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About sandradan1

Novelist. I blog about writing, reading and everything to do with books and writing them at http://www.sandradanby.com/. Come and visit me!

My ‘Porridge & Cream’ read: Judith Field

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Today I am pleased to welcome short story writer, Judith Field to share her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read.

“My book is Anybody can do Anything by Betty Macdonald. I’d read her books The Egg and I (which, like the Curate’s egg, is good in parts) and The Plague and I (which I love), so when I saw Anybody in a second hand bookshop in 1981 for only 25p, I grabbed it. I re-read this funny and uplifting boot, with its brilliant character descriptions. when I need picking up, but I leave it long enough between reading that I can’t remember the text word for word. When I do read it, I feel a thrill of recognition, like meeting an old friend. Judith FieldPublished in 1945, it’s a memoir of life in Seattle during the Depression, in the early to mid nineteen thirties. Betty leaves an unhappy marriage and, with her two small daughters, goes back to live with her quirky, warm, and supportive family of four sisters and a brother headed by Mother, who “with one folding chair and a plumber’s candle, could make the North Pole homey.”  Betty says “It’s a wonderful thing to know that you can come home any time from anywhere and just open the door and belong”.  The title comes from the positive attitude of Betty’s sister, Mary, who spends her time finding jobs for her sisters (especially Betty), and Betty often winds up in uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous, work situations.

The character descriptions are wonderful. The book is often contemplative, for example when the electricity is cut off because they can’t afford to pay the bill, but it’s never miserable or preachy. The final sentence, of Mary’s, is wonderful. Betty has just had her first book accepted and tells Mary about her “strange, enchanted feeling”. Mary says “You just feel successful, but imagine how I feel. All of a sudden my big lies have started coming true!”

About The Book of Judith by Judith Field [Rampant Loon Press]
Judith FieldThe Book of Judith is a collection of 16 short stories: sometimes funny, sometimes poignant; sometimes whimsical and fantastic; sometimes romantic, and sometimes disturbing, and sometimes both in the same story!

There’s no better endorsement than that from a reader. One Amazon customer said: “A collection of tales of the fantastic that manage to be sweet, poignant and laugh out loud funny all at the same time.”

Judith Field’s Bio
Judith Field lives in London, UK. She is the daughter of writers and learned how to agonize over fiction submissions at her mother and father’s knees. She’s a pharmacist, medical writer, editor and indexer, and in 2009 she made a New Year resolution to start writing fiction and get published within the year. Pretty soon she realized how unrealistic that was but, in fact, it sort of worked: she got a slot to write a weekly column in a local paper shortly before Christmas of 2009 and that ran for a several years. She still writes occasional feature articles for the paper. She has two daughters, a son, a granddaughter and a grandson. Her fiction, mainly speculative, has appeared in a variety of publications, mainly in the USA. When she’s not working or writing, she swims and sings, not always at the same time. She speaks five languages and can say, “Please publish this story” in all of them.

Judith Field’s links
Luna Station Quarterly blog
The Mill Hillbillies blog
Buy The Book of Judith here.
For more about Judith’s publisher, Rampant Loon Press and its Stupefying Stories series, click here.

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What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message via the contact form here.

 

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Sue Moorcroft
Claire Dyer
Lisa Devaney

Judith Field

 

‘Anybody Can Do Anything’ by Betty Macdonald [UK: University of Washington Press] 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Why does author Judith Field love love ANYBODY CAN DO ANYTHING by Betty Macdonald? #books via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1MU

