Tag: relationships

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

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Review: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano – an engaging story about sisters and finding your family

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I seemed to miss the Little Women references when I picked up Ann Napolitano’s latest novel, Hello Beautiful. Maybe I was distracted by all the basketball, but I was about three quarters of the way through when the penny dropped and it all made a lot more sense. Until then, I was wondering where it was all going as it just seems to be a nice story about a family, about love and loss, lies and betrayal, all nestling among the intriguingly varied personalities of the Padavano sisters.

None the less, this was an easy book to get lost in. The story bounces between several characters and over several decades as the Padavano girls grow up and make lives for themselves. They are a close Italian American family living in Chicago with their parents, a couple who married out of necessity – with Julia on the way – and struggle with a marriage that is broken. Into all this comes William, himself from a broken family, with parents who have never healed from the loss of his older sister, who have never been able to love him instead.

William’s character is both sad and compelling. He’s been rescued by basketball, and his height gives him a terrific advantage on the court, as well as a scholarship to study in a new town and leave his loveless childhood behind. Julia Padavano discovers him at one of her classes and somehow persuades him into a possible future as a History professor, and as her husband. Her family gives William the warmth and security he’s lacked all his life.

Willam knew all the players except the freshmen, and once or twice after finishing his sandwich he let the guys convince him to take a few shots from the corner. He knew his knee couldn’t take pivoting or even jogging from one spot to the other, so he stood still and drilled one long shot after another while his former teammates hooted with pleasure. When the ball swished through the net, William’s breathing slowed to normal, and he could pretend that he still inhabited a recognisable life.
With the basketball in his hands, he could forget that his father-in-law had dropped dead, his sister-in-law slept on his couch, and every time he saw his wife he was startled.

We also have Sylvie, Julia’s closest sister. Unlike Julia, Sylvie fails to push herself towards college, instead immersing herself in novels and helping out at the library where she kisses random boys among the shelves. Her dream is to find one, intense true love, and until then isn’t interested in dating. At home, her mother spends her life in the garden, growing saleable produce, her father quoting Walt Whitman and drinking too much. There are also the twin sisters: artistic Cecelia and nurturing Emeline.

The future seems settled for Julia and William, when a series of events upset the applecart and cracks appear in the extended family. Then, as so often happens, life goes on around the cracks, characters settle in and hunker down until another earth-shattering event brings the past back into focus and there is potential for a reckoning, and for healing.

I am glad that I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out which sister was Meg or Jo, Beth or Amy, as it wouldn’t have done me any good as things turned out. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But this was a nice read, if a not particularly compelling one. It is a story where emotions run high, either expressed outwardly, or contained and mulled over or contained and ignored.The characters of the sisters and particularly William, are all easy to engage with, and interesting.

There are themes around mental health – how do you get over a childhood that is missing love? And about finding your place in life as a young person, of being accepted for who you are. I found quite a lot to like but the story did lag a little around the middle – the stretched-out timeline doesn’t help. Fortunately it all picks up near the end with the hope of at least one reconciliation and some impetus from the younger generation. I’ll be interested to check out another novel by Ann Napolitano. Hello Beautiful is a solid three-star read from me.

Book Review: After the Funeral – a short story collection that’s as compelling as any novel

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I rarely seem to pick up short story collections these days. There are always so many brilliant new novels coming out all the time, and you get used to the way the plot teasingly unfolds with the longer form, the unrolling of scenes and the character development. But sometimes a short story is just such a wonderful thing. A small, complete entertainment. It can say a lot too.

And that’s what you get with Tessa Hadley’s latest collection, After the Funeral. These twelve stories are for the most part family stories, delving into the reactions and emotions when something happens that upsets the applecart in relationships, between siblings, between parents and daughters and with couples. The subtle undercurrents of the class system are also there. Things are suitable or not suitable, or plainly ludicrous in a particular milieu.

Several stories have children dealing with parents acting alarmingly. The title story has two daughters whose world changes after the sudden death of their father, leaving their beautiful mother, who is something of an airhead, to provide for her family. It’s the 1970s and women didn’t necessarily equip themselves with career prospects back then. A family connection soon sets her up with a job in the office of a dentist. Of course the dentist falls in love with her. In “Cecilia Awakened”, Hadley perfectly captures that feeling you have when you discover as Ceclia does at fifteen, what an embarrassment family holidays, and in particular, parents, can be.

