Tag: The 52 Book Club 2026

Book Review: Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors – a family of siblings coping with tragedy and addiction

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Coco Mellors second novel focuses on the lives of three sisters who return to their family apartment in New York following the news that their mother is going to sell it. I have often enjoyed books about siblings returning to where they grew up, often to deal with ageing parents and having to get over their differences. And it’s a bit like this with Blue Sisters.

First there’s Avery, the eldest, a lawyer now living in London with her wife Chiti, a picture of success; then Bonnie, a world-class champion boxer who has abandoned boxing to work as a bouncer for a night-club in L.A.; and Lucky, the youngest, a fashion model based in Paris with a substance-abuse problem.

The family is still reeling from the tragedy of their sister’s death a year ago. The fourth sister, Nicky, who was the nice one, the school teacher everyone loved, who yearned for a family of her own. Nicky’s story also involves dependency on painkillers, which she takes to deal with her crippling endometriosis.

The story is narrated by each of the three sisters in turn, and we get the backstory and how they eventually make their way to New York, each of them running away from something. I found Avery, under pressure from Chiti to start a family, less interesting until suddenly she wasn’t. The fashion world of top models is revealed warts and all and it suddenly isn’t surprising that Lucky is an addict. But I found Bonnie’s story and that of the disciplined world of boxing particularly interesting.

Woven through it all is the theme of addiction, different kinds of addiction and its ability to ruin families. And because Chiti is a therapist, you get quite a lot of therapy too. Sometimes I found this invaded the story a little too much. There’s also a lot of guilt. While Avery isn’t blaming her mother for her poor parenting, for not leaving her drunk of a husband, she’s feeling guilty for not helping Nicky, for not seeing her struggles, a guilt shared by her sisters. We don’t meet the girls’ mother until the end of the book, but she was really interesting too, and I wouldn’t have minded seeing a bit more of her.

Growing up, she and her sisters had everything they needed, but not what they wanted, which was space. Too close for comfort. A cliché, but it was true. They were too close to be comfortable in that home. There was one bathroom for all six of them; Prufrock may have measured out his life with coffee spoons, she always thought, but Avery measured hers in the hours she spent waiting for that bathroom to be free. At the time, she’d hated it; she and her sisters felt like lobsters packed into a murky tank, each of them jostling and bumping up against the other to reach the light above the water. All through her adolescence she longed to leave, but she stayed living in that home until Bonnie started training, Nicky went to college, and Lucky began traveling as a model. Once her sisters were all safely out, she allowed herself to flee.

The Blue Sisters is a very readable, engaging story with several great settings – including Hampstead and New York – and three well-drawn narrative voices. It’s an easy read, even if it does deal with difficult themes, and the way the sisters relate to each other, disagree, fight and come back to each other seems very real. A good read if not a great one – three and a half stars from me.

Book Review: The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry – the first in a riveting mystery series set in Victorian Edinburgh

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Ambrose Parry is the pseudonym for the husband and wife team of Chris Brookmyre, an award winning crime writer, and Dr Marisa Haetzman, a consultant anaesthetist. They combine their talents and expertise to great effect in this story set in mid 1800s Edinburgh, a time when the discovery of chloroform opened the door for safer and more humane surgery.

Enter one Will Raven, a young medical student apprenticed to work for a brilliant doctor specialising in delivering babies, using ether when required. Will arrives troubled by the death of a prostitute and friend, her body contorted to suggest she was poisoned. Other prostitutes have met a similar fate. This isn’t his only problem. The night before he’s to begin his apprenticeship, he is set upon by thugs working for a loan shark. He turns up at Dr Simpson’s house filthy, wounded and dishevelled, but the eccentric doctor doesn’t seem particularly bothered, as there’s work to be done.

