Teaser Tuesdays – Page 6

Teaser Tuesdays – Hearts and Minds

Published on March 30, 2010 by Margaret7 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!

I’ve just started to read Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig. I bought this book last year, attracted by the description on the back cover which describes it a contemporary novel which is entertaining and asking questions about the way we live. It’s about five people, all immigrants living in London, an illegal mini-cab driver from Zimbabwe, an idealistic supply teacher, from South Africa, a miserable dogsbody at a political magazine, from New York and a teenager trafficked into sexual slavery.

I remembered it when I saw that it’s on the Orange Prize for Fiction longlist and thought it was time I read it.

My teaser is from page 7.

Polly thinks gratefully of Iryna overhead. Bill has teased her about the way her life is dependent on cheap foreign labour, and she is conscious of the irony that, while her professional life often consists of helping refugees and illegal immigrants, her ability to do so depends upon exploiting them.

More teasers can be found here.

Teaser Tuesdays – Crime on the Move

Published on March 23, 2010 by Margaret7 Comments

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

My teaser this week is from Crime on the Move: the Official Anthology of the Crime Writers’ Association of 2005, a collection of short stories edited by Martin Edwards. The last one in the book is Seeing Off George by David Williams.

Disposing of the body was so often the undoing of conspirators like Tristan and Laura, and she knew it. But not only had she lighted upon the perfect solution to their problem, she had also devised a credible story to account for George’s disappearance which would purportedly take place more than a thousand miles away from Farringly. (page 318)

I’ve now finished reading this book, which is an excellent selection of crime stories from a number of authors who were new to me, as well as some very well known ones.

Teaser Tuesdays – Heartland by John MacKay

Published on March 16, 2010 by Margaret6 Comments

My teaser today is from Heartland by John MacKay, which I have just finished reading.

John MacKay is a Scottish broadcast journalist, television presenter and producer, who is currently the chief anchor for the Central Scotland edition of STV News at Six. This is his second book.

Heartland is about Iain Martin who returns to his home on the Isle of Lewis to rebuild his life after the breakup of his marriage and to reconstruct the ancient family home, a blackhouse, now in ruins. He meets his old friend Neilie and his wife Catriona, bringing back memories of their friend Rob who was lost at sea 20 years earlier. Neilie alone had survived the accident, becoming the local hero as he had piloted the boat back to shore. Iain also discovers a skeleton under the floor in the blackhouse.

My teaser is from page 50.

The body had been laid to rest in a formal manner, on its back, the arms crossed on its breast and the legs fully extended. Over time it had settled awkwardly, twisted towards the right, with the distortion more exaggerated from the waist down.

Is it Rob’s body he has found? His suspicions are increased when Neilie confesses he had not been on Rob’s boat that night. At times the narrative stalls with lengthy descriptions of the locality and its history, all of which is interesting but it does slow down the story. I liked it well enough to look for MacKay’s other books – The Road Dance and Last of the Line.

See Should Be Reading for more ‘teasers’.

Teaser Tuesday – Crime on the Move

Published on March 9, 2010 by Margaret5 Comments

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

This week I’ve been reading short stories from Crime on the Move: the Official Anthology of the Crime Writers Association edited by Martin Edwards. The contributors include Ann Cleeves, Reginald Hill, Michael Gilbert, Keith Miles Martin Edwards and Kate Ellis who wrote Top Deck, the story I’m quoting from today.

The theme of the collection of the stories in this book is illustrated in Top Deck through Keith’s journey home from work in Liverpool by bus in 1965. What he sees has a profound effect on the rest of his life.

When the bus stopped briefly in the Ullet Road to let somebody off Keith found himself staring straight across into a lighted upstairs window. The curtains were wide open and two people were silhouetted behind the glass; a man and a woman who, for a split second, seemed faintly familiar. The man seemed to have both his hands raised up to the woman’s throat and they were moving slowly to and fro as if the woman was trying to ward him off, trying to save her life. (page 92)

The stories in this collection are varied, succinct and satisfying, ranging from the macabre and eerie to the comic, about journeys on the sea, in the air and on land. This is a book to dip into and enjoy.

Tuesday Teaser

Published on January 19, 2010 by Margaret4 Comments

In between reading the books shown on the sidebar (Black and Blue and Can Any Mother Help Me?) I’ve also read the beginning of William Fiennes’s The Music Room, which I borrowed from the library three weeks ago. It’s due back today and I’ve got to decide whether to renew it or return it. Some of it really interests me and makes me want to continue reading but other parts are rather boring and make me put the book to one side. It’s a gentle book, written with sensitivity and warmth.

It’s the story of William Fiennes childhood. It reads in parts like a novel, but is actually a memoir. He lived in a moated castle, in a beautiful setting with his parents, and older brothers and sister. Richard, eleven years older than him suffered from severe epilepsy, which has a profound effect on the family. I like the descriptive passages in this book and the details about the family, the loving memories that William evokes. The castle is open to the public part of the time and is also used by film crews and he was entranced by the filming as well as by the actors. Just fancy meeting Eric Morecambe when you’re five and he asks if you’re married, or selling Ian McKellen a postcard.

Here’s his description of the castle:

Our house was almost seven hundred years old, a medieval beginning transformed in the sixteenth century into a Tudor stately home, a castle surrounded by a broad moat, with woods, farmland and a landscaped park on the far side and a gatehouse tower guarding the two-arched stone bridge, the island’s only point of access and departure.

The gatehouse doors hung on rusty iron hinges, grids of sun-bleached vertical and cross beams, like the gates of an ancient city, a Troy or Jericho, creaking like ships as you manoeuvred them. (page 4)

Interspersed with the narrative about his family are sections on early experiments with electricity which, although interesting in themselves, slow down the book for me and make me impatient for the author to get on with his story.

But looking at the book again this morning has revived my interest in it. I hope I can renew it

Teaser Tuesday – Can Any Mother Help Me?

Published on January 12, 2010 by Margaret9 Comments

One of the books I’m reading is Can any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey. It’s an edited collection of letters between a group of women calling themselves the Cooperative Correspondence Club, or CCC. They created a magazine that was circulated between the members for over 55 years. They wrote chatty letters to each other about all aspects of their lives, becoming close friends through their letters.

This extract is from letter from Roberta, who was living in Kent in September 1940. It was a Sunday, the sun was shining and just as the family sat down to lunch the peace and quiet was shattered by the sound of the siren and machine gunfire could be heard in the distance. Then suddenly the noise was terrifyingly close, as right overhead six planes were fighting and one plane was shot down in front of their eyes.