#BookReview ‘A Question of Identity’ by @susanhillwriter #crime

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A Question of Identity by Susan Hill starts with a flashback to a trial: a man is found not guilty of three murders. Elderly, vulnerable women. Such is the public outcry that he is given a new identity. This is the seventh book in the successful Simon Serrailler detective series. Susan Hill Lafferton, ten years later. A woman is killed. Elderly, vulnerable, murdered the same way as those three women in 2002. But how can Simon Serrailler track down a villain who doesn’t exist: the man was given a new name, a new face, a new identity and was relocated. But we’re talking about murder, so surely one police department will help another?
This is an intriguing premise, all too believable. As ever with Hill’s novels, this is efficient and chilling. She introduces us to prospective villains, each seems a little questionable: but are we being unfair, reading something into signs that don’t exist, generalising, making assumptions? In parallel with the introduction of prospective villains, we are also shown prospective victims.
Whilst Simon Serrailler deals with this emotional case, his own heart is being pulled between love and guilt, and his sister Cat must manage two warring children.
An excellent tale which keeps the pages turning, an examination of the jury system. When ‘not guilty’ can be the wrong verdict, when ‘with reasonable doubt’ can condemn more vulnerable women. A disturbing take on the efficiency of our justice system.

Read my reviews of the other novels in the series:-
THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN #1SIMONSERRAILLER
THE PURE IN HEART #2SIMONSERRAILLER
THE RISK OF DARKNESS #3SIMONSERRAILLER
THE VOWS OF SILENCE #4SIMONSERRAILLER
THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET #5SIMONSERRAILLER
THE BETRAYAL OF TRUST #6SIMONSERRAILLER
THE SOUL OF DISCRETION #8SIMONSERRAILLER
THE COMFORTS OF HOME #9SIMONSERRAILLER
THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT #10SIMONSERRAILLER
A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE #11SIMONSERRAILLER

And also by Susan Hill, HOWARD’S END IS ON THE LANDING

If you like this, try:-
‘No Time for Goodbye’ by Linwood Barclay
‘The Art of the Imperfect’ by Kate Evans #1SCARBOROUGHMYSTERIES
‘A Taste for Death’ by PD James #7ADAMDALGLIESH

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A QUESTION OF IDENTITY by @susanhillwriter via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1CR

Great opening paragraph 78… ‘Divisadero’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“By our grandfather’s cabin, on the high ridge, opposite a slope of buckeye trees, Claire sits on her horse, wrapped in a thick blanket. She has camped all night and lit a fire in the hearth of that small structure our ancestor built more than a generation ago, and which he lived in like a hermit or some creature, when he first came to this country. He was a self-sufficient bachelor who eventually owned all the land he looked down onto. He married lackadaisically when he was forty, had one son, and left him this farm along the Petaluma road.”
Michael Ondaatje From ‘Divisadero’ by Michael Ondaatje 

Read the #FirstPara of THE ENGLISH PATIENT, also by Michael Ondaatje.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters
‘Back When We Were Grownups’ by Anne Tyler
‘Far From the Madding Crowd’ by Thomas Hardy

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara DIVISADERO by Michael Ondaatje http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1KL via @SandraDanby

#Bookreview ‘Sweet Caress’ by William Boyd #historical #romance

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Sweet Caress by William Boyd is a tour through history, via the life story of Amory Clay, photographer, born 1908. In 1977, from Barrandale in Scotland, she looks back at her life from schoolgirl to 1920s Berlin, 1930s New York, pre-war fascist riots in London, France in the Second World War, Vietnam in the Sixties and a hippie commune in California. William BoydBoyd uses the same technique that was so successful in Any Human Heart: slipping a fictional character into a grid of true events. It works, again, just. The lines between fact and fiction are satisfactorily blurred, when Amory meets someone new I found myself asking, ‘is this a real person or an invented one?’
I read this book quickly, the drive of historical events pulling me through. I didn’t quite connect with Amory, I’m not sure why. Possibly, because the only viewpoint we see is hers. I never really got why men were drawn to her so. She only sleeps with five men in her life, neatly there is one for each segment of her life. One scene I could have done without, a description of her first lover after sex made me cringe. Boyd is strongest when writing about the war reporting, clearly an interest of his own, and believable.
I am not a photographer so the technical details of cameras passed over my head [I was curious but unconvinced by the black and white photographs which punctuate the pages] but her role as first society photographer, fashion photographer and eventually war photographer does give her an entry into the most dramatic events of the 20th century. The ending was clever.
A good read, but not his absolute best. I am still a big fan.

