Tag: Growing Up

Posted in Netgalley

The Princess by Wendy Holden 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It was all she ever wanted. Until her dreams came true…

The moving new novel about the young Diana.

Diana believes in love. Growing up amid the fallout of her parents’ bitter divorce, she takes refuge in romantic novels. She dreams of being rescued by a handsome prince.

Prince Charles loves his freedom. He’s in no rush to wed, but his family have other ideas. Charles must marry for the future of the Crown.

The right girl needs to be found, and fast. She must be young, aristocratic and free of past liaisons.

The teenage Diana Spencer is just about the only candidate. Her desperation to be loved dovetails with royal desperation for a bride.

But the route to the altar is full of hidden obstacles and people with their own agendas.

When she steps from the golden carriage on her wedding day, has Diana’s romantic dream come true?

Or is it already over?

Princess Diana hit the headlines when I was nine years old, perfect timing for me to buy into the fairytale and fall in love with her. I had my hair cut into Diana’s short style and I had one of her jumpers, well an Asda version, covered in sheep with one little black sheep in the bottom corner. When we look back at her life in retrospect, it could be that she was trying to tell us something. This book focuses on Diana’s earlier years, from her schooldays until that fairytale of a wedding which seemed to cement her into the consciousness of everyone, across the world. It was interesting to read more about her single life before dating Charles, a period that struck me as interesting when it was dramatised in The Crown. She had a busy, fun lifestyle sharing a flat with three friends and working in a nursery. Then as soon as the engagement was announced she was taken into apartments at Buckingham Palace, totally closed off from outside, but also from other members of the royal family. It was quiet, almost like a church, with no one reachable by phone and Charles on a tour abroad. His only thought in terms of company was to introduce her to Camilla Parker Bowles. 

The book did well when describing the dysfunctional way the Royals live. It’s an almost surreal existence with very specific rules to live by. When I read how much time each member spends alone I started to understand why they all have dogs. They don’t eat together daily, non-royals don’t come to the palace unless invited and each royal has their own quirks. For a 18-19 year old wandering round empty rooms and not being able to talk to friends must have been totally isolating. It was for her security of course, but it also meant she could be trained to fit the role she would play. She must have been so lonely. I’ve clearly read a lot of the same books as the author, because I knew about King Charles’s very odd boiled egg habits and the Queen Mother’s exploits in her home at Clarence House, but there were some things that were new to me. 

It was clear that Diana was a young girl full of life and romantic ideas about men and marriage. Wendy Holden tells the story through the eyes of Diana, her best friend at boarding school Sandy and Stephen Barry who was the Prince of Wales’s valet. The girls read paperback romances, the type of story written by Diana’s relative Barbara Cartland. When the girls imagine love at the age of 13, they imagine it being: ‘like a particularly delicious bath, deep and warm, with lots of bubbles.’ It conjures up a sense of comfort and pampering that I do actually feel sometimes with my other half, but a man who doesn’t know what love means isn’t equipped to love like that. The only people who pampered him were his servants, how can you provide what you’ve never had? I think Holden has captured the essence of a girl in adolescence, dreaming what her life might be. She’s a lively, bubbly girl who loves music and the company of others. She has a shy charm that’s so endearing, but her parents divorce has left a mark and I wondered whether it instilled in her a determination to get it right, which left me feeling a little sad for her.  

The second section of the novel definitely has a a melancholy feel, that shows us how well the author has brought the fun, young Diana to life. This is such a contrast. It also makes us realise how young she was to get married anyway, never mind becoming a future Queen of England. It is only six years since that journey with Sandy to boarding school. So, when she becomes engaged to the then Prince of Wales she was probably still expecting the comfort and care of a warm bath. She must have been disappointed at this moment. I always feel that Diana married the people on that day, rather than Charles. When she has some late doubts her sister Sarah warns her that her face is already on the tea towels. It’s too late. The pressure must have been immense. She has spent months hounded by the press and the famous moment where photographers captured her with a see through skirt is just one incidence of naivety on her part. She’s been getting thinner and her wedding dress needed taking in constantly. This isn’t the fairy tale love she’s dreamed about, more the matchmaking of two grandmothers living in the past and desperately trying to break off Charles’s adulterous relationship with Camilla.

I think the author attempted something very difficult here, to create a unique view of a story that’s a modern parable. Everyone knows a version of what happened. So, to create something that captures the voice of the most well known woman in the world, while bringing something new to her story, is near impossible. I think she partly succeeds. I didn’t learn anything new, but I did feel that I was listening to Diana in this story. It doesn’t have that compelling quality, because we already know about the divorce in 1996 and her death only a year later. I felt there was a bit of fire in this girl, despite her naivety. The rude awakening that she was simply a brood mare fuelled a fightback – the Andrew Morton book, the interview with Bashir and that last poignant summer are her pushing back against a system she felt used and abandoned by. A desperate need to be heard. I thought it was interesting to know she spent time with Princess Margaret, another young, royal woman who learned early on that her happiness came very low on the list of priorities. The royals never tried to be her family, missing that warmth and heart Diana was known for. I think this warmth, plus her fight and desire to buck the system is perhaps inherited by her son Harry. This was a well-researched book that really captured the spirit and personality of the most famous woman in the world. 

Out Now from Mountain Leopard Press

Posted in Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday! City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

When one of my favourite authors writes a new book I always experience a confusing mix of emotions. Excitement and anticipation mix with fear; will I love it as much as I love their last book? I don’t want to be disappointed. Since there’s a new Liz Gilbert out this year I thought I’d share my review of her last novel, City of Girls. Like a lot of readers my first encounter with Gilbert’s writing was Eat, Pray, Love; a book that was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon, not to mention the following hit film. For me, it was her novel The Signature of All Things that caught the imagination. The combination of a sparky and intelligent heroine, the feminist theme and the historical detail came together in a beautifully woven story. So as the publication date approached for this new novel I desperately wanted it to live up to her first.

I shouldn’t have worried. City of Girls is a joyous, exhilarating riot of a book. Our narrator, Vivian, plunges us into 1940s Manhattan where she is sent by her parents after expulsion from Vassar. There she is placed in the care of her Aunt Peg who runs the, slightly ramshackle, Lily Theatre. I was suddenly immersed in the bohemian world of theatre people where Vivian soon finds her niche. At Vassar she made friends by creating outfits for the other girls on her trusty sewing machine. So, in her new rooms above the theatre she is soon surrounded by showgirls wanting costumes. I have an interest in fashion and sewing, so I really enjoyed the descriptions of Vivian’s creations, made on a shoestring with a lot of help from Lowtsky’s vintage clothing store downtown. Yet not everything is as it seems on the surface. Is her friendship with showgirl Celia as mutual as it appears? What influence does the matronly and doom laden Olive have over Aunt Peg? Where is Uncle Billy, whose rooms Vivian has been using since her arrival?

