Book Review: Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell – a heart-stopping novel about a woman trying to leave her marriage and start again

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

This book reads more like a thriller than a slice-of-life contemporary novel. Nesting is about Ciara Fay who decides to leave her husband. She makes the sudden decision to grab the clothes off the line, bundles her children into her car and takes off, not knowing where she’s going. Her husband Ryan, upstairs in the shower, is completely oblivious.

Ciara has very little money. Ryan managed their finances, only giving her a bit of housekeeping money in cash and expecting her to account for it all. All the same, she has saved enough to tide them over for a few days. But with two girls under five, it’s going to be tough, even before she discovers she is pregnant again. The only reason she is putting herself through this is because she is so scared of her husband.

Ciara does everything right – she keeps Ryan informed about needing a break to keep everything above board. She doesn’t want to lose her girls. Her family – a mother and sister – are both in England and she can’t leave Ireland with her girls without their father’s permission.

When she finds a place in social housing, you get a lot of insight into the soul-destroying situation this can be. The lack of space – one hotel room for a family – and minimal cooking facilities. People hide rice cookers in their rooms, but there’s the threat they could be kicked out if discovered. They mustn’t use the lifts, it’s off-putting for the other guests, so they have to sneak up the back stairs. Even so, there’s a sense of community here and Ciara makes friends.

‘I left my marriage and it’s all been a bit … You know.’
‘One of those.’ Cathy nods. ‘Fair play to you. Takes some guts to leave.’
‘I just don’t know, if I did the right thing.’
She looks down at the endless corridor. Mottled red carpet blotted with stains. Scratched walls. The stench of cheap industrial disinfectant. Sepia prints of colonial-era Dublin. Ryan’s voice in her head. For no reason. You are tearing this family apart for no reason at all. She says, ‘I don’t know if I should have left. He didn’t cheat, or drink, or gamble. And it wasn’t physical. He didn’t hit me or anything.’
‘Your husband didn’t hit you? Well that was very fuckin nice of him. Make sure you text and say thanks.’

All the while, there are incessant text messages from Ryan which are like a battering ram, either declarations of love or hostile accusations, but always intense. Ciara is always on edge, her husband’s voice constantly in her head, dominating her thoughts. She doesn’t realise how bad it is until she talks to other people.

The story follows Ciara’s desperation to find a home, to find work, to make a new life for herself and Ryan’s ability to always crank things up another gear through lies and deception. So it isn’t surprising there is that thriller level of suspense. So often did I have my heart in my mouth, wondering if Ciara and the children would ever be safe. And it’s right down to the wire in the last chapters. Such an emotional roller-coaster of a read.

Through it all there’s imagery of birds. There are the young crow chicks Ryan finds in an abandoned nest on a building site and decides the girls can help him nurture. Another ploy. But other images too. It’s a beautifully written and crafted book. I enjoyed the audiobook, read by Louisa Harland. Even so, Nesting is so tense, so vivid, I could only listen to a little at a time. But gosh, what a great story. A five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon – a midwife and her battle for justice in 18th century Maine

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

There’s something about settings in winter that can be very atmospheric. Ariel Lawson conjures up the depth of a very cold winter in The Frozen River, set in Maine in the late 1700s. Mere decades before, the militia had a fought long and hard to drive out the French as well as the native people of the area, ready for settlement. Martha Ballard, our protagonist, lives in the town of Hollowell with her family, her husband running a sawmill on the river, Martha the town midwife.

The story begins when Martha, with her medical expertise, is asked to examine a dead man, pulled from the river just before it ices over completely. As soon as she sets eyes on him, she is shocked to see that it is Joshua Burgess, one of two men accused of raping Rebecca Foster, her friend and the wife of a pastor. Rebecca had upset some townsfolk by making connections with the local Wabanaki people. What is also disturbing is that Joshua has been beaten and hanged.

When a newly-graduated doctor arrives and declares that the injuries sustained by the dead man are consistent with drowning, Martha is appalled to see her opinion discredited. She decides to find out what really happened, particularly when she learns that her son had an altercation with Joshua at the town dance on the night in question. She’s also determined to find justice for her friend Rebecca, who is still emotionally and physically scarred by her ordeal.

