bwl 105 - Summer 2022
Fiction
| John Boyne - The Thief of Time
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| Due to a quirk of nature Matthieu Zela is over 250 years old, the ageing process having been arrested in his 40s. Alternate chapters chronicle his life today and his previous experiences, ranging from the French revolution to 19th century Rome to Hollywood. His only enduring family is a series of nephews who all die young , a chain he is desperate to break. Sounds confusing? Not so but a cleverly structured page turner with a fitting ending. (Sue Pratt)
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| Isabel Colegate - The Shooting Party
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| A group of privileged guests gathers at Sir Randolph Nettleby's estate for the traditional shooting party... the detailed description of the persons involved together with the elements of romance, social comment, country lore and intrigue both above and below stairs are deceptively innocuous, seemingly superficial and cleverly maintained until almost the very end, where the shooting suddenly ceases to be a sport and becomes a real and potent danger, the atmosphere starts to suffocate and the sense of doom is almost palpable. . . . (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)
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| Robertson Davies - The Cornish Trilogy: What's Bred in the Bone, The Rebel Angels, The Lyre of Orpheus
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| Want to escape from this real world? Here's another spellbinding trilogy from the author of The Deptford Trilogy (bwl 90). The titles alone are enough to stir the imagination. We follow the life, death and legacy of Francis Cornish, a Toronto art patron. Amongst the cast of characters are eccentric professors, a defrocked monk, a beautiful gypsy's daughter . . . A page-turning saga of academic and artistic life involving theft, murder and love in twentieth century Canada and underlying all, Davies's delicious sense of humour!
(Jenny Baker)
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| Lyndsey Davis - The Ides of April
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| Falco and Helena Justina are happily married with a grown up family. Now it is the turn of their adopted daughter, Flavia Alba, to take centre stage following her father as a “private investigator”. Not, perhaps what one might expect but Davis does her research. Once again she brings Rome to raucous life, all grit and grime , while Flavia is a lively, likeable protagonist well able to step into Falco's shoes - definitely one to enjoy. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| Esther Freud - I Couldn't Love You More
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| Mothers, daughters, betrayals and secrets - three generations seeking to find what they have lost. Aoife waits in Ireland for news of her daughter; Rosaleen in 60's London is bewitched by a famous sculptor; Kate's trail leads to a forbidding convent in Co. Cork where fallen women come to have their babies. Freud has drawn on her own family's history to write another involving read and amongst those censorious nuns she does allow one humble soul to have compassion. (Jenny Baker)
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| Lauren Groff - Matrix
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| The book is an imagining of the life of the medieval poet, Marie de France, ejected from court life and sent to a remote, impoverished royal English abbey. She transforms it through leadership, ambition and 'visions', aiming for a feminist utopia. The daily life, trials and tribulations are magnificently described but I found I had reservations, perhaps the present tense, lack of variation in tone and slightly Marie herself. (Christine Miller)
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| Andrey Kurkov - Grey Bees
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| Peace-loving beekeeper Sergey is one of only two residents remaining in a village in the 'grey zone' between warring Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces (back then...). Worried for his bees he decides to take them away from the noise of shelling and sets off into peaceful Ukraine and thence to (Russian) Crimea. Unobtrusively, Kurkov uses Sergey's very human adventures to denounce the painful socio-political realities of that complex region. I absolutely loved this eye-opening bitter-sweet saga. (Annabel Bedini)
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| Jon MacGregor - Lean Fall Stand
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| Starting in a vividly and beautifully described Antarctica where a sudden storm puts an end to a routine field operation, the novel moves to Cambridgeshire and a baffling new world of brain injury recovery. McGregor uses words brilliantly to convey the broken mind and also the effects on all involved in a moving and totally convincing way - and with humour. It's an intriguing exploration of communication and the power and importance of self-expression. (Victoria Grey-Edwards)
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| Luke Rhinehart - The Dice Man
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| So much of life is determined by chance, but what if you determined all your life's choices by chance? Luke is in the middle of a stagnant life. He decides to spruce it up by determining all his actions by a roll of the dice. He lives as the dice tell him to. The result is an outrageous novel, a cult classic from the 70s. (Herb Roselle)
