Tag: British settings

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.

Book Review: Murder Before Evensong by Rev. Richard Coles – an ecclesiastical cosy that takes you back to the ’80s

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The cosy mystery genre is as varied as any, and some are definitely better than others. I am always on the lookout for the feel of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories when I pick one up, so this one with its classic English village setting seemed promising. Murder Before Evensong introduces us to the parish of Champton, a village with a lord of the manor, Lord Bernard de Floures of Champton House, and a rectory, the home of our sleuth, Rev. Daniel Clement.

When Daniel suggests the installation of toilets at St Mary’s during a church service, he couldn’t possibly have imagined the fallout. A posse of flower ladies are appalled that the space required will mean the loss of the back pews. Daniel is reluctant to back down, but soon has his hands full with other matters. There’s the arrival of his actor brother Theo doing background research for a new role as a TV vicar in a ‘gentle comedy’. He wants to follow Daniel around to get a sense of what he does.

Then there’s the annual open day at Champton House, with the whole village mucking in, managing the door, running guided tours, serving tea. But the day ends in tragedy, with Daniel discovering Bernard’s cousin Anthony Bowness, who’d been archiving the family’s papers, dead in a back pew of St Mary’s. Anthony, a troubled man, often came here to pray, which is where Daniel’s naughty dachshunds come upon the body, stabbed in the neck by a pair of secateurs. What secrets had Anthony uncovered? And who knew how to kill so effectively, picking the exact spot for the carotid artery?

There are more murders before the last page, and multiple suspects. Nathan, the de Floures odd-job man, has a shady past, and the grandfather he lives with an even shadier one. And no one knows what to make of Bernard’s younger son, Alex, with his wild enthusiasms for art installations and his unsuitable friends. Other characters seem to be hiding secrets, and the village’s role in the war can’t be discounted either.

‘And you took the dogs?’
‘They usually come with me to church. And it’s their wee-wee time before bed.’ What a ridiculous phrase, he thought. How would that sound read out in court? ‘And they like to sniff for mice. If they’re lucky, maybe they’ll find half a biscuit … and I thought they would be particularly enthusiastic this evening because we had a lot of visitors come through church on Open Day and some of them bring dogs. Lots to sniff. And that’s when I noticed. Or rather didn’t notice: they didn’t sound enthusiastic. They were barely making a noise, and that’s what made me think something was out of the ordinary. I called them, they didn’t come.

The story is well plotted, adding enough interest to keep the reader guessing and turning the pages. But the steady humour of the writing and the interplay between a host of quirky village characters lift this cosy above the average. Author, the Reverend Richard Coles, obviously knows well the life of an Anglican priest, and as a former member of the band the Communards, seems keen to evoke the 1980s here – Cagney and Lacey on the telly, Wham on the radio. But in a village like this, you feel it could be any time, that things don’t change a lot.

Daniel is a thoughtful, always considerate rector, at times struggling with the demands of those around him – not just his parishioners. His perceptive but interfering mother Audrey has to be constantly held in check, as do the two dachsunds, Cosmo and Hilda. The tiny general store and post-office is often the scene of gossipy councils of war between the anti-toilet brigade which contrasts nicely with scenes at the old-fashioned rectory and the palatial Champton House.

The writing is terrific too. Coles blends in Biblical and other ecclesiastical references to add authenticity without overburdening the story, which is generally lively and full of wit. I chuckled my way through, not particularly caring whodunit, as I was enjoying the journey so much. I’ll definitely be keen to continue with this series – the fourth is out later this year, so there’s a few to catch up with. Murder Before Evensong is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Clear by Carys Davies – a spare, impeccably written novel set during the Highland Clearances

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

The Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction is always on my calendar, with its longlist of brilliant new titles. Among this year’s list was this little book by Carys Davies, and being set for the most part on a remote Scottish island, it immediately caught my eye.

Clear takes us back to 1843, the tail-end of the Highland Clearances, when small holdings made way for sheep, their tenants forced onto unproductive land, emigrating to the colonies or finding other ways to make a living where they could. It’s also the time when Presbyterian ministers signed the Deed of Demission to separate from the Church of Scotland so that congregations could have more say in who they accepted as ministers. These rebel ministers were an evangelical bunch, forming the Free Church of Scotland, which left many of them without a living, at least in the short term.

