Tag: relationships

Book Review: Precipice by Robert Harris – history unfolds in a fascinating drama involving love and war

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’d not read a Robert Harris novel before, but was curious about the events Precipice describes – the indiscretion of a prime minister writing endless letters to his much younger mistress, revealing state secrets. The potential for said letters to get into the wrong hands as Britain tips into World War One.

In the author’s notes at the beginning and at the end of the book, you learn that all of the above events are quite well documented, historians have devoted entire books to the subject, and that the letters written by the prime minister as they appear in the book are authentic. My interest even more piqued, I happily plunged in.

The story begins describing the life of the Hon. Venetia Stanley, a member of a somewhat fast set known as the Coterie who live in London, enjoying the excess afforded to them by money and privilege, and amusing themselves in various daring ways. It’s the summer of 1914, and Venetia is expected to attend a boat party on the Thames, an invitation the PM, H.H Asquith begs her to cancel in favour of meeting him. He needs help with the Irish question, as he tells her in his letters. The boating trip ends in disaster, just as well Venetia cried off at the last minute, and we meet policeman, Paul Deemer.

Deemer, an invented character, is a nice contrast to the elevated world of the PM and Venetia. He’s just an ordinary sergeant at the Met, has a young brother rescued from various scrapes by a promising career in the army, while Paul having recently broken off an engagement, is not sure about his future. His parents are dead, and he’s a quiet, lonely sort, ideal for a hush-hush project with Special Branch.

Asquith writes to Venetia several times a day (postal deliveries numbered twelve a day in London at the time), the two meet at various social occasions, and go for a Friday “drive” together, where the PM shares with Venetia the burdens of his role, the decisions he is tussling with and often revealing copies of telegrams and other top secret documents. Venetia is intelligent, offers a sounding board and emotional encouragement. He’s like a politician who has made it to the top job, only to discover it’s a lot harder than he’d anticipated.

She liked him for his kindness, his cleverness, his fame and power, which he wore lightly. Her father had been a Liberal MP: she had grown up surrounded by talk of politics. Now she was probably the most well-informed woman in the country. And if she was honest, she also enjoyed the thrill of it – the secrecy, the illicitness, the risk.

In the background, as war is declared we meet lots of the key players, such as Lord Kitchener, Winston Churchill and and Lloyd George. I’ve never read such a clear account of how WWI began, nor how agonising it was for the British government to make the final decision to declare war on Germany. As the months pass, the huge confidence of those like Churchill is put to the test as troop losses start to take their toll on morale.

This is all quite fascinating, while Paul spends his days doing things he’s not comfortable about in his new role. Harris has done an amazing job in weaving in the letters with events they describe as they unfold. But anyone wanting a riveting spy novel might be disappointed. This is much more a story about three characters and their emotional journey as the world turns to chaos. And it’s well done, carrying with it a depth of research that makes everything that happens seem very real. I’ll certainly read another Robert Harris; Precipice is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue – a gripping read set during the Spanish Flu epidemic

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

Emma Donoghue’s novels are always worth checking out and quickly immerse you into all sorts of situations and topics. I loved Akin and was fascinated by Haven, but The Pull of the Stars is one of the most intense stories I’ve read in a while. Perhaps it is due to the short time-frame of the narrative, and its setting shortly before the Armistice of 1918. We’re in a struggling Dublin hospital where thirty-year-old nurse Julia Power is assigned to a tiny maternity ward for women infected with the Spanish Flu.

Julia is suddenly given the charge of the day shift for the three bed ward, a former storage room, taking over from the stern nun working through the night. The hospital is woefully understaffed and undersupplied, but Julia has good midwifery skills. A helper, Bridie Sweeney, is sent from a kind of convent workhouse and finally a doctor, Kathleen Lynn, who while being extremely caring and experienced, is wanted by the police for her involvement with Sinn Fein.

Over the four chapters, named for the four colours a flu victim’s skin turns, from early fever through to oxygen deprivation and even death, the reader is given a nail-biting ride into complications of childbirth. There are some pretty grisly details, and I confess to being somewhat squeamish when it comes to descriptions of operations, but this kept me reading, the life and death situations surrounding the women’s care quite fascinating.

