Category Archives: book reviews

#BookReview ‘Corpus’ by Rory Clements #thriller #WW2

It is 1936. The Spanish civil war is in full swing. A constitutional crisis looms as Edward VIII considers abdicating in order to marry the woman he loves. Corpus by Rory Clements starts in Berlin as a young Englishwoman slips away from a friend to deliver a secret package to an unnamed man. Soon after, Nancy Hereward is dead. It is Nancy’s death which makes Cambridge history professor Tom Wilde ask questions, awkward questions which lead him to uncover conspiracy, lies, and pre-war positioning by Stalin and Hitler.
Wilde makes an interesting amateur detective. For one, he is American with a different reading of human nature; he sits on the fence and observes. For another, he is a professor of history; he analyses and looks for proof rather than opinion. And third, he has a cool motorcycle that he uses to cross the fens and investigate isolated country houses. The story starts rather slowly as Clements fleshes out various groups involved without letting the reader know how these people are connected, and who is traitorous. There is one out-and-out baddie, another who looks like a baddie but possibly isn’t, and a journalist who may or not be a spy or a traitor. The reader’s confusion reflects Tom Wilde’s muddle as he and Nancy’s friend Lydia, both disillusioned with official efforts to explain Nancy’s death, unite to investigate. I particularly enjoyed the description of Cambridge in the 1930s, college life, the city and surrounding fens. The portrayal of Cambridge dons is rather polarised, they all seem to be either fascists or communists, reflecting the political jockeying that went on pre-war.
The plot features twist upon twist as Wilde, and the reader, doesn’t know who to trust: is that policeman really honest, or in the pay of the fascists or communists? Perhaps there is one twist too many as Clements manipulates history to fit his plotline. I have a few minor quibbles, knowing that this is the first book of a series. Some of the loose ends were tied off conveniently at the end with minimal or no explanation. The gold plot was lightly sketched and lacked significance. And the budding romance seemed rather one-sided.
A good read, not a great read, but it left me liking Tom Wilde and anticipating the next novel in this spy series.

Click the title to read my reviews of the other books in the Tom Wilde series:-
NUCLEUS #2TOMWILDE
NEMESIS #3TOMWILDE
HITLER’S SECRET #4TOMWILDE
A PRINCE AND A SPY #5TOMWILDE
THE MAN IN THE BUNKER #6TOMWILDE
THE ENGLISH FUHRER #7TOMWILDE
A COLD WIND FROM MOSCOW #8TOMWILDE

And from the Sebastian Wolff series:-
MUNICH WOLF #1SEBASTIANWOLFF
EVIL IN HIGH PLACES #2SEBASTIANWOLFF
INVITATION FROM A DICTATOR #3SEBASTIANWOLFF

If you like this, try:-
‘An Officer and a Spy’ by Robert Harris
‘The Ways of the World’ by Robert Goddard #1WIDEWORLD
‘The Bone Church’ by Victoria Dougherty

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview CORPUS by Rory Clements https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3cu via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Days Without End’ by Sebastian Barry #historical

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There is not a word out of place in this harrowing and beautiful tale of love, war, duty and sacrifice. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry deservedly had award success in 2016/2017. I already knew Barry could write about war, having read and loved A Long Long Way set in the Great War. What is different about Days Without End is the relationship between Thomas McNulty and John Cole. Barry tells the epic story of the Indian and Civil wars in America, combined with a heart-stopping tale of love. The story is the first person narrative of Thomas, an Irish émigré fleeing the Irish famine. He arrives in a young America with so many disparate groups, contrasted and never seeming to connect: men, women; officers, foot soldiers; gay, straight; white, black; American, Irish immigrant; army, native Indian; north, south. Barry does not shy from telling the reality of the American wars, the brutality, the atrocities of army against Indians and vice versa; but also the comradeship and solidity of men fighting alongside each other. There is betrayal on both sides, brutality on both sides, and soldiers hating and turning on each other. At the core of this though is the story of Thomas and John Cole, who meet as boys and perform a cross-dressing act on stage before signing up for the army. It is not all about war. There are three sections of ordinary life when we see the ordinary life of the two men, finding a role for themselves and fitting into society.
Much was written at the time this novel was published about how Barry dedicated this book to his son. The portrayal of the men’s relationship is gentle, fond and loving, but the single thing which struck me most was their absolute loyalty to each other.
Full of beautiful prose, plot twists and turns, savage cruelty and betrayal, poignant loyalty at the expense of self, it feels like a slow-moving story but I didn’t want to put it down. Highly recommended.
The story is continued in the sequel, A Thousand Moons.