Our other main character is Sarah Fisher, a housemaid in the Simpson household who comes from a family of healers. She helps out in Simpson’s clinic when her long list of household duties allow, and soon forms a dislike of Raven who is surprised by her chutzpah. Sarah is just as smart as Raven, but held back by her place in society and by being a woman. Raven arrives with secrets and the burden of having to appeal to a miserly uncle to fund his studies.

Sarah tramped along Princes Street several paces behind Mina, giving her an interrupted view of the dirt that was becoming attached to Mina’s skirt. She was effectively sweeping the pavement with her numerous petticoats. Sarah added the cleaning of these to the perpetually lengthening list of chores that she would be expected to complete by the end of the day. She thought of Sisyphus and his giant boulder, condemned for all eternity to engage in an ultimately pointless task.

The two main characters become awkward allies in their determination to find who is murdering at-risk women when a maid Sarah is acquainted with becomes the next victim. The story bounces along with several subplots, including Simpson’s eventual use of chloroform, following a hilarious scene where the young doctors of the house and one or two others experiment on themselves. Peppered through it all are scenes of women in labour and babies being delivered. Some of these are tragic and grim, others with happier outcomes. Fortunately, the authors know when to hold back on the details, but it still makes you think how lucky we are to enjoy the benefits of modern medicine.

I loved the characters of Raven and Sarah, the way they bounce off each other, both struggling to be make their way in the medical world. Raven’s loan-shark thugs lurk, ready to do more damage, and there’s also the tension of a killer at large poised to strike again. We get a look into new technologies, in pharmaceuticals and also the burgeoning art of photography. It all brings the period to life, and descriptions of the streets Edinburgh are also evocatively rendered.

The Way of All Flesh is the first book about Raven and Fisher, and was such a brilliant read I rattled through it every chance I got. There are now five books in the series, which has garnered a bunch of nominations for Dagger Awards and the McIllvanney Prize. I love a well put-together historical mystery and this one ticks all the boxes. It’s a four-and-a-half-star read from me.

Book Review: My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor – terror and courage in German occupied Rome

~ Judith ~ 3 Comments

My Father’s House has been on my radar since it was short-listed for the Walter Scott Prize. With a second book in the trilogy already out (The Ghosts of Rome) and the third (The City of Echoes) due early next year, it was high time to pick it up. I was fascinated by the story of the daring escapades of the Escape Line, the underground network of unlikely comrades, knowns as The Choir, who worked to get Allied escaped prisoners, diplomats and refugees out of Rome during the German occupation. But also just as interesting were the characters of those involved, in particular, the Vatican priest who led their mission.

The occupation began in September of 1943 led by Gestapo chief, Obersturmbannfüher Paul Hauptmann, who is under pressure from Himmler to get results. It doesn’t take long for him to notice that one particular priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, gets about a lot and has some interesting friends. Among them singer and the Irish diplomat Delia Kiernan, Jo Landini a countess, and Sir D’Arcy Osborne, a British envoy to the Vatican. It’s fascinating that the Vatican City was a safe haven, a tiny, neutral and independent state within Rome. This made it a kind of bolt-hole when a bombed and terrorised Rome became unsafe for so many escapees.

The book opens with Delia driving through the night to get one of The Choir, Major Sam Derry, to hospital when he falls dangerously ill with appendicitis. He’s dressed in a Nazi uniform, the car is struggling and there’s a curfew on. So plenty to ramp up the tension. Derry is an important cog in the wheel of their work, as an important mission looms – the Rendimento. Money accumulated by the group needs to be dispersed among the safe houses around Rome to get the escapees out before an expected clamp-down by Hauptmann in the new year. Dated for Christmas Eve, there’s an expectation that German forces will be a little thin on the ground, so a good time for the plan.

