bwl 107 - Winter 2023
Fiction
| Nicola Davies and Petr Horáček - Choose Love
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| Why a picture book? Do not be misled into thinking this is a simple picture book for the very young. Rather it is a collection of poems, written by Nicola Davies, to describe and respond to the experience of being a refugee; of leaving home from necessity to travel dangerously to a cold welcome. The poems are short, the emotional impact powerful; an impact heightened by the images created by Petr Horáček. This is one for teens and adults. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| Kate Atkinson - Shrines of Gaiety
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| Set in post WW I London, the novel tells the story of a family run set of night clubs, venues for frantic gaiety and widespread criminality. The police want to nail the family’s matriarch who is simultaneously under attack from a corrupt employee and rival criminal interests. Intrigue and deception rule but the matriarch is alert to much of it. A vivid portrait of 1920’s London emerges and, despite some grim realities, the feel tends to be light and breezy with the emphasis on entertainment. A very enjoyable read. (Tony Pratt)
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| Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
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| Surely everyone must have read Mansfield Park. I had – but a long time ago. Coming to it once again, I found that I had missed a great deal. There was no boredom or impatience for me. I was drawn into this polite world where emotions and tensions swirled. I met characters I could recognise, whose voices I could hear (no, I have not seen the film). Dismiss Austen at your peril – a mistress of her art. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| William Boyd - The Romantic
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| The fictional biography of Cashel Greville Ross - soldier, farmer, felon, writer, father, lover - one man many lives. We move from Ireland to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, from Sri Lanka to Pisa and the world of Byron and Shelley to Ravenna where he meets the woman who will haunt his heart. Another treat for fans of Boyd or another to be avoided if you find his books too contrived and full of coincidences! I enjoyed it. (Jenny Baker)
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| William Boyd - The Romantic
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| The nineteenth century memoirs of a man whose life takes him from Ireland to England, Italy, Africa, the USA, and Austria (Trieste). Along the way he fights at Waterloo and encounters Byron and Shelley, Burton and Speke but it is his inner life – family story, love affairs, ambitions – that command greatest attention. Impulsive and passionate, he gets into numerous scrapes but emerges with sympathetic insights into what it is to live and die. A familiar Boyd formula, occasionally feeling just a little stale as a result, it is nevertheless a cracking read. (Tony Pratt)
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| Bryce Courtney - The Family Frying Pan
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| A biographical novel based on the experiences of the grandmother of the woman who eventually became the author's wife. It is an illuminating, entertaining delivery of the real life travails of a group of survivors fleeing Russia on foot, which occurred during the months just prior to the eventually successful if bloody, Bolshevik Revolution. (Margaret Teh)
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| Anthony Doerr - About Grace
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| David is crippled by the prophetic nature of his dreams until one night, with floodwaters surrounding his home, he has a nightmare in which he fails to save his baby daughter, Grace. Believing this will somehow save her, he flees and beaches up on a remote Carribbean island forever tormented by not knowing if she survived. After two decades he musters the strength to find out . . . Doerr's first novel, a feast of lyrical, descriptive prose, full of the promise of things to come.
(Jenny Baker)
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| Karen Joy Fowler - Booth
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| John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln, came from a famous theatrical family. The novel follows the Booths, from a Maryland country childhood through to the assassination and beyond, interspersing the narrative with Lincoln’s rise to the Presidency and greatness. In a vivid portrait of nineteenth century America, with slavery and the theatre as known to the family in the foreground, you see the drama unfolding in the lives of the characters. A long novel, perhaps too leisurely at first, it gathers pace and excitement as the fateful moment approaches. (Tony Pratt)
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| Travis Holland - The Archivist's Story
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| Stalin's Russia, 1939. Disgraced literature teacher Pavel is consigned to the Lubyanka archives, forced to incinerate the works of purged writers. His wife has died, his mother's brain is deteriorating, his friend is 'disappeared'. All gloom? No, despite constant underlying fear, the loss and sadness, life goes on with moments of joy and hope, culminating in Pavel's final act of rebellion. Holland writes beautifully, his evocation of Stalinist Russia is hauntingly convincing. A really lovely book. (Annabel Bedini)
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| Shehan Karunatilaka - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
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| 1990's Sri Lanka rife with death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons - Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet gay wakes up dead in a sort of celestial visa office. He is given seven moons to discover who killed him and lead those he loved to hidden photos that will rock the country. It's a tough read but there is humanity and humour alongside the grimness, the ghouls and the ghosts and the powerful writing keeps those pages turning. (Jenny Baker)
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| Ian McEwan - Lessons
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| Due to his beautiful writing, McEwan is able here to get away with a few irrelevant musings. His personal experience of abandonment, including that of his own children, comes very clearly through the narrative, so that his resentment and lasting hurt is palpable. He has true talent for creating an atmosphere, into which we are immediately drawn. (Polly Sams Plant)
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| Maggie O'Farrell - The Marriage Portrait
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| An imagining of the brief life of Lucrezia de’ Medici which is full of rich descriptions of the dress, jewels and life in the ducal palaces of Renaissance Italy. We follow her through childhood and early marriage of convenience to Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. She is a pawn in powerful dynasties and the need for an heir. O’Farrell has distorted historical facts for a modern reading of the heroine, but it is an entrancing read.