Read my reviews of these books also by Sebastian Barry:
A THOUSAND MOONS #2DAYSWITHOUTEND
A LONG LONG WAY
OLD GOD’S TIME
THE NEWER WORLD
THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY… and try the #FirstPara of THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY

If you like this, try:-
‘Barkskins’ by Annie Proulx
‘At the Edge of the Orchard’ by Tracy Chevalier
‘My Name is Yip’ by Paddy Crewe

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview DAYS WITHOUT END by Sebastian Barry https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3oB via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Fred’s Funeral’ by Sandy Day #genealogy #family #WW1

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None of us have the luxury of hearing what is said about us after we are dead. In Fred’s Funeral, Canadian author Sandy Day tells the story of one soldier, returned from the First World War, who felt misunderstood and sidelined by his family. Only when he dies in 1986, seventy years after he went to war, does he observe his own funeral and find out what they really think of him. Fred Sadler has lived his post-fighting years in one institution or another. Clearly he is suffering from some form of shell shock or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder but this goes undiagnosed. There are periods of living in boarding houses, his family is unwilling to have him live with them, until his behaviour deteriorates and he is sent back to hospital. Now dead and trapped as an unwilling ghost, Fred observes his funeral presided over by Viola, the sister-in-law he always disliked. As the mourners sit around and share memories of Fred, he watches, frustration mounting, as he is unable to correct their observations. They portray a ‘Fred Sadler’ which he does not recognise. I kept expecting something to happen; a true memory of the war, an event, which would explain Fred’s illness and set the record straight with his family. But it didn’t come. The story is told in linear fashion; the anecdotes of Viola and the remaining family are interchanged with Fred’s reaction to these stories plus a few flashbacks to the war. Clearer signposting of these sections would make reading easier.
Day clearly captures the time and place of post-Great War Canada, a subject which is new to me. However I found the repeated digressions into the extended family history and details of the lifestyle a distraction from the main story [so many cousins, great-great grandparents and houses]. I so wanted to cut some of these unrelated sections to allow a stronger novel to push its way to the surface; simpler, more powerful. The inclusion of so many family details makes me wonder if the core of Fred’s Funeral is a memoir, inspired by a real family, from which the author feels unable to cut some relations and take the leap into pure fiction.
The portrayal of Fred’s experience at Whitby Hospital for the Insane is heart breaking, as is the disinterest of his family. For them, Fred is an embarrassment. It is a sad indictment of our treatment of soldiers returning from war and our ignorance that the effect of fighting can last a lifetime. It is easy to assume that in the 21^st century this has changed, but the modern day strand of Day’s story suggests it hasn’t. It is as if Fred’s life has paused. “He banished feeling anything long ago. He feels timid. He feels tentative, like every step he takes is on a thick layer of ice and at any moment, he might crash through into a frenzy of drowning.”
At the end of the novel, there is no ‘reveal’, no surprise, and I felt a little let down. Overall, this is a thoughtful examination of how family tensions, petty jealousies and misunderstandings can spread down the generations. Gossip and guesses are transformed into ‘truth’.

If you like this, try:-
‘Etta and Otto and Russell and James’ by Emma Hooper
‘Wake’ by Anna Hope
‘Yuki Chan in Bronte Country’ by Mick Jackson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview FRED’S FUNERAL by Sandy Day https://wp.me/p5gEM4-35o via @SandraDanby

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#BookReview ‘Vanishing Acts’ by Jodi Picoult #contemporary

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This is the first book by Jodi Picoult which I have read, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I would describe Vanishing Acts as long, intriguing, multi-layered. Is it the greatest? No, but it makes me want to read more of her books. Her multiple-perspectives mean you get a 360° view of a situation and see how different people view the same thing, something we are not always privy to in real life. Delia Hopkins lives in New Hampshire with her widowed father Andrew and her daughter Sophie. She works with her own search-and-rescue bloodhound to find missing people. She is about to marry Eric, a friend since childhood. Everything seems happy, except for strange dreams which she cannot explain. ‘I am little, and he has just finished planting a lemon tree in our backyard. I am dancing around it. I want to make lemonade, but there isn’t any fruit because the tree is just a baby. How long will it take to grow one? I ask. A while, he tells me. I sit myself down in front of it to watch. He comes over and takes my hand. Come on, grilla, he says. If we’re going to sit here that long, we’d better get something to eat.’ Fitz, a journalist, who also grew up with Delia and Eric, cannot explain the significance of the lemon tree. But the puzzles keep coming, after a policeman knocks on the door and arrests her father for kidnapping.
This is a story about repressed memory and triggered memory, the difference of which is central to the court case which is the core of this novel. It is about trust, instinct and loyalty and how sometimes the hardest thing to do is the right thing to do.
It is a long book and some sections felt over-written, a style I sometimes find with American authors; using two metaphors where one will do. But the plotting is excellent and the rope of tension pulls you mercilessly onwards.