 Some of these questions are answered during the production of the brand new play City of Girls. Aunt Peg’s friend Edna Parker Watson comes to stay after losing her London home during the Blitz. Edna is a talented theatre actress who is petite, beautiful and impeccably dressed. She arrives at the Lily with her huge wardrobe and her very famous and much younger husband, Arthur. Every member of the theatre company does their very best to get this musical off the ground and make it a success. Vivian works hard on her costume designs, but also finds herself becoming an unofficial PA and friend to Edna. Determined to put on the best show they can to turn the Lily Theatre’s fortunes around, Aunt Peg agrees to audition for new actors. When Vivian meets Anthony, the new leading man, she falls in love for the very first time. But alongside the awakening of first love, Vivian will also have her eyes opened to how cruel showbiz and the wider world can be. Several revelations teach her that not everyone can be trusted, the most unexpected people can come to your aid, and Vivian realises she has been walking around with her eyes closed. As the Second World War moves ever closer to their shores Vivian is left with a reckoning of her own. Does she want the respectable, quiet life her family expects or does she want to make her own way in a city and a career that is anything but quiet?  

You will fall in love with Vivian as she takes you into her past and candidly shares her exploits in 1940s NYC. She takes you from theatre, to nightclub to a dingy apartment in Hell’s Kitchen where she conducts her first love affair. She holds nothing back and I felt her delight at encountering the bohemian characters of the theatre, her passion and ingenuity for costume work and her discovery of a city laid out before her like a playground. She allows us to experience her growing up with every triumph and mistake she makes along the way. Such an engaging central character is well matched with other beautifully drawn female characters from the dowdy killjoy Olive who has surprising depths, the enigmatic Edna Parker Watson, the brisk and sometimes foolhardy Aunt Peg to the glamorous showgirl Celia who leads our narrator into a world of nightclubs, make-up and disposable men. The women in this novel are strong, surprising and all teach Vivian something about the kind of woman she wants to be. The novel emphasises the importance of strong female role models or mentors in both our personal and working life. I found myself torn between bingeing on this book or savouring it slowly: I wanted to know what happened next but I didn’t want my adventures with Vivian to come to an end. 

Meet the Author


Elizabeth Gilbert is an award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Her short story collection Pilgrims was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award, and her novel Stern Men was a New York Times notable book. In 2002, she published The Last American Man, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. She is best known for her 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which was published in over thirty languages and sold more than seven million copies worldwide. The film, released in 2010, stars Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem. Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage, a follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love, was published in 2010. Elizabeth Gilbert lives in New Jersey, USA.

Posted in Throwback Thursday

A Girl Made of Air by Nydia Hetherington

Posted on by thelotusreaders

This is the story of The Greatest Funambulist Who Ever Lived…

Born into a post-war circus family, our nameless star was unwanted and forgotten, abandoned in the shadows of the big top. Until the bright light of Serendipity Wilson threw her into focus. 

Now an adult, haunted by an incident in which a child was lost from the circus, our narrator, a tightrope artiste, weaves together her spellbinding tales of circus legends, earthy magic and folklore, all in the hope of finding the child… But will her story be enough to bring the pair together again? 

I’ve recently read Nydia’s incredible new novel Sycorax, in fact today is her publication day. So I thought it might be time to revisit her debut novel, also a real favourite of mine.

Sometimes all you can say when you finish a book is ‘Wow’. When that happens I close the book and have a moment of reverence. I need a few moments, in silence, to take in what I’ve read. I often need overnight before I can start a new book. I suppose you could describe it as being haunted – the thought of a scene or a letter in a book that invaded your thoughts when you least expect it. It stays there, sometimes forever, to become a part of you. In the same way a particular aria or love song might forever float through your head. Some books lie on the surface, they pass the time, they amuse, and I do enjoy them but they don’t stay. Others get into your brain, like a complex puzzle you have to keep fiddling with, this way and that, until you find a solution. Some books enter your soul, they make you feel real physical emotions, they make you wonder in the same way you did as a child when a book took you away on a marvellous adventure. They touch you soul deep. This is one of those books. 

Nydia Hetherington is a sorceress. She has conjured up this box of terrors and delights from the depths of her imagination and it is incredible. We follow Mouse as she crawls, peeps, stumbles and walks around the incredible show that is a circus. Billed as a tale about the Greatest Funambulist Who Ever Lived I was expecting glitz and glamour, the front of house show. However, the author cleverly goes deeper than that, far behind the curtain. Incredible descriptive passages draw us in to Mouse’s world from the smell near the big cats enclosure, the feel of a llama’s fur against your skin, the cramped but colourful quarters of the circus folk and the volatile relationship between her mother Marina and father Manu. So focussed on each other, her parents seem barely aware of her existence as she watches the drab and grubby circus folk become stars of the ring with their make-up, sequins and feathers. Her freedom gives us access to every part of this wondrous world, but freedom has its dark side and for Mouse this is really a tale of parental neglect. She is brought up by the circus, by the mother of the company Big Gen and her husband Fausto and eventually by Serendipity Wilson, the flame haired high wire artists who takes Mouse under her wing. Under her tuition Mouse becomes an incredible tightrope walker, able to take her place under the spotlight like her parents. 

Serendipity with her flaming hair that glows like amber is from the Isle of Man and brings with her all the mythology of the islands. She weaves incredible stories for Mouse, who now sleeps in her wigwam, in much the same way as mystical fog weaves around her according to her mood. She thinks that Manu and Marina barely notice she’s gone, but Manu enlists her help to get Marina performing again. They coax her into the tank to perform as a mermaid for the crowd. Even so, there is no discernible warmth between Mouse and her mother, Marina’s focus is always inward to her own problems. It is after her mother’s death that Mouse is handed a letter from her mother, in which she admits to never feeling love for her child and explains why. For me this was the most powerful part of the book, and brought me to tears. The author has cleverly placed this moment of stark reality within the magic and it gives the letter huge emotional impact. It hits home the idea that all freedom has a price. Mouse has never had a mother, except the warmth and care she’s had from Serendipity and never questions whether that will change. 

Book ending these stories is an elderly Mouse, recounting these stories to a journalist. Living in New York, she recalls her arrival in the city and her expectations of Coney Island. She is older and recounts her past from a distance, but what comes across is terrible regret and sorrow around the disappearance of a child from the circus family. She is haunted by a flame haired Serendipity Wilson who, like all mothers, lives on as a voice in Mouse’s head; her inner critic commenting on all she does, only silent when Mouse truly lives in the moment. It’s in these sections that we see what the book is truly about. I expected a book about the spectacle of the circus, the showmanship and all that glitters. Instead this is a meditation on what it is to be human. The journalist asks the questions that go beneath Mouse’s surface and see the gritty truth; we are all flawed and we all make mistakes. This is a beguiling mix of myth, magic and human frailty. Truly brilliant.

Meet the Author

From Leeds — although born on Merseyside and spending the first few years of life on the Isle of Man — Nydia Hetherington moved to London in her early twenties to embark on an acting career. Later she moved to Paris where she created her own theatre company. When she returned to London a decade later, she completed a creative writing degree graduating with first class honours.

Posted in Throwback Thursday

Rules for Ghosting by Shelley Jay Shore

Posted on by thelotusreaders

There are three rules about ghosts. Rule #1: They can’t speak. | Rule #2: They can’t move. | Rule #3: They can’t hurt you.

Ezra Friedman grew up in the family funeral home which is complicated for someone who can see ghosts. Worst of all was his grandfather’s ghost and his disapproving looks at every choice Ezra made, from his taste in boys to his HRT-induced second puberty. It’s no wonder that since moving out, he’s stayed as far away from the family business as possible.