(The title refers to Robert Browning’s poem ‘My Last Duchess’.) (Christine Miller)
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| Roberto Plumini - Glowrushes
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| Piumini is an important author in Italy and this is the first book by him to appear here. This is a novel which reflects a different tradition in writing for young people. We can see a similarity in many ways to Exupery’s The Little Prince, already a well established classic here. These two books have a real affinity in their atmosphere and belief that children can respond to questions and ideas that might be considered too philosophical when presented with engaging, teasing storytelling. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| Joanna Quinn - The Whalebone Theatre
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| A motherless waif, a feral childhood, running wild with her siblings by the sea on their Dorset estate, claiming a beached whale as their own, while their lives are those of stories, plays and theatre dreams. But the play acting becomes real in war time France when brother and sister enlist in the SOE. In post war Dorset all is changed and swept away apart from those theatrical dreams. A promising first novel and enjoyable holiday read which never flags. (Sue Pratt)
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| Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle
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| An engaging and intriguing saga that explores heroic achievements and adventures in aviation in the first half of the 20th Century. Told as two parallel stories, this novel retraces from the beginning, the choices and sacrifices made by a young accomplished female aviator. It also tells the story of the actress who portrays her in a Hollywood film, becoming obsessed with discovering the manner of the heroine's disappearance while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, flying over both North and South Poles. (Margaret Teh)
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Non-Fiction
| Anthony Beevor - Berlin, the Downfall 1945
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| Reviewed in BWL back in 2002 this book has only now come to my attention. Timely? Beevor compellingly combines military history with personal accounts, weaving a complex tapestry of Germany during the last six months of WWII. Rape, destruction, columns of refugees and of course, uncountable deaths. Horribly familiar? What I ask is how can it be that the deranged mentality of one man (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, now Putin) plunges millions into appalling suffering? No answer expected! (Annabel Bedini)
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| Orlando Figes - The Story of Russia
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| Figes’ aim in this readable and informative history of Russia’s thousand-year history is to illuminate the terrible precedents of horror, persecution and terror that might help decipher the motives for Putin’s war in the Ukraine. Myths too have shaped Russia’s past. These reflect the structural continuities of Russian history, its geographic position, systems of belief, modes of rule, political ideas and social customs. Figes channels unsurpassed scholarship into a compulsive contribution to today’s geopolitical thinking. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Stephen Fry - Greek Myths Trilogy: Mythos - Heroes -Troy
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| There could be no better, more useful nor more agreeable way to re-read or to learn about the classic Greek myths and heroes than these books by Stephen Fry. Wearing his enormous erudition lightly, with humanity and humour, writing with deep respect for humans and gods, Fry manages to unite the real with the mythic and spiritual, as well as bridging seamlessly the ancient and modern... breathing life and relevance into everything he writes, he presents us with the world's greatest story, shining new and easily accessible. ( (Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)
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| Martha Gellhorn - The Face of War
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| These first-hand dispatches - starting with the Spanish Civil War right through Vietnam to Israel's Six-Day War and further - read as though they were published yesterday, Heartrendingly relevant still, they illustrate how fragile the veneer of civilisation is - although in our day and age we, and especially our politicians, should know better. It throws no good light on human progress but sheds a very clear one on the glorious heights of courage and humanity people can reach in times of need.
(Kathie Somerwil Ayrton)
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| Michael Ignatieff - On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times
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| Don’t be put off by the grim title! From the Book of Job to modern times we are introduced to a starry cast of thinkers who have shown, in very different ways, how we can find consolation and make sense of our lives. Philosophers, statesmen, authors, composers; all have something valuable to tell us. It’s fascinating, inspiring and full of history and I’m learning so much. Very worthwhile - even if you don’t need consoling right now! (Victoria Grey-Edwards)
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| Henry Marsh - And Finally, Matters of Life and Death
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| Facing his own mortality after a diagnosis of prostate cancer, symptoms long denied, Marsh, a retired neurosurgeon, gifts us his discursive book on becoming a patient, his continued joy in building things, his love for his grandchildren and much more. He is candid in his thoughts about his work, life and dying but this is not a bleak book without any humour. He is an optimist who believes in the power of hope, no matter how small. (Christine Miller)
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| Philippe Sands - The Last Colony: A tale of exile, justice and Britain’s colonial legacy
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| The plight of the Chagossians is a painful reminder of how the cold war created misery to communities across the world, no more so than the deportation of these islanders from their homes in the 1960’s in order to facilitate an American base in Diego Garcia. Sands’ forensic examination of the Chagos Islanders efforts to be restored to their ancestral lands is also a woeful tale of diminishing influence of, and respect for, British diplomacy. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Colin Thubron - The Amur River: Between Russia and China
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| This must be one of the most remote, and arguably the bleakest, riverine experience. Aged 80, Thubron travels by horse, track, road, rail and river to follow the Amur from the Mongolian mountains through Siberia to the Pacific. For many thousands of miles, the river marks the border between totalitarian frenemies Russia and China. The Russian Far East would appear to have forsaken civilisation, not surprising after brutal regimes extending from Tsarist days to the present. (Jeremy Miller)
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