Micro review 12

 

Disobedient by Elizabeth Freemantle (Michael Joseph)

I've just been lucky enough to spend a long weekend in Venice, surrounded by wonderful architecture and art so when I was looking for a book to read on my journey home Disobedient seemed the obvious choice from my Kindle.

This is a retelling of Artemesia Gentileschi's early years as she learns her craft and is caught up in the politics, intrigues and scandals of Rome in the early 1600s. Her life was quite shocking and she was subject to some terrible abuses but overcame them all to become a wonderful, if often overlooked, artist.

Rome 1611.

A jewel-bright place of change, with sumptuous new palaces and lavish wealth on display. A city where women are seen but not heard.

Artemisia Gentileschi dreams of becoming a great artist. Motherless, she grows up among a family of painters - men and boys. She knows she is more talented than her brothers, but she cannot choose her own future. She wants to experience the world, but she belongs to her father and will belong to a husband.

As Artemisia patiently goes from lesson to lesson, perfecting her craft, she also paints in private, recreating the women who inspire her, away from her father's eyes.

Until a mysterious tutor enters her life. Tassi is a dashing figure, handsome and worldly, and for a moment he represents everything that a life of freedom might offer. But then the unthinkable happens.

In the eyes of her family, Artemisia should accept her fate. In the eyes of the law, she is the villain.

But Artemisia is a survivor. And this is her story to tell.

The book definitely evoked Rome of the time, and I could clearly 'see' the action (and smell it too, such was the power of the writing) but at times I felt that the writing was too Twenty-first century and I did step out of the period setting.

I'd have loved this book to have been longer and contained more about the art and methods used - maybe not quite as detailed as Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy but heading this way! Once I read the author's notes at the end I understood the authorial choices more and came to admire the book in an extra way.

 

Kentish Book Boy returns - part six

 

The Monkey Who Fell from the Future by Ross Welford (Harper Collins)

Synopsis

The year is 2425. Centuries after a catastrophic meteor collision, nature has retaken the earth. In a small town in what was once Englnd, young Ocean Mooney and the monkey-owning Duke Smiff have just dug up a 400-year old table computer.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Thomas Reeve and his genius cousin Kylie create the Time Tablet - a device which they hope will allow them to communicate with the future.

But when the Time Tablet malfunctions live on television, Thomas and Kylie are sucked in to the tear 2425 - and only have 24 hours to return home, and save the future of humanity...

My views on the book

I really enjoyed this book; my favourite part was the prologue - so descriptive and it really paints a picture in my head. I felt the epilogue was kind of funny as it linked back to the middle of the book!

Recommendation

Really recommend this book.
No other words for it.

Another one for me to borrow I feel - KBB has interesting (and great) taste in books!

Post holiday reading round up

 

A fortnight doing nothing.

Mr Norfolkbookworm and I have just spent two glorious weeks in Corfu. We did absolutely nothing except a few gentle walks, lie on the beach, swim in the sea and visit lovely restaurants. Oh and I did some reading...in fact I did a lot of reading as I got through 27 books in the fortnight!

A quick list of books and thoughts follow!

An Astronomer in Love - Antoine Laurain (Gallic Books) - a beautiful whimsical tale about love, Paris and the transit of Venus.

Greek Lessons - Han Kan, tr. Deborah Smith & Emily Yae Won (Hamish Hamilton) - an odd little book about a man losing his sight and woman who has become mute, not quite sure I understood all of it.

In Memoriam - Alice Winn (Random House) - a WW1 novel that draws inspiration from public school magazines from the era and also Journey's End. I loved this, a contender for best of the year!

Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir - Daniel Finkelstein (Harper Collins) - a book that tied in with my reading from just before our holiday as well as covering a far less talked about WW2 experience of being Russian prisoners of war. Incredibly moving.

Madame Pommery: Creator of Brut Champagne - Rebecca Rosenberg (Lion Heart Publishing) - a fun historical fiction novel based around real people. Definitely made me want a glass of bubbles while I was reading it!

The Air Raid Book Club - Annie Lyons (Harper Collins) - an enjoyable WW2 novel set around a bookshop/bookclub.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking - T Kingfisher (Argyll Productions) - a fun fantasy novel that owes a lot to Tamora Pierce and Terry Pratchett.

The Half Life of Valery K - Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury) - Wow! What a book! Not an easy read and one that gave me some pretty vivid dreams but was an edge of your seat read - another contender for book of the year!

Yellowface - Rebecca F Kuang (Harper Collins) - This is one of the most talked about books of the year but for me it was all hype and the book was a disappointment.