Read my reviews of these other William Boyd books:
ANY HUMAN HEART
LOVE IS BLIND
NAT TATE: AN AMERICAN ARTIST 1928-1960
ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS
THE BLUE AFTERNOON
THE DREAMS OF BETHANY MELLMOTH
TRIO
WAITING FOR SUNRISE
… and try the first paragraph of ARMADILLO

If you like this, try:-
‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert
‘After the Bombing’ by Clare Morrall
‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SWEET CARESS by William Boyd‪ via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ny

#BookReview ‘Death of an Expert Witness’ by PD James #crime

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What a great title. Ask most people to name a PD James novel, and this is probably it. Death of an Expert Witness has a gloriously convoluted plot surrounding a Fens village, a forensic science laboratory, and a tightly-knit community linked in ways the reader cannot forsee. PD JamesThe clues are there but each is so fleetingly mentioned, so parsimonious, and so intertwined, that you will forget each and discount its importance. When the senior biologist at Hoggatt’s Laboratory is found dead, New Scotland Yard is called in. Commander Adam Dalgliesh arrives with Detective Inspector John Massingham; it is not the easiest of working partnerships, another layer of grit added to the oyster.
PD James’ observations are at times heart-rending. Of a victim’s elderly father: “The old man sat there, staring straight ahead. His hands, with the long fingers like those of his son, but with their skin dry and stained as withered leavers, hung heavily between his knees, grotesquely large for the brittle wrists.”
The technical detail, at which James is always so reliable, is interleaved here with the writing style I associate with the later Dalgliesh books. On his way to interview a bereaved relative, Dalgliesh stands on high ground and looks towards Hoggatt’s Laboratory. “Under the turbulent painter’s sky, with its changing clusters of white, grey and purple cumulus clouds massing against the pale azure blue of the upper air, and the sunlight moving fitfully across the fields and flittering on roofs and windows, it looked like an isolated frontier outpost, but welcoming, prosperous and secure. Violent death might lurk eastwards in the dark fenlands, but surely not under these neat domestic roofs.” But regular crime readers know that is exactly where crime lurks.
Dalgliesh’s observations, about the process of life and death, the motivation of murder, the role of life of art, of religion, of poetry, are becoming denser in the transition which elevated PD James’ books from crime fiction to literary fiction. There is so much more in her books than murder. “Death, thought Dalgliesh, obliterates family resemblance as it does personality; there is no affinity between the living and the dead.”

Read my reviews of the other Adam Dalgliesh mysteries:-
COVER HER FACE #1ADAMDALGLIESH
A MIND TO MURDER #2ADAMDALGLIESH
UNNATURAL CAUSES #3ADAMDALGLIESH
SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE #4ADAMDALGLIESH
THE BLACK TOWER #5ADAMDALGLIESH
A TASTE FOR DEATH #7ADAMDALGLIESH
DEVICES AND DESIRES #8ADAMDALGLIESH
ORIGINAL SIN #9ADAMDALGLIESH … read the first paragraph HERE
A CERTAIN JUSTICE #10ADAMDALGLIESH
DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS #11ADAMDALGLIESH
THE MURDER ROOM #12ADAMDALGLIESH …read the first paragraph HERE
THE LIGHTHOUSE #13ADAMDALGLIESH

Here are my reviews of the two Cordelia Gray mysteries:-
AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN #CGRAY1
THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN #CGRAY2

And two other books by PD James:-
INNOCENT BLOOD
TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

 If you like this, try:-
‘The Killing Lessons’ by Saul Black
‘The Guest List’ by Lucy Foley
‘The Mystery of Three Quarters’ by Sophie Hannah #3POIROT

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS by PD James http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ff via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph 77… ‘Vanishing Acts’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“I was six years old the first time I disappeared.
My father was working on a magic act for the annual Christmas show at the senior centre, and his assistant, the receptionist who had a real gold tooth and false eyelashes as thick as spiders, got the flu. I was fully prepared to beg my father to be part of the act, but he asked, as if I were the one who would be doing him a favour.”
Jodi PicoultFrom ‘Vanishing Acts’ by Jodi Picoult

