Tag: Romance

Posted in Personal Purchase

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Posted on by thelotusreaders

What an absolute privilege it was to read this incredible story a couple of years ago and it was my book of the year. It is truly the best book Maggie O’Farrell has ever written and I’m a huge fan. I’ve loved her previous novels, especially The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. The scary part was trying to do this incredible work justice in my review. Something that director Chloe Zhao must have thought before embarking on the film version, due out on the 9th January. The responsibility of taking something so precious and recreating it for the cinema must have weighed heavy on the cast too. I watched an interview with Jessie Buckley a few days ago where she divulged that at first she didn’t know how to be. Not how to capture Agnes but how to portray something she’d never had in real life – to embody the role of being a mum when she wasn’t one and to capture the enormity of losing a child. I think her reticence and how she searched for those emotions show that Agnes is in safe hands with Buckley. I’ve been a fan since her debut you on the BBC series I’d Do Anything and to see the wonderful Paul Mescal cast opposite her took away any concerns I might have had about the book being ruined. Here though I want to tell you about this beautiful book and encourage people to read Maggie O’Farrell’s masterpiece. 

Despite his place in literature as our most famous playwright, not a lot is known about Shakespeare’s life with his wife and children. Until reading this, and despite doing a module in Renaissance Literature at university, my only knowledge was of a wife called Anne Hathaway. Any other knowledge has rather embarrassingly and erroneously come from Upstart Crow, which depicts his eldest daughter Susannah as an intelligent, outspoken and boy crazy teenager. I also remember that many years ago I was shown the outside of a picture perfect cottage that belonged to Anne Hathaway. This was Hewlands where Anne was born, and after her marriage, the home of her brother Bartholomew. There has always been this hole in my knowledge, and when watching the totally inaccurate Shakespeare in Love I do remember wondering whatever happened to his wife. Did he love her and if so, how did he spend so much time away from her and their family? Also, with his success down in London, what did Anne do with her life? I wondered whether she was weighed down with the care of children, as well as her elderly in-laws with whom they lived.

For the author it was a different absence that became her way into the story. She had always wondered why the Black Death or ‘pestilence’ never featured in any of Shakespeare’s works. It’s absence seemed odd, considering that, in this time period, it killed large swathes of people. From 1575 in Venice over 50,000 people died as a result of plague over two years, thought to be caused by troop movements associated with The Thirty Years War. The beautiful cathedral Santa Maria Della Salute was built after a third of the population was wiped out in a return of the plague in 1630. The city still celebrates the Festival of the Redeemer today as a thank you that the city and some of its residents survived these pandemics. In England in 1563 the plague killed 20,000 people in London alone. Historical sources cite the plague as cause of death to extended members of Shakespeare’s family and possibly his sisters. His work was also affected, with all London playhouses closed down in 1593, 1603 and 1608. However, the biggest loss of all was his only son Hamnet, who is thought to have contracted the disease and died, aged 11, in 1596. O’Farrell takes these facts as the bare bones and fleshes out a more human story, weaving the life of a boy and his family with empathy, poetry and a touch of magic.

One of my favourite passages of the book focuses on the transmission of this horrific disease via some fleas and the beautiful millefiore glass beads crafted on the Venetian island of Murano. It takes accident, upon chance, and coincidence to carry the deadly disease all the way back to Stratford. A glassmaker burns his hand, so someone else packs his beads into some soft rags he finds lying around, instead of their usual packaging. A merchant ship bound for England has docked and a cabin boy searches Venice for cats to combat rats on board, when he is diverted by a monkey in a waistcoat. The keeper roughly pulls him away, but left behind are a few fleas, some of which make their way onto the cats an a crew member who tends to sleep with cats in his cabin. He doesn’t report for duty and has a fever plus the telltale ‘buboes’ or swelling of the lymph glands. These swellings turn black and the smell of the dead man is so repugnant that other crew members are relieved to heave him overboard for burial. He isn’t the last. Only five crew members remain as the ship docks in London and one box of beads from Murano makes its way to a Stratford dressmaker, where a customer is determined that only Murano glass beading would do for her new dress. The dressmakers assistant unpacks the beads from their ragged packaging and as she does a flea jumps from the fabric to its new host. The dressmaker’s assistant is Judith Shakespeare, Hamnet’s twin sister. This is typical of the author’s signature style of layering description to create depth and its effect is like an assault on the senses. I can smell the sweat of the glassmaker, feel the fur of the monkey, hear the creak of the boats in the canals and the shouts in the market, and feel the swell of the waves and ruts in the road as the package takes its journey, delivering both beauty and death at the same time.

In one timeline Judith and then Hamnet succumb to the plague, while unwittingly the family go about their usual day. There is a clever nod to the cross dressing in Shakespeare’s comedies here in the likeness of the twins, but this is anything but funny, it’s a disguise to cheat death. As the family slowly discover what fate has in store, our timeline jumps into the past following Agnes and Hamnet’s father. Although she is more widely known as Anne, she was recorded in official records as Agnes so the author chose to stick with that name. She always refers to him as the tutor, the husband or the father and never by name. The absence of his name creates a sense of two people; the London celebrity playwright and the family man. We start to see what an extraordinary woman Agnes is in her own right. The object of gossip in town, people say the daughter at Hewlands is a very singular character. She has a friend who is a priest, she has her own hawk and can charm bees. In truth she knows a lot of old country ways such as foraging, hawking and bee keeping as well as what plants to grow for household ailments. She often roams barefoot in the forest and her stepmother Joan despaired of her a long time ago and is jealous of the love her husband held for his late wife. When Agnes meets her brother’s Latin tutor, she uses her method of reading people and pinches the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. Here she sees depths and universes within, that his surface youth and inexperience don’t even hint at. It is this promise, these unseen layers, that she falls in love with. For his part, it is her difference he finds intoxicating. He realises that he will never see another woman who walks barefoot, with lose hair and a hawk on her arm. However much they accept each other, will their families accept their choice and will those untapped depths come between them?

I enjoyed the way these two timelines intersected, each informing the other and adding layers of understanding. How both families assimilated and worked together over time was really interesting. In each generation sibling relationships were particularly important, with their rivalries, but also their unspoken trusts and understandings. The idea of ‘doubling’ and disguise around siblings, especially where there are different genders such as Judith and Hamnet, makes us think again about a play like Twelfth Night. Disguise allows women to do things they would normally be excluded from and O’Farrell shows that in the industriousness of women in the novel. This isn’t just based around domestic matters but planning and running businesses. Agnes grows medicinal plants and creates cures, with people often knocking on the door to be seen. As a country girl I also liked the depiction of her relationship with the land. When I stand on the bank of the River Trent, I feel an urge to go barefoot and ground myself. I was born there, so when I moved next to the river recently grounding and feeling the earth felt so powerful. Agnes is the same with the land at Hewlands, particularly the woods, and she chooses to give birth there to Susannah. Agnes feels cradled by the earth, it protects, cures and grounds her. She also has great ‘countrycraft’ such as being able to control bees – something I’ve seen my own father do with a swarm – there’s a practicality but also a mysticism to these abilities.

Underpinning all of this, I am in love with Maggie O’Farrell’s flow. It’s a hard book to put down because it reads like one long poem to love, family, and home. Then there is the tension that comes when a member of this family follows their dream and is taken away from that unit. How does a father balance his roles as lover, son, father and still follow his dreams? Especially when those dreams are so big. When he gets that balance wrong will he be forgiven and will he be able to forgive himself? The book is full of contrasts, from passages so vibrant and full of life, to the devastating silence of Hamnet’s loss. From birth scenes to death scenes. Wild country lanes and the leafy woods compared with the noise and enclosure of town. The routine of daily family life as opposed to a chaotic life in the theatres of London. All of these contrasts exist within one family, and no matter what we know about our most famous and celebrated playwright, this is about family. Finally, the author’s depiction of grief is so moving. Whether quiet and contained, or expressed loudly, we never doubt its devastating power. We never overlook the boy-shaped hole in the life of this family. Whether our response to grief is to run from it, distract ourselves from it or deny it, eventually we do have to go through it. In the life of this couple, will their grief be expressed differently and if so, can they ever make their way back to each other? This is a simply stunning piece of work. Moving, haunting and ultimately unforgettable.

I’ll keep you posted for the film version but I know I’ll be taking lots of tissues.

Hamnet is in cinemas on January 9th.

Posted in Publisher Proof

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice. 
If Davy had remembered to put on a coat.
If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.
If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt.

I came late to this incredible story of love set in Ireland, a story that reaches across the barriers of age, religion and fidelity. I was first sent it in 2022 and read it once, then decided to read it again before watching the television series. On an ordinary day Michael Agnew walks into the pub belonging to Cushla’s family and a chain of events is set in motion that can’t be undone. Cushla teaches seven year olds who already know phrases like rubber bullet and petrol bomb, everything is upside down so why wouldn’t the married, Protestant barrister lock eyes on the Catholic schoolteacher half his age. As Cushla tries to help her pupils, particularly Davey McGeown, and deal with her alcoholic mother, she conducts a secret love affair, but there are forces moving beyond her control. As she desperately tries to keep all the disparate parts of her life under control and apart, they are on a collision course. I couldn’t stay away from this brilliant book, feeling so much for this young woman who simply falls in love in a place that’s far from simple. Her relationship with her mother is fascinating and as she moves in very different circles with Michael we feel her self-consciousness and doubt about herself. This is a place and time with very different rules to ours and their impact is utterly devastating.