Among them is one John Ferguson, a main character from this story. He’s a somewhat dour man who aims to set up his own church, but desperately needs funds to get going. So he accepts help from his brother in law, who finds him short-term employment for a land-owner. This Mr Lowrie has recently converted his land to sheep-farming but has one offshore island still requiring the eviction of its single inhabitant. John makes the arduous boat trip beyond Sheltand to a small island where he’s to persuade the man to leave with him in a month’s time, but immediately things do not go well.

In the meantime, we meet John’s wife Mary, a sensible sort of woman who has come late in life to marriage. Now in her forties, she has learnt to manage and think for herself. So in spite of a decent payout, she can see the pitfalls of this project. The islander may not be happy about being thrown off his holding; John may not be able to express the landlord’s decision in a way the islander, a speaker of a rare dialect, can understand. And John is in the meantime cut off from any transport out for a whole month.

The third main character in all this is Ivar, the island’s solitary inhabitant, a man attuned to the harsh nature of living so far north, with no one but his animals to talk to, but who suits his situation so well. He’s been on his own for twenty years, the visits from his landlord’s factor becoming fewer and further-between. How is he going to react to an interloper on his island?

The big bearded man, Ivar, was watching him turn over the pages.
‘Who does he think I am?’ thought John Ferguson.
He really was very large, as Strachan had told them he would be, and as John Ferguson turned over the last of the sea-washed pages with his raw and damaged fingers, he began to regret that he had come.
Having been alarmed by the factor’s insisting he brought the pistol, he wished now he had it with him. It was a terrible thing to admit to himself, and to God, but it was true. He would have been less afraid with the gun in his possession, and in his weakened state without it, and without Flett’s speech, and without the document of Removing to wave about and prove his authority, he shied away from trying to explain his errand.

Carys Davies creates a terrific story from these characters, their miscommunications and their solutions to unexpected problems. How the two men come to reach an understanding is a large part of the story, building to an intense and somewhat surprising ending. Like the best in this kind of fiction, it brings history to life through the experiences of well-rounded characters. At only 150 pages it’s a short book, but you feel you have lost yourself in this world, the island setting, as well as the backstories of our main characters – all in carefully honed prose.

I can see why this book has made the Walter Scott Prize longlist. It captures perfectly a time and place, as well as creating a nail-biting read. It’s also well-researched. Carys Davies has incorporated some of Ivar’s vanishing language, evocative and interesting words for the environment she describes. Such a lot for such a small book. While it’s nice to have a long immersive read when you pick up a historical novel, sometimes a short book is a breath of fresh air. I loved Clear – easily a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Twins by L V Matthews – a twisty psychological thriller with dark family secrets

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This novel is the sort of psychological thriller that has you hooked from the beginning. Yes, it’s about twins, and I know there have been so many stories about twins, you often feel you’ve heard them all before. But that didn’t stop me picking this one up and getting immersed in the story of Margot and Cora.

For twins, the two couldn’t be more different. Margot is quiet and responsible, a dedicated nanny to a well-to-do London family. She has a comfortable life and makes sure everything is as it should be for her young charges. It’s a twenty-four seven kind of gig, but you get the feeling Margot is creating a warm and loving environment because that seems to have been absent in her own childhood.

Cora on the other hand lives in a cramped flat across town with a flatmate, and the two are complete hedonists, living on the edge, while Cora will stop at nothing to get that big break as dancer. She’s confident, a bit crass, breezy and somewhat heartless. Glimpses of her at school, a decade before, reveal she’d been in with the in-crowd, while Margot lingered in the background, friendless and the butt of jokes.

The Twins begins with a mishap during a family holiday on a yacht which sees Margot lose the medication that keeps her anxiety at bay, and slowly memories start to creep back. These are events from her late teens, when something terrible happened involving the death of the twins’ younger sister Annie. Desperate to know more, Margot toys with the idea of seeing a therapist, an idea that Cora vehemently opposes. What is the secret that Cora wants to keep from Margot?

