Tag: Book Prizes

Book Review: The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller – a carefully crafted and moving historical novel

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

It’s always nice to see a novelist you admire long-listed for a Booker Prize. The Land in Winter has been on my radar for a while, since it won the Walter Scott Prize, and also because Miller’s an author I always look out for. So I was excited when I finally got my hands on a copy. And it didn’t take me long to become engrossed in this story of two couples who live in a village near Bristol and their struggles through the particularly cold winter of 1962-3, known as The Big Freeze.

There’s Bill and Rita on the farm – both new to farming and finding their way. Bill has big dreams for his land, as well as the kind of private school accent that doesn’t win him much respect among the farming community. Rita grew up too fast, with a father in a nearby asylum due to his experiences during the war. She has a veneer of glamour from her time working in a nightclub and fills her days reading sci-fi novels – so not farmer’s wife material. They are expecting their first child.

In a cottage nearby, Irene is also pregnant, her husband Eric a doctor at the local practice as well as visiting the asylum, where a young man has just taken his life. Eric has to deal with that and the pressure of his job, while having an affair he doesn’t know how to end. Irene meanwhile is trying to be the perfect wife but her middle class upbringing is sometimes at odds with Eric’s humbler beginnings, and the two seem to have different ideals.

Miller takes four characters who are each battling problems or being quietly miserable and then throws a tough winter at them. The narrative switches between them so we are right inside their heads as we watch them get things wrong and try to do better. They are so sensitively drawn that you can’t help but feel for each of them, caught as they are at a time when the war is still a raw memory and the future about to change. The class system is ready for a shake-up and feminism still emerging, but none of it can come fast enough for our characters.

In the kitchen, the cat jumped off the table where it had been licking out the inside of last night’s spaghetti pan. There was no obvious alarm in its jumping; it was not fleeing, merely taking up a more fortified position under the table. Next to the saucepan was the egg basket. She had not washed the eggs, she had not washed the pan.
On the floor by the Rayburn was a mug, a cushion, a book. He picked up the book and the mug, placed the mug in the sink and examined the book. That she liked to read, he had thought of as something that made up a little for the difference in their education. But Venus Plus X? And the rest she came back with from the library van, flying saucers on the covers, astronauts, red planets. He had suggested other things to her. She might, for instance, like Virginia Woolf. He had known girls at university who adored Virginia Wool and probably wanted to be her. Did the van have any Virginia Woolf? And she had given him a look, wide-eyed, not overly friendly, then turned to the cat to ask, ‘Does the van have any Virginia Woolf?’

A budding friendship between the women is viewed with suspicion by their husbands, but is never-the-less a godsend, opening up connection and different viewpoints for the two. There’s small-town gossip which only makes Rita and Eric separately more self-conscious. The period comes to life with some of the trashy horror and sci-fi movies of the day and music (dancing to the Mashed Potato; listening to Acker Bilk). There’s a brilliant chapter where Irene and Eric host a Boxing Day party – one of the best party scenes I’ve read – all that alcohol making people reveal themselves.

And then there’s the relentless cold. Nobody dies of hyperthermia or endures frostbite, but you can’t help feeling it’s not impossible as you read. So this is a novel best read somewhere warm. The story is carefully plotted and builds to a climax for each character with truths revealed that have to be dealt with, to find a way through.

You might think it sounds a little bleak, but I loved The Land in Winter because any time spent reading Miller means enjoying his wonderful writing. Every so often you hit a sentence you want to read again because it’s a fine and wonderful thing. It’s an altogether brilliant read and well worth the award nominations that have come its way. A five-star read from me.

Book Review: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward – a struggling family, a desperate girl and a hurricane

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It’s so easy to go for a book that’s a nice relaxing read and totally forget the wider world. But this time I took up Salvage the Bones with the idea that this might be a fairly gritty read and, well, yes it was. But it is just so instantly immersing and the storytelling so engaging that once I’d picked it up, I really didn’t have much say in the matter.

The story follows a poor African-American family living in Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. This family has such a lot to deal with. Told from the point of view of fifteen-year-old Esch, we’re soon in her world – a house on the outskirts of town which she shares with older brothers Skeetah and Randall, a much younger brother, Junior, and their alcohol-dependent father.