Presently Ugo would call the group to order and play the keynote on a harmonica. As the singing began, which usually happened ten or fifteen minutes after the last of us had arrived, sometimes white-faced and breathless, up the haunted steps, his practice was to systematically make his way around the table, from one of us to another, talking in whispers or showing scribbled notes on lavatory paper, which he would tear up and burn in the stove when we had memorised them. Rome was of course a nest of spies in those months; Hauptmann’s Gestapo had planted microphones widely. It was common knowledge that they had taken over the telephone exchange, that every operator was now an SS agent, every call monitored, every meeting of more than six people covertly photographed. A secured radio transmitter at Nazi Headquarters in the fashionable hotel neighbourhood had a direct channel to Hitler’s lair, the Berghof at Obersalszberg.

With Derry ill, Hugh is anxious to find a replacement for the Rendimento, and this becomes a part of the plot, leading up to the night itself. But the story is told in an unusual way, swapping between the characters of The Choir and even a bit with Hauptmann himself. Some of these appear as transcripts from BBC interviews, parts of a memoir, as well as regular narrative. It keeps things interesting and also gives insight into the lives and characters of the key players.

I also really enjoyed the dialogue. Hugh, a big-hearted man, can be blunt and witty, Delia has the charm of the Irish, D’Arcy the languid insolence of someone of his class. Then there’s the Italian candle-seller, Enzo Angelucci, who knows Rome as well as anybody and has the passion of a man whose city is under siege. Hauptmann himself is well-imagined – a ruthless narcissist – but with an ability to shake off the horrors of his day by vanishing to his bolt-hole, a lakeside house in woodland, dreaming of catching his priest.

While Joseph O’Connor admits in his author’s note that this is a novel and that he has fictionalised much of what happens to suit the story, you can tell he’s done a heap of research and knows his subject well. You get an authentic feel of what Rome was like, its cobbled streets and dark alleyways, the bomb craters and riverside. While we get a satisfying ending – a glimpse of The Choir two decades later with a This Is Your Life TV episode – there’s still a way to go with the war. So plenty more work for the Escape Line. I will very much look forward to the next two books.

My Father’s House handily suited one of the tasks in the 52 Book Club challenge – a book “inspired by the top-grossing movie the year you were born”. For me this was Spartacus (yes, I know that’s a long time ago), similarly set in Rome and also with rebels and fugitives. The book was the perfect choice for me – and a terrific five-star read.

Book Review: The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean – a novel about life in a Scottish town on the brink of change

~ Judith ~ 4 Comments

This book could almost be titled Love in the Time of Cholera, or possibly The Book Group if those titles hadn’t already been taken. The Cromarty Library Circle takes us to 1830 and a small coastal town in the north of Scotland, where a group of its more genteel citizens decide to start a small library, a kind of book group where each member chooses a book. These are purchased, read and passed on to the next in the circle, which also meets regularly to discuss them.

I must say I quite like the idea of this kind of book group. The circle includes the minister, Alasdair Mackay and his younger wife Rachel; the local gentry, Sir William Mackenzie, also with a younger wife, Charlotte, who is a friend of Rachel’s. There’s Janet Cameron, the hotelkeeper, and her bank-teller son Ludovic, and the spinster sisters Elspeth and Anna Rose. There’s a quaint old antiquarian and a young romantic-minded schoolteacher. The Hossacks, representing new money, are the owners of the rope works.

The story follows the problematic marriages of the Mackays, which is mostly happy, and the Mackenzies, which isn’t. We’ve got the predatory Farquhar Hossack, a thorough ne’er do well, and also medical student, making life uncomfortable for Ludovic, whom he’s bullied since childhood, and Ludovic’s sister, a young black girl brought back from a sugar plantation by Sir William. In the background, an abolitionist bill is slowly making its way through parliament, and this drives some dire predictions around future prosperity by those who have made their fortunes on the back of slavery.

Ludovic is friends with John, the schoolteacher, and Stanislaus, the clockmaker’s apprentice. Stan’s a refugee from Poland following the Russian quashing of an uprising, a former count now making his home in Cromarty. I enjoyed their discussions about the wider world – Ludovic dreaming of America, Stan dreaming of home, while John mostly seems to dream about the fine-looking ladies of the library circle.

