Book Review: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson – a love letter from a father to his son and a wonderful contemplation on life itself

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I’ve been meaning to read Gilead for years – ever since I stumbled upon Marilynne Robinson’s later book Lila, which was such a fascinating portrait of a woman who’d had a hard-scrabble life finding a fresh start in a small town. She is in a way rescued by the Reverend John Ames, although she also gives him immense joy, a new chance at a family. Their May-September relationship leads to marriage and the birth of a son, although the book itself contemplates lots of deeper philosophical ideas, Lila being so desperate for understanding about human suffering and God’s place in it..

In Gilead, John Ames is writing a memoir for his son, a small boy of seven, intended for him to read later, long after his father has gone. Ames, well into his seventies, has a weak heart and fears leaving his boy to grow up without a father. So he wants to write it all down – from his own childhood and his life as the son and grandson of preachers to what’s going on around him in the present. We get bits of history – the Civil War and the Underground Railroad, World War I, the Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression, and how all these events impacted on ordinary folk in small towns like Gilead.

While he’s telling his story, Ames is irritated by the return of Jack, the black sheep son of his good friend Rev. Robert Boughton. Unlike Ames, whose first wife died in childbirth along with their daughter, Boughton has a large family, most of whom live some distance away. Jack, in spite of his chequered history, seems a favourite of his father’s, while Ames is constantly censuring himself for harbouring an ongoing dislike for the younger man, which of course isn’t very Christian of him.

Ideas about what it is to lead a good life in the way God intends us to blend with stories about the characters, their pasts and particularly their problems. Jack’s story is heart-rending, and there’s more about him in the two other Gilead novels: Home and Jack, which I will get to, I’m sure. But what is particularly moving in this book is the tone of the writing, the voice of John Ames. You get such immense love in the way Ames is writing to his son coupled with the sadness that he won’t see him grow up. But with that is also the joy of someone who notices the wonder in simple things.

There’s a shimmer on a child’s hair, in the sunlight. There are rainbow colours in it, tiny, soft beams of just the same colours you can see in the dew sometimes. They’re in the petals of flowers, and they’re on a child’s skin. Your hair is straight and dark, and your skin is very fair. I suppose you’re not prettier than most children. You’re just a nice-looking boy, a bit slight, well scrubbed and well mannered. All that is fine, but it’s your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined. I’m about to put on imperishability. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye.
The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I’ve thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it. ‘The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart.’ That’s a fact.

I find myself getting teary-eyed just thinking about Gilead, and the character of John Ames, the heart-felt thoughts of a humble man. You do get quite a bit of religious contemplation, with Biblical references and ideas for sermons, which might not suit every reader. But it’s more wise than preachy and fills out the character of our storyteller. I read this as an audiobook, superbly narrated by Tim Jerome – it was as if John Ames was talking to me in the same room – but I’m glad to have a physical copy to flip through too. Gilead is a beautiful book, which won a number of awards, including a Pulitzer Prize – a modern classic and a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson – a fun historical read set in post WWI England

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I’d really enjoyed both of Helen Simonson’s earlier books, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and The Summer Before the War, so was looking forward to her new book. And it’s a treat. Peppered with a cast of interesting characters, the story follows Constance Haverhill, who has recently lost her mother to the Spanish Flu. She has been taken pity on – and by that we mean made use of – by her mother’s old school friend, Lady Mercer. Constance is to accompany Lady Mercer’s mother to the seaside for an extended stay as a lady’s companion.

As you can guess, it’s just after World War I and Britain is both reeling from the devastation of losing so many soldiers, as well as celebrating peace. Women who have had to step up and take jobs formerly held by men are returning to traditionally female work, struggling to make ends meet on widows pensions, or depending on relatives.

Constance had made herself useful in the Mercer household managing the farm accounts – she’s a farmer’s daughter, after all – and has also trained as a bookkeeper. But with nowhere to go except her brother’s farm, her unpaid accounting work for the Mercers no longer required, Constance sees her short visit to Hazelbourne as a chance to evaluate her options. Fortunately, the elderly lady, Mrs Fog, is kindly and appreciative, allowing Constance plenty of time off to see the sights.