However, when his dream job doesn’t work out, his mother invites him to Passover Seder and announces she’s running away with the rabbi’s wife! Now Ezra finds himself back at the funeral home to help out and is soon in the thick of it. He has to deal with his loved ones and his crush on Jonathon, one of their volunteers. Jonathon is their neighbour so Ezra is trying to keep the crush under wraps while also dealing with Jonathon’s relative, a spectre who’s keen on breaking all the rules. Ezra must keep his family together and avoid heartbreak, but is starting to realise there’s more than one way to be haunted. 

This book came totally out of left field and I didn’t know what to expect at all, but I fell in love with it. I do connect to books about grief and loss as it’s something I’ve gone through but I also loved it’s emphasis on family, culture and tradition. Yes the book is about grief, but it’s also about love. Ezra is a Jewish trans man so it’s also firmly based in the queer community and I enjoyed that too. The romance is quiet and more of a slow burn than the heat of passion, tempered by Jonathon’s recent loss of his father. It depicts the chaos and disruption of death beautifully, especially in how it affects family members differently and can come between them. Ezra and the funeral staff treat deceased persons with respect; they’re both gentle and caring in their work with them and their grieving families. The author takes us deeply into the customs and rituals surrounding a death in a Jewish family and I find this so interesting because we can all learn from each other’s ceremonies and traditions. I felt that their attention to detail and the respect they had for the people brought to their funeral home was ultimately life affirming. Their deference shows how precious life is and that our relationships with family are the most important thing of all. 

I also loved the author’s focus on something that I think is the secret to a happy and contented life – being your authentic self. We can see how Ezra’s connection to his communities – family, religion and the queer community – grounds him and reminds him of who he is. When we’re not true to who we are we start to feel dislocated and uncomfortable. Through Ezra’s story we explore how to find yourself again and hopefully be your authentic self. The book felt so much more than a romance, because it’s really a family story too. With a delicate touch the author also brings a light humour to the story, softening the grief and loss without being disrespectful which is a difficult balance to find. It surprised me that this was a debut novel because she’s managed that balance perfectly. My only criticism is that I was hoping for more ghosts. They were more of a background feature than relevant to the plot and from the blurb and title I expected more. Having said that it’s still a great story and I’d love to read more from this writer. 

Published Aug 2024 from Trapeze.

Meet the Author

Shelly Jay Shore (she/they) is a writer, digital strategist, and nonprofit fundraiser. She writes for anxious queer millennials, sufferers of Eldest Daughter Syndrome, recovering summer camp counselors, and anyone struggling with the enormity of being a person trying to make the world kinder, softer, and more tender. Her work on queer Jewish identity has been published by Autostraddle, Hey Alma, and the Bisexual Resource Center.

Posted in Sunday Spotlight

Sunday Spotlight On The Moomins

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I was born in Scunthorpe in the the 1970s and our family had a fairly set weekend tradition. On Saturdays mum and dad would take us into town on Saturday mornings where we would visit the market and mum would take us to Scunthorpe Library. This was a huge brick building in a square full of pigeons and had a entrance that was a glass pyramid giving it a strange futuristic look. I was left in the children’s library to make my choices. I was always a voracious reader and started reading more grown-up novels when I was ten, my first being Jane Eyre. I loved it when all my classmates were reading the scheme in class and I was allowed to sit in the library alone and read by choice. I can still smell that library when I think about it. But it was in the Scunthorpe library that I first met the Moomins and I’ve been hooked ever since. These plump white hippo- like creatures were so cute and I loved the range of characters Tove Jansson had created. From the tiny light-up hattifatteners that brushed against your legs and felt like nettle stings to the determined and bitey Little My, I’d never read anything like it and I’m sure part of me thought there might be an unknown corner of Finland where they actually lived. Moomin House was a blue tower by a lake surrounded by snow and ice. I’ve recently found out that Finland doesn’t just have the Moominland theme park, there is a genuine Moomin House where you can spend your holiday. It’s the perfect combination for me and my other half, I can immerse myself in reading and he can fish the lake.

Despite having an actual theme park, the Moomin’s world created by Tove Jansson is not a sanitised pink Disney experience where everything is beautiful and everyone is safe. Yes, there are floating clouds you can ride, fantastical creatures full of character and the safe space of Moomin House, always welcoming and happy to see you. Yet, the family have ups and downs from comets, floods and an evil hobgoblin. In Comet in Moominland Moomintroll and his friend Snufkin set off on a quest to find out about a comet hurtling towards earth. In Moomin Summer Madness the Moomin are flooded out of their home and have to go on a trek to find another. In the final book Moominvalley in November, the other characters are waiting for the Moomins to arrive, but there’s no sign of them. As we wait with the others there is a palpable sense of absence and potentially loss. Our beloved friends are often in peril, suffering anxiety or are openly depressed and despairing of life. I realised when I was older just how carefully the books address worries that children and adults both have. Sometimes, it’s a worry or issue that is affecting the real world at the time Tove Jansson was writing. It’s easy to see the comet in the first book as an allegory of real world concerns about nuclear warfare. When read now we can see issues about climate change and the experience of being a refugee in Moominsummer Madness. The Snork Maiden is in love with Moomintroll and worries about her appearance, particularly her plumpness. Snufkin comes and goes from Moomin House, sometimes needing a quest with his friend and sometimes he needs quiet, only his fishing rod and flute for company. This could be read as the response to sensory overload experienced by introverts and people on the autistic spectrum. There’s the rather melancholy Hemulen, he’s a botanist who likes to wear dresses. Mymble is a single mother to Little My who’s a force to be reckoned with. All of these creatures seem to find solace and community spending time with the Moomins.

I always felt that the Moomin house was like my own. The welcoming, non-judgemental and loving Moomin Mamma and Papa are so like my mum and dad. My brother and I did have a penchant for waifs and strays, sometimes people and sometimes animals. We’d bring them home and look after them for a while. I had a friend who would ring my mum and ask if they could come for tea, then he’d wait for me outside school and go home with me on the bus. To be honest he did worry my dad a bit with his huge flared jeans and red Mohican. I was probably a square teenager, I didn’t really rebel and we were brought up in church. I did wonder sometimes what our friends got out of being with us, but at fifty years old I can see that some of our friends were drawn to the comfort and stability of my family. My mum was always home, was a great cook and accepted everyone. My dad was a bit more concerned, especially about boys, but he was a youth worker and used to relating with teenagers. My brother is Snufkin through and through, preferring solitude to being with people and enjoying nothing more than fishing with his dog. He walks off into nature for a weekend with his tent and a fishing rod on his back. My late husband was rather like the Hemulen, not that he wore dresses, but he had that professorial air and focus. I’m an absolute Snork Maiden, impossibly romantic and a little too plump.

I think Tove Jansson created beautiful, endearing characters that would appeal to children, but she doesn’t hold back when it comes to plot. That’s the enduring appeal of these books and the merchandising that has exploded over the years. If friends or family go to Covent Garden they always bring me something from The Moomin Store. I have jewellery, note books, Christmas baubles (including a Moomin House), posters, mugs and glasses. I have a beautiful shadow box and various travel mugs and water bottles. So I couldn’t resist this beautiful Folio Society anniversary edition of Finn Family Moomintroll. As you can see it has beautiful illustrations and I absolutely treasure it. This year is the 80th Anniversary of the book so I’m looking forward to a year of the comfort and nostalgia I still get from these beautiful books.

