Tag: British settings

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: 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: 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 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.

The Painter’s Daughters by Emily Howes – a stunning historical novel exploring the family of Thomas Gainsborough

~ Judith ~ 3 Comments

I knew a little of the work of Thomas Gainsborough before I read this book, his striking portraits, the most famous of which is probably the Blue Boy, which frequently used to appear in tapestry kits. Such a pretty picture. But I remember looking at his portraits, marvelling at the light feathery brushstrokes, the use of colour, and how they seemed to capture the essence of the sitter. Then the way he might put them in a landscape setting rather than a fashionably lavish interior.

So it was interesting to learn that Gainsborough much preferred painting landscapes, was a great lover of the countryside near Ipswich where the book, The Painter’s Daughters begins. He wants his young girls to have a free and healthy country childhood just as he did. But his wife, Margaret, has other ideas. There’s no money in landscapes and the fashionable town of Bath is full of the kind of society that will want their portraits painted, and also where young Molly and Peggy might make a good marriage.

Emily Howes weaves a brilliant fiction around a well-researched collection of facts. Among them that Margaret was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, although there also exists a document that suggests an even loftier parentage. Margaret knows about this and is desperate for the family to do well. She’s there in the background working on her husband’s accounts, calculating and chivvying.

Thomas is much more a bohemian character, carousing with friends, playing music and up all night. It’s a difficult household, so you can imagine how that might affect the young girls, particularly as early on, Molly appears to be mentally unstable. You would think fresh country air would be better than the sudden town environment in which young Molly and Peggy find themselves. In Bath they are kept inside, dressed in silks, the better to appear in the famous portraits painted by their father. These are his advertisements, as prominent visitors come to call.

She is not playing or laughing any more. She is eyeing me, breathing hard in and out, and her hairbrush hangs limp in her hand. She is just Molly, I think, urgently. She is just Molly. I take a step towards her, when suddenly she draws back her hairbrush and throws it hard at a mirror. There is a crack like a bullet and shards explode across the hallway.
‘Molly, why did you do that?’ I say in the seconds before the adults come, hot tears rising. ‘Why did you do that?’ My voice sounds small and shaky. ‘You are so stupid.’ As the feet thunder up the stairs towards us to pull us from the shattered mess, I want to shout out, ‘It was not me, it was Molly, it was Molly, it was all Molly.’ But I know that if I do that we will only be separated for the day, and there is nothing worse in the world. It is like a bit of me has been cut off.

The girls grow up, and Molly continues to be Molly, bright and seemingly well one minute, lost in a mental nightmare the next. Young Peggy adores her sister and promises to look after her, as she always has, trying to maintain a veneer of the normal in a polite society full of rules. Much of the narrative is from Peggy’s viewpoint, and she’s a constantly anxious child, watchful of her sister, but also desperate for the attention of her father.

Through the novel, is another story, that of Meg, Margaret’s mother, bullied by a brute of an innkeepr father. Meg slaves away, serving and cleaning, her life mapped out for her. When a German prince and his escort party descend on the inn, one of them dangerously ill from an infection, the men settle in until the invalid is fit to travel again. Meg catches the eye of the handsome heir to the throne.

The two stories, that of the sisters and Meg’s, make a rich contrast that brings 1700s England to life, warts and all. Both show a picture of the kinds of lives women led, with no power of their own, dependent on fathers and husbands for their livelihood. If they cannot make a good marriage, or keep their reputations intact, their futures are uncertain indeed.

This is such a satisfying read – fascinating with its descriptions of art and fashionable society, as well as the muck and mess of 18th century England. The struggle if you’re poor; the struggle to keep up appearances if you’re genteel. The book is full of images that stick in your mind from the feel of silk and lace and satin, to the stench of streets full of horse dung. A totally immersing story and so much my kind of book that it is, unsurprisingly, a five out of five read from me.

Book Review: Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent – an enthralling mystery for word lovers

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

How to head up a book’s chapters is a big decision for any fiction author. Do you give them enticing titles or apposite quotes, or just leave them numbered? Susie Dent begins each of the chapters in Guilty by Definition with an interesting word and a dictionary-style description. Some are really old, like “mathom, noun (Old English): a precious thing; a valuable gift”; others more recent, like the verb “broggle (seventeenth century): to poke with a pointed instrument”; and there’s one or two that are quite new, like “zugzwang, (twentieth century): the obligation to make a move, but every move is detrimental”.

The main characters in the novel are lexicographers, editors for the Clarendon English Dictionary, so words are their thing. Not just words and their meanings, but their history, their earliest known usage and how they have changed over time. This alone would have been quite interesting as the characters are all engaging, have secrets and things happening in their personal lives. The team of four are headed by Martha, whose sister Charlie was a PhD student who went missing a decade before. Martha had escaped to Germany for a decade and hasn’t been long home, slotting back into the house she grew up in with her widowed father.

