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The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

Published on May 28, 2018May 28, 2018 by Margaret8 Comments

This is another short book review as I catch up with writing about my reading. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson is one of my TBR books. It is her second novel and I enjoyed it so much more than her first book, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. It’s the summer of 1914, set in Rye in East Sussex when spinster Beatrice Nash arrived to teach Latin at the local grammar school. Her appointment was the result of Agatha Kent’s and Lady Emily Wheaton’s wish to have a female teacher as a Latin teacher.

This is really a book of two parts – the months before the outbreak of the First World War and then the events as the war got underway. It begins slowly with the first part describing the lazy, idyllic summer and in which all the characters are introduced. Although there is a clear distinction between the classes in society cracks are beginning to appear which will only widen as the century gets under way and the war acts as a catalyst for change..

But it really gets going in the second part when the young men sign up, including High and Daniel, Agatha’s nephews, and Snout one of Beatrice’s pupils. He was underage but his father, the local farrier, signed the papers agreeing he could enlist. Simonson doesn’t hold back on the horrific conditions under which the war took place and from a gentle beginning the book moves into a war novel, emotional and moving.

This book slots into the only reading challenge I’m doing this year – What’s in a Name 2018. It fits into two of the categories, The word ‘the’ used twice and A season. For the time being I’m putting it into the ‘season‘ category but may change that later if I read one of the other ‘season‘ books on my list.

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 1770 KB
Print Length: 497 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing; 1 edition (24 Mar. 2016)
Source: I bought the book
My Rating: 4*

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

Published on May 25, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

The Hunger

Description:

After having travelled west for weeks, the party of pioneers comes to a crossroads. It is time for their leader, George Donner, to make a choice. They face two diverging paths which lead to the same destination. One is well-documented – the other untested, but rumoured to be shorter.

Donner’s decision will shape the lives of everyone travelling with him. The searing heat of the desert gives way to biting winds and a bitter cold that freezes the cattle where they stand. Driven to the brink of madness, the ill-fated group struggles to survive and minor disagreements turn into violent confrontations. Then the children begin to disappear. As the survivors turn against each other, a few begin to realise that the threat they face reaches beyond the fury of the natural elements, to something more primal and far more deadly.

Based on the true story of The Donner Party, The Hunger is an eerie, shiver-inducing exploration of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu is a story about the Donner Party, comprising pioneers, people who were looking for a better life in the American West. They formed a wagon train under the leadership of George Donner and James Reed making their way west to California in 1846. This is historical fiction based on the true story of the Donner Party. I knew nothing about the history so it was all fascinating to me – especially as I’m always drawn to stories of pioneers.

Alma Katsu has taken the basic facts and has woven a fictional tale around them to explain what happened. She lists the sources she has used and explains where she has varied from the actual facts and added fictional characters. The Donner Party did set out to get to California, and they did take what was supposed to be a short cut that promised to cut 300 miles off their journey, following a trail called the Hastings Cutoff, from Fort Bridger, Wyoming and this proved to be their downfall – it wasn’t a short cut.

It took them into the Great Salt Lake Desert, a much harder and longer route, a long hard dry drive without water and without feed for the animals. So by the time they got to the Oregon trail to take them over the Sierra Nevada mountains it was late in the season, at the beginning of November and their way was blocked by heavy snowfall. The snow was head deep and impenetrable. Their supplies were low, many of them died of starvation, and some of them resorted to eating their animals and it is supposed, the deceased members of the group.

The facts alone are fascinating, but with Alma Katsu’s fiction interwoven with hints of the supernatural and Indian myths it becomes a thrilling, spine tingling horrific tale. And above all it is well written, describing the landscape the wagon trail takes through the heat of the desert, the lonely deserted plains, the isolated forts along the way, the forests where they had to hack a trail through, and the freezing cold of the snow filled mountains that finally blocked their way.

It has an impressive cast list of men, women and children, explaining their back stories and drawing a realistic picture of what their lives were like on the trail – their friendships, rivalries and hostilities, the ways they managed to survive and how they reacted to the frightening rumours of Indian rituals, especially when their children begin to disappear. It is a tense, menacing tale full of hope and also of desperation. I loved all of it.

Many thanks to Random House UK for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

Her Hidden Life by V S Alexander

Published on May 14, 2018 by Margaret4 Comments

Description:

It’s 1943 and Hitler’s Germany is a terrifying place to be.
But Magda Ritter’s duty is the most dangerous of all…

Assigned to The Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat, she must serve the Reich by becoming the Führer’s ‘Taster’ – a woman who checks his food for poison. Magda can see no way out of this hellish existence until she meets Karl, an SS officer who has formed an underground resistance group within Hitler’s inner circle.

