The Lost Garden by Katharine Swartz

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The Lost Garden is  an emotionally intense novel of love, loss and grief, set in both the past and the present day, in a small village on the Cumbrian coast.

In 1919 Eleanor, the daughter of the vicar of Goswell, is struggling to adjust to the loss of her brother, Walter who died just before the Armistice was declared and in the present day half-sisters Marin and Rebecca are coming to terms with the death of their father and his wife.

The link between the two stories centres around the walled garden at the back of the Bower House, a small house next to the church. It was said to have been the herb garden for the monastery before the Reformation.

In 1919 the garden is covered in brambles and Eleanor decides she wants to make it into a garden of remembrance, a place to just be, to remember or to forget as much as you need. And she begins to restore it with the help of the church gardener, Jack. As they do so the garden begins to blossom as winter moves into spring and summer, but the mood of both the family and the country remains sombre as they come to terms with the aftermath of the First World War.

In the present day, Marin has bought the Bower House, not knowing its history. Rebecca discovers the walled garden once more overgrown with brambles and weeds and it captures her imagination. And when Marin she sees a photo of a young woman in the garden, thought to have been taken around 1920 she is determined to find out more – just who was the young woman and what is underneath the brambles. With the help of the local gardener, Joss, she begins to restore the garden and in doing so they discover secrets about both the past and the present.

The Lost Garden is a gentle story, well told and an enjoyable read, switching between the past and the present. The differences in attitudes and social conventions of the times provide a distinct contrast and highlights the parallels between the two stories. I liked the story-lines for both Marin and Eleanor, both have difficult relationships with their sisters and both are coming to terms with their grief, but on the whole I was more interested in Eleanor’s story, set against the backdrop of the post First World War.

My thanks to Lovereading for providing an advance proof of this novel, due to be published 15 May 2015. The Lost Garden is the second book in Katharine Swartz’s Tales from Goswell series – the first is The Vicar’s Wife.

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

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Years ago, well before I began this blog, I read many of John Grisham’s books and loved them. Then, somehow, he went off my radar, but when I saw Gray Mountain on display in the library I remembered how much I used to enjoy his books and borrowed it.

Gray Mountain

 

I don’t think he has changed much – this book is just as much a campaign against injustice and the misuse of power, about the good little guys against the big bad guys as his earlier books are. In this case it’s the big coal companies that come under the microscope, companies that are  ruining the environment by strip-mining in the Appalachian mountains. I was amazed to read the details – clear-felling the forests, scalping the earth and then blasting away the mountain tops to get at the coal. All the trees, topsoil and rocks are then dumped into the valleys, wiping out the vegetation, wildlife and streams. Gray Mountain is one of the mountains destroyed in this way.

But this is running ahead in the book. It begins in 2008 when Samantha Kofer has lost her job as a highly paid third-year associate with New York’s largest law firm following the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers bank. One of the options open to her is to work for free for twelve months as an intern at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Virginia, run by Mattie Wyatt.  After that there is the possibility that she could get her old job back.

Up until then Samantha had only worked in corporate law and had never been in a courtroom, but she soon became immersed in a variety of  cases, including meths dealers and people suffering from black lung disease.

Gray Mountain is owned by Mattie’s nephew, Donovan Gray, also a lawyer, who is taking on cases against the Big Coal companies.  One of the cases involves the Tate family, two little boys who were killed when a boulder from the rock clearance crashed into the trailer where they were sleeping.  Although Samantha is horrified by the situation and wants to help Donovan and his brother Jeff in their search for justice, she feels reluctant to get involved as Donovan’s  methods are sometimes not strictly legal – and she doesn’t feel she belongs in Brady. And there is still the opportunity for her to work in New York, when a former colleague offers her a job.

But she gets emotionally involved with the people and their problems and begins to like litigation:

This was the rush, the high, the narcotic that pushed trial lawyers to the brink. This was the thrill that Donovan sought when he refused to settle for cash on the table. This was the overdose of testosterone that inspired men like her father to dash around the world chasing cases. (page 197)

She has to decide whether to stay with the Clinic or take the job in New York, and she loves the city life. It’s not an easy decision, and it is not revealed until right at the very end of the book.

Although Gray Mountain doesn’t quite match up to my memories of Grisham’s earlier books, I still enjoyed it. At first I thought he was introducing too much detail about the coal companies’ mining practices, but I soon realised how essential it is to understanding the issues. At times it’s like reading a series of short stories, but the main theme is well maintained. I liked the view of the small town community, the mountain scenery, the legal cases large and small and the tension created by the danger of opposing the big coal companies.

Reading Challenge: Color Coded Reading Challenge, with the word ‘Gray’ in the title and the cover being mainly grey in colour it qualifies for the category a book with ‘Black’or any shade of black in the title/on the cover.

Five of the Best- April 2011 – 2015

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This was originally Cleo’s idea ‘“ see Cleopatra Loves Books. It’s to look back over your reviews of the past five years and pick out your favourite for each month from 2011 ‘“ 2015.

I really enjoy looking back over the books I’ve loved reading. These are my favourite books for each April from 2011 to 2015 (click on the covers to see my original reviews).

2011

 

I thoroughly enjoyed The Long Song by Andrea Levy. It’s brutal, savage, and unrelenting in depicting the lives of the slaves in Jamaica just as slavery was coming to an end and both the slaves and their former owners were adjusting to their freedom. The narrator is July, at the beginning a spirited young woman, born in a sugar-cane field, telling her story at her son’s suggestion. I read it quickly eager to find out what happened, but at the same time I didn’t want it to end. It’s shocking, breath-taking and completely absorbing.

