Micro Review 59

 The No-Show by Beth O'Leary (Quercus Publishing)

I was blown away by Beth O'Leary's first novel, The Flat Share as it managed to pack some hefty punches in what could so easily have been any other rom-com. Much of the plot to this appeared to be obvious but the way the two leads got there was innovative and emotional.

I didn't enjoy her second book (The Switch) quite so much and very unusually for me I didn't finish  last year's The Road Trip. However I'm nothing if not persistent and felt very lucky when my wish to read this book was granted by Quercus and Netgalley.

Something about the book's blurb drew me in from the start: 

Three women. Three dates. One missing man...

8.52 a.m. Siobhan's been looking forward to her breakfast date with Joseph. She was surprised when he suggested it - she normally sees him late at night in her hotel room. Breakfast with Joseph on Valentine's Day surely means something... so where is he?

2.43 p.m. Miranda's hoping that a Valentine's Day lunch with Carter will be the perfect way to celebrate her new job. It's a fresh start and a sign that her grown-up life is finally falling into place: she's been dating Carter for five months now and things are getting serious. But why hasn't he shown up?

6.30 p.m. Joseph Carter agreed to be Jane's fake boyfriend at a colleague's engagement party. They've not known each other long but their friendship is fast becoming the brightest part of her new life in Winchester. Joseph promised to save Jane tonight. But he's not here...

Meet Joseph Carter. That is, if you can find him.

With a hook like that I was instantly drawn in and I am going to say nothing more about the except to say that it was funny and sad and beautifully written. The plot gently revealed itself and was very clever, and the book managed to touch lightly on many issues giving you plenty to think about and discuss.

I am now looking forward to Beth O'Leary's next book even more!

Micro Review 57

 

Heritage by Miguel Bonnefoy, trans. Emily Boyce (Gallic Books)

Bonnefoy has managed something incredible in Heritage - a sweeping, multi-generational, family saga told in just 200 pages. It also repeatedly takes you by surprise, the blurb for the book is also a masterclass in understatement:

A winegrower ruined by the Great French Vine Blight takes his one surviving vine stock and boards a ship for California. But the new life he has in store is not the one he had imagined – taken ill aboard ship, he is forced to disembark at Valparaíso, where a misunderstanding at the customs post finds him rebaptized after his birthplace, Lons-le-Saunier: the Lonsonier family is born in Chile.

Making the journey in reverse, his sons return to defend the motherland in 1914, and the ghosts of the war live on across the Atlantic, in a house with three lemon trees and a garden filled with birds, for years to come.

It is only in the very last paragraph of this are you given a hint that there is more to the book than a simple family saga:

From the depths of the trenches to the soaring peaks of the Andes and the shadow of dictatorship, the personal stories of the Lonsoniers collide with key moments in a century of global history, painting a vivid picture of what is both gained and lost through migration. 

I confess that I was lulled in to a false sense of security by the first two thirds of the book, it was a good read but with the exception of a few magical realism flights of fantasy I thought it was 'just' another multi-generational family book - all be it one looking at WW1 & WW2 from the point of view of the colonies.

Then there comes the last part and boy was that an eye opener and shocking read - I knew a little of Chile's history but this packs no punches.

Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy of the book (which I was under no obligation to review), it is published on 14th April and is well worth a read. 

Bailey's Book Prize book three

First Love but Gwendoline Riley.

The third book I picked out of my book prize box was First Love and my initial impression was how minimalist the cover appeared. Then when I opened it and saw both the line spacing (lots of white areas on the page) and the length (short) I wondered just how minimalist the tale was going to be!

In general I read very fast and book of this length usually wouldn't have taken much longer than my lunch break to read. As this book has been  shortlisted for the Bailey's Prize I made a deliberate decision to read this slowly, to read each segment and then take a break to think about what I'd read.

I think that this was the right decision as at first glance this is a slight book, Neve is in a bad relationship and the story charts this but in reading it slowly I also read behind the lines.

Again if I talk about this too much I am aware that I could spoil the book for other readers but I know that if I'd read it at my normal speed I would have come away with only one story from the novel. By reading it slowly I got a more rounded story, but this did change my sympathies entirely... swings and roundabouts I guess!

At first I wasn't sure that such a slender story was in the same league as the other books on the shortlist but this one really has got under my skin and while Do Not Say We Have Nothing remains my favourite read of the year so far this one is a worthy contender for the Bailey's Prize.

Now from the compact to the epic - the 545 page Sport of Kings was the next book out of the box!

Holiday reading

Spring Break!

Mr Norfolkbookworm and I are just back from a week away in the sun. We both needed a break and the intention was to sit around doing very little whilst soaking up some vitamin D. I was doubly able to relax as the first draft of my dissertation was completed just before we went and so I could indulge in reading for pleasure guilt free!

I certainly made the most of the huge balcony and comfy sunbeds as I read 13 books in the week we were away! All that was distracting me was this view from my lounger:

The books I read (in no particular order)

Persuasion - Jane Austen.  I'm not sure why I've not read this before but my friend the Upstart Wren challenged me to read this on our break.  I wasn't sure at first but pretty soon found myself sucked in and I loved this by the end.

Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell.  This book came up as a suggestion on Goodreads and while I am pleased that I read it, I can't say that I enjoyed it. Orwell himself made me cross, especially once he got back to England but his insights into the underclass were interesting.