Many of the stories have their roots in the last decades of the twentieth century, while others dip back into the past from the present day. In “The Bunty Club”, three sisters return to the family home when their mother is dying in hospital. They are such different characters, and in a few deft paragraphs, Hadley vividly describes their characters as older women, bookish Pippa, capable Gillian and glamorous Serena – what drives them apart and what can bring them together again.

— Bathroom’s empty! Gillian said. — You should get in before Serena embarks on any aromatherapy. I wish she’d wash the bath out when she’s finished.
— She’s up already, Pippa said. — Look! Worshipping in the garden.
Gillian came to stand beside her. They were spying, and meant to say something dry and funny about their sister, taking advantage of watching her unseen: dancing in the long grass, flitting like a sprite in her black cotton tiered skirt and satiny top – which she’d most likely got from a charity shop, because she was solemn about waste and recycling.

“Funny Little Snake” is set in hippy era London, and is a heart-breaking story of middle-class neglect of a young child, and the woman who attempts to rescue her. In fact there isn’t a lot of good parenting on offer in the collection – distant or missing fathers, mothers wrapt up in their own lives, families recreating themselves after loss or divorce. Tessa Hadley’s writing is too crisp and sharp for the stories to seem downbeat; interesting developments make them crackle with energy.

I’d already enjoyed an earlier novel, The Past, by Tessa Hadley, which was another brilliant look at a family and shares some of the themes on display here so I was expecting to enjoy this collection. I read these stories one after another, but a collection like this could happily sit on the bedside table, ready to be dipped into again and again. But they are so moreish, I dare you not to keep reading until they’re all finished. After the Funeral gets four and a half stars from me.

Book Review: Goyhood by Reuven Fenton – a hilarious road-trip story full of unexpected detours

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

People often expect twins to be alike – even the non-identical ones. But you couldn’t find two brothers more different than David and Marty Belkin, the main characters in Reuven Fenton’s debut novel Goyhood. We meet them during a heatwave in small-town Georgia when they’re twelve, the day that young Marty, soon to become Mayer, has an epiphany.

The boys are doing it tough, living with a mother who frequently absents herself and drinks too much. So it’s not surprising that when Marty is offered a chance to study at an Orthodox Jewish school, or yeshiva, in New York, he jumps at it.

Switch forward thirty odd years and Mayer is still a student of holy scripture, that’s all he has to do, thanks to the generosity of his father-in-law. His marriage to Sarah is not a happy one, weighed down by difficulties in conceiving a child. Things are all set to change again for Mayer when he gets the news that his mother has died. He will have to sit shiva for her and he’ll see his twin brother again for the first time in decades.

David has had a completely different life to Mayer, having to learn the lessons of life the hard way. There have been a lot of drugs and career misfires, but now he’s made his fortune in the e-cigarette market and turns up to collect Mayer at the airport looking the essence of prosperity. The two hardly recognise each other. A letter written shortly before their mother’s death reveals the bombshell that the boys aren’t technically Jewish which throws Mayer into a spin. With the help of their old rabbi, Yossi, he’ll have the chance to remedy that situation, in a week’s time.

But David’s still a wild boy at heart and persuades his twin to travel to New York with him for the appointment for his ‘conversion’ in a muscle car he nicknames Daisy. They take their mother’s ashes with them, the plan being to scatter them somewhere she would enjoy, and along the way collect an unappealing dog, but not Mayer’s luggage, which has not arrived with him at the airport. David has plans that Mayer should enjoy his week of ‘goyhood’ and live a little, while Mayer is like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

“And due to an unprecedented turn of events, we find ourselves facing an entire week with empty schedules.”
“You’re talking about a vacation,” Mayer said.
“A rehabilitation period to wrap our heads around the existential vortex we’ve fallen into.”
“A vacation.”
“A pilgrimage.”
“I don’t need a vacation. I don’t want to wrap my head around this. If it were up to me, I’d spend the week in a medically induced coma.”
“Listen, Ese, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s when the going gets tough, the tough get in the car and drive.”