As their forbidden love grows, Magda and Karl see an opportunity to stop the atrocities of the madman leading their country. But in doing so, they risk their lives, their families and, above all, a love unlike either of them have ever known…

After I came to the end of Her Hidden Life I was left feeling there was something missing, something not quite right about it. I liked the basic premise of the book, written from the point of view of one of the tasters of Adolf Hitler’s food and the light it throws on the Second World War from the Germans’ viewpoint. The general public were kept unaware of the atrocities that the Reich carried out by the propaganda perpetrated by Joseph Goebbels.

But I felt as though I was distanced from it – there is a lot of ‘telling’, of recounting what happened. It is fiction, not fact, although it is based on the life of one of the fifteen women who tasted Hitler’s food – and that part is fascinating. Magda is an amazing character. But maybe that is part of my problem with the book – she is so amazing, beautiful, intelligent, resourceful, with a will and determination that carries her through all the difficulties and dangers that are thrown at her. And there is so much danger. She falls in love with Karl, a handsome SS officer, who makes her heart flutter – and despite what the blurb states their love is not forbidden – when Hitler realises they are in love he insists they marry and not only that, he is present at the ceremony and presents them with silver wedding rings, inscribed inside with his name.

Anderson’s descriptive writing is good especially when he is describing scenes at Hitler’s mountain retreat, the Berghof, at his bunker in Berlin and at the Wolf’s Lair, his military headquarters. The scenes in Berlin during the Allies bombing raid and Magda’s imprisonment in the women’s concentration camp at Bromberg-Ost are particularly dramatic and horrific. I liked his portrait of Hitler, showing his charismatic side and the hold he exerted over people.I know almost nothing about Eva Braun, and liked the picture Anderson drew, but was surprised at Eva’s friendship with Magda and the access that Magda had to both Hitler and Eva. There were many assassination attempts that failed or weren’t carried out and there have been speculations about how he died and who killed him – but I can’t accept Anderson’s fictional version of who killed Adolf Hitler, even though it was foreshadowed throughout the book.

I realise now that it is the fictional elements of Her Hidden Life that bother me. In his Author’s Note, Anderson explains that the idea for writing this novel came from the story of Margot Woelk, one of Hitler’s tasters. She had kept that fact a secret until she was ninety five. It is not an account of her life but several scenes are based on her experiences, although Anderson doesn’t specify which are factual. He relied on many sources, some of which differed, and states that he has made every attempt to marry fiction with history,

Overall, I did enjoy aspects of this book and am glad I read it, even though I think I would prefer a factual account rather than fiction revolving around a romantic love story that had, to my mind, a fairy tale ending.

My thanks to Avon Books for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link – published as The Taster

Snap by Belinda Bauer

Published on May 11, 2018May 11, 2018 by Margaret5 Comments

Random House UK|Review Copy|3.5*

This is Belinda Bauer’s 8th book but only the second one that I’ve read. I loved her first book, Blacklands, about a serial killer, told mainly from a child’s point of view, so I was looking forwarded to reading Snap. I enjoyed it but I was a bit disappointed as I read it, as it relies quite a lot on several coincidences and some of the characters were not much more than caricatures, particularly the police, Detective Inspector John Marvel, who is a bit of a maverick and Detective Sergeant Reynolds, who in contrast, is a stickler for correct procedure.

However, I think the children in this book come across as real characters. I liked the opening as eleven year old Jack and his sisters, Joy, nine years old and Merry aged three sit in their broken down car, in the sweltering sun, on the hard shoulder of the M5 motorway. Their pregnant mother didn’t have a mobile phone with her and had left them alone in the car as she walked up the road to find an emergency phone to call for help. She never returned.

Move forward three years to find Jack, now fourteen and his sisters living alone – their father couldn’t cope after his wife had been found dead by the motorway – supporting his sisters through breaking into houses to steal food and valuables. He is ‘guided’ in his criminal activities by Louis – in the same way that Fagin taught boys to pickpocket, Louis tells Jack which houses will be empty so that he can break in without fear of being caught. Then Catherine While and her husband Adam are brought into the story, when Jack breaks into their house thinking it is empty. However Catherine, pregnant, had stayed at home whilst her husband went out and is horrified to discover that she is not alone in the house. But for reasons of her own she doesn’t tell Adam or inform the police, which puts her in a dangerous situation.

The story is well paced and I was keen to find out what had happened to Jack’s mother, how he would cope with being responsible for his sisters, whether he would be caught and whether his father would return. And I was most concerned about Catherine’s safety! So overall I did enjoy it, despite the coincidences. It’s quirky and different from other crime fiction, which is refreshing.