I keep up with the journals because I enjoy it, but also because it is my job. One of the duties of my profession. As a midwife and healer, I am witness to the details of my neighbors’ private lives, along with their fears and secrets, and – when appropriate – I record them for safekeeping. Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists. But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without partiality. That, I believe, is why so few women are taught to read and write. God only knows what they would do with the power of pen and ink at their disposal. I am not God – nor do I desire to be – but, being privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in this town, I have a rather good idea what secrets might be recorded, then later revealed if more women took up the pen.

The plot really sweeps you along for the first half of the book and I couldn’t put it down. And then it kind of stalled. It was still interesting, in that the book is peppered with Martha’s diary entries, based on journals the real Martha Ballard kept, and you get a lot of the day-to-day life of a midwife in winter. The saddling up – she has a horrifically scary stallion called Brutus she’s still getting used to – and riding out in all weathers to tend to women in labour.

Apparently Martha never lost a mother during childbirth and her skills are recorded here, as well as those of a French speaking Black woman known as Doctor, who visits from time to time. But women skilled in medicine were not taken particularly seriously, and Martha often has a battle on her hands to make her patients and their husbands see sense. She’s a feisty character, always knows best, and a thorn in the side of powerful men. We also get a lot of her relationship with her husband Ephraim, still an intense passion now they’re in their fifties.

Then there are Matha’s battles against the local judge and businessman, Joseph North, the other man accused in the rape of her friend. He’s a nasty piece of work, and has the power to make things difficult for the Ballards. The ending is quite the showdown, if a little difficult for this reader to swallow. The author has written quite a lengthy explanation in a note at the end of the book about her reasoning here and the research which informed her story.

I’m glad I read The Frozen River as I had known little about this corner of history and the life of this interesting woman. I can see why the author wanted to fill in so much detail of her history, family and the settler township where she lived. I feel a more carefully edited version would have made a better novel. Overall it’s an engaging read and a three-star read from me.

Book Review: The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey – a story about friendship, growing up and a small town’s dark secrets

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

The List of Suspicious Things is a debut novel which takes you back to 1979. Thatcher has just been elected PM and the Yorkshire Ripper is at large, killing young women, while the police have few clues to his identity. In Miv’s Yorkshire town the mills have closed down, so things are already tough, and likely to get tougher. At home, Miv’s mother never speaks, Auntie Jean delivers food to the table and terse comments, while her dad seems a bit lost.

When the family thinks a move down south might be a good idea, Miv is desperate. At twelve, she’s bright but a bit socially gauche, partly due to her home life, so her friendship with Sharon is too precious to lose. She’ll do anything to save it so decides to investigate and catch the Yorkshire Ripper. She buys a notebook and makes lists, and with Sharon’s help, begins to look for suspicious characters close to home.

As names are added to the list, the reader is introduced to the people of the town, beginning with Mr Bashir who runs the corner shop. He’s one of the nicest adults Miv knows but he has dark eyes and a moustache, so makes the list. There’s a truck driver from her father’s work, people she knows from church and a teacher among others. Other people in the community include Helen at the library – because where else do you go for information in 1979?

The people we saw on our way to school were like the buildings we passed: predictable and unchanging. At eight-fifteen we chimed, ‘Morning!’ in perfect unison to Mrs Pearson, out walking her snappy Jack Russell. After her, we knew we would say hello and stop for a chat with the man in the corner shop, as he would be outside by now, arranging the daily newspaper stand. He would call us the ‘Terrible Twosome’ and we would laugh, as if it were the first time he had said it.
Just before we got there, Sharon nudged me hard in the ribs and muttered, ‘Watch out!’ under her breath. Following her gaze, I saw another familiar person, the only person we didn’t say hello to on our journey and whose name we somehow knew was Brian, though we didn’t use it. To us, he was just ‘the man in the overalls’.

