if ever love is found, it can just as easily be lost. In this fourth and final book in the series we move forward, after two prequel novels, to Jet and Franny’s old age. When the deathwatch beetle starts clicking in the family home, one of the Owens women knows that their time is up. As the generations gather, Sally’s daughters have to face the truth of the family curse. So a quest begins to change this generation’s luck in love, but do the girls have the power within them or will they venture into darker magic?
Published by Scribner 6th January 2022.
The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown.
I was a little bit giddy to open my book mail a couple of days ago and find an unexpected copy of this book. I’ve been talking about it since Halloween so it’s definitely time I read it.
I still dream, every night, of Polneath on fire. Smoke unravelling from an upper window, and the terrace bathed in a hectic orange light . . . Now I see that the decision I made at Polneath was the only decision of my life. Everything marred in that one dark minute.
By day, Ivy Boscawen mourns the loss of her son Tim in the Great War. But by night she mourns another boy – one whose death decades ago haunts her still. For Ivy is sure that there is more to what happened all those years ago: the fire at the Great House, and the terrible events that came after. A truth she must uncover, if she is ever to be free. But once you open a door to the past, can you ever truly close it again?From the award-winning author of The Witchfinder’s Sister comes a captivating story of burning secrets and buried shame, and of the loyalty and love that rises from the ashes.
Published by Viking 13th January 2022.
A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting by Sophie Irwin.
This novel has quite recently appeared on the radar but looks like a really enjoyable read. I’ve just had NetGalley approval and it’s taking all my willpower to read my January blog tours first! The season is about to begin and there’s not a second to lose. Kitty Talbot needs a fortune. Or rather, she needs a husband who has a fortune. This is 1818 after all, and only men have the privilege of seeking their own riches. With only twelve weeks until the bailiffs call, launching herself into London society is the only avenue open to her, and Kitty must use every ounce of cunning and ingenuity she possesses to climb the ranks. The only one to see through her plans is the worldly Lord Radcliffe and he is determined to thwart her at any cost, especially when it comes to his own brother falling for her charms. Can Kitty secure a fortune and save her sisters from poverty? There is not a day to lose and no one – not even a lord – will stand in her way…
Published by Harper Collins 12th May 2022
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow.
Joan can’t change her family’s past. But she can create her future.
Joan was only a child the last time she visited Memphis. She doesn’t remember the bustle of Beale Street on a summer’s night. She doesn’t know she’s as likely to hear a gunshot ring out as the sound of children playing. How the smell of honeysuckle is almost overwhelming as she climbs the porch steps to the house where her mother grew up. But when the front door opens, she does remember Derek. This house full of history is home to the women of the North family. They are no strangers to adversity; resilience runs in their blood. Fifty years ago, Hazel’s husband was lynched by his all-white police squad, yet she made a life for herself and her daughters in the majestic house he built for them. August lives there still, running a salon where the neighbourhood women gather. And now this house is the only place Joan has left. It is in sketching portraits of the women in her life, her aunt and her mother, the women who come to have their hair done, the women who come to chat and gossip, that Joan begins laughing again, begins living. Memphis is a celebration of the enduring strength of female bonds, of what we pass down, from mother to daughter. Epic in scope yet intimate in detail, it is a vivid portrait of three generations of a Southern black family, as well as an ode to the city they call home.
If I had to choose just one book that blew me away this year then it would be The Stranding. I was bewitched by it. It’s just so good it’s hard to believe it’s a debut novel. I know that a book is extraordinary when I finish it and feel changed in some way. I’m never sure what has happened, but there’s a tiny, imperceptible change, to the air around me, how I feel and even the way I perceive the world. The Stranding left me feeling calm, thoughtful and as if a lot of the small things worrying me didn’t really matter in the big scheme of things. I cared deeply for the characters and their grief, and strangely proud of them for what they managed to achieve. The author created an incredible sense of New Zealand and the whale that becomes Ruth’s saviour, and mother – birthing her and Nik into their new world and sustaining them. Her detailed descriptions left me fully immersed in this world, so much so that when I finished reading, it took a while to adjust back to being in Ruth’s ‘before’ and my 21st Century world. It has a unique narrative structure of two timelines: one represents ‘before’ and finishes where Ruth finds the whale; the second is ‘after’ and starts at the whale moving forwards. We don’t know what the apocalyptic event is, but it divides Ruth’s world into before and after. Nik is literally the last man on earth and their teamwork is vital if they are to survive. The Stranding might sound depressing, but it isn’t. It’s a post-apocalyptic landscape but the book celebrates the human spirit, our capacity for change, resilience and even love. It’s an incredible achievement.