At the Meredith Hotel Constance is unable to have a table on her own as an unaccompanied young woman, as is Poppy Wirrall, who has just blown in on her motorcycle and is unsuitably attired. The two girls bond over a loaned skirt and before you know it, Constance is swept up into Poppy’s world. Poppy is a fan of motorcycles – she was a courier at the front – and has collaborated with some other women friends to set up a motorcycle and sidecar taxi service. One of the crew, Iris, is a keen motorcycle racer, but it’s hard breaking into a field dominated by men.

“I say, is there any chance you would help me?” said the girl, jumping up and extending a slightly oil-stained hand. “I’m Poppy Wirrall. I’ve been out all day on the motorcycle and damn it all if I didn’t leave my bag behind at home. My mother is still out visiting and the powers that be here have decided that after four years of war and pestilence they should still have the vapours over a woman having tea in trousers.”

Pippa’s family have decamped to the hotel while Mrs Wirrall is spending the family fortunes lavishly renovating their stately home. Brother Harris is an amputee, bitter at being treated like an invalid and desperate to fly bi-planes again. Several characters face difficulties in being seen for who they are, not just what they are. So Harris is expected to be an invalid, and his sister to marry, rather than run around on motorcycles. There’s also hotel waiter Klaus, a naturalised Englishman, but no one can see past his German origins. Class rears its ugly head as Constance knows only too well.

There is an element of Pride and Prejudice in the way Constance and Harris interact in the early parts of the book. Harris is haughty to protect himself from ridicule, and is bitter at seeing so many of his fellow pilots killed in the war. Constance, ever the poor cousin, bridles at his rudeness. But Harris at least is not a snob like the Mercers, and knows the value of people who have a good heart.

Everything comes together in a plot that simmers with exciting events – motorcycle races and aerobatic displays, dances and weddings, romances and disasters. Not everyone gets a happy ever after, but there’s hope and fresh starts aplenty as characters face challenges and rise to the occasion. The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is a charming story, nicely recreating the post WWI period in an English seaside setting – a light, fun read with moments that make you want to cry or cheer. A four-star read from me.

Book Review: Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain – a short and bitter-sweet novel about lost love and finding your way

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I was warned that this book was somewhat melancholy, and in a way it is. Absolutely and Forever is about first love, specifically Marianne Clifford’s falling in love at fifteen with handsome and clever Simon Hurst. It is a love she just can’t seem to get over, and years after Simon has disappeared from her life, she still thinks about him in a yearning kind of way.

This might make Marianne appear somewhat daft. But don’t be put off; every moment we spend with her is entertaining. Tremain has written a dryly witty, self-aware character, born at time when a good marriage was often considered life’s ultimate goal for any young woman. We’re thrown into the late 1950s; Bill Haley and the Comets is on every party’s turntable and parents are eyeing up young men with prospects for their daughters. Particularly middle class parents in the Home Counties.

Absolutely and Forever made the shortlist of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and although it didn’t win, you can see why it was noticed. Tremain captures the period so well, and through Marianne’s eyes we see how the times, they are a changing. At school, Marianne’s best friend is brave, outspoken Petronella who goes on to university to study sociology and spends the entire book urging Marianne to forget Simon and discover what she’s good at. You can tell Marianne’s smart, but this lesson takes a while for her to master.

On certain days, particularly when I was in the typewriter room of the college and fifteen typewriters were clattering and pinging and the carriages were being shunted left to right, left to right, and the wall clock was clicking away time, measuring our typing speeds, I felt my mind disintegrating. I thought, I’m in a madhouse; life has brought me here, to an asylum of a kind. It wasn’t the old and wondrous Love Asylum, it was now the Grief Asylum, where my heart was being shunted back and forth, back and forth, inside a chamber of despair.

The story takes Marianne through many ups and downs, including tragedy, and a surprise ending. Both turn out to be oddly liberating for our MC. So, yes, there is enough of a story here to keep you reading. But it’s the language that really had me hooked. At one point, Hugo, the man who falls for Marianne enough to put up with her melancholy, says the one thing he really loves about her is that he never knows what she’s going to come out with next. Tremain gives Marrianne’s narrative plenty of charm and flavour.