We experience everything through Cushla, a young girl who works as a schoolteacher by day and struggles with boundaries. She goes above and beyond for Davey McGeown, with lifts home from school and loaning books to him and his teenage brother Tommy. When their father is severely beaten by paramilitaries she continues to help, at a potentially huge cost to her family’s safety. I loved her instincts to help but also understood her brother’s warning. Her home life can be a struggle, her mother Gina made me hugely angry with her drinking and self-pity. Sometimes she’s fit for nothing but bed, then on other occasions she can pull it together, especially if there’s a situation where she can be the centre of attention. It is this formative relationship that makes Cushla a ‘rescuer’ and leaves her open to being exploited. We see her relationship with Michael through her eyes only, the attraction is instant and mutual but only develops when he asks if she’ll teach him and his friends the Irish language. At first she feels a fool, taking her school books to people with advanced qualifications who are so much older than her. We never know Michael’s motivations, although he does seem to fall in love with Cushla we don’t know if the lessons are a manipulation. A means of spending time with her. I was watching to see if he was practised in adultery, is he a serial seducer of young women? No one mentions his wife in the small circle of friends she meets. There’s a huge power imbalance between them and Cushla never really thinks about his other life, until it’s right in front of her. 

Love of any sort seems gentle and tender when placed against the backdrop of the troubles. Beatings and bombs are a regular occurrence. Violence is never far away. Killing is mentioned with regret and reverence, but still more casually than you’d expect. However, it is devastating to those left behind. As Cushla’s love affair with Michael intensifies so do political tensions in the town. Cushla’s attention is drawn by dramatic events close to home, totally unaware of where the real danger lurks, with tragic results that left me heartbroken. I loved the naivety of Cushla and her wish to make other people’s lives better. She’s less good at looking after herself and the secrets she keeps mean that when tragedy does strike she cannot share it and is utterly alone. It is only with the backdrop of this tragedy that Cushla sees how fragile peace and love can be. Her life is like a hall of mirrors, with events looking different depending on which position they’re viewed from. If Michael hadn’t stopped by the bar that night. If she’d never helped Davey McGeown. A photograph she finds in the bar shows that night and to those people drinking in the bar this is as close as she and Michael are, only she knows different

“Michael standing at the counter […] Cushla’s hands were just in the frame, slipping a beer mat under his whiskey, his outstretched fingers almost touching her wrist.”

This is an incredible debut from Louise Kennedy that captures the naivety of youth while also exploring infidelity, betrayal and complicated raw grief. This may be a secret love but is no less powerful for that. 

Trespasses is available on C4 on demand.

Posted in Personal Purchase

The Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

She survives four queens. Will she fall to a tyrant?

Philippa Gregory brings the Boleyn traitor into the light in an explosive story of one woman’s survival in the treacherous heart of the Tudor court.

It’s been a while since author and historian Philippa Gregory delved into the lives of the Tudors, but what a character to come back to. I’ve always been interested in those women who survived Henry VIII, not just Katherine Parr but Mary Boleyn, who was the subject of Phillipa’s first book and managed to spurn court and live in the countryside with her husband and children. There’s Anne of Cleeves who had the common sense to take an annulment and lived the rest of her life as a wealthy woman. Then there’s Jane Boleyn, one of those fascinating people who seems in the background and very unimportant. In fact when I first read about Anne Boleyn her sister-in-law was no more than a functionary, a lady-in-waiting with no bearing on the main story. However, the more I read, the more interesting little snippets occurred to me. She’s named as someone who betrayed their own husband in the trial Henry VIII held against Anne and three men who were close to her, including her brother and Jane’s husband, George Boleyn. I wondered why he wanted to prove incest against Anne, when her adultery was treason anyway. This was a claim that had anger and spite behind it, that wanted to taint and bury the name Boleyn and with Jane surviving the fall it seemed likely that she had provided this salacious claim, perhaps jealous of her husband’s close relationship with his sister. Maybe she was just lucky, but Jane survived four queens, serving as lady in waiting from Katherine of Aragon to Katheryn Howard. That shows she was accomplished at court and able to weather the changes under a very unpredictable king. She survived the change from Roman Catholicism to the Church of England and the huge change in Henry’s court when he became less dependent on the opinions of his dukes and more on the commoner Thomas Cromwell. So I was really looking forward to reading more about this woman and her perspective on a story we know very well. 

Of course there was a certain amount of repetition, but that’s my fault for having read everything there is to know about Henry’s court. Even though we’re firmly in Henry’s time, this book felt strangely contemporary in its themes. As it goes along we start to see Henry the tyrant emerge from the sought after and enlightened prince he once was, possibly due to the blow on the head he suffered while jousting. Now America is in the grip of a similar man, they’re both petty, vindictive, vengeful and willing to manipulate the truth to get the outcome they want. 

“Pity about the horse” my father says […] “the King had him beheaded”. 

By the time we reach Cromwell’s search for a new wife, after the death of Jane Seymour, Henry seems on the brink of insanity and no one can say no to his demands. A whole court revolves around his wishes, no matter how irrational they may be. 

“The King kills those closest to him […] he loves them at first, calling them to his side to make himself shine and then he cannot tolerate that they eclipse him.” 

Philippa writes a brilliant scene based on what we know of Anne of Cleeve’s arrival in the country. We know she spoke very little English or French, but she also had no experience of Henry. One of his foibles was dressing up and fooling people with his appearance. He failed to realise that his sheer size, not to mention his gait which was affected by the wound on his leg, meant he was likely to be identified whatever mask or disguise he wore. Used to the pandering of his courtiers who would pretend not to know him, he was horrified when he burst into Anne’s room dressed as a beggar and she failed to recognise him, even flinching at his touch. It’s was an appalling first impression and Philippa writes Jane as desperately trying to stop it from happening. Jane had spent time with the German bride and knew she wouldn’t get the King’s humour, pleading with Cromwell to stop him. However, it was too late and this woman’s reaction to him would have been a huge dent to his pride. This rejection doomed their relationship before it started, with Henry claiming she was overweight, her breasts were slack and she had a strange smell – a rather bold claim considering Henry’s persistently infected leg and his courtiers having to hold perfume to their noses to disguise the smell. The annulment was swift and Henry’s eye was drawn to a new girl at court, the fifteen year old Katheryn Howard. 

Of course, there is also a contemporary parallel between Katheryn Howard’s past at her aunt’s home and Epstein scandal. She was supposedly being trained as a lady-in-waiting but Gregory’s past novel about Katheryn’s short time as Queen reveals that this finishing school in Norfolk is a magnet for the men of the area who are allowed to visit the girls at night. Katheryn has always been portrayed as promiscuous and it is thought by more recent historians that she was sexually active from a very young age of about twelve to thirteen. We would now consider this grooming of a minor for sexual exploitation and it’s worth remembering that she was executed for treason due to her infidelity with Thomas Culpepper, who had been the King’s favourite, but also for adultery with young men she met before she’d ever come to court. Henry changed the law specifically to charge her with this when he had the evidence to sign her death warrant anyway. He’s not alone in his predilection for young women. His best friend Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, has a young ‘ward’ who lives at Grimsthorpe Castle in my home county of Lincolnshire. As a middle aged man he thinks nothing of marrying her as soon as she’s of age and taking her property as his own. He’s also a lot less appealing when I’m not imagining Henry Cavill who played him in The Tudors. I found the scenes where Henry is brought to Katheryn’s bedchamber almost unbearable to read, but I can’t deny that they are well written. Henry is described as bloated, sweating and leaning upon his courtiers who have to heave him into bed with this young girl. We know he is likely to be impotent at this point in his life, but the fact that this tiny girl has to try and initiate sexual activity with him made me feel sick. I felt a tremendous pity for her and a hope that she found some moments of happiness and love in her short life. 

Gregory writes Jane as a woman who lost her husband, her status and her role as a mother to serve this tyrant King’s court. It’s so fascinating to read how she stays within the King’s good graces for such a length of time. Here the author writes an alliance that might explain that, but we can see she’s intelligent in her own right, speaks several languages, is good at reading people and has a shrewd ability to sense which way the King might drift next. I found myself admiring her quick thinking and felt she could have easily been a politician or spin doctor in modern times. Something that stood out strongly in this novel was the misogyny, which wasn’t surprising but still felt desperately unfair. After Henry suffers his jousting accident he is unconscious for anything from 45 minutes to a couple of hours, with Anne distraught and by his side. Later she miscarries and as awful as that experience is, having been there more than once, what struck me was the shame and guilt she was made to feel. The rush to clean her up and change the bed, making sure it’s all presentable and the Queen looks well enough to accept a visit from the King. Her brother George is the only man who goes to bring comfort, not caring what state she is in. This belief that women are unclean and should come to a marriage bed untouched, no matter how experienced her new husband may be, does breed a resentment and fury into those women. That can start to question in their own mind but it can’t be voiced yet. This is about little rebellions and pushing the boundaries of the powers they do have and Jane is very good at this, knowing which powerful men to trust and those to placate. I found the book gripping even though I knew the outcome would not change and I think that’s a great skill to have. Gregory takes people we know from school and history books and makes them into living breathing humans, with wants and needs that are no different from ours. I felt Jane’s loneliness and this was perhaps why she helped Katheryn in her love affairs. Both have had very little love in their lives and for Jane living this vicariously was so tempting, but very dangerous. This was an interesting look at the Tudor court from the viewpoint of a character whose position makes her almost invisible but also a very compelling witness. 