Meet the Author

In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, one of the most famous cartoonists in the world was a lesbian artist who lived on a remote island off the coast of Finland. Tove Jansson had the status of a beloved cultural icon—adored by children, celebrated by adults. Before her death, in 2001, at the age of eighty-six, Jansson produced paintings, novels, children’s books, magazine covers, political cartoons, greeting cards, librettos, and much more. But most of Jansson’s fans arrived by way of the Moomins, a friendly species of her invention—rotund white creatures that look a little like upright hippos, and were the subject of nine best-selling books and a daily comic strip that ran for twenty years.

From the New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/06/inside-tove-janssons-private-universe

Posted in Netgalley

Crescendo by Joanna Howat

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I love reading debuts because you’re never sure what you’re going to find and this tale of two adult siblings who lose their parents suddenly has all the family dynamics and trauma that I love to untangle in a novel. Jamie and Caz are used to their parents being top of the social scale in their area, a small village close to a market town in Yorkshire. Their family home is a hall in the centre of the village, where Jamie still lives alongside his parents having not found his career path yet. Caz has left home, but has a chequered history of teen pregnancy and alcoholism. She married husband Steve after he came to work on the hall’s electrics when her first little girl was only a baby and she had been sober for several months. Now they live in a cottage a short drive away from her childhood home and recently she’s had another baby. The catalyst to their problems is the loss of their parents. One Sunday both siblings are there for lunch when Jamie and his father clash over what he sees as his son’s fecklessness when it comes to making a life for himself. Jamie has secured a job with the local estate agents but desperately needs to sell a house this month. The best thing in his life is his recent relationship with local vet Zoe. What Jamie loves is his piano, but he doesn’t think he has the skill of a concert pianist. This Sunday he decides not to take his father’s criticism and storms out in a huff. That night the hall goes up in flames, so fast that no one could escape and the hall is burned to the ground. 

For both siblings the village now looks like a set of teeth with one missing. The huge gap left in the centre is soon boarded so no one can see the wreckage, but it doesn’t allay the shock. Caz is immediately emotional, dazed even and takes refuge with Ruth, their housekeeper who lived next to the hall. Jamie seems frozen. The only thing he wants to save is his piano but it is damaged, maybe beyond repair. Insurance will take care of it and will hopefully rebuild the hall, but do they want that? They have no idea about their parent’s wishes, for the meantime Jamie has to buy some clothes and moves in with Zoe. It’s very early in their relationship but Jamie thinks they’ll get along fine. As he moves through life like an automaton, Caz starts to slide downhill. Gin was her usual tipple, but avoiding that she thinks an occasional glass of wine won’t hurt. One glass soon becomes a bottle and as she starts to hide her stash from Steve we can see that this could be a serious relapse. So can Jamie, but he’s having his own problems. The turmoil in his life is too heavy for the early stages of a relationship. Zoe had no relationship with his parents and although she can listen, she still has her own routine of riding and looking after her horse, whereas at the moment Jamie is sleepwalking through work and every time they are intimate, visions of the hall burning down come into his mind and ruin the moment. He’s not sure if he’s dealing with his grief at all. When Zoe decides they need some space from each other, he moves out to Caz and Steve’s house. Now he’s noticing that his sister isn’t coping either and his nieces are suffering. How can the siblings best help each other to cope? 

I loved how the author shows grief hitting people in different ways. In some ways Jamie has never had to grow up. Living under his parent’s roof has enabled to try jobs and leave them with minimum consequences, while away hours in the village pub and not think beyond tomorrow. Caz has also depended on her parents, dropping out of university pregnant and with an alcohol problem. She moved home and had her baby there, until Steve actually walked through the door for a contracting job and they fell in love. For both of them, there’s now no safety net and the place filled with all those memories has gone too. Jamie also fears the loss of his piano, which has been lifted from the wreckage and been sent to a specialist repairer by the insurers. Music was the way that Jamie processed his emotions and without it he seems strangely neutral all the time, occasionally tapping out melodies using his fingers on whatever surface he find. Caz is more erratic, grabbing convenience foods instead of her usual home cooked meals and forgetting the girls activities or even to wash their uniforms. When the drinking starts Steve stays away from it, leaving Jamie with a full time job and two small children to feed and get out of the door in the open. He knows teachers have noticed the girls are a bit unkempt, but he doesn’t want to drop his sister in it. He just keeps smiling and nodding that everything’s okay. There’s only one person that won’t have the wool pulled over their eyes and that’s their parent’s housekeeper Ruth. Caz fears not letting the emotions out. Jamie thinks if he gives in and feels his emotions he might fall apart completely.

Through Jamie the author shows how grief can change our outlook on life completely. He becomes sentimental about an old couple looking for a house. He has a beautiful Georgian house on the books and he’s shown it to a rude and superior client with an enormous dog who didn’t seem interested. Then he has an adorable old couple who want to downsize and be closer to amenities, but he needs a studio to work in and it is in town. When he shows it to them he knows it should be theirs and when they offer he is ecstatic and shakes hands. Then the first woman comes back and offers 10k over the asking price, but Jamie says it’s already sold and turns her offer down, much to the fury of his manager. Jamie feels different, where once he might have taken the high offer now he can’t. Does he see his own parents in the old couple? Or is it that loss has given him a conscience? I really identified with this because after being seriously ill I returned to my work as an advertising rep only to struggle with selling newspaper space. It felt so trivial in the scheme of things I simply didn’t have the killer instinct. This was when I was sacked but went on to train as a counsellor and worked with the Mental Health Team in my area. It felt like I’d helped someone every day I went to work and it felt more in tune with my changing values. 

I really felt for Jamie and wanted him to get his piano back and be able to express himself more. I was also so happy at his care for his nieces and his loyalty to his sister. Underneath the immaturity Zoe was concerned about, he’s a kind, perceptive and caring man. I was hoping they would find a way back to each other. Similarly I wanted Steve to reconnect with his wife and family and realise that while keeping a roof over their head was important, so was spending time together as a family. The author’s setting is perfect and having lived in villages all my life, I knew they come with beautiful countryside around them, but also residents who want to know all of your business. As my parents get older I do wonder what it might be like when they’re gone and I’m now the oldest member of the family. They’re my anchor, but so is my brother and I know our relationship will probably be stronger. I think the author makes it clear how seismic a shock it is when someone close to us dies. I loved the play on musical terms because the storyline has a tempo and Jamie is our conductor, desperately trying to keep the orchestra together towards the crescendo and beyond. This is a thoughtful and real story that had a lot of heart in it. 

Out now from Flying Dog Press

Meet the Author


Joanna Howat trained as a journalist and worked as a news producer for BBC Radio 5 Live. She now lives in her native North Yorkshire with her family and two spaniels, and is a keen classical pianist. Crescendo is her first published novel.

