The Shortest Day by Colm Toibin

Published on December 21, 2020 by Margaret3 Comments

Today is the shortest day of the year, so it’s the best day to write about The Shortest Day by Colm Toibin, a novella of just 31 pages, one of the shortest books I’ve read. I loved it. It appealed to me on several levels – first of all it’s about the mythical past, about the strange carvings I’ve found on certain stones, about archaeology, and about the unknown customs and rituals of our ancient past, and secondly because it’s storytelling at its best – a tale of wonder and mystery.

Amazon Original Stories|3 November 2020|31 pages

Professor O’Kelly is writing notes about Newgrange, also called Bru na Boinne, a circular mound with a retaining wall that had a narrow passageway leading into a vaulted central chamber. There are spirals and diamond shaped designs cut into some of the stones both inside the chamber itself and outside the entrance to the passageway. It’s a burial chamber, a prehistoric monument in County Meath in Ireland, that was built around 3200 BC – older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. It’s ringed by a stone circle, stones brought from the Mournes and Wicklow Mountains.

He speculates about the people who created the burial chamber, who they were, where they came from and what they believed in. He wonders about their burial rituals, what language they spoke and what they believed about the spirit. It all remains a mystery. He would dearly love to find something to open up its secrets to him. He has visited it several times in the past and plans to spend the days before Christmas visiting Newgrange, to make fresh drawings of the carvings on the stones and do a small amount of excavation in the passageway.

Meanwhile deep within the chamber there were whispers among the dead that the professor was coming again. They are concerned that he would discover the secret of the light penetrating the chamber on the winter solstice – the shortest day of the year. Some of the local inhabitants know of the secret but they never talk about it, except in whispers between themselves. When he arrives they put up a number of obstacles to prevent him from entering the chamber.

This is a wonderful story full of atmosphere, of dread and of anticipation. My heart was in my mouth as I read this story, wondering and hoping that the professor would succeed. Would he witness the secret of Newgrange – the secret of those who had lived thousands of years before?

My Friday Post: The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths

Published on December 18, 2020 by Margaret18 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.

At the moment I’m reading The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths, the 11th book in the Dr Ruth Galloway mystery series. One of the reasons I’m enjoying it is because it has links to the 1st book in the series, The Crossing Places, and another is that I’m fascinated by standing stones and in particular by stone circles.

It begins:

12 February 2016
DCI Nelson,
Well, here we are again. Truly our end is our beginning. That corpse you buried in your garden, has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? You must have wondered whether I, too, was buried deep in the earth. Oh ye of little faith. You must have known that I would rise again.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader . If you have to improvise, that is okay. *Find a snippet, short and sweet, but no spoilers!