Of course, the girls don’t catch the Ripper, but their investigations uncover some of the darker elements going on in the town – the racism, the misogyny, the prejudice against those who are a bit different. Miv learns one or two secrets that are a bit close to home, and finds herself caught up in some of the fallout. She’s a girl who is left too much to her own devices, there’s just too much going on at home for consistent parenting. But then in 1979, kids were often left to find their own entertainment and the town is their playground.

Through Miv you also see the struggles of the adults in the story. Sometimes the narrative shifts to Austin, Miv’s dad; Helen; or Mr Bashir, who each have personal sadness and secrets. The setting – the late ’70s is well realised. Mr Bashir is always singing along to his favourite Elton John songs, jeans go from bellbottoms to stovepipes and Sharon buys a glittery lipgloss to try. And it’s also very Yorkshire, though not posh Yorkshire – the kids go ‘laiking about’ and at least one character’s house has an outdoor loo.

While overall I enjoyed the book, I did feel at times that it was rather overloaded with issues. So many dark things happen with a lot to fall on Miv’s small shoulders. Still, The List of Suspicious Things is a quirky and interesting novel, easy to get lost in. I was reminded of Joanna Cannon’s The Trouble with Goats and Sheep – another novel about two young girls investigating – in this case a neighbour’s disappearance – also set in the ’70s, and which is well worth checking out. The List of Suspicious Things is a three-star read from me.

Book Review: Still Life by Val McDermid – a layered cold case mystery with lots to keep you interested

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I’d long known Val McDermid to be one of the top Scottish crime writers, ever since Wire in the Blood showed on our TV screens in the 2000s. While I enjoyed the characters, I’d never really taken to the books as I’m not such a fan of plots about serial killers. But the stories were always complex and the characters engaging. Then I came upon Still Life, a mystery in the Karen Pirie series.

Karen is a DCI from Fife working in a Historic Cases unit. When a body is found by fishermen in the Firth of Forth, Karen is called to investigate due to the dead man’s connection to a politically sensitive missing person’s case she’d had a hand in years before. Karen is a little reluctant as the local police have just started their investigations but is given no choice by her snooty boss “the Dog Biscuit” with Sergeant Daisy Mortimer as her back-up. Daisy is with the original team and with her French degree will be particularly useful when their case takes them to Paris..

This is an engrossing mystery not least because of the interesting characters. Victim James Auld had absconded when the police began to finger him for his brother’s presumed death, although the body of Ian Auld was never found. Ian was a high-level civil servant in the Scotland Office when he disappeared.

There’s a connection to art theft and a well-known Scottish artist who painted unique collage styled portraits of the rich and powerful, lost to suicide around a decade before. And throw in the fact that James had a seven-year stint in the Foreign Legion, and was a talented jazz musician and you start to feel a real interest in the victim. So many strands to investigate and very few clues.

‘He couldn’t have fallen and hit his head on the way in? There’s plenty of rocks along that part of the Fife coast.’
‘The injury’s too regular for that. If you pressed me, I’d be inclined towards a baseball bat or a steel pipe.’
‘So, homicide.’
The professor gave a sharp sigh. ‘You know it’s not my job to make that judgement.’
‘I wasn’t asking, Jenny.’ He softened his words with a bashful smile, then turned to DS Mortimer. ‘The passport?’
She spotted the evidence bags on the side counter and picked up the two relevant ones. ‘It’s a French passport. Issued just over two years ago to a Paul Allard. Like the prof said, he’s forty-nine. His driving licence was issued in Paris at the same time – ‘
‘What? Exactly the same time?’
‘Same date. That’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, nobody has a passport and a driving licence issued on the same date, do they?’

Meanwhile Karen’s Historic Cases sidekick, Jason Murray (the Mint), is left carrying on with the case of a three-year-old body found in a camper van parked in a garage. And if that’s not enough to keep the story humming along, Karen is also upset when the man who killed the love of her life is released from prison. A woman of strong emotions and fierce actions, her grief bubbles to the surface again, threatening to overwhelm a promising new relationship.