Posted in Personal Purchase

The Undoing of Violet Claybourne by Emily Critchley 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

This was my read for over Christmas week and having started a couple of novels only to put them down again, I was beginning to think I’d lost my reading mojo. I was crying out for something that would draw me in quickly so I went for a tried and tested genre. A genre that maybe has a title, but I don’t know it. A preference I blame on reading Jane Eyre as a very imaginative ten year old. The formula is: huge rambling country house; time period from Victorian – 1930’s; young unsure girl/woman; aristocratic families with huge secrets. This fantastic novel from Emily Critchley fit the bill perfectly and was the only thing that drew me away from watching Black Doves all in one go! Our heroine is Gillian Larking, a rather invisible girl at boarding school who does her best to fit in but has no real friends. Gillian has lost her mother and with her dad working in Egypt feels very much alone. However, when she gets a new roommate that feeling starts to change. Violet is a bright, lively girl whose first goal is to break school rules and sneak up onto the school roof to check out the view. Despite her mischievous and seemingly confident nature, Violet is anxious and has a series of rituals to perform that help her cope: 

“She had to do certain things at certain times, like twirl around on the spot before she flushed the lavatory or touch a door handle twice before she opened a door. I often caught her whispering certain words to herself three times or counting to fifty on her fingers. When I asked her why she had to do these things, she struggled to tell me. For protection, was all she would say, or so that nothing bad will happen.”

She is also prone to emotional outbursts when things become overwhelming. Gillian is seemingly more aware that as young ladies of the middle and upper classes they must manage their emotions. She herself has had moments of despair and loneliness but has kept her tears for under the covers late at night. She also aware that girls in packs tend to sniff out weakness or odd behaviour and worries whether Violet’s rituals or ‘undoings’ as she calls them, could affect both their positions at school. Yet the other girls don’t seem to bother Violet and Gillian wonders whether that’s because she’s from a wealthy family. As Christmas approaches Gillian is delighted to receive an invitation from Violet to spend the holidays with her family at Thornleigh Hall. There she is dazzled by their slightly shabby country home, being waited on by the servants and Violet’s rather beautiful older sisters. Emmeline, the oldest and definitely in charge, wafts around in old Edwardian gowns whereas Laura is a rather more modern and fragile beauty. Both girls accept Gillian as one of their own, but their new friendship is tested by an incident on Boxing Day that will reverberate through the years. 

I have a soft spot for books set between the two World Wars and this had a lot of the themes pertinent to aristocratic families of the time. Thornleigh Hall is badly in need of repair but has a faded grandeur that is still impressive to Gillian. They’re a family living a way of life that ended twenty years before. They clearly don’t have the funds to maintain their estate, but Gillian notices the lavish breakfasts laid out every morning under silver dishes. Emmeline, the eldest sister, is the family’s great hope. She must find a suitor with money and secure the family’s fortunes with a sensible marriage. She has a candidate in mind, much older than her but definitely of the right class and enough money to save the hall for another generation. Gillian is enthralled by the sister’s unique style and confidence and realises that to some extent her friend Violet is the odd one out. Her nervous rituals, like her need to read Peter Pan over and over, suggest a deep insecurity in her character and even a fear of growing up. She warns Gillian that her sisters are not all they seem to be, but Gillian feels accepted for the first time in her life. There was an element of L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between in her relationship with the sisters because she is naive and doesn’t realise when she’s being manipulated. On that fateful Boxing Day, Emmeline takes charge as always, instructing Gillian and Laura to lie or even pass blame onto a man who lives in the lodge house. Gillian feels obliged to go along with the plan because they’ve been kind to her. Again there are shades of another book here, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, where naivety and misunderstanding could lead to a terrible end for an innocent man of a lower social status. The full implications of these lies are utterly life changing for Violet, but almost no one escapes unscathed.

The novel is structured into four parts, taking us to different points in the life of Gillian and her relationship to the events of that Christmas in 1938. I’ve already mentioned L.P.Hartley’s The Go-Between and the first section has echoes of it’s opening page, from the naivety and social position of Gillian to the sense of delving into a past that’s long dead with it’s own social codes; “the past is a foreign country – they do things differently there’. We start the novel in 1999 when Gillian visits Thornleigh Hall, now under the guardianship of the National Trust. Over a slice of lemon and poppy seed cake, she ponders life from her time as a guest here to the recent death of her husband and the diary from 1938 that she’s come across while clearing out cupboards. This 1999 visit to Thornleigh is like travelling into the past as she strolls the rooms now on show and sees Lord and Lady Claybourne in the dining room complaining about their eggs and Laura in her stockinged feet reading a book on the library sofa. There is so much about this first chapter that draws us in: the suggested tragic circumstances of some members of the family; the emotional state of Gillian as a young girl who has lost her mother and is desperate for a role model; there’s also the hint of darker secrets lurking underneath the surface of this beautiful stately home. In the other three parts we’re taken to the aftermath of that fateful day in 1938 and then to London in 1942 where Gillian bumps into Laura’s husband Charlie. 

Finally part four brings us to the 1990s when Gillian and the Claybourne sisters are old women, taking us full circle to the beginning of the book. In each part there shocking revelations that leave Gillian in no doubt that the secrets from all those years ago are still having their effect. She has received a letter from Henry Cadwallander who has written to Gillian at his Aunt Violet’s request. Will she meet Violet and let her know that with the wisdom of experience she now understands her warning about the older sisters? I wondered if there would be closure or whether Gillian is always fated to be a horrified observer of the Claybourne’s family dynamics? This was an enthralling and fascinating look at a tumultuous time in history and it’s effects on one aristocratic family, observed through the eyes of a naive visitor. The author has created an incredible atmosphere that drew me in so strongly I felt like I was there. This is an amazing debut from Emily Critchley and I look forward to reading more of her work. 

Out now from Zaffre Books

Meet the Author

Emily Critchley has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. She currently lives in Hertfordshire in the UK. 

Posted in Netgalley

The Trouble With Mrs Montgomery Hurst by Katie Lumsden

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife – so why choose her?

Katie Lumsden’s first novel – The Secrets of Hartwood Hall – was a fantastically addictive Gothic mystery where nothing was as it seemed. This second novel has the feel of Jane Austen; light, witty and full of gossip. In this comedy of manners, where class and family reputation is everything, scandal is just around the corner. Amelia Ashpoint is comfortable with her life as it is. She and her brother Diggory live at home with their wealthy father and younger sister Ada in their newly built mansion in the county of Wickenshire. Summer 1841 and at the start of marriage season Amelia is 23 and her father has decided he wants to secure a husband for her. He has his hopes for Mr Montgomery Hurst, the most eligible bachelor in their social set and the owner of stately home Radcliffe Park. At previous dinners and dances, he has sought Amelia for his dance partner and they chat comfortably together at dinner. Their easy manner has been noted in society. However, at the next society ball there is intrigue and shock. Mr Hurst has been secretly engaged elsewhere, to an unknown widow with three children. Their friends are appalled but Amelia feels nothing but relief. She has no interest in marriage at all. It seems society has big expectations for Amelia, but her heart lies in a very different direction.

There’s so much to like in this Regency tale and Amelia is the centre of the centre of that. She’s an intelligent young woman who really knows her own mind and accepts who she is. She also knows where her heart lies but realises it can never be made public. It’s interesting to watch her slowly realise that she’s no longer a girl but is considered a grown-up and there are expectations on young women to marry. She imagined spending her days at the family home with her father, never having to marry but hasn’t realised what her father already knows. He isn’t going to be here forever. He’s becoming anxious about making sure she is settled, because the truth is all of them will have to marry. The house and estate will go to her brother and whoever he chooses to marry will become the mistress of Ashpoint Hall. Ada is still a girl but there won’t necessarily be room for Amelia. If only everyone could have as simple and happy a marriage as the new Mrs Hurst. When Amelia visits Radcliffe she is heartened by their easy manner with each other and the very natural relationship he seems to have built with his new stepchildren. Everyone around Amelia, including her best friend Clara and even her brother Diggory, appears to understand this unwritten rule – it’s time to find a mate.