Meet the Author

Philippa Gregory is an internationally renowned historian and novelist. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature at the University of Edinburgh and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Universities of Sussex and Cardiff, an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck University of London and she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services to literature and to charity. Her novels have been adapted for stage and screen and in 2023 she published her groundbreaking history book, Normal Women – 900 Years of Making History, which was also released as a podcast, a teen edition and a series for young children.

Posted in Netgalley

The House of Hidden Letters by Izzy Broom 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Be whisked away to Greece with this dual narrative novel set on the Greek Islands. Greek cottage. Price: One Euro. Skye doesn’t make impulsive decisions. But when she sees a derelict Greek cottage for sale by lottery, she enters with dreams of a fresh start. However, her heart sinks as she pushes open the tattered blue door weeks later. Can this wreck ever be her home? Then Skye finds a bundle of letters hidden in the fireplace, their faded pages drawing her in with a story of long-forgotten love, tragedy, and unbelievable bravery during WW2. But all the while, Skye’s own past is circling. No matter how far she goes, fate is never far behind…

I throughly enjoyed this novel that treads the difficult line between feeling escapist while looking back to harrowing events in the island’s history. The people who buy the one Euro houses bring an optimism and sense of renewal to the island. The current residents of the island are a joy, incredibly generous with the new arrivals and particularly Andreas who is the builder commissioned to renovate the houses. He is hospitable, showing Skye around her new home and chatting ideas, but he goes above and beyond when he realises she is staying in the empty house so brings her groceries and coffee. When some of the other residents arrive the place is full of camaraderie and new friendships. These are mainly women. Joy is an artist from Australia who clicks with Skye straightaway. There are three sisters, one of which is a builder determined to renovate in her own way much to Andreas’s disgust. As Skye wanders through her house alone, taking in the sea view from the attic room we get a sense of freedom and independence from her, possibly a feeling she hasn’t had for some time. All of this activity is exciting and hopeful, a light-heartedness that’s at odds with the reasons Skye left the UK and her new home’s sad history. Skye and Andreas find Nazi dog tags and a stash of letters in a half collapsed wall, so they know these are from the time of occupation, when Italian and German soldiers were present in the islands. It’s more troubling when remains are unearthed in the garden, some of which appear to be human. What has happened on this particular street? 

I found Katerina’s letters and the times we delve back into the island’s history so vivid and there were scenes so memorable, I don’t think I’ll forget them. It really engaged my emotions and I fell in love with Katerina when we first meet her as she’s climbing to reach her goats. Her relationship with the little three legged goat is so touching. It’s also the reason she meets Stefanos, as her goat climbs a little higher than she should considering her poor balance. Katerina tucks her skirt into her knickers and shows off her own climbing skills. It feels like love at first sight for these two, but war will get in the way of their courtship. This heroine is bold and brave and even though she faces some terrible events she never loses her determination or her love. This is a turn around for the girl who scorned her sister’s marriage and the constraints it placed on her.

“Love, such a stupid thing. She was eighteen, strong, healthy and free to roam between chores. A man would not let her behave in such a way.” 

I found the islander’s experiences at the hands of their occupiers harrowing. They take everything they can from the villager’s stores of food, requisition their animals and leave them starving slowly. Katerina can see her sister is becoming frail, but doesn’t realise what she’s enduring in order to secure the tiny amount of food they have. One particular soldier takes an interest in her and she knows he won’t take no for an answer, even though she is expecting to marry Stefanos if he comes home. As she symbolically tries on her mother’s wedding dress she feels the strength of the older generation with her. This is a strength she sees when encountering an elderly man on the beach who greets her warmly then simply walks away into the sea, unable to cope with what is happening on the island and knowing the young need to be priority when it comes to resources. It’s the young who have to fight, including Stefanos and her sister’s husband, but it’s easy to forget that occupied women are also fighting in their own way. That might be foraging for food, hiding supplies from the occupiers, or even collaborating to survive – something that women were often punished for by their community, but is understandable when there are children to feed and refusal only means they take what they want anyway. Katerina’s principles are steadfast, even when starving and pregnant, but they also lead to devastating consequences. I loved the author’s focus on women helping women, even across the barriers between them. 

Skye arrives in a timid state, but blossoms on the island. She has come through a period of grief after losing her father, but there’s something more in the way she reacts to men and in the joy she takes in making her own choices for her new home. She gains the confidence to tutor some of the children and her friendship with the bold and liberated Joy seems to be exactly what she needs. She also builds a good relationship with Andreas, they work well on the house together and he quickly learns her boundaries. If something has to be done his way because of safety or local regulations he stands his ground, but all other decisions belong to Skye. He literally gives her own power back to her by remaining respectful and passive with decision making. It’s a marker of how broken the mother daughter relationship is, that Skye’s mother turns up on the island with her husband. If I’d disappeared across the continent with no forwarding address my mum would know something was very wrong back home. The author illustrates so well how grief is life-altering, leaving us potentially vulnerable to those who seem to offer love and protection, but actually want to control. With a total break from her usual life and the new people she has around her, I hoped Skye would have enough strength to break from relationships that have become abusive. It emphasises ‘found family’ and shows that community is vitally important to our wellbeing. 

This was a fabulous read, a dual narrative storyline where both timelines held my interest and kept the pages turning. Of course Katerina’s experiences have more power because of the horrors they faced during occupation. I also particularly loved Katerina’s bond with Chrysi her little goat, a relationship that was so touching it brought me to tears. Skye is also fighting for her survival, to build a life that’s how she wants it and the freedom to make her own choices and mistakes. I loved the hint of romance that didn’t overpower or devalue the serious points being made about the strength of women and their supportive bonds with each other. The historical finds that are made really piqued my interest and it was fascinating to see Katerina’s story slowly uncovered and I have wondered since finishing what she might have done next. There is loss, domestic abuse and sexual violence which can be a tough read if you’ve been through it, but all are handled well and felt authentic. I felt Katerina’s despair when she realises she no longer ‘feared the enemy, not their guns and bombs. It was the sorrow that terrified her.’ Like Skye she realises that she must use this as a strength going forward. I was rooting for both women throughout, dealing with the oppression of men and finding their own path. 

Meet the Author

My career as an author really began when I won The Great British Write Off competition in 2014 with a short story called The Wedding Speech. It was the first time anyone in the publishing industry had looked at my writing, and their collective advice and guidance gave me the confidence to complete a proper novel. My Map Of You was the result.

I write escapist fiction because travel is in my soul. My books are about all facets of life and often feature a love story. Getting inside the hearts and minds of my characters continues to fascinate me, as does searching the globe for settings in which to set their stories. I have scaled mountains in Sri Lanka, watched fireworks over Lake Como, swam in crystal clear Croatian waters, made wishes in Prague, hunted for orange houses in Mallorca, fallen off chairs in French bistros and wept over the beauty of the stars in Zakynthos – and these experiences are just the tip of the iceberg.

Each of my novels comes with a promise: to take my readers on an adventure and leave them with hope in their hearts. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I love writing them.

Posted in Banned Books

Banned Books Week – Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Defending free expression has become a challenge. Words seem to matter more than ever and their impact. Just having an X account in the past week has been painful if you have empathy. It’s a battle for control where the desperate need to counter someone’s post, fights with common sense. By replying, even if it’s scathing, we have entered the arena and boosted that person’s profile. On the other side there are more people taking offence, on their own behalf and on the behalf of others. In this endless spiral of offence and discrimination it can be easy to become apathetic. It’s a political strategy the Kremlin has been using for years, bombard the people with so much opinion and disinformation that they become completely overwhelmed and withdraw. In this war of words, art is a form of activism, said the publisher Crystal Mahey-Morgan in an interview published online this week and as more books seemingly disappear from schools and libraries in America, we have to think carefully about the books we fight for. If we’re asserting that all books matter, then that applies equally to the books we like and those we don’t. If we’re saying books that offend others can’t be banned, we’re fighting equally for books we find distasteful or are offended by. There are books I rather not have read – there were definitely parts of American Psycho I could have done without, but I would never say they shouldn’t exist. Yet we seem to be stuck in a world where various groups in society want to ban or cancel books that don’t align with their views or misrepresent them. Even the writer’s behaviour, political views and private life can contribute to the moral panic around their work and our permission to read them. J.K. Rowling is a case in point and the controversy extends to her Robert Galbraith books which I still read. I grew up a long time before the internet and the cancel culture and I know that my ability to separate art from the artist is frowned upon. I want to talk to you about one of my favourite banned books and it’s the one people remember most – Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H.Lawrence. 

An adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover has come to Netflix, where streamed shows are probably the 21st Century’s most popular creator of water cooler moments. The fact that this banned story is there for everyone to watch in their own homes would have shocked the 1960’s general public. The story is a simple one, about a young married woman (Connie Chatterly) and her husband’s gamekeeper (Oliver Mellors), and the forbidden love between them. First published privately in 1928, it took until 1959 for a ban on the book to be lifted in the U.S., and then 1960 when an uncensored version was published in the United Kingdom. Lawrence’s novel was also banned for obscenity in Canada, Australia, India, and Japan. People were genuinely shocked by the explicit descriptions of sex, use of four-letter words, and depiction of a relationship between an upper-class woman and a working-class man. To my mind, the most outrageous part of the book was the author’s portrayal of female sexual pleasure. In fact, Sean Bean’s ‘we came off together that time m’lady’ still lives rent free in my head. Maybe that’s because I spent most of the 1990’s dreaming, like the Vicar of Dibley, that Sean would come striding in and say ‘come on lass’ beckoning me with a single nod towards the door. I believed in him and Joely Richardson as those characters in the Ken Loach adaptation, more so than many others I’ve seen. Although I do have memory of going to see a more explicit French version of the book, wedged between a group of elderly ladies who gasped every time they saw a penis and a man who had a large bag of sweets that he would rummage in, very forcefully, at certain parts of the film. I moved seats in the interval. 

Once I’d read the book, in my teens, I hated the way people talked about it. In my dad’s family, any mention was met with raised eyebrows and Monty Python’s ‘a nudge is as good as a wink’ type of humour. My mum loved D.H.Lawrence and I could see it bothered her to have him relegated to the role of pornographer. My dad’s brothers didn’t have a single bookshelf back in the 1970s and still don’t. They would come to our house with its massive bookshelves and ask ‘have you read them all? It was a question I never really understood. Did they think we were bluffing? Mum let me plunder her bookshelves all the time and this is why I know it isn’t just a ‘dirty book’. If I wanted to read something dirty I’d go for her Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz or Lace by Shirley Conran. I never reached for this as a prurient read, because it isn’t about sex. It’s about love. 

“Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(Which was rather late for me) –

Between the end of the Chatterley ban

And the Beatles’ first LP.” 

Wrote Larkin and perhaps that’s why my Uncles and Aunties raised their eyebrows, being teenagers pre-1960 and very unlikely to pick up a book by D.H. Lawrence. In fact once they’d seen the naked wrestling of the film adaptation Women in Love, they were convinced Lawrence was a pornographer. My mum happily shared these films with me as a teenager with no comment or explanation, she just let me make sense of it for myself and I knew there was something more complex at play here. 

There is so much more to Lady Chatterley than the sex, although the sex is glorious and we’ll finish with that. Firstly it was fitting that when Penguin did publish in 1959 and challenged the previous year’s Obscene Publications Act, it was sold deliberately at a price that meant the working class and women could afford to buy it. Objections mainly came from the middle and upper classes, who weren’t necessarily concerned that Connie Chatterley committed adultery, but were objecting to her choice of lover. In fact it was this discrepancy between the classes that finally forced the court case, echoing the attitude of Clifford Chatterley. He was quite matter of fact about his wife taking a lover. He realised that his war injury would force Connie into a lifetime of celibacy and no chance of becoming a mother. He also wouldn’t have an heir. In one conversation he is quite open about the fact he doesn’t expect Connie’s fidelity, in fact he thought a lover might be the best thing for her. At least then they could have a child who would take on the title and estate. However, she was to choose someone from their class and he’d like to meet him. This turned Connie’s stomach for two reasons, she didn’t want to be passed from one Lord to another like a chattel and secondly she was shocked that Clifford didn’t seem to care.  She’d expected there would still be some intimacy between them, even if it was confined to the care he needed. Yet, he chooses to employ a woman from the village who’s nursed during the war and there is something intimate in her care of him, something he gains some pleasure or comfort from. This leaves Connie free, but to do what. All their needs are taken care of by servants, she doesn’t need to work and while she does check in on tenants, they are isolated and she has few friends. She’s married and not married. She wants to find someone she has desire and feelings for, not just to jump in bed with someone of the right class and hope it scratches an itch. She wants true intimacy and she has that with Mellors. What we’re seeing in this affair is the breakdown of the aristocracy after WW1 and in this love story is the mixing of different social strata and the changing roles of women. 

There’s also a massive shift for the working classes between the two World Wars. We see Clifford visit the colliery he owns and the workers are restless. They’ve been through terrible experiences on the battlefield and to come back and slot into their old social status, working under a man they’ve fought with in the trenches doesn’t sit right. They want better wages, better living standards and for the respect to work both ways. We can also see mechanisation creeping in. Clifford is ready to try anything new, whether it’s his new motorised bath chair or mechanising the pit. There’s an uncomfortable scene where Clifford uses his chair to walk with Connie in the grounds, but it becomes stuck in the mud. He angrily calls for Mellors to push the chair and he gamely tries to climb on the back and weigh it down enough for the wheels to grip. It’s a metaphor for the death of the aristocracy, all while Connie looks on awkwardly and Clifford becomes more and more frustrated. 

Then there’s Connie and Mellors (Oliver) who are an interesting mix and their sexual tension is palpable but endearingly awkward at first. Mellors clearly desires her but doesn’t know how to treat a woman of her class. That’s not to say Mellors is stupid, because he isn’t. He’s self-taught and he reads too. Their conversations are on the same level as they get to know each other, but their dialect shows the huge difference socially and geographically. Connie has an openness that comes from being the daughter of an artist and it has always afforded her a huge amount of freedom. She and sister Hilda were expected to have lovers, to drive themselves around to parties and different stately homes. They have the opportunity to be upper class, particularly now that Connie is mistress of the Chatterley house, but are also eccentric and bohemian. They can use this to push the boundaries a little and Connie is encouraged to by her sister and her father when they visit near the beginning of the book, noticing she is pale, listless and a little depressed. They see the chasm that has opened up between husband and wife leaving them with the appearance of a marriage, but missing all the elements that make a marriage work – a shared humour, joint outlook, deep conversation and intimacy. 

It’s no wonder that as Connie and Mellors think about a longer term relationship they know they’ll have to emigrate to somewhere new like the USA or Canada. These are the places where a relationship like theirs would be accepted. We see the incongruity of it in their early sex scenes where they move from intimacy to Mellors calling her m’lady because at the same time as being under him she will always be over him. There is tenderness between them, something more than sex. There’s real care and Mellors’s link to nature is important too, such as the first time they meet when he is placing pheasant chicks in their new enclosure. She sees a gentleness and a nurturing side that Clifford does not have. He would care if she was to be with another man and he wants to her to enjoy their encounters, not just him. When she does orgasm with him he comments on it and how special it is when that happens between a couple. He makes her feel safe. They have a joint childlike joy with nature, running around naked in the rain and threading wildflowers in each other’s pubic hair. He wants to be with her after the orgasm, which she hasn’t experienced before. I’m touched by this book and I’m infuriated that it was treated as pornography when it’s a comment on WW1, disability, masculinity, nature and so much more. It’s also a touching love story and you’ll root for this couple. They have an immediate connection, that goes beyond the boundaries of their class. They see each other as two equal human beings (an equality that Clifford disputes even exists) and recognise the loneliness in each other. Even if you do find the sex scenes awkward and you’ve never read this book due to its reputation, go give it a chance. 

The political and religious climate in the USA has seen 16,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021, a number not seen since the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s. This censorship is being pushed by conservative groups of people, such as evangelical Christian and has spread to nearly every state. It targets books about race and racism or individuals of color and also books on LGBTQ+ topics as well those for older readers that have sexual references or discuss sexual violence. One of the most banned authors across America is Jodi Picoult with her novels Nineteen Minutes (school shootings), Small Great Things (Racism) and A Spark of Light (abortion).  In the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America found more than 10,000 book bans affecting more than 4,000 unique titles. Here are a few of them: 

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and The Colour Purple by Alice Walker 

Both these books are banned for themes of racism, sexual abuse and assault. Both break the silence around domestic violence and depict how tough life is for black women in the early 20th Century. 

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – the book that some people believe is coming to life before their eyes has themes of enslavement, sexual assault, misuse of religion and power. In a future where the elite class are unable to have children ‘handmaids’ are kept in the family home to provide the couple with children. 

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman – is a first love story that springs up between a teenager and an older man, cited for depictions of homosexuality 

The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini – was put forward by a group of mums concerned about their children reading an account of ‘homosexual rape’ but Hosseini fought the ban with a letter that talked about the book’s insight into Afghan lives and inspired children to ‘desire to volunteer, learn more, be more tolerant of others, mend broken ties, muster the courage to do the right and just thing, no matter how difficult.’

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult – begins with a black midwife assigned to a woman in early labour who is then refused by the father, a white supremacist. When the baby is ill and there is only one midwife available does she touch the baby or wait for someone else? This really does have impact and made me think about my own privilege. 

