Tag: novels

Book reviews #2

Apologies, I haven’t blogged for ages as publicising Bridport Literary Festival and involvement in ongoing projects with Windrose Rural Media Trust have been keeping me busy.

BridLit is over now – a great success, hurrah! – while my work with Windrose, a registered charity, is opening up into new pastures.

I realise I haven’t posted any book reviews since August, which is remiss of me because it’s not as if I haven’t found the time to read.

So here are some novels I’d like to recommend.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

*****

First published 31 March, 2022.

I came late to the Lessons in Chemistry party but I loved everything about this novel.

An inspiring, hopeful narrative with meaning and feminist optimism, laugh out loud moments and the most wonderful characters to root for in 1960s America.
I borrowed the book from a friend and had only a short time in which to read it. But it didn’t matter, I was hooked from start to finish.

A brilliantly clever debut, easy to read and very memorable.

Life Hacks for a Little Alien by Alice Franklin

*****

Expected publication 11 February, 2025.

What an extraordinary novel! I found it to be beautifully written, very witty and unusual in its second person telling (such a difficult perspective to pull off, but Alice Franklin does it superbly) of the story of a young child growing up in a suburban household in south east England. It seemed very American to me at times, in its use of language and experimentation, which gave gravitas to this coming-of-age story about a little girl who feels different. It was incredibly moving and warm, I was hooked.

As I fell into the story, I wondered where on earth it was going to go, so when I reached the part of ‘Little Alien’s’obsession for and pursuit of the truth behind the Voynich manuscript, a 15th century codex of uknown origin (which I’d never heard of), it took me into an entirely unexpected realm altogether.

Tender, insightful and funny – and hugely original.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance review copy of this novel. It’s one I won’t forget in a hurry.

The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr

****

Expected publication 6 February, 2025.

When a baby is found by the sea in Donegal, on the north west coast of Ireland, the child is taken in by a young fisherman and his wife. They adopt the boy, call him Brendan and bring him up alongside their small son, Declan. The story follows Brendan and Declan’s stories and that of their parents, set against the brooding backdrop of a landscape almost cut off from the rest of the world. As the children grow up, what emerges is one of those quiet and satisfying tales of family life – with joy and heartbreak, conflicts and misunderstandings – told from the various viewpoints of the characters through an eavesdropping voice of a villager acting as a narrator.

An astonishing debut, haunting and gentle, with well-drawn characters and atmosphere to make the reader feel part of the community in which Brenda and Declan are growing up,

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for an advance reader copy of this novel.

That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz by Malachy Tallack

***

Published 24 October 24.

The novel starts off in 1957 with Sonny, a young man from Shetland, working on a whaling ship in the South Atlantic. We move on to the present day to his son, Jack, now in his early 60s, and flit back and forwards to Jack’s life now and his formative years with his father, Sonny, and mother, Kathleen, in the house on Shetland where he was brought up and still lives. Jack is obsessed with country music and the chapters are interspersed with his handwritten songs.

This is a quiet, thoughtful, beautifully written literary novel, where not much happens but with a haunting, evocative depth to it that is hard to explain or define but leaves the reader wistful and contemplative.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this novel.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

*****

First published 10 September 10.

Only Elizabeth Strout can write a slow-paced novel about the quiet minutiae of everyday life in a small town where nothing much happens (except everything does,) to such great effect. I had this book on my ‘to be read’ pile for a while, savouring just seeing it there and knowing the pleasure I would get from devouring it a month or so down the line. Her books don’t ever have much of a plot, but the depth of emotions and feelings she is able to convey by just a character’s look or nod of the head is astounding.

In Tell Me Everything, the familiar characters of Lucy Barton and an elderly Olive Kitteridge feature strongly in the cast, which is led by nice Bob Burgess, who comes to realise that he is in love with his dear friend, Lucy. This is a novel about family, relationships, friendships, misunderstandings, brutality and the things that might have been.

For me, nothing Strout writes will ever top the wonderful Olive Kitteridge, whiich is one of my favourite books. But Tell Me Everything comes very close. There is something about her measured, sometimes old fashioned style of writing which I absolutely adore.

Thank you NetGalley for the advance reader copy of this book.