But in the end, it’s Karen’s intelligence that shines through. She’s an impressive tactician, works hard and is brilliant in the interview room. The story allows Jason and Daisy to show their strengths too in very different ways, with Daisy a new recruit for more in the series.

If you enjoy character-driven police procedurals, this is a great read with lively prose full of Scottish vernacular. This didn’t hamper my understanding of what was going on, but added an appealing touch of local colour. I broke my rule about reading a series in order – Still Life is number six in the Karen Pirie series – but it didn’t seem to matter; it worked fine as a standalone novel. I’ll be checking in with Karen again and definitely trying some other Val McDermid mysteries. She’s definitely reliable for a satisfying read. Still Life earns a comfortable four stars..

Book Review: The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey – an enthralling and haunting dystopian novel

~ Judith ~ 4 Comments

It can be a bit nerve-wracking reviewing a book that has already had a lot of publicity and kudos. Even as you start to read it you know you are supposed to like it, but what if you don’t? Fortunately, The Book of Guilt soon drew me in with it’s 1979 English setting, although it’s not quite like how anyone would remember it.

Catherine Chidgey has reimagined the world as it might have been if England had signed a treaty with Germany in 1943, ending the war and continuing similar scientific experiments to those the Germans had been working on. We’ve got triplets, Vincent, Lawrence and William – 13 year olds who are the last boys living at Captain Scott house, a kind of children’s home. They follow a strict regime of activities and medication, overseen by their caregivers – Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night.

Along with taking daily medicine, their dreams are recorded in the Book of Dreams, and any misdemeanours noted in The Book of Guilt. Lessons are from The Book of Knowledge – a kind of old-school encyclopaedia. The house is shabby, toys are minimal, but then the boys don’t always feel well enough for a lot of physical activity. But once they have beaten “the Bug”, they are promised they will be sent to Margate, a child’s paradise, where they’ll meet up with their old friends again, and every day enjoy the amusement park, described in loving detail.

Soon our reader’s antennae are twitching, as we know this isn’t normal and the boys part of a grander scheme, pawns in some kind of experiment. There are visits by an avuncular Dr Roach, eagerly awaited, with his little dog Cynthia. The mothers are reluctant to share what’s really going on and shut down any questions with platitudes. And when the boys are at last allowed to visit the village, the locals are wary, hostile even.

Through the high-street windows we saw whole sides of pork and whole jars of sweets, mannequins wearing real clothes and painted-on hair, tins of rice pudding arranged in precarious stacks, and, in the bakery window, a little automaton dressed in a white apron and white hat, nodding his head and tapping on the glass with a wooden spoon. But although we were locals – we’d lived in Ashbridge our whole lives, after all – the villagers never really warmed to us; they gave us the briefest of nods if we said hello, and the schoolchildren in their smart uniforms nudged one another and stared wide-eyed, and the shopkeepers stonewalled most attempts at small talk.

The story is told largely from Vincent’s point of view, but interspersed is Nancy’s story, a girl about the same age, whose own family situation is unusual and plagued with secrecy. And then there’s The Minister of Loneliness, who is tasked with overseeing the closing of the boys’ home and others like it, and finding suitable families to take the remaining children. She is clearly uncomfortable about what she sees when she visits the boys at Captain Scott.

This is such an intense read, so haunting I could think of little else. And things get pretty dark, with new revelations and plot developments. At one point I had to take a break, so I read a crime novella about a wife murderer for a bit of light relief. But I did continue and I’m glad I did as it is such a compelling and thought-provoking story.

Chidgey is brilliant at detail and at times this was like a trip down memory lane with artifacts from everyday life circa 1979 appearing – leatherette furniture, the knick-knacks on display, Nancy’s Spirograph. You can feel the world through Vincent and Nancy, just as a young person might, all five senses vividly recounted. And the way children, no matter what circumstances they are living in, will sometimes burst into moments of imagination, or excitable play.

