Book Review: Lessons by Ian McEwan – an epic read in more ways than one

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Ian McEwan is usually a reliable author, one I’ve turned to before anticipating a satisfying and intelligent read. And that’s pretty much what you get with Lessons. The story follows Roland Baines from his childhood and delivery to an unusual boarding school – we’re in the late 1950s – through his schooling and into adulthood, and on to the present day. Critical to his story are the lessons he has at school with a predatory and obsessive piano teacher.

Rolande’s experiences, the grooming and sexual predation by Miriam Cornell, have an ongoing effect on his life. At first the story weaves these scenes from school with a police enquiry into the disappearance of Rolande’s wife Alissa in the 1980s. She has left a note and sent postcards from Europe, so there’s no obvious reason to suspect foul play, but DI Browne wants to be sure. Roland has been left holding the baby, literally, seven-month-old Lawrence.

The story meanders through the years bringing the past up to the time of Alissa’s vanishing and beyond and along with Roland’s story we have key moments of recent history. There’s the Cuba Missile Crisis, which is what sends Roland into a spin, cycling towards danger and Miss Cornell. There’s the fall of the Berlin Wall, another key factor in Roland’s life, the rise of New Labour and much more. Roland is a political animal and there are groups of friends around the dinner table, and lively discussions.

Throughout, Roland considers the effects of broader events in history on his path through life. It is obvious that Roland had potential to have a solid career in something, possibly even as a concert pianist. But failing at school and then bringing up a child on his own have led to a working life that is a cobbling together of hotel piano playing, occasional journalism, and tennis coaching. He’s also a terrific dad. He has relationships with other women but most of them don’t stick. Has he been ruined emotionally by Miss Cornell?

Against his chest he felt the baby’s heartbeat, just under twice the rate of his own. Their pulses fell in and out of phase, but one day they would be always out. They would never be this close. He would know him less well, then even less. Others would know Lawrence better than he did, where he was, what he was doing and saying, growing closer to this friend, then this lover. Crying sometimes, alone. From his father, occasional visits, a sincere hug, catch up on work, family, some politics, then goodbye. Until then, he knew everything about him, where he was in every minute, in every place. He was the baby’s bed and his god. The long letting go could be the essence of parenthood and from here was impossible to conceive.

And yet all in all, Roland’s has been a good life. A life rich in people, experiences and love. He hasn’t been a big achiever; he’s had to be a parent, rather like the lives of many women. So there’s a feminist message here too – not only through Roland, but in the stories of Alissa, her mother and Roland’s mother too.

Roland’s a likeable protagonist, which is just as well as we are with him throughout all the things in life that trouble everyday people. What secrets have his parents kept all these years? How will a new government affect things? Or even, are we on the brink of another world war? The tiny things as well as the broader issues. It’s a novel full of wisdom, and the gaining of it, and I suppose these are also the lessons of the title.

For quite a way through I thought nobody, and certainly not Roland, was learning any lessons. He really does seem to bumble along, reacting to things, rather than making decisive steps in any direction. But he mostly gets there in the end and there are some memorable scenes. McEwan creates these beautifully. The scenes with Miss Cornell are somewhat creepy, but affecting.

While not especially long, it’s a monumental work, and I admire Lessons hugely, but somehow it felt at times rather a slog. I think this is down to the lengthy timescale of the book and also the way it lingers on life’s more difficult moments, of life slipping away, of our mortality. You can relate to this for sure, but you long for lightness and hope. In the end I was glad to have read Lessons, but certainly glad to finish it too. So it’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan – a pacy legal thriller with a few dramatic twists

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Dervla McTiernan is the author of the Cormac Reilly series of crime novels set in Galway, Ireland. After three books McTiernan quickly earned a place on my must-read list. So imagine my surprise to find book number four, The Murder Rule, is a departure from the series and is set in Maine and Virginia.

We’re with Hannah, a law student near to graduation, who finds a place as an intern on The Innocence Project, a legal team that take on dodgy convictions, including death-row cases. As you can imagine, the work is intense, emotions running high.

