Micro Review 8 (2025)

 

Poor Girls by Clare Whitfield (Bloomsbury Books)

I had this book marked as a February release and so had been saving it for a New Year read but I think that in fact this was published in 2024 - oops!

It was the premise of this book that drew me in - set just post WW1 and all about how the girls and women who'd had freedom and money during the war thanks to their work settled back in to an ungrateful society.

1922. Twenty-four-year-old Eleanor Mackridge is horrified by the future mapped out for her – to serve the upper classes or find a husband. During the war, she found freedom in joining the workforce at home, but now women are being put back in their place.

Until Eleanor crosses paths with a member of the notorious female-led gang the Forty Elephants: bold women who wear diamonds and fur, drink champagne and gin, who take what they want without asking. Now, she sees a new future for herself: she can serve, marry – or steal. 

I raced through the first part of the book which covered this return to society but then found my reading slowed down as Eleanor leaves home and joins the London gang. In this part I found that there were a few 'information dumps' from Whitfield as she explained how the gang worked and they didn't flow as well for me. Some of the actions and descriptions were also a bit too dark for me - I'm a real coward in my reading and viewing!

Overall I'm glad I read this book, it is always good to try new things and I liked the social history aspects a lot but rather than more crime/thriller books like this one I'd rather read the non-fiction books that formed the research for the novel!

Microreviews 6 and 7 (2025)

 

Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 and some recently read books.

While I was poorly I made an effort to read some of the physical books that I had piled up around the house and with January 27th being the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz it seemed fitting that two of the books were about the Holocaust.

Last year when I posted about the 20 books that had stayed with me the most since reading two of this list were books about the Holocaust and I did write my MA dissertation on the way that it is portrayed in children's literature so it should be no surprise at all that I had books waiting on my TBR that covered this topic.

The first one I read was Other People's Houses by Lore Segal (Sort of Books)

This is a fictionalised autobiography covering her life in Vienna pre-1938 and then her childhood in Britain after she was one of the children evacuated on the Kindertransport. It was a fascinating read because even though it was a novel it was so detailed and personal that it could be mistaken for autobiography.  Segal explains this choice in her afterword explaining that while what she writes feels like her truth she knows that this isn't the case as historical facts don't line up with her memories and so to avoid complaints writing it in a fictional way let her tell her story as she saw it.

Segal was lucky in that her parents did also manage to escape Vienna and come to the UK (although due to a quirk in the system they were not allowed to live with Lore) but the feelings and issues that this caused are also covered in the book. Segal doesn't always come across in the best light but again this adds to the accurate feel of the book.

I Seek a Kind Person by Julian Borger (John Murray)

Like Segal's book this also is about Jewish children who left Vienna in 1938/39 but rather than coming on the official Kidnertransport the children featured here came via adverts placed in the Manchester Guardian - desperate parents pleading with British people to foster their children.

The book is centred on Borger's father, who was one of these children and who sadly committed suicide in the 1980s - as Borger says, the reach of the Holocaust didn't end with the liberation of the Camps in 1945. We learn much more about life in Vienna before the war and then about the means and methods that people did escape Austria before war broke out.

This book is more scholarly and impersonal than Segal's account but they compliment each other perfectly and this one shows that even though Other People's Houses is all from memory Segal's memories were accurate and although each journey was different there were incredible similarities in all of the evacuees stories.

Neither book made easy reading, but there is (dark) humour in them both and even though I have read other books about Kindertransport experiences I learned new things from each book and in the challenging times we are currently living in it seems important to read and remember what happened 80 years ago in the hope that it can't happen again.

Micro Review 5 (2025)

 

What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts (Transworld)

Before Christmas I took part in an online bookish Secret Santa run by the brilliant Big Green Bookshop . To take part you paid for an unknown book and then sent Simon an email saying what type of book you liked (and didn't like) and he found a surprise book for you and a wrapped parcel containing a fancy tea, a bar of chocolate and a book arrived before Christmas. If that wasn't enough work he also spent time to match you up with another person with similar tastes to create new bookish friends.

My parcel came with a lovely bar of Green and Blacks chocolate and inside was this book - and it ticked soooooo many of my boxes - translated fiction, set in Japan, about libraries and about books.

It was another perfect read for while I was poorly.

Like lots of the books in this genre it is more a collection of short stories that are connected by either a location or by chance encounters with other characters. In this case the main point of connection is a library that runs from a community centre that also offers lots of other activities. The characters are all visiting the centre for other things but end up in the library where they are helped to find the books they need and then also recommended a 'wild card' book which at first seems to make no sense to them...

As is to be expected in books like this the books all help to change the characters' lives and the book is a love letter to both the library and the book.

I've now read a lot of this type of Japanese fiction and every time I think that I've reached saturation point another good read comes along although I'm not totally sure how I missed this one when it was first published a few years back. 

Micro Review 4 (2025)

 

The Baby Dragon Cafe by A T Qureshi (Harper Collins)

Having been felled by a cold that morphed into a chest and sinus infection over the past 10 days I've felt decidedly below par recently and this book really was a case of right book at the right time.