Daddy is very hurricane-aware and weather warnings impel him to get his house in order – the bottled water and extra supplies, gathering the timber to board up the windows, but his children have other things on their minds. Randall has hopes of going to basketball camp – he’s got potential, and if he can perform well at an upcoming game, he can earn some sponsorship. Skeetah is more entrepreneurial; his pit bull is due to give birth to puppies and China being such a good fighter, he thinks he can sell the pups for a good price.

Junior has been cared for since day one by his older siblings and is a bit of a loose cannon, though very much loved. And that’s the thing. There is such a lot of love in this family between the siblings, but without a lot of parental guidance things pretty soon go haywire. And no one is more desperate than Esch – in love with one of her brother’s friends who is blatantly using her, and pregnant. But Esch is also a reader, dipping into a book of mythology from school, especially drawn to the story of Jason and empathising with the ill-used princess Medea.

After Mama died, Daddy said, What are you crying for? Stop crying. Crying ain’t going to change anything. We never stopped crying. We just did it quieter. We hid it. I learned how to cry so that almost no tears leaked out of my eyes, so that I swallowed the hot salty water of them and felt them running down my throat. This was the only thing that we could do. I swallow and squint through the tears, and I run.

The plot is really compelling as the siblings resort to all kinds of escapades to help fulfil their ambitions, or to just get by. It’s a very different world, there’s danger and lawlessness, and the story doesn’t shy away from the violence inherent in these kids’ lives, and of their acceptance of it as a kind of normal. But there’s also camaraderie and loyalty, a tight-knit community that sticks together. Plenty to keep a story going as it is, but on top of everything else, there’s a hurricane coming.

The story builds up to a dramatic climax – the weather event we are expecting makes its presence felt and it’s truly life and death. Earlier in the year, in my neck of the woods, we also experienced a cyclone (that’s what we call hurricanes here), and as I was reading this was well aware of the kinds of situations that people can find themselves in if they don’t get out in time, or if things get a lot worse than predicted.

I raced through this book, particularly the final chapters, engrossed in Esch’s world, but also dazzled by the writing. Jesmyn Ward won a National Book Award for this novel, a prize she’s won again for Sing, Unburied, Sing, and she’s brilliant, confronting, but also immensely readable. I’ll be putting Ward on my must-read list and give this book five stars out of five.

Book Review: Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry – a deceptively gentle novel that will tear at your heart

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For a novel on the Booker long-list, this is a very easy book to slip into. The story is set in the mid 1990s and is told from the point of view of Tom Kettle, a recently retired Dublin policeman. As a character he suffers more from aloneness than loneliness, as Tom’s family of ghosts are ever present, in his thoughts and more.

Tom lives simply, recently taking a flat that’s an annex to a castle, also divided into flats, by the sea. It sounds idyllic, and indeed his first visitors comment on it. It’s a February evening when two policeman from his old station knock on his door. They bring with them documents about an old case that Tom had handled, in fact had put his heart and soul into, only for the commissioner to call an end to taking it further.

Tom can’t bare to look inside the folder, but instead insists his visitors, Detectives Wilson and O’Casey stay to eat with him. All he can offer is rarebit made from cheese singles, and hauls out his daughter’s air-bed and blankets. It is too dreadful a night to send them out to catch the bus back to the town. It’s a fairly light scene with pockets of humour, O’Casey’s digestion not best pleased by the rarebit and Tom can only imagine how uncomfortable his visitors must be bedding down in his living room

But underneath is a storm of feeling that will gnaw at Tom and slowly his story and that of his late wife June and their children will emerge. And what a sad tale it is. Tom and June were both brought up in church run orphanages where predatory priests made use of small children. And it is just such a case that Tom has to relive for his old colleagues. He can never reveal how personal the case it is and so it festers.

There’s literally a Chekov’s gun in the story too. Tom was a sniper in Malaya before his stint in the police, which gives you a hint at what he’s capable of. So while the story seems to have a gentle flow about it, and a very Irish narrative style which is descriptive, lyrical and ambling, there’s a spring-loaded tension and a kind of inevitability here as the story draws to its conclusion.

And all soundlessly, with an almost comic fall, the poor creature would go down, hardly bothering the earth, Tom’s aim so good they called him Beady-Eye as a happy nickname. Beady-Eye Kettle. A talent that rescued him in his own country, the mercy of being allowed into the police. Oh yes. Killing rebels gave him his Irish life, away from the shame and shambles of his childhood.