She’d known there would be ghosts in Oxford. Martha wasn’t afraid of any headless horsemen, or nuns haunting the local ruins; it was Charlie, always Charlie she was afraid would find her. There had been times in the first year after her sister’s disappearance when Martha’s heart would stop as she spotted her through the crowd: the long blonde hair, the shapeless cardigan draped over a thin cotton dress. She’d hear a laugh, throaty and sudden, or catch a movement, a walk, a twist in the shoulders, and she’d be certain. Just for a moment. Then the illusion would shatter and the person she knew to be her sister would resolve into a stranger.

Also working at Clarendon we have Alex, a stylish older woman with a penchant for nice things; Safiya, a lively young woman who shares a flat with others her age; and Simon, who misses family life since his divorce. Their boss is Jonathan, a Shakespearean expert who is television’s go-to commentator for all things to do with the bard. He has good looks and charm in spades, perfect for the media.

They’re all just puddling along, lost in the rarified world of words, when a cryptic letter, penned by someone calling themselves Chorus, has them reaching for their pencils to decipher its clues. The letter starts them off on a quest to investigate Charlie’s disappearance, something Martha feels very sensitive about, as you might expect. Charlie was the golden girl of the family, and with Martha’s mother now dead, her father is still apparently grieving all this time later.

Then there are the postcards. This Chorus seems to be sending them not just to the core group at Clarendon, but other witnesses they visit to ask about Charlie. Seemingly quotations from Shakespeare, some of them verge on “poison pen”. There are more letters, and some wonderful scenes as Martha and co. delve into archives, visit old acquaintances, and uncover some disturbing facts about Charlie. We see Oxford in all its glory – old ruins and scholarly institutions, May Day celebrations, cafés and watering holes, leafy parks ideal for cycling. I was often googling as I read for images so I could imagine the settings all the better.

It all adds up to a wonderful read, erudite and witty, but not without its darker moments, as you’d expect of a good whodunit. Which this is. If you love cryptic crosswords, this will be a delight, but there’s still plenty to enjoy without trying to figure out the clues. I am thrilled to see that Martha will be back next year in another mystery in the series – Death Writ Large, out next March. Guilty by Definition is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: Would You Rather by Maggie Alderson – a beach read about a grieving widow with a grievance

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I picked up this book for a light holiday read, intrigued about the story of a woman coping with loss and redefining her life in order to move on. In this case, we’ve got Sophie who has two terrible things happen to her in one day. First Matt, her husband of thirty years, tells her he’s not going to move house with her after all, but stay on in London with his mistress. She’ll be off to their new house in Hastings on her own! And then Matt gets hit by a truck while riding his bicycle and killed.

Suddenly Sophie is an angry wronged wife and a grieving widow all at once. Thank goodness she has the support of her friend Rey, who helps her adjust to her new life, and she soon makes friends with her new neighbours: Agata in her nineties and Olive who calls a spade a spade, both of them widows too. Also among the huge cast of characters are Sophie’s sons, Jack who lives in Australia and Beau, the spitting image of his dad and just as big a hit with the ladies. Beau has also inherited his father’s talent as an artist, making his own brand of jewellery and working as a waiter to pay the bills.

Would You Rather follows Sophie’s story as she gets on with life, her work as a food stylist, and the questions she suppresses about the ‘other woman’. We also follow Beau who has overheard something at the funeral which has him digging into his father’s past. When he gets a rude awakening from girls he’s treated badly, he’s also on a learning curve. Then there’s Juliet, the mistress, a successful jewellery designer. She’s mother of little Cassady when we meet her, and is determined to live life according to her own terms.

Sophie saw her the moment she lifted her eyes from the eulogy to look at the congregation.
Standing at the back of the packed venue, looking straight at her, was a woman about twenty years or so younger than her, not particularly striking, yet Sophie knew exactly who she was. Juliet.
Or Gillette, as Sophie thought of her. She’d certainly cut her like a razor. Slashed everything Sophie had thought she’d known about her life into ribbons.

These stories are all set to intersect in a fairly predictable way, although the characters have so much going on in their lives there’s lots to keep the reader interested. Sophie decides to keep Matt’s devastating decision to herself, which is difficult when his brothers and their wives are still a part of her world. There were five Crommelin brothers, all it seems larger than life and in their own way full of charm.

The story carries the reader through the dilemmas faced by its three main characters with lots of colour thanks to its attractive settings: seaside Hastings and elegant parts of London with its art auctions, jewellery stores and fabulous parties. I must say I got a little sick of all the parties. There’s plenty of wine and descriptions of sumptuous food too as you might expect with several characters who are terrific cooks and another who is a winemaker.

I did feel sorry for Sophie though. How is someone supposed to grieve or turn their life around when having to keep their chin up at parties? While there were plenty of lessons learnt and positive hopes for fresh starts, ultimately I couldn’t help finding these characters, with the descriptions of their lavish homes and lifestyles, all a little bit shallow. So while I am often up for a feel-good, second-chances story, this novel was disappointing. I’m still not sure why the book is called Would You Rather, but it’s a two-and-a-half star read from me.