Hazardous Spirits - Anbara Salam (Hachette) - for an advance project, can't talk about yet!

The Moon Represents My Heart - Pim Wangtechawat (Simon & Schuster) - another much talked about book that left me cold. All things I like in a book - time travel, mystery and strong family ties but I just didn't see the point of this one.

Last House Before the Mountain - Monika Helfer tr. Gillian Davidson (Bloomsbury) - a multi generational novel from Austria which included a strand about WW1 in Austria which isn't a common setting. For me it felt more style than substance but an interesting read.

The Farmer's Wife - Helen Rebanks (Faber and Faber) - I liked the recipes and insights in to farming but to me the rest of the book just felt a bit weird and more like a conversation she should have been having with her husband or a therapist.

Moderate Becoming Good Later: Sea Kayaking the Shipping Forecast - Katie Carr and Toby Carr (Hachette) - a wonderfully moving travel memoir of Toby's journey around the UK in his kayak.

The Shadow Of Perseus - Claire Heywood (Hodder & Stoughton) - I love the way that Heywood retells the Greek legends but seeing how they might have played out with no divine intervention.

House of Odysseus - Claire North (Little Brown) - A sequel to Ithaca which I read last year. Another retelling of some of the classic stories and I read this while overlooking a rock that is supposed to be Odysseus's ship so very apt!

The Fire - Daniela Krien tr. Jamie Bulloch (Hachette) - This was an interesting look at how the fall of the Berlin Wall has impacted through the generations in the former East Germany and how despite the publicity integration isn't as easy as it is said. I didn't like all the strands of the story but it was a book I could absolutely 'see' as I was reading it.

The Rich - Rachel Lynch (Canelo) - for an advance project so can't talk about yet.

Maame - Jessica George (St Martin's) - I thought that this might be too much of a Sally Rooney-esque 'millennial' novel for me but instead it was incredibly moving and had a lot more depth than I expected, another book of the year contender!

Sweet Bean Paste - Durian Sukegawa tr. Alison Watts (Simon & Schuster) I loved this tale about second chances, unexpected friendships and Japanese food, and also an unexpected link to a favourite Greek set novel.

Morgan is My Name - Sophie Keetch (Simon & Schuster) - I've not read many Arthurian legends and this was a great introduction to the new strand of stories and being a feminist retelling I was instantly hooked and I can't wait for the next book!

A Spell of Good Things - Ayobami Adebayo (Canongate) - I loved Adebayo's first book (Stay With Me) and had really been looking forward to this one. While I loved the setting and found the story interesting, the (over)use of Nigerian phrases and words meant I wanted subtitles as I read the book which kept it at a distance.

Safiyyah's War - Hiba Noor Khan (Andersen Press) - A YA novel about a Muslim family in Paris during WW2 and how the mosque was a centre of resistance and survival. While not a retelling of anyone specific family this is based on research and real life and was a really powerful read.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop - Satoshi Yagisawa tr. Eric Ozawa (Manilla Press) - billed as being perfect for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and I agree with this and for me the book was just a bit too slight and convenient to become one of my favourite Japan set books.

The Girl with the Red Hair - Buzzy Jackson (Random House) - another Dutch set WW2 book, this time fiction but taking true like happenings as the base. The Girl with the Red Hair was an active member of the resistance and as well as helping Jews to hide from the Nazis she also comminted huge acts of sabotage and violence to help defeat the Germans. Definietly a story that needs to be told, and a Hannie Schaft should be as well known as Anne Frank.

Yours from the Tower - Sally Nicholls (Andersen Press) - a fun epistoloary novel about three 18 year olds in the 1890s, it didn't quite conjure the period for me as it was just a bit modern but I loved spotting the books that had inspired Nicholls' writing!

The Heroines - Laura Shepperson (Little Brown) - My last book that I finished on the plane home and another retelling of a Greek myth. Sadly this wasn't a great novel and it needed a much better editor and fact checker.

Kentish Book Boy returns - part five

 

The Rescue of Ravenwood by Natasha Farrant (Faber and Faber)

Synopsis

To Bea and Raffy, Ravenwood is home. To Noa, it is a welcome refuge. In its own way, the house rescued them, even with a fallen tree taking up most of the kitchen. But now they're about to lose it and there is nothing they can do...or is there?

We all have choices.

Bea can stow away across Europe on a train.

Raffy can keep climbing the tree.

And Noa can find out who started the fire.

My views on the book

I find it a very powerful and symbolic novel. To me, there is a deep family connection.