You can’t help thinking, thank goodness for the Swinging Sixties and women’s lib. For if they hadn’t come along would girls still be growing up pinning all their hopes of happiness on a man and forgetting they have a brain? Absolutely and Forever is a welcome reminder, and at a mere 180 odd pages a nicely-crafted, diversion you can read in a day. A four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell – a wryly intelligent evocation of growing up in early 20th century England

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For some time I’ve been meaning to reread Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time – the author’s career-defining sequence of twelve novels. And rather than crack on and make a start, I dropped the first book, A Question of Upbringing, into my list for the Classic Club’s Spin challenge. And at last, up it popped, so I got to work.

And you do have to work a little at the prose, the language is so rich, the sentences long and often convoluted. But there is a wry humour never far from the surface and the attention required is more than rewarded. I chuckled my way through much of the book as it describes the late teens of the main character, Nicholas Jenkins.

Nicholas is at his public school when we first meet him – he’s been down to the shops for some sausages to cook over the fire with his friends, Charles Stringham and Peter Templer. These boys all take different paths to Nicholas, who goes on to university, and they drift in and out of each other’s lives, along with another boy, Kenneth Widmerpool, who is unpopular and often made fun of. To be fair Nicholas feels uncomfortable about this – Widmerpool lives in much more straightened circumstances, with just a widowed mother who obviously dotes on her son. But that doesn’t mean he’s in any way likeable.

The story is told in several sections beginning with Nicholas’s last year or so at school. There’s a visit to Peter Templer’s home where he meets his friend’s quirky family and in particular Peter’s sister Jean, with whom he’s quite smitten. There follows a sojourn in France to help Nicholas improve his French before university. Here Nicholas comes across Widmerpool, of all people, who insists on speaking to him only in French, while Nicholas is a trying to make some headway with a girl.

Stringham was bending forward a little, talking hard. Templer had managed to get his pipe back into his pocket, or was concealing it in his hand, because, when I reached the level of the field, it had disappeared: although the rank, musty odour of the shag which he was affecting at that period swept from time to time through the warm air, indicating that the tobacco was still alight in the neighbourhood. Le Bas had in his had a small blue book. It was open. I saw from the type face that it contained verse. His hat hung from the top of his walking stick, which he had thrust into the ground, and his bald head was sweating a bit on top. He crouched there in the manner of a large animal – some beast alien to the English countryside, a yak or sea lion – taking its ease: marring, as Stringham said later, the beauty of the summer afternoon.

The final chunk of the book brings Nicholas to Oxford where he meets other interesting people at the tea parties of a professor known as Sillery. Stringham and Templar also reappear but the friendships they once had seem now under strain. Further amusing characters make appearances, such as the disapproving house-master, Le Bas, and Nicholas’s Uncle Giles, the family black sheep, who is of no fixed abode and constantly short of funds.

Not a lot happens that is extraordinary on any kind of grand scale, though there are some amusing incidents. This is not like many coming-of-age novels where a disturbing event makes a young person grow up in a hurry. Powell seems to be capturing something more realistic – what it’s like when you’re at an impressionable age and trying to make sense of the interactions of people around you, of how to decide what you want to do with your life, and with whom you want to spend it.

A Question of Upbringing is really all about the characters, of class and how much you can be yourself in a world where things are done a particular way. Nicholas is just beginning to find out, but he’s a great observer of others and you know you can expect more of this in the books that follow. This novel is set in the early 1920s, so as he matures there will be political and social changes going on around him, and even a war.

I hope I don’t wait so long to read the next in the series, A Buyer’s Market, as Powell is really worth spending time with. If you want a slower, more measured read, which captures a period of English life, these novels are quite brilliant. A classic kind of read in every sense.

Book Review: The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie – a Golden Age thriller soon to be adapted by Netflix

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I was intrigued to learn that Netflix had picked up The Seven Dials Mystery for the small screen and not remembering a lot about it, hunted it out among my collection of dusty old Agatha Christie paperbacks. First published in the 1920s, the opening scenes make it sound a little like a P G Wodehouse novel.

