bookswelike

bwl 97 - Summer 2020

Fiction

Elen Caldecott - The Short Knife

Historical novels are back in vogue both for adults and for the young - so much easier to get rid of the adults. The Short Knife - aimed at good readers 10+ - is a really good example. It reminded me of the immersive novels of Rosemary Sutcliff. Set just after the legions have left Britain as the Saxons arrive it may not be such a familiar period to some but here is history that is colourful and relevant. A great read. (Ferelith Hordon)

Edward Carey - Little

A reconstruction with graphic illustrations of the life of Marie Grosholtz, nicknamed Little, destined for fame as Madame Tussaud. Orphaned Marie, growing up under master wax-maker Curtuis, watches and learns and is infiltrated into the life of the French court. It doesn't shun the gruesome and there are moments to wish for the smelling salts but there is also much humour, especially with her meeting of the King. How much is true, how much myth, it's impossible to say, but I found it irresistible. (Jenny Baker)

Tracy Chevalier - A Single Thread

1930's Winchester, newly-arrived Violet Speedwell, resigned to bleak spinsterhood, visits the Cathedral and is drawn into the world of the Broderers, extraordinary women who design and stitch the cassocks and cushions so exquisitely. Their stories reveal fascinating insights into the lives of single women challenging the norms of their time. A beautiful and quietly emotional story based around true characters and events, inspiring me to revisit the Cathedral with greater insight. I hope it inspires the same reaction in other readers. (Clare Gratton)

Lydia Davis - The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Davis prefers to call these stories, rather than poems. With her understanding of our underlying senses and feelings, she addresses life from all angles - death, marriage, children, the home, anecdotes, thoughts, objects, authors. All feel close to life but with a twist to make you think, smile, grimace, each one mind blowing and thought provoking. She was new to me but I am hooked, though I had to stop for a while. Keep them on your bedside table and read a few each day. (Sally Guttierez Diaz)

Bernadine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other

I thoroughly enjoyed the vivid storytelling mostly about the lives of some black women, spanning a century to contemporary Britain. The protagonists have different social and cultural backgrounds but despite the struggles, including those of race and feminism, much feels positive with a sense of supportive togetherness. There is the joy and laughter of shared time and memories. However, I still find the plural pronoun used for a single binary individual cumbersome. (Not a large feature thankfully). (Christine Miller)

Penelope Fitzgerald - At Freddie's

A West End theatre school in the 60's, the National is at the Old Vic, TV an emerging force: a tawdry, makeshift backstage world nevertheless gives rise to theatrical magic. Pretentious directors, world-weary actors, irritating child hopefuls are there but it's the pupils, staff and above all its legendary principal who are centre stage. Missing the theatre? This evocation by an outstanding novelist will fill the gap. Written with humorous nostalgia, a dash of cynicism and penetrating insight. (Tony Pratt)

Suzanne Goldring - My Name is Eva

Evelyn Is now an old lady living in a care home, but her brain and memory remain sharp. Her story starts in the Second World War after her husband is killed when, in order to do something useful with her own life, she joins the Wrens. The narrative includes letters which she writes to her beloved late husband, through which we learn more about her and her inner feelings, and her wish to avenge his death. Beautifully and poignantly written. (Polly Sams Plant)

Jane Harper - The Lost Man

As with her other novels, this is set in the Australian outback. And it vividly conveys the sheer vastness of it, the blistering heat, and how families live incredibly remote and isolated lives in this harsh environment. While the main plot is about a mysterious death, it's also an exploration of family, domestic violence and grief. It's a real page turner and a gripping story. (Annie Noble)

Nazanine Hozar - Aria

We follow the story of Aria, abandoned as a baby in Tehran, through to motherhood. We meet gentle Behrouz who found her, the three important 'mother' figures and her friends. Aria's personal story is set against the growing social/political unrest culminating in the 1979 revolution overthrowing the Shah. She experiences the poverty of the traditional south and the wealth of the westernised north of Tehran. An enjoyable story but I felt it lacked a certain depth. (Christine Miller)

Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Translated into English, this Japanese novel asks the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? Who would you want to meet, maybe one last time? Get yourself passed the book's obligatory abracadabra of time-travel, and you will be rewarded with stories of long-wished-for brief reunions. (Sharron Calkins)

John le Carré - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Our unworldly lockdown was an interesting time to re-read this bleak story of a British intelligence officer seemingly at the end of his service in the Cold War. It's an excellent thriller, stark and compelling. No James Bond glamour here, it's a bleak and friendless World and chills appropriately as you try and work out the truth and where danger really lies in surreal circumstances. (Rebecca Howell)

Christy Lefteri - The Beekeeper of Aleppo

This haunting book follows beekeeper Nuri and his wife on their perilous journey from war-torn Syria to England's promised land. Beekeeping is all he has known, now his hives are destroyed, his wife blinded, his son lost. The author worked in a refugee camp in Athens and this story is not just Nuri's but the story of hundreds of others struggling to survive the terrifying circumstances of their lives and still retain their humanity. It puts our worries into perspective. (Jenny Baker)