‘But why are you not there?’
Despite the young man’s great intelligence, James often had to remind himself that Stanislas had much to learn about life in a Scottish town. He laughed. ‘Me? Because I am neither great nor good. And there are amongst the chosen ones a goodly few whose memories stretch back forty years and are not inclined to forgive what they have been so careful not to forget.’ What they would neither forgive nor forget was James’s youthful enthusiasm for the French and their revolution that had, in his younger days, drawn him to Paris itself.
‘But you have read more than those people. You have read more than anyone in this town.’
James took out his eyeglass and pointed it at Stanislas. ‘Not quite, Stan. Miller, the stonemason, has read more than anyone else in this town, and I can assure you, they haven’t invited him to join their number either.

The story is charming in its portrayal of these characters, all brought to life in a believable way, with their worries and foibles. But the issue of wealth from plantations worked by slaves casts a dark shadow. Also in the background there’s the emigration ships, preparing to take people to Canada and beyond. These are people who have lost their crofts due to the land enclosures – sheep replacing small-scale farming. Also in the harbour are the quarantine ships – an attempt to stem the spread of cholera which has been slowly creeping up the British Isles.

I loved these characters, their stories each coming to dramatic points throughout the book in a more than satisfying way. The stranglehold on people’s lives by duty and a strict social hierarchy, which I kind of expected. And also the power of the minister and his barbed comments about behaviour from the pulpit, which I hadn’t. But I’m also impressed by MacLean’s dept of research into the politics and concerns of the time which adds depth to the novel and creates an interesting world.

There is both joy and sadness in the story, and the feeling that while our characters have been through a lot by the end of the book, they have much more to face. But perhaps they are finally strong enough to weather the storms coming. The Cromarty Library Circle is a terrific historical novel and a five star read from me.

Book Review: The Undoing of Violet Claybourne by Emily Critchley – a tense, coming-of-age, historical thriller

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This novel was long-listed for a Historical Dagger Award, so I had high hopes for an intelligent mystery. The Undoing of Violet Claybourne is more psychological thriller than mystery and built a well-sustained creeping sense of dread, for this reader anyway.

Most of the novel takes place over the 1938 Christmas holidays when Gillian is invited by new school friend Violet to her family’s crumbling mansion, Thornleigh Hall. Gillian’s mother died when she was born, and her diplomat father in Egypt has remarried and now has a young son, leaving Gillian’s care to a penny-pinching aunt.

Gillian is delighted to be staying with a proper family, and one with good connections at that. Violet is a little childish to Gillian’s mind, still playing imaginary games, and with strange rituals – her “undoings” – which the modern reader will flag as an obsessive-compulsive disorder. But Violet is also affectionate, exuberant and kind.

Violet’s parents aren’t quite what Gillian might have hoped for. Her father is war-damaged and vague, her mother a vain and snooty woman who doesn’t believe in education for girls, but Gillian is soon swept away by Violet’s glamorous older sisters. Only Laura drinks too much and is unstable, while Emmeline, a student of psychology, is calculating and manipulative. Ignoring her school friend, Gillian attaches herself to the older girls with disastrous results.

There are secrets which slowly leak out during Gillian’s visit. Why is Emmeline so mean to Violet? What happened with the tutor who left in a hurry? There’s also a poacher who Flora’s father is oddly tolerant of and who lives on the estate. Then there’s the small boy Robin, also tolerated, the child of one of the maids. This family seems somewhat benighted, so when disasters happen, I wasn’t in the least surprised. Much of what goes wrong seems to come from their general sense of superiority, and the necessity of keeping up appearances.