The story builds in tension as Mayer is pulled in different directions – his sense that he must live according to religious principals constantly under fire. As Mayer struggles to rein his brother in, Sarah is continually on the phone about his luggage and her sudden plans to join him at his mother’s house. She would be appalled by what Marty has been up to with David and all this adds brilliantly to the story’s humour.

Meanwhile there is plenty of temptation on offer to a man who has never been tried before, particularly when the two hit New Orleans and David offers a ride to Charlayne, an attractive acquaintance of his who is about to walk the Appalachian Trail. David is the sort who lives for the moment and acts on impulse, so the road trip takes some unexpected turns.

Fenton piles on one madcap scene after another, putting our characters through their paces, and even allowing the dog, Popeye, a moment of glory. Intermingled with all this is some deep soul-searching – by the end of the book, the reader has an inkling that change is in the air for Mayer, and possibly for David as well.

It all adds up to an entertaining, feel-good read enhanced by lively dialogue as the characters bounce off each other. The writing is polished and witty and the story never lags for a moment. I enjoyed it immensely and will be keen to read more by this author. Due for release on 28 May, Goyhood is a four-star read from me..

Book Review: All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman – a carefully observed story of siblings through the decades

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

In All Day at the Movies, Fiona Kidman has devised the perfect protagonist to chronicle the story of a family amid the wider social changes of her time. Belinda is a film-maker, known for her sharp eye for detail. Her story is a struggle for survival, for love and for a career, but it’s also one of those sins of the father’s stories too. The events around her arrival in the world are horrific and tragic.

Kidman takes us back to the post-war years, with war-widow Irene, striking out for a new beginning in an attempt to provide a better life for her young daughter, Jessie. Leaving Wellington and the industrial dispute that has put her father off work and caused unbearable tension at home, the two have settled on the tobacco-growing town of Motueka. They have basic housing, a kind of worker’s shack, while Irene does hard physical toil in the fields. Kidman highlights the lack of choices open to Irene, a former librarian, who settles for marriage to the creepy foreman, Jock Pawson.

“There was that girl Iris who wrote books and had babies when she wasn’t married and her life was just all sorrow, mental hospitals and … but her mother couldn’t bring herself to say the word suicide. In the end, dead, anyway. Irene’s mother had known Mrs Wilkinson, the mother of Iris, although she called herself something else, and it had been a terrible thing for her to have to lose a daughter to books. And, Irene’s mother had said, she hoped that Irene wasn’t thinking of writing books. It brought disgrace on a family.”

The story flips forward through the decades, each chapter like a short story in the chronicles of the Pawsons. We’re with young Belinda after her mother’s death and her banishment to live with a grim, sanctimonious aunt, her younger siblings, Grant and Janice left to the mercies of an unloving stepmother and a predatory father. The three siblings each take a turn with the narrative, as they try to make their way in life.

And in spite of an unplanned pregnancy, Belinda finds both love and a career, although there is still much that troubles her. We are in the midst of social change in New Zealand, with events around social justice and women’s rights a part of the wider story. As Belinda attempts to be a good wife and mother to her children, while building a career – thank God for dependable Seth at home – what has become of Janice and Grant?

They’re all walking some dark path, Belinda thinks. The marches have brought out the best and the worst in them all. ‘Are we really marching because black people in South Africa are oppressed by white people?’ she asks Nick. ‘Or are we doing it for ourselves because we have stuff and things and good lives and we feel bad about it?’

Belinda is an interesting character – one of the era when women were encouraged to ‘have it all’, but this also means being pulled in so many directions at once. Grant also seems set on a path that will see him succeed in life, if he can get past the terrible events of his upbringing. He has ambitions of becoming a pilot, and there’s a brilliant scene with four fairly refined elderly women having lunch, and the dramatic effects their actions that day have on Grant’s life to come. Meanwhile Janice seems to have one struggle after another. All three seem to belong to such different worlds – can they ever reconnect?

Fiona Kidman writes with such honesty and naturalness, you are brought into the lives of these characters in a way that seems very real, and so the tragic events that happen hit hard. But there is a wry humour too as she shows the foibles of people, their awkward interactions, their obsessions.

