Fiction – Page 221 – BooksPlease

He Wants by Alison Moore

Published on June 14, 2014 by Margaret2 Comments

I received a proof copy of He Wants by Alison Moore from Lovereading for review. It will be published in August this year. I began reading with high expectations because I thought I’d like it from the publishers’ synopsis:

Lewis Sullivan, an RE teacher at a secondary school, is approaching retirement when he wonders for the first time whether he ought to have chosen a more dramatic career. He lives in a village in the Midlands, less than a mile from the house in which he grew up. He always imagined living by the sea. His grown-up daughter visits every day, bringing soup. He does not want soup. He frequents his second-favourite pub, where he can get half a shandy, a speciality sausage and a bit of company. When an old friend appears on the scene, Lewis finds his routine and comfortable life shaken up.

However, this synopsis is a bit misleading. Lewis is not approaching retirement – he has already retired. He is looking back over his life and thinking about all the things he had wanted/wants/ does not want. It’s a book about ageing and unfulfilled expectations. It jumps around mirroring Lewis thought processes as he remembers his childhood, his parents, his wife, his daughter and his friend Sydney.

He Wants is a short book (180 pages in the proof copy). Written in the present tense, it’s a bleak tale of a man whose life did not turn out as he expected or wanted. I don’t have to like the characters to enjoy reading a book, but despite the quality of writing, which is taut and effective in creating an atmosphere of unease and emptiness, I couldn’t take to this book. Lewis’s dissatisfaction with his life compared to how had imagined it would be was just too drab and unrelenting.

Lewis had wanted all sorts of fantastic things. The chapter headings indicate the things he wanted but never got, or the things he did not want and did get: he did not want soup or the sausages, he did not want the boy to be spoiled, he wanted to go to the moon, to live in Australia, to be seen, a time machine and a cup of tea and so on.

Sadly, it was not my cup of tea.

Alison Moore was shortlisted for the Man Book Prize in 2012 with her debut novel The Lighthouse, a book I haven’t read and may check just to see if it’s in the same vein as He Wants.

North Sea Cottage by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

Published on June 13, 2014 by Margaret10 Comments

Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen’s latest book, North Sea Cottage, is an e-book, a novella set in Denmark. It’s another dual time period book – it seems that each book I’ve read recently is one of these. This one is split between the present day and 1943/4 and it works very well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book; the cottage in the title is owned by Tora’s aunt, Bergatora. As soon as I began reading I was immediately transported in place away to the other side of the North Sea to Denmark with Tora, and in time back to the Second World War, with her aunt, Bergatora. In just a few words Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen draws a vivid picture of the old fisherman’s cottage surrounded by dense sea fog.

Tora is struggling to overcome her own problems when she is faced with a new problem. The old stable next to the cottage catches fire during a thunder storm and in the aftermath of the fire Tora finds a skeleton in the potato cellar under the ruined stable. Who is it who had died in the cellar? Bergatora is reluctant to talk about the war years and her brother, Tora’s father, was too young at the time to help. It was a time when Denmark was under German occupation and a resistance movement was under way. Inspector Thomas Bilgren suspects the victim may have been related to the German occupation.

Tora, helped by Bilgren attempts to discover the truth, but is hampered by the strong character of her aunt and the silence surrounding what happened during the war. I loved this aspect of the book – the delving back into history, the way the narrative switches backwards and forwards, gradually revealing what had happened. North Sea Cottage is only about 90 pages but it has depth both in mystery and in characterisation and the setting is so atmospheric. I was fearful for Tora’s safety as she dug deeper into the mysteries from the past.

Thanks to Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen, who kindly sent me a copy of her book. She has a blog – Djskrimiblog and used to be a teacher. She writes both serious mysteries as well as humorous and cosy stories about the Gershwin family in Knavesborough, a fictional village in Yorkshire, publishing in Danish and English. I like her humorous stories but prefer the serious ones like North Sea Cottage and her previous novel, Anna MÃ¤rklin’s Family Chronicles. She is currently at work on her next novel – Crystal Nights, to be published in 2014/5.

Pictures at an Exhibition by Camilla Macpherson

Published on June 10, 2014 by Margaret4 Comments

I enjoyed Pictures at an Exhibition by Camilla Macpherson very much. It’s a dual time period novel moving between the present day and the Second World War, a format I think that can be hard to do successfully. In this book, Camilla Macpherson’s first published novel, I think it is successful as I was equally keen to find out what happened next in both periods.

Pictures at an Exhibition is structured around Daisy’s letters to her cousin Elizabeth telling her about the paintings on display at London’s National Gallery during the war years – one a month. In the present day Claire reads the letters, left to her husband Rob, by his grandmother, Elizabeth. They are not just about the paintings but also about Daisy’s life and the man she meets and loves. Claire meanwhile, is struggling to recover from a tragedy that threatens to overwhelm her and wreck her marriage. She decides to read the letters, one a month, and visit the National Gallery to see the paintings and compare them with Daisy’s descriptions.