Book reviews #1

I read so many novels, I’ve decide it’s time I started sharing some of my reviews.

I’m a reviewer for The Historical Novel Society and NetGalley. I get through books like chocolate biscuits.

I’ll try to post reviews on the last weekend of every month.

The Maiden of Florence by Katherine Mezzacappa

*****

The Maiden of Florence is based on a true story about Giulia, a young woman who, in 16th century Italy, was plucked from an orphanage to prove the virility of a prince marrying into the powerful Medici family. Her task done, a comfortable life is arranged for her. But she can never forget what happened, nor escape the unwanted attentions of the lecherous minister who facilitated the ‘test’ in the first place.

It’s a shocking, harrowing scenario and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about reading such a horror story, imagining bleakness and a tale without hope. The novel sat on my shelf for a while before I had the courage to read it. But when I started it, I just couldn’t put it down.

Katherine Mezzacappa uses every tool in her writer’s armoury to create an astonishing novel, weaving fact with credible fiction to totally immerse the reader in Giulia’s world, a world in which men of money and power call all the shots. The Maiden of Florence is beautifully written and diligently researched, with all the senses in action, making this reader feel uncomfortably prurient when the act is described and as injustice after injustice is heaped upon the protagonist.

Giulia is treated so brutally. Inside, she is raging, yet she manages to retain a quiet dignity to equip her well in the years that follow.

This is a novel with tenderness, hope, justice and love at its heart. The Maiden of Florence is my book of 2024.

The Engraver’s Secret by Lisa Medved

*****

In 17th century Antwerp, an engraver is on his death bed when he reveals to his daughter, Antonia, a terrible secret. Something he did when he worked in the studio of artist Peter Paul Rubens will have dangerous repercussions for his family for generations to come.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Rubens aficionado Charlotte secures a short-term position as a university lecturer in Antwerp. She has a secret of her own, which may be affecting her judgement when she makes a major discovery.

In a dual timeline, handled deftly by the author. Antonia’s and Charlotte’s stories intertwine, building layers of intrigue to reach a thrilling conclusion. Along the way, we get to know the two women, the times in which they live, the prejudices they face and the towns and workplaces they inhabit.

The Engraver’s Secret is that rare thing – solid, well researched and fascinating historical fiction combined with a fast-paced thriller, all wrapped up in terrific writing which flows off the page. The novel is a real page turner, and I couldn’t put it down. A Dan Brown for discerning readers of art history fiction.

Witness 8 by Steve Kavanagh

****

This is a fast-paced crime thriller with ex-con-man turned criminal lawyer Eddie Flynn defending a respected surgeon and family man wrongly accused of murder in a rich neighbourhood of New York. Throw into the mix some capable sidekicks, assassins, corrupt police, preening officials and an unlikely baddie in the shape of a young mother’s help with a sick mother, and you have a real page turner of a novel with a twist at the end which I did not see coming.

I’m familiar with the genre but not the author or his protagonist. I’d definitely read him again.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance reader copy of Witness 8. Thoroughly recommended.

Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey

***

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

The story is told from the viewpoints of two characters, Milly and Pip, over the course of forty years. They are both Irish and live in London. When they meet, Milly is a barmaid and Pip is a promising boxer but becomes an alcoholic.

The pair live their largely separate lives against a backdrop of a London which is changing hugely, with buildings and locations crucial to the characters deteriorating over the years.

It is a melancholy, gentle and sometimes brutal novel. If you are expecting a romance with lots of dramatic ‘will they, won’t they’ moments to punctuate the narrative, this is not it.

Pivotal events are sometimes told in a retrospective, detached way, which, as a reader, I found frustrating.

The character of Pip was explored more fully than Milly’s and there were times when I felt that the author held back on what motivated Milly by not delving into her backstory.

I found the novel compelling and capitivating but it felt to me like something was missing, and I did not care for the ending. For that reason, I am giving it three stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance reader copy of this novel.

The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier

**

I’ve enjoyed some of Tracy Chevalier’s novels in the past but really struggled with this novel, which follows the fortunes of a female glassmaker from the Rosso family on Murano.

Her ability to transport you into certain eras and to describe complicated processes are expertly done but, for me, the narrative plodded, with more telling than showing.

