Category: Fiction

Reading Notes

Published on by Margaret

Notes on The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann and Small Island by Andrea Levy

My face-to-face book group is introducing me to some books I would never read by my own choice. Last month’s book was The Weather in the Streets.

I was looking forward to reading it as I don’t often read romantic fiction. However, I was disappointed. It’s about Olivia, separated from her own husband and having an affair with Rollo Spencer. At times I just wanted to shake Olivia and tell her to open her eyes to reality. It’s set in the 1930s, that inter-war period that seems so glittering, full of bright young things going to lots of parties, lots of socialising and being part of the in-crowd. Olivia is really just on the fringes looking in, whereas Rollo is one of the aristocracy – it’s painfully obvious that he is not going to leave his wife and marry Olivia.

Although it is a beautifully written book, rich in description, giving insight into the characters’ thoughts as well as their actions, I didn’t like the plot and felt little empathy with the characters. I can imagine how shocking it must have seemed when it was first published in 1936 when divorce and abortion were taboo. I found it mildly depressing.

I didn’t fare any better with Small Island by Andrea Levy, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Orange Prize for Fiction. I had high expectations of this book as I had thoroughly enjoyed The Long Song. Small Island tells the story of two couples, Hortense and Gilbert from Jamaica and Queenie and Bernard from England and the interactions of their lives in 1948 and earlier. It’s narrated by each of the four characters, covering a number of issues, predominantly racism and prejudice, war and love.

As with The Weather in the Streets I didn’t like the characters very much; although they mostly come across as rounded personalities, at times they seemed like stereotypes. For me the book was too long and I lost interest several times. For such a long book I thought the ending was rushed, as though Levy had suddenly thought she’d better draw it to a close.

Gormenghast – Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

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This week is the start of the Gormenghast Read-Along:

Titus Groan: The Hall of the Bright Carvings ‘“ Near and Far (p15 ‘“ p136 in my edition, Vintage 1998)

I was a bit concerned that re-reading this book would spoil my memory of it. I needn’t have been, I’m finding it just as entrancing, whisking me off to the strange world that is Gormenghast.

Gormenghast, that massing of stone, the castle, surrounded by an ‘epidemic‘ of mean dwellings swarming round its walls, with its ‘irregular roofs‘, ‘time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets’, and the enormous Tower of Flints:

This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing threat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. (page 15)

These first few chapters set the scene and introduce the characters, all eccentric, grotesque even and above all – strange. The castle is filled with excitement at the birth of an heir to Gormenghast, although not everyone welcomes it with delight. Indeed, Mr Flay, Lord Gormenghast’s personal servant, calls it a ‘Challenge to Change!‘ and he doesn’t want ‘Change!‘ And neither does Fuchsia, Titus’s older sister, and on hearing of his birth she refused to believe it. She’s a girl of

about fifteen with long, rather wild black hair. She was gauche in movement and in a sense, ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have become beautiful. Her sullen mouth was rich and full – her eyes smouldered. (page 51)

The descriptions are very visual, with a strong expression of colour and solidity and there is an emphasis on the importance of ritual and tradition.

List of characters so far (in order of appearance):

  • the craftsmen who created the Bright Carvings, the forgotten people living outside the Castle.
  • Mr Rottcodd, the curator of the Bright Carvings.
  • Mr Flay, the thin, bony and taciturn servant of Sepulchrave, Earl of Gormenghast.
  • the Grey Scrubbers, a company of 18 men who clean the kitchen, deaf slablike men.
  • Abiatha Swelter, the fat, drunken slob who is the head chef – Flay and Swelter dislike each other intensely.
  • Steerpike, a kitchen boy whose aim is to escape from the kitchen, loathing Swelter.
  • Doctor Prunesquallor with a high pitched voice and an alarming laugh.
  • Fuchsia, Lord Sepulchrave’s daughter.
  • Countess of Sepulchrave, Gertrude, dark red hair, huge, surrounded by birds and white cats.
  • Nannie Slagg, a little ancient woman, nurse for Titus and before that Fuchsia.
  • Titus, newly born baby with extraordinary violet eyes.
  • Lord Sepulchrave, bound by tradition, long olive coloured face, a melancholy man.
  • Sourdust, the librarian, knotted beard very lined face as though made of brown paper.
  • Keda, a woman from the Dwellings of the Bright Carvers, Titus’s wet-nurse.
  • Lady Cora and Lady Clarice, Sepulchrave’s sisters, resentful of Gertrude, wanting what she has that they think should be theirs- power.