And read the first paragraphs of VANISHING ACTS and NINETEEN MINUTES, both by Jodi Picoult.

If you like this, try:-
‘Somewhere Inside of Happy’ by Anna McPartlin
‘Something to Hide’ by Deborah Moggach
‘Crow Blue’ by Adriana Lisboa

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview VANISHING ACTS by Jodi Picoult via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2uE

#BookReview ‘Beneath an Indian Sky’ by Renita D’Silva @RenitaDSilva #historical #India

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Women’s ambition, women’s capability to lie and manipulate, and women’s ability to love, cherish and recover. Beneath an Indian Sky by Renita D’Silva is the cautionary tale of Sita and Mary and how their lives, from childhood to old age, are entwined in India. It is a symmetrical story, but the permutations of its angles and consequences are not clear until the end. Be patient, relax into the story, because the ending is worth it. 1925, India. Sita’s parents despair of her acting like a girl so, to encourage more restrained behavior, they arrange for her to become friends with Mary. Mary’s parents encourage individuality, freedom and learning, but Mary secretly envies the rules and ordered life of Sita’s home. And so the two girls become friends. Until in 1926 something happens which splits them apart.
This is a tale of opposites; two little girls who, despite being different, become friends. What happens when they grow up turns into a darker more difficult story about friendship, honesty, betrayal, loss, anguish and regret. Renita D’Silva takes you to another world, India pre- and post-partition, with all its scents, colours, flavours, wealth and poverty. She is a magical writer of the setting into which she lays an emotional story of the twists and turns of women’s treachery and ability to heal.
The girls are born into an India where women must defer to their husbands and sons, where endless wealth and dirt-grovelling poverty exist side-by-side; where women do not always support each other and mistakes are not forgotten. Behind the story is a ‘be careful what you wish for’ moral that applies to both girls. Intertwined with their story is the modern one of Priya, a documentary film-maker, who lives in London and is unable to have a child.
I really enjoyed this book, read quickly over a weekend. Be warned, secrets have a way of being found out.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Renita D’Silva:-
A DAUGHTER’S COURAGE
A MOTHER’S SECRET
THE GIRL IN THE PAINTING
THE ORPHAN’S GIFT
THE SECRET KEEPER
THE SPICE MAKER’S SECRET
THE WAR CHILD

If you like this, try:-
‘White Chrysanthemum’ by Mary Lynn Bracht
‘The Tea Planter’s Wife’ by Dinah Jeffries
‘A Life Between Us’ by Louise Walters

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BENEATH AN INDIAN SKY by Renita D’Silva @RenitaDSilva https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3jl via @SandraDanby

My Porridge & Cream read: Fiona Morgan

#BookReview ‘Winter’ by Ali Smith #SeasonalQuartet #contemporary

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Winter by Ali Smith is second in her Seasonal Quartet but unconnected to its predecessor Autumn in terms of character and location. Like all Smith’s novels, it pays to read with patience. The story is at times choppy and sections seem unrelated; but have faith, it will make sense, connections will link up, characters will coincide and small details laid down early will connect to something much later. And simmering beneath the words is Smith’s anger at our unjust messed-up modern world where we don’t notice what’s going on around us and don’t seem to care.
So much fiction today looks back at our history, Smith’s Seasonal Quartet is so modern if feels as if she is writing a page ahead of the one I am reading. First we meet two sisters, Sophia and Iris who are as unalike as sisters can be. Art, Sophia’s son, has had his Twitter identity stolen by his angry girlfriend. Charlotte is posting incorrect tweets about Art’s ‘Art in Nature’ blog and these untruths are now trending. Art, who has committed to taking Charlotte to his mother’s house in Cornwall for Christmas, instead invites a girl he sees sitting at a bus stop. Lux, who starts off pretending to be Charlotte but then admits the deception to Sophia, is a catalyst in the wintry household. It is Lux who encourages Sophia to eat, Lux who discovers an outbuilding full of old stock from Sophia’s