“No one is innocent in this story” says the tagline on the cover, so I was expecting possibly an unreliable narrator. And yes, pretty much from the get-go, we learn Hannah will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She shows this in how she persuades the Innocence Project director, Robert Parekh to take her on, and the hours she is willing to spend, long into the night to prove her worth.

What Hannah really wants is to be part of the small team focussed on the Michael Dandridge case. After eleven years in prison, his case has come up for retrial due to questionable evidence. Even so, he could still end up with the death penalty. Dandridge had been sent down for the rape and murder of a young mother, something he’s always denied – his confession, he says, beaten out of him by the sheriff. Hannah’s phone conversations with her fragile mother, Laura, reveals a hidden agenda.

 ”I’m sorry,” Hanna said, as sincerely as she could manage.
 ”You should be,” he said, still with a trace of amusement. “But here’s the thing.” He gestured broadly around the room. “Here at the Project, we are not the police and we’re not the FBI. We have a very limited budget to pay investigators. I need students who are imaginative, inventive, and willing to be creative when it comes to pursuing our cases. Working here does not mean sitting behind a desk drafting motions – our staff attorneys take care of that. We need students to do the hard grind of investigating facts and tracking down new evidence. If you could be as dogged with that as you were with trying to get a place here, maybe you could be of use to me.”
 Hannah could feel the flush rising in her cheeks. She made herself hold his gaze. This was not the time to play the shy girl.

Interspersed with Hannah’s narrative are entries from Laura’s diary describing her summer spent in Maine working for a cleaning company to save money for college. At one secluded summer house she meets Tom, the son of wealthy parents, and the two click. If only that creepy Mike wasn’t around. After seeing what he has hidden in his room, he makes her nervous.

The story builds towards the Dandridge trial, as Hannah does what she can to fulfil her promise to her mother, impressing her team with her commitment and ingenuity. However, fellow Dandridge interns Sean and Camila, are smart cookies too and soon ask questions. So there’s plenty of tension and no one Hannah can trust. Meanwhile her fragile mother is struggling with Hannah being away, so there are tearful phone conversations between them.

There’s a tense last act with plenty of danger and near misses as new facts come to light with some shocking twists. The scene’s all set for a dramatic courthouse finale which may seem a little unlikely in the real world, but is entertaining nevertheless. It all comes together in a pacy novel that’s perfect escapist reading. I kind of miss the Galway setting of the previous books though.

McTiernan is a brilliant storyteller and I’ll be on the look out for her next book, What Happened to Nina?, which is set in Vermont and due out soon. The Murder Rule is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig – a cracking novel of rural England, the plight of the middle classes, with a mystery thrown in

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes when you pick up a novel, you just instantly know you are in good hands. I felt like this about The Lie of the Land with its interesting premise – a couple desperate to divorce but can’t because they have no money. So they rent out their London house and find cheaper digs (together!) in the country with their children.

Stories where people ditch the city for the countryside for whatever reason have been around since the novel has, quite probably, or at least since Green Acres appeared on TV in the sixties. But there’s always fresh material to mine, particularly when you’ve got such complex characters as Quentin and Lottie Bredin. Quentin is older than Lottie and his career as a journalist has taken a dive – he’s rude and arrogant and has upset too many people. To make matters worse, Lottie has discovered he’s had several affairs, and all the while she’s been left to manage the home and her children.

Lottie was once an up-and-coming architect, and keeps her home like something out of House and Garden. Perhaps that is what makes her so difficult for Quentin to live with: her fastidiousness, her sharp tongue, plus her ongoing tiredness since the birth of their daughters – Rosie (6) and Stella (8). An opportunity to rent a farmhouse near Quentin’s parents in Devon ridiculously cheaply has them reluctantly leaving London and all its temptations behind.

The novel has a load of interesting plots woven together, with several main narrators. We’re with Lottie, angry and grieving over the way Quentin has treated her, while she tries to balance the books and economise. If they can stick it out for a year, they can clear their debts and sell the London house. This will pay for their divorce and leave enough capital to set up house separately.

