Category: Fiction

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett: Book Review

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

I didn’t write about Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett as soon as I’d finished reading it, which is a pity because I only made a few notes whilst reading and now my memory of it is fading fast. It took me some time to get really involved in the story, which is a mixture of fiction and history. I liked the historical elements very much. The fictional side mixed in quite well but I found some of it a bit too sentimental and somewhat contrived.

It’s the story of Sir Thomas More’s fall from Henry VIII’s favour and that of his adopted daughter Meg Giggs and her love for two men – John Clements, the family’s former tutor, and the painter, Hans Holbein. Bennett puts forward a theory about John Clements’ true identity drawn from an analysis and an interpretation of two paintings by Hans Holbein of the More family and also his painting, The Ambassadors. I was fascinated by this and the detail in the paintings, enhanced by the inclusion in the book of a reproduction of the plan for Holbein’s first portrait of the More Family painted in 1527 -28 and a colour reproduction of  a second portrait of the family attributed to Holbein, even though it is signed ‘Rowlandas Lockey’.

I liked the way Bennett portrayed different aspects of Sir Thomas More’s character; in his early life he was a humanist and friend of Erasmus, later a courtier and Henry VIII’s Catholic chancellor, who persecuted Protestant heretics. This contrasts with his family life, where he is relaxed, generous and gentle and Meg cannot reconcile her knowledge of him as a father with his cruel and fanatical persecution of the heretics.

It combines a love story, art history and historical fiction providing an insight into the Tudor period at a time of great social and religious change.

The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery: Book Review

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I found The Gourmet an interesting book, maybe an appetiser, or an amuse-bouche, for Muriel Barbery’s later book The Elegance of the Hedgehog (which I haven’t read). It offers tantalising glimpses of food that Pierre Arthens, France’s celebrated food critic recalls as he lies dying, trying to remember the most delicious food he ever tasted. He thinks the flavour of this elusive food is

the first and ultimate truth of my entire life, and that it holds the key to a heart that I have since silenced. I know that it is a flavour from childhood or adolescence, an orginal, marvellous dish that predates my vocation as a critic, before I had any pretension to expound on the pleasure of eating. A forgotten flavour, lodged in my deepest self, and which has surfaced in the twilight of my life as the only truth ever told – or realised. (pages 12-13)

As he remembers back to his childhood his life and character are also revealed through impressions and memories of him from his wife, son and other relations and acquaintances. These are in short chapters building up a picture of Pierre’s character and contrasting with his own thoughts and memories. They are interspersed with Pierre’s florid, over-blown, pretentious ruminations on food, including fish, meat, vegetables, bread, mayonnaise, ice cream and sorbet, none of which provides that elusive taste he is seeking.

I wished the short chapters from his family and friends had been longer and his own shorter – I wanted to know more about the other characters. I know from the extract from The Elegance of the Hedgehog that there is more about Renee, the concierge of the apartement building where Pierre lies dying in that book, so I will read that at some time. I liked the changes in writing style between the characters and Pierre.

All in all, it’s a delightful description of food, mouth-watering, rich and sumptuous, but somehow lacking in substance. By the end it was losing impetus as I began to wonder what it could possibly be that had been tantalising him so much and that was so important to him. The ending was really inevitable and rather sad.

My copy was kindly sent to me from the publishers, Gallic Books.

Teaser Tuesday: The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

This week I’ve been reading The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery. It’s a slim book, packed with richness – sumptuous, and full to over-flowing with words and images. It is verbose, florid and sensational – meaning that is celebrates all the sensations experienced relating to food.

Here is a description of one of my favourite foods:

… crimson in its taut silken finery, undulating with the occasional more tender hollow, with a cheerfulness about it like a plumpish woman in her party dress hoping to compensate for the inconvenience of her extra pounds by means of a disarming chubbiness that evokes an irresistible desire to bite into her flesh.

… my teeth tore into the flesh to splatter the tongue with the rich, warm and bountiful juice, whose essential generosity is masked by the chill of a refrigerator, or the affront of vinegar, or the false nobility of oil.

The raw tomato, devoured in the garden when freshly picked, is a horn of abundance of simple sensations, a radiating rush in one’s mouth that brings with it every pleasure. The resistance of the skin – slightly taut, just enough; the luscious yield of the tissues, their seed-filled liqueur oozing to the corners of one’s lips, and that one wipes away without any fear of staining one’s fingers, this plump little globe, unleashing a flood of nature inside us: a tomato, an adventure. (from pages 44-5)

The Body on the Beach by Simon Brett: Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

The Body on the Beach is the first in Simon Brett’s Fethering Mysteries. It’s an easy read, a ‘cozy mystery’, set in a fictitious village on the south coast of England. Not a typical village as it has a large residential conurbation, but at its heart is the High Street, with its flint-faced cottages, dating back to the early 18th century. Radiating out from the High Street are a number of new developments, Victorian and Edwardian houses, bungalows, post-war council houses and a large private estate of huge houses backing on to the sea.

Carole Seddon has taken early retirement from her career at the Home Office to live there and as the book opens she is confronted by a new neighbour, Jude, who with her informality and casual approach to life breaks all the accepted local conventions. Carole views her with slight distaste. But when Carole is also confronted by the the discovery of a dead body on the beach, that has disappeared by the time the police go to investigate, she gradually accepts Jude’s help. Together they set about solving the mystery, which gets more complicated with the discovery of the body of a local lad.

