Finding my bookish self

I’ve been out of the blogging loop lately, focusing on a writing project which is going to keep me busy for the next couple of years.

However, there is lots going on in the world (earthquake, heatwave, violent death and political farce) but I’m choosing not to obsess about these subjects and am trying (not very successfully) to stop doomscrolling on Facebook and Instagram, which is a complete waste of time and just feeds massive egos and conspiracy theories and lines the pockets of the megarich.

And news websites and a constant diet of updates and cliches are leaving me cold.

The reading is going well, but not in terms of me writing reviews. I’ve had some real duds in recent months, which has been incredibly disappointing.

I had high hopes for The Calamity Club (2026), by Kathryn Stockett, the author of The Help (2009), but it wasn’t for me. I gave it two stars out of five.

I didn’t fare much better with Under Story. I devoured an earlier Chloe Benjamin novel, The Immortalists (2018), but really struggled with this new book, which comes out later in the year.

The very science-based science fiction of Under Story is sweeping in its ambition. Set in the hostile, surreal world of Antarctica, it’s essentially a love story with two central protagonists who take their time to reconnect.

It’s beautifully written but moves forward at too slow a pace for me. I gave it three stars.

Having encountered a reader’s block with new novels other people seem to adore, I had a bit of a book break and then started reading narrative nonfiction, if nothing else but to help with the current writing project, to see how it’s done when done well.

The last bit of nonfiction I read was probably The Salt Path (2018), billed as memoir, nature and travel writing and definitely not fiction. I gave up after two chapters because I liked neither the style nor the whining presence of the author, who irritated me from the start. Well, we all know how that book panned out. Maybe I am more discerning than I think.

I’ve done a bit of research and have started giving nonfiction another go. Mixed results but I completely fell in love with the Bruce Chatwin’s groundbreaking travel writing classic, In Patagonia (1977).

Similarly, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (2023) by David Grann is unputdownable, telling the true story of what happened when a naval vessel hit rocks off the South American coast in 1740. Piecing together the story through solid historical research and strong primary sources, Grann has produced a knockout of a book. I was hooked by it.

After failing to ‘get’ an award-winning memoir that had been recommended to me (too highbrow and about a wealthy family I didn’t care much about), I was delighted to then plunge into Great Uncle Harry: A Tale of War and Empire (2024) by Michael Palin, a writer who takes a family story and turns it into a search for answers in this compelling biography, travelogue and history book. Palin is such an empathetic and kind sort of a chap and his writing reflects his humanity.

I’m now reading two novels: A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) by Amor Towles (my day book) and the beautiful There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak (2024), which I turn to at night because I have a back-lit Kindle so I don’t disturb Mr Grigg when he’s trying to sleep.

So, you can see I haven’t been completely idle in this ennui-inducing heatwave, which is turning us all into gibbering wrecks.

More from me later in the week, I think. In the meantime, if you have any narrative nonfiction recommendations, I’m all ears.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

Taking a break

Just to let you know, the blog is taking a back seat for a while.

I’ve had lots of things going on and I’m currently knee-deep in work around the publication of new novel by an indie press. It’s due out in the autumn – more news to follow.

Have a lovely summer, and maybe catch up with you through posts on my Instagram and Facebook pages, although these will also be a bit sporadic over the coming months.

Love, Maddie x

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.