Recommendation

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a good, meaningful book.

Once more KBB manages to pique my curiosity with his book choice/review and I'm hoping I can sneak this one of his book case next time I visit!

Micro Reviews - connected books (10 & 11)

 

Changing the way we think about the Dutch experiences of World War Two

A few years ago I read and reviewed Bart van Es's book The Cut Out Girl which opened my eyes to another side of the Dutch experience in WW2, as I said then the prevailing feeling is that the Dutch had a good war, protected the Jews and stood up for the Nazis but this really isn't the case.

Nina Siegal's The Diary Keepers (William Collins) uses the extensive archives of WW2 Diaries held in Amsterdam to tell a rounded story of WW2 as people recorded at the time.

The book includes many voices but concentrates on diaries from a Nazi-sympathising Dutch policeman, an ardent  female Nazi party supporter, an ordinary factory worker, a Jewish woman working for the Jewish Council, a Jewish journalist held in Westerbork Concentration Camp for well over a year, and a Christian woman at the heart of a resistance ring who protected dozens of Jewish people.

With Siegal's commentary framing entries a much fuller picture of Holland between 1940 and 1945 this was eye opening, even for me who has read so much around the Holocaust. There's lots of balancing views given but the reader is left to draw their own conclusions overall - and who knows how any of us would actually act if we were in the same situation.

After finishing this book I was approved for a book on NetGalley called My Friend Anne Frank by Hannah Pick-Goslar (Ebury Publishing). Pick-Goslar was, like Anne Frank, a German Jewish girl who's family had moved to Amsterdam in the 1930s. She was good friends with Frank and lived next door to them- she is mentioned in several times in Anne's diary.

However this book is so much more than someone tagging on to Frank's fame. While Pick-Goslar did survive the war, and Belsen-Bergen, her account of her experiences is one of the most moving Holocaust accounts I've read and I think that it does the incredible story a disservice to market it in terms of being about Anne Frank.

It tied in so nicely with The Diary Keepers  as many of the people Pick-Goslar talks about in Amsterdam are also featured in depth is Siegal's book and both narratives help build a full picture of the choices people had to make and of how life was at the time.

Pick-Goslar's account of liberation from the camps and her physical recuperation was as gripping as her actual wartime life, and filled in more of the "what came next" narrative for me. I really hope that this book does become as important in the Holocaust memoir cannon as Anne Frank's Diary.

The difficult second novel - but not for readers!

 

Four Seasons in Japan by Nick Bradley (Transworld)

Back in 2020 one of my friends was raving about a book called The Cat and The City and was insistent I had to stop everything and read it *now*. I was decidedly skeptical as Alison and I do not often share the same taste in books. I am glad that I listened to her as the book was excellent and I've been keeping my eyes out for the author's next book.

Four Seasons in Japan has just come out and it was, I think, even better. This is a clever book that uses the 'book in a book' device to weave two beautiful stories - one about Flo (a character we met in The Cat) who is looking for her next translation project and then the book she finds and falls in love with.

All of the characters jumped off the page for me and I loved the slight air of mystery and 'out of time' feeling I got from the book. Being a fan of translated fiction I also really liked the parts of the book that looked at this process.

Alison and I went to Nick's book launch this week and as he talked about the book I fell in love with it even more, so many little nuances that are obvious now I think about is, and also knowing how personal parts of the book are but without being autobiographical.

Nick also admitted that this was his second difficult novel - well in fact as the original 2nd novel was scrapped (bar three ideas) perhaps it should be known as the brilliant third novel - but as a reader I definitely didn't feel this at all and really hope that the book does brilliantly.

Many thanks to Transworld for allowing me to read this book early via NetGalley

Too soon? (Micro reviews 8 & 9)

 Looking back on Covid around the world - sort of.

It was inevitable that the Covid pandemic was going to spawn a lot of books, already you can see it filtering through into fiction and there have been a lot of memoirs from medical professionals published. In the past couple of months I've also noticed a few memoirs coming through from people in other countries talking about their experiences of lockdown. So far the ones I've come across have been all from English speakers and set in western cities but it has been interesting getting an insight into lockdowns around the world.

The first book I came across was These Days are Numbered by Rebecca Rosenblum (Dundurn Press/NetGalley) which is a collection of Facebook posts that Rosenblum wrote between March 2020 and March 2022. She lived in an apartment on the edge of a reasonably affluent Toronto suburb but was keenly aware how lucky she and her husband were compared to lots of their neighbours.