Could she be hungry for her breakfast? Unlikely, in her state; patients with serious flu cases had no appetite. Haggard at thirty-three years old, pale but for those flame-red cheeks, her belly a hard hill. Eleven previous deliveries, it said on Ita Noonan’s chart, seven children still living, and this twelfth birth not expected for another two and a half months. (Since Mrs. Noonan had been able to tell us nothing about when she might have conceived or when she’d felt the quickening, Sister Finnegan had had to make a stab at the due date based on the height of the uterus.)
My job wasn’t to cure all Ita Noonan’s ills but to bring her safe through his particular calamity, I reminded myself, to push her little boat back into the current of what I imagined to be her barely bearable life.

Poverty is described in all its forms here, made all the worse by the war. We learn of the harsh social cost of carrying a child out of wedlock – we’ve all heard about the convent laundries – but the orphanages seem to be just as bad. Young Bridie is an orphanage girl, not sure of her age – “about 22” – undernourished and unpaid. For all that, she’s eager to help and enjoys the work, is kindly with the women in the ward and strikes up a friendship with Julia.

At home Julia has a brother, who has never spoken since returning from war service, the two making an odd sort of couple, Julia earning a living, Tim keeping the house and making meals. Talk of women’s suffrage and the division of opinion about the Easter Rising hover in the background. The character of Kathleen Lynn is based on a real person, and in the book she inspires Julia to think about political issues differently.

This is a dramatic and intense read about friendship in the face of adversity, changing political and social times, a microcosm that tells so much about the wider picture. I loved the book, though it was tough-going at times with the harsh realities of birth trauma and fever as grim as any battle story. In fact the two are compared more than once in the book. For all that there is a positive ending that gives you a glimpse of hope, so don’t let me put you off – this is such a brilliant story – a five-star read from me.

Book Review: My Sister and Other Lovers by Esther Freud – a return to the characters of Hideous Kinky

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Esther Freud is one of those authors I always read, so I was eager to check out her new book My Sister and Other Lovers. It’s a return to the characters of Hideous Kinky, her first novel, also made into a film starring Kate Winslett, which is well worth a viewing too, if you can find it. The earlier story follow’s two young girls, Lucy and Bea, when their mother abruptly leaves their father, taking them to Morocco in search of enlightenment in the 1960s. Their mother is very young, parental supervision is minimal and the children often left to themselves, sometimes frighteningly so.

In the new book, we pick up the story of Lucy, now fourteen, Bea soon disappears off to university, but there’s a little brother, Max, now, and the mother has recently left Max’s father. They eventually arrive at a commune, and again there are adults behaving badly, and no one minds what Lucy gets up to.

We follow Lucy’s story, her awkward relationship with her mother, as she goes on to study drama, and the remoteness of Bea. The past is a dangerous country, but inspires Bea to make a film of their childhood in Morocco, in which she reveals she never felt safe. Lucy seems continually in search of a family, men are predatory when they see a young girl without few parental boundaries. Later it seems impossible to establish a lasting relationship with any boyfriend. Men come and go, are unpredictable, sometimes just as lost as she is. She never seems to get close enough to anyone to really understand what’s going on with them, her sister included.

It was high summer when the police arrived. Someone must have let them in, and shown them up the stairs. They stood, a man and a woman, awkward in shirtsleeves, at the door. ‘What’s this about?’ my mother asked. Max clung to her skirt.
‘We have reason to believe your daughter may be implicated in a crime.’
I blanked my face. I’d seen it: Free Astrid Proll in red letters on the bus shelter. Baader-Meinhof scrawled across the Wartlington Hotel.
‘No.’ I shook my head.
‘We have information relating to a terrorist cell.’
‘Here, in East Sussex?’ My mother laughed.
I laughed too and they turned to look at me, in my school uniform, ink from a pen I’d used to do my homework staining my thumb.
‘We have the name Lucy on a list.’
‘Wrong Lucy.’ My mother crossed her arms.