What I particularly liked about the book was the character of Tom, who seems just so ordinary, with his little routines. His trips to the shops, his buying an ice cream cone, his carting home a bag of sausages and potatoes. But simmering beneath, we can’t help wonder, as Tom does, about the state of his mind, haunted as he is by the past and those he’s lost. It’s difficult to tell what is real at times as we are so much inside Tom’s head.

For such a tragic story, and there really is no other word for it, Old God’s Time is immensely readable, the writing is exquisite and then there’s that sympathy you have for Tom. As a character, Tom is so well understood by the author, his narrative voice seems so true. The pacing is perfect – as I said at the beginning, you are so easily drawn into the story, and Barry doesn’t put a foot wrong. Though it’s not the sort of book you should read if you need cheering up. But I can see why it’s on the Booker long-list, so it’s an easy five out of five stars from me.

Book Review: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan – a moving Christmas story, perfectly told

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Expectations were high when I picked up Small Things Like These. After all it is a very small book – a novella really – and still it made last year’s Booker shortlist. I expected a small piece of perfection, and in many ways it is.

Set during the weeks before Christmas in a small Irish town, we are with Bill Furlong, a coal merchant as he makes his deliveries and plans his holiday with his family – a wife and five daughters. It’s a cold winter, and Bill draws our attention to the poverty of those around him who can’t afford their coal bill. He sees a boy gathering sticks by the roadside and gives him the change from his pockets, even though he has little enough to spare. You would think this is the 1950s, or earlier, but it is 1985.

Up on the hill, the convent looms over the town, and it is here that the better-off send their laundry, the nuns running a well-respected business. While delivering coal there Bill stumbles upon something he shouldn’t have seen, which as the father of daughters, leaves him troubled and absent-minded with his family. As the days pass Bill must decide if he will turn a blind eye to what goes on at the convent, as surely everyone else does, or step in and do a good deed.

People could be good, Furlong reminded himself, as he drove back to town; it was a matter of learning how to manage and balance the give-and-take in a way that let you get on with others as well as your own. But as soon as the thought came to him, he knew the thought itself was privileged and wondered why he hadn’t given the sweets and other things he’d been gifted at some of the houses to the less well-off he had met in others. Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people.

This is the perfect Christmas story, quietly telling and moving about an ordinary man’s battle to do the right thing without thinking about the consequences. Bill himself is an interesting character, having been raised in the home of a wealthy woman, where his mother was housekeeper. He never knew who his father was and was bullied about it at school. He has had to work hard from the ground up to become the owner of his own coal business. But its viability relies on a fair bit of forelock tugging and respect towards the powerful, particularly the church.

Small Things Like These is an engaging story from the start and manages to convey a lot within its pages. There is nothing to spare, no mucking about with subplots or extra scenes added for colour. It is no longer or shorter than it has to be and doesn’t try to be particularly artistic or modern. It reminded me a little of those old stories by writers like O’Henry that let the story do the talking and pack a big emotional punch.

Some background information about the Irish convent laundries makes for sobering reading at the back of the book, but really Keegan has said it all with her story. A masterclass in storytelling and a five out of five from me.

Book Review: Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase – secrets and lies in an evocative Cornish setting

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I love these novels set in old English country houses, specially when family secrets, heartbreak and mystery are added to the mix. Old houses can add a Gothic quality, as it is with Black Rabbit Hall, although that’s not the house’s real name. Pencraw’s a dilapidated mansion on the Cornish coast, subject to storms and heady summer heat and it’s the home to the Alton family when they’re not in London.

The young Altons are a blessed with loving parents – beautiful Nancy who hails from New York, and Hugo who is struggling to maintain the old house, with its leaky roof and unreliable floorboards. The couple are devoted to each other, and adore their kids: little Kitty, nature-loving Barney, fifteen-year-old Toby and his twin sister Amber who narrates most of the story. Their world comes crumbling down when Nancy dies suddenly in a riding accident, and the children become more wild and unkempt.

Amber does her best to fill in as a mother figure to the two younger children while Toby acts more weirdly than ever. He has a fixation with what to do if civilisation comes to an end – it’s 1968 and the Cold War and the nuclear arms race are all go. He’s a survivalist but not in a good way and argues constantly with his father. It doesn’t come as a surprise when Hugo invites an old flame to visit but it’s a shock when she arrives with her seventeen-year-old son, Lucien. Caroline is the opposite of their warm, spontaneous mother, but she’s got money and might just save Black Rabbit Hall.