Being a collection of Facebook posts this book did, at times. feel overlong and repetitive but thinking back to this time in Norwich it was overlong and repetitive so this may be more accurate than annoying! 

The second book was Matthew Kneale's Roman Plague Diaries (Atlantic Books), set in Rome and focussing on the first Roman lockdown of March 2020 until early summer 2020. Again Kneale lives in an apartment in a reasonable affluent area of the city but the Italian/Roman lockdowns were more severe than others I've read and the lack of access to open spaces even for the Kneale family becomes an issue.

This book is a diary and also a meditation of being a non Italian living in the city, Italian history and politics as a whole plus also a look at how nothing in the world is actually new...

Both books were thoughtful in that they did query how people not as fortunate as themselves were coping with the rules, and they did convey the fear, oppressiveness and the way time really did seem to behave oddly. 

On the whole I preferred Kneale's taut and focussed book rather than the sprawling stream of consciousness from Rosenblum but it was great to get a more global view of the pandemic - I would like to hear more from the developing world, or even in translation to see how non English speaking world found this unsettling time. 

Award Season (Micro Reviews 6 & 7)

 

The International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award

May seems to be a big month for book awards, several prestigious ones have been announced, there's been shortlists galore and just this week Café Nero announced it was starting a new awards (hopefully to replace the much missed Costa award). However just this week two prizes were given out in awards I follow more closely - and to the books I'd have picked which is unheard of!

The International Booker Prize went to Time Shelter by the Bulgaria author Georgi Gospodinov and his translator Angela Rodel (Orion books).

I was about three quarters of the way through this book when it won and I enjoyed it greatly - indeed it was the one that leapt off the shortlist to me initially and the one I made sure to read first when my library reservations came in.

It deals with the idea of recreating rooms and apartments from different eras in time to help those with dementia and other memory problems. These are such a success that people run with the idea at ever bigger scales with scary (but all too believable) results. For me the very end of the book was a little out of balance with the main part but it was still a great read and I am very pleased that it won.

The Dublin Literary Award was awarded to Marzahn Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp and her translator from the German Jo Heinrich (Peirene Press).

I read this book last year and reviewed it here, it also made my 'best of 2022' list and I was very pleased that this won from the shortlist.

The Dublin Literary Award is very different from most as all the books on the longlist are nominated by libraries from around the world, including Norfolk Libraries. We put Lessons in Chemistry forward this year (along with a few libraries) and while we made the longlist it got no further. One year we'll predict the winner!

Micro Review 5 (2023)

 

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris (Duckworth Books)

I was quite excited by the Women's Prize longlist this year as several books I'd read and loved were on it, sadly when it came to the shortlist none of these made the cut, and (contrary to every other reader I've met) the one I had read wasn't a hit with me at all.

On reading the blurbs for the others I want to try some of them but it was Black Butterflies that instantly caught my eye - the striking cover also helped with this!

After the fall of the Berlin Wall one of my other big historical memories of the 1990s is the conflict in the Balkans. We had our first family holiday abroad in 1990 and we went to Yugoslavia. We loved the place and planned on going back in 1991 but then Croatia declared independence shortly before our holiday and we ended up in Mallorca (quite a different location!). Following on from this declaration the area descended in to various conflicts, including the siege of Sarajevo, the setting for this novel.

This book details the siege through the eyes of Zora - an artist and teacher in Sarajevo, it starts before things descend in to utter chaos and Zora is able to get her husband and elderly mother out of the city to relatives in England but she remains in the city to tidy up the loose ends. Before she can leave the airport is closed and the city besieged.

The book focuses very much on the daily life of the people trapped in the city, the general violence, the hunger and the fear - it is not particularly about any sectarian divides and definitely not about neighbours turning on neighbours - and I found it utterly compelling and very hard to put down.

Parts of the books are quite gruesome but are definitely not gratuitous, and I also liked that through Zora's eyes you see how you can become desensitised to anything in extreme situations. Not an easy read but a book I'm really pleased to have read. The Balkan conflicts have faded in our memories and this book shows that Sarajevo in the 1990s wasn't that different to the WW2 sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad and deserve to be remembered.

Quick reads don't mean easy reads

 

Brilliant Books by Barrington Stoke

I've been quite open here on the blog, and in real life, about the struggles I had with reading a few years ago and how much I support initiatives such as the Quick Reads books for adults. Over the past year or so I've been reading more books aimed at children and young adults who also experience difficulties with reading - whether through dyslexia or other reasons.