Ideas around power and what should be sanctioned for the greater good, of difference and prejudice and, of course, guilt trickle through the storyline. It all adds up to a top literary achievement and I can see why there’s a lot of talk about the novel. Crafted and intelligent, The Book of Guilt is a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Party by Tessa Hadley – coming of age in postwar Britain

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

A new Tessa Hadley is always worth picking up, and this one is a novella, the perfect choice for when life’s a bit busy. The Party is set in the decade or so after World War II in Bristol, with two sisters who are desperate to enjoy their youth and experience life. It’s told from the perspective of seventeen-year-old Evelyn, in her first year studying French at university, where her older sister, Moira, studies art.

Moira knows some interesting people, particularly Bohemian Vincent who gets the story started by hosting a party at a dodgy pub down on the docks. It’s a rainy night and Evelyn changes in the ladies’ toilets into figure-hugging black, stashing away the more demure clothes she’d left home in. Moira isn’t expecting her sister to turn up, but introduces her to the people at her table, among them two older men who are appear sophisticated and well-off – handsome but offhand Paul, creepy and not handsome at all Sinden.

I love the way Hadley conjures up the discomfort of the scene – the miserable rain, the impractical shoes, the need to pee, the grotty pub. The things a young girl puts herself through for a bit of excitement. This party is the first of three chapters. The second takes us to the girls’ home life with their younger brother and parents – a father who disappears for long intervals and a tensely respectable mother. Here the girls have to pretend they were out with nice friends the night before, with no ‘drink’ taken.

Evelyn shuddered inside the blazer’s warmth and Donald put his arm tentatively around her shoulders. — Don, if we went back inside, she said — would you buy me a drink? Because I need a boost. I’m not really enjoying myself much at this party. I’m not talking to anybody, or not anybody I actually like – I mean, apart from you of course. I’m always disappointed at parties. I long to be, you know, a succès fou, but I never am.
— You’re a succès fou with me, he said.
— Yes, she said with a flare of irritation. — But that’s not enough, is it?
— I suppose not.

The third chapter focuses on the other ‘party’ which the girls are pressured into attending at the mansion-like home of Paul’s family. Hadley highlights the naïveté of the girls, their powerless, and the predatory behaviour of Sinden, the older man. As you read, you see all the alarm bells that would have the girls’ mother up in arms. Also, the lack of happiness at the house – a sick brother, absent parents and the need for distraction.

While the storyline might seem dark and worrying, there’s such sharp wit in the writing and even a sense of adventure, particularly in the way it captures the exuberance of youth. The settings are varied and contrasting and seen through Evelyn’s eyes you can imagine being seventeen when everything can be a bit of a surprise, but you take it all at face value anyway, even if that means putting up with things you shouldn’t need to.

The Party is such a brilliant read, reminding me a little of Rose Tremain’s novel Absolutely and Forever. It’s only 115 pages long but packs a lot in. I’m beginning to be quite a fan of the novella. On the back cover, Kate Atkinson declares that Tessa Hadley is her favourite author, and well, I don’t blame her – Hadley is hard to beat. The Party is a five-star read from me.

Book Review: Hemlock Bay by Martin Edwards – a cosy mystery with plenty of Golden Age panache

~ Judith ~ 3 Comments

I was in the mood for a cosy mystery and was intrigued by this new book by Martin Edwards, the fifth in a series about the investigations of Rachel Savernake, a young woman of private means with an interest in murder. Edwards has immaculate credentials, being something of an expert in Golden Age murder mysteries. He’s the President of the Detection Club, a group formed in 1930 by crime writers such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers and where Knox Commandments are sacrosanct.

These are rules about what a crime novel must and mustn’t do – things like the murderer must appear early on in the story, the detective must declare any clues they discover as they discover them and also must not be the killer. Among others. Martin Edwards has also been awarded the Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to crime fiction, so I felt this book was definitely worth a shot.

As Hemlock Bay begins, we are soon reading the diary of Basil Palmer who is planning a murder in the North of England seaside resort of the title. He wants to dispose of the man responsible for his wife’s death – someone he has never met. Pushing him off a cliff seems a good idea. Around the same time, our amateur sleuth, Rachel, has just bought a painting, also of Hemlock Bay, by well-known Surrealist painter Virginia Penrhos, which shows, if you look carefully enough, someone lying dead at the bottom of a cliff.