I found the characters thoroughly convincing, the settings and the time periods contrasting vividly and loved all the details about the paintings. I also liked the way the characters developed throughout the book. For example, at the beginning of the book, which I found so devastatingly sad, Claire is full of anger and grief, affecting her relationship with Rob:

It was the grief speaking. It could do strange things grief. She had not known that until now. She had never had to know. It had brought with it this desperate, physical need to blame someone, someone who would be right there when she had to lash out – Rob. The only person who was always there. (page 106)

She becomes obsessed with the letters, the paintings and with Daisy’s life. It’s a remarkable portrayal of a woman in crisis and how she managed to find herself again. Daisy’s story is just as convincing describing life in London during the Blitz and along with Claire I really wanted to know more about her and what happened to her.

I think it was the art that drew me to this book in the first place and I found those parts of the book absolutely fascinating. The National Gallery did display one painting a month after most of them had been transported away from London and the bombs for safe keeping. You can see the paintings described by scanning the QR codes at the beginning of each chapter and also see them on Camilla Macpherson’s website, and of course on the National Gallery’s site too. I knew of most of them before, but not all of them and as I was reading I printed copies to see what Daisy and Claire saw.

But by the end of the book it was the characters and the story that had captivated me too. It’s about life and death, love and loss, grief and relationships and I found it compelling reading – when I wasn’t reading it I was thinking about it and keen to get back to it. It’s a book I want to re-read at some time – and there aren’t many of those.

My thanks go to Camilla Macpherson, who kindly sent me a copy of her book. I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.

New Additions at BooksPlease

Published on June 8, 2014 by Margaret9 Comments

It’s been a while since I did one of these posts about books I’ve bought/been given. I always like to have a few books on the go at any one time and I like to have some waiting to be read.

Yesterday I finished reading Pictures at an Exhibition by Camilla Macpherson, which I’ll be writing about soon. I’m in the middle of reading Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and I’m still reading Shakespeare: the Biography by Peter Ackroyd. I’ve been reading the Shakespeare book for months just a short chapter at a time – it’ll be a while before I finish it.

Here are these recent additions that I hope to get round to reading sooner or later:

From top to bottom they are:

He Wants by Alison Moore, a proof copy for review from Lovereading. It will be published in August. Alison Moore’s debut book The Lighthouse which I haven’t read was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012, so she is a new-to-me author. It sounds a bit different from the usual type of book I read, so I’m not sure what to expect. It’s about Lewis Sullivan, an RE teacher who is approaching retirement and wondering whether he ought to have chosen a more dramatic career. I have started reading it and am still getting used to the fact that it’s written in the present tense – not my favourite style.

The next two books in the pile are used books that I bought when I went to vote the other week in the European Election. There was a table full of books for sale – nothing to do with the election, but a bonus for me! I bought two.

One of the books almost leapt from the table into my hands – Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey, a book I first heard about years ago and fancied reading. The first book by Josephine Tey that I read was The Daughter of Time which I absolutely loved. In that book Detective Inspector Alan Grant looked into the death of the Princes in the Tower from his hospital bed. As far as I can tell he doesn’t feature in Miss Pym Disposes.

The other book is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, another new-to-me author. A wife has disappeared and her husband is the suspect – what happened to her? I have been avoiding getting this as it’s one of those books that gets lots of hype and sometimes they just don’t live up to the praise. It has nearly 1,500 5-stars on Amazon UK and also 300+ 1-star reviews criticising it as disappointing and boring. But as it was on the table in front of me at a bargain price I thought I’d see for myself just how good (or otherwise) that I think it is.

And finally a hard-backed book that I bought from a local bookshop:

The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark, her debut novel. Kirsty Wark is a favourite of mine – a journalist and broadcaster, hosting programmes such as Newsnight, The Review Show and arts documentaries. I picked up the book in Mainstreet Trading whilst having lunch there and immediately thought I’d like it. It’s set on the Scottish island of Arran where Elizabeth has lived all her life. When she dies she leaves her house to someone she hardly knew. But just who was Elizabeth Pringle?

The Sea Change by Joanna Rossiter

Published on June 3, 2014December 4, 2020 by Margaret4 Comments

Set in lost landscapes, The Sea Change is Joanna Rossiter’s debut novel revolving around a mother and daughter caught up in catastrophic events. The lost landscapes are the village of Imber, a Wiltshire village that was requisitioned by the army during World War Two, where Violet had grown up, and the coastal village of Kanyakumari in Southern India, where her daughter Alice was caught up in the tsunami that devastated the area in 1971.

It’s about lost lives too, wrecked relationships, the isolation of people through their inability to communicate with each other, about love, loss and grief and above all about the relationship between mothers and daughters and sisters.