The device of showing the same characters through the centuries, hardly ageing, didn’t work for me, as there was no reference to this in their everyday lives, apart from an omnipresent narrator at the beginning of each section. It seemed forced, artificial, and I think it would have been much more interesting, readable and brave if she had followed the dynasty generation by generation or gone the whole hog and done a Matt Haig-type How To Stop Time treatment.

Book Corner

I have the good fortune to be a reviewer for NetGalley, a website which distributes advance reader copies of books to hundreds of thousands of members in exchange for honest reviews.

I was introduced to it by a friend in Lush Places, who insisted it would be for me after we started reviewing books from the village phone box library during lockdown.

It was too much hassle at first, but she kept on at me until I signed up and requested my first book. Thank you, Vikki!

Several years on, I’m now getting some amazing (free) downloads for my Kindle. The more books you review online, the more likely you’ll be approved for books in your favourite genres.

I share my reviews on the Goodreads platform or here on this blog.

I don’t very often award five stars but I’ve had some absolute corkers recently. Here are a couple of novels to look out for (both books are available to pre-order):

You Are Here by David Nicholls (due to be published by Sceptre 23 April 2024).

I was very excited to be approved for the latest David Nicholls novel. It didn’t disappoint. I didn’t want it to end, although I did, to find out what happened.

Michael and Marnie are two single strangers approaching middle age, living lonely, separate lives, north and south of the country. Michael is a geography teacher, obsessed with geology and his broken relationship with his beloved ex. Marnie is a self-employed, self-taught book editor who is finding her way after divorcing her entirely unsuitable husband She is anchored to her work, her ‘cosmopolitan’ life in London and, most of all, the joys of the English language.

The two are thrown together by a mutual friend on an arduous walk across luscious countryside in the Lake District and Yorkshire Moors. As the walk progresses, and as other walkers fall by the wayside, the reader learns more about the two of them and their problematic love lives. We are willing them to get together, to reach some kind of understanding that will see them triumph, ultimately, as a couple. But the course of true love, just like a coast-to-coast walk, does not run smoothly.

Romance isn’t really my thing but I loved this novel. I loved the characters of Michael and Marnie (and most of all, Marnie, who has a kick-ass sense of humour and pedantic eye for detail).

Nicholls’ writing is seemingly effortless and a joy to read. Tender moments are captured with humour and clarity. There are laugh out loud moments and I imagined myself picturing who might play the roles when it’s adapted into a television series like his best-known novel, One Day.

The new novel has so much hope at its core, following the desperation and isolation of the covid lockdowns. I thoroughly recommend it.

The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins (expected publication by The Borough Press, May 2024).

In 1870s London, widower Henry Latimer is working in his father-in-law’s shop selling hearing aids. A mysterious customer, who owns a silk factory in the Devon town of Telverton, asks Henry to help his young daughter who has been deaf since birth. Intrigued, Henry takes up his invitation. He travels to the man’s big house in Telverton and ends up getting caught in a web of deceit, greed and enchantment.

Henry’s story is interspersed with the first person journal of a previous lady of the house, whose sojourn on a Greek island results in the discovery of spiders which spin the most incredible silk. When worked into fabric, the spider silk has a unique property that can bring calming silence or excruciating madness to those exposed to it.

I was spellbound by this novel – more so because I wasn’t expecting to like it. I had read one of Collins’ previous novels, The Binding, which I was enjoying before it started to get weird. The Silence Factory, however, is streets ahead in its storytelling, quality of writing and characterisation. If you like gothic novels, you will love this. Prepare yourself for an immersive ride. It’s definitely got big screen potential written all over it, either as a film or television series. Highly recommended.

Books: which are your favourites?

World Book Day was created by UNESCO on 23 April 1995 to celebrated books and reading.

It’s marked by more than a hundred countries.

In the UK and Ireland, the charity celebrates World Book Day on 7 March – today!

‘Our mission is to promote reading for pleasure, offering every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own. Reading for pleasure is the single biggest indicator of a child’s future success – more than their family circumstances, their parents’ educational background or their income. We want to see more children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, with a life-long habit of reading for pleasure and the improved life chances this brings them.’

