I’ve not done very well with books this month. This is a shame because the weather outside is frightful and there’s nothing better than curling up with a good book when the rain is lashing against the windows.
There were two novels I abandoned after a couple of chapters and then a three-star which was all right, but not that enjoyable.
However, there is one stand-out book for me and I’m still reading it. It’s A Private Manby Stephanie Sy-Quia, due to be published in April. I didn’t expect it to be my thing at all, but it’s captivating. I’ll reveal more in next month’s reviews.
One of my next reads will be the new novel by Elizabeth Strout, the author of Olive Kitteridge. But I have a few more to get through first, including my first purchase in a long time, Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, published in 1939 and set around these parts, yet I’ve never read it.
In 1976, it was made into a television film starring Peter O’Toole.
A murder rocks a small community in southern USA and threatents to blow apart the impending marraige of Rhett and Lucinda and their future happiness together. We think we know who did it and what and why it happened, but do we?
There are twists and turns galore in this thriller/whodunnit/domestic drama and I did not see the end coming. The story is told from various viewpoints, including the voice of the murdered woman, a device I always find difficult to take on board because how can she tell a story in the first person, past tense, when she’s dead?
I also didn’t much like any of the characters through which the tale unfolded.
Anyway, that aside, this was a tense and generally fast-paced novel which would be an ideal basis for a Netflix adaptation in the Harlan Coben mould.
Two teenage girls are on trial in Scotland for the killing of one of their friends. As the court case unfolds, primarily through the eyes of one of the burnt-out jurors – a heart surgeon – a ritualistic sisterhood is exposed, each one of the accused blaming the other, with witchcraft at the centre of it all.
This is a very difficult book to review without spoilers so I won’t ruin the unexpected twist. Suffice to say that this is a thrilling thriller, with viewpoints shifting like sand and the reader questioning what is real and what is fantasy.
An easy-to-read crime novel and highly recommended.
Wow! What an imaginative use of one of the two small islands just opposite Corfu Town, the capital of the Ionian island. This was an intricate, exciting thriller set in a place I know so well.
Alex Preston envisages Vidos as the home – or sanctuary? – for compromised or spent MI6 agents. It’s not long before something happens and a tangled web of deceit begins to unravel as the body count stacks up.
I won’t say much more than that for fear of spoilers but this is a well-researched (both in terms of spyland and Corfu) novel which is multi-layered.
Very well written, easy to lose yourself within its pages and duplicitous characters.
This is my first taste of Gwendoline Rlley and, despite the lack of a hard plot or storyline to the novel, I loved it.
Two forty-something Londoners, Laura and Putnam, have been friends for years. The contemporary story begins when Putnam loses his writer job at Sequence magazine. This is the springboard for a tale of friendship, with respective pasts and presents and ponderings about the future intertwining, like a commentary on midlife and how they got there.
It’s not a novel that goes anywhere much but the wit, matter-0f-fact descriptions and use of language make this a joy to read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance review copy of this novel.
Detective Sam Hansen comes back to work after a period of extended leave when she stumbles across a murder scene. A teenager has been killed in a London park and a copy of a book, How To Get Away With Murder, has been left next to the body.
This is a tense and witty crime thriller, with alternating chapters from Sam’s point of view and then chapters of the book written by a person called Denver Brady, who describes himself as a serial killer.
It’s a really clever premise, tautly written, well-plotted and with a self-deprecating lead character, who is easy to like. I was very suprised this is a debut novel. I hope it will be the start of a series.
An easy, page-turning and satisfying read. Recommended.
Natalie is a God-fearing, clever woman who is married into a patriarchal political family in the USA.
She’s an egotistical bitch who devises a plan to become an ‘influencer’ when the money runs dry. She sets up home with her handsome but stupid husband as a ‘trad wife’ on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere, raising her many children and working the farm in a wholesome, simple way remiscent of the pioneer men and women who ‘made America great’.
But it’s all a sham – no-one sees the nannies, the pesticides and the immigrant workers whose labour keeps the facade from falling down.
And then Natalie finds herself in the actual past, where the reality of her life on Yesteryear Farm is far, far different from the picture she has painted her adoring public.
Will she be able to get back into her present? And what’s behind her terrifying time travelling journey?
I romped through this book, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Razor sharp, a very unlikeable heroine and dystopian in the mould of Margaret Atwood.
Constantina Costa is an angry teenager living with her Greek Cypriot father in 1970s UK. She plots to kill him, referring to him as The Fat Murderer because she holds him responsible for the death of her British mother and two younger brothers.
Connie finds solace in her love for Marc Bolan and David Bowie, whose posters she frequently consults in her bedroom about her miserable life, which has been so touched by tragedy and darkness. She develops a loving relationship with Vas, a Greek Cypriot boy who ‘gets’ her and is a ray of sunshine in a world where Greekness threatens to suffocate her.
I absolutely adored this sweary and nostalgic coming-of-age novel (which is totally from my era) and was cheering Connie on from the sidelines.
The scenes in which Connie is enveloped by her Greek heritage and ‘aunties’ were incredibly warm and funny, and I loved the music, food and pop culture references.
This would make such a great television series. The sassy Connie deserves her moment on the small screen.