I enjoyed reading this beautifully written book; I could easily visualise the different landscapes as I read. It begins with drama in the ‘present’ (1971) as the tsunami sweeps through Kanyakumari, separating Alice from her new husband, James and she is in danger of drowning. The story is a dual time novel told alternately by Alice and Violet. After the dramatic opening scenes it then moves immediately to Imber in 1971 as Violet returns to Imber and recalls how they were forced to leave, clinging to Imber ‘as if it were a lost soul.‘

There are parallels between their stories, both caught up in events outside their control. I was more interested in Violet’s story as she and her mother and sister try to carry on with their lives during the war, mourning the death of her father. And yet Alice’s story is also moving as she desperately searches for James. Alice and Violet had not parted on good terms when Alice had left home to go on the hippy trail and I liked the way the two stories gradually came together and details of their lives became clearer.

I wrote about the opening paragraphs of this book in this earlier post.

Thanks to Penguin for providing a review copy of this book. I’m sorry to say that it has sat unread apart from the opening pages on my bookshelves since last year when I received it. This is one reason I’m reluctant sometimes to accept review copies – there are so many books clamouring to be read!

Joanna Rossiter has her own website where you can see a YouTube video of her reading from the beginning of the book and talking about her book. I hope she writes more books!

Books Read in May

Published on June 1, 2014 by Margaret14 Comments

I can’t quite believe it but despite spending many hours in the garden in May mowing the grass and weeding (there are still too many weeds!) I managed to read ten books, bringing my total for the year so far to 45. They’re a bit of a mixed bag of excellent and not very good, with some good ones in between!

They are, in the order I read them, with links to my reviews (* marks crime fiction novels):

The Big Four* by Agatha Christie – a bit of a let down, not up to her best!
The Lost Army of Cambyses by Paul Sussman – goodish
The Dance of Love by Angela Young – her second book due out at the end of July. I loved it!
The Wicked Day by Mary Stewart – good
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – very good
Nemesis* by Agatha Christie – disappointing
The Witch’s Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff – good
No Stranger to Death*by Janet O’Kane – very good, her first book
The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez -not very good and I don’t intend to write about it
A Whispered Name* by William Broderick – excellent – see my thoughts below.

I’m not taking The Dance of Love into account in considering which book is my favourite book of the month because I’m saving my review for July when the book is published – but I can say now that it is brilliant!

The Graveyard Book and No Stranger to Death are both really good books and as I was reading each one I thought either could be my favourite book for May but then I read A Whispered Name and that decided it – it is my favourite book of the month and also my Crime Fiction Pick of the Month (hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise)!

A Whispered Name by William Brodrick is the third Father Anselm novel, which won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award in 2009.

I think this is a most remarkable book and it kept me glued to the pages as I read about the First World War and the effects it had on those who took part, those left at home and on future generations. It is, of course, historical fiction.

From the back cover:

During the slaughter of Passchendaele in 1917, an Irish soldier faced a court martial for desertion. On the panel was a young captain, Herbert Moore, charged with a responsibility that would change him for ever.

After the war Herbert became a monk, one of the founders of Larkwood monastery, where Father Anselm came across two visitors, Kate Seymour and an unnamed old man, searching for Father Herbert. But he had died in 1985 and no one could answer their questions about the trial of a deserter, Joseph Flanagan and Father Herbert’s part in it. Father Herbert was revered and loved by all who knew him and Anselm was deeply dismayed at the thought that there was anything in his past that he had lied about and he set out to discover the truth.

I think the whole book is so well thought out with chapters revealing what happened from different characters’ viewpoints during the war and what Anselm discovered as he went through the records and talked to people. Nothing is straight forward, the records are ambiguous and there is confusion about identities. The horror of the war is there:

After the wallop, Herbert found himself prostrate with his face against the dirt, vaguely aware that time had passed, that water was creeping on him; that he would have to move or he’d drown.

… Herbert slid through a sludge of intestines and grit, hauling himself into the open. Staring across the beaten land he tried to gain his bearings … he couldn’t see anyone else from the regiment. (page 35)

And Herbert did indeed serve on a court martial that condemned Joseph Flanagan to death. But there is not just the horror of war in this book, it’s an intricate, evocative novel focussing on the themes of morality, justice, sacrifice and human redemption. It is a book above all that identifies the place of the individual within history, written so lyrically putting the past under a searching spotlight. One of the best books I’ve read for quite some time.

A Whispered Name is a thoroughly researched book with a list of sources at the end of the book, but it never reads like a dry factual account – it comes so vividly to life. Although based on fact, gathered from memoirs, reports, published research, Battalion War diaries and the original transcripts of trials, William Brodrick explains in his Author’s Note:

This novel is not about FGCMs [Field General Court Martial] in general. It does not imply a comprehensive critique of First World War executions from any perspective, be that historical, legal or moral. Rather, one might say, it is a parable of how a man found meaning in death, and how another – on seeing that – found faith in life. And it is about a fictional trial that cannot be compared with any genuine case. (p 344) (my emphasis)

William Brodrick became a barrister, having been an Augustinian monk for six years (the other way round from his fictional character, Father Anselm). After 10 years at the Bar, his interest in writing led him to writing the Father Anselm books.

The Father Anselm books are: