Category: Fiction

Library Books – December 2023

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

These are the books I have on loan from my local library:

Daphne Du Maurier and her sisters : the hidden lives of Piffy, Bird and Bing by Jane Dunn.The Du Mauriers – three beautiful, successful and rebellious sisters, whose lives were bound in a family drama that inspired Angela and Daphne’s best novels. Much has been written about Daphne but here the hidden lives of the sisters are revealed in a riveting group biography. The sisters are considered side by side, as they were in life, three sisters who grew up during the 20th century in the glamorous hothouse of a theatrical family dominated by a charismatic and powerful father. This family dynamic reveals the hidden lives of Piffy, Bird & Bing, full of social non-conformity, love, rivalry and compulsive make-believe, their lives as psychologically complex as a Daphne du Maurier novel.

Politics on the edge : a memoir from within by Rory Stewart. Over the course of a decade from 2010, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister – before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise. Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow and inadequate our democracy and government had become. Cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence ran rampant. Around him, individual politicians laid the foundations for the political and economic chaos of today. Stewart emerged battered but with a profound affection for his constituency of Penrith and the Border, and a deep direct insight into the era of populism and global conflict. This book invites us into the mind of one of the most interesting actors on the British political stage.

In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill. After just a year of close, loving marriage, Ruth has been widowed. Her beloved husband, Ben, has been killed in a tragic accident and Ruth is left suddenly and totally bereft. Unable to share her sorrow and grief with Ben’s family, who are dealing with their pain in their own way, Ruth becomes increasingly isolated, hiding herself in her cottage in the countryside as the seasons change around her. Only Ben’s young brother is able to reach out beyond his own grief to offer Ruth the compassion which might reclaim her from her own devastating unhappiness.

I’d love to know if you’ve read any of these books and if so what did you think? If you haven’t, do any of them tempt you?

Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Every Man For Himself was the winner of the 1996 Whitbread Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in that year.

For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls. In her labyrinthine passageways the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers are played out, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty, as Beryl Bainbridge’s haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end.

This is one of her historical novels, so it’s no surprise that this is a disaster novel. It’s the story of Morgan’s voyage divided into four days as he tells it. It’s mainly the story of the young rich people as they drink and party their way across the Atlantic. Morgan is part of the crowd but he is not rich, and although he has connections, he’s a young American who has to earn his living. We only see a glimpse into his background and I found it confusing for quite a way into the book. But eventually we learn more about him and things became clearer,

By the time he writes about day 4, the sinking itself, the pace speeds up, and the story came to life for me. I think Bainbridge conveys what it must have been like –

There was such a dearth of information, of confirmation or denial of rumours – the racquet court was under water but not the Turkish baths; a spur of the iceberg had ripped the ship from one end to the other but the crew was fully equipped to make good the damage and were even now putting it to rights – and such an absence of persons in authority to whom one might turn that it was possible to imagine the man in the golfing jacket had spoken no more than the truth when presupposing we were victims of a hoax. (page 179)

I could easily imagine what it was like to be a passenger, people rushing about the boat, trying to get on the lifeboats and being separated from friends and family. And the final scenes bring home the reality that it really was a case of every man for himself with the callous attitude towards the steerage passengers, the lack of lifeboats and the disregard of the ice warnings. And so the boat described as unsinkable, sank.

Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Canongate Books| 2 November 2023|257 pages| Review copy| 4*

Synopsis

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able – despite the cost – to make a life she could call her own.

My thoughts:

Kate Grenville is one of my favourite authors, so I was looking forward to reading Restless Dolly Maunder. I was not disappointed.

This is the fictionalised life story of Kate Grenville’s maternal grandmother, Sarah Catherine Maunder, known as Dolly. She was the sixth child of Thomas and Sarah Maunder, born in Currabubula, New South Wales, Australia in 1881. She was not only restless but also clever and determined – she knew what she wanted and she did her best to achieve it.

As a child she longed to be a pupil-teacher but in a world where women were subservient to men she had to obey her father who wouldn’t allow it. She could marry or be a spinster. Eventually she married Bert Russell and began a life away from the farm and her family, moving from place to place and from one business to the next to better herself and her family – a shop, a boarding house, a pub, and a grand hotel.. But she was a difficult person, not easy to like and unable to show love. Hers was a success story but also a tragedy as her wanderlust impelled her to keep striving for more and better things in life.