All Day at the Movies is just one novel among a long list of novels that have made Fiona Kidman a household name in New Zealand. As well as a winner of many literary prizes, she’s now Dame Fiona Kidman, and even the recipient of the French Legion of Honour. This book may seem just the story of a family, but probably only Fiona Kidman could write a book like this. Like Belinda she has that telling eye for the detail that captures so much more. It’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng – an enthralling novel about love, duty and writerly inspiration

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This book was long-listed for last year’s Booker Prize, but it was the imagining of the life of W Somerset Maugham that caught my eye. At one time Maugham was a prolific and hugely successful author, often setting his books in the exotic locations he visited. The stories are peppered with unhappy marriages and scandals, and here he probably drew on his own experiences. Dozens of movies have been based on the stories, the latest I have come across being The Painted Veil starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts (2006).

His light may have faded in the last few decades, but Tan Twan Eng has brought Maugham to life again as one of two main characters in The House of Doors, set largely in Penang, Malaysia. It’s 1921 and Lesley, the wife of Robert Hamlyn, an old friend of the writer’s, is reluctantly hosting Maugham and his secretary/lover Gerald for an extended stay. Maugham, or Willie, as he’s called here, is at the height of his popularity, but poor investments have left him in a tight spot and desperate for material for new stories. Over the days that follow, Lesley reveals her own story from a decade before.

Lesley’s story takes us back to a visit by Sun Yat Sen, Chinese revolutionary and leader of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party), in Penang to raise funds to overthrow a despotic Chinese dynasty. Lesley gets caught up in the cause, a distraction from problems with her marriage. In the meantime her best friend Ethel Proudlock has been charged with murder for shooting an expat engineer. Both stories suggest an uncomfortable relationship between men and women, as well as between the British rule with its wider expat community and the local Chinese and indigenous populations. (The Proudlock affair inspired Maugham’s story “The Letter”, which was made into a movie starring Bette Davis.)

Lesley is an interesting character as being born and raised in Penang she speaks one or two local languages and makes an effort to understand both worlds. So she’s the best person to show Maugham around, but takes a while to warm to the writer, feeling a little unhappy with him when she makes sense of his relationship with handsome and somewhat dissipated young Gerald. With Maugham you have insight into the mind of a writer, a man with his own share of disillusionment and regret.

The silence around us, the very weave of the night itself, felt denser. Even the waves outside, fraying away the margins of land since the beginning of the world, seemed to have stilled into stone. In the hallway the weighted heart of the grandfather clock went on beating, as indifferent as an aged monk thumbing his prayer beads on their long and infinite loop.
‘Where does a story begin, Willie?’ I asked.
For a while he did not say anything. Then he shifted in his chair. ‘Where does a wave on the ocean begin?’ he said. ‘Where does it form a welt on the skin of the sea, to swell and expand and rush towards the shore?’
‘I want to tell you a story, Willie,’ I said. Yes, I thought to myself. Tell him your story. Let him write it. Let the whole world know.
The music I had just played seemed to go on unspooling in the air between us, this song that had no beginning and no ending; the song of time itself.

The novel is a story within a story, bookended again by Lesley receiving a parcel in Africa many years later. You get a sense of a carefully constructed narrative and it all works beautifully, keeping the reader guessing and enthralled. Tan Twan Eng creates a superbly atmospheric setting enhanced by gorgeous writing. There’s a love story here, more than one perhaps, but it is also an ode to Penang in the way the characters experience the lush tropical setting, the sea that seems to brim with a life of its own, the history and culture.

The House of Doors is a beautiful novel, and at only 300 pages, carries a lot of story for its word-count. It’s quite an emotional read too – love and regret, nostalgia for a place and times past. So it really packs a wallop. I loved it and want to read everything by this author, though I see I shall have to be patient as this is only his third book – his first The Gift of Rain coming out in 2007, with a big gap between his second book, The Garden of Evening Mists from 2011 and The House of Doors, from last year. Whatever the wait, it will be worth it, I’m sure. This one’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: Lessons by Ian McEwan – an epic read in more ways than one

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Ian McEwan is usually a reliable author, one I’ve turned to before anticipating a satisfying and intelligent read. And that’s pretty much what you get with Lessons. The story follows Roland Baines from his childhood and delivery to an unusual boarding school – we’re in the late 1950s – through his schooling and into adulthood, and on to the present day. Critical to his story are the lessons he has at school with a predatory and obsessive piano teacher.