The story flips between Amber’s narration and Lorna’s some thirty odd years later. Lorna and her fiancé Jon are looking for a wedding venue, and Amber has a distant memory of visiting Black Rabbit Hall as a child with her mother. There is an emotional pull here for Lorna as her mother has recently died, lacing the memory with nostalgia. Finding the house almost defeats them, but it’s also a shock when they get there and it seems the Hall is not quite ready for hosting weddings, despite what the website says.

Jon and Amber look set to fall out over the Hall, Amber still excited about finding the perfect setting for the wedding, Jon more realistic having noticed the general state of disrepair. Then there is the lack of staff, the house inhabited by the frail and elderly Mrs Alton and Dill, her flustered general factotum. Amber is talked into visiting for a weekend to help make up her mind – no pressure! What she experiences when she’s at the Hall is more about disturbing distant memories and uncovering family secrets that giving the place a trial run. What is it about Black Rabbit Hall that seems to prod deep into her consciousness?

The story slowly comes together as we go back through the years to fill in the gaps as the Alton children have to deal with family upheaval while still grieving for Nancy. Lorna also teases out hints from the past which make her doubt her future with Jon. In each narrative there is a gathering storm and sense of impending doom, which has you galloping through the book to find out what happens. It all comes to a startling and intense ending but there is resolution as well.

For me the book had hints of Daphne du Maurier, not only with the Cornish setting, but with the cruel, Mrs Danvers-like malefactor and the Gothic qualities of the house. Chase also does a great job with the family dynamics, particularly the way she writes about siblings and the intense connections between the twins, the pressure on the older sister to keep things together and the difficulty for her to be her own person.

Black Rabbit Hall is the perfect read if you like old country house mysteries and evocative settings. The characters are easy to empathise with, honestly they break your heart, and there is an interesting dichotomy between long summer days where nothing seems to happen and events hurtling characters into rash behaviour. This is my second Eve Chase novel – I’d previously enjoyed The Wilding Sisters – and it didn’t disappoint. I’ll be heading back for more. Black Rabbit Hall (which incidentally won the Saint Maur en Poche prize for best foreign fiction) gets a four out of five from me.

Book Review: The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey – an atmospheric historical drama and the perfect ‘quiet’ read

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I recently came upon a post on Twitter asking readers to name their favourite ‘quiet’ books.. Among the recommendations were lots of my favourites and quite a few more I’d not heard of. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead was there, and Barbara Pym, as well as Anne Tyler and Elizabeth von Arnim’s Enchanted April. And I thought, yes these are the authors that I read again and again. Now I can add The Narrow Land to the list – a book about the small dramas of people thrown together on Cape Cod during the summer of 1950.

Among the cast of characters is Ed Hopper. He’s the much-loved American painter who produced similarly quiet pictures of people and cars and architecture, the most famous of which is probably Nighthawks, showing late-night customers at a city diner. Ed and his wife Jo live in New York with a holiday house at Cape Cod. They make an odd couple, he’s very tall, quiet, solemn even, while she’s short, emotional and talkative. When we meet them they are in their sixties. Ed has the artist’s version of writer’s block; Jo anxiously quizzing him about possible subject matter, while regretting the sacrifice of her own artistic ambitions to further Ed’s career.

We also meet Michael, the ten-year-old German orphan adopted by a kindly New York couple after their own son’s death. He is sent for two weeks’ holiday with the Kaplans, a well-to-do family who support the charity that has rescued orphans like Michael. Mrs Kaplan is a Lady Bountiful type of character who is renting a large house on the cape with her daughter, Katherine, who is ill, and her glamorous daughter-in-law, the widow of Mrs K’s only son. As well as enjoying the benefits of a holiday by the sea, Michael will be company for Mrs K’s grandson, Richie.

Michael has plenty of demons – memories of the horrors of his war, the loss of his nationality, his language, but also the fear that his new parents won’t want him back – they are moving house and expecting another child. Then there’s fitting in with the tony Kaplans, knowing what to say and do. Richie, soon to be despatched to a new boarding school is chatty and excessively well-mannered, but also suffering the loss of his father.