We’re in an English country mansion known as Chimneys which has been rented out for the summer by a wealthy industrialist, Sir Oswald Coote, and his wife Lady Coote. For some reason there are a bunch of young people staying that don’t seem to be anything to do with the Cootes, a typical Wodehouse type of house party.

When Gerry Wade becomes increasingly tardy about coming down for breakfast, much to Lady Coote’s growing discomfort, Jimmy Thesiger and his friends decide to teach him a lesson. They go into town to buy a collection of alarm clocks. The plan is to sneak them into his room to rouse him the next morning at the ungodly hour of 6:30. Only even that doesn’t seem to work, particularly when it is discovered that Gerry, far from sleeping through the cacophony of eight alarm clocks going off, is dead.

Chimneys is the home of Lord Caterham and his daughter Lady Eileen (Bundle) Brent. Bundle is also the heroine of a previous book, The Secret of Chimneys, and is always on the go in her Hispano-Suiza. Being a fearless young woman with time on her hands, she is easily bored. Before long Jimmy teams up with Bundle to solve the crime. Unlike his friends who have jobs in London, Jimmy’s a man of leisure; his valet Stevens has the same aplomb and consideration for Jimmy’s every comfort you might expect of Jeeves.

Bundle made a grimace.
“Why need people die in my room?” she asked with some indignation.
“That’s just what I’ve been saying,” said Lord Caterham, in triumph. “Inconsiderate. Everybody’s damned inconsiderate nowadays.”
“Not that I mind,” said Bundle valiantly. “Why should I?”
“I should,” said her father. “I should mind very much. I should dream things, you know – spectral hands and clanking chains.”
“Well,” said Bundle. “Great Aunt Louisa died in your bed. I wonder you don’t see her spook hovering over you.”
“I do sometimes,” said Lord Caterham, shuddering. “Especially after lobster.”
“Well, thank heaven I’m not superstitious,” declared Bundle.

Bundle’s and Jimmy’s friend Bill Eversleigh works in the Foreign Office, as did the victim, Gerry Wade. A second victim directs the investigation to Seven Dials, once a seedy part of London, now the name of a nefarious night-club and headquarters of a sinister sounding gang. With a second murder victim it is easy to assume it’s all something to do with a spy network of sorts, and the pace cranks up as our amateur sleuths team up with Gerry Wade’s step-sister, who’s a lot sharper than she looks, and follow clue after clue.

But Agatha Christie is a master of surprises, and there will be more than one shock for the reader before the end of the book. Of course, the killer is unmasked, in typical Christie style, and in spite of references to hangman’s nooses, there’s also a touch of romance in the air.

The Seven Dials Mystery really immerses the reader in a very different era of crime fiction and for some a book like this will seem terribly old fashioned. But with the huge array of cosy mysteries on the market, many set in similar periods, you can see why the Queen of Crime’s books are still big sellers. They are a lovely kind of escapism and the dialogue is full of fun, lending itself well to screen adaptations. And then there’s the settings, the costumes, that car! I shall look forward to the Netflix adaptation – in the right hands the story should come to life beautifully. This book scores three and a half stars from me.

Book Review: Body of Lies by Sarah Bailey – a riveting crime novel packed with surprises

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I’d given up hope of another Detective Gemma Woodstock novel so was ecstatic to see this one come out earlier this year. If we’re talking Aussie Noir detectives, I might have to put Woodstock ahead of Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk (The Dry; Forces of Nature; Exiles), Woodstock scoring points for instinct, putting two and two together, feistiness and courage. If only she could get her life together.

But in Body of Lies, it seems Woodstock is at last doing well on the home-front. She has recently returned to her hometown of Smithson – she’d escaped it after the first book, lived dangerously for a time in Melbourne, but with a new relationship going well, she has come back to her old job. Gemma wants to be a good mother to her son, and has a new baby, but with the help of Mac, the man best pal Candy says is a saint, it all looks fairly promising.

