bwl 49 - January 2009
Fiction
| Gaynor Arnold - Girl in a Blue Dress
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| The marriage of Charles Dickens is the inspiration for this novel which charts its disastrous course through the eyes of his widow. However, the author has changed all the names and transposed events and relationships to give herself the imaginative freedom to provide an insight into how a once adored wife came to be put aside in favour of her sisters and an enigmatic actress. Sounds like a potboiler? It's far better than that.
(Jenny Baker)
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| Patrick Bishop - A Good War
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| This was a disappointment. Bishop was foreign correspondent of the Telegraph and is an accomplished author of military histories (Fighter Boys, 3 Para), so I expected great things of his highly-praised first novel. But while it accurately recreates a wartime atmosphere and depicts the precarious life of a pilot well, I found the story rather far-fetched and formulaic, and it just didn't win me over: I am still struggling to finish it as I write this review! (Annie Noble)
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| William Boyd - Restless
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| Grandmother isn't all she seems. Her identity was taken from a blitz victim and she's been on the run since 1942, hunted as a foreign double-agent after a covert operation in America went badly wrong. But now she needs her astonished daughter's help to discover the truth before she too finally suffers the fate of her old wartime colleagues. Her drip-feeding of information hooks both reader and daughter and strange habits begin to make sense. (Clive Yelf)
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| William Boyd - Restless
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| This story of a young woman, recruited in 1939 by the British Secret Service, I found a most interesting insight into the mind of a spy. It shows how such a profession permeates the whole person, so that for the rest of her life she cannot avoid the fearful mindset of living under cover,
trusting no one but her own family. It's a story of intrigue, of passion and, ultimately, of betrayal.
(Polly Sams Plant)
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| John Burnside - Glister
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| Innertown: isolated, forgotten, its chemical factory - which has poisoned the landscape and the inhabitants - is decommissioned; teenagers play and hunt in its expanses; boys disappear, the authorities, without any evidence, claim they have run away; the town policeman knows otherwise; then there is the mysterious Glister. Narrated through the eyes of teenager, Leonard - clever, sensitive and frightened - Burnside, with his poet's voice, creates in the strange landscape a dark and haunting beauty. (Christine Miller)
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| Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book
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| If you want a modern fairytale, then Gaiman is your author. Nobody Owens has been given the Freedom of the Graveyard when, as a baby, he is found there after the brutal murder of his parents. We follow Bod as he grows up, meeting a variety of creatures from ghost and folk tale on the way, always aware of the threat that hangs over him. This is a book to read aloud at bedtime. Highly recommended. (Ferelith Hordon)
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| Jane Gardam - Bilgewater
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| "Not a wasted word", one comment made during discussion of this gem at my book group. Marigold Green is growing up in a boys' boarding school where her father is a house master. She is nicknamed Bilgewater by the boys ('Bill's daughter'). Perfectly captures the agonies suffered by an adolescent who feels she doesn't fit in. Originally written as children's fiction but now classified as adult. Captures the atmosphere of 1950's England. Poignant and very funny. (Mary Standing)
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| P D James - The Private Patient
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| Once again, a beautiful piece of writing; James is the poet of mystery, and therefore a delight to read. Perhaps, at times, she is inclined to over-detailed passages, but I marvel that she uses so many often neglected words of the very rich English language. She kept me on the hook until the end and, sadly, to the last of Commander Dalgliesh. (Polly Sams Plant)
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| Valerie Martin - Trespass
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| A book about reconciliation, or perhaps conciliation. Toby, from a typical American academic background, marries Salome, daughter of a Croatian refugee. Toby's mother's open-minded convictions fall to pieces in suspicion and dismay. These bare bones are fleshed out admirably as the story broadens to include Salome's family's fearfully (literally) un-American past. Who will survive the culture shifts and how? I found this novel perceptive, involving and highly readable. (Annabel Bedini)
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| Ruth Rendell - Portobello
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| Ruth Rendell's Portobello reaffirmed my faith in her as giving us a good light read, because some of her latest books were disappointing. Portobello is quite different from her others and only other fans will appreciate this, in fact it almost seems a "Barbara Vine" book of hers. Get it at once and curl up by the fire and see what it's all about . . . in Portobello. (Ange Guttierez Dewar)
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Non-Fiction
| Jenna Bailey - Can Any Mother Help Me?