Rolande’s experiences, the grooming and sexual predation by Miriam Cornell, have an ongoing effect on his life. At first the story weaves these scenes from school with a police enquiry into the disappearance of Rolande’s wife Alissa in the 1980s. She has left a note and sent postcards from Europe, so there’s no obvious reason to suspect foul play, but DI Browne wants to be sure. Roland has been left holding the baby, literally, seven-month-old Lawrence.

The story meanders through the years bringing the past up to the time of Alissa’s vanishing and beyond and along with Roland’s story we have key moments of recent history. There’s the Cuba Missile Crisis, which is what sends Roland into a spin, cycling towards danger and Miss Cornell. There’s the fall of the Berlin Wall, another key factor in Roland’s life, the rise of New Labour and much more. Roland is a political animal and there are groups of friends around the dinner table, and lively discussions.

Throughout, Roland considers the effects of broader events in history on his path through life. It is obvious that Roland had potential to have a solid career in something, possibly even as a concert pianist. But failing at school and then bringing up a child on his own have led to a working life that is a cobbling together of hotel piano playing, occasional journalism, and tennis coaching. He’s also a terrific dad. He has relationships with other women but most of them don’t stick. Has he been ruined emotionally by Miss Cornell?

Against his chest he felt the baby’s heartbeat, just under twice the rate of his own. Their pulses fell in and out of phase, but one day they would be always out. They would never be this close. He would know him less well, then even less. Others would know Lawrence better than he did, where he was, what he was doing and saying, growing closer to this friend, then this lover. Crying sometimes, alone. From his father, occasional visits, a sincere hug, catch up on work, family, some politics, then goodbye. Until then, he knew everything about him, where he was in every minute, in every place. He was the baby’s bed and his god. The long letting go could be the essence of parenthood and from here was impossible to conceive.

And yet all in all, Roland’s has been a good life. A life rich in people, experiences and love. He hasn’t been a big achiever; he’s had to be a parent, rather like the lives of many women. So there’s a feminist message here too – not only through Roland, but in the stories of Alissa, her mother and Roland’s mother too.

Roland’s a likeable protagonist, which is just as well as we are with him throughout all the things in life that trouble everyday people. What secrets have his parents kept all these years? How will a new government affect things? Or even, are we on the brink of another world war? The tiny things as well as the broader issues. It’s a novel full of wisdom, and the gaining of it, and I suppose these are also the lessons of the title.

For quite a way through I thought nobody, and certainly not Roland, was learning any lessons. He really does seem to bumble along, reacting to things, rather than making decisive steps in any direction. But he mostly gets there in the end and there are some memorable scenes. McEwan creates these beautifully. The scenes with Miss Cornell are somewhat creepy, but affecting.

While not especially long, it’s a monumental work, and I admire Lessons hugely, but somehow it felt at times rather a slog. I think this is down to the lengthy timescale of the book and also the way it lingers on life’s more difficult moments, of life slipping away, of our mortality. You can relate to this for sure, but you long for lightness and hope. In the end I was glad to have read Lessons, but certainly glad to finish it too. So it’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig – a cracking novel of rural England, the plight of the middle classes, with a mystery thrown in

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes when you pick up a novel, you just instantly know you are in good hands. I felt like this about The Lie of the Land with its interesting premise – a couple desperate to divorce but can’t because they have no money. So they rent out their London house and find cheaper digs (together!) in the country with their children.

Stories where people ditch the city for the countryside for whatever reason have been around since the novel has, quite probably, or at least since Green Acres appeared on TV in the sixties. But there’s always fresh material to mine, particularly when you’ve got such complex characters as Quentin and Lottie Bredin. Quentin is older than Lottie and his career as a journalist has taken a dive – he’s rude and arrogant and has upset too many people. To make matters worse, Lottie has discovered he’s had several affairs, and all the while she’s been left to manage the home and her children.

Lottie was once an up-and-coming architect, and keeps her home like something out of House and Garden. Perhaps that is what makes her so difficult for Quentin to live with: her fastidiousness, her sharp tongue, plus her ongoing tiredness since the birth of their daughters – Rosie (6) and Stella (8). An opportunity to rent a farmhouse near Quentin’s parents in Devon ridiculously cheaply has them reluctantly leaving London and all its temptations behind.

