Anita Brookner – BooksPlease

It’s almost time for Novellas in November, hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Rebecca of Bookish Beck. It’s now in it’s sixth year. I took part in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

There are no categories this year, although participants are invited to start the month with a My Year in Novellas retrospective looking at any novellas read since last NovNov, and finish it with a New to My TBR list based on the novellas that others have tempted them with over the course of the month.

There are also two buddy reads this year – Seascraper by Benjamin Wood and Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde.

These are some of the novellas from my TBR shelves:

Women and Writing by Virginia Woolf – 198 pages
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark – 172 pages
The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald – 167 pages
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner – 184 pages
The Case of the Canterell Codicil by PJ Fitzsimmons – 177 pages

At the moment I think I’ll start with The Case of the Canterell Codicil: the first Anty Boisjoly Mystery, described on the back cover:

Anty Boisjoly, nineteen-twenty-never Wodehousian gadabout and clubman , takes on his first case when his old Oxford chum and coxswain is facing the gallows, accused of the murder of his wealthy uncle.

Not one but two locked-room murders later, Anty’s pitting his wits and witticisms against a subversive butler, a senile footman, a single-minded detective-inspector, an irascible goat, and the eccentric conventions of the pastoral Sussex countryside to untangle a multi-layered mystery of secret bequests, ancient writs, love triangles, and revenge, and with a twist in the end that you’ll never see coming.

Where would you start?

On Tuesday it was time for another visit to my favourite bookshop Barter Books, one of the largest secondhand bookshops in Britain. This is where you can ‘swap’ books for credit that you can then use to get more books from the Barter Books shelves.

These are the books I brought home:

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner. I first read this many years ago and want to reread it – and hope I still like it as much. It won the Booker Prize in 1984. From the back cover: ‘Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville, and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating spinsterhood is renewed . . .’

Now is the Time by Melvyn Bragg. I loved his Soldiers Return quartet amongst some of his other books, so I’m hoping this historical fiction set in 1381 at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt will be as good. Richard II was on the throne of England when a vast force of people led by Wat Tyler and John Ball demanded freedom, and equality.

Then, three books by Belinda Bauer that I’ve been wanting to read for some time now:

Blacklands, her first novel – this tells the story of a game of cat and mouse between a 12 year old boy, Steven, and Arnold Avery, a serial killer and an abuser of children, who murdered Steven’s Uncle Billy, when he was 11 years old, twenty years ago.

Her second book, Darkside is set in the middle of winter time, when the people who live in a peaceful place, Shipcott, are shocked by the murder of an old woman in her bed.

The Beautiful Dead is about Eve Singer, a TV crime reporter, who will go to any length to get the latest scoop. But when a twisted serial killer starts using her to gain the publicity he craves, Eve must decide how far she’s willing to go – and how close she’ll let him get.

I’d love to start all these books straight away but I think I’ll begin with Belinda Bauer’s books, especially as I also have a review copy of her latest book, Snap which is due to be published as an e-book on 3 May 2018, with the hardback and paperback editions coming out later this year.