Her daily walk includes a visit to the village shop, a Portakabin crouched in the church car park. The design makes her wince, but just to talk to another adult who doesn’t hate her is a relief.
 ’Home-made?’ she asks, pointing to pasties, keeping warm in front of the counter.
 ’Oh, yes. We don’t hold with Humbles.’
 ’It’s good that Shipcott still has a shop.’
 ’It doesn’t make a profit,’ the woman says, shyly. ‘We volunteer, though we all worry about being held up at gunpoint.’
 ’Do you really?’
 ’You’d be surprised. There’s crime here, my lovely, just like everywhere else. But how else are pensioners without cars going to get their food and money each week?’
 She has never known people like this, with their terrible teeth and terrible clothes and kindness. That’s what astonishes her most: the kindness.

We’ve also got Quentin, who can’t believe the nosedive his career has taken, but is still trying to keep in the swim while being a decent father. There’s Xan, Lottie’s eighteen-year-old son, desolate at missing out on a place at Cambridge and at the idea of his London life coming to a halt. Showing us the rural point of view, there’s Sally, a district health nurse with her own quiet grief.

While this seems to be mostly a novel of a marriage, there’s also a grim mystery with the hideous death of the previous tenant at Long Farm, an unsolved crime no one has told the Bredins about. You know you will find out the who and why of the crime by the end of the book, but in the meantime there’s so much character development, as rural life weaves its charm and throws up new challenges for the family.

We get plenty of insight into rural issues, particularly the struggles for farmers to make a living off the land in a competitive market-driven economy. The Polish immigrants that fill in doing unpleasant and exploitative work the locals avoid is evocatively depicted in scenes at Humbles Pie Factory where Xan picks up a casual job. Also the loss of a way of life, the closing of schools as people move away.

Then we’ve got a look at intergenerational relationships, particularly between Quentin and his dying father – the guilt, the disagreements and old scores. And about parenthood, both good and bad, as well as the redemptive power of music and literature. Quite a lot to think about then.

The writing sparkles with wit and vivid descriptions, and is polished and nuanced. You don’t have to like the characters, certainly not all the time – Craigs shows them warts and all – but you can’t complain they’re not interesting. Each finds themselves caught up in difficult dilemmas that give the story plenty of go. Meanwhile all the plates Craig keeps spinning are carefully balanced and then caught at the end for a cracking finish. I loved every minute of it and, although it’s not saying a lot – this being only February – The Lie of the Land is quite my favourite book of the year. A five star read from me.

Book Review: The Wakes by Dianne Yarwood – a thoughtful, contemporary read about life, death and catering

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

So we’re back in ‘feel-good fiction’ territory with a novel mostly about Clare, whose husband has had a kind of conniption and decided to leave their marriage. She becomes unhinged by this and takes some long service leave, and this coincides with her meeting a new neighbour, Louisa, who has plans for a catering business centred on funerals. Clare is persuaded to help out – she’s always been a dab hand in the kitchen and her chicken sandwiches are to die for – ha, ha!

Louisa is a larger-than-life character – tall and funny as well as kind. She’s soon in and out of Clare’s kitchen when Clare needs a friend. An accident that has left her face bruised and her front teeth chipped has confined Clare to her home. We find out that Louisa’s bouncy, chatty manner hides a secret heartache.

The story flips to Chris and his own marriage break-up – a relationship that has turned sour when he and his wife found they were unable to conceive. He thinks back to his relationship with Beth when he was in London – was she his one great love? He determines to find out if she is still in Australia – he has a box of her things he’d like to return. Chris is also no stranger to death, being an ER doctor, and it is this that brings about his first meeting with Clare at the caterers’ very first wake.

Clare worked at a very fast pace. It wasn’t until people began streaming through the doors that Louisa admitted how uncomfortable she felt around crowds. Somehow, stupidly, she’d thought mourners would be different. Quieter, less of a strain on her sensibilities. But not so. The opposite, really – all those families. She disappeared into the kitchen as the room filled up. I’ll hold the fort in there, she said with a look of concern and apology. And so Clare moved around the room in something approaching a run: she hovered by groups, raced off to the kitchen, came back, checked on what people had, offered plates and darted off again.