For more info on Banned Books Week visit ⬇️⬇️

https://bannedbooksweek.org/

Posted in Personal Purchase

The Bride Stone by Sally Gardner 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

According to our narrator, a ‘bride stone’ is a precious stone given to the groom’s family as a dowry. Sometimes though, a beautifully made fake stone was used, one they could only have valued when it was too late. It’s an apt title for a book where women are traded in many different ways and in the human sense the most unprepossessing stones may turn out to be priceless. It is set just after the French Revolution where Marie Antoinette, who would have had no choice in marrying Louis VII, was condemned to the guillotine as his Queen. Many aristocrats left France for British shores at this time and were often welcomed in high society. Edmée has somehow made her way to Britain, despite seemingly being an ordinary citizen and she is being offered at a ‘wife sale’, something I had no idea existed until I read Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge where Michael Trenchard sells both his wife and daughter as chattels he can no longer afford. When I first read it at 14, I felt how degrading it must be and was automatically revolted but now, I’m even more aware of the implications of being sold to the highest bidder. The thought of being owned by a man, a complete stranger, to be treated as he wishes is horrifying. Yet for Edmée this chapter surely can’t be worse than the last? For Duval Harlington it’s something he would never usually countenance, but his circumstances are uniquely desperate. Having been captured by the French while fighting and treating wounded soldiers, he is met by one of the family servants who bears bad news. Duval Harlington so now Lord Harlington because his father has recently died. Although he now has the title, his right to the ancestral home of Muchmore and his father’s wealth is rather more complex. Duval had a tough relationship with his father who didn’t see the point of him training as a doctor. Once he departed for France, Duval’s father installed a distant relative, Mr Carson and his wife, to manage the day to day running of the estate. So his will has an interesting stipulation, in order to claim his inheritance Duval must be married and now he has only two days to achieve this aim. Otherwise the estate becomes Mr Carson’s. When his servant points out the wife sale it seems like a means to an end. Duval notices a young woman being led around the room by a scarf round her neck. Her hair has been shorn away like a boy’s and she has a veil covering her face, but the buyers call out for it to be removed and he’s shocked to see that one side of her face is swollen and covered in bruises. Someone has recently beaten her very badly. On impulse he puts up his hand and bids for her, his intention being to marry her quickly and claim his inheritance. Then he could seek an annulment. However he does find Edmée fascinating and with Mr and Mrs Carson ready for a fight this marriage might not be as easy to shrug off as he thinks. 

This is a fascinating period of history and I didn’t know as much about it as I thought. I knew bits about Versailles, the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette and the guillotine but my understanding was very vague. I hadn’t realised how many aristocrats fled here to escape the Reign of Terror and their fate at the guillotine. Edmée is interesting because she is French but claims not to be an aristocrat, so how else did she end up here? Could she be a Jacobin or a spy? The fear that something similar to the overthrow of the ancién regime could spread here was a real one, because it would remove the power held by the Royal Family and other aristocrats, instead creating a republic where all people would share natural rights of liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. Yet a book is always the product of its time and I could definitely see parallels with today’s politics. A dinner guest, Sir Wilfred Fairley MP talks about the influx of French emigrés saying he was asked if he thought ‘we’d been too lenient with the number of emigrés we have allowed into the country and my answer is yes’. However, a Marquis replies very strongly that no one wants to be in that position: 

“To be forced to leave their lands, their houses, to start again in a country that doesn’t possess their humour or their language and is frightened of their religion […] to cross La Manche in a small unseaworthy boat to discover they have paid a fortune to be at the mercy of sailors threatening to throw them overboard if they do not pay double.” 

It felt like it could have been two people arguing on social media today. 

It’s evident Edmée has gone through a terrible ordeal at the hands of her previous husband, the Reverend Hughes. At first she must fear a similar fate from this stranger and Duval doesn’t help by abandoning her as soon as they reach Muchmore to go and sleep with a long term mistress. I was fascinated with Edmée because she’s such an unusual character and like me she keeps a journal and writes daily. The author lets us into that diary and we get to know how unsure she feels and that she has secrets. Duval’s aunt notices Edmée’s vulnerability and really takes a shine to her as they dine together and she takes her to buy gowns from the local dressmaker, a fellow French woman called Madame DuPont. Now that she’s Lady Harlington, she must look like a lady. It’s hard to know who she really is because she could just be fitting into each person’s expectations. Maybe this is something she’s used to doing in order to survive. When she falls ill and Duval returns to Muchmore, using his knowledge as a doctor to treat her, he shows great care and tenderness. As he waits for her to recover he reads her journal and learns so much about this woman he’s married to. With Duval she seems to blossom a little. Something unlocks in her and it’s like watching a mistreated animal learning to trust a human. Until now she’s been a blank space for others to write on, but it seems like Duval might be the person who brings out the real her. It is hard not to like this woman, who is described by her previous husband’s natural son as courageous: 

“There was hardly anything of her but she had a will of steel. I don’t say that lightly. Some soldiers profess bravery and talk about courage, but that’s a woman who says nothing and has survived a Revolution and a violent bastard of a husband […] she would be a hard candle to blow out.” 

This isn’t just a love story though, it’s a thriller. Just as Duval starts to settle in to being home, the unthinkable happens. The couple are talked into holding a ball to introduce the new Lady Harlington to society. Their guests come from the local area, but also from London and some are French emigrés. Mr and Mrs Carson are even invited and unbelievably accept. Edmée is a great success as the host in her new role as mistress of Muchmore, but the next morning she has vanished. Did she leave of her own accord – perhaps spooked by someone she saw the previous night. Or has something more sinister happened? It could be the work of someone closer to home – a disgruntled lover of Duval’s or someone determined that their marriage won’t succeed. I was drawn so deeply into the story of these unlikely partners. Duval and Edmée have both had difficult starts in life. The relationship between Duval and his father is typified by the ridiculous terms of his inheritance. The only thing he has to guide his search is her journal and the book that came with her, seemingly an ordinary history book but beautifully bound.

The theme of domestic violence and sexual assault is distressing and hard to read, but what shocked me most was other people’s ability to ignore what was happening even when they witnessed it with their own eyes. It brought home to me how dependent women were, in fact the only women in control of their own destiny are those who have a skill or their own business such as Madame DuPont the dressmaker or the brothel madam where Duval was a loyal customer in his youth. This is absolutely in line with social history of the 18th and 19th Century, but so much literature adapted for television focuses on the upper and middle classes where marriage is the only means of improving a woman’s status. I love when writers go back and write people back into a history they’ve been erased from due to race, disability or sexuality or when characters are more complicated figures in society. Duval isn’t your average privileged heir and Edmée would never normally be his wife. During dinner discussion on the revolution, Sir Wifred points out that its biggest folly was that all people should be equal, meaning men and women. Duval surprises him by stating that in his view “it was one of the most exciting things to have come out of the revolution.” I love that he is starting to see women as equals. Edmée is surviving the only way she knows how and by the skin of her teeth, so why would she choose to move on again? Duval has no choice but to retrace his steps, go back to where he bought his wife and find the clues. I was hoping for Edmée to have a happy ending, but it was clear this might not be the case making for a tense read in those final chapters. The book has a mix of hardship, adventure and mystery interlaced with the romantic possibility of an unlikely match being perfect. If only Duval can find her again. The author has created a fascinating mystery and an extraordinarily modern hero and heroine that I desperately wanted to find each other again.

Meet the Author

Sally Gardner gained a first class degree at a leading London art college and became a successful theatre costume designer before illustrating and writing books. Her debut novel, I, Coriander won the Nestle Gold Award and she is also a Costa and Carnegie prize-winner. Her books have been translated all over the world and have sold over two million copies. Find Sally online at sallygardner.co.uk, or on Twitter @TheSallyGardner.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Forest Hideaway by Sharon Gosling

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Hidden away in Cumbria’s Gair Forest is the most romantic setting, a ruined castle. It’s a haven for local history lovers and a once in a lifetime project for architect Saskia Tilbury Martin. She’s finding it difficult to get a builder to take the project on so Owen is her last hope and she’s already running late to meet him. She knows that she’s overdressed for the great outdoors and she’s had to borrow her friend’s BMW sports car because her trusty Land Rover is in the garage. In a way this is Owen’s last chance too. Previously in the forces, he has been a builder for a number of years but the business is struggling and he knows he’s not pulling his weight with wife Tasha and their gorgeous little girl. They have debts and if he doesn’t take this job he’s looking at failure, but when Saskia turns up with her sports car, three inch heels and double-barrelled name he’s isn’t impressed. Especially since she’s an hour late. He dismisses her as a rich girl throwing her money around. However, when she gets the plans out he can’t help but be intrigued. Saskia assures him that she wants to preserve what’s here, to leave the ruin looking as it does now but create a number of platforms inside to house her living spaces. She even intends to leave the slightly dilapidated oak tree growing in the centre of the castle, with a glass roof that can open in good weather. She doesn’t tell him that she’s the architect because other builders have been unsure about working with an unproven architect before. Owen takes the night to think about it, but when she offers him ten grand up front to get started he knows he can’t turn her down. Saskia reflects that they don’t have to like each other, they just have to be a good professional team for the project and save this beautiful building that holds so many memories for her. 

