Maddie Grigg

May book reviews

I’m ploughing my way through another long book, which I’m enjoying but haven’t finished yet.

It’s The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett, who wrote The Help. It turns out her latest novel, which has just been published, is longer than I first thought.

I’m also in the final copy edit stage of my own novel, which is being published in the autumn. Can’t say too much about it yet but I will reveal all in due course.

At the same time, I’m doing some in-depth research for a narrative non-fiction story where the ancestor I share with Ernest Hemingway will take centre stage. This is a project involving a half-circumnavigation of the world so will take a few years.

I’ve read three books this month but only one of them is worth telling you about. The other two were thrillers but not very thrilling.

So here goes. And it is a good ‘un.

Whistler by Ann Patchett *****

Contemporary fiction (304 pages). Publication date expected 2 June 2026

A chance meeting in a New York art gallery leads the fifty-something protagonist into a myriad of memories in this quietly reflective novel about family, relationships and love.

English teacher Daphne and her husband realise the elderly man who appears to be stalking them is, in fact, her ex-stepfather, book editor Eddie Triplett, who she hasn’t seen since she was nine. The encounter sends Daphne down unexpected paths, sifting through a painful period in her childhood and a dramatic incident she’s never really talked about with anyone else since.

Her conversations and interactions with Eddie – a lovely, kind man – enable Daphne to think about her past and make sense of everything that happened all those years ago and the complex layers – and people in her life – that underpin it.

It’s an astonishing novel and Patchett is an astonishing writer, who takes something so relatively simple and transforms it into a deep and meaningful story about what it is to be loved and respected. I coldn’t put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance review copy of Whistler.

A visit to Plymouth

I’ve just been to see the Beryl Cook exhibition, Pride and Joy, at The Box in Plymouth.

As it happens, it was just in the nick of time because it ends at the weekend.

It’s a wonderfully thought-out display of Cook’s work. It makes you appreciate her influences and great skill as an artist.

I loved the paintings of her family in particular and everyday scenes like the market and a car boot sale. The details in some of the paintings are tremendous. Little warm and comedic asides playing out alongside the main event.

I have never seen so many people smiling and giggling as they walk around an art exhibition. Sheer joy.

Beryl Cook (1926-2008) was a quiet, private person but one of life’s great observers, going out and about from her Plymouth guest house and finding inspiration in pubs, clubs and on the seafront.

Plymouth was my stomping ground from 1979-1982 when I was doing my training. It was fascinating to think I might have seen some of these real-life tableaux unfolding around me.

But back then I was coming up to twenty and only interested in live bands and having fun with my fellow trainees.

When we left the exhbition yesterday, I followed my memories to drive along the back of the Hoe, turning left into Lockyer Street where I remembering once sitting one of many Teeline shorthand exams until I hit the magic spot of one hundred words a minute which meant I’d passed.

At the junction, we had to wait while a Beryl Cookesque woman – large and colourful – crossed the road. It was perfect timing.

Down at the Barbican, we strolled to our lunch stop overlooking the boats in the harbour.

At one point, I was sure I’d spotted a fellow trainee, wandering around the Barbican in shorts and a sun hat.

I chased after her, shouting ‘Susan, Susan!’ but it wasn’t Susan, which is not surprising because Susan lives in Scotland and would not be in Plymouth unless we were having a reunion.

The thing is, this Susan looked like my Susan only maybe thirty or forty years younger, just as I remembered her.

I even asked the woman if she was sure she wasn’t Susan but she didn’t understand me because she was Spanish.

Then it was a fish and seafood lunch overlooking the boats and a stroll to see the work of another Plymouth artistic genius, Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002).

Like Cook, his work at the time was unfashionable in high art circles but popular with the public.

When I was in Plymouth in 1979, the Barbican Mural next to his studio – where a fellow trainee the year above me had a flat – was truly wonderful.

Now, it’s been allowed to fade and rot, which is an absolute travesty and so very sad.

My paternal grandfather was born in a pub run by his parents in Martin Street, Plymouth, just off Union Street. Family legend has it that, as a child, he set the cannon balls that formed part of a monument on the Hoe rolling down the hill. This can’t be true because they are glued together, or maybe it is and the glueing happened after Grandpa’s childhood exhuberance.

So what with my grandfather’s Janner status and my own connection to Britain’s Ocean City, Plymouth holds a very special place in my heart.

Come into the garden, Maud…

Apologies for the dearth of posts this past week or so.

We’ve done a bit of travelling and are now heavily involved in a village event coming up at the end of May.

The weather here in Dorset is absolutely splendid and it’s wonderful to get out in the garden and soak up the sights and sounds. Flowers are bursting forth from lush green foliage, bees are buzzing and blackbirds are singing their dear little hearts out.