Normally I like a book to move along swiftly – this one doesn’t, but I’m perfectly happy reading it slowly, enjoying the scenes it conjures up in my mind.

Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Jackie at Farm Lane Books Blog is hosting a read-along of Mervyn Peake’s trilogy Gormenghast beginning with Titus Groan. The reading schedule is on Jackie’s blog – reading approximately 100 pages a week.

I first read Gormenghast when I was at school. I’d found the books in my local library and devoured them, amazed at the story and it’s macabre, dreamlike and fantastic setting. The strangeness of it captivated me.

Years later I watched the BBC’s serialisation Gormenghast (the first two books) and bought the books to re-read them. For one reason or another I didn’t so when I saw Jackie’s read-along I decided to join in. As you can see from my photo I haven’t even unwrapped books 2 and 3. I hope I enjoy them as much as I did the first time round.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: T is for Once a Biker by Peter Turnbull

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I’ve chosen Peter Turnbull’s Once a Biker, a Hennessey and Yellich mystery to illustrate the letter T in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet. For a full list of his books see Fantastic Fiction.

Synopsis from the book jacket

When a death bed confession leads to the reopening of a murder case, it doesn’t bode well when both victims were members of the same bikers’ gang twenty years ago. As Detective Chief Inspector Hennessey and his team try to investigate, it seems the vow of silence is still as strong as it was all those years ago, and many ex-gang members refuse to discuss those days of dangerous initiation rites and violent dares. But, when an ex-member is suddenly found murdered, it seems that someone is determined to keep old secrets dead and buried…

My view

This is the 16th Hennessey and Yellich mystery, a police procedural set in the city of York. Once again I have jumped into a series that is well advanced in the sequence, but Once a Biker works well as a standalone. Chief Inspector George Hennessey is nearing retirement – ‘His pension was calling his name more and more loudly with each day that passed.’(page 15)  But he is still very much in charge and leads his team, Detective Sergeant Somerled Yellich, Detective Constables Thompson Ventnor and Reginald Webster (new to CID) in uncovering the murderer.

Tony Wells, dying of cancer in a hospice tells Gillian Stoneham, a counsellor, the whereabouts of Terry North’s body, buried in Foxfoot Wood outside York. Both Tony and Terry had been members of a bikers’ gang known as the Dungeon Kings. The post-mortem reveals that Terry had been killed by a blow to the head. There were fractures all over his body but no facial injuries. The pathologist Dr Louise D’Acre describes it as ‘a very dispassionate execution, but somebody wanted to hurt him before they killed him.’ (page 20)

One of the biker chicks had been murdered three weeks before Terry had been reported missing and Harry the ‘Horse’ Turner, a gang member had been convicted of her murder. Released from prison he now maintains that he was innocent and Hennessey believes him, but first he has to penetrate the bikers’ code:

“Don’t grass on your mates”. They are still bikers in their hearts, early middle-aged as they may be. Once a biker, always a biker. (page 62)

I know nothing about bikers and their gangs, but learnt a lot from this book, enough to make me glad that I didn’t – if the initiation ceremony is dangerous, the biker’s chicks’ leaving ‘ceremony’ is very brutal and shocking.

There is a very strong sense of place in this book, as George Hennessey walks to and from his office in Micklegate along the medieval city walls. I liked the chapter headings giving a short preview of the contents, in a similar vein to a Dickens’ novel, such as this for chapter 4 ‘Wednesday, 19 June, 10.10 hours – 13.40 hours in which life in the biker gang is recalled.’ (page 71) In places the dialogue also has an old fashioned feel and the use of words, such as ‘forenoon’ adds to the formality not found in most of today’s crime fiction books. I liked it.

There is an intriguing ending to this book involving George Hennessey which made me realise that I have missed something in not reading the earlier books in the series, something I hope to remedy.