Owen soon finds he has assumed a lot about Saskia. When he sees the cabin she tows onto the site with her Land Rover back on the road, he thinks it’s an affectation to need a whole kitted out living space for when she’s here in the day. The builders have to make do with bare sectional buildings with no comforts. When he’s there early one morning, he’s surprised to see her appear from the cabin in her old denim shirt and her hair tied back, all set to walk her dog. She’s living in the cabin when he’s assumed she had a boutique hotel booked for the duration of the build. I wouldn’t have blamed her, having half my house out of bounds for building work at the moment I’d give anything for a couple of nights in a nice hotel! The truth is Saskia doesn’t have many people or places she could say feel like home. Her inheritance is from a grandparent and she has no relationship with her mother, instead she has best friend Vivian. Owen isn’t doing any better on the family front, Tasha has put up with a lot and has decided that their relationship just isn’t working anymore and he’s bunking down with friend and fellow builder Stuart. I found Saskia interesting and loved that she had a dream she was seeing through. She seems very sure of her ability and has confidence in her design which I found inspirational because I’m not confident and I’m rubbish at finishing projects. I admired that perseverance because she isn’t just hanging around waiting for life to happen. Owen’s life path felt more passive, despite seeing different parts of the world his life hasn’t been his own, it belonged to the army. He’s also drifted in his relationship. It clearly hasn’t been right for some time and Tasha tells him that his long absences on detachment meant they never really built a life together. As soon as he left the army and was home full time, they could both see their differences. Neither of them have tried to address the decline and now it’s too late. Maybe he needs to spend some time with Saskia because her self-reliance and determination could inspire him. 

The setting is absolutely stunning. I love the Lakes, a love that was awakened again on a recent visit. I loved the idea of taking such a romantic ruin and making it into a home without taking away any of the decay that makes it so picturesque, the beauty being tied up with its imperfection. The isolation is fascinating too. I used to live in a large house in the middle of nowhere and friends would be aghast that I didn’t shut my curtains or check that all five doors were properly locked every night. Saskia isn’t afraid of the isolation either and I liked that about her. The history of the site is important too, both Saskia’s link to it but also the local history buff’s attachment to the building. So far they haven’t even given Saskia a chance, stating they want Gair preserved as it is without realising that’s exactly what she’s trying to do. I loved the idea that there are:

‘Two types of history here […] the castle ruins, the ancient oak tree. They both have worlds within them”.

This is so true because they hold the history of many people over centuries, enduring every new generation and what they bring. When we think about it like that it’s clear that making it a home again is exactly the right thing to do, reintroducing humans to the building and the nature surrounding it. I thought the added intrigue of Roman ruins under castle was fascinating and I was again impressed that Saskia had thought of this and ordered drone scans of the castle and underneath to see what the layers of soil revealed. I was hoping the local history lovers would give her a chance if she tried to her plans to them. 

There is a ‘will they, won’t they’ to this couple’s relationship and while a touch of romance is always nice it isn’t the main focus here. Owen slowly comes round to Saskia once he’s realised how much of his assessment of her was based on assumptions. She isn’t a rich girl playing at property development. Owen doesn’t know himself as well as Saskia does and part of that is because of his years in the army. It takes time after coming out, to get to know the person inside and decide what you want the rest of your life to look like. I imagined that if Tasha hadn’t been brave enough to say something that morning, Owen would have drifted along for years in an unfulfilling marriage never knowing any different. His growing inner world was very well written as he learns to read other people better and how to be a responsible co-parent with Tasha for the future. Whereas Saskia has worked on herself and needs Gair to be her home, somewhere to feel grounded. When she needs support she checks in with Vivian and I loved this idea of ‘found family’, the people you choose to support and sustain you in life when the family you’re born with can’t. They aren’t an obvious match and this is not one of those books that ends with a big fairytale wedding. We just have the sense that they’re gradually moving towards each other as the build progresses and they learn how to be a team. The oak tree felt like a metaphor for both these people, but also for life in general. It’s not the most beautiful tree, in fact part of it has been hit by lightning and someone had an abandoned attempt at pruning it once, very badly. Despite these setbacks the oak has kept growing, not in the most beautiful shape but still reaching for the sky. This is the perfect, cozy, autumnal read.

Out now from Simon & Schuster Uk

Meet the Author

I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, which is now a distressingly long time ago! I started out as an entertainment journalist – actually, my earliest published work was as a reviewer of science fiction and fantasy books. I went on to become a staff writer and then an editor for print magazines, before beginning to write non-fiction making-of books tied in to film and television, such as The Art and Making of Penny Dreadful and Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film. 

I now write both children’s and adult fiction – my first novel was called The Diamond Thief, a Victorian-set steampunk adventure book for the middle grade age group. That won the Redbridge Children’s prize in 2014, and I went on to write two more books in the series before moving on to other adventure books including The Golden Butterfly, which was nominated for the Carnegie Award in 2017, The House of Hidden Wonders, and a YA horror called FIR, which was shortlisted for the Lancashire Book of the Year Award in 2018. My last children’s book (to date) is called The Extraordinary Voyage of Katy Willacott, and was published by Little Tiger in 2023. 

My debut adult novel, The House Beneath the Cliffs, was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2021. Since then I’ve written three more: The Lighthouse Bookshop, The Forgotten Garden, and The Secret Orchard, which is out in September 2024. My adult fiction tends to centre on small communities – feel-good tales about how we find where we belong in life and what it means when we do. Although I have also published full-on adult horror stories, which are less about community and more about terror and mayhem…

I was born in Kent but now live in a very small house in an equally small village in northern Cumbria with my husband, who owns a bookshop in the nearby market town of Penrith.

From Sharon’s Amazon Author Page 28th August 2023

Posted in Netgalley

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I loved this book. It drew me in immediately and two days after I finished it I can’t let go of it. I can’t start another book. It’s left me bereft. Our setting is 18th Century London and George II is on the throne. On St James’s Street is a confectioner’s shop called the Punchbowl and Pineapple and running it is the newly widowed Hannah Cole. This was her grandfather’s shop and has been handed down the family. Her father realised he needed an apprentice to pass on his skills and to work with Hannah, so he employed a young lad called Jonas Cole. Jonas and Hannah grew close and fell in love, with Hannah losing her father only a few days after they were married. So until a couple of days ago Hannah and Jonas ran the shop, with Hannah becoming quite an accomplished businesswoman. Jonas could be hard and ruthless in his business dealings and of recent years they had grown apart, with Jonas often spending evenings away from home. Then two nights ago he did not return and was found further down the Thames minus his money, his watch and several teeth. Hannah has had to borrow, especially to re-open after his death, something that caused a minor scandal so soon. She can’t afford to be closed and is waiting on their savings being released from the bank so she may pay her suppliers. Then Henry Fielding pays a call. In his role as magistrate rather than novelist, he explains that all money will remain frozen while he investigates Jonas’s death. He isn’t sure this is a simple robbery and wonders whether he should be looking into his business or personal dealings. He informs Hannah that Jonas had money in the bank, more than the £200 she knew about. Fielding explains he wants to be sure that the money was obtained legally and above board. Luckily, at Jonas’s funeral Hannah meets William Devereux. An acquaintance of Jonas, he has never met Hannah before but is very sympathetic to her plight. He promises to visit her shop and discuss how he may help her with Fielding and Jonas’s life outside the home – was he gambling, womanising or getting into shady business dealings? He also mentions a delicacy his Italian grandmother used to make called iced cream. It has all the ingredients of a custard, but flavoured with fruit or chocolate and is then frozen and eaten as a desert. Hannah resolves to let William help her and to master the art of ice cream, but are either of them being fully honest with each other about who they are and what their purpose is? 

As with all Laura’s books we become fully immersed in the setting straight away and it’s the little details that stand out and make us believe in this world. I loved the descriptions of Hannah’s various confections and the way she can tell what people will choose, not to mention what it says about them. 

“He paused to take a bite of his Piccadilly Puff, washing it down with a generous gulp of green walnut wine. It is a favourite choice of the sybarite: the silken sweetness of the custard, the crunching layers of puff paste, the dusky depths of the spices mingling with the sourness of lemon. I might have guessed that Mr Fielding was a man who struggled to keep his appetites in check.”

I believed in Hannah as a businesswoman and confectioner very quickly thanks to these details and as she narrates she tells us her hopes and dreams, including a joint dream of her and Jonas, to buy the empty premises next door and extend the shop so they could have more tables and chairs, especially when her iced cream starts to become popular. I think we always imagine that people from the 18th and 19th Century are very genteel and well behaved, this comes of too many Austen adaptations and strange hybrid historical settings like Bridgerton. While lovely to watch they give us little idea of what these centuries were like for those of the lower classes in society and women who worked. Real life 18th Century London was rather more colourful than Pride and Prejudice, as depicted in some of Fielding’s novels like Tom Jones and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. The author gives us the dirt and the bawdy side of London life when Hannah takes a trip to the theatre. 