The novel has a load of interesting plots woven together, with several main narrators. We’re with Lottie, angry and grieving over the way Quentin has treated her, while she tries to balance the books and economise. If they can stick it out for a year, they can clear their debts and sell the London house. This will pay for their divorce and leave enough capital to set up house separately.

Her daily walk includes a visit to the village shop, a Portakabin crouched in the church car park. The design makes her wince, but just to talk to another adult who doesn’t hate her is a relief.
 ’Home-made?’ she asks, pointing to pasties, keeping warm in front of the counter.
 ’Oh, yes. We don’t hold with Humbles.’
 ’It’s good that Shipcott still has a shop.’
 ’It doesn’t make a profit,’ the woman says, shyly. ‘We volunteer, though we all worry about being held up at gunpoint.’
 ’Do you really?’
 ’You’d be surprised. There’s crime here, my lovely, just like everywhere else. But how else are pensioners without cars going to get their food and money each week?’
 She has never known people like this, with their terrible teeth and terrible clothes and kindness. That’s what astonishes her most: the kindness.

We’ve also got Quentin, who can’t believe the nosedive his career has taken, but is still trying to keep in the swim while being a decent father. There’s Xan, Lottie’s eighteen-year-old son, desolate at missing out on a place at Cambridge and at the idea of his London life coming to a halt. Showing us the rural point of view, there’s Sally, a district health nurse with her own quiet grief.

While this seems to be mostly a novel of a marriage, there’s also a grim mystery with the hideous death of the previous tenant at Long Farm, an unsolved crime no one has told the Bredins about. You know you will find out the who and why of the crime by the end of the book, but in the meantime there’s so much character development, as rural life weaves its charm and throws up new challenges for the family.

We get plenty of insight into rural issues, particularly the struggles for farmers to make a living off the land in a competitive market-driven economy. The Polish immigrants that fill in doing unpleasant and exploitative work the locals avoid is evocatively depicted in scenes at Humbles Pie Factory where Xan picks up a casual job. Also the loss of a way of life, the closing of schools as people move away.

Then we’ve got a look at intergenerational relationships, particularly between Quentin and his dying father – the guilt, the disagreements and old scores. And about parenthood, both good and bad, as well as the redemptive power of music and literature. Quite a lot to think about then.

The writing sparkles with wit and vivid descriptions, and is polished and nuanced. You don’t have to like the characters, certainly not all the time – Craigs shows them warts and all – but you can’t complain they’re not interesting. Each finds themselves caught up in difficult dilemmas that give the story plenty of go. Meanwhile all the plates Craig keeps spinning are carefully balanced and then caught at the end for a cracking finish. I loved every minute of it and, although it’s not saying a lot – this being only February – The Lie of the Land is quite my favourite book of the year. A five star read from me.

Book Review: The Wakes by Dianne Yarwood – a thoughtful, contemporary read about life, death and catering

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

So we’re back in ‘feel-good fiction’ territory with a novel mostly about Clare, whose husband has had a kind of conniption and decided to leave their marriage. She becomes unhinged by this and takes some long service leave, and this coincides with her meeting a new neighbour, Louisa, who has plans for a catering business centred on funerals. Clare is persuaded to help out – she’s always been a dab hand in the kitchen and her chicken sandwiches are to die for – ha, ha!

Louisa is a larger-than-life character – tall and funny as well as kind. She’s soon in and out of Clare’s kitchen when Clare needs a friend. An accident that has left her face bruised and her front teeth chipped has confined Clare to her home. We find out that Louisa’s bouncy, chatty manner hides a secret heartache.

The story flips to Chris and his own marriage break-up – a relationship that has turned sour when he and his wife found they were unable to conceive. He thinks back to his relationship with Beth when he was in London – was she his one great love? He determines to find out if she is still in Australia – he has a box of her things he’d like to return. Chris is also no stranger to death, being an ER doctor, and it is this that brings about his first meeting with Clare at the caterers’ very first wake.

Clare worked at a very fast pace. It wasn’t until people began streaming through the doors that Louisa admitted how uncomfortable she felt around crowds. Somehow, stupidly, she’d thought mourners would be different. Quieter, less of a strain on her sensibilities. But not so. The opposite, really – all those families. She disappeared into the kitchen as the room filled up. I’ll hold the fort in there, she said with a look of concern and apology. And so Clare moved around the room in something approaching a run: she hovered by groups, raced off to the kitchen, came back, checked on what people had, offered plates and darted off again.