Rachel lives in a large London house with her chauffeur Trueman, his wife Hetty, and Trueman’s sister Martha. Hetty cooks and Martha is a kind of companion-maid, but they all get on well, as equals almost – a kind of family of amateur sleuths. There’s some history here that you no doubt get more of in the earlier books, which I have yet to read. While this scenario does arouse the reader’s curiosity, it was perfectly fine to read Hemlock Bay as a standalone novel.

When London crime reporter Jacob Flint interviews a clairvoyant claiming to have had a vision of someone being pushed from a cliff at Hemlock Bay, he pays a call on Rachel. What he reveals sets them all off together for a summer stay at the seaside resort with the aim of preventing the murder. Flint has had some previous lucky breaks following Rachel’s nous for crime – also in the previous books – and this seems set to happen again here.

‘… I’ve been told when and where the crime is due to take place, but there’s no clue to the identity of the victim, let alone whoever is planning the crime.’
‘Rachel pursed her lips. ‘A good start. Carry on.’
As Jacob described the letter and his meeting with Gareth Bellamy, alias The Great Hallemby, he was conscious of her intense concentration. Impossible not to feel a warm glow. He admired Rachel, and there was no doubt that she was extremely good-looking. But something set her apart from other attractive women. Her sudden shifts of mood were unpredictable and occasionally disturbing. When provoked into anger, she was capable of being astonishingly ruthless. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but there were moments when she scared him.
‘Hemlock Bay,’ Martha said as he reached the end of his story. ‘Well, well.’

The story is peppered with many interesting characters – among them Sir Harold Jackson, who with wife Sadie, turned Hemlock Bay into a luxury resort; Virginia Penrhos, who is staying there in a lighthouse with her moody lover, Fion, and Louis Carson, schemer an all-round dodgy character and his charming wife Pearl. The perspective flips around among our sleuths and Basil’s diary, with a lot of time spent with Flint, who is energetic and determined, and also a bit in love with Rachel.

It all comes together with a twisty plot and a barrel of surprises at the end, as Rachel reveals who did what and why – a scene rather like many a Golden Age mystery, with all the suspects and witnesses gathered together, listening with baited breath. Martin Edwards has set the story up with clues peppered throughout for the careful reader, and these are listed in the Cluefinder at the back of the book – a popular trope from fifty years ago.

The result is a pleasurable read, a clever cosy mystery, with engaging characters, plenty of warmth and humour and smart writing. Everything you could want with a relaxing crime story. In the background is enough period detail – talks of the Slump (it’s 1930, so we know hard times are a coming), fashionable pastimes for the wealthy (including naturism) – to add enough colour without slowing down the plot. Hemlock Bay is a treat – a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Treasures by Harriet Evans – an immersive family saga and the first of a trilogy

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I was happy to put my hand up for this Netgalley offering as I’ve enjoyed several Harriet Evans’ novels before. She often centres her novels around an atmospheric house (Keepsake in The Butterfly Summer; Vanes in The Beloved Girls; Fane Hall in The Stargazers), which I’ve always found appealing. A bit like Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Early on in The Treasures we hear mention of a house called Sevenstones. I imagined a grand old English manor, full of secrets and mystery. In actual fact Sevenstones has more of a cottage feel, a country bold-hole where various members of the cast of characters arrive when they need a break. For some, including Tom Raven’s parents, it was a chance to take a break from the war – World War II that is – and where relationships were forged.

But we first meet Tom as a young boy, living in a two-room cottage with his much loved Dad in Scotland. At the age of nine, he is uprooted by his Aunt Jenny, leaving the simple life behind for more opportunities in London and public schooling, even though his aunt and Uncle Henry really have no idea about children or even running a house without staff. We’re in the 1950s, and there are bomb craters everywhere, and children from the upper classes aren’t to mix with the lower orders, or so Tom’s told.