We move through the decades and Lucy eventually builds a new career, has a chance to start a family, but nothing is easy, however hard she tries. It’s a very bohemian environment described, ephemeral and sometimes insubstantial and the language reflects this. I found myself at times rereading paragraphs to discover the underlining meaning. Esther Freud’s novels often delve into the autobiographical for inspiration and I couldn’t stop wondering where the real ended and the imagined began.

Esther Freud is the daughter of Lucien Freud, the artist, as well as the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. If she was ever to write an autobiography, I’m sure it would be fascinating. In the meantime, her fiction is well worth exploring. My Sister and Other Lovers is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum – an original and riveting L.A. thriller with all the feels

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I hadn’t a clue what to expect from this debut novel, and even looking back having turned the last page, it still seems an interesting mix of genres – by turns a psychological thriller, a dramedy and a love story.

This Story Might Save Your Life is named after the massively successful podcast hosted by besties Benny and Joy. The idea behind the show is life-threatening situations, and how to survive them. Each episode describes one such event researched by one of the team, who then asks the other, how would you escape – for instance, being caught in the mouth of a humpback whale. So yes, we’re not just talking house fires and boats capsizing.

There’s a lot of comedic banter, and it’s really the personalities of the two that make the show work. Neither Benny or Joy ever thought they’d be still doing the show years later but subscribers write in with their own near-death survival situations and it goes from strength to strength. Joy’s husband Zander has helped grow the brand, running the business side of things and even taking the show on tour.

The situation is complicated by Joy’s medical condition. She has narcolepsy, which means those closest to her are aware that she might just fall asleep at any moment. With care and meds she leads a fairly normal life. The other complication, which happens right at the start of the book, is that during the season that the Santa Ana winds threaten trees and cause general mayhem, Joy and Zander disappear from their home.

We get Benny’s story about the disappearance, the police investigation and the growing concern that the two may be in danger. Benny’s not a big fan of Zander – there’s some jealousy there between them – so his main concern is for Joy whose narcolepsy makes everything tricky anyway. Interwoven with the all the CSI, the search teams and suspicious looks from a probing Detective Keller is Joy’s story. She and Benny have a publishing deal to write a two-person memoir, so this is her story, going back to her learning to deal with her illness, make a life for herself, her meeting Benny and then Zander.

The switching between the two stories makes you beaver through the chapters desperate to see what happens next. Joy’s backstory is just as interesting as Benny’s search for clues, slowly bringing us up-to-date with potential reasons for the disappearance. The plotting is excellent, but the characters are engaging too. Joy and Benny are charming and funny – Joy captures our empathy because she’s just so positive in spite of her medical condition, while Benny’s a bit of a goof, but also intense. He’s also been through some difficulties and has a temper.

Zander is a bit of a dark card, and there are other characters who have emotional connections to the two MCs – among them Zander’s sister Mallory, and Benny’s ex, Luna, which adds further complications. It’s quite likely someone’s lying, but who? And even Benny and Joy seem to be hiding something. So there are plenty of twists that keep you eagerly reading to the end. I also loved the L.A. setting which Tiffany Crum helps you visualise – a place I’d be happy to revisit.

I read this novel courtesy of Netgalley and Hachette, Australia for an honest review. It’s a great story, and I’d certainly be keen to read more by Tiffany Crum. This Story Might Save Your Life is due for publication on 10 March and is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty – a gripping novel about superstition, mortality and fate

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

It takes a smart novelist to write an engaging story with multiple characters and viewpoint switches. Liane Moriarty pulls this off really well in her novel, Here One Moment, about a passenger on a short intercity flight who predicts the ages at which her fellow passengers will die and the cause of death. We follow a selection of these passengers in the days, weeks and months following the “Death Lady”‘s predictions as they assimilate what they’ve been told.

Honestly, this is such an original and clever story and Moriarty really pulls you in wth short chapters that flit between Cherry’s story – she’s the Death Lady – and one of a small group of passengers who have been given the short straw – a death predicted for the near future. Understandably their responses vary from being a bit worried, angry, or shrugging the predictions off as nonsense. That is until some of the predictions begin to come true.