The Wakes makes you aware of the idea that “in the midst of life we are in death” in that it is the passing of loved ones and the proximity of death that makes the characters feel aware of the wonders of life. That we only have one and we must seize the day. But there’s also a lot about the complexities of friendship. Chris’s great friend is Max, who is dying; there are other friends – particularly Paul, who was also in London during the Beth era.

Paul has his own chapters, too, and his role in the story is important as a catalyst for what happens. Paul’s a kind of counterpart for Louisa in that he’s always quick with the ready wit and can rattle off a vast selection of pop culture references at any given opportunity. But Paul’s life is an empty shell. We are not really supposed to like. him – he works in advertising – but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Chris, as an ER doctor, is obviously more worthy.

Perhaps it was these moral undertones that put me off the book a little. That and the funerals. It is difficult to balance the weight of grief with that of the hopeful resolutions that we wish for the characters. Sometimes it just got a bit too much. Or was it just that I liked the more light-hearted scenes better? Perhaps if I’d just lost someone dear to me, I’d have found the book more relatable. The Wakes is a three-star read from me.

Book Review: The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page – a big-hearted novel about letting go

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I’d forgotten why this book was on my list – probably a glowing review somewhere (thank-you, if that was you), but was soon ensconced in the story. I quickly discovered a novel packed with quirky characters and gentle humour – two key ingredients for a pleasant, feel-good read.

The Keeper of Stories takes us to the English university city of Cambridge, where Janice cleans people’s houses and discreetly collects people’s stories. This isn’t for any inclination towards blackmail; it’s just a kind of hobby. Many of these stories come from clients: the famous opera singer who has come from humble beginnings, charming but frail Carrie-Louise, and recently widowed Fiona and her boy Adam who are still grieving. Everyone knows Janice is the best cleaner in Cambridge, but not everything’s plain sailing.

For a start there’s her husband Mike, who is a serial job-quitter, never keeping the same employment for more than a month or two. To make things worse he always leaves on a sour note. He belittles Janice for her humble work even though it’s her earnings that keep a roof over their head, and his insistence on sending their son Simon to boarding school has caused a rift between mother and son.

When two of her more difficult clients, Mrs YeahYeahYeah and her husband Mr NoNoNotNow ask her to clean for the husband’s autocratic mother, Mrs P, it might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Janice. Yet she forms an unlikely alliance over stories with Mrs P. Catching the bus – Mike nearly always has the couple’s car – her attention is caught by one of the drivers who reminds her of a geography teacher.

“How many stories do you think that there are in the world? Seven? Eight? I can’t remember how many. I read in a magazine somewhere that there are only a certain number of stories ever told.”
  Mrs B sits quietly, watching her.
  Janice sighs. “You and I both know what’s coming, don’t we? It’s a predictable story. It has been played out in hovels and palaces around the world since the beginning of time. There are no new stories, Mrs. B.”
  “But this is your story, Janice, and I believe you need to tell it.”
  “Do I? Will it make any difference? I can’t change the ending.”
  “That’s where I think you’re wrong.”

Mrs P’s has determinedly unsettling ways, trading stories, including that of the scandalous Becky, a courtesan from Paris and her rise in society, in her attempts to hear Janice’s story. For we soon realise that Janice’s collecting of stories is her way of avoiding her own, a story that she feels is too dreadful to tell. Through all this, Mrs P also has a battle on her hands to stay in her university flat, while her son wants to throw her out. Janice is soon doing her bit to help.

There’s plenty of humour and whimsy in Janice’s interactions with her clients while the story builds in drama as it seems likely for Janice that change is in the air. This will not be without pain, but Janice has her friends to help her through, as well as Decius, the sweary dog that Janice walks for Mrs YeahYeahYeah, and who patently thinks Janice should be his owner.

We’re in classic ‘second chances’ territory here, and it all comes together nicely for a big-hearted read. The writing is witty enough to avoid being sentimental – often a danger with this type of book. Keen readers will enjoy the references to literature, while the characters are varied are and interesting. Look out for Page’s new novel, The Book of Beginnings, which will be out later this year. The Keeper of Stories is a four star read from me.