I made the mistake of watching some of the Chelsea Flower Show programmes on the BBC this week.

One was probably enough, to be honest.

I mean, I love seeing the incredible gardens and plants on display but there is only so much I can take of grinning presenters we are clearly meant to know (their names only appear in the credits at the end) and celebrities I have never heard of.

Grayson Perry described Chelsea along the lines of being Middle England’s ‘Glastonbury for people who wear linen’, and he’s not wrong.

There is no way I could cope with all those crowds. I get slight agoraphobia just by watching it on the telly.

So this spring bank holiday weekend, I’m looking forward to spending time in my own glorious garden -small but on the way to being perfectly formed – as the sun beats down from a clear blue sky.

Enjoy the weekend, where ever you are.

Stepping out

I’m determined to up my steps each day so I hit the magic 10,000, a figure dreamed up by a marketing campaign but not a bad one to aim for.

It’s the equivalent of 3.9 to 4.9 miles, depending on your stride length, speed and height.

I walk a couple of miles every day with the dogs but it’s not quite far enough, so I need to add a section at the beginning and end of the day to cover it.

Or otherwise achieve 7,000 steps every day, which the experts say is enough, especially when combined with some real bursts of energy.

I like what the British Heart Foundation has to say about walking: To boost the health benefits, aim to walk at a brisk pace, meaning you can talk comfortably but would be too out of breath to sing.

As someone who had a surprise heart attack ten years ago when I was fifty-four, that hits home.

Having had a bit of a slothful week of editing, where I mostly exercise my fingers while sitting at a laptop, I know I need to keep my body moving to improve my general fitness.

There’s more I can do but this is a good start. I’m not one for the gym or joining a class, preferring my own company and that of the dogs. I’m not an introvert exactly, and certainly not an extrovert but more of an omnivert, apparently.

Maybe I should lift a few weights next, or schedule my own personal dance class in the confines of my own home. Perhaps I should ask my old friend, over-50s fashion and lifestyle blogger Gail, at Is This Mutton?

All suggestions gratefully received.

In any case, eating more healthily and not drinking so much alcohol should help me achieve my goals.

I have a ‘health’ app on my phone but I don’t think it’s very accurate. I walked 3,790 steps this morning and several hours later it’s not showing any increase, even though I’ve got the phone in my pocket so steps around the house and up the stairs ought to count.

So I’ve ordered a ‘non-smart’ pedometer watch to help me in my quest.

It’s non-smart because I don’t want a watch to pay bills or receive calls and messages. For me, it’s better to be away from all that constant interruption, hence the need (I think) for a simple pedometer which also tells the time.

Along with that, I want to eat more healthily, cut down my alcohol intake and engage in constructive pursuits when I’m not reading and writing, rather than doom scrolling on my phone or laptop and getting depressed by a word gone mad.

I want to learn and see new things, whether it’s visiting an art exhibition or getting a close-up view of a golden beetle. I want to hear and identify birdsong and possibly learn the ukelele, although I don’t think I’m quite ready for that just yet.

Maybe just soak up the beauty of nature, as and when it happens. Live in the moment.

So there you go, those are my May resolutions – what are yours?

Have a great weekend.

Love, Maddie x

The first time ever I saw your face

Did you see that news story about scientists claiming to have discovered the ‘real’ face of Anne Boleyn?

Now that would be some feat, because her real face would have been on the head cut off by a French swordsman in 1536 at the behest of the corrupt court sycophants surrounding Henry VIII.

She was executed for adultery, incest and treason – charges which paved the way for Henry to dump rather than divorce Anne and make room for wife number three, Jane Seymour, and the potential for a male heir.

It was typical of this tyrant king.

No, this ‘real’ face is a previously unknown sketch by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection.

The finding is the work of a computer science team from the University of Bradford, which used modern facial recognition techiniques to come up with the controversial theory.

They believe another sketch below in The Royal Collection was mislabelled and is more likely to be of Anne’s mother, Elizabeth (nee Howard).

It doesn’t really fit with the description we have of Anne with a long and slender neck and dark hair.

There is a fascinating blog about the various portraits of Anne here, which was written in 2020 and is still relevant now, even with this new ‘discovery’ which may or may not be what it seems.

Up until now, the painting below, from The National Portrait Gallery, is the one that has informed the modern world what the doomed queen might have looked like. It’s not contemporary, it’s Elizabethan, but it’s the one we all know.

So are we any closer to the truth? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – as we know from the famous Holbein painting of a sweet Anne of Cleves. We are told Henry was rather taken with the portrait but, apparently, when he saw the lady in real life, his reaction was that she was the spitting image of a “Flanders Mare”.