So I’ve finished Natalie Hayne’s No Friend To This House and my review is winging its way to The Historical Novel Society.
You can see my other book reviews for the HNS here. But, spoiler alert, I liked it.
It will be my last review for the HNS because I have other irons in the fire, which I must pull out at some time to check if they’ve reached the correct temperature.
I’m still a reviewer for NetGalley, and I’ve just finished this:
The Naked Light by Bridget Collins ***
(Due to be published by Harper Collins 25 September 2025)
Set just after the First World War, The Naked Light tells a a dark story of life in a small rural village where the inhabitants feel protected by the Face, a simple and ancient chalk image on a hillside, which acts as a kind of amulet against evil.
We follow the fortunes of beautiful spinster, Florence, her precocious and unsettling niece, Phoebe, and a female artist called Kit, who is haunted by the disfigured soldiers from her war work and moves into an old cottage which used to be the home of the Bone family, who were custodians of the Face.
The Naked Light is a slow burner, but a fascinating story of womanly love, darkly Gothic in places and peppered with a heavy dash of country folklore, which serves as allegorical device bringing home the horror of war and its effects on a small community.
Bridget Collins is imaginative and writes beautifully. This is a novel that will stay with me for some time but I struggled to like or understand some of the main characters, hence my giving it three stars.
Films worth watching (or not)
I’ve watched three films recently, only one of which I actually enjoyed (in the main).
Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)
As you’d expect, Happy Gilmore 2 is the sequel to Happy Gilmore, a sports comedy film from 1996 which Mr Grigg particularly enjoyed because it involved lots of whacking. And I quite liked the original because of the underdog-conquering-stuffy-establishment-vibe (think Eddie the Eagle and Dream Horse, two excellent examples of the genre).
Happy Gilmore 2 sees Adam Sandler reprise his role but now as a winner down on his luck. He’s a widower, an alcoholic and hasn’t played golf for years but is forced into it because his talented daughter needs to go to dance school.
I’m not keen on anything with Sandler in it and this film relies heavily on in-jokes and characters from the first movie. If, like me, you’ve forgotten those, then you’ll probably sit in front of the screen po-faced and reaching for the fast-forward button.
I can’t recommend the film but I was fascinated that Sandler recruited his wife and two daughters for peripheral roles. Keeping it in the family led me down a long internet rabbit hole which was far more enjoyable than the film.
The Naked Gun (2025)
The fourth film in the slapstick crime franchise, in which the late Leslie Nielsen made the role of cop Frank Drebin his own back in the 1980s (I just loved Police Squad!, the American comedy crime series on which the films were based), sees Liam Neeson playing Frank’s son, Frank Drebin Jnr.
If you like corny jokes, seeing Neeson stumbling around in a ridiculous setting and a plot as far-fetched as the way in which politics is going all over the world, you’ll love this. The only similarity between the two actors is their names.
I’ve never been able to take Neeson seriously since I saw him as Zeus in the dreadful 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, where he utters the immortal line: ‘Release the Kraken’ to unleash the monster onto poor, chained-up Andromeda.
This line has been used many times during lock-ins at the Lush Places pub, although I hasten to add that lock-ins there, now it’s a community pub, are a thing of the past.
Mind you, these days, Neeson, who was in the Oscar-winning Schindler’s List (1993), doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously either, playing recent roles with as much depth as a half-inch ruler.
But I did like him in the action thriller In The Land of Saints and Sinners (2023), set in a very beautiful and stark Donegal. He plays a quiet contract killer in this surprisingly moving film.
However, I digress. The Naked Gun is terrible, apart from having ex-Baywatch beauty Pamela Anderson in the same sort of role that Priscilla Presley (who makes a cameo appearance in the latest film) played in the original.
Pam is now 58 and still a stunner, embracing the ageing process both boldly and beautifully, a shining, make-up free beacon for older women rejecting the relentless barrage of turning back time.
So I’ll let them both off for having a laugh, even if the audience is not splitting its collective sides.
The Friend (2024)
This takes a while to get going but it’s a lovely film, starring Naomi Watts as Iris, a writer coming to terms with the death of her friend and mentor, Walter, a louche author played by Bill Murray.
Set in New York, Iris finds it hard to grieve for Walter and is bottling-up her emotions. All around her, the women that were close to him have their own agendas when it comes to mourning, and seem to be expressing themselves much better than she can.
Iris has been tasked, along with Walter’s daughter, with putting together a book of his letters, but she’s struggling.
It’s not just writer’s block, but something that goes deeper.
Things begin to change when she finds herself having to look after Walter’s dog, Apollo, a Great Dane ‘the size of a pony’, which dominates her small apartment and her life.
The performances, sentiments and storyline, are lovely, particularly Bing as the massive, mournful dog.
I’ve never had a hankering for a Great Dane but I do now.
A long film (120 minutes), but definitely worth a watch. Gentle, heartwarming and touching on universal themes in a understated and layered way.
Maddie Grigg 