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| In 1935 a cri de coeur published in "The Nursery World" spawned the Cooperative Correspondence Club, a shifting group of women from varied social and educational backgrounds, who together wrote a fortnightly annotated round robin "newsletter". The CCC endured for over 50 years, in a spirit of mutual support and friendship. Although many of the contributions have not survived, which makes this collection a bit piecemeal despite Bailey's helpful biographical in-filling, what remains is absorbing, sometimes hilarious, and often moving. (Siobhan Thomson)
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| Helene Berr - Journal
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| This heartrending book by a young Jewish woman of high culture during the growing horror of the Nazi occupation of Paris, describes her inner life and turmoil with dazzling eloquence and honesty. To think that a life of such rich promise should be so brutally snuffed out is almost unbearable. To read this book is to enshrine her memory as long as we ourselves draw breath. Read it and weep. (David Graham)
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| Julia Fox - Jane Boleyn - The Infamous Lady Rochford
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| If like me you're a bit of a Boleyn junkie and have enjoyed Phillippa Gregory's novels on the theme, you will be fascinated by this factual defence of the role Lady Rochford played in the downfall of two of Henry VIII's wives. She makes a satisfying villain but it seems that truth is more prosaic than fiction and that far from being scheming and vindictive she was as much a victim as her royal mistresses. (Jenny Baker)
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| Janice Galloway - This is Not About Me
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| A curious title for a memoir, but by the end it becomes clear. Novelist Janice Galloway recounts her childhood in Ayrshire in the 1950s and 60s. Suffering abuse and lack of love from her adult sister and mother, she copes by being a silent observer. Later she will find her voice writing fiction. Recently published, this first of an intended two-part memoir is chilling, but a very good read, evocative of time and place. (Mary Standing)
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| Simon Gray - Coda
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| This book written under the shadow of death meditates movingly with courage and wit about his beloved Greece his wife and the trio of doctors who preside over his treatment and fate with varying degrees of detachment and awkwardness. Being Simon Gray it is beautifully written while he was still puffing away on the cigarettes that were to end the life and career of this talented man. (David Graham)
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| David Halberstam - The Coldest Winter - America and the Korean War
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| Halberstam's last book (he was killed in a car accident just after it was published in 2007) harnesses his formidable journalistic skills to weave stories of military blunders and political miscalculations that have uncanny echoes in what is happening today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't expect to read about British endeavour. This is an all-American tale of 'death by a thousand cuts' of its former military hero, Douglas MacArthur. Fascinating, but chilling stuff! (Jeremy Miller)
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| Barbara Kingsolver - Small Wonder
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| Might Kingsolver as essayist be even better than Kingsolver as novelist? This collection of essays - many bearing on the post 9/11 American psyche - are full of absolutely sane, quirkily intelligent and enlightening insights and comments on life. On Nature (she trained as a biologist), the politics of fear, television-watching, chicken-keeping, flying, her children . . . she's thoughtful, even philosophical, but never ponderous. On the contrary she makes us think while we laugh out loud. Excellent! (Annabel Bedini)
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| Charlotte Mosley (edited by) - In Tearing Haste - Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor
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| Leigh Fermor devotees may be surprised by this collection of letters between 'Paddy' and 'his Darling Debo' spanning the years 1957-2008. Whilst his letters often display the erudition that runs though all his books, this collection as a whole leaves one with a distinct distaste for the name-dropping and inconsequentiality of their intertwined literary-aristocratic lives. The excessive use of footnotes, though necessary, makes this an infuriating book to read. Overall, somewhat disappointing. (Jeremy Miller)
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| Barack Obama - Dreams from my Father - A Story of Race and Inheritance & The Audacity of Hope - Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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Although the standing of the United States suffered a severe blow during the presidency of George W Bush, there is little doubt that the country will continue to play a major role in the foreseeable future. It is interesting to learn more about the background and ideas of the new president than was quoted in the media during his election.
The first book was written after Harvard Law School and recounts his childhood and intervening years in Indonesia, Hawaii, Chicago (where he worked in the social field) and in Kenya, his father's country. His mother was white and his father black making him Afro-American. He is enlightening on the suspicion and distrust experienced by black people.
The second book sets out the political and ethical problems of America and the steps he considered desirable to remedy them.
I warmly recommend these two books to any reader interested in world affairs.
(Jeremy Swann)
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| Brian Power - The Ford of Heaven - A childhood in Tianjin, China
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| Born and brought up in the English Concession by his mother and profoundly influenced by the loving care of his "Amah" Jieh-Jieh who also taught him Chinese, Brian Power left when 18 for college in England not returning until 1973 after 40 years and the intervention of WW II and the Chinese Revolution. The contrast is spelt out clearly. Having been born and spent part of my childhood in Tientsin (now Tianjin), I can highly recommend this superb book. (James Baker)
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| Raja Shehadeh - Palestinian Walks - Notes on a vanishing landscape
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| These walks around Ramallah, Jerusalem and the ravines by the Dead Sea span 26 years and as you accompany this human rights lawyer on these journeys you experience the transformation from hills of olive groves and orchards to one of Jewish settlements, the Wall and what it means to the displaced Palestinian farmers to lose this 'biblical' land. He understands the damage to ordinary people and is frustrated by his own helplessness when faced with injustice. (Christine Miller)
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| Emma Smith - The Great Western Beach - A Memoir of a Cornish Childhood Between the Wars
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| Not all bliss but written with perception and compassion, this is the antithesis of those over-hyped misery memoirs. As well as a portrait of the highs and lows of family life, it is a beautiful evocation of life in a small Cornish town between the Wars. Emma Smith recalls her world through a child's eyes. Her last words are "Goodbye, my childhood!" and throughout there is a lingering sense of Paradise (however imperfect) lost. (Jenny Baker)
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| Tommy Steele - Bermondsey Boy - Memories of a Forgotten World
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| Born into a loving poor East End family in the 1930s, Tommy Steele tells of a tough but secure childhood; his life in the Merchant Navy; his gradual awakening and love for music and the theatre; his explosion onto the scene as a pop idol; and his lasting fame. The book is rich in incident and characters and a good read. This man can write. (David Graham)
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Poetry
| A P Wavell (compiled by) - Other Men's Flowers |
| This anthology evokes memories, real and imagined - of the poems themselves of course since as children to recite Browning and Keats from it was commonplace - and of the darker days of WW II. Published in 1944 (the dedication in my War Economy Standard copy is dated 22nd March), one realises now how important poetry was to our parents' generation helping them to cope with the awfulness of their times. The same might apply today. (Jeremy Miller) |
| Carol Ann Duffy - Rapture |
A book of poetry that follows the early rapture of a new love affair through to the sadness at its end. You almost feel you want to read it through in one go as you follow the path of the relationship. Beautifully constructed and accessible poems that completely absorbed me. Her name has been put forward as a potential poet laureate but don't be put off by that!
* Winner of the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize
(Christine Miller) |
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