When I think of the Christmas of 1938, what comes to mind is the sound of the dinner gong, the shine of the silverware, the rustle of Emmeline’s dress as she swept up the central staircase. Jazz music drifting through the drafty, shut-up rooms, scarlet-clad figures galloping across the snowy fields, and Violet sprawled star-shaped across her bed. “How good it is to be home, Gilly.”
    But these are nothing more than scrambled snapshots, a slideshow of disordered images on a fuzzy projector screen. If I am to remember, to truly remember, I must go back to the very beginning.

There’s a Boxing Day hunt, then a ball, as things go from bad to worse, and by the end of the Christmas break, I was relieved when Gillian’s story is rescued by the start of a new term and then the the war. Gillian throws in school for London and gets stuck into the war effort, a chance to forget about everything that happened at Thornleigh Hall. Her story is bookended by glimpses of Gillian in her seventies as the past comes back to her and she finds out what has happened to Violet and her family.

This a nicely paced story, the secrets revealed at just the right intervals, and the writing and characterisation both excellent. I was reminded a little of The Go-Between by L P Hartley as well as Nancy Mitford’s novels, with this book’s exploration of a dying way of life and how secrets can tear a family apart. The audiobook edition was excellent too, read by Nathalie Buscombe. All in all, it’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher – a riveting retelling of the Snow White fairytale

~ Judith ~ 4 Comments

Book challenges are a great way to step out of your reading comfort zone and discover fabulous new books you’d never normally think of reading. And this was how I discovered Hemlock and Silver, a book recommended by a couple of colleagues and which I might never have got around to except that it happened to fit not just one reading challenge but two: our local library’s Turn Up the Heat winter reading challenge (discover a new genre), and the 52 Book Club 2026 reading challenge (read a standalone fantasy novel).

I think it was the strong narrative voice which appealed to me from page one. We meet Anja, a healer specialising in poisons, scruffily attired and with a chime adder for company, when the King arrives at her workshop asking for her help. He wants her to cure his daughter Snow, whose health has been in decline, with some kind of poison suspected. While Anja is thought of as a healer, she is at heart a scientist, observing, noting and experimenting, often with roosters, but also on herself.

Anja is the daughter of a well-to-do merchant, she’s a big woman, abrupt and sometimes tactless as her more marriageable sisters often remind her. But she has the respect of those who need her help. Her new task will take her away from her home of Four Saints, to a desert enclave where the Princess is sequestered, accompanied by two of the King’s guard, chatty and cheery Aaron and the strong but taciturn Javier.

I had just taken poison when the king arrived to inform me that he had murdered his wife.
The poison was a distillate of chime-adder venom, which burned my sinuses when I took it off my wrist the way some people take snuff. The king was a tired man of medium height, with sandy hair and deep grooves worn into the sides of his face. I hadn’t recognized him at first when he stepped through the door of the stillroom. Well, why would I? The king was someone that I had seen far off, at the head of a long table or perched on a throne. Without context, he was simply a well-dressed man who had come in without even knocking.

As everything she knows about poisons throws up no obvious solution, Anja is forced to watch and wait and hope for a solution. Spying the Princess eat an apple that has not been brought from the palace kitchen’s, Anja is mysteriously drawn into a strange world involving mirrors, a talking cat and a sense of evil. There is indeed dark magic afoot, but T Kingfisher maintains a light touch with her storytelling, with humour and a touch of romance never far away.

She also does a brilliant job of creating a believable magical world that relates well to the original story. As such it was the perfect fantasy read for me, as we have that ‘stranger in a strange land’ feel, with Anja’s observant and scientifically aware character. She’s aided not only by a snarky cat who is only sometimes helpful, but by the practical and determined Javier. It’s a clever reinvention of a fairytale favourite, complete with poisoned apples, but missing the dwarfs.

I particularly enjoyed the audiobook narration of Hemlock and Silver, which was read by Jennifer Pickens who does the voices so well, I would seek out other books she reads on that basis alone. Hemlock and Silver is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Wreck by Catherine Newman – a funny and relatable novel about the trials of modern life

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

So I never got around to reading Sandwich, Catherine Newman’s earlier novel about Rocky, a woman going through menopause and what happens when her family are on holiday together at Cape Cod. It was on my to-read list for ages, but you can’t read everything, and I somehow didn’t read Sandwich. Now, I’m seriously tempted.