Cherry is a pleasant looking, reserved woman of around seventy who arrives on the plane tired and a bit dehydrated. Her mother was a well-known fortune-teller in the Sydney suburb where Cherry grew up. You might think that Cherry has inherited this profession and continued to practise. But Cherry’s a maths geek from a young age. How her life develops takes the reader through the sixties and seventies and on, so that we eventually form a clear picture of why she had her ‘funny turn’ on the plane.

The lady sighs. She turns to appraise Leo.
Leo says, ‘You’re telling us how and when we’re going to die?’
Later he will berate himself. He will think he should have followed Sue’s lead and shut her down, but his feelings are mixed up with memories of his beloved grandmother’s confused face and how he – Leo! – could make it smooth and peaceful when he went along with her delusions. He was better at it than his sisters. Those were the last gifts he gave her. He will do the same for this lady. It doesn’t matter what nonsense she is talking.
‘Cause of death. Age of death,’ says the lady. ‘It’s really very simple.’
‘Sounds very simple,’ agrees Leo. ‘Give it to me straight.’

Meanwhile we get to know the half-dozen or so “doomed” passengers and how they deal with what they’ve been told. There’s Allegra, the cabin manager, stunningly beautiful, loves her job and yet has a family history which includes depression. Is she really likely to taker her own life in the next year? There’s engineer Leo, a loving family man, late for his daughter’s performance in a school production, supposedly going to die in a workplace accident. He chums up with Ethan, 30 years old and returning from the funeral of a friend, who has died suddenly, leaving Ethan to wonder about seizing the day.

There’s also the ER nurse in her sixties, still fit and active, as well as the bride, with her new husband, still in their wedding regalia, both women given terrible predictions. But possibly the most difficult to hear is the young mother, Paula, who has had to deal with an unsettled baby through the whole flight, which included a two-hour delay, only to learn at the end of it that her boy will die by drowning, aged seven.

We follow each of these characters, their stories woven in with Cherry’s, as their ‘death-day’ looms. It’s nail-biting stuff, as they’re all likeable people with busy lives, loves and families. You get to the middle of the book as the first predictions seem to come true, wondering if you’re going to like what happens next. Is this some kind of ‘And Then There Were None’ (Agatha Christie) scenario?

Well, you’ll have to read it to find out. I will say that it was interesting to read a book that deals with our mortality, an issue we tend to put to the back of our minds. But in the cases of Leo, Ethan, Allegra and co, death is suddenly there in their minds all the time. And the idea of what you might do differently if you knew what was in your cards, or tea leaves. The question of how much of our destiny do we hold in our hands.

I enjoyed all these character’s stories, even Cherry’s, who seems unlikeable at first, cruel even. I galloped through Here One Moment, desperate to find out the what happened – so it’s a four-star read from me. If you’re doing the 52 Book Club Challenge, Liane Moriarty has a sister Nicole Moriarty who also writes fiction.

Book Review: Belgrave Road by Manish Chauhan – an engrossing novel about love across the cultural divide

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

This debut novel describes the immigrant experience from two quite different points of view. It begins with Mira’s arrival from India to make a new life in Leicester with her husband. She’s twenty-three, and this is an arranged marriage. In itself this would be fascinating for a reader from a culture where arranged marriages, apart from those on reality TV, don’t really happen. What can it be like to suddenly share a bed, a home, a life with someone you hardly know? Mira has to remain married to Rajiv for five years to stay in England, if that’s what she wants. Somehow you get the feeling though, there’s no turning back – that she could never face returning home to India to be a disappointment to her parents.

Mira had hoped she could use her beauty therapy diploma to start her own business – she’s bright and ambitious – but beauty therapists are a dime a dozen in this part of Leicester, an area that is surprisingly full of Indian people, Indian shops, Indian food outlets. It could even be a lot like home, if only it wasn’t so cold. An opportunity arises for Mira to work in the kitchens of a sweet shop, where she makes friends with the other workers and where, across the yard, she first sees Tahliil.

Tahliil is a young man who has recently had a harrowing journey from Somalia with his sister and lives with his mother in a tiny flat. He’s not legally allowed to work, has not even registered as an asylum seeker when we first meet him, but picks up several part-time jobs, paid in cash, no questions asked. He’s diligent and well-mannered, so is kept on. It’s at the cash-and-carry where he shifts stock, sometimes delivering grocery items to the sweet shop next door, where he meets Mira.

Mira begins to question her marriage. Rajiv is older and has a history with a woman who secretly texts him, and friends he sees without Mira. So it’s easy to fall into a friendship, and then something more with Tahliil. The story includes Tahliil’s struggles as an asylum seeker, the lengthy wait for his paperwork to go through, the worry that he could be sent home. The fact that he’s Muslim means any relationship with Mira would be unacceptable to his family.

This is such a compelling novel, beautifully written, with its two very different characters, who find themselves in desperate situations. Perhaps an older version of themselves would think twice, but when you’re in your twenties it’s so easy to let your heart hold sway. And why wouldn’t they? They’ve both travelled so far. Why would they settle for anything less than a life lived on their own terms? As a reader you can’t help thinking of the roadblocks, and whether each has the fortitude for the journey ahead of them if they want to be together. This drives the story and keeps you engrossed to the end.

Other characters have their struggles too. Mira’s mother-in-law seems to be eternally optimistic rather than seeing the reality of what’s going on with her family, with her marriage. Rajiv’s cousin Rupal is in a same-sex relationship she’s completely committed to, but struggles to formalise before her family. Tahliil works for an old man who hardly ever sees his daughter, and is estranged from his son.

I found the setting of Leicester, with its huge immigrant population, quite fascinating, a place that must seem cold and physically inhospitable to those from warmer climates, and yet which offers opportunities and safety. Belgrave Road is a brilliant story, and Manish Chauhan really gets into the heads of his characters, making their lives believable. If you want to understand what makes people leave their country for new beginnings in the West and the struggles they face, this is well worth reading – a five-star read from me.

I read Belgrave Road courtesy of Netgalley and Faber & Faber (UK). The book is due for release on 29 January.

Book Review: The Elopement by Gill Hornby – an engaging story inspired by Jane Austen’s family

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’d already enjoyed Gill Hornby’s earlier book, Miss Austen, a novel about Cassandra, Jane Austen’s sister. But there’s obviously a lot more to tell, for the Austen’s are an interesting bunch. The Elopement is the third book about the family by Hornby, picking up their story with Fanny Knight, Jane Austen’s favourite niece, and Mary Dorothea, Fanny’s step-daughter.

This is a story of country life among the gentry in the early 1800s, large families and the rocky path to love. It begins with Fanny, in her late twenties, feeling as if she has missed the marriage boat, having spent many years mothering her younger brothers and sisters. When she is courted by an older neighbour, the politically ambitious Sir Edward Knatchbull, she accepts his hand.

Married life at Hatch, the Knatchbull manor house, includes five motherless children but somehow Fanny never quite takes a shine to the Knatchbull offspring, particularly the eldest, Mary Dorothea, the only girl. The boys get sent off to school from a young age, so are barely there. Fanny and Sir Edward contrive to have Mary educated with Fanny’s younger siblings at Godmersham Park, where Mary Dorothea becomes a firm favourite.

The story flips mostly between the two female characters: Fanny’s marriage to the pompous, devout and domineering Sir Edward, with whom she finds contentment, her avoidance of maternal responsibility for his children, her own struggles to be a mother; and Mary Dorothea, who seems like two – people quietly inoffensive with Fanny, and fun-loving and gossipy with Fanny’s sisters, particularly Cassie. As Mary and Cassie grow up, they bloom and go to balls – there’s a hint of a Jane Austen novel here, with suitors appearing in the wings. But no one is ever good enough to please everybody, particularly parents.

Sir Edward finds the young male Knights flippant and too fun-loving, particularly the eldest, Ned. So of course, Mary finds them charming, Ned in particular. The story follows the problems of making a match agreed on by the girls’ families. Not just Mary and Cassie but also Marianne, who ends up stepping in as a mother figure for her younger siblings after Fanny’s marriage.