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| Andrew Taylor - The Last Protector
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| I am not usually a great fan of series, but Andrew Taylor’s novels featuring James Marwood and Cat Lovett have me hooked. This one, the fourth in the sequence, had me as gripped as its predecessors. Full of twists and turns, jeopardy and the violence that goes with the period, one cannot help but be completely immersed in the story following James and Cat in their uneasy relationship , willing them to succeed. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| Anne Tyler - French Braid
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| She said there wouldn't be another novel - but hooray, another Anne Tyler! As ever it's centred around an ordinary Baltimore family, the Garrett's, and spans three generations. I like the book's structure - chapter 1 is set on 2010, then it goes back to 1959 moving forward to 2020 during the pandemic. Near the end we learn the significance of the title. It's all there - sadness, humour and poignant moments, secrets, slights and misunderstandings. In essence, a family! (Mary Standing)
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Non-Fiction
| Mary Beard - S P Q R: A History of Ancient Rome
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| Why is the Roman Empire still important and relevant today? Surely just as “Latin is a dead language, dead as dead can be"….. the same can be said of the Roman Empire? Mary Beard, passionate about Roman history warts and all, takes on the challenge – and makes the case with conviction, enthusiasm and scholarship. No whitewashing, but opinions that make sense – this is history brought to life. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| S N Behrman - Duveen: The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time
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| Well there's a bold claim but one I doubt many could dispute. America's wealth but no art and Europe's art but no wealth might be its base but Duveen uniquely elevated dealing from the mercantile to the personal, deciding who might be his client, what they should buy and when they might appreciate it. He cultivated his unique reputation and methods so that 'his' artworks were appreciated in the manner (and price!) he deemed appropriate. (Clive Yelf)
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| Lawrence Booth - edited by - Wisden Cricketers' Almanac 2022
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| A thud on the doormat heralds the latest edition. At over 1,500 pages and several inches thick, it will soon join its elders on a shelf extending to more than 20 feet of yellow spines. Cricket is in a parlous state if you get your news and views from the daily press. Wisden's more reflective thoughts are, like the game, better appreciated in the longer form. What bliss - hours of reading ahead, alternating with watching. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Bill Browder - Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
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| More exposures and revelations from the author of Red Notice (bwl 92) as he follows the trail of the stolen billions from Russia, across Europe to America which leads right back to a certain KGB operative in St. Petersburg 20 years ago. Now Putin's enemy No. 1 Browder, despite honey traps, hired agents following him around the world and the murder of his Russia allies, is determined to expose the truth. A truly inspiring Knight of our times. (Jenny Baker)
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| Cal Flyn - Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape
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| The author hauntingly describes abandoned sites : Chernobyl and Detroit; a Scottish island inhabited by cattle gone wild; a polluted desert; deserted botanical gardens and collective farms; a ships' graveyard and a World War One battle site amongst them. Parts are poisoned beyond repair but in others nature's ability to find new ways of thriving asserts itself. Her message is that there are warnings of potential mass extinction but also causes for hope. Don't rush to panic. A fascinating meditation on places vividly evoked. (Tony Pratt)
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| Matthew Green - Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain
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| An historian takes a fascinating look at eight places which have disappeared, whether abandoned, destroyed, or fallen into the sea. Their well researched and evoked stories, what they were like and what survives, vary, but from, St Kilda to Winchelsea via Wharram Percy and the lesser known Stanford or Trellech, each fascinatingly illuminates a part of our history. Coastal erosion is still actively at work as are impersonal economic forces and climate change. The past lives on. (Tony Pratt)
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| Peter Hopkirk - Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia
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| The young, fervent communist Russia, struggling with both internal and external resistance, looked east for a fertile source of converts and expansion. Whilst Mongolia became the second country to embrace communism the prize would have been India, but claims from competing Muslim, Chinese, White Russian and local warlords ensured years of horrific bloodshed, deprivation and devastation. Sadly attitudes to the evident cheapness of human life and the willingness to destroy reverberate down to the present. (Clive Yelf)