The author portrays Wickenshire society beautifully, detailing how much traditional country society has changed. The differences can be seen in the village’s gentleman’s club The Lantern, where one floor is for those deemed gentlemen and downstairs is for tenants and tradespeople. People like the foreman of the Ashpoint Brewery Mr Lonsdale and military men like Major Alderton. The Ashpoints are not aristocracy themselves, in fact Ashpoint Hall is relatively new despite it’s grandeur. They may be new money, but the fact they have so much of it qualifies them as acceptable in polite society. The Earl and Countess of Wickford are the pinnacle of county society, so when they have a ball, they invite everybody, including the Major and Mr Lonsdale, but they can only get away with this behaviour because they’re aristocracy. If anyone else invited such men to a soirée it could reflect badly on the host. However, the author shows very strongly that just because someone is viewed as a gentleman it doesn’t mean they behave as one. Amelia’s brother Diggory is horrified to find that his best friend Alistair, Viscount of Salbridge and heir to the current Earl, has a guilty secret. His behaviour shows he has no regard for those reliant on him for their wages, the roof over their head, or even for a woman’s honour. This discovery leads to such a parting of the ways that Diggory starts to frequent downstairs at The Lantern. The usual downstairs clientele would be considered beneath him normally, but he’s growing up quickly and making his own life choices. Ever since he decided to propose to Lady Rose he’s started a steep learning curve, working every day in the brewery and preparing to take over from his father. He’s also keen on showing Lady Rose’s parents that his intentions are serious, realising that men are not born with integrity and honour. Money is also no guarantee of a man’s good character. Falling in love has set Diggory on the path to be a better man, also abstaining from drinking and the dangerous levels of gambling that have been the norm for him and the Viscount.

Amelia also has to grow up a lot throughout the novel. The subject of a woman’s honour and her marriageability are the strongest theme in the novel. It’s clear that societies like Wickenshire are in flux. Amelia has been insulated by her father’s money, so up until now the reality of a woman’s choices in life haven’t touched her. It is only her money that makes Mr Hurst a possible mate, otherwise he would be completely out of reach. Meanwhile, some titled families are beginning to find themselves financially unstable, meaning they are having to cast their nets wider to find suitable marriage partners. Where once only a title would do, families might need to consider new money and potential grooms may have to support the whole family or maintain a huge mansion. This could be good news for Diggory and Lady Rose, who is horrified to find her parents in dire straits and in a hurry to find her a husband. If Diggory doesn’t secure his bride, anyone reasonably respectable might do! For Amelia it’s her best friend Clara’s potential suitors that shock her the most as she’s always assumed they were of the same mind. However, Clara’s family don’t have the financial stability of the Ashpoints so she doesn’t have the luxury of turning down good offers, even if it isn’t her inclination to marry. Amelia grows up and gains a lot of perspective listening to her friend’s dilemma, realising how lucky she is to have a family who can support her for life and a fledgling writing career to fall back on should her father’s plans come to nothing. When rumours start to spread about Mrs Montgomery Hurst, Amelia realises how even a whiff of scandal can ruin a woman and how polite society shuns those who stray from the accepted conventions. Could there be a way for Amelia to use her position to still the gossiping tongues and sway polite society to accept the family? This is also a timely reminder that her own perpetual single status could be the cause of gossip.

I loved this wonderful homage to Austen. It has everything: characters of all classes; light comedy; smart social events; a dissection of Regency love and the marriage market. The author then brings in themes that we might consider more modern, such as infidelity, domestic abuse and LGBTQ+ relationships too. Just as Sarah Waters did with the Victorian novel, Katie uses the format of a Regency novel to show us that these types of relationships did exist when Austen was writing. It’s a form of writing back; she’s placing people and themes that were not included in literature of the time back into their historical context and exploring how they might fit in that time period. It gives us a richer and more varied sense of how society might have been, touching on subjects that didn’t really start to appear in literature until Queen Victoria was on the throne. It was only a few decades later that the Brontë’s wrote about more complex relationships: Jane Eyre’s love for a married man, Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall escaping from an abusive and violent marriage or Emily Brontë’s slightly incestuous and abusive relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. These are very different novels though with a darker tone.

Katie has instead taken all the lightness and wit of Austen, making her novel such a pleasure to read, but brining darker and more complex themes under the surface. The opening scene of chaos as the Ashpoint family get ready for a ball while Ada sobs at the unfairness of having to stay at home, is reminiscent of the Bennett sisters in a similar situation. For Austen, the comedy of Mrs Bennett’s nerves, the preposterous Mr Collins and Mr Elton, as well as the romance of the storylines disguised more complex themes of a woman’s place in society and their inability to inherit, not to mention the awful fate of an unhappy marriage. Upon the death of their father, girls were often left at the mercy of distant male relatives and had no say over their own fate. Our heroine Amelia simply wants to achieve the best outcome for herself, knowing she doesn’t want to marry. All she wants is to live in her childhood home, write her books and to enjoy the company of her brother’s family when he inherits. Most of all she wants to have the personal freedom that characters like Lady Rose and her friend Clara sadly can’t have. You’ll keep turning the pages, hoping she can achieve it.

Meet the Author

Katie Lumsden read Jane Eyre at the age of thirteen and never looked back. She spent her teenage years devouring nineteenth century literature, reading every Dickens, Brontë, Gaskell, Austen and Hardy novel she could find. She has a degree in English literature and history from the University of Durham and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the London Short Story Prize and the Bridport Prize, and have been published in various literary magazines. Katie’s Youtube channel, Books and Things, has more than 25,000 subscribers. She lives in London and works as an editor.

Posted in Netgalley

The Glass Maker by Tracey Chevalier

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Orsola is the spirited teenage daughter of the Rosso family, all glassmakers from the tiny Venetian island of Murano. She’s very young when she sees her father bleed out in the workshop after he’s struck in the neck by a shard of glass while making pieces for a chandelier. Out of his two sons, the youngest is quiet, solid and dependable and would have made the perfect maestro, while his eldest Marco is loud, egotistical and very proud of his skill with glass. Now the entire family’s fortunes lie on his shoulders as the eldest always inherits the title of maestro from their father. He needs to support everyone from his widowed mother Laura and her youngest daughter Stella. His promotion leaves room for another servente to become the apprenticed glassmaker, second only to the maestro. In an unusual move Marco employs Antonio, originally a fisherman he has always wanted to work with glass. For Orsola it is love at first sight. Meanwhile, she is looking for ways to supplement the family’s income and visits their patron and merchant, a Dutchman called Klingenhorn. He suggests that she approach the only female glassmaker in the city to teach her how to make glass beads over a heated lamp. Once her beads are of the right quality, Klingenhorn agrees to place an order and she sets to work with determination. Orsola is our window on the Rosso family and she imparts both their history and the history of the island with it’s amazing glassmaking heritage. It is a history filled with love, passion, duty, tragedy and ingenuity, plus a little touch of the magic that Venice has in abundance. 