The Wakes makes you aware of the idea that “in the midst of life we are in death” in that it is the passing of loved ones and the proximity of death that makes the characters feel aware of the wonders of life. That we only have one and we must seize the day. But there’s also a lot about the complexities of friendship. Chris’s great friend is Max, who is dying; there are other friends – particularly Paul, who was also in London during the Beth era.

Paul has his own chapters, too, and his role in the story is important as a catalyst for what happens. Paul’s a kind of counterpart for Louisa in that he’s always quick with the ready wit and can rattle off a vast selection of pop culture references at any given opportunity. But Paul’s life is an empty shell. We are not really supposed to like. him – he works in advertising – but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Chris, as an ER doctor, is obviously more worthy.

Perhaps it was these moral undertones that put me off the book a little. That and the funerals. It is difficult to balance the weight of grief with that of the hopeful resolutions that we wish for the characters. Sometimes it just got a bit too much. Or was it just that I liked the more light-hearted scenes better? Perhaps if I’d just lost someone dear to me, I’d have found the book more relatable. The Wakes is a three-star read from me.

Book Review: The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page – a big-hearted novel about letting go

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I’d forgotten why this book was on my list – probably a glowing review somewhere (thank-you, if that was you), but was soon ensconced in the story. I quickly discovered a novel packed with quirky characters and gentle humour – two key ingredients for a pleasant, feel-good read.

The Keeper of Stories takes us to the English university city of Cambridge, where Janice cleans people’s houses and discreetly collects people’s stories. This isn’t for any inclination towards blackmail; it’s just a kind of hobby. Many of these stories come from clients: the famous opera singer who has come from humble beginnings, charming but frail Carrie-Louise, and recently widowed Fiona and her boy Adam who are still grieving. Everyone knows Janice is the best cleaner in Cambridge, but not everything’s plain sailing.

For a start there’s her husband Mike, who is a serial job-quitter, never keeping the same employment for more than a month or two. To make things worse he always leaves on a sour note. He belittles Janice for her humble work even though it’s her earnings that keep a roof over their head, and his insistence on sending their son Simon to boarding school has caused a rift between mother and son.

When two of her more difficult clients, Mrs YeahYeahYeah and her husband Mr NoNoNotNow ask her to clean for the husband’s autocratic mother, Mrs P, it might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Janice. Yet she forms an unlikely alliance over stories with Mrs P. Catching the bus – Mike nearly always has the couple’s car – her attention is caught by one of the drivers who reminds her of a geography teacher.

“How many stories do you think that there are in the world? Seven? Eight? I can’t remember how many. I read in a magazine somewhere that there are only a certain number of stories ever told.”
  Mrs B sits quietly, watching her.
  Janice sighs. “You and I both know what’s coming, don’t we? It’s a predictable story. It has been played out in hovels and palaces around the world since the beginning of time. There are no new stories, Mrs. B.”
  “But this is your story, Janice, and I believe you need to tell it.”
  “Do I? Will it make any difference? I can’t change the ending.”
  “That’s where I think you’re wrong.”

Mrs P’s has determinedly unsettling ways, trading stories, including that of the scandalous Becky, a courtesan from Paris and her rise in society, in her attempts to hear Janice’s story. For we soon realise that Janice’s collecting of stories is her way of avoiding her own, a story that she feels is too dreadful to tell. Through all this, Mrs P also has a battle on her hands to stay in her university flat, while her son wants to throw her out. Janice is soon doing her bit to help.

There’s plenty of humour and whimsy in Janice’s interactions with her clients while the story builds in drama as it seems likely for Janice that change is in the air. This will not be without pain, but Janice has her friends to help her through, as well as Decius, the sweary dog that Janice walks for Mrs YeahYeahYeah, and who patently thinks Janice should be his owner.

We’re in classic ‘second chances’ territory here, and it all comes together nicely for a big-hearted read. The writing is witty enough to avoid being sentimental – often a danger with this type of book. Keen readers will enjoy the references to literature, while the characters are varied are and interesting. Look out for Page’s new novel, The Book of Beginnings, which will be out later this year. The Keeper of Stories is a four star read from me.