These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

Clough’s face gives nothing away. He hands over a Starbuck’s cup, which probably completely violates the karma of the dig, and looks around the trench with apparent interest. Ruth drinks the coffee gratefully.

~~~

Description:

DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to ‘go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there’. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle’s baby due to be born, but because although the letters are anonymous, they are somehow familiar. They read like the letters that first drew him into the case of The Crossing Places, and to Ruth. But the author of those letters is dead. Or are they?

Meanwhile Ruth is working on a dig in the Saltmarsh – another henge, known by the archaeologists as the stone circle – trying not to think about the baby. Then bones are found on the site, and identified as those of Margaret Lacey, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared thirty years ago.

As the Margaret Lacey case progresses, more and more aspects of it begin to hark back to that first case of The Crossing Places, and to Scarlett Henderson, the girl Nelson couldn’t save. The past is reaching out for Ruth and Nelson, and its grip is deadly.

My Life in Books 2020

Published on December 16, 2020 by Margaret12 Comments

I’ve done different versions of this in the past. This year I’ve added Annabel’s lockdown question.

Using titles from the books you’ve read this year complete the following sentences. The links take you to my reviews.

In high school I was the one who was: Writing Wild

People might be surprised by: The Mystery of Princess Louise

I will never be: (in) Yesterday’s Papers

Every Monday morning I look like: The Luminaries

I fear: The Lost Lights of St Kilda

I hate being: (in) The Mist

Wish I had: The Secret of High Eldersham

The last meal I ate was: (with) The Last Protector

At a party you’d find me with: The Lady of the Ravens

I’ve never been to: The Dutch House

A happy day includes: (watching the) Blue Tits in My Nest Box

Motto I live by: And Now for the Good News

On my bucket list is: (learning) How to Disappear

In my next life, I want to have: A Thousand Moons

My life in lockdown was like: The Year Without Summer

What’s your Year in Books been like? Do let me know.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Winter 2020-2021 TBR

Published on December 15, 2020 by Margaret11 Comments

The topic this week is Books On My Winter 2020-2021 TBR. These are physical books on my bookshelves, but this is an aspirational list rather than a realistic one. I want to read these books but it may not be during this winter (many of these are so long!) and there are other books I’d like to read too, which I may read instead.

Helen of Troy by Margaret George – historical fiction (611 pages)
I’ll Never Be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier (304 Pages)
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone – historical fiction about Michangelo (776 pages)
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley (830 pages)
World Without End by Ken Follett – historical fiction (1248 pages)

Sashenka by Simon Sebag Montefiore – historical fiction (607 pages)
Book of Love by Sarah Bower – historical fiction (598 pages)
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmunde de Waal – art, history, biography (368 pages)
The Watch House by Bernie McGill – historical fiction (288 pages)
Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham – fictional autobiography (700 pages)

Have you read any of these books?

The Survivors by Jane Harper

Published on December 14, 2020 by Margaret4 Comments

Little, Brown Book Group UK| 1 October 2020| 337 pages| Kindle review copy| 4*

Kieran Elliott has moved back to his home town of Evelyn Bay on the island of Tasmania twelve years after the death of his older brother, Finn. His father has dementia and he has come home to help his mother move house. He feels guilty as Finn died trying to rescue him during a violent storm at sea and he has always thought that his parents blamed him for the loss of their favourite son. On that same day twelve years earlier, a teenage girl went missing. Her bag was later found on the beach, washed up by the tide, but her body was never found. The day after Kieran’s arrival, Bronte, a waitress at the Surf and Turf bar, is found dead on the beach, which stirs up memories of the events of twelve years ago.

I struggled reading the first part of this book. I couldn’t easily make out who was who, especially between the male characters, and I had no idea who or what the ‘Survivors‘ in the title were. There were hints about what had happened twelve years ago, but it wasn’t really compelling me to read on to find out who did what, where and how – until, that is, I’d read about 25% of the book. I was on the point of giving up, when things became clearer, the characters came to life and I realised what was going on – and I just had to read on.

Evelyn Bay is a small community where everyone knows everyone else. There are plenty of rumours flying around, and suspicion falls on several people. Just who and what the ‘Survivors‘ are plays a major role in the story – along with the sea, the caves and the tides. So, this is a slow-burner at first, that turns into an emotionally charged book rather than one of high tension and suspense. I enjoyed it, but not as much as Jane Harper’s earlier books, The Dry, Force of Nature or The Lost Man, which all had me enthralled.

My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for my review copy.

My Friday Post: The Big Sleep

Published on December 11, 2020 by Margaret14 Comments

The Big Sleep begins:

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

I smiled. He didn’t like the smile. His eyes got nasty.

Blurb:

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood’s two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA’s seedy backstreets, Marlowe’s got his work cut out – and that’s before he stumbles over the first corpse . . .

~~~

I’ve just started to read this book, a crime fiction classic, the first in Chandler’s Philip Marlow series set in Los Angeles. In the introduction Ian Rankin writes that it opens with his favourite opening paragraph in all crime fiction and that it is

a story of sex, drugs, blackmail and high society narrated by a cynical tough guy, Philip Marlowe‘ and that it is ‘such fun to read that you won’t notice how clever its author is being.