Tom was eight, about to turn nine, in that everlasting winter, and because he was inside so much during that time he started to have questions: how they had ended up there, what had happened to them. So in the late-winter evenings Tom would ask for stories about the time before he was born, his father’s early life, how he had met Tom’s mother. And his father would tell him: tales of the time he had fallen out of his Hawker Fury when the door wasn’t fully fastened, or the pub that his commanding officer had found them all in when war was finally declared, opening the door and calling, ‘Back to base, you bleeding useless lot. Fight’s on!’ …. All these stories were grand, but they never really answered any of Tom’s questions.

There’s also another grander house in this book – Valhalla, the American home of the Kynastons. Alice is growing up as best she can, with a father battling demons and debts owed on his orchards. When he takes his life, it seems Alice and her mother are to lose their home on the grounds of Valhalla. Wilder Kynaston was a good family friend and offers them a lifeline, but there’s a price to pay.

We’re well into 1960s by now, and as Jack and Alice grow up on opposite sides of the Atlantic, another war has arrived, and with it the rise of the protest movement, women’s lib and the chance of new freedoms and ways of thinking. The novel takes you through these changes as our two young characters’ stories are set to intersect. But family secrets lurk, throwing roadblocks in their way.

Harriet Evans captures the time really well, and the dilemmas faced by young women like Alice who are trying to forge a new path for themselves, only to find they’re still chivvying for the boyfriends they tie themselves to. The men of the establishment still hold all the power, while choices for women remain limited. But there are others too, like the fathers of both Alice and Jack, who have been left haunted by the past, plagued by guilt or disappointment, also unable to be the people they want to be.

I was curious that the book starts with a modern day setting and a character, Emma, who doesn’t appear again, discovering the ‘treasures’ of the title. These are little mementos Alice has been given by her father on each of her birthdays. But I now see that this novel is the first of a trilogy – I’ll be intrigued to see how the story continues to fill in the gaps in the books that follow. The Treasures is a rich, immersive read with terrific characters you empathise with.

The Treasures is due for release on 12 June. It’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Coast Road by Alan Murrin – a novel about marriage and the price of non-conformity set in small town Ireland

~ Judith ~ 3 Comments

I was impressed by this debut novel, which reminded me of fiction by other Irish authors I’ve enjoyed in the past, such as Anne Enright and Claire Keegan.

The Coast Road is set in a small coastal town in Donegal in the 1990s, a year or two before divorce became legal in Ireland. The story describes the awful predicaments people, and particularly women, could find themselves in while stuck in loveless marriages. It does this through three main characters.

Colette Crowley has escaped her loveless marriage to Shaun determined to live her life on her own terms. She’s a published poet but has done the unthinkable in running off to Dublin to live with a married man. Finding no joy in that relationship, she has come back to be closer to her younger children. But Shaun won’t let her see her kids, and it’s easy to drown her sorrows in booze.

When Colette rents a holiday cottage we meet Dolores Mullen, who is pregnant with her fourth child and all too aware that her husband sleeps with other women. She knows it could be dangerous to rent the cottage up the path from her home to Collette, but with another baby on the way, the Mullens need the money.

And then there’s Izzy, who is married to James Keaveney, a politician and a bully. Not allowed to work, Izzy fills her home with expensive china ornaments and does evening classes. The only brightness in her day are the chats she has with their priest, Father Brian. She knows Collette because her youngest son is friends with the youngest Crowley boy, but gets more friendly with her when she signs up for Collette’s creative writing class.

The three women are all deeply unhappy, and certainly unfulfilled while local opinion, the establishment and gossip all work against any idea of their standing up for themselves. In the background the political machine plays out, as a change in the divorce law is debated. But how this might help these women is yet to be seen, as Colette becomes more unstable, Izzy more angry and Dolores more anxious. The story slowly builds up to a breaking point that has you biting your nails.