Book Review: Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas – a story of melancholy and nostalgia told through the senses

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I confess I had a couple of goes at this novel, which I’d heard such good things about. And it’s not as if it gets off to a slow start. I was soon swept up into the narrator’s story – a woman in her late thirties reminiscing about a relationship from over ten years before, and the man, Jude, whom she’s never quite forgotten.

I imagined some kind of reconciliation, a meeting of some kind. What would they say to each other? How would they feel about each other now? Would such a meeting rekindle old feelings? Would there be new revelations about what really happened?

But that’s not what happens. Thirst For Salt is a journey back to a year in the life of the narrator – do we ever learn her name? – viewed from the point of view of her older self. It’s a journey filled with nostalgia, melancholy and yearning.

Our narrator meets Jude at the beach where she and her mother have rented a cottage for a summer holiday. He’s an older man of 42, compared with the young woman’s 24. She swims a lot on her own and this attracts Jude’s concern – all kinds of creatures lurk in the water, he tells her, and there are no lifeguards at this beach. Sharkbait, he calls her.

The cool shock of the blue. Movement, water, salt, light, heat. I began every day that way, my first week at Sailors Beach. Rising up with the waves and kicking down into the depths, into those sudden cold patches where the sun didn’t reach. Patterns of light on the surface, shadows passing above, water darkening. The fear, sometimes, of something brushing past my leg – a tangle of kelp or a lone gull landing beside me. Rocks seemed to quiver on the silty bed below, and once, I caught sight of a silver ray.


Parallel to their story, is the narrator’s relationship with her mother, who was just 24 when her daughter was born, a relationship that’s almost sisterly. Her mother has always lived a Bohemian kind of life, her long separated father, an itinerant, so learning how a long-term relationship works isn’t easy. By contrast, Jude seems a more solid, settled kind of guy. He’s a man of steady habits, with his own routines. He’s even living in the old family beach house built by his father.

The novel is an intimate portrayal of a relationship that reminded me a little of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. It is also a story that evolves through all the senses – the feeling of the sea on skin, the sights and sounds of the beach, of nature, both summer and winter. There’s taste and scent as well, in the old things Jude has in his house, the meals they prepare together. And the writing is just gorgeous.

As I said, I put this book aside after the first third or so, a little frustrated at the lack of obvious plot. But I still wanted to know how it ended and found myself picking it up again as an audiobook, which in this case was read by the author. It seemed to work and Madelaine Lucas gives a nuanced and engaging performance, capturing perfectly the feelings of loss and sadness that haunt the pages. I’m glad I persevered; Thirst for Salt is a four star read from me.

Book Review: This Wild, Wild Country by Inga Vespa – old sins cast long shadows in hippy-era New Mexico

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

In her latest book, Inga Vespa pairs another couple of outsiders to investigate a murder, while digging around among social issues of the twentieth century. In her debut, The Long, Long Afternoon, we had a stirring of civil rights, and the murder investigated by a disgraced cop and the African American maid who’s a key witness. It’s 1959 and so there’s misogyny as well, particularly in this strait-laced California suburb.

Moving on a decade This Wild, Wild Country takes us to Boldville, New Mexico, a town out of the Wild West with it’s faded shop fronts, a blink and you’ve missed it sort of place, that keeps going because of local mining interests. Once upon a time it had it’s share of gold-rush opportunists, but now it’s where Glitter – real-name Lauren Weiland – wants to set up a counterculture commune.

Glitter lives with her boyfriend Ziggy on a hippy-decorated bus which she’s parked by the cabin her mother used to rent out behind the family hotel, a little out of town. With a few friends they hope the commune will catch on and expand. The little group are mostly college drop-outs, flower children who are anti-war and full of new ideas and ideals that put them outside of society. The town folk are wary of them, particularly when Dutch and a couple of his motor cycle gang move in. The gang has a constant supply of drugs and bring an air of menace. If only Ziggy wasn’t quite so keen to keep them onside.

After a particularly wild night, Glitter wakes up to find her cousin, Mike, dead from a skull fracture. Sheriff Nickel writes the death off as an accident while under the influence, but Glitter knew Mike wasn’t the kind of guy to take the kind of hard drugs found in his pocket. Not surprisingly no one will take her seriously.