Many thanks to Random House UK for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

Details of Belinda Bauer’s books (copied from Fantastic Fiction)

Series

Exmoor trilogy
1. Blacklands (2009)
2. Darkside (2011)
3. Finders Keepers (2012)

Novels

The Facts of Life and Death (2012)
Rubbernecker (2013)
The Shut Eye (2015)
The Beautiful Dead (2016)
Snap (2018)

First Chapter First Paragraph: Her Hidden Life by V S Alexander

Published on May 8, 2018 by Margaret14 Comments

Every Tuesday First Chapter, First Paragraph/Intros is hosted by Vicky of I’d Rather Be at the Beach sharing the first paragraph or two of a book she’s reading or plans to read soon.

This week I’m featuring one of my NetGalley books, Her Hidden Life by V S Alexander, a newly published book (3 May 2018), that I’m currently reading.

It begins with a Prologue:

Berlin, 2013

Who killed Adolf Hitler? The answer lies within these pages. The circumstances surrounding his death have been disputed since 1945, but I know the truth. I was there.

Synopsis:

A forbidden love. A deadly secret.

‘An absorbing, well-researched story that brings to life an extraordinary period in history’ GILL PAUL, bestselling author of The Secret Wife

It’s 1943 and Hitler’s Germany is a terrifying place to be.
But Magda Ritter’s duty is the most dangerous of all…

Assigned to The Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat, she must serve the Reich by becoming the Führer’s ‘Taster’ – a woman who checks his food for poison. Magda can see no way out of this hellish existence until she meets Karl, an SS officer who has formed an underground resistance group within Hitler’s inner circle.

As their forbidden love grows, Magda and Karl see an opportunity to stop the atrocities of the madman leading their country. But in doing so, they risk their lives, their families and, above all, a love unlike either of them have ever known…

∼ ∼ ∼

I like it when an author clearly distinguishes what is real and what is fictional in a historical novel and she has done so in this case in her Author’s Note. Her Hidden Life is loosely based on the life of Margot Woelk, one of Hitler’s tasters, a woman who kept her former job a secret until she was ninety-five. It is not intended to be a strictly historical account of the Third Reich and the author states that she has relied on many sources, some of which differed.

What do you think – would you read on?

Time is a Killer by Michel Bussi

Published on May 7, 2018 by Margaret3 Comments

Description:

It is summer 1989 and fifteen-year-old Clotilde is on holiday with her parents in Corsica. On a twisty mountain road, their car comes off at a curve and plunges into a ravine. Only Clotilde survives.

Twenty-seven years later, she returns to Corsica with her husband and their sulky teenage daughter. Clotilde wants the trip to do two things – to help exorcise her past, and to build a bridge between her and her daughter. But in the very place where she spent that summer all those years ago, she receives a letter. From her mother. As if she were still alive.

As fragments of memory come back, Clotilde begins to question the past. And yet it all seems impossible – she saw the corpses of her mother, her father, her brother. She has lived with their ghosts. But then who sent this letter – and why?

Every summer Clotilde, her brother, Nicolas and her parents, Paul and Palma Idrissi visit Paul’s parents in Corsica. What really happened in Corsica that last year she was there 27 years ago that led up to the car crash that killed her parents and brother? It had taken her that long to summon up the courage to return to Corsica. Clotilde thinks she knows, but a letter from her mother sets her on a trail to the truth. Her husband and daughter just want her to come to terms with the past, in fact her daughter is not interested in the past and is closer to her father than to her mother. Clotilde’s grandparents are still alive but are reluctant to talk about the accident and the locals seem to resent her presence. As Clotilde delves into her memories she begins to realise that the past is not quite as she thought it was.

The narrative switches between the present and the past – the past told as an unknown person reads Clotilde’s diary that she had been writing about her holiday, her family and friends. She had left the diary behind just before they all set off in the car and after the accident it had disappeared. In it she had recorded what they did as well as her thoughts about her family and friends and their relationships. Some of the friends she had at the time are still in Corsica, most notably Natale, the girl who had fascinated Nicolas so much and she has much to reveal about what happened prior to the car crash.

After a somewhat slow start, I was totally gripped by the story. Just who is this unknown man reading her thoughts on her family and friends? He is worried that she has returned to the island wondering just how far down into the past she will be able to dig, and what secrets she will discover. I had little idea for quite a while. The clues are there but well hidden and there are many twists as one by one secrets are revealed that make Clotilde question everything she thought she knew about her family.

I loved the setting, Corsica is a place I’ve never visited but I could easily see the scenes, helped by the plan showing the Revellata Peninsula, a wild and beautiful coastline, where Clotilde’s grandparents lived, and all the key locations. I loved the way Clotilde wrote in her diary, in which she poured out her thoughts and dreams – describing it as ‘Top Secret and Totally embargoed‘. I loved the drama of the story and the way it only gradually revealed the secrets of the Idrissi family – and what really happened.

Many thanks to Weidenfeld & Nicolson for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link