When the detective asked Izzy what had woken her that night she could not say exactly. She’d been sleeping badly all winter. It was not uncommon for her to wake three or four times in the night. It was also the first time in several weeks she’d shared a bed with her husband, but she did not mention that. At some point she’d needed the toilet. Crossing the landing, she’d stopped at the window and looked out across the bay. It had become her habit in recent months to pause there and try to locate the point where on a clear day the gable of the cottage was just visible. The sky was mottled with cloud, the first of the morning light seeping through. Black smoke hung over the headland.
‘And straight away, I knew something had happened,’ she said.

As a male author Alan Murrin has done a great job at making these female characters believable, capturing not just their lives, but their voices and inner thoughts in a realistic way. And also their situation in a small town, where men have the power and nobody helps out if there is any sense of non-conformity. The writing is real, at times humorous, particularly through Izzy’s lens, the bigger situations balanced nicely with the minutiae of everyday life. It all adds up to an amazing story and reminded me a little of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These with characters needing to find courage to do the right thing against the tide of opinion.

Alan Murrin has won a couple of awards for this debut novel and I’ll be keen to see what he writes next. I enjoyed this as an audiobook and it was a superb read, narrated by Jessica Regan, who does a terrific job with all the characters. The Coast Road is another wee Irish gem and highly recommended – a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron – a story from World War Two with its roots in the previous war

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

The devastation of Coventry by enemy aircraft during World War II is often described as the Forgotten Blitz. Coventry was targeted because of its munitions factories, but thousands of homes were also destroyed, hundreds of civilians killed and the Cathedral left in ruins..

Kristy Cambron uses this as a background for her novel The British Booksellers, but the story gets going before all that, even before World War I, when we meet two young people: fifteen-year-old Amos Darby the son of a tenant farmer, and twelve-year-old Charlotte Terrington, an earl’s daughter. They have played together for years, and are obviously soulmates, sharing a love of books, Charlotte also being keen on playing the cello, something she’s not allowed to do – it’s unladylike. So far, so Downton Abbey.

As they get older, their friendship deepens, but Charlotte is promised to local gentry, one Will Holt, who’s something of a lad, but determined to have his fair lady. With a war waiting in the wings, the First World War, that is, everything is accelerated and with miscommunications and nobody getting quite the life they had planned, a kind of bitterness settles on Amos’s and Charlotte’s relationship. Jump a couple of decades on, and here we have Charlotte and daughter Eden at their Coventry bookshop, still living at Holt Manor, while across the road Amos lives above his own bookshop, Waverley Novels. They have been not only business rivals but apparently feuding bookshop owners all this time.

But with another war on the go, things are set to be shaken up in more ways than one. The arrival of Jacob Cole, an American solicitor with claims on Eden’s inheritance adds another plot thread and there are suddenly land girls from London to settle in. But Holt Manor’s struggling to pay the bills, so they need all the help they can get. And then there’s the Bltiz.

Men, mustaches, and marching drills.
It was the view for the last weeks Amos had spent at the Army Riding School. That, and the cricket pitch with endless rows of horse lines set to join the cavalry unit of the British Army’s 7th Infantry Division.
Amos still couldn’t get used to it, the required mustache for the mounted brigade scratching his lip every time he tried to blow in his palms and warm bitter-cold hands in the early mornings. And though he expected water and clean razors were scarce at the front, he also knew the military ban on shaving might not be the blessed convenience the soldiers seemed to think. A mustache didn’t give a tight seal to a gas mask. And while a soldier couldn’t question orders from the big brass, it rankled Amos’s insides not being able to think for himself as he always had.

Kristy Cambron writes a great story about love and war, and there’s a lot here to keep you turning the pages. The characters are complex, appealing and developed well. The scenes of war, of bombing and our characters thrown into the maelstrom of it all are exciting. I enjoyed the scenes with Amos more than all the girls mucking in together and comparing notes about clothes and how to cope without regular access to stockings. Personally, I’d be digging out the less glamorous Lisle stockings, as that manor house, the rain and mud sounded miserably cold.

This is a nice enough novel, but a picky reader might find the prose a little American sounding, the descriptions a little lengthy and over-egged. But the story is terrific and worth picking up for a diverting read that has you eager to find out what happens. The British Booksellers is a three-star read from me.