While all this is going on, Joanna Riley is on the run. She has left her bully of a husband, sporting bruises she attempts to conceal. With only two hundred dollars and not much gas in the car, she escapes Albuquerque and winds up in Boldville, where she finds Stovers Hotel, the hostelry belonging to Glitter’s mother. A former police officer, and married to another, Joanna’s cop senses are on alert when she hears about the mysterious death, witnessing the family’s grief, and begins to ask questions.

The road is a ribbon wrapping a gift never given. A million stars twinkle overhead. Dust fills her lungs and cleans away the taste of blood. The Datsun’s headlights pick out cactus ghosts and the spiky crowns of agave plants. Somewhere she’s read that the Native Americans use agave sap as a balm. But she cannot bring herself to stop and try some on her arm.
 The needle’s hitting eighty. She will never get far enough. He’ll find her. If she drives to Canada, he’ll come after her. And the tank is already running low.

The story also flips back to the 1930s, where Cordelia Stover is desperate: a hotel that’s losing money, a Depression that has lost her even more, and a young daughter to raise on her own. When she comes across a secret, she heads off for the hills on a borrowed mule, hoping for a windfall.

This Wild, Wild Country is a brilliant mystery that builds to an action-packed sequence of events towards the end, where, eventually, all is revealed. Inga Vespa ticks all the boxes for a great crime novel, particularly with two young heroines on a quest to uncover the truth, while the whole town seems to be against them – even the law. The book is also peopled with interesting minor characters: the menacing sheriff; the posturing mayor; Lonan, Cordelia’s Native American side-kick. It’s easy to imagine this novel as a movie, which could be down the evocative setting.

But there’s a lot more going on here. There’s all the issues raised by the counterculture movement and its ideals of freedom, love and peace, but the misogyny that pervades the establishment is here too – women taken advantage of quite horrifically. There’s racism in the way business interests are at odds with those of the local Native Americans as well as issues around power and the corruption that brings. So quite a lot going on, but not at the expense of character development or a gripping storyline. So it’s a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict – a novel about an extraordinary set of sisters and the politics that divided them

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been fascinated by the Mitfords ever since I saw a British TV adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate which aired in the 1980s. Nancy was a witty novelist who moved in literary circles during the 1930s and ’40s, rubbing shoulders with Evelyn Waugh and his ilk. She mined her family and the upper classes for material for her books, which are still very readable today. Nancy had five sisters and one brother, and with eccentric parents, each sibling seemed to be more extraordinary or oddball than the next.

These are the characters that people Marie Benedict’s novel The Mitford Affair, which concentrates on the years 1932 to 1941, with the rise of fascism in Europe and the opening chapters of World War II. Told from the viewpoints of sisters Nancy, Diana and Unity, you couldn’t ask for more varied characters, each with a very distinctive narrative voice. As the years pass, Nancy watches in horror as Diana goes to ever more extremes to promote the politics of her lover Oswald Mosley, and as Unity heads off to Germany to become a kind of Hitler acolyte. As war becomes inevitable, Nancy has to decide if her loyalty lies with family or her country.

As a reader, you feel very much on the side of Nancy, who seems to be the voice of reason among her sisters. She’s also dealing with a lot personally, in particular a problematic marriage and ever more desperate attempts to bear a child. Meanwhile Diana has ditched an adoring, wealthy and titled husband for a man who is already married and the voice of fascism in Britain. She devotes her energies to his cause even when Mosley declares he cannot offer her marriage or any kind of respectability.

Then there’s Unity. Always the least liked in her family – the only daughter to be sent to school so her mother didn’t have to put up with her – you get the feeling that today, Unity would be diagnosed with a mental condition, possibly as bipolar or a spectrum disorder. Much younger than Nancy or Diana, she’s only in her late teens when we meet her, her half of her bedroom festooned with pictures of Hitler and Mussolini, as opposed to Jessica who on her side of the room has etched the hammer and sickle into the window.