Gemma’s still on maternity leave – Scarlett is just nine-months old – when she becomes caught up in a crime. Her dad’s had a health scare, so Gemma is at the hospital when the lights go out and a body is stolen from the morgue. But even before that, we’d had a white-knuckle scene with a car being chased off the road – the somewhat inebriated witness says it’s murder and so do the forensics. A murder and a stolen body before page 20!

Gemma is like a bloodhound, her detective nose is twitching and she wants in on the case. Jonesy, her old boss, is keen to have her help, as they’re short-staffed. But she’ll have to answer to DS Everett who finds Gemma pushy and inclined to do her own thing. Gemma finds Everett lacking in imagination and reluctant to share information. They’re going to have to work as a team but for a chunk of the book that seems unlikely to happen.

I’m halfway through Monday’s points when I smell Everett, a woody cologne that doesn’t fit with the musty aroma of the office. He stands in the doorway in an expensive suit, and not for the first time I wonder what led him to leave Melbourne and take a role in Smithson. It’s rare that a senior detective relocates to a small town mid-career. Smithson has become more of a drawcard in recent years, but in my experience, city cops only give up their plum metro roles when a problematic personality is being off-loaded or – like in my situation – when someone wants a fresh start due to personal reasons.

The body stolen from the morgue has yet to be identified, and that is surprisingly difficult in a town where everybody knows everybody. Before long the plot is complicated by the discovery of a newborn baby in a park by the lake, and then there’s another murder. Are the crimes all connected? Meanwhile Gemma is making a hash of juggling work and home life. Mac is busy on his own cases, and Gemma can’t help feeling there’s something he’s not telling her.

I always enjoy Gemma Woodstock as she’s such a determined police officer, as well as a thorn in the side to those in authority. She takes a lot of risks and stirs up a lot more trouble for herself, so you know that she’s going to put herself in harm’s way at least a couple of times before the end of the book. And so it is here, the plot racing away with some revelations you would never guess at and a thrilling, action-packed ending. Her relationships with new colleagues take some surprising and interesting turns too, making for a well-rounded and satisfying storyline.

This will probably be the final book in the series, which is perhaps a shame, although it would be nice for Gemma if life settled down a little for once. I’ve enjoyed her way of thinking, her banter with Candy the journalist and the avuncular Jonesy. But I’m sure Sarah Bailey has more exciting stories up her sleeve; perhaps she has a new detective waiting in the wings. Body of Lies is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: You Are Here by David Nicholls – a witty, feel-good read about hiking and the human heart

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I’d seen a bit of David Nicholls on the small screen – the movie of One Day and the TV adaptation of Us – but You Are Here is the first time I’ve actually read a David Nicholls novel. And having just turned the last page, I realise now what I’ve been missing. Because, You Are Here is simply wonderful. The writing, the humour, the characters and the emotions. They’re all there in a perfect package – all that you could want in a book.

The story’s narration alternates between two people: Marnie, a long time single and thirty-eight, who works as a freelance editor from her rented flat in London; and Michael, a recently-separated geography teacher from York. Both are a bit sad and lonely. Marnie has been bruised by her marriage to overbearing, unfaithful Neil, and now that her friends all seem to be married, mostly with kids, she’s dropped out of the loop, doesn’t see anyone, often stays in her flat for days on end. Michael has not recovered from his wife leaving him or from an assault which left him with bouts of PTSD and feeling a coward.

So it’s up to mutual friend Cleo to fix them both up with someone, if only she can drag Marnie north for a hike – a chunk of the Coast to Coast Walk, which Michael, a committed walker, is keen to complete, preferably alone for as much as possible. Michael does a lot of walking as he hates going home. Cleo brings along her thirteen-year-old son as well as gorgeous Conrad, a pharmacist also from London, she’s hoping to set Marnie up with. A pity Tessa couldn’t make it – she loves doing triathlons so would suit Michael well with his love of the outdoors.