Restless Dolly Maunder casts light not just on Dolly’s life but also on life in Australia for most of the 20th century. The book has a relentless pace as it tells her life story as she propels herself from place to place and from business to business, enjoying success whilst it lasted and enduring all else, not stopping to pause breath in her restless pursuit of what came next.

Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

I can recommend all of Kate Grenville’s books. One of my favourites is One Life:My Mother’s Story, her biography of Nance Russell, Dolly’s daughter. Hers was a happier and more fulfilled life.

Fair Stood the Wind for France by H E Bates

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Synopsis

When John Franklin brings his plane down into Occupied France at the height of the Second World war, there are two things in his mind – the safety of his crew and his own badly injured arm. It is a stroke of unbelievable luck when the family of a French farmer risk their lives to offer the airmen protection. During the hot summer weeks that follow, the English officer and the daughter of the house are drawn inexorably to each other…

My thoughts:

I bought Fair Stood the Wind for France by H E Bates in October 2018 when it caught my eye in Barter Books in Alnwick, mainly because of the title, which appealed to me. I knew nothing about it, but as it’s one of Penguins Modern Classics I added it to my Classics Club booklist. It’s my Classics Club Spin book for December, which is why I’ve read it recently.

I’m in two minds about this book. It begins really well and I was totally gripped by the first part of the book describing Franklin’s flight, with his crew of four sergeants, over France then the Alps and on to Italy. On his return flight when they were over France, they began to dive, rapidly losing height and he knew that the port engine had gone. The air screw (that’s a propeller) had broken, meaning they wouldn’t make it back to England and they crash landed somewhere in the countryside. They thought they were about west-north-west of the Vosges. From then onwards the story covers the period when Franklin whose arm had been very badly injured was cared for by Francoise and her family, hidden in their farmhouse. He falls in love with Francoise and she agrees to help him escape and marry him when they reach England.

But from then on as they made their way through Vichy France and eventually to Marseilles I felt the story dragged and I lost much of the interest I had had in the first part. Even though they encountered much danger and the tension rose, the action slowed down too much. I was relieved to finish the book.

As it was written and initially serialized weekly in the Saturday Evening Post from March 18 to May 6, 1944, and in Woman’s Journal (May-July 1944), it does give a contemporaneous account of the war portraying all dangers and the hardships they endured. It is really an extended short story, a love story, but one that didn’t particularly convince me. However, it does contain some beautiful descriptions of the French countryside and I loved the drama of the first part of the book.

  • Published by Penguin in paperback it’s also available as an e-book, published in 2005.
  • My Rating: 3.5 stars

Reading Beryl Bainbridge

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Annabel at AnnaBookBel is hosting the third Reading Beryl week from 18 – 26 November, enveloping her birthdate on the 21st.

In previous years I’ve read According to Queenie, a novel about the life of Samuel Johnson as seen through the eyes of Queeney, Mrs Thrale, and the other Master Georgie, set in the Crimean War telling the story of George Hardy, a surgeon.

Since starting my blog I’ve also read these books, which are linked to my posts:

I have copies of the following books of hers left to read:

  • Every Man for Himself – Recapturing the four crucial days prior to the sinking of the Titanic and the loss of fifteen hundred lives, this story is told from the perspective of Morgan, the American nephew of the owner of the shipping line, and reveals how his destiny is linked to other passengers.
  • Winter Garden – Ashburner’s wife had been sporting about his need for a rest, packing him off on a holiday to Scotland. But in the taxi he changed his luggage labels and checked in for a flight to Moscow. He was the official companion to the artist Nina St Clair – but within 48 hours Nina had vanished. I did start reading this but it didn’t appeal to me very much, so the book has gone back on the shelf for a while.

I’ve started reading Every Man for Himself, and may finish it in time to write about it – I hope so anyway.

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham one of the Chunksters I wrote about in this post. I bought this book in 2008 and I still haven’t read it – probably because it is such a big thick book of 700 pages that it is really unwieldy, hard to hold and so tightly bound I can hardly open it. And the print is quite small!

Book Beginning:

The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

And tonight he sank on his knees, buried his face in his hands, and prayed to God with all his might that He would make his clubfoot whole. It was a very small thing beside the moving of mountains. He knew that God could do it if he wished, and his own faith was complete. Next morning, finishing his prayers with the same request, he fixed a date for the miracle.

Description from Goodreads:

Of Human Bondage is the first and most autobiographical of Maugham’s masterpieces. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as would-be artist, Philip settles in London to train as a doctor.

And that is where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a formative, tortured and masochistic affair which very nearly ruins him.

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?