After the Olympia Hall rally and the violence of the Blackshirts inflicted at the slightest provocation, undoubtedly on Mosley’s orders, I could no longer even pretend to be in the same political ranks as my sisters. Did we not live in a society where free speech was guaranteed? Could Mosley not bear the slightest critique of BUF and his rule. The strutting, posturing, flag-waving, and shows of bravado I’d chuckled at privately now seem menacing rather than humorous, and I felt an urge to unmask Mosley and his dangerous army as hooligans through my writing. I also began to wonder if I could use my writing as a way to awaken my sisters from this madness.

Unity’s adoration for Hitler is like any ordinary girl’s crush on a matinee idol, but such is her fervour, that she talks her mother into sending her to a finishing school in Munich and staking out a café popular with Hitler himself. She’s a difficult character to be with, but Benedict captures her intensity with sympathy, despite her anti-semitism and support for a cruel totalitarian regime. Hers is the saddest story of the three, and you can’t help feeling that with affection from her family, and some half-decent parenting, Unity could have had a brighter future. But that’s not to be.

This is one of those books that is so much more extraordinary for being based on real events and real people. I found myself often heading to the internet for more background, and it’s all there. The Mitford Affair is an enthralling read, although not an easy one, considering what Diana and Unity were prepared to do for a political cause that would lead to such terrible events in Europe. But I couldn’t help feeling that the writing could have been sharper – there are some rather convoluted sentences, and a few Americanisms slip through now and then. As a study of how political fanaticism can take someone over, though, it does the trick. It’s a three star read from me.

Book Review: Prettier if She Smiled More by Toni Jordan – another hilarious round with the Schnabels

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I hadn’t realised until I started it, that Toni Jordan’s latest novel features a bunch of the same characters we met in Dinner with the Schnabels – one of my favourite reads from 2022. In Prettier if She Smiled More, we follow the story of Kylie Schnabel who at the start of the book is about to experience three disasters that upend her life – all before Wednesday. By the end of the week, nothing will be the same.

Kylie Schnabel, if you remember, is the oldest sibling, daughter of Schnabel matriarch Gloria. She works as a pharmacist and likes to think she has everything under control. She’s very serious and is a stickler for detail, hardworking and a little abrupt. She’s been working at the same small suburban pharmacy since she graduated, living frugally and planning her life around one day buying the shop from her genial boss Tim who’s approaching retirement.

Life’s all going to plan, until one day it isn’t. Kylie gets to work on Monday to discover that Tim is selling his shop to a chain of pharmacies, a big business conglomerate all set to modernise and refurb. Gail from Pharmacy King insists Kylie reapply for her job – just a formality, and even though Kylie has a work ethic second to none and has won a Young Pharmacist of the Year award, the reader knows it’s going to be tricky. Kylie’s sometimes grim, no-nonsense manner is going to be a problem.

Then there’s Colin, Kylie’s partner, who is supposedly away at a business conference but activity on his Fitbit suggests he’s getting up to some extra-curricular hanky-panky. Kylie suddenly sees unpatchable cracks in their relationship. When Gloria breaks her ankle and needs full-time care, Kylie finds herself back at her childhood home, dealing with a mother who doesn’t want to be looked after and somehow ends up baby-sitting Caesar, a tiny Pomeranian.

There are plenty of funny moments, and Kylie’s internal monologue is always entertaining – she’s such a force of nature. But coming home where the decor is still stuck in the 1980s and there are so many reminders of her childhood, suddenly the past comes back with a wallop. Why has Kylie’s bedroom been turned into a sewing room, while her siblings, Tansy and Nick’s rooms are still intact, just as they left them? Then there’s her parent’s acrimonious divorce and memories of her childhood anguish, of being the eldest and having to be the sensible one when her mother was in pieces.

‘Your … father, is this?’ Ramona said, picking up one of the photos. ‘Is very handsome, but familiar somehow?…
  …In those years before Photoshop, what could be done about David, who was in the centre of many of the said photos and who Gloria wished dead several times a day in a variety of painful ways? Facing the grinning face of her ex-husband every day in her own home was untenable.
  Gloria’s solution had been to cut out a range of Kevin Costner heads of varying sizes from different magazines and glue them over similarly sized David heads. Now the family photos lined up on the mantel were of Gloria and Kevin, standing proudly behind their children, young Kylie, Tansy and Nick.