When Jo tries to shoo the Kaplan’s from the beach in front of the Hoppers’ house, what begins as a seemingly awful social gaffe becomes the catalyst that throws the two households together. Everyone’s intrigued to meet Ed, who cringes at the thought of social engagements. But it’s the two lost and lonely boys who seem to connect with the artist and his wife. While Jo tries to make up with the Kaplans for her earlier bad manners, Ed roams around looking at buildings, their windows and doorways, sketching, walking and thinking. There’s a woman too whose image he can’t quite shake and feels he’s seen her somewhere around here before.

The Narrow Land is a slow burn of a read, with chapters named after some of the planets in Holst’s famous suite, a record loved by both Ed and Katherine. Stars are aligning, perhaps. Little by little, we get to know the characters and they are all written with immense sympathy though each have their faults. Against this, the wider story of the middle twentieth century and an America rebuilding after the war, while a new war in Korea is on the horizon. The characters are also battling it out – Ed and Jo bicker and walk out on each other, Michael and Richie don’t get along either. Only Katherine can soothe the troubled waters it seems, but she’s got her own battle on her hands.

In the background you have the Cape Cod summer, the wind riffling through the long grass, the boats on the water, the long, languid evenings. Did I mention this is also the perfect winter read? I particularly enjoyed the insight you get into Ed Hopper’s paintings, his artist’s eye, his struggles to find the right subject matter. Visual images, music and lingering scents of cigarettes and cologne add to the immediacy of the book, often seen through Michael’s point of view, the perfect impressionable young narrator.

The Narrow Land is an accomplished and spell-binding drama, easily a five out of five from me. It’s also the 2020 recipient of the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, and as such qualifies for one of the challenges in our library’s Turn Up the Heat winter reading programme: Read a Prize Winning Book. Put this ‘quiet’ novel on your to-read list.

Man Booker Prize Musings

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

The Man Booker Prize is one of the highlights of the serious reader’s year. So when the long list comes out, as it did a couple of weeks ago, people begin to speculate. (Click here for the 2021 list.) I wish I was enough of a serious reader to read more of them and, in a mood to see what I may have missed, trawled through a list of previous winners. It was heartening to find I’d read quite a few so I’ve listed a few of my personal highlights.

Favourite Man Booker winners:
A tricky one this as they are so varied, but the most memorable for me are as follows:


The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992)
This one’s special because it has an interesting historical background, loaded with atmospheric physical settings (Italy and the Egyptian desert), four complex and interesting main characters, a tragic love affair and gorgeous writing. You can tell Ondaatje is a fairly decent poet, the way he paints images with words.

Possession by A S Byatt (1990)
This dual time-frame novel about academic rivalry is subtitled ‘a romance’, but it is also a brilliant mystery. Two young academics – one English and one American, follow a paper trail to discover a little known romantic entanglement between two Victorian poets (loosely based on Christina Rossetti and possibly Tennyson or Browning). Terrific plotting makes this intelligent read hard to put down.

The Gathering by Anne Enright (2007)
This novel follows the Hegarty family as it comes together for a funeral in Ireland for one of its sons, Liam, who has taken his own life. Its narrator, Veronica, is also rather damaged and speculates about things that happened in the past to cause the death. An intelligent novel which looks at the human psyche and family interaction told in Enright’s unmistakably dry tone that is such a pleasure to read.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)
One of the longer books on the list at 688 pages, yet for me it just whizzed by, bringing the court of Henry VIII to life and in particular, his man for getting stuff done, Thomas Cromwell. Mantel has a style you either love or hate, which is very vivid, present tense and right in Cromwell’s head.

Milkman by Anna Burns (2018)
I reviewed this book last January and still think about it – click Milkman for the post.

More Man Booker Mentions:
In 1986, Margaret Atwood’s shortlisted title, The Handmaid’s Tale, lost out to Kingsley Amis’s novel, The Old Devils.

I have read four of the shortlisted titles the year Iris Murdoch won the prize for The Sea, The Sea in 1978. My best effort yet, but remember I’ve had over forty years to get there. Including the winner, the other titles are: God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam; Jake’s Thing by Kingsley Amis and The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald.

The longest Man Booker Prize winner I’ve read is The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, which won in 2013, and which took a bit of an effort, I must admit. I read the first half quickly and began to tire towards the end, but enjoyed it over all.