In Wreck, Rocky is back and it’s another summer. She and her husband have a busy household, with Willa, her PhD student daughter, living back home, as well as her ninety-two-year-old dad in the cabin in the garden. Rocky and Willa both suffer from anxiety and a few things happen which bring this to the fore. A train accident when a young man is killed, someone they know vaguely who went to the same school as Rocky’s son Jamie, has her caught up in the social media storm that erupts. And then there’s the rash.

Rocky’s skin condition seems to defy medical explanation and she goes through a ton of tests. Time passes, and it’s Halloween, then Thanksgiving and Christmas and these issues threaten to unbalance Rocky’s world. This might sound a bit grim, but it never is because Rocky is such good company and Newman is such a witty writer. The way she and Willa bounce off each other, her father’s random comments about modern life, memories and non-sequiturs, her good-humoured and sometimes goofy husband, all add to the fun.

An email dings in, and I click over to it. It’s a new message from the patient portal EarlyGateway, which shows up in my inbox as ppearlygateway. Pearly Gateway! Like it’s a missive from the afterlife I’ll be arriving at ASAP. You have new test results, the message says. I hover my finger over the link, sigh, click back over to the Internet. I don’t even want to know just yet. It’s Schrödinger’s rash: Until I look at the results, I simultaneously do and do not have skin cancer. I’ll just loiter around scrollingly for a bit.

At first I wasn’t really sure where this slice of life book was going. Is it about the rash? Is it about the accident? And yet it’s all so entertaining. Can we really laugh about this stuff? The medical stuff is brilliant though – the calm indifference of the patient portal and its raft of lengthy latinate terms, the backwards and forwards between clinic and specialist appointments, the scans and blood tests. The endless wait for results, for a diagnosis. We can see why Rocky gets anxious. On top of everything, Rocky and her dad in particular, miss their mother who has died a year or so ago.

Somewhere in the middle the threads come together and the book suddenly has a lot more substance. Rocky is so vividly written you can’t help wondering if there’s something of the author in her. Both thoughtful and humorous, Wreck is by the end, a life-affirming read, fairly short – a short book is nice every so often – and very relatable. Wreck is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Bone Lands by Pip Fioretti – first in an Outback Noir series and a cracking good story

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Pip Fioretti writes a kind of genre blending crime novel with Bone Lands, which combines everything that we love about Outback Noir – the big skies and harsh, dry landscapes, the Aussie battlers who live there – with a hardboiled policeman and puts it all in the historical setting of 1911. And as a character, mounted trooper Senior Constable Gus Hawkins has a lot going for him. He’s complex in that he’s well-educated and sounds it, with several tours in the Boer War behind him which have left him with both mental and physical scars. He’s smart and resourceful, but that old PTSD means he drinks too much and gets into fights.

But then, everyone here seems to get into fights, well, just about. It’s a hardscrabble existence out in the back-blocks of New South Wales. Hawkins’ little town of Calpa is a ‘blink and you miss it’ kind of place, with a pub, a post-office, the police station and not a lot else. It’s a one-man station, with tasks often concerned with managing unrest – there’s not a lot to do in Calpa but drink your wages away – local admin like gun permits and the like. But riding home from monitoring behaviour at a dance honouring the King’s coronation, Hawkins comes across a serious crime – three young members of the same family brutally murdered.

The Kirkbride family are well-off landowners, running a huge sheep station, and not well liked in this haves and have-nots kind of place. With the endless work required to make money from wool, they have a huge labour force of hardened men of the land. Life is cheap and violence comes easy. But when the violence is against their own, the grim landowner and patriarch Robert Kirkbride is oddly reluctant to have Hawkins nosing around too much, preferring to believe in the ‘robbery gone wrong’ theory. It doesn’t help that Gus has had a romantic connection with the remaining daughter, Flora.