There’s a lot for Kylie to deal with, all in one week, including a tennis open day for Gloria, who is a children’s tennis coach. There’s finding a nurse who will want to stay with her mother so that she can get back to work when Gloria has other ideas. Kylie’s brother Nick talks her into going on a date with one of his mates. And on top of everything, Kylie has agreed to host the family lunch on Sunday. As the pressure mounts, something has to give.

Prettier if She Smiled More is a smart and often hilarious second-chances kind of novel. The format is similar to Dinner with the Schnabels, with one character having a lot to get done as the days of a single week slip by and each day heralds more problems. The final chapter brings everything to a head and somehow everything gets fixed, but in a way Kylie, the meticulous over-planner, would never have predicted a week earlier. I loved it and wouldn’t say no to another Schnabel novel if Toni Jordan feels so inclined. This one’s gets an easy five out of five stars from me.

The Mother by T M Logan – a light, escapist thriller and perfect holiday read

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Another thriller seemed a good choice for the holiday season – something to while away the minutes between basting the turkey and digging out the good crystal. And this one certainly suited the day. An easy read with short chapters so you can pick up where you left off, and an opening scene that has you hooked from the beginning – a woman, assumedly the ‘mother’ of the title, watching her own funeral.

Yes, I’m sure this has been done before, but it’s always interesting to see a funeral from the late departed’s point of view. But for Heather (yes, another book about a Heather!), hiding behind heavy-framed glasses and dyed hair, she has the pain of seeing her own children for the first time in years and they are visibly distressed.

The story flips back to Heather’s former life, ten years before, when she was a busy mother of young boys, with a career in HR and a husband, Liam, who is a rising MP. They have a pleasant home in Bath, and it would seem a charmed life, if a little hectic. Then, one evening, once the children are in bed, Heather discovers Liam is hiding something from her – he’s unusually evasive and there’s the scent of cologne on his clothes. The two argue. Next morning Heather wakes to find her husband dead.

The story flips forward again and we’re with Heather as she’s released from prison. She’s on parole after serving a nine-year sentence, sharing a room at a hostel with three other women, and with serious conditions surrounding her release. These include keeping away from witnesses from her trial, and from her boys. How is she going to clear her name, let alone be a mother again?

Until Liam’s murder, I had never really appreciated how privileged I was – and what it might be like to lose that privilege overnight. Because from the moment Liam died, all of it – the police, the press, the courts, the system – had turned against me. And from the moment the guilty verdict was read out, I became the enemy, the outsider, the other, to be feared and reviled and never to be trusted again.

Heather is really up against it. Her former middle-class life is in tatters, and she has no one to turn to – her mother now dead and her in-laws refuse to have anything to do with her. Slowly she builds up a support group – Owen Tanner, the journalist who has never given up on her case and fellow hostel inmate, Jodi – a woman from the other side of the tracks. She even manages to convince sister-in-law Amy to help.

The story gathers steam as Heather pieces together facts from her case, helped in part by those Tanner has garnered that reveal something shady within Liam’s constituency office. The appearance of heavies that follow and threaten her would suggest that someone has got something to hide. Heather has to risk breaking the conditions of her parole again and again. Can she discover the truth before she’s sent back to prison?

T M Logan really knows how to plot an enthralling thriller that keeps you turning the pages. The unmasking of the killer near the end packs quite a surprise in a nail-biting finale. The character of Heather is an ‘everywoman’ type you can empathise with. Subordinate characters are interesting too, if a little lightly drawn. My only quibble is how did the police get it all so wrong. Why didn’t Heather’s defence team put up more of a fight? All the evidence seems to be circumstantial. On the other hand, perhaps this happens a lot more than we know. We hope the system is a fair one, but is it really?

The Mother is a pacy, escapist read, well-written and with engaging characters. But after A Bird in Winter it seemed a little ordinary. Oh, well. You can’t have everything. I’ll probably pick up another by this author when I want a book I can easily get lost in. This one’s a three-and-a-half star read from me.