  • Paperback: 201 pages
  • Publisher: Severn House Paperbacks Ltd (Jun 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 9781847510266
  • ISBN-13: 978-1847510266
  • Source: Borrowed from the library

Gently Does It by Alan Hunter: Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

When I saw that Gently Does It by Alan Hunter was available as an e-book I bought it because I’d enjoyed watching the TV version with Martin Shaw as Chief Inspector George Gently. First published in 1955, this is the first in the Chief Inspector Gently series, set in Norfolk (unlike the TV version, set in Northumbria).

Product Description from Amazon

The last thing you need when you’re on holiday is to become involved in a murder. For most people, that would easily qualify as the holiday from hell. For George Gently, it is a case of business as usual. The Chief Inspector’s quiet Easter break in Norchester is rudely interrupted when a local timber merchant is found dead. His son, with whom he had been seen arguing, immediately becomes the prime suspect, although Gently is far from convinced of his guilt. 

Norchester City Police gratefully accept Gently’s offer to help investigate the murder, but he soon clashes with Inspector Hansom, the officer in charge of the case. Hansom’s idea of conclusive evidence appals Gently almost as much as Gently’s thorough, detailed, methodical style of investigation exasperates Hansom, who considers the murder to be a straightforward affair.

Locking horns with the local law is a distraction Gently can do without when he’s on the trail of a killer.

My thoughts

I really enjoyed Gently Does It. I liked the portrayal of George Gently, a patient, thoughtful policeman, never hurried or distracted, quiet and persistent. He eats a lot of peppermint creams and doesn’t follow normal police procedures, as he admits:

I oughtn’t to tell you this ‘“ I oughtn’t even to tell myself. But I’m a very bad detective, and I’m always doing what they tell you not to in police college. (page 36)

but he does get results. He takes his time and despite disagreeing with Inspector Hansom, from the local police force, he gradually works his way through the various suspects, all of whom have secrets that he winkles out.

About the Author (copied from the e-book version)

Alan Hunter was born in Hoveton, Norfolk in 1922. He left school at the age of fourteen to work on his father’s farm, spending his spare time sailing on the Norfolk Broads and writing nature notes for the Eastern Evening News. He also wrote poetry, some of which was published while he was in the RAF during the Second World War. By 1950, he was running his own book shop in Norwich and in 1955, the first of what would become a series of forty-six George Gently novels was published. He died in 2005, aged eighty-two.

There are more Gently books that I’m aiming to read. I love the titles and they’re all available as e-books!

First Lines

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Currently I’m reading The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann, but I’m getting increasingly tired of it. It maybe very well written, chronicling (in detail) the tension and despair in Olivia Curtis’s life as she has an affair with a married man in the 1930s, and no doubt it captures the spirit of the times of the interwar years but I just want to shake her. I’m probably in the wrong frame of mind to read it right now with its stream of consciousness style of writing and the small font that is blurring in front of my eyes as I read.

So this morning instead of struggling on with it I opened Once a Biker by Peter Turnbull, a Hennessey and Yellich mystery and began reading. It was a relief – the font size is much bigger, the writing is straightforward and the action is quick-moving.

I’ll write more about both books when I’ve finished them, but for now here are the opening lines of Once a Biker:

Monday, 17th June, 09.05 hours – 23.42 hours in which a realization comes to a dying man.

She had found the hospice had a wholly unexpected air of happiness about it. The peace of the institution she could understand, and indeed expected, as with the atmosphere of resignation, but the happiness of those awaiting death was something that came as a surprise. (page 1)

and of The Weather in the Streets:

Turning over in bed, she was aware of a summons: Rouse yourself. Float up, up from the submerging element … But it’s still night, surely … She opened one eye. Everything was in darkness; a dun glimmer mourned in the crack between the curtains. Fog stung faintly in nose, eyelids. So what was it: the fog had come down again: it might be morning. But I hadn’t been called yet. What was it woke me? Listen: yes the telephone, ringing downstairs in Etty’s sitting room; ringing goodness knows how long, nobody to answer it. (page 1)

Both books invite me to carry on reading. They are very different genres, but I’m keener to find out who killed Terry North, whose body has been found buried in a wood, twenty years after he disappeared, than I am to find out how Olivia’s affair progresses. I suspect it’s doomed.

A Book Beginnings post hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.