I’ve read quite a few books in the last month, thanks to NetGalley, and some were better than others.
Endeavouring to be more organised and helpful to my readers, I’m just going to include on my blog books which have just been or are about to be published, rather than those not due to be released for months hence.
And, following in the footsteps of my old friend from the lifestyle and fashion blog, Is This Mutton, I’m only going to include reviews of three stars and over. (Sadly, I’ve had a few two-star ones in recent months. You can read my reviews of these and others on the Goodreads website.)
I can’t imagine anyone wanting to read a book if a reviewer thinks it’s duff. And it’s a bit soul destroying for authors to get a pasting online – writing is a tough enough world as it is.
However, saying that, I’m going to include my review of the latest John Grisham novel, because I was expecting such great things from this esteemed and prolific author. And, besides, his career is not going to nosedive just because a nobody from Dorset said she didn’t like his book.
In her latest retelling of the Greek myths, Natalie Haynes turns to Jason & the Argonauts and the Medea story. The tale of the handsome hero who seizes the golden fleece, with help from the witch, Medea, is well-known, particularly to those of us brought up with the 1960s classic movie.
The Medea story, as told by Greek playwright Euripides and first performed in 431 BC, is a staple of the stage even to this day, with various adaptations and audiences trying to make sense of why the protagonist murders her two sons.
Tying the two halves of the story together in the one novel was always going to be a challenge. The first half is a swashbuckling quest and the second is a dark tragedy. But who better to meld the two together than Haynes, a writer, broadcaster, classicist and comedian whose novels include Stone Blind (about Medusa) and A Thousand Ships, which sees the Trojan War from the perspective of the women involved.
No Friend to This House centres on the roles played by Jason and Medea – and the Greek gods as puppeteers – in seizing the golden fleece from the far eastern edge of the Black Sea and taking it to Colchis, encountering dreadful obstacles along the way. Medea’s magic enables them to get through their ordeals.
They end up in Corinth, married with children, and then Jason announces he is in love with Glauke, the princess, and is getting wed. Medea enacts a terrible revenge, but is it any wonder? She’s been deceived by her conniving husband. But killing her sons? How on earth can this be explained?
Haynes does so with aplomb – no spoilers here, but there is a final plot twist – in a nuanced and layered story, with multiple narrators and viewpoints. Highly recommended.
I came to this wanting to love it as I’d heard so much about it. I thought it might be a sort of British version of To Be Sung Underwater (2011) by Tom McNeal. I adored that novel.
Set in rural Dorset in the 1950s and 1960s, Broken Country sees Beth’s world turned upside down when her first love comes back into her life.
Grieving for Bobby, the young son she lost, Beth makes a momentous – and reckless – choice. It can only lead to heartache and pain.
Spoiler alert: it does.
Broken Country is a story of loss, love and betrayal. Part thriller, part courtroom drama, the reader will be on the edge of their seat when this is made into a film by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company, which also made Where The Crawdads Sing.
Readers raved about that book, as they are raving about this one. I was not a fan of the former – but if we all liked the same fiction, it would be a very dull world indeed.
Broken Country is a good yarn. The ‘heroine’ is not very likeable but this cracking story will become a book club favourite and convert well to the big screen.
I could see the denouement a mile off but, even so, it was a satisfying ending which tied up loose ends, although I felt cheated by Beth, as a first person narrator, telling me only half a story and leaving the juicy bit until last.
A down-at-heel lawyer with gambling debts and a failing marriage takes on a new client. She is seemingly a wealthy widow who wants him to take a look at the will prepared by another lawyer in town. Our protagonist soon realises the other lawyer has carved out a sizeable chunk of her fortune for himself – can he help her out while, at the same time, solve some of his own financial worries by being a little dishonest himself?
I’ve read some cracking John Grisham books in the past but, sorry, this isn’t one of them. It was a huge disappoinment and lacking the urgency and intrigue of Grisham’s earlier work.
The relationship between the main character and the widow drags on, as does his family story, with lots of telling and not much showing. Then a court case ensues, followed by a wrongful imprisonment and then another character who comes into the frame only in the third part. And then it ends very abruptly to the point that I thought I was missing some pages from the Kindle. Apparently not.
I skim read in the end, wanting to know what had happened and why, but it was quite a few nights’ reading I will never get back.
Featuring lots of old photos and interviews with locals, the 120-page book was produced by me for Windrose Rural Media Trust, for which I act as voluntary co-ordinator.
It’s available from the community pub and community shop, and also directly from me. I have to send a copy to the British Library, now that the international standard book number (ISBN) has been registered, so, in theory, people should be able to order it from book shops.
It’s been a long gestation and a difficult birth – my designer was beset with software problems and then a car crashed into a tree, causing him and thousands of others in the area to lose their internet for several days.
But it’s here, and the feedback has been lovely. It’s been a privilege to hear local people’s stories of their childhood and how the village used to be.
All sale proceeds go to the pub, the shop and to Windrose, a registered charity.
The project is supported by grants from Dorset Council’s Community and Culture Fund, the South West Procurement Alliance/LHC Community Benefit Fund, Magna Housing Association’s Community Improvement Fund, and the British Association for Local History’s Small Grants Programme.
Maddie Grigg 