It’s hard not to fall in love with Orsola because she’s so brave and independent, attacking life with a fearlessness that aligns her with the most important woman working in glass, Maria Barrovier. The family business is run by the men of the family, leaving the women powerless. Her mother has a great business brain and younger brother Giacomo would have definitely been a safer pair of hands, churning out the same simple glassware for daily use. Yet thanks to a circumstance of birth they are all at the mercy of the mercurial Marco. He is so dissatisfied with their usual output of plates and goblets that have been the Rosso’s bread and butter, he wants to make more ornate and decorative glass, but misses the fact that it still has to be functional.  Orsola keeps her own business dealings with Klingenhorn a secret from her family, telling them her bead making is merely a hobby. Her budding romance with Antonio is intoxicating, but she knows immediately that he wouldn’t be her brother’s choice for a husband. They spend moonlit nights marooned on Antonio’s boat dreaming of a life where they can be together, away from the rivalry his presence has caused in the workshop. The Rosso’s business is a rollercoaster and they have to face hardship, change focus and rebuild several times. The author takes us from the 17th Century plague that hit Venice hard, all the way through to the COVID pandemic. While centuries pass in the real world, somehow everything happens within Orsola’s lifetime. When I visited Venice for the first time, particularly in the evening, I had a strange feeling I might turn a corner and be in another century. Orsola rarely leaves Murano and Venice, only once venturing to the mainland, rowed by Klingenhorn’s slave. I felt that if Orsola actually set foot on the mainland she would suddenly age by decades. 

The time difference felt strange at first, but it soon felt completely normal. We get to experience the city’s heyday as a bustling port, filled with merchants and people of all races and places. We see that dwindle as time goes on and slowly native Venetians leave and tourists move in. The author explores issues that are important to the island today: the worsening of the acqua Alta; the building of flood defences in the lagoon; cruise ships dwarfing the city and disgorging hundreds of tourists into San Marco at once; the shops selling cheap Chinese versions of local crafts such as mask makers, leather workers and glass makers, undercutting local artists; the changing flora and fauna, illustrated by the dolphins reported in the lagoon during COVID when only residents were left in the city. The author explores that conundrum of the negative impact of tourism on the city, while also acknowledging the city’s absolute dependence on it’s visitors. The endless lament that Venice is sinking, only serving to heighten people’s desire to see it. There are those who feel Venice has become a theme park of of it’s original self. I utterly adore Venice and I’m going next year for what will probably be the last time as it is difficult for a disabled person to get around. The author mentions a Las Vegas hotel where a microcosm of Venice has been created, with some visitors thinking they no longer need to travel to see the city. Yet it’s picture perfect bridges and clean canals are miles away from the real Venice. Of all my memories of Venice, the most important are those that are far from perfect. It’s the churn of the mud in the Grand Canal and silty smell of the mud, the washing hanging above your head, meeting locals and their dogs walking after dinner and the sound of squeaking rubber against the dock as the vaporetto leaves it’s stop. We always laugh about the old man we met crossing a bridge into Castello who farted loudly, before laughing uproariously! I feel that spooky sensation I had walking round the back of La Fenice after dark and the smell of candles and incense as we heard mass in an unexpectedly beautiful church. It was watching everyday things that gave me an idea of living in Venice: the grocery deliveries; being rushed to hospital or having the rubbish collected by boats. It’s all these things that make Venice real and not a film set. 

Of course I was longing for Orsola to reunite with her one love Antonio and I won’t ruin your enjoyment by telling all, except to say that just like the real Venice, real life is rarely a romantic novel. However, what I enjoyed most was Orsola herself because she is a pioneer and an incredible business woman. In fact she succeeds precisely because she is a woman. While Marco inherits the business, his ego and inability to change could have derailed the whole family. The women in this novel ‘manage’ the men, working around them and often slowly drip feeding ideas and solutions to the men until they adopt the idea as their own. Whereas Marco never asks for advice and rarely takes it, Orsola recognises the shortcomings of the business or when a crisis is looming. She knows who to ask, consulting with Klingenhorn and his replacement Johnas, Maria Barovier and the women of Cannaregio about threading and stacking seed beads. Even as the novel comes up to date she’s still diversifying, opening a second shop in a busy tourist Calle of Venice itself and employing someone to crate the glass balloons and trinkets that are easily packaged and stowed in a suitcase. She survives by being pragmatic, recognising when to challenge and when to do her duty, even if her temper does get the better of her at times. The depth of research that’s gone into her story and the author recommends many sources in her brilliant afterword. She creates a Venice I recognise, full of beauty and history but also a real and imperfect place, reliant on the very thing that destroys it. She captures the soul of the island and of Murano too and the people who feel themselves as Muranese first and foremost. I loved the magic of these places and how it attracts the eccentric and eclectic characters who have made it their home over the years. From Casanova, to Peggy Guggenheim and the previous owner of her home, the Marchessa and her pet Cheetahs. It is a moving, vibrant and intelligent novel that I know I will want to read again and again.  

The Borough Press 12th September 2024

Meet the Author

Tracy is the author of 11 novels, including the international bestseller GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, which has sold over 5 million copies and been made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. American by birth, British by geography, she lives in London and Dorset. Her latest novel, THE GLASSMAKER, is set in Venice and follows a family of glass masters over the course of 5 centuries.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Black Loch by Peter May

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Readers probably won’t believe this but this is my first Peter May novel. I’ve had his books on my ‘authors to explore’ list for when I’m second hand book shopping, but something always gets in the way of me reading them. So, when I was offered this blog tour I jumped at the chance to finally read one. I love books set in Scotland and I am a particular fan of Tartan Noir – crime novels and mystery novels from authors like Doug Johnstone and Val McDermid. I was immediately drawn into the incredible scenery and atmosphere of the Isle of Lewis. This is the fourth in a trilogy, so I’ve definitely got some catching up to do where Fin McLeod is concerned. Once a detective and now retired, Fin is drawn back to Lewis when Caitlin Black’s body is discovered on a remote beach. Only eighteen years old, Caitlin was a student at the Nicholson Institute. It emerges that she was having an illicit affair with Fionnlagh McLeod, her teacher and a married man twenty years her senior. Fionnlagh soon becomes the prime suspect and is arrested on suspicion of her rape and murder. He is also Finn’s son. Finn knows he must return to Lewis to support his daughter-in-law and granddaughter. He also knows, despite the evidence against him, that he must try to clear his son’s name. As Fin travels around the island, he is drawn into past memories and soon realises this crime has echoes back into his own teenage past on the island. A terrible accident at a salmon farm caused two deaths, just as the industry started to expand on the island and become a multi-million pound concern. This is a journey of family ties, secret relationships and a bleak and unforgiving landscape, where violence, revenge and revelations converge. 

Fin and his wife Marsaili both grew up on the island, so it holds echoes of their relationship over the years. It’s strange for them to be back on Lewis after a ten year absence and awkward to turn up on Fionnlagh’s doorstep where his wife Donna is devastated by the possibility that her husband has killed his teenage lover. Their daughter Eilidh is happy to see her grandparents and currently oblivious about her father’s fate, but it’s clear to see the damage Fionnlagh’s exploits have had on Donna. These early chapters felt like being sucked down into a whirlpool of memories. There’s such an incredible sense of place and the use of Gaelic words and names feels foreign, strange and somehow magical at the same time. There are tourists enjoying the white sandy beaches, but we’re taken down below the surface to the realities of living somewhere so remote and bleak. Then further down to the horrors underneath where salmon are eaten alive by lice in their cages, where beached whales gasp their last agonising breath on the sand and a beautiful girl with her whole life ahead of her can be thrown over a cliff like rubbish.