The Shape of Darkness by Laura Purcell.
I was so excited to receive a proof of this latest novel from one of my favourite authors. I love the mix of gothic horror and historical fiction that she excels in. So I came to it full of anticipation. I was hooked by the end of the first chapter and didn’t put it down. Our narrator is Miss Agnes Darken, living in Bath with her invalid mother and nephew Cedric. Agnes earns her money cutting silhouettes or ‘shades’ for people, but her art is put under threat not just by newer inventions, but by a mysterious killer stalking the people who have sat for her. Desperate for answers, Agnes visits a spirit medium – an albino child named Pearl who lives with her sister Miss Myrtle West, and an invalid father. Agnes and Pearl try to conjure the spirit of one of her murdered sitters, so they can find the killer. Unfortunately, they have underestimated the power of what they have unleashed. This is an excellent gothic mystery, that grabbed me from the start and didn’t let go. I thought the characters were well developed and fascinating – even the ones who are no longer there! I liked that were transgressive females who had their own agency and independence. I enjoyed the author’s sense of place, the evil portents like the magpies and the build up of tension. I also liked the contrast between those living in poverty and those with a more middle class lifestyle. The supernatural elements are always spooky with Purcell, so the seances and visitations are unsettling, but so are the real life people. As the mystery deepens you won’t be able to stop reading, because you’ll have to know what’s going on. There’s a saying we use about timid people – afraid of your own shadow – and that’s what this book does, it makes us afraid of what others might see in us, and who we can become in the dark. An utterly brilliant addition to Laura Purcell’s work.
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner.
Nearing her ten-year anniversary, Caroline stumbles on a secret that takes her to London on holiday and to explore. She stumbles across a man who takes tourists out mud larking and joins them, finding wandering the shoreline looking for objects in the mud, strangely relaxing. She follows their guide’s advice that she shouldn’t look for an object, but look at patterns in the mud for an absence of something. Not long after she finds a bottle, an apothecary bottle, with a crude etching of a bear. Our second narrative takes us to the depths of eighteenth-century London, where a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo forward through the centuries to Caroline. I thought the author conveyed both 18th and 21st Century London really well. I could imagine myself there with all the sights and smells she conjured up. I loved the description of the apothecary shop, back in its heyday and as it was when Caroline rediscovered it. The ending of Nella and Eliza’s story was unexpected, but showed the strength of female friendship and solidarity. I found myself hoping that Caroline would do the same – choose an unexpected and unknown future of her own making. This was a brilliant read, historical fiction at its best and an incredible debut from an author I’ll be watching in the future.
Cold as Hell by Lilja Sigurdardóttir.
I’ve had the pleasure of reading Lilja Sigurdardóttir before and this novel grabbed my attention very early on with it’s reluctant protagonist, quirky characters, and an almost lunar landscape lit up by twenty four hour daylight. Āróra is being pestered by her mother. She hasn’t heard from Āróra’s sister Īsafold for over two weeks now and she’s very worried. She wants Āróra to fly out to Iceland and find out what’s going on from Īsafold’s partner Björn and their family who are still based there. Āróra lives in the north east of England and rarely goes back to Iceland, despite being born there. She mainly travels there when Īsafold needs rescuing from Björn. The whole family have known for some time that she is suffering domestic violence, but despite several attempts to help and convince her to leave, Īsafold always returns to Björn. Āróra has given up trying to help her sister; you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. I loved the depiction of the relationship between these two sisters: the sibling rivalries; the roles of eldest and youngest; that push and pull between loving and resenting each other. Īsafold is continuously putting herself in the role of victim and even though it’s positive encouragement and support from Āróra, she will still say she’s being pushed and persecuted into leaving. I actually wondered whether this behaviour had lead to her death? Had someone become so tired of helping, only to hear her being beaten again the following week, that they’d snapped? Āróra remembers the last time Īsafold called her and she chose not to come. What if she’d said the right thing this time and her sister chose to return to England, safe and sound? In fearing her loss, Āróra stops seeing a problem and starts seeing her sister. The barrier between them melts away as she lists her regrets and acknowledges she hasn’t been the perfect sister either. But is it too late? This was a fascinating tale, from a clever author whose words can manipulate us into racing through the thrilling twists and turns, then stop us in our tracks with a moving tribute from one sister to another.