“The playhouse crowd gave a wide berth to the nest of alleys around the back of the Theatre Royal, home to brothels and bath houses, gin shops and squalid taverns. The residents started drinking over breakfast and then kept going. Groups of ragged men stood about on corners. One lot were fighting, skidding in vomit. Half-naked women leaned from the upper windows shouting encouragement.” 

The King openly has a mistress and there are brothels and gaming rooms everywhere, operating just on the edge of the law. This is a book with every vice on display, even when if it is just cake. As Hannah points out when she’s evaluating Fielding, every man has his personal struggle. She is incredibly astute when it comes to assessing character and has Fielding’s own psychological make-up worked out through reading his novels. William Devereux appears to be equally astute, visiting Fielding’s rooms he notes the perfectly bound volumes of his own books and the wine glasses etched with the crest of Eton College, it’s students described beautifully as the “school of the most selfsatisfied fucksters in the kingdom.” I thought there were some brilliant choices in terms of the book’s structure and the way the story passed from Hannah to William was brilliant. Often when reading from NetGalley there are little mistakes or quirks to the format that can ruin the reading of the book, but here reading from NetGalley was a benefit because with no gaps or idea how far I was into the book, when the shocks came they were huge. The author has cleverly used aspects of modern thriller writing and applied them to her story, so there are twists and turns aplenty. She uses sudden unexpected confessions or statements that mean we know something no one else does. Other times a character suddenly changed their demeanour or had a different inner compared to their outer voice that made me go back a few pages in confusion. Then just as I become comfortable with my narrator, they switched back again.

This is definitely a cat and mouse game between three characters, a battle of wits where you’re never quite sure who is on the right side. Fielding appears to be pursuing this case to make his point to parliament that a national police force is needed to deal with crimes like murder. He also has a good point, Jonas’s watch had belonged to Hannah’s father and had a Russian Imperial Eagle on the case. If that had been stolen, every pawn shop and jewellers in London would have remembered someone trying to sell it. So where is it? Has the thief taken it to be sold elsewhere or is it still with a murderer rather closer to home? Devereaux seems like a gentleman, he introduces Hannah to friends who seem wealthy and of good status and they all vouch for his honesty and charity. He even seems to be thinking of making a young boy belonging to a distant relative his ward, in order to give him a better life. Hannah had a hard life at Jonas’s hands, especially when she found she was unable to have children something they both wanted. I loved the author’s detail of them both saving some urine to pour on a seedling and if the seedling grew they were believed to be fertile. Hannah’s didn’t grow and she felt her husband hardened his heart to her at that point and perhaps looked elsewhere. She has her head turned by the handsome gentleman who wants to find out where Jonas was going at night and intervening with Fielding on her behalf. He wants to help her keep her shop too and his iced cream idea is proving a huge hit, with even an impromptu visit from the King’s mistress who reassures Hannah that a hint of scandal is not necessarily a bad thing: “virtue matters rather less once you are rich.” Devereaux has some ideas in that area, that maybe rather than leave her money in the bank she might like to meet some of the people who’ve invested in a company of his called Arcadia, based in a place called Bentoo. Is he genuine or not? Does he have feelings for her, because Hannah’s starting to have stirring feelings she hasn’t had for years. Surely though Devereaux’s  interest wouldn’t lie in the direction of an older widow? 

I was utterly entranced in this novel from the first page to the last, especially as the tensions mounted in the final third when Fielding makes his move. However, just when you think you’ve worked everything out another twist will come along and surprise you. I was rooting for Hannah to come out on top, but was very scared for her in parts. For both her heart and her liberty! I wanted her to live out her days as the grand proprietress of the Punchbowl and Pineapple. I very much feared that Fielding had the desire to see her face the hangman’s noose. While I didn’t trust Devereaux at first I did wonder if he had feelings for Hannah or whether he was some sort of confidence trickster. There is certainly sexual chemistry by the bucketload. I was working out in my head who might play Hannah in a film or TV adaptation because it would be a brilliant period thriller with lots of raunchy scenes perfect for Netflix. I was honestly hypnotised by this story and Laura’s talent. Bravo on such a fantastic story that I’m still thinking about four days after finishing it. Go beg, steal or borrow a copy of this one, it’s a cracker. 

Out now from Mantle Books

Meet the Author

Laura Shepherd-Robinson is the award-winning, Sunday Times and USA Today bestselling author of three historical novels. Her books have been featured on BBC 2’s Between the Covers and Radio 4’s Front Row and Open Book. Her fourth novel, The Art of a Lie, will be published in Summer 2025. She lives in London with her husband, Adrian.

Posted in Netgalley

Dear Miss Lake by A.J. Pearce

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It was lovely to be back with the gang at Woman’s Friend magazine and particularly with our narrator Emmy Lake as they enter the final and arguably most difficult stretch of WW2. After five years of war both the team and their readers are tired. As a way of boosting morale at the magazine Emmy suggests they all decamp to Bunty and Harold in the countryside. As Hitler’s V1 and V2 bombs start to hit, it will certainly be safer. Emmy strongly feels they all need a boost in order to keep supporting and inspiring the women who read their magazine. If they’re tired and the magazine suffers, how will their readership keep the fight going? Although they’ll still be working, the children, the animals and the beautiful countryside should have the desired effect. Plus, for Emmy, she’ll be closer to where her husband Charles is posted and she’ll be with her best friend Bunty. Emmy throws herself into rural life and is soon organising games nights, competitive knitting and planning the very important wedding of their officer administrator Hester and her fiance Clarence. She also has an important phone call from the ministry to travel abroad and report from the French field hospitals looking after the wounded. She even manages to mastermind a break into husband Charles’s barracks before they’re both deployed. Emmy has no idea how much she’s going to need those around her in the coming months as her hardest test is yet to come. On their return to London after the summer she receives a telegram to say that Charles is missing, presumed captured, in enemy territory and she has the agonising wait for the confirmation letter. Then Hester receives a blow when Clarence calls to say he’s being deployed in three days, two days before their planned wedding. Hester is inconsolable and after catching Emmy in a moment of frustration, she disappears. However, Emmy isn’t one to dwell on her misfortunes for long and I wondered what schemes and plans she would hatch next. 

This is a very fitting end to the Emmy Lake series, because it showed, no matter how Pollyanna our attitude is, it is okay to sometimes find we’ve run out of steam. It’s hard to imagine what five years of war must feel like when we take into consideration women having to work, look after children, support their husbands and face the fear of losing someone important to them or even their home if situated in London or other major cities. The nearest thing we have to such upheaval is the COVID pandemic and that meant two years of shielding for me. However, I still had tv to stream, books to read and could send myself little treats from Amazon or Betty’s tearooms. I can’t imagine how I’d have felt if I was exhausted from working, missing my husband, had the possibility of a bomb coming through the ceiling and had to find the tenth thing to do with a cabbage. Although the Lakes and friends are relatively okay financially, many were not and the author brings in these experiences through the magazine where some readers are infuriated with the magazine’s rather chirpy, optimistic tone or want to vent about the desperate situations they’re in. I loved the storylines about unexpected pregnancies as I could really understand getting carried away in the moment when someone you love is being deployed to fight, perhaps never to return. I could also imagine myself being swept off my feet by an American GI or one of the Polish airman posted only a few miles away from my village all those years ago. I could absolutely understand why some readers lost their faith in the magazine and whether it’s writers truly understood the predicaments some readers were in. I could also understand if Emmy did run out of patience, because sometimes the only answer is ‘talk to the people who love you’ no matter how angry or disappointed they might seem at first. It always gets easier.

 When news arrives that Charles’s secret mission was Arnhem and he’s been captured behind enemy lines, it takes a while for Emmy’s emotions to catch up with the news. She has all the information at her fingertips, having had years of finding out what to do for her readers. Practically she’s doing all she can, plus organising the Christmas Fair and making connections with other POW wives. She’s particularly proud of the piece she wrote for the ministry on the military hospitals so hopes for another mission. When she, the editor and publisher are pulled in for a chat the news isn’t good. It’s this that seems to bring her to a standstill. Returning to the magazine office she’s despondent and feels a deep sense of injustice, leading to a sudden and misdirected rant. Things go from bad to worse when the next morning, Hester has gone missing. Emmy knows she took her cancelled wedding plans hard, but surely that’s not the reason for her disappearance? Could it have been her own moment of anger and emotion that provoked this sudden reaction? Emmy realises how much of a lifeline they all are to each other and resolves to find her, whatever it may take. 

A.J. Pearce has written a triumph of a series in this quartet of books and in her main character too. We’ve experienced the ups and downs of different editors and publishers, the staff’s other responsibilities for their families and war jobs such as the fire service or driving ambulances, as well as terrible losses on the battlefield and in the Blitz. Through what seems on the surface to be a light-hearted and perhaps frivolous lens, I’ve learned so much about what it was like to be a young woman during WW2. It’s given me an insight into my grandparent’s generation – my Aunty Connie who was an unmarried mother and a subsequent marriage to my Uncle John who suffered from PTSD after his ship was attacked and his friend was blown up right next to him. My grandad went into the army just as war was ending and experienced the other side’s struggles – German cities destroyed by our bombardments and people living in the ruins of their homes. I don’t know if I’d have the strength and determination to contribute in the way people did, something brought into sharp focus when I had to discuss what the war in Ukraine could mean for those who’ve served in the forces but are still under reserve? Could I cope if he was called back in?