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| Adam Kay - This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor
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| Kay's memoir of his life as an NHS junior doctor is both funny and terrifying. Ben Wishaw portrayed him beautifully in the recent TV adaptation as he rushes from one emergency to another in the maternity department of a London hospital. Can it really be as chaotic as he portrays? No wonder he chucked it in. Product warning: Don't read this book if you are planning a pregnancy. (Jenny Baker)
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| Edward J Larson - An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science
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| This is a fascinating account of the extensive and varied scientific research conducted by daring explorers, who risked their lives to learn about emperor penguins, massive glaciers, frozen fossils, underwater marine world, and much more, including their race to the Pole, with excellent original maps. Describing the triumph and tragedy of the polar expeditions, it paints a wonderful picture of the era, and is certainly suitable for the general public as well as scientists of all kinds.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)
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| Penelope Lively - A House Unlocked
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| The story of an Edwardian house and family where Penelope Lively's grandparents lived in what was then remote West Somerset and where she often visited as a child. Often told through mundane household objects which prompt memories, the radical changes, social, economic and in rural society are charted and described in fascinating detail and brought vividly to life. It is a thoughtful reflection of 20th century life, attitudes and perceptions. (Sue Pratt)
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| Tom Nancollas - The Ship Asunder: A Maritime History of Britain in Eleven Vessels
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| From a bronze age prow to a lonely mast outside Anfield (relic of Brunel's Great Eastern), this beguiling tale meanders through Britain's seafaring tradition like the ebb and flow of the tides that once bore all these vessels. The author's attention alights in his journey on the arcane and the curious, the mystical and the superstitious. He reminds us of the pre-eminent role the ship played though wistfully regrets its diminishing importance in our future. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Jasper Rees - Let's Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood
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| The story of 'the greatest entertainer of the television age' based on extensive interviews with family, friends and contemporaries. Her life and career are traced from a lonely and neglected Lancashire childhood through a shy, unfulfilled student life to ultimate show business stardom and her own family life. Often spiky and demanding, she nevertheless gave and inspired great devotion in her close circle and was extending her range creatively before being cut short by sadly premature death. Above all she was uniquely funny and this book has plenty to make you laugh again. (Tony Pratt)
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| Lindy Warhead - War Paint: Elizabeth Arden andHelena Rubinstein, Their lives, their Times their Rivalry.
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| The double biography of two extraordinary women with exceptional daring and drive, both starting with nothing, burning to prove themselves, workaholics. During their six decades in the cosmetic business, they founded the principles of beauty care taken for granted today and with their colossal wealth had enormous influence in the international art and racing worlds as well. Extreme rivals, they never met. Not only an excellent biography but a valuable history of make-up, art and fashion in the twentieth century. (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)
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| Lea Ypi - Free: Coming of age at the end of history
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| This is the memoire of an Albanian girl growing up as her country frees itself from Communism. From dictator Hoxha worship to uncontrolled westernisation via near civil war, a fascinating account lived through the eyes of a growing girl. Just think, from an empty coca-cola can being a prized, fought-over ornament to full ones suddenly available everywhere. A true revolution which Ypi also intelligently examines within the context of personal freedom. Altogether a thoroughly engrossing read. (Annabel Bedini)
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| Just finished reading Ai Wei Wei's One Thousand Years of Joys and Sorrow, which I reviewed last time. A totally engrossing documentation of life and times of a significant contemporary artist, now living in exile in Cambridge. Detached irrevocably from his roots in China, a political refugee so to speak. Brilliantly translated and very readable. Other readers may have seen his exhibitions at the Tate Modern, pre-pandemic. I have seen a major exhibition of his works, drawings, installations and ceramics in Melbourne about 4 years ago. (Margaret Teh)
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