…I then look at the sea out of the porthole, exhale, and tell myself that I’m safe here. Looking after people is what I’m good at: routine and order and consideration. There is no need to feel anxious.
‘Margot?’ someone calls from above. ‘Can you bring up the oysters?’
‘Absolutely.’
I busy myself with tending to others. People don’t realise you’re not talking to them about your own life if you’re putting food on their tables, if you’re doing their laundry, if you’re smiling at their stories. I like living their lives because it’s easier than living my own.
My life has ghosts.

The story flips between the two sisters as we watch Margot attempt to reclaim the past, questioning her grandmother, in a care-home, her own memory now patchy. She trawls the internet to find the one person who might help her – Cora’s high-school boyfriend and Margot’s secret crush. Meanwhile Cora trains for a role in a dance performance that echoes parts of their story.

As more and more shadowy secrets rise to the forefront of Margot’s mind, you can’t help but feel for her and worry that when she finds out the truth it will be worse than not-knowing. She’s a much more sympathetic character than Cora, who seems like the dark to Margot’s light. Besides which, Margot’s grip on her life seems more and more rickety. This really racks up the tension.

Altogether, this is a nicely escapist read that keeps you hooked. However there was one point at which I wanted to throw the book across the room – a twist that I wasn’t expecting, not at all. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to finish the book after that. But I’m glad I did. It all comes together quite well and it makes the book seem rather more psychologically interesting than it might have been.

So if you like a good twisty, suspenseful read, this one’s worth persevering with, even if it is about twins. There is a really nasty character who makes a good villain; and the story plays with the fickleness of memory and the effects of trauma to create an interesting psychological situation. The plot really keeps you on your toes as a reader, so The Twins definitely does the job. A four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Mischief Makers by Elisabeth Gifford – an imagining of the life and creativity of Daphne du Maurier

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As a girl, I remember being given a number of Daphne du Maurier’s books and enjoying them immensely – particularly Rebecca and The Scapegoat. There were adaptations of her novels and stories that appeared on TV – I’ve seen several versions of Rebecca, and then there was Hitchcock’s The Birds. I read her darker, spookier short stories too. She always struck me as a master storyteller and remarkably original for her time.

Elisabeth Gifford explores what made du Maurier tick in her new novel The Mischief Makers – how she got her inspiration as well as her family life, before and after marriage. It also describes the encouragement she got from J M Barrie, her Uncle Jim, the author of Peter Pan and guardian to her five cousins, the Llewelyn Davies boys.

I’m not sure how Elisabeth Gifford managed to write such a nicely concise and well put together story because there must have been such a lot left on the cutting room floor. The du Mauriers and J M Barrie are all such fascinating people. As a young girl Daphne was often at the theatre, her father, Gerald du Maurier, one of the outstanding theatre actors of his time. It was during a run of Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton that her parents had met, her mother starring opposite Gerald. Daphne’s grandfather was the author of Trilby and creator of the character Svengali, the evil mesmerist whose name lives on.

But one by one they have grown too old for tales of Peter Pan. Now Uncle Jim can also be found sitting with Daphne and Angela in the nursery, perched like a crumpled bird on the fender, mesmerising them with secret islands, prompting them as they swoop from chair to chair or swim like mermaids across the carpet. All night long Daphne continues to swim and fly through the night in her sleep. And it becomes clear to her that she has a secret only Jim knows: she may look like her sisters but really she is one of the boy cousins whom she has long idolised, longed to be there with them when the stories were first told in Black Lake Woods. She is part of Jim’s little gang, living on the edge of magic and adventure. She is really a wild boy, dancing at the edge of Neverland, thumbing her nose at the rest of the dull old world.

Daphne married Major Frederick (Tommy) Browning, himself an interesting man, a career soldier who set up the first British Airborne Division that was instrumental in the defeat of Germany during WWII. Knighted for his war work, Daphne became known as Lady Browning, although the strain the war put on their marriage was one they struggled to recover from. And of course Daphne’s immersion into her work as a writer, her determination to live quietly in Cornwall, which at times cut herself off from her husband, even, at times, her children.