The shortest Man Booker Prize winner I have read is Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (at 140 pages) which won in 1979. Although without a word count, it is difficult to be sure as 2011’s winner, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is only 10 pages longer. If you factor in typography and layout, Barnes might pip Fitzgerald to the post for making every word count.

If you have any personal Man Booker favourites or interesting asides, do drop in with a comment.

Book Review: Nothing But Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon

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When winter starts to bite, there’s nothing like a book cover showing a summery scene to make you want to pick it up. Kathleen MacMahon’s latest book, Nothing But Blue Sky describes a succession of summer holidays spent abroad, mostly on the sunny Costa Brava. 

David Dowling is recently bereaved – his wife, Mary Rose, killed in a plane crash while she was on her way to a wedding. Ever since they were newly married, the couple have holidayed at the same Spanish seaside town, visiting the same restaurant over the years, the same bar for their pre-dinner aperitif. They’ve people watched, making up stories in particular about a glamorous French family.

In many ways, this is the story of a marriage. David is a cynical foreign correspondent, who doubts his capacity for happiness. His parents seemed to live in a loveless marriage, his father bullying his mother, just as his older brother bullied David. When David meets Mary Rose, he is swept up into the world of his girlfriend’s family, a home full of joy and conversation and people who actually seem to like each other. David discovers another way to live, but can’t quite shake off his inner doubts, his bad cop to Mary Rose’s good cop routine.

When Mary Rose dies, David’s grief is all-consuming. He revisits the events of his marriage – Mary Rose’s goodness and optimism, their childlessness, the way they just seemed to gel, their disagreements. The book weaves their story together in chapters that read a little like a succession of short stories highlighting different aspects of their relationship.

A summer holiday with friends, soon after the air crash, is a miserable affair for David, so he bravely takes himself off to Aiguaclara one more time, and the possibility of starting again takes shape. 

MacMahon draws you slowly into the novel, and in David has created a brilliant character study. How do you deal with feelings, when you’ve spent a lot of your life suppressing them? David is a difficult character but oddly likeable, and you want him to learn a little empathy and trust. This is such a sensitive portrayal about love and loss, about happiness and grief, nuanced and yet also very entertaining. 

The book reminded me a little of novels I’ve read by Anne Enright as well as Andrea Levy. I can’t wait to read more by MacMahon. Nothing But Blue Sky earns a four and a half out of five from me.

Book Review: Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

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Clare Chambers writes the kind of novel that I particularly like, finding the unique in ordinary characters, rounded out with gorgeous writing full of perception and wit. We hadn’t had anything new from her for a while, so when Small Pleasures appeared I let out a whoop of joy and wasn’t in the least surprised to see the book make the Women’s Prize for Fiction long-list. And of course, when I got my hands on a copy, I devoured it.

Small Pleasures is set in southern England in 1957 and is based around two unrelated events which really happened that year. The first is a rail disaster introduced on the first page of the book as a newspaper report dated 6 December, in which two trains collided in thick fog, leaving 80 dead and many more wounded. But over the page we skip back to June with another story from the North Kent Echo, which is where Jean Swinney works as a reporter.

It’s a small piece on parthenogenesis under the dramatic headline: Men No Longer Needed for Reproduction! Scientists have been studying reproduction in frogs and rabbits, the story says, developing embryos without fertilisation by sperm, and hinting at the possibility that this could take place in larger mammals, even humans. The article elicits a mailbag full of letters, including one from a Mrs Tilbury who states her daughter was born ‘without the involvement of any man’.

Jean’s role on the paper is largely what might once have been called the ‘women’s pages’ – household hints and reports on weddings. Not surprisingly, she’s tasked with making contact with Mrs T – the nature of the story is a bit too delicately feminine for the mostly male newsroom. Jean soon warms to Gretchen Tilbury and her daughter and learns that in the months around young Margaret’s date of conception, Gretchen was a teenager suffering from immobilising rheumatoid arthritis and the patient of a nursing home.

As Jean tries to piece together the facts around Margaret’s birth, encouraging the mother and daughter to take part in a scientific study, her world is suddenly expanded by the Tilburys’ friendship, including Mr Tilbury – Howard – who is kindly and perceptive. She visits the family out of office hours, which is often problematic as Jean also cares for a malingering, agoraphobic mother in a kind of genteel poverty. Theirs is a life of small pleasures indeed.