It was a six-hour ride upriver to Bourke. In summer it was a bastard of a ride, one I preferred to do at night if I had a choice. The thing to do was carry a tin of Josephson’s Australian Ointment. Buckskin breeches were made so you didn’t chafe, but six or more hours in the saddle on a hot day and everything chafed, from balls to brain. The glare was blinding but our official hat was a jaunty pillbox affair, which would be just the thing for a Parisian gendarme but was ridiculous out here. I shoved it in a saddlebag and wore a cabbage-tree hat like every other man in the bush.
The sun was on its way across a vast blue sky, a westerly wind blowing. I noticed a shape ahead in the distance, moving slowly. Dancer stopped at the sight of it. He didn’t like things that moved, nor did he like things that didn’t move. So there we were, his ears pricked forward, completely still, every muscle tensed and ready to flee.
‘How’d you get into the police force, mate?’ I said, stroking his neck. ‘Bribed someone, eh?’

But Gus is determined to find out what happened. These were his friends and he wants to bring some closure for Flora, too, who has become unhinged by the deaths of her siblings. It doesn’t help when two detectives arrive from Sydney with their own way of doing things, but none of the nous for dealing with the locality or shifty farm labourers. If conflict is the linch pin of a good story, then this one has it in spades. You can’t help but feel for Gus, even if he is, quite often, his own worst enemy.

Other characters are interesting too, particularly in relation to Gus. His initial dislike of Trooper Lonergan, a somewhat wet behind the ears type, sent from Bourke to manage the station while Gus looks after the detectives, mellows into friendship. Other characters are lightly drawn but the author captures their essentials in a way that makes them immediate. The few female characters – this really is a man’s world – have to manage as best they can, and we can’t help but sympathise over how they’re treated. The plot steams along towards some surprising revelations to make for a very satisfying mystery.

Bone Lands is atmospheric and absorbing, with sentences that are nicely honed and laced with wit, making Gus Hawkins good company. It’s a great start to a series – there’s already a second book (Skull River) with another due out next year, which is good news. Bone Lands is a five-star read from me.

Book Review: Six Little Words by Sally Page – finding your family where you least expect it

~ Judith ~ 4 Comments

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this novel as much as I did. Six Little Words is a second chances story following Kate, a cancer survivor whose three daughters have all left home. She loves her house in a coastal Norfolk town and the little café that’s her local. But her life is missing something, possibly family. It’s at Luigi’s café that she strikes up a friendship with Pia, Danish and effortlessly stylish, and also here that a card appears on the community noticeboard. It simply says, ‘To be or not to be’. It turns out to be a call out for anyone wanting to join an amateur art group.

At one time, before she got a “sensible” job doing accounts, Kate had been a painter, and now thinks she’d like to try oils. Somehow she convinces Pia to go to the first meeting with her. The group has been jump-started by Tay, the girl who works at the café, something for Bardy, who’s a kind of foster father, to get him out of his rut. Bardy’s sons now live in New Zealand, his ex-wife is heading there too, and he’s feeling a bit sorry for himself. A former English teacher (Mr Shakespeare), he soon gets into organising the group and the story follows what happens when you throw a bunch of strangers together and add some art.

She was a golden yellow.
That luminous tone that sits between the glistening hue of honey and a wheatfield caught in the slanting rays of an August evening. He saw it as soon as he met her. He wonders sometimes if he glimpsed it, turned to the glow, even before she walked into his classroom: dull-red exercise books held in the crook of her arm, spines nestled against her hip.
She had introduced herself – Miss Anderson … Hana – a new teacher, like him. She laughed at his name. Most did. Then left for her own classroom, his life changed forever.