But it’s the stories of her cousins, the Davies boys, and their recollections of their guardian that is really interesting. Peter as an older man is constantly engrossed in letters and memorabilia, trying to make sense of his childhood, whether or not they were simply used by Barrie, and the tragic death of his brother Michael as a young man. Was Barrie somehow at fault?

Daphne sees similarities between Barrie and herself, as writers stepping into imaginary worlds, discovering their characters in the people they meet, as well as in themselves. She even seems to feel Rebecca watching her, a somewhat disturbing presence. This insight into the mind of Daphne the writer is illuminating and fascinating. You also get a strong sense of what people went through in the last century with two world wars, and the social changes that followed, as seen through Daphne’s eyes.

The Mischief Makers is quite a tour de force, a brilliant read, particularly for a life-long Daphne du Maurier fan like me. The writing is pared back and straight-forward, mostly written from inside Daphne’s head, but with some extra chapters slipped in from earlier family experiences, the results of Peter’s research. It all comes together to create an overall picture of a very complex woman and her world. I wonder if we’ll see the book among those long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year. It’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Last Line by Stephen Ronson – a World War Two thriller with a home-front hero who’ll stop at nothing

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I’m not really sure what to make of The Last Line, Stephen Ronson’s first book in a series following wartime hero John Cook. The cover promises that Cook is “the Jack Reacher of 1940s Britain”, and that would certainly seem to be true. But it took me a while to get used to a character like Cook in a WWII Suffolk setting.

After serving in the First World War, Cook had decided he wanted more action, and found it as a Commando in India. Once he got that out of his system, he got busy turning around a struggling family farm and buying up more land. When we meet him, Cook is just quietly minding his farm when a Spitfire crash lands in one of his fields, chased by a Messerschmitt, an interesting scene that reminds us that the war is dangerously close to British soil.

As a farmer, Cook needn’t rejoin his regiment, but you can’t keep a good man down and he plans to get back into the action as soon as possible. But the War Office has other ideas for him, and he’s instead asked to be part of an Auxiliary Unit, a resistance group designed to make things difficult for a German invasion, which after the fall of France now seems imminent. He meets a man named Bunny in a pub who tells him to find some people he can trust to lend helping hand, people who are prepared to give their lives in a ‘last line’ of defence, before the tanks roll their way on up to London.

Bunny shook his head. ‘I want you to form a small team, I’m calling them Auxiliary Units. Someone local will make contact with you. Work with them to pick up a few more men you can trust. Ex-army probably. Men who take the initiative, who can find their way around the country, who know the woods. Men who get things done without being told how to do it. Men like you.’
‘How do I communicate with you?’ I asked.
‘You don’t,’ he said. ‘This isn’t regular army. No chain of command. No safety net. If you get caught with a machine-gun and a pound of TNT under your bed next week, you’ll be shot as a German spy. No crying to Mother.’

And so we get to meet a few other determined sorts, among them young Eric, out poaching every night, Cyril with his hidden radio gear, and Lady Margaret who is struggling to save her estate from ruin, but has a stash of munitions ready to go. There’s some instant chemistry between LM and Cook, but before any romance can take place, our dashing hero has some local battles on his hands. The daughter of his accountant has been murdered – she’d been worried about a young evacuee and had been asking awkward questions.

These lead Cook to The Grange, a stately home also struggling to pay the bills, where he spots odd comings and goings involving trucks, a couple of young spivs who aren’t dressed for the country, and a padlocked barn. He puts his Commando knowledge to good use, how to make himself invisible as well as how to get answers out of people who think a sidearm makes them tough. They’re always in for a surprise as Cook will stop at nothing and knows how to kill with his bare hands.

It’s fair to say, however, that the malefactors are truely vile and get what they deserve. But as the death toll rose, I just couldn’t help wondering how Cook could get away with it all. Perhaps Bunny would pull a few strings. In the end I decided to just go with it and enjoy the story as a kind of boy’s own adventure for grown-ups.

The support characters are interesting and offer scope for development in the novels to come. I liked Lady Margaret, she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty, and the young evacuee, Frankie. He’s struggling to fit in, has obviously come from poverty, but Cook takes him on in an endearing way. I hope we get more from Mrs Cook, John’s mother, who seems a salt of the earth type, and has a lot to put up with.