Small pleasures – the first cigarette of the day; a glass of sherry before Sunday lunch; a bar of chocolate parcelled out to last a week; a newly published library book, still pristine and untouched by other hands …

We are definitely in post-war Britain here. London is the victim of those terrible pea-soup fogs, and unmarried women are expected to look after ageing parents, relinquishing their independence. People are always making do with less it seems. Even Jean’s handy hints column is a little depressing:

Never throw away an old plastic mackintosh. The hood cut off will make a useful toilet bag. The large back panel may be used to line a suitcase to ensure safety from damp should the case get wet when travelling.

But as Jean begins to enjoy her new friendships – a godmotherly relationship with Margaret, as well as the possibility of happiness of a deeper kind – the reader cannot quite forget the image of that rail crash reported on page one. Sooner or later that event is going to raise its ugly head, a bit like Chekov’s gun. For me this gave the book an almost unbearable suspense, and the pages flew by.

Small Pleasures is a brilliant novel if you like stories about lives of quiet desperation told with charm and understanding – Barbara Pym and Anne Tyler spring to mind. I felt absolutely wretched for Jean at times, hopeful at others. Chambers always makes you really care about her characters and I finished the book knowing that the story will stay with me for days afterwards, and it has. A four and a half out of five read from me.

Historical Novels in the Spotlight: The Walter Scott Shortlist

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

Being a lover of historical fiction, the Walter Scott Prize is a highlight of my reading year, bringing to my attention some stunning new authors and reminding me of some old favourites. This year’s shortlist has already got a couple of books on my To-Read List, but the others look amazing as well. And three of the short-listed books are by Australian authors, which is also pretty interesting. Here’s a quick summary.

First among the Aussies is The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte. During the German invasion of Russia in WWII, Paul Bauer is the doctor tasked to set up a field hospital at the former estate of Leo Tolstoy. Evoking the French invasion under Napoleon which is a key element in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the story describes Paul’s troubled relationship with hostile, aristocratic Katerina, and the unhinged behaviour of Paul’s commanding officer. ‘A poignant, bittersweet love story – and, most movingly, a novel that explores the notion that literature can still be a potent force for good in our world,’ says the blurb. Sounds a goodie to me.

The second Aussie novelist to make the list (we’re strictly alphabetical here) is old hand Kate Grenville and her new book A Room Made of Leaves. The book is a kind of imagined memoir by Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of a notorious Sydney wool baron back during the early colonial days, describing her marriage to a ruthless bully. The book gives her a voice and according to the blurb is ‘a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented’. Grenville who penned the terrific Secret River trilogy, is brilliant at colonial history, but is an original writer too, so it’s not surprising this book has made the lists of several book prizes.

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel is the final book in the trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, who was the guy that made things happen for Henry VIII – his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s becoming the head of the Church of England, and so on. Mantel has a vivid present tense style which makes the history all come alive and shows Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son who rose to immense power, from all sides. The last book will deal with his downfall, which probably won’t be pretty, and which is why, in spite of enjoying the previous two in the trilogy, I have yet to pick up the third. But it’s only a matter of time. Once I start reading, I know I’ll be hooked.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell describes events when William Shakespeare is away working in London and his twin children fall ill with a fever. Like many of O’Farrell’s novels Hamnet is sure to be original and difficult to describe so here is what the publisher says about it: ‘It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. It is also the story of a kestrel and its mistress; a flea that boards a ship in Alexandria; and a glovemaker’s son who flouts convention in pursuit of the woman he loves. Above all, it is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.’ This sounds mesmerising and since I always enjoy Maggie O’Farrell’s novels this one’s been on my To-Read List for a wee while.

Finally, with our third Aussie contender, we’ve The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. It’s the story of Esme, daughter of one of the compilers of the first ever Oxford English Dictionary. Motherless and left to her own devices, Esme decides to gather together all the words the compilers leave out of the dictionary for being in some way ‘objectionable’. Words like ‘bondmaid’ are tossed aside. This and other discards seem to relate to women or the lower classes. The story is set at the time of the women’s suffrage movement and with a world war looming, we know all sorts of social change is just around the corner. As a person who always likes to have an OED to hand and having heard great things about it, I’m eager to read this one. And another pretty cover too.