World Book Day

It’s great to get children into books from an early age. Books take the young – and the old – to new worlds. The printed word and writers’ imagination allow us to go backwards or forward in time, and meet fictional and real-life characters from history.

There’s nothing quite like curling up with a good book.

As a child to my early twenties, I was an avid reader. And then life got in the way, until, about ten years ago, I reignited my love affair with books, and novels in particular.

Back in the day, I read Enid Blyton’s Tales of Long Ago, which filled me with a longing for stories from Greek mythology. And then it was magical things like The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Princess and the Goblin and The Hobbit.

At school, I loved Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. Still do.

In my early twenties, it was anything by Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck or F. Scott Fitzgerald.

My two favourite novels are Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. And I love the Steinbeck collection of linked short stories, The Pastures of Heaven.

These days, I’m into witty and thoughtful reinterpretations of the Greek myths, such as Natalie Haynes’s Stone Blind: Medusa’s Story and Madeline Miller’s Circe, historical fiction like The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams and Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield.

I’m very keen on Elizabeth Strout, Stephen King, Rachel Joyce and Barbara Kingsolver and literary fiction by John McGregor and Max Porter.

I love a good thriller, I’m not at all keen on chick lit or romance, and, most of all, I adore a quiet, coming-of-age novel set in small-town settings, such as Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger, To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal, Go As A River by Shelley Read and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Although I hated Where The Crawdads Sing. I think it was the melodrama I didn’t like.

At the moment, I’m reading an advance reader copy of Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment. So far, it’s a good ‘un.

What’s on your reading list?

What we’re reading and watching

Books

With all the rain we’ve had, the door on the village telephone box library is jammed shut.

Luckily, I have a number of great books on my Kindle still to read, thanks to NetGalley, which provides advance reader copies of digital books in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve just finished reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. It’s not out yet – I had a review copy – but it’s such a compelling novel.

I’m generally a low scorer (something has to be pretty amazing for me to award it five out of five) but I gave the book four stars on Goodreads.

Here’s my review :

This is an astonishing debut. Time travel, romance, comedy and thriller, all beautifully constructed and written with literary flair.
In the near future, the unnamed protagonist works as a civil servant for The Ministry of Time in London as a ‘bridge’ between her world and her charge, a naval officer from the 19th century who history says disappeared in the frozen north, with the rest of the ill-fated crew. The plot follows the twists and turns of their relationship with each other, with authority, their pasts, presents and future and the wider world.
This was a compelling, easy read with much humour and pathos. Can see it making a great film or television series.
Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for an advance review copy of this novel.

Lo and behold, the novel is being made into a television serial.

Imagine what it must feel like to have your work adapted for the small and big screens. It’s happening to someone I know who worked at the Dorset Echo the same time as I did, albeit in different offices. It must be incredible, if a little scary, to see someone else nurturing your ‘baby’ for a different medium and audience.

Joanna Quinn’s The Whalebone Theatre, a family epic, coming-of-age novel and wartime thriller set in Dorset and France, is to get the television treatment. I loved the novel and gave it five stars.

I’m about to start reading Andrew McMillan’s Pity and The Women by Kristin Hannah.

Television

We’re still plodding through Blue Bloods (CBS), the multi-season police drama with Tom Selleck heading a family of New York cops embroiled in crime and political intrigue. It’s an easy series to watch, with self-contained episodes and likeable, hardworking characters, and nothing too taxing for an addled brain to take in late in the evening.

We’ve just started True Detective (Amazon Prime), a crime and mystery drama which is providing to be uncomfortable and brutal viewing. The jury is still out on this one. Maybe I need to get past season one. I’m done with stories that feature hideous crimes with women as victims.

There are times when our preferred viewing is just not compatible. Mr Grigg is currently watching Masters of the Air (Apple TV), an American war drama mini-series, and I’m watching Daisy Jones and the Six (Amazon Prime), which charts the rise and fall of a fictional 1970s rock band not dissimilar to Fleetwood Mac.

I wasn’t keen on the book but I’m enjoying the show, particularly the gorgeous Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley. She’s mesmerising.

Films lined up to watch include Saltburn (Amazon Prime), which I’m plucking up the courage to see after hearing someone talk about it in the pub, and One Love, the biopic of Bob Marley, in cinemas now, which looks amazing.