The Last Line is a diverting read, with plenty of pace and a lively style that suits the period and the main character. The second book is already published (The Berlin Agent), and I’m interested enough in Cook & co. to find out what happens next. This one’s a three-star read from me.

Book Review: The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell – a twisty, psychological thriller sequel that will have you hooked

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Lisa Jewell often explores dark family secrets in her psychological thrillers. This is never more so than in The Family Upstairs, the 2019 novel about the Lambs, a well-to-do family and the interlopers who make their home with them, upending their lives. Mrs Lamb has felt the need to do something useful with the Chelsea family’s wealth, and takes in the Thomsen’s, as well as a couple of homeless musicians. Their London riverside house is luxurious and roomy, but David Thomsen exploits the Lambs, and the children, Henry and Lucy Lamb; Phin and Clemency Thomsen, get caught up in a situation that ends in murder.

The sequel, The Family Remains picks up the story of the younger generation, having been reunited in the first book and who are now trying to each build a future. This includes Libby Jones, the daughter Lucy had as a teenager, brought up by adoptive parents and who inherited the house in Chelsea. But the shadows of what went before still linger and there’s a sense that Henry and Lucy in particular are still looking over their shoulders.

When a bag of bones is found by mudlarkers on the riverbank, DI Samuel Owusu traces them back to the old Lamb residence and all the things that Henry and Lucy hoped would be forgotten about forever may now come to light. But Henry and then Lucy are on a quest to find Phin, Libby’s father, supposedly working in a safari park in Botswana, but who has high-tailed it, for some reason, to Chicago.

So while Henry and Lucy are hunting down Phin, DI Owusu is trying to piece together the life of Birdie Dunlop-Evers, a former member of a pop-group, reported missing in the 1990s. The story also works in the story of Rachel, a jewellery designer, who is told at the start of the book of the death of her estranged husband. We’re well aware of the particularly nasty type of guy Michael was – we met him in the earlier book when he was married to Lucy.

Lucy is a lovely-looking woman. When I saw her last year for the first time since we were teenagers, I was taken aback by the loveliness of her. She has a face that tells stories, she looks all of her forty years, she barely grooms herself, she dresses like a bucket of rags, but somehow she still always looks lovelier than any other woman in the room. It’s something about the juxtaposition of her amber-hazel eyes with the dirty gold streaks in her hair, the weightlessness of her, the rich honey of her voice, the way she moves and holds herself and touches things and looks at you. My father looked like a pork pie on legs and my lucky sister snatched all her looks from our elegant half-Turkish mother.

Golly, there’s a lot going on here, so never before was there a better reason to read the earlier book before the sequel. But somehow it all makes sense, and even if it’s a while since you read The Family Upstairs, you never feel completely bamboozled. Yes, you will have questions, loose ends and half-forgotten pieces of the overall puzzle. But Lisa Jewell will have you hooked, never the less, as I was.

I steamed through this novel in a couple of days, desperate to know if things would work out all right in the end. There’s always the sense that even though Henry and Lucy and even perhaps Phin, have been driven to do desperate and even quite bad things, they were very damaged children. We still feel for them, as well as Rachel, getting caught up in a relationship with a monster. It’s a twisty, original psychological thriller and as such a compelling read, but it’s very empathetic too.

And the characters are just so interesting. DI Owusu is a really nice guy, thoughtful, intelligent and sympathetic, which helps balance out the potential darkness and selfishness of Henry. Rachel’s story takes us into a character who has lived for the moment when it comes to relationships and suddenly in her thirties, feels it’s time to make a commitment. If only she hadn’t settled on Michael. But it’s Lucy I really enjoyed the most – she is so fragile on the one hand and yet has had to be strong and think on her feet for her children.

It is probably the characters and their unique situation that prompted so much demand from readers for the sequel that Lisa Jewell hadn’t planned to write. Which is probably why her books are so good, so moreish. Whenever I feel like a book to unwind with, she’s a top choice. If only I could make them last a day or two longer. This one’s a four-star read from me.