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
This novel is exceptional. It’s beautiful, moving and speaks about women’s experience in such a unique, but brutally honest way. It’s an incredible piece of auto-fiction, which is half memoir and half novel but all poetry. Our narrator is a mother of three small children and she has a fascination with the Irish poem ‘Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire’ where an Irish noblewoman laments the death of the her murdered husband. Such is her passionate grief, that on finding his body, she drinks handfuls of his blood and then composes the extraordinary poem. For our narrator, the poem has echoed down the centuries and is her constant companion. As she reads it aloud the poet’s voice comes to life. The author writes her own life to its rhythms and wants to discover the truth of the poem’s story. I loved how her recording of 21st Century motherhood is treated as an epic. I loved consciousness running through the book. As if her words join hundreds and thousands of others in a never ending stream of female consciousness. This isn’t just about putting your experience into the world, it’s about having a source of female wisdom to draw from whenever you need it. This is a female text and in it’s search for the meaning of women’s lives it is reassuring, it lets us know we’re not alone, but it also inspires us all to create meaning. To add our voice to the women’s wisdom, expanding that collective consciousness and making our mark.
Bad Apples by Will Dean.
Wow! Will Dean does like to put his heroine in some terrifying situations. There is so much about this series that I love, then a good 20% that makes me feel a bit sick or unsettled. In the last book it was snakes that had me a bit on edge. This time? Well it’s saying something when a severed head is the most comfortable thing about one of Tuva’s investigations.We’re back in Gavrik, deep in the northern most part of Sweden and Tuva is back at the local newspaper, but has a more senior role and a new colleague to oversee in the shape of eager young newbie Sebastian. In fact, things are pretty good in Tuva’s world. This book picks you up and takes you on a fascinating and thrilling ride that builds in tension to a terrifying ending that I didn’t see coming at all. I had to stop reading at one point, because I realised I was so tense I was gritting my teeth! I’m sure the author has a hotline to my fears and this ending tapped into them perfectly. Needless to say, if I was Tuva, I’d be packing up the Hilux and leaving the hill folk to murder each other! I think the way the author depicts Tuva’s deafness is interesting. Usually Tuva uses it to her own advantage – taking her hearing aids out when she’s writing a piece means she can focus and taking them out at home means she can’t hear next door. However, it can also leave her vulnerable and the author uses it to intensify the horror element of the book, particularly towards the finale. There’s something about another person touching her hearing aids that feels so personal and also like a violation, depending on who it is. Every time I know a Tuva Moodyson book is coming, the excitement starts to build. By the time it’s in my hands I’m ready to drop all my other reading to dive in. Of course when something is so anticipated there’s also a fear about whether the book will live up to expectations. Bad Apples did not disappoint and is a fabulous addition to this excellent series.
The Return by Anita Frank.
This beautiful historical love story just made it under the wire as I was compiling my Top 21 Books for 2021 and it truly deserves it’s place next to the others on the list. I was gripped by the story of Jack, who makes a very different promise to his new bride Gwen on the eve of WW2. Most soldiers are promising to see them again, to return, but Jack is quite clear. If he should survive the war, he won’t be back this way again. Gwen prays he keeps to his promise, but as they celebrate VE Day she does keep looking over her shoulder. What if he reneges on his promise? War has changed Jack and he is no longer the man who made that bargain. He wants to return and claim Gwen as his bride again, but little does he know that this could set in motion a chain of events that will leave he and Gwen fighting for what they love most. We go back and forth in time throughout the book, but begin with Jack fleeing his Newcastle on the night train, shielded by a friend who works on this south bound train. Jack is a riveter in the shipyards and lives in a terrace house with his Mum and sister Jenny, when a terrible twist of fate leads to a violent act of revenge. Stowing away on the night train, Jack plans to hop off somewhere where he can find work. So, as he walks down a country lane next morning, he finds a young woman who has fallen from her horse, but has her foot trapped in the stirrup. He hurries to help Gwen and takes her home to her family farm where she lives with her father. Jack is in luck, because it’s a busy time on the farm, and when he’s invited to stay for a home cooked meal he meets Gwen’s dad Jim. Jim asks if he would like to stay and work and Jack accepts. As Gwen talks about their daily routine and shows him his bed in the tack room, Jack thinks he may have fallen on his feet for the summer. What he doesn’t know is that Gwen is about to put him in a very difficult position and he won’t want to miss another opportunity to rescue a woman in distress. This book captures early 20th Century farming beautifully and you will be rooting for Jack all the way.
My final seven books of the year are coming on Sunday 19th December.
The Lotus Readers 