Of course, when hunting or killing or hitting a thing, Ned moved like quicksilver. In the world beyond sport, though, he knew no sense of urgency and was rarely disturbed. Yet here he was, eschewing all greetings – Fanny prayed Sir Edward would opt, just on this one occasion to not take offence – and – what was this? – spluttering about yet another drama of Marianne’s making.
‘A proposal?’ Fanny fell back into the depths of the worn leather sofa. ‘A proposal from whom, might one ask?’
It was to her eternal credit that Fanny’s first thought was given not to Godermersham’s domestic arrangements and her own convenience, but that the gentleman’s identity did, in fact, take priority.
‘Billington,’ she repeated, once informed. ‘Billington?‘ Now she was thoroughly mystified. ‘But, Ned dearest,’ she explained in her patient voice, ‘we have no knowledge of any Mr Billington.’ As if that put an end to the matter.

It all gets a bit fraught for the young couple at the centre of the story, Sir Edward remaining intransigent, while Fanny is caught in the middle. A dutiful wife, she’s also strangely unaware of the secret trysts going on under her nose. You want to like Fanny, who means well, but it’s hard to see in her the niece of Jane Austen. She must have been brought up on the famous stories, and the recurring theme of the difficult path to love. Couldn’t she have a little more sympathy? More mettle?

I enjoyed The Elopement, but although the story is full of drama and conflict, the plot is a little slow-moving at times, sticking closely, it would seem, to events noted in Fanny’s collection of diaries. But you do get a good sense of the time, particularly of a woman’s lot; whether as wife, unmarried and useful relative, or as a mother. Hornby notes that giving birth was like Russian roulette, with dying in childbirth a distinct possibility even after a number of healthy births. The Austen’s were particularly fecund, producing endless large families – ample opportunity for losing a mother.

With the recent Jane Austen commemorations – 250 years since Jane Austen’s birth on 16 December – it was a good time to revisit her world. I enjoyed meeting Cassandra Austen again, still stepping in with wisdom and caregiving, an ageing mother at home, nieces requiring guidance, to say nothing of visits to the deserving poor. Gill Hornby does a brilliant job of capturing the tone of an Austen novel, and the book has the ring of authenticity, reflecting solid research. I’ve still Godmersham Park to read by Hornby, and wonder if there will be more Austen stories to look forward to after that. The Elopement is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: June in the Garden by Eleanor Wilde – a heartwarming story with a memorable protagonist

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I’d heard such a lot of good things about this novel, particularly about the wonderful character of June Wilson – her unique point of view, her determination. June in the Garden is told from June’s perspective, describing the weeks following the death of her mother and her bid to find her biological father. At 22, she is bright and has a good eye for details, but is unable to filter out what matters or socialise well with others. When things are stressful, everything goes dark, and she loses it, not always able to remember what happened afterwards.

What June is really good at is gardening. So when her social worker tells her she must leave her council house in Scotland and offers her a bleak flat without a garden, or a hostel, June packs a bag and heads for the station. A letter with an address is all she has to go on, but there will be a few missteps along the way, including a ride in a police car, before she finally makes it to her father’s Notting Hill address. She’s not exactly welcomed here, but sneaks back to take up residence in the garden shed. Here at least she has an opportunity to be in her element – a rambling, if poorly maintained, garden.

The story follows June’s little adventures as she settles in and makes do with very little, the people she meets, including her young stepbrother and his dog, and her attempts to understand the common interactions of others, but which are often beguiling to June. Slowly she begins to make sense of this change in her life, particularly how things stand for her father and his second family. Will she ever win them over?

It all adds up to a charming feel-good story, with a brilliant neurodiverse character. We get June’s need for routine, her regimen of meals at a particular time each day, part of what keeps that crippling anxiety at bay. June still misses her mother, so she’s dealing with grief as well. But Mother is never far away, her urn safely in her bag or on a shelf in the shed. I loved her developing relationship with her stepbrother, twelve-year-old Henry, a sad and lonely boy, but someone she has to learn to trust.