When I was a bookseller I was aware of Barrington Stoke as a publisher and really admired their work but they did slip completely off of my radar until recently when I rediscovered them thanks to the brilliant WW2 inspired books by Tom Palmer whose books I've blogged about before.

More recently I've been looking at their forthcoming books more closely and discovered that some of my favourite writers have published books with them. 

Ravencave - Marcus Sedgewick

Marcus Sedgewick, who sadly died recently, was the very first author I ran an event with when his novel Floodland was published back in 2000 and I'd only been a bookseller for about 6 months. Well ahead of its time Floodland was the first Cli-Fi book I came across and I loved that it had an East Anglian setting however I digress...one of Sedgewick's last books was Ravencave  and its published by Barrington Stoke.

This is a clever tale that right until 3/4 of the way through made me think it was going to be one type of book when in fact it was quite a different tale altogether. It is also written in clear, simple language with some evocative images to help move the tale along. The publisher rates it as having an interest level of 11+ but a reading age of 8+ and wow - if a book that is written to such incredible margins can surprise me to the extent it did what a powerful piece of writing it is!

Jodie - Hilary McKay

Another author I have loved for years (bust sadly haven't yet been fortunate enough to meet although Kentishbookboy did and got a book signed for me!) and who has written an incredibly good book for Barrington Stoke that is just published.

In this book a class is on a residential trip to a nature reserve and Jodie, who is a new pupil at the school, is out of her depth and unhappy which leads to all sorts of adventures and accidents. Something has happened in Jodie's past but this isn't discussed in the book at all,  as this isn't a book about what has happened or what will happen tomorrow it is all about what is happening right now which makes it a fascinating read and very different from the normal type of book I read.

I can imagine that the immediacy of the narrative, the action and the edge of your seat adventure/ghost story will all help reluctant readers discover a page turner. What is incredible is how McKay has managed to create such a feeling of place (a presumably North Sea) salt marsh within such  a short tale and not got bogged down (pun intended) in description.

I'm in awe of all authors anyhow but the skill needed in creating th

is type of book is incredible and I can't wait to explore more books from Barrington Stoke, whether from writers I already know or ones that are new to me!

Micro Review 4 (2023)

 

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin (Fourth Estate)

This book has been longlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize and while I don’t have time to read the whole longlist this one really leapt out at me and I am so pleased that it did.

To my shame the Vietnam War is not something I know a lot about, in fact I think I know more about the end of French rule in Indochina than I do about the American conflict, and the fallout through the 1970s and 1980s (and most of this comes from the musical Miss Saigon which is not a great admission).

Wandering Souls  is told in many voices but all of them relate to the story of siblings Anh, Thanh and Minh as they flee Vietnam in one of the small boats first to Hong Kong and then the UK. To say much more will spoil the way the book unfolds and I really wouldn’t want that to be the case as I loved it so much.

It is a shortish book but one that punches well above its weight in many ways and at more than one point I was in tears as well as reaching for my phone to research more about the things mentioned. It opens up so many things to talk about, and I also liked the exploration of intergenerational trauma which I’ve read a lot about regarding the Holocaust but hadn’t thought about in regards to other conflicts.

I also came away really wanting to try some of the food that is eaten in the book but this feels a very shallow response to such a great book.

Kentish Book Boy returns - part four

 

SkyWake Invasion by Jamie Russell (Walker Books)

Synopsis:

Casey Henderson – aka CASEY_FLOW – is obsessed with online team shooter SkyWake, which has taken the world by storm. The Ghost Reapers are a high-ranking team, and when Casey’s in the zone, anything seems possible.

Then, at a live SkyWake tournament, things start to get weird. The Red Eye alien “cosplayers” seem to have real guns, a massive spaceship looms overhead… and kids are going missing.

My view on the book:

Personally, I find this book very weird. I don't really know how to put my true view into words.

However, I am intrigued as to what the sequel has to offer.

Recommendation:

Honestly, I am giving it a 3.5/5 because it could be better.

Maybe more action/drama is needed; however, mine's just one opinion among many.

I think that this is one of the lowest starred books that KBB has sent over and while not every book can be a hit I admire his perseverance in getting to the end and then in being just curious enough to want to know what happens next. This is very much my reading style so I love that the traits of a bookworm are a family thing!

When he let me know this was the book he'd picked for the month I was really impressed at how far out of his comfort zone he was happy to go. I could see that the sci-fi aspect would appeal I was more surprised at the appeal of the computer game as I didn't know he was into multiplayer games...

I've added this one to my list as again it isn't my normal type of book but I have to confess that I won't be in a huge rush to reserve a copy from the library.