But he must not teach. He would be travelling with adults who had no need or desire to learn about drumlins and moraines. The train ticked and hummed, then began to crawl, rattling past sooty Victorian buildings, warehouses, and the new light industry at the edge of town, the sky widening like a cinema screen, opening on to farm and woodland. Seated diagonally across the aisle, the woman with the poorly fitted rucksack was typing noisily but without a table, so that the laptop kept slipping down her new trousers towards her new boots. What was so important that it should take precedence over the view? She was certainly making a big show of it, tutting and blowing up her fringe. It was a nice face, amused and amusing, with a city haircut (was it a ‘bob’? He wanted to call it a ‘bob’) and more make-up than you’d expect on a walker, sometimes rolling her eyes or clapping her hand to her flushed cheek at the words on the screen. He noticed that she was perspiring slightly. Noticed, too, that he’d stopped looking at the view.

But things don’t go as planned for Cleo, and it’s just as well, when soon the weather conspires to leave just Michael and Marnie on the walk, Conrad with no wet weather gear, and Cleo’s son missing his friends. Michael might have hoped Marnie would pike out too, but she’s invested so much in outdoor gear for the trip, and has packed three nice dresses and 12 pairs of knickers, so it seems absurd not to tag along for another day at least.

The two make an awkward couple at first, struggling through the rain and having hiked a number of New Zealand’s ‘great walks’ for the most part in the rain, I really felt for them. But it’s the grit that makes the pearl, and if they can get along enough, who knows what might happen. As a reader, you soon realise the two are better suited than Michael would be with Tessa or Marnie would be with Conrad – Michael is what Cleo describes as wry, and seems to get Marnie’s sense of humour, the jokes no one else seems to notice.

This is a delightful read – I steamed through it – the writing is just so polished but not in a way that makes you think it’s polished. The dialogue is lively and funny – you can tell this will make another lovely movie. But underneath, Nicholls is aware that he’s dealing with two people who have stuff to deal with. He shows a fine understanding of the workings of the human heart and while there is a lot that has you laughing out loud, there are also moments that make you sigh or clutch your chest.

As I said before, this is a perfect book, with two engaging characters you are happy to spend time with, even on a hill walk in the rain. There is a lot of scenery, which is described as much as it needs to be but not so much that it intrudes. I enjoyed the B&Bs and hotels with their themed rooms – one naming its rooms for freshwater fish (Michael finds himself in Chubb). So you get the experience of the walk without having to put on hiking boots. All in all David Nicholls doesn’t put a hiking booted-foot wrong. You Are Here is a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Politician by Tim Sullivan – a quirky detective and a pacy, intricately-plotted crime story

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Tim Sullivan is an accomplished screenwriter and director who has turned his talents to a crime fiction series featuring an autistic detective. DS George Cross works for the Serious Crime Unit in Bristol, his sometimes difficult manner with his colleagues tolerated because of his impressive case clearing rate. Paired with DS Josie Ottey, a single mother of teenagers and a more empathetic officer, the two make a balanced team, Ottey often schooling Cross in better ways to manage people, whether colleagues – like eager young Alice MacKenzie and their blustering senior officer DCI Carson – or the recently bereaved.

In The Politician we’ve got a murder that looks like a home invasion gone wrong. Peggy Frampton was a former mayor, now a kind of online agony aunt, who has been found murdered in her own home, her bedroom ransacked. Her husband, a well-known local barrister was in London at the time, but the investigation soon throws up cracks in their marriage.

Cross immediately discovers clues that throw doubt on the likelihood of a panicked burglar having committed the crime and delves into Peggy’s ongoing dispute with a property developer and his plans for a heritage building. And what about all that angry invective hurled at her online regarding her often blunt advice? It seems that although she had a lot of popular support as mayor, she has also made a lot of enemies. But it will take forever to sift through all the online messages, and in spite of a large team pulled in to work the case, it takes Cross and Ottey a while to make any headway.

‘DS Cross,’ he announced customarily, holding up his warrant card for all to see as he marched into the mortuary the next morning.
‘Clare Hawkins, pathologist,’ came the reply, scalpel held high as a further mark of identification, should there be any doubt.
‘I know who you are,’ he retorted, surprised.
‘Likewise.’
‘Likewise, what?’
‘I know who you are.’
‘I’m required to identify myself.’
‘Every time you come here? Says who?’
This had him stumped. The truth was he wasn’t sure who required it in these circumstances, or even if it were required at all. It had just become part of his routine. So he changed the subject as quickly and in as businesslike a manner as possible.
‘Have you ascertained a cause of death?’