Andrea Levy - Fruit of the Lemon

Born and raised in England, Faith knows that her Jamaican parents travelled as newly-weds to England on a banana boat. Now grown and at an impasse in her life, Faith is unexpectedly invited to return to Jamaica to meet her relatives. This intelligently humorous book will entertain you with sharp observations about modern British life, and the culture of Jamaica. (Sharron Calkins)

Hilary Mantel - The Mirror and the Light

Having psyched myself up for months I have just begun to read Mantell's latest. I tend to inhabit her world once I have gotten into the mood. We shall see. Watch this space . . . . (Margaret Teh)

Heather Morris - Cilka's Journey

This sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz (bwl 89) is loosely based on a Holocaust survivor and her time in a Russian gulag. Her family have disowned it as a distortion of the truth. It's a pity, perhaps, the author used the name of a real person who did survive, but differently. Nevertheless, it is a compelling read and indictment of the terrible things humans do to each other. True 16-year old Cilka would do anything to survive but would we have been any better? (Jenny Baker)

Maggie O'Farrell - Hamnet

Artistic license is an essential element in historical novels but when the facts are few, imagination is key. Maggie O'Farrell puts the focus entirely on Shakespeare's wife in telling the story of their love affair, marriage and death of their son, aged eleven. It becomes a study of love, compromise, separation, motherhood and grief. The prose is beautiful and the character and intimacy the author creates are so masterful that I was utterly convinced. Brava! (Denise Lewis)

Delia Owens - Where the Crawdads Sing

This is a heartbreaking tale of a little girl growing up alone in the swamps of North Carolina, but it's also a story of murder, prejudice, nature, love and family. It may be a little far-fetched at times but it's captivating, beautifully written, and the characters are vivid and real. The author is a wildlife scientist and it really shows through her descriptions of the natural world around little Kya. A lovely read. (Annie Noble)

Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

Set in Oxford during the Restoration, this intellectual whodunit centres around a murder and the young woman convicted of the crime. Four different narrators tell their version of events, each with an axe to grind and so possibly unreliable. I was absolutely engrossed, especially because of the insights into the state of politics, religion, philosophy and medical science during this tumultuous period. The characters are both real and fictional and the ending is brilliant. (Denise Lewis)

Frank Tallis - Mortal Mischief - Book 1 of The Leiberman Chronicles

During this strange limbo period, I caught up with Vienna Blood - based on the Liebermann Chronices - on BBC iPlayer - so I borrowed this. Sometimes the film version disappoints and indeed Mortal Mischief is very different from its screen incarnation - the cast, the plot and the setting are the same - fin de siecle Vienna creaking under the end of the Hapsburg regime, anti-semitism, protocol, Freud and Klimt - but the flavour of the two approaches refreshingly different; the result two very enjoyable experiences. I shall read more. (Ferelith Hordon)

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

Screen adaptations concentrate on Anna and Vronsky's doomed love affair but there are many concurrent stories: a landowner's social responsibility after the abolition of serfdom (autobiographical Tolstoy?), the descriptions of agriculture and the distance between the upper-levels of society lavishing money on high living and gambling, speaking French and wanting to be more Northern European than Russian. As usual confusion with those convoluted names - keeping a notepad handy to make a cast list helps greatly! A marathon read to be taken gently. (Chris Cozens)

Anne Tyler - Redhead by the Side of the Road

Tyler has the unfailing ability to tenderly observe the tiny details of ordinary lives and make them so interesting that you care about the characters. Micah leads a happily ordered, if somewhat OCD, existence until his 'lady friend' deserts him - understandable to the reader but not to Micah. Then the son of a former girlfriend arrives on the doorstep to unravel his life even more. The ending is hopeful which pleased me greatly. (Christine Miller)

Anne Tyler - Clock Dance

With her family grown, Willa"s life feels pointless and empty so she decides, on a whim, to cross the country to care for her son''s ex-girlfriend who has been shot. Never having met her or her young daughter she quickly becomes embroiled in their lives, while failing to understand the consequences of her actions. I'm a great fan of Anne Tyler but was disappointed. I couldn't empathise with Willa or believe in some of the characters, while the narrative felt disjointed. (Sue Pratt)

Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle

One of my responses to lockdown has been to revisit some of the authors of my past. Diana Wynne Jones is certainly one of my favourites - but not from childhood; from my early career. Her fantasies are gloriously imaginative and teeming with life. Howl's Moving Castle is a perfect example in which we meet the feisty Sophie, the unreliable but attractive Wizard Howl, a tricky fire-demon called Calcifer - and, of course, a moving castle. What more could one want? (Ferelith Hordon)