The whole cosy 'romantasy' (romantic fantasy) genre has pretty much passed me by, but the cover of this book just made me want to read it and thanks to NetGalley I did get an early copy of the book although it was about publication date by the time I started it.

It really is nothing new in the world of literature and it doesn't even tip in to the enemies to friends to lovers trope - it really is about two people coming together in a cafe aimed at carers of baby dragons as they raise and train their own dragon.

At times there were hints of darker paths that the book could have taken (for example poaching or illegal and cruel sports) but it confounded my expectations by just remaining a gentle story with a romance blossoming.

I do wonder if I'd been fully well when I read it if the book would have touched me so much but I surprised myself by falling for it completely and being pleased that there are more in this world planned!

Micro Review 3 (2025)

 

The Artist by Lucy Steeds (John Murray Press)

Wow - two weeks into 2025 and I am still keeping on top of my vague bookish resolution with another review of a NetGalley book that will be published in January! I think that I will need a lie down soon...

As can be seen from my best of lists from 2024 I do like a novel that is based around art/music and in general the ones that aren't biographical work the most for me. I enjoyed Hamnet and The Painter's Daughters but I do spend too much time looking up the 'real' details to fully lose myself in these books.

The Artist could be about any of the artists working pre or post WW1 in France but is all based around a completely fictional artist - however it is obviously written by someone who knows a lot about art as it feels utterly real. I felt I could see, smell and touch every item described in the book and as I was reading it I am sure that I felt the hot Provencal summer sun beating down on me, even in a Norfolk winter.

It was refreshing to read a book that is set in France in the 1920s for it not to carry on into a WW2 setting, and the flashbacks to WW1 were beautiful and definitely opened up a new seam of history for me. 

There are a few twists and mysteries in the book but they aren't the point of the narrative as such and even when 'real' people pop up in the story it feels organic and appropriate.

The Bookseller has tipped this as one of the debuts of the year and I have to agree - it is published on 30th January and really recommend it! 2025 is really shaping up as a good book year. 

Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with an advance copy via NetGalley

Micro review 2 (2025)

 

The Life of Herod the Great by Zora Neale Hurston (HQ - Harper Collins)

Keeping on top of my vague 2025 plan and reviewing another NetGalley book that is published this January - this time the historical novel about Herod the Great.

I've long loved books that retell parts of history in novel form, and this includes novels based on parts of the Bible - The Red Tent from Anita Diamant came out back in 1997 and I think that I read and loved that one very close to its original publication date.

This book wasn't fully completed in Hurston's lifetime and has now been published using the drafts, notes, and letters that she left about the book and for the most part I think that the book works really well. Towards the end the details become more sparse and large chunks of time are passed over quite quickly, which is at odds with the rest of the book but there's just enough left that the book hangs together.

The Herod at the heart of this book is the King Herod from the Nativity in the Bible and we learn about how he came to rule Judea and what type of man he was. Hurston has obviously researched many of the contemporaneous sources as well as later interpretations and you are left with the idea of a man who could have called for the Massacre of the Innocents as in the Gospels or who might not have done and is on the receiving end of biased history - an interesting point to ponder.

I think for me the best part of this book was the way it clarified in my mind how all the various books/histories I'd read about before were actually linked. It hadn't actually occurred to me that Herod the Great and the birth of Jesus occurred roughly at the same time as is covered in Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra / Julius Caesar  and Robert Graves' I, Claudius. I felt spectacularly dim as all the dots connected but also these other reference points did help to colour in some of the gaps from the book.

I'm certainly going to look out more of Hurston's books now - probably starting with Moses, Man of the Mountain.

Micro review 1 (2025)

 

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen (Sceptre)

Wow! What a start to the 2025 reading year - if it continues like this I am really excited to see what else is coming!

One of my (unofficial) New Year Resolutions is to try and read the books that NetGalley give me access to much closer to publication day so that when I love them I can talk about them instantly and this was rewarded by the first two novels I've read this year.

Homeseeking is a sweeping following the lives of two people - Suchi and Haiwen who meet as children in 1930s Shanghai and then thanks to world events are separated. They meet occasionally through the decades until the (almost) present day when there is time to tell their full life stories.

I don't want to say much more about the plot because discovering how their lives unfold organically is what gives the book its emotional punch.

The way Chen weaves the two characters together is very clever and I don't think that I've come across a book told in this way, or at least told so well in this way, for a long time and it really helped move the story through time in an organic way.

The author's notes at the beginning of the book are essential to readers to explain why the protagonists seem to change name but apart from that there is very little extraneous historical research dumped in to the novel. Chen gives just enough details for you to follow world events and politics that influence the plot but never dumps huge chunks of history - if you are interested then there's plenty of other books/information out there to give more information and the works used for research are all given at the end of the novel. 

I've already recommended this book personally to several people and I really hope they enjoy it - I'm just glad I read it now and didn't save it for a summer holiday read.