We sit outside the house watching the policemen drive away. Mrs Wilson – not the Mrs Wilson that is my mother, but another one – is inside, in the living room, hovering near the window, staring at us. Mr Wilson is sitting on the doorstep beside me, gazing out past the red rose bushes and the copper-rusted gate to the street lined with dawn redwood trees and pink cherry blossoms. He is still very pale.
After a heated back and forth between the officers and my relatives of 16 Lansdowne Road, it was finally decided that no further action would be taken with regard to the ‘train station incident’. It was concluded that it was a ‘family matter’.
Family.
A word that has always sounded very strange to me. I looked it up once in a dictionary, which defined it as ‘descendants of a common ancestor‘. I am still unable to ascertain who this common ancestor of ours is.

But while the book is sympathetic and sensitive, it is not at all morose because June is such a triumph, so determined and honest. This adds to the humour of the story – not that we are laughing at June, but more at the way other people obfuscate, hiding their motives and feelings behind a facade of manners. June just blows a hole right through all that. And then there’s the gardens, particularly the flowers that June knows such a lot about. She’s got that botanical encyclopaedia with her for reference which she puts to good use.

If you feel like a charming, feel-good read, or have ever secretly thought a garden shed would be a nice place to live (with a few modifications, of course), June in the Garden might just be the thing. It’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Silence In Between by Josie Ferguson – a remarkable historical novel about a family divided by the Berlin Wall

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I’ve read quite a few books about World War II from the Allies’ point of view – the families caught up in the war, on either side of the Channel, the people who helped Jewish children escape at risk of their lives and the SOE recruits dropped behind enemy lines to help the Resistance or lead downed Allied airmen out of occupied territory. Loads about Bletchley Park too. But I haven’t come across nearly so many about what it was like from the German perspective.

While The Silence In Between describes what happens to ordinary people in East Berlin when the Wall went up, it also dips back to follow the lives of a mother and daughter during the war and the terrible treatment they received at the hands of Soviet forces in 1945. Events of both periods are firmly linked.

The book opens in 1961 with the Wall. Lisette has just had a baby, and while she is ready to take little Axel home, the hospital want to keep him in for a bit longer. She goes home to fetch some things for him and to spend the night with her husband and daughter, and that’s when the Wall goes up. Overnight, Lisette and Axel are separated. The situation is made more poignant by Lisette’s admission to herself that she loves Axel more than her daughter, teenage Elly. As the days and weeks pass with no means of contacting the hospital or any news of Axel, Lisette sinks into despair, losing her speech.

Elly’s life goes from carefree outings with friends to trying to manage her mother. She decides the only way to save her family is to bring Axel back herself. The Wall is patrolled by armed Soviet officers sent over from the USSR, ordered to shoot anyone attempting to cross the border. By chance Elly meets the one soldier who doesn’t shoot. She has a gift for hearing music in other people, and the music the soldier Andrei has tells her she can trust him. In the background is the awareness that there are people watching and reporting back, a spy in every apartment block. Secrecy is of the essence.

The voice on the radio crackles, static eating the man’s words. I recognise the presenter, but his voice sounds more high-pitched than usual, as if he’s being strangled.
‘A fence…barbed wire? What’s he talking about? When did this happen?’
‘Elly, please, stop with the questions.’ Papa is still crouched down beside Mama. ‘There will be a way to cross,’ he says. But I can hear he doesn’t believe his own words.
‘Come, let’s go down,’ he says, gently touching Mama’s shoulder. ‘We’ll speak to them at the border. Explain.’
Mama won’t look at me. She simply howls once more and it’s then I see the empty wooden cot in the bedroom beyond, the crumpled sheet poking through the bars. I finally understand the full horror of the situation.
‘Axel?’ My voice is a whisper.
Papa looks at me, his eyes strained. ‘He’s on the other side.’