Non-Fiction

Naoke Abe - Cherry Ingram: The Englishman Who Saved Japan's Blossoms

Collingwood Ingram (1881-1981) was passionate about cherry trees. During a second study trip to Japan, he was shocked to realise that Japan was rapidly losing diversity in its types of cherry trees, and that many were already extinct. He devoted the rest of his very long life to restoring this diversity in Japan and to increasing it in England. (Sharron Calkins)

Shaun Bythell - Confessions of a Bookseller

This is a delightful sequel to The Diary of a Bookseller (bwl 95), something to make you chuckle and enter into the world of the somewhat eccentric and at moments curmudgeonly owner of Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. He doesn't like customers who bargain and wishes they'd put things back in the right place, his loyal and faithful assistants are never quite good enough. Yet despite, or perhaps because of his droll and pithy grumbles, he comes across as an absolute treasure. Read it and laugh! (Jenny Baker)

Edward S Curran - Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

I didn't know much about Diderot - apart from the Encyclopaedia which is cited by the British Museum in the introduction to the Highlights Tour, one of those men of the Enlightenment. I now know him quite well (sort of). It's been a pleasure though I sympathise greatly with his wife. A thoroughly readable and enjoyable biography of a man whose reputation nowadays is overshadowed by his contemporaries - Voltaire and Rousseau. In his lifetime he was Le Philosophe. What a character, what a life. I urge you to read it. (Ferelith Hordon)

Michael Henderson - That Will be England Gone: The last summer of Cricket

Part lament for English cricket besieged by money men and part appreciation of the England of Larkin and Vaughan Williams. Written by a highly cultivated lover of the game and the arts who has enjoyed friendships in both worlds, it is best read as a celebration of good things by an agreeable pavilion companion, though there's also a slight sense of being drawn into the ranks of disgruntled old buffers. Nevertheless a true appreciation of the game shines through and just now is surely the time for nostalgia. (Tony Pratt)

Peter Hennessey - Winds of Change: Britain in the Early Sixties

Macmillan's last years as Prime Minister covering Cuba, De Gaulle and the EU, Profumo, the 'Night of the Long Knives' and the advent of Wilson. Hennessey, a serious historian, is seemingly a clubland figure who had access to newly declassified information and the private reflections of many involved, the perspective is very much Establishment. Very readable, with fascinating insights and some rich entertainment. Hard to forget Macmillan struggling to phone in the nuclear codes from a call box or the after-life of Selwyn Lloyd's dog at Chequers. (Tony Pratt)

Michelle Obama - Becoming

It would be an understatement to say that I enjoyed this book. This is a wonderful memoir by a wonderful woman beautifully written and in parts deeply moving. If only she and her husband were still in The White House. (David Graham)

William Turner - Riot: The Story of the East Lancashire Loom-Breakers in 1826

A fascinating in-depth study of the destruction of a community and its way of life by the introduction of power looms. It is more than just the story of the riots in which the handloom weavers destroyed each factory as they marched from valley to valley over a number of days, of hangings, imprisonment and transport on prison ships to Australia. His research is far reaching and he is able to bring the individual voices to life. It lingers long in the memory. (Lynda Johnson)

Jeanette Winterson - Why be Happy When You Could be Normal

A courageous memoir from the author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Adopted by a dysfunctional Pentecostal couple, aged 16 she was evicted by her mother so set up home in a car and put herself through university. Written with a light touch, it is a journey of pain, humour and the will to survive and grow as a person. All this built on her love of books which, other than the bible, her mother saw as works of the devil. (Lynda Johnson)

Feedback

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Of course Sharron is correct in saying we should be reviewing books we LIKE but may I - as a serial sinner in this field - suggest that sometimes it might be acceptable, in a spirit of solidarity, to alert fellow readers to books they might want to avoid? In any case, apart from that altruistic motive I have to admit to the guilty pleasure of enjoying reading (and writing!) don't-like reviews. What do other reviewers think? (Annabel Bedini)

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I'm guilty too. Our excuse for including them is they add a bit of spice and contrast to what otherwise might be a bit too saccharine. (Jenny Baker)

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An additional vote for Golden Hill by Francis Spufford (bwl 83). A sophisticated romp this is also an excellent historical novel, giving a vivid picture of colonial Manhattan (population 7,000), its inhabitants and political factions. While the author might be a bit obviously keeping you waiting for all to be revealed, the journey is nevertheless immensely entertaining. (Tony Pratt)

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Some readers might be interested to know that if you are driving south in France you can see the original Diderot Encyclopédie in the Maison des Lumieres in Langres, which is near the A 31 and the A 5. (Wendy Swann

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I share Jenny Baker's guilt of having contributed some reviews about books that I have not altogether liked. But I feel no shame about doing so because our critical faculties have to be given full rein if they are to be honest and sincere. I don't think we should get hung up on the website's title 'bookswelike'. I remember that some time ago, the blurb under James Baker's wonderful banner read something like 'reviews of books we like and sometimes those we don't like as much. (Jeremy Miller)

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