We also meet elderly couple Linda, a forthright former nurse, and her husband Leonard who won’t wear his hearing aids. Lou (Luigi) is Bardy’s best friend and he turns up, perhaps dragged along by Tay. And there’s Bardy himself, who has a gift in that he sees people as colours. He writes little colour themed poems, but keeps all this a secret, pretending he wants to write stories. Others have secrets, but nobody has anything like the secret that Kate’s hiding. Not that she means to hide it, it’s just that events sweep everyone along before she has a chance to mention it.

And of course everyone’s got a problem, big or small, and over the course of the story, they come to the surface. Characters rally round, and what begins as an art group becomes something more. There’s plenty of humour in the way the characters bounce off each other, misunderstand things and eventually sort things out. There’s romance too, which keeps the plot simmering along. And then there’s the Bard. Lovers of Shakespeare will enjoy the quotations that begin each chapter.

I particularly liked the way Sally Page conjures up the Norfolk setting, with the marshes and wading birds – Leonard’s a keen bird-watcher so you learn a bit about that too. It all adds up to a lovely story, a gentle but thought-provoking read. I enjoyed the novel as an audiobook, and the reading was excellent, performed by Christine Rendel. Six Little Words is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Tata by Valérie Perrin – an evocative story with a complex web of family secrets

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Valérie Perrin is well-known for her bestseller, Fresh Water for Flowers, a book that’s been on my to-read list for a little while. So when Tata popped up on Netgalley, I grabbed the chance to read it. And I’m so glad I did. Tata (which means Auntie) is such an engrossing story, bringing us into the world of Agnès Dugain, a film director who has been unable to work since her actor husband left her. A phone call out of the blue from a small town in Burgundy informs her that her beloved Aunt Colette has died. Which would be sad news, indeed, except Agnès believes her aunt was buried in the Gueugnon cemetery three years ago.

It soon transpires that Colette lived quietly in a secluded house for the last three years, carrying a secret. Agnès leaves Paris to view the body and to discover anything she can about her aunt’s final years to solve the mystery of who is buried in her aunt’s place. The story flips back to the 1950s and the farm where Colette grew up with her little brother, Jean. There’s not much parental love, and the children are expected to work, rather than further their education. But, in spite of this, Jean is discovered to be a musical prodigy.

Colette will do anything to protect Jean, but fortunately there’s help from Blaise, both her friend and the landowner’s son from the chateau, where there’s a magnificent piano. We learn of her apprenticeship to a cobbler in the town, and where Colette finds a niche and some happiness. Meanwhile, Agnès receives from Colette’s good friend and co-conspirator a suitcase full of cassette tapes and so listens to her aunt’s story in her own words.

There are numerous plot threads, and more secrets are slowly revealed. We’re taken to Gueugnon in the 1960s, and its football team, back further to events of the war and its legacy. You read about Agnès’s own career and how she met her famous actor husband. As she looks into the past, Agnès is forced out of the slump that has taken over her since her divorce and reconnects with old friends and makes new ones. She starts to think about a new story.

Throughout are numerous cultural references, including the movies that have inspired Agnès, the music of her father, the popular fashions and songs that evolved over time. I loved coming across film titles of movies I’d also loved, such as La Double Vie de Véronique, The Piano, and Un Coeur en Hiver, which I remember from a film festival. There are scenes in cafés, although Agnès doesn’t often have any appetite, but others eat and we’re treated to that as well. But at heart it’s a story about what we will do to protect the people we love, about friendship and the ties that make us a family. It’s heartbreaking – there are cruel characters as well as terrible historical events – but it’s also hopeful, charmingy written and full of wit.

Tata seemed to me a quintessentially French novel, and while I knew nothing of this particular small town, it was easy to imagine the stone houses, the narrow streets, the little shops and cafés. And the style of storytelling seems very French as well. I loved it. I could happily have started back at page one and read it all again. Tata is due for publication on 23 June, and I read it thanks to Netgalley and Europa Editions. It’s a five-star read from me.