“He finally reached the Black Loch just before seven-thirty. He parked above the beach as sunlight fanned out towards him across cut-crystal water, revealing the secret colours that concealed themselves on the shore, among rocks and boulders and the seaweed washed up to dry along the high-tide mark. To his right, cliffs of Lewisian gneiss rose steeply out of the water and he could just see the gables and chimneys of the house that stood above them overlooking the bay. He cast his eyes down again to the water’s edge and left footprints in the wet sand as he followed the curve of the day towards the looming black of the cliffs. Somewhere here Caitlin’s body had been washed ashore.”

Peter May has portrayed the environment, whilst also showing the extent to which climate change and the eco- industry have impacted the surroundings he’s known for his whole life. The old cottages are damp and battered, some being refurbed by incomers with money either as family homes or holiday cottages. New houses are squat, one-storey dwellings built to blend with the sand and the heather with large  windows giving uninterrupted views of the landscape. Younger islanders are focused on eco-activism with Caitlin Black and her friend Isobel starring in a programme about the island’s ecology. They care about fish farming practices driven by the market across the globe for salmon. Practices that prevent wild salmon from swimming up river to spawn as well as terrible conditions for the farmed salmon too. Huge cages that once held a few hundred salmon now hold a hundred thousand, with such a high mortality rate they’re having to take them from the cages and dump them into rock crevices formed from by the tide. They lay there rotting until the sea washes them away.

“The activist’s aerial shots exposing the illegal dumping of dead fish, and the zombie salmon, half eaten by sea lice, swimming listlessly around in cages where anything up to twenty-five percent of fish were already dead. She listened in horror as he conjured up an image of the stinking, maggot-ridden morts […] and the 1000-litre containers of formaldehyde that a desperate Bradan Mor was using to try to kill the sea lice.”

Fin’s narrative takes us on his investigations around the island, trying to find evidence to disprove the police’s theory that his son is a killer. A task made much more difficult when his DNA matches samples taken from Caitlin’s body. Why would he rape someone he’s been sleeping with for months? This is according to locals who’d noticed their clandestine comings and goings from a derelict cottage by the sea. Despite the urgency of the present moment, Fin is also pulled inexorably into the past, because this island has a huge hold and power. I felt centuries of history in the land it’s people and their relationships. This is sometimes positive, as Fin remembers beach parties where he first met Masaili as a teenager and they make love on the beach in the present, grasping a tiny moment of happiness and connection in the hurt and devastation. The most terrible memories involve a scheme to steal fish from the fish farm and pass them off as wild salmon, for a ghillie from the estate to sell on. Fin goes along with it despite his misgivings, but the scheme is originally suggested by Niall. A group of teenagers meet and drive to the fish farm several times, but one night there’s an awful storm and a sense of foreboding. This enterprise leads to two deaths and creates a suspicion in Fin about his friend Niall. If he is willing to steal from his own family and brush aside the death of a friend, is he capable of murder? Niall’s surname is Black and Caitlin is his daughter.

It feels as if the island has a consciousness. It sees your past and your future as clearly as the present, almost as if they’re happening simultaneously. I felt it when Finn walked across the very place he stood with Masaili when they were first meeting at six years old and she had two pigtails. She also called him Finn for the first time, christening him with a nickname he still uses. This is a thin place, unchanged for centuries. It also said something about how we experience the world. We are rarely solidly who we are in the present, with past and future forgotten. We are simultaneously all the selves we’ve ever been. In this way Fionnlagh can be a good father, a talented teacher and a suspect in a murder. There are also darker moments from Fin and Marsaili’s past that come alive here. Her narration is a rare moment in the novel but she relives a night in Glasgow from their university years, when she found Finn in bed with another girl in their student flat? It makes us realise that Finn isn’t wholly the upstanding man we think he is, he was also the cause of so much hurt, rather like his son. 

There’s a sense in which this trauma is generational, not just in individual families but in the island itself. The environment has always been harsh and people have found it to survive. It’s a hunting and fishing community and other nearby islands, like St.Kilda, became uninhabitable in the early Twentieth Century due to the difficulty of growing and catching enough food for the islanders. Fin takes us back to a conversation he had with his grandfather about the whaling industry, brutal tales of harpooning these majestic creatures and turning the sea red. It links to the beached whales in the bay, possibly drawn off course by one of them being unwell and in distress. As the vet assesses these giant creatures and people desperately try to save them he talks about a tradition in the Faroe Islands where they draw whales to the shore then hack them to pieces. Fin has violent memories of being forced to join a seasonal slaughter. In his last summer before university, Fin felt like a black cloud had descended because he and his friend Artair had been chosen to join the guga hunters. This was a four hundred year old tradition where twelve men would travel to An Sgeir, an island no more than a rock in the middle of the ocean. A guga was a young gannet, once hunted in a desperate need for food, their slaughter was now a rite of passage. Hunters killed two thousand birds in a fortnight, then they would be plucked and salted. Fin felt disgusted by the idea, but it seemed unavoidable and it would be dishonourable to give up your place.

“Neither Artair nor I wanted to spend two weeks on that bleak and inhospitable rock, scrambling among the blood and shit that covered the cliffs, slaughtering defenceless birds.”

This was a tense and complex case with so many possible suspects, and Peter May also keeps us guessing about Fionnlagh. Perhaps he could be the killer, after all he does confess. In a way this created a crime novel that didn’t revolve completely on whodunnit, but on the tensions between different characters and also their environment. He also creates a compelling picture of the beautiful and intelligent victim, Caitlin Black. A girl as embedded in the island as Fin, with a deep passion for the island’s environment and it’s flora and fauna. She epitomises the gap between generations, but also between those who want to protect the island and those who are making a generous living by exploiting and polluting it. I loved how deep the island and it’s history ran in these people, something I can understand having lived right next to the River Trent for most of my life. In fact the first thing I did when moving into my last village twelve years ago was go to the river bank and take off my sandals to feel the river bank under my feet. The river and it’s daily tidal bore, the smell of fresh cut hay, the cool of the forest, the crunch of dry pine needles underfoot as well as the smell of straw bales in the sun and freshly turned earth are all in my soul. They make up part of who I am and although I moved away for study, I have returned and unknowingly into the same village where my great-great grandmother is buried. Our ancestors call to us and this is definitely what Fin and Marsaili are feeling, as well as need to be close to Fionnlagh, Donna and Eilidh. This is something he couldn’t have imagined ten years ago, but now he wonders if it’s where they belong. Perhaps this means future additions to the series and on the basis of 5is novel, I’ll be the first in the queue if it does.

“He leaned over to kiss her and remembered that little girl with the pigtails who had walked him up the road from the school to Crobost Stores giving him the nickname that had stuck for the rest of his life.”

Out on 12th September from RiverRun Books, an imprint of Quercus.

Meet the Author

Peter May was born and raised in Scotland. He won Journalist of the Year at twenty-one and was a published novelist at twenty-six. When his first book was adapted as a major drama series for the BBC, he quit journalism and became one of Scotland’s most successful television dramatists. He created three prime-time drama series, led two of the highest-rated series in Scotland as a script editor and producer and worked on more than 1,000 episodes of ratings-topping drama before deciding to leave television and return to his first love, writing novels.