This is an entertaining whodunnit which I liked well enough. It wasn’t too difficult to work out the identity of the first body and the culprit. I liked the contrast between Carole and Jude – Carole, set in her ways, reserved and conventional and the flamboyant, casual Jude. Despite her informality Jude reveals very little about her life and relationships, despite Carole’sefforts to get to know more about her.  I also liked the way Brett so convincingly describes the relationships between the different groups of Fethering’s residents.

There are 11 books in the Fethering series.  I’ve already read the fourth –  Murder in the Museum, so there are plenty more to read, the latest one being The Shooting in the Shop. The full list is in Wikipedia and Simon Brett also has a website.

Agatha Christie Reading Challenge: My Progress

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge is an open-ended challenge to read all of Agatha Christie’s books and short stories, run by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. I first read some of Christie’s books when I was a teenager and hadn’t read any for years until I borrowed a copy of The Crooked House from my local library three years ago. This reminded me of how much I had enjoyed her books and set me off reading them again. Over the years I must have read a good number of them but had never kept any records of what I read at the time.

So when I saw that Kerrie was running this challenge I decided to join in. It’s one of the best challenges out, for me at least, because all you have to do is read Agatha Christie’s books at your own pace and link to the Agatha Christie Carnival once a month. There’s no pressure to meet any deadlines – if you haven’t read any Christie books for the Carnival that’s OK and you just carry on reading when you like.

I’m not even trying to read them in the order they were published, even though Kerrie and some others are, because I’m reading books I already own or books that I find in librarys and/or bookshops. So far I’ve read 17 and 2 collections of her short stories – I’ve listed them on a separate page.

My latest find is 4.50 from Paddington, which I received from Juxtabook as part of my prize in her recent competition. Catherine described this book as a ‘rather aged paperback’ and it is, but then it is 50 years old, published in 1960 for just 2/6 (in old money). It may be old and faded, but because it was published soon after Agatha Christie wrote it, it has a contemporary feel about it. I’ve watched so many TV and film versions, with different actors playing the part of Miss Marple, some more successfully than others that it’s interesting to see this book. I’m not sure who the woman on the front cover is meant to portray – surely not Miss Marple?

And this is the back cover – really that’s all the blurb you need to capture your interest.

This will be my next Agatha Christie book to read.

The Comfort of Saturdays by Alexander McCall Smith: Book Review

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I do like the Isabel Dalhousie books and this one The Comfort of Saturdays is so good. What I find so fascinating about the series is that whilst not a lot actually happens, a lot goes on in Isabel’s head. Isabel is an ‘intermeddler’ … She imagined the dictionary definition:one who meddles in affairs that are no business of hers. (page 153) She can’t resist appeals for help and tries to do the right thing.

In The Comfort for Saturdays her main concern apart from her relationship with her family, Jamie, the father of her son, Charlie, and her niece, Cat, is trying to discover the truth behind Dr Thompson’s disgrace on resigning from all medical work. He was an infectious diseases specialist carrying out a drugs trial on a new antibiotic, which was going well until two patients developed serious side effects and then another patient died. He was accused of falsifying figures and producing a misleading report. His wife asks Isabel to clear his name as she believes he is innocent. Dr Thomas has sunk into a deep depression, too ashamed to go out of his flat.

Isabel is also struggling with the dilemma of whether to include a paper by Professor Dove in the Review of Applied Ethics, which she both owns and edits. Earlier she had dismissed Dove from the editorial board and on the one hand she doesn’t want to appear petty in rejecting his paper, which she doesn’t think meets the Review’s standards and on the other, she needs to show that Dove is treated equally with other people who submit papers.

Issues that interested me as I read the book included thoughts on the existence of otherwise of God and Hell, agnosticism, the possibility of ‘killing’ God, the existence of a merciful creator, and justice:

She had never been able to understand how anybody could reconcile the existence of Hell with that of a merciful creator; he simply would not have embarked on us in the first place to send us to some Hieronymous Bosch-like torture chamber or its more modern equivalent (a place of constant piped music, perhaps). Hell might be an airport, she thought lit with neon and insincere smiles. No, she told herself; she was prepared to accept the possible existence of a creator, in the same way she was prepared to accept curved space, but he or she would not invent Hell, whatever twists and turns on the subject of free will and choice were resorted to by the concepts apologists. (page 70)

She goes on to recognise, however, that although people relish the idea of eternal justice we should be careful about abolishing Hell, and also that we should accept that because the wicked more often than not get away with their wickedness and much as we would like a perfect world ruled by perfect justice, this is not the way it will ever be.

Other themes that arise are jealousy, guilt, and the nature of freedom – between people in a relationship – trust, values, and money. Yet all this thinking doesn’t make the book tedious, far from it, because McCall Smith writes in such an engaging style, mixing in events and descriptions of the location along with what I think of as Isabel’s meditations that keeps me turning the pages to find out not only what will happen next, but also what Isabel thinks about it.

One more quotation that made me smile is this:

There were things, she thought, which were probably true, but which we simply should not always acknowledge as true; novels, for example – always false, elaborately constructed deceptions, but we believed them to be true while we were reading them; we had to, as otherwise there was no point. One would read, and all the time as one read, one would say, mentally, He didn’t really. (page 42)

I do believe The Comfort of Saturdays is true – even though I know it’s all a figment of McCall Smith’s imagination.

The title? Well, Isabel liked Saturdays, but not quite so much, she thought if she had to work. And yet even a working Saturday seemed subtly different from a weekday … (page 175) Saturday was her favourite day.