The story follows Elly’s plan to cross to West Berlin, which is told from Elly’s perspective, interwoven with Lisette’s narrative of her survival in Berlin during WWII. Lisette witnesses many terrible events, the barely acknowledged rounding up of the Jews; the pressure from nosy neighbour, Frau Weber, to meet her nephew, a Nazi officer; the lack of food; the fear of bombing, which becomes a reality as the war progresses. We learn why she never bonds with Elly, her worries for Julius, the boy she loves, fighting on the Eastern Front in a war he doesn’t agree with.

Throughout the book is music. Lisette is an accomplished pianist and gives lessons to a young girl who becomes like a sister. Elly has her own kind of musical synasthesia and a keyboard in her bedroom, which she loves to play, but for reasons she doesn’t understand, it only upsets her mother. If you check out Josie Ferguson’s website, there are pieces of music you can listen to that relate to some of the characters, composed by the author’s brother.

The Silence in Between is a gripping novel, beautifully written that had me constantly on edge. On the one hand I couldn’t wait to see what happened next, while also being almost too anxious to find out. I almost broke my rule about not reading the back of the book to see how it ended. But the book is much more than its story, and gives a good picture of what life was like on either side of the Wall, and the lot of women in Berlin during the war. Some of this makes for grim reading.

The Silence in Between is a brilliant debut, well-researched and gripping, offering a different view of the war as well as Berlin in 1961. Well recommended, it’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Names by Florence Knapp – a ‘sliding doors’ novel describing one character across three possible lives

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I like a book that takes you on a different kind of journey, so that you don’t quite know what to expect next. You’re not always looking out for plot points, twists or turning points. The Names is the story of a baby boy, born to Cora and Gordon and the question of his name. His father insists he must be called Gordon, like him and his father before him, both doctors and both domineering men. But Cora would prefer Julian, an altogether gentler sounding name, while the baby’s older sister, Maia, thinks he should be Bear.

We get three different stories – one for Bear, another for Julian and the last for Gordon, showing the man he becomes, a new chapter for every seven years. But it’s also the story of Cora and the abuse she suffers at the hands of her husband. Each story offers a different set of outcomes, and the different effects this has on each of our core characters, Cora, Maia and Bear/Julian/Gordon.

It’s an interesting concept which keeps you hooked on the story, wondering what is going to happen next. I found I was enjoying one version of B/J/G more than another for one chapter, but this would be different in the next. To start with Bear wasn’t really all that interesting – he’s so confident, like his name, likeable and successful. But Florence Knapp makes sure there are interesting things that happen so that life isn’t always plain sailing.

Julian is damaged by what happens to him, and struggles to open up. He worries he’ll be like his father, that he has that same ability to hurt, and avoids relationships. Gordon is also damaged by his childhood and growing up, and learns things the hard way. He was difficult to read about to start with, but in the end I felt he was the most interesting of the three. You feel for all of them in different ways. Alongside the young man is his relationship with his sister, who is also going through some soul searching. What is it like to grow up with a parent who is capable of such violence? To what extent do you also inherit that gene?

But it was Cora who really has your sympathy. In one story, the author captures the manipulation, control and violence the elder Gordon inflicts on her, which makes for grim reading. The way it goes on through the years and how her husband shuts down her chances to live her own life, to be her own person. The hopelessness and acquiescence. I found I desperately wanted to stay with Cora’s story to see if she will make it out alive.

And when she speaks, she hears herself as he will: pathetic, weak.
‘I went to register the birth like you asked, and I – I hope you won’t mind, but I’ve called him something else. Not Gordon. You know I’ve never really wanted to call him that and I – I -‘
She stops because he hasn’t blinked; his eyes haven’t left her face. And this part, it’s like someone with a fear of heights, someone at the top of a ladder, so sure they’re about to fall, they have the impulse to jump and get it over with. It takes all her strength not to sink to his feet and let him kick her, to not even try to escape its inevitability, but to submit, because this anticipation only delays what she knows is coming.

In the background there are other characters coming into the picture, as each starts to build their own life, and grows their family. There are some interesting descriptions of the work they do, particularly the work of silversmithing and archaeology. The Names would make great fodder for book groups and I will be interested to see what Florence Knapp writes next – a more traditionally plotted story, or something different again. The Names is an engaging debut and a four-star read from me.