Click the title to read my review of VANISHING ACTS, and try the #FirstPara of another novel by Jodi Picoult, NINETEEN MINUTES.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Long Drop’ by Denise Mina 
‘The Guest Cat’ by Takashi Hiraide 
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara VANISHING ACTS by @jodipicoult http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1GQ via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Betrayal of Trust’ by @susanhillwriter #crime

11 Replies

The trust betrayed in The Betrayal of Trust by Susan Hill is marital, parent/child, doctor/patient, in a thought-provoking drama about the bonds between us – personal and professional – and the responsibilities we bear. Exploitation, dominance and manipulation should not belong in the patient/carer sphere, but here in the sixth book of her Simon Serrailler series, Hill examines the difficult zone of terminal illness. Susan Hill

Heavy rains and floods reveal first one skeleton, then another. The first is identified, the second is a mystery. Serrailler must investigate, working almost on his own as police cutbacks see drug busts getting more staff than his investigative team. And then at what promises to be a dull evening, an official dinner at which he wears his police hat, he falls instantly in love: never a convenient time, for all sorts of reasons. In the midst of love at first sight we see a different Serrailler, not in control of the situation, distracted, wracked by longing.
This is the sixth in the series, but unlike other crime series you can read these in or out of order. Of course there are references to long-running storylines – all related to the Serrailler family – which may pass you by if you read them out of order, but that will not affect your enjoyment of the story. Susan Hill crafts her book well, as both stand-alone detective story, and long-term story arcs. But if you can, read from the beginning.

Read my reviews of the other novels in the series:-
THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN #1SIMONSERRAILLER
THE PURE IN HEART #2SIMONSERRAILLER
THE RISK OF DARKNESS #3SIMONSERRAILLER
THE VOWS OF SILENCE #4SIMONSERRAILLER
THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET #5SIMONSERRAILLER
A QUESTION OF IDENTITY #7SIMONSERRAILLER
THE SOUL OF DISCRETION #8SIMONSERRAILLER
THE COMFORTS OF HOME #9SIMONSERRAILLER
THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT #10SIMONSERRAILLER
A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE #11SIMONSERRAILLER

And also by Susan Hill, HOWARD’S END IS ON THE LANDING

If you like this, try:-
‘The Vanished Bride’ by Bella Ellis #1BRONTEMYSTERIES
‘The Killing Lessons’ by Saul Black
‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ by MJ Arlidge #2HELENGRACE

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE BETRAYAL OF TRUST by @susanhillwriter http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1CN via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘How to be Both’ by Ali Smith #art #historical

7 Replies

I admire Ali Smith, own quite a few of her books, so it was without hesitation that I stared to read How to be Both knowing it is an ‘experimental’ novel, a twisting, spiralling tale which has been shortlisted, longlisted, and won awards up the ying-yang. Ali SmithI wasn’t prepared for the first 20-30 pages [it’s difficult to be accurate on a Kindle] which completely lost me. Complete non-sequiturs, verse, stream of consciousness. Rambling, with little context. If it had been an unknown author I would have run out of patience, but it’s Ali Smith so I stuck with it and fell into the story of Francescho. The writing is beautiful, atmospheric, still a little short on fact for me: a child [boy or girl?] with artistic talent, whose father is a skilled brickmaker. The story of the child Francescho twists and twirls with that of the adult Francescho, a Renaissance painter of frescoes, who in his own quiet way challenges the status quo.
If you love books about artists, you will enjoy this one. In a brothel, Franchescho paints the women rather than laying with them, and becomes known for this. As he paints, he remembers the words of ‘the great Alberti’. “The great Alberti says that when we paint the dead, the dead man should be dead in every part of him all the way to the toe and finger nails, which are both living and dead at once : he says that when we paint the alive the alive must be alive to the very smallest part, each hair on the head or the arm of an alive person being itself alive : painting, Alberti says, is a kind of opposite to death…”
Just at the point when you wonder where Francescho’s story is going, Part Two starts. And what a contrast. 21st century. George is a modern-day teenager, grieving for her mother, remembers a visit they made to Italy because her mother was drawn to see a fresco by an unknown artist. There, they discover elements of the fresco which we saw Franchescho paint, their modern-deay interpretation, and Franchescho’s reason for painting them.
Through George’s eyes, and through her conversations with Mrs Rock, the school counsellor, we see the binary nature of the world: boy/girl, truth/lies. Is this the ‘both’ of the title? Mrs Rock says a truth teller is “usually someone with no power, no social status to speak of, who’d take it upon themselves to stand up to the highest authority when the authority was unjust or wrong, and would express out loud the most uncomfortable truths, even though by doing this they would probably even be risking their life.”
This is a book to read and read again. Complex, challenging and beautiful, this is not an easy read, it demands concentration, but it is worth it.