A Country Road, A Tree - Jo Baker.  I loved Longbourn by this author a couple of years ago and was excited to see this title on Netgalley.  I think my mistake with this one was leaping on the author and not reading more about the book as I found it stilted and the characters unlikable however once I got to the end and read the afterword it all made more sense and in retrospect I like it more. A warning to myself with this one! 

The Summer Before the War - Helen Simonson.  This was a pure delight to read, set in the summer of 1913.  War looms, and comes to pass, as the book unfolds but the book is not about the trenches - it is about how the war affected everyone.  This book isn't literary but is a delight and I was transported to the era perfectly.  This is a book I am going to champion for a long time. 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - Mary Ann Schaffer.  After The Summer Before the War this book was the only thing I wanted to re-read as I wanted another book which balanced serious issues and whimsy. GLPPS is one of my 'desert island books' and I loved meeting my book friends again. 

Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabther Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World - Matthew Goodson. I love the original novel by Verne (and the cartoon from my childhood) so I was intrigued by this book.  Bly was an investagative (and undercover) journalist in 1899 who decided that it would be possible to go around the world faster than Verne's Fogg.  She sets out eastwards... Bisland was also a journalist and when her editor heard of Bly's journey sent Bisland off in the opposite direction to both beat Fogg and her rival.  The book is part travelogue, part history and part biography and was all compelling! 

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - Joanna Canon. This is a much talked about novel set in the long hot summer of 1979, all the action takes place in just one street as two girls investigate a mysterious disappearance.  I'm not certain that I loved this as much as others but it was a good holiday read. 

Consumed - Abbie Rushton.  Abbie is a friend and I've been looking forward to reading her second novel since it was announced.  I really enjoyed this, it had a Norfolk setting and covered 'issues' in an interesting and new way.  It was a little more predictable than Unspeakable and possibly the issues were overcome a little too simply but this is a book for young adults and hopeful endings are always good. 

The Infinite Air - Fiona Kidman.  The early pioneers of flight lived in exciting times and I've long been fascinated with the female pilots such as Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart.  This follows the story of New Zealand's pioneering aviator - Jean Batten.  I'd not heard of her but found this fictionalised biography utterly compelling and a brilliant read. 

Eliza Rose - Lucy Worsley.  This is a young adult read set in Tudor times and Worsley creates a fictional foil to the ill-fated Katherine Howard. This book annoyed me intensely, it was simultaneously too adult and too childish and at no point did I warm to the Eliza or feel that the Tudor court was real. 

German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie - Monique Laney.  After WW2 many German scientist and rocket engineers were brought to the US.  With the start of the space race many of these scientists were relocated to Huntsville in Alabama right in the heart of the segregated Deep South.  This book is comprised of oral histories from all of the Huntsville community and attempts to be rounded but personally I'd have liked more of the histories and less focus on the Rudolph case.  More probing of the idea of possible Nazis (or Nazi sympathisers) being relocated to a deeply racist area would have been nice too as ultimately I am left with more questions at the end than I had at the start! 

Somewhere Inside of Happy - Anna McPartlin.  This was another book I requested through Netgalley because I'd loved the author's previous book.  At first I thought I was going to be disappointed, it seemed like a typical Irish-set, chick-lit read but the twist towards the end blew me away and while not quite such a tear-jerker as The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes this was still brilliant. 

Freya - Anthony Quinn.  A bit of a cheat here as I didn't quite finish this one on the plane home, but I was more than half way through before we landed.  Another real surprise of a book which follows one woman, her friends and family from VE Day through to the mid-sixties. It is full of unappealing characters but their voices and the plot is so good that I found it hard to put the book down, and I didn't want it to end - always a good sign.

Phew - what a lot of books in a short time!  Now it is back to the grindstone as I have to finish and submit my dissertation in the next three weeks, I bet I wish I was back here very quickly

Theatre 2015: Review Thirty-Eight

Waste, Lyttleton Theatre at the National Theatre, London. November 2015.

After our recent trip to the disappointing The Winter's Tale I'm pretty sure that all three of us were a little nervous of seeing this play, two of us had no real idea of what it was about. I was drawn to it mostly because it is a play that was banned by the censor for many years and I always feel that if those "superior" to me think I shouldn't see/read something then I really probably should.

It is a very talky play, it reminded me a lot of Man and Superman from earlier in the year where there were so many ideas to get across that full attention had to be given at all times, luckily for this production the actors and the script made this easy to give.

The play is a political drama, but all about what goes on behind the scenes, it is also a personal drama and one that I found most affecting.  Time after time my assumptions were proved wrong and I found the ending to be a shocking surprise.

Some parts bothered me slightly - the play started with a very strong female-led scene and then this group of intelligent women vanished from the stage. It has since occurred to me that this is a play from 1907, before the main suffragette campaign was under way, and that of course women would be excluded from everywhere except the drawing room. Even those women who appeared to be powerful behind the scenes could not come to the fore as the political intrigue deepens.

The play was banned because it deals with abortion, a politician gets a lover pregnant and she dies getting rid of the child, however even this is not quite as it seems. The subsequent potential for scandal then is the catalyst for the second half of the play.  I am trying not to go into detail about the play as since I've seen it I have seen many reviews where all of the plot is given away and I think that seeing it unfold organically was the best way.

I found this a political play from over 100 years ago to still be scandalously relevant - decisions made by the old-boys' network behind closed doors making or breaking laws and lives.  The play hasn't been received well by all reviewers but I know that it will stay with me for quite a while and it gave me lots to think about.