Strength is one of those things we find reserves of when the situation demands it of us and I have no doubt I could keep the ‘home fires burning” but I certainly don’t have the grit that some of the Ukrainian women are showing, having lost their husband then joining up to fight themselves. I feel the author doesn’t let us forget the sacrifice and loss in people’s lives at this time, but still manages to bring in humour and a defiantly upbeat make do and mend attitude. This is the closest I’ve seen Emmy come to breaking point and it’s hard to do when you’re the one whose role it is to buoy everybody else up. As she finds out though, those who she’s helped and supported are so happy to be able to return the favour and support her. This is a set of books I always recommend, to women of all ages, because it’s so easy to relate to one of the characters and absolutely root for them. The main impression I take away from them is that sense of female solidarity. The instinct we have to come together, share the load and make each other’s lives a little easier – from taking on someone’s children all the way down to being there with a meal or a shoulder to cry on. Emmy uses her writing to do the same and triumphs in being exactly what the magazine promises – the Woman’s Friend. 

Meet the Author

AJ Pearce was born in Hampshire, UK. Her favourite subjects at school were English and History, which now (finally!) makes sense.

Her debut novel Dear Mrs Bird was a Sunday Times Bestseller and Richard and Judy Bookclub Pick. It was shortlisted for Debut of the Year at The 2019 British Book Awards and has been published in the USA, Canada and Australia and in translation in over fifteen languages.

Dear Mrs Bird was the first in AJ’s series The Wartime Chronicles which now includes Yours Cheerfully and Mrs Porter Calling. Her books are funny, sometimes extremely sad, but always uplifting stories about a group of women standing together to face the challenges of World War II.

The fourth and final book in the series, Dear Miss Lake, will be published in the UK on 5 July 2025 (and on 3 August in the USA and Canada).

When not writing books, AJ enjoys being fairly rubbish at a variety of hobbies and has recently started to learn to paint, with so far messy although enthusiastic results.

Follow AJ on Instagram, Facebook and Threads: @ajpearcewrites.

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

Posted on by thelotusreaders

As part of the Squad Pod, I’ve been re-reading this novel in its new edition and I’ve really enjoyed my reintroduction to these interesting characters and the incredible atmosphere the author creates around the Blackhurst Estate in Cornwall. Our story begins in 1913, when a little girl sits forlorn on the harbour side, using her white suitcase as a seat. The authoress told her she was going on an adventure and she’d stayed hidden for such a long time, but now she doesn’t know when the authoress is coming. The harbour master notices her and resolves that if she’s still there when he finishes work, he will have to take her home to his wife. Surely someone will come for her in a day or two? The mystery of the authoress and the little girl took me from 1900 to 2005, in the company of three women who have a link to that little girl in 1913. Eliza lives in London digs with her mother and twin brother at the turn of the Twentieth Century but finds life changes suddenly after her brother is killed in an accident with a coach and horses. She is taken to the Blackhurst Estate in Cornwall to be the companion of Rose, the daughter of the family, who is an invalid and rarely leaves her bedroom. Then in 2005 there is Cassandra, living in Australia and also facing upheaval after the death of her beloved grandmother Nell. Cassandra has lived with her gran since her mother left her there when she was a little girl. She promised to return and never did, leaving her mother Nell to raise her daughter. Together they run an antiques business and after Nell’s death, Cassandra is stunned to find a series of sketches by American artist Nathaniel Walker in her grandmother’s belongings. There’s also a small white case and inside there is a book of strange fairy tales also illustrated by the artist, but the writer is unfamiliar. Eliza Makepeace doesn’t seem to be well known but Cassandra is happy to do some digging and understand what link exists between this famous painter, an obscure writer and her grandmother. After the funeral, Cassandra’s great aunties explain that Nell was the baby in the family, arriving some time after them since their father found her on the Maryborough harbour alone. He decided that Nell needed to know about her true origins before he died, but her sisters wonder if that was the right thing to do. It left her a little distanced from them, as if she didn’t know where she belonged anymore. 

Interspersed between Cassandra and Eliza’s narratives is that of Nell, who did her own detective work on who she was decades before. In fact she had plans to make a big change before her daughter turned up with Cassandra and asked her if she would look after her for a short while. Nell knew that once her daughter was gone, neither of them would ever see her again. This put her own plans to one side but Nell never regretted bringing up Cassandra. Cassandra takes her book of fairy tales to a book dealer who explains that Eliza Makepeace was linked to the Blackhurst Estate in Cornwall. In fact Nathanial Walker was married to Rose, the daughter of the family. When Nell’s lawyer confirms that Cassandra has been left a small cottage on the Cornish coast she is intrigued and before long is on a flight to the UK. From there we are catapulted into the past where Eliza is adjusting and trying to make friends with Rose who has been ill for most of her childhood. Her regime is overseen by her rather formidable mother while her father seems largely absent, secretly longing for the return of sister Georgina who ran away to London with a menial worker from the estate. All of these separate story lines are linked beautifully by the author over the course of the novel, telling the story of a family beset by tragedy, but also shaped by rigid control, manipulation and jealousy. All of this is set within the beautiful backdrop of Cornwall and its history of fishing and smuggling as well as its stunning scenery. Cassandra’s cottage sits above the cliffs looking down to the sea, but has a stone wall around it. She wonders why someone would block off that incredible view, but also whether they were blocking people from seeing out or in? It must have been a gloomy existence. When Cassandra hires a local gardener to remove the tree that’s partially growing inside the cottage they discover a crawl space under the back wall and inside an overgrown but entirely enclosed garden. The walls that cradle the garden create a deep sense of belonging, as if the birds sing just for her. It’s a peaceful space, almost frozen in time. 

Cassandra is also interested to know how Nell ended up buying the property and why she never came back. Speaking to the village’s estate agent Robin gives her a lot of insight and the date Nell bought the cottage starts to make sense to her. Through Robin’s father, a retired fisherman, she hears some of the cottage’s history from a smuggling lookout to the home of the Authoress, a beautiful red- headed lady who used to live at Blackhurst. The actual manor has slowly become a hotel and Cassandra learns more by talking to the owner, who has refurbished the house and made some fascinating finds. She shares some scrapbooks with Cassandra, made by Rose who later became the wife of Nathaniel Walker. Rose was an invalid and her scrapbooks show a young girl’s imaginings from fairies to beautiful dresses and what she imagined her wedding to be like. Not that anyone expected she would meet anyone to marry. Her cousin Eliza tells her strangely dark fairytales and encourages her to aim for some of her dreams, to travel and perhaps get married someday. When she is married, her longings become focused on having a child, but will that be possible for her and if not, how can she find another way to become a mother? Kate Morton gives us little revelations as we go along, taking us back into the past to show us exactly what transpired and another jigsaw piece of this mystery slots into place. 

I loved how vividly Morton describes the squalor of turn of the century London and the harsh way of life for those just trying to keep a roof over their head. Blackhurst is the perfect name for the estate in Cornwall, named after an outcrop of black rock that juts out into the sea and provides an incredible lookout for the brave who enjoy the crashing waves and the seaspray. The estate feels like a mausoleum in contrast to Cornwall’s natural beauty. It is somewhere where people are shut away and miserable, with Rose in bed and her father shut away in his study and harbouring his secret obsessions. The cottage is accessed through the maze and it feels like a walkway to another world as it opens out in Eliza’s garden. What could possibly have caused two cousins to be entirely separate, with the maze as the barrier between their properties? I loved the theme of motherhood throughout, especially the loss of mothers for Eliza, Nell and Cassandra. One of the saddest parts for me was when Nell finds out that she isn’t a blood member of her Australian family and it changes her outlook, leading to her own trip to Cornwall. There’s even a touch of romance for one character who’s suffered a terrible loss. Reading this again has made me realise how rich Morton’s writing is and how reading her books probably led me to me enjoying this genre so much and current writers like Amanda Geard and Kate Lumsden. This is a sweeping epic of a mystery, with great characters and dark gothic undertones which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering. 

Meet the Author

KATE MORTON is an award-winning, Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author. Her novels – The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden, The Distant Hours, The Secret Keeper, The Lake House, The Clockmaker’s Daughter and Homecoming – are published in over 45 countries, in 38 languages, and have all been number one bestsellers around the world.

Kate Morton grew up in the mountains of southeast Queensland and now lives with her family in London and Australia. She has degrees in dramatic art and English literature, and harboured dreams of joining the Royal Shakespeare Company until she realised that it was words she loved more than performing. Kate still feels a pang of longing each time she goes to the theatre and the house lights dim.

“I fell deeply in love with books as a child and believe that reading is freedom; that to read is to live a thousand lives in one; that fiction is a magical conversation between two people – you and me – in which our minds meet across time and space. I love books that conjure a world around me, bringing their characters and settings to life, so that the real world disappears and all that matters, from beginning to end, is turning one more page.”