2012

1238734The Village by Marghanita Laski chronicles life in an English village immediately after the end of the Second World War, exploring the issues of class and social mobility, family relationships, parental control and the position of women. It’s written in a simple direct style of writing that contains depth and complexity and  by the end I was convinced I was living in the village, amongst these people at the end of the war. It’s absorbing reading.

2013

After Flodden by Rosemary Goring. This is the dramatic story of what happened after the Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513. Well written, well researched it’s a compelling and powerful book, bringing the characters and Edinburgh and Borders of 1513 vividly to life. Once I started reading the book I didn’t want to stop. I read it quickly, devouring the pages, completely involved in this dramatic story.

2014

 The Potter’s Hand by A N Wilson, a remarkable novel about the Wedgwood family, their lives, loves, work, illnesses, depressions, addictions and deaths. The novel begins in 1768 and roughly follows the fortunes of the Wedgwood family until 1805, 10 years after the death of Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter and the founder of the Wedgwood company. I found it fascinating throughout, whether it was set in America during the fight for independence, or in England in Wedgwood’s factories, or his grand new house Etruria Hall, or travelling through England on the new canals.

2015

Detective fiction is my choice for April this year with Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers taking top spot – although Dacre’s War by Rosemary Goring is also an excellent book. A Harriet Vane/ Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, from the Golden Age of crime fiction this is an example of the puzzle type of crime fiction ‘“ incredibly complicated and seemingly impossible to solve. It involves numerous characters who are not who they first appear, complete with alibis, disguises and false trails. Just brilliant!

Books Read in April 2015

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After a bumper month in March, reading 11 books, I’m back to normal this April, reading 7 books, bringing my total for the year so far to 33.

Here they are in the order I read them:

  1. Dacre’s War by Rosemary Goring  –  set in 16th century Scotland, there is so much packed in this book, political intrigue, personal conflict and vengeance, and spies, manipulators and double crossers abound. I loved it.
  2. The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld-  historical fiction ‘“ a mixture of murder mystery and psychoanalysis with an interpretation of ‘˜Hamlet‘˜ thrown in.
  3. Dreamwalker by James Oswald – inspired by Welsh folklore this is a magical tale of the young dragon, Benfro and the young boy, Errol, born on the same day. I was drawn into their fantasy world.
  4. Nora Webster by Colm Toibin – set in Ireland in the late 1960s, a vivid portrait of a woman initially locked within her grief, claustrophobic and intensely personal, and focussing on daily life in all its boredom, frustration and triviality.
  5. Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey – The events in that unfold in Emma Healey’s debut novel are seen through Maud’s eyes. But Maud is an unreliable narrator ‘“ she can’t help it though as she has dementia.
  6. The Last Girl by Jane Casey – crime fiction, the third Maeve Kerrigan book in which Maeve investigates the murders of Vita Kennford and her daughter, Laura, age 14. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
  7. Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers –  a brilliant book, crime fiction from the Golden Age the second book featuring Harriet Vane, a crime fiction writer, in which Harriet and Lord Peter Wimsey investigate the death of a man found on a deserted beach with his throat cut.

It’s really difficult this month to choose which one I enjoyed the most because I’ve read some really good books. But on balance I think it has to be  Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers, because that book kept me entertained on several levels – it’s a mystery and a love story all rolled into one and set in the 1930s it also has historical interest, although it’s not historical fiction per se.

 

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

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The events in that unfold in Emma Healey’s debut novel, Elizabeth is Missing are seen through Maud’s eyes. But Maud is an unreliable narrator – she can’t help it though as she has dementia.

Emma Healey’s depiction of dementia is convincing showing the confusion and bewilderment that Maud must have felt. It’s heart-rending, as she knows that Elizabeth, her friend, is missing, but doesn’t know where she is and no one seems to be listening to her when she talks about her – her own daughter and Elizabeth’s son just don’t answer her questions. And she asks them over and over again. As Maud continues her search for Elizabeth, she also recalls the search for her sister, Sukey, who disappeared in 1946.

It is not a book that I can say I ‘enjoyed’, even though it’s well written and with convincing characters. I thought it was over long and maybe would have been better as a novella. Inevitably, because the narrator has dementia there is much repetition – too much for me. I was disappointed with the plot too, because the ending became predictable quite early on in the book. Overall then a depressing book.

First Chapter First Paragraph: The Ghost Riders of Ordebec

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First chapterEvery Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

My book this week is a library book that I’m thinking about reading soon. It’s The Ghost Riders of Ordebec by Fred Vargas, translated from the French by Sian Reynolds.

It begins:

A trail of tiny crumbs led from the kitchen into the bedroom, as far as the spotless sheets where the old woman lay dead, her mouth open. Commissaire Adamsberg looked down at the crumbs in silence, pacing to and fro, wondering what kind of Tom Thumb – or what ogre in this case – might have dropped them there. He was in a small, dark, ground-floor apartment, with just three rooms, in the eighteenth arrondissement, in northern Paris.

Blurb:

‘˜People will die,’ says the panic-stricken woman outside police headquarters.

She refuses to speak to anyone besides Commissaire Adamsberg. Her daughter has seen a vision: ghostly horsemen who target the most nefarious characters in Normandy. Since the middle ages there have been stories of murderers, rapists, those with serious crimes on their conscience, meeting a grisly end following a visitation by the riders.

Soon after the young woman’s vision a notoriously vicious and cruel man disappears. Although the case is far outside his jurisdiction, Adamsberg agrees to investigate the strange happenings in a village terrorised by wild rumours and ancient feuds.

What do you think? Would you keep on reading?