Click the title to read my reviews of other books by Ali Smith:-
AUTUMN #1SeasonalQuartet
WINTER #2SeasonalQuartet
SPRING #3SeasonalQuartet
SUMMER #4SeasonalQuartet
COMPANION PIECE #5SeasonalQuartet

If you like this, try:-
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
‘Girl in Hyacinth Blue’ by Susan Vreeland

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HOW TO BE BOTH by Ali Smith http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1HE via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Betrayal’ by Laura Elliot #family #secrets #mystery

1 Reply

The Betrayal by Laura Elliot is a well-written study of a teenage relationship which, when it falters and is left to fester into adulthood, can mess up a whole family.Laura Elliot

Slow-moving for me until towards the end, its billed as a ‘gripping novel of psychological suspense’ but to me seemed more of a family drama. At its heart is an examination of the marriage breakdown between two empty-nesters, Jake and Nadine, who are then messed around by Karin, the ex-friend from hell. Yes, there is a stalker. Yes, there are accidents and co-incidences. There are some colourful sections to Jake and Nadine’s viewpoints which I enjoyed reading – the band Shard, Alaska, the container village – but these seemed like diversions when I spent a long time waiting to find out what the actual betrayal was. Perhaps an insight into Karen’s mind would have helped to balance Jake and Nadine’s story.

Read my review of STOLEN CHILD, also by Laura Elliot.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Accident‘ by CL Taylor
‘Butterfly Barn‘ by Karen Power
‘The House at the Edge of the World’ by Julia Rochester

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE BETRAYAL by Laura Elliot http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1K1 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘A God in Ruins’ by Kate Atkinson #WW2

9 Replies

If the best recommendation for a novel is that, once you finish it, you want to start reading it all over again, then this is my recommendation for A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson. The story of Teddy Todd reeled me in until I was reading late into the night.

Kate AtkinsonTeddy is brother to Ursula Todd, who featured in Atkinson’s Life after Life, but this is not a sequel. More a companion piece, one book informs the other but stands up fully on its own. Read either first, it doesn’t matter. This is a book about war – the Second World War, the daily grind of Teddy’s life as a bomber pilot – and the effect this experience has on the rest of his life. War doesn’t happen and then go away, it colours lives and affects them until death, mostly unnoticed or misunderstood by relatives. And so we see Teddy’s life, told in a chopped up manner with excerpts from his childhood, war, early marriage and fatherhood, and as a much-loved grandfather. I don’t think I’m giving much away here to say he survives the war, but Atkinson’s descriptions of his bomber sorties are realistic, we feel the cold, the fear, the near-misses, the camaraderie, the determination and discomfort. Reading the bibliography at the back of the book, her research was thorough but it never shouts out from the page. Details are included because they are important to Teddy’s life, not because they happened.
Kate Atkinson remains a ‘go to’ author for me, I buy every book she writes.

Read my reviews of these other books by Kate Atkinson:-
BIG SKY #5JACKSONBRODIE
DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK #6JACKSONBRODIE
LIFE AFTER LIFE
NORMAL RULES DON’T APPLY
SHRINES OF GAIETY
TRANSCRIPTION

… and try the #FirstPara of EMOTIONALLY WEIRD

If you like this, try:-
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘The Light Years’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard
‘After the Bombing’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A GOD IN RUINS by Kate Atkinson via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1IK