While we are served a nicely-paced plot, reading The Politician is also about the journey as every interview, team briefing and exploration of new evidence throws Cross in a new situation to be himself. This is always entertaining as he rubs people up the wrong way, or responds to sayings, metaphors and euphemisms as if they are factual statements. Sullivan puts his screenwriting skills to good effect with some excellent and often hilarious dialogue.

But the storyline is also richly layered, with a subplot describing Cross’s relationship with his parents – his elderly father with his new passion for model railways, and the mother who left when Cross was a young child. She has recently reappeared in his life, but the mystery of her leaving is another puzzle for Cross to put together. For either mystery, it will be Cross’s ability to analyse facts objectively and without bias that will lead him to the truth.

Sullivan has come up with a brilliant character in George Cross who is both quirky and fascinating. How his mind works, how he pieces facts together and uses all the help available to him, from spreadsheets – a lot of his previous career was in Fraud – to people with specialist knowledge, show him to be a brilliant detective. His endless patience in the interview room always seems to pay off too.

The Politician is my second DS Cross audiobook – The Patient is also an excellent read; both narrated by Finlay Robertson who does a stunning job of bringing Cross, Ottey and co. to life. I have enjoyed them so much that this is now a ‘must-read’ series for me. I am fortunate that so far there are another four books, with more in the offing. The Politician is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: The Good Liars by Anita Frank – a haunting novel where old sins cast long shadows

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It is interesting how claustrophobic a large country house can seem in a nicely gothic suspense novel like this. In spite of extensive grounds and views that take in woods and a river, the country house at the heart of Anita Frank’s latest novel, The Good Liars, is taut with post-war misery, its inhabitants hemmed in by events of the past.

We catch up with the Stilwell family in 1920. There’s Maurice Stilwell, who is mentally damaged by his time in the trenches. He lives at the atmospherically named Darkacre Hall with his beautiful and somewhat petulant wife, Ida, and his younger brother Leonard. There’s also Maurice’s great friend, Victor, manly and debonair, who was once in love with Ida, but with Maurice’s family money, was always going to be the losing suitor.

Unlike Maurice, Leonard is sound of mind, but a physical wreck, and this is why Sarah is taken on as his nurse, a great relief to Ida, as it has been nigh on impossible to find staff willing to stay at Darkacre Hall. It is soon clear that Ida has earned the hatred of the locals because of her actions in the early stages of the war, handing out white feathers to young men who needn’t have signed up, either because of their age or occupation. Many felt compelled to enlist and some lost their lives.

It’s a chilly, gloomy house, that Sarah has come to but being a good sort, she soon mucks in, not only helping Leonard but taking on a lot of the housekeeping. You can’t help wondering if she’s too good to be true, but she’s kindly and observant which helps the story along.

Sarah is beginning to find the dark wood that dominates the Hall horribly oppressive. The incessant panelling and ancient furniture greedily absorb all glimmers of light. Everything around her appears drab and morose. Even the silverware on the table – the candlesticks, the cruet set, the cutlery – is tarnished, and though the electric lights of the low-hanging brass candelabra above them are lit, two of the bulbs have blown, meaning that, beyond the immediate table, the features of the room are concealed in dense shadow, in which anyone – or anything – might lurk without fear of detection. She finds it a most unsettling thought.

Into this setting comes a police inspector who is looking into a cold case – the disappearance of a teenage boy in the summer of 1914. There’s been a letter apparently, and new information to suggest the boy was in the Darkacre Hall grounds when he went missing. A Sergeant Verity is sent to ask further questions, and this throws the household into a spin. Maurice becomes agitated, and Leonard even more miserable.

The reader is soon aware that there are secrets everyone is hiding, events from before and during the war that have never been accounted for. While everyone else quivers and frets, Victor, the man of action, makes a bold decision. Meanwhile Sarah has a sense that there is a ghostly presence at the Hall, which adds to the atmosphere. Can the aptly named Verity get to the bottom of things?

Anita Frank builds tension expertly, switching the point of view between characters who huddle in corners, or take drastic steps. As well as a major weather event that keeps everyone even more housebound, there are one or two surprises you probably won’t see coming. And while you get caught up in the story, desperate to know how it plays out, you’re treated to some excellent writing too.

While this may not be the cheeriest novel – the dark events of a terrible war haunt every moment for the characters, in more ways than one – it is all put together really well. I will be happy to look out for more by Anita Frank – The Good Liars is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy – a novel about love and war, and crossing the line

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I had previously picked Trespasses up a couple of times but moved onto something else. I knew I wanted to read it, but I kept thinking it could never be as good as Milkman by Anna Burns, which is similarly set in Northern Ireland. Then I downloaded it as an audiobook and am so glad I persevered.

Trespasses is set in a town on the outskirts of Belfast in 1975, so we’re well into the time of the Troubles, with sectarian violence a common phenomenon. Cushla is a young school teacher at a Catholic school who moonlights at her family’s pub. It is here that she meets Michael Agnew, an older, married man, also a barrister as well as being a Protestant. So many red flags.

The two begin an affair and Michael introduces Cushla to some of his friends who are learning to speak “Irish” and Cushla being fairly fluent agrees to help teach them. All the while she is self-conscious among these people – that she stands out for her youth, for being a Catholic. But Cushla keeps Michael a secret from her family, her alcoholic mother, her brother who runs the pub. It would only infuriate Eamonn and bring disrepute on them all. She would most certainly lose her teaching position.

Cushla is the story’s narrator, and her voice has that resigned self-awareness of her predicament, not just the affair, but of the difficulties of being hopeful in a country torn apart by violence. Where at any moment, British security forces might descend on a social gathering looking for Republican insurgents, or stop cars at a roadblock and cause their owners varying kinds of inconvenience. To say nothing of car bombs and random shootings and other acts of violence.

Another thread to the story is Cushla’s world as a teacher and her looking out for young Davy McGeown, one of her pupils. His home life is a constant struggle, with a parent from each side, an out of work father and neighbours who make their life hell. Through it all, Davy is bright and cheery and Cushla is drawn to help the McGeowns, in spite of the disapproval of others.

Before lessons they did The News. Cushla hated doing The News, but the headmaster insisted. He said it encouraged the children to be aware of the world around them. Cushla thought they already knew too much about the world around them. Davy stood up, always the first to volunteer. His red jumper was dark with damp at the shoulders and neckline.
There was as bomb in Belfast, he said.
He says that every day, said Jonathan, who sat beside him.
Well, today he’s right. Thank you Davy, said Cushla.
Jonathan got to his feet. It wasn’t in Belfast, he said. A booby-trap bomb that was intended for a British Army foot patrol exploded prematurely, killing two boys near the border. They died instantly.
Booby trap. Incendiary device. Gelignite. Nitroglycerine. Petrol bomb. Rubber bullets. Saracen. Internment. The Special Powers Act. Vanguard. The vocabulary of a seven-year-old child now.

The two story threads will eventually become entangled and the reader has a sense of impending doom. Well, there’s always impending doom in any novel set during the Troubles, isn’t there? It’s a bit like Chekov’s gun. And Cushla seems to take such a lot of risks. You can’t help but admire her for her determination to do what’s right by people. Michael too, with his sympathies for young men pulled in by the security forces on flimsy evidence, his attempts to help them. They are both crossing the line and some sort of reckoning seems inevitable.

This is an engrossing read with vivid and memorable characters. The banter between Cushla and her alcoholic and sentimental mother, her brother who’s trying to save the pub, the old codgers who never miss a session there, the kids at the school. The dialogue is terrific, and really comes alive as narrated by Brid Brennan who reads Davy particularly well. I’m glad I rediscovered Trespasses – the book was shortlisted for a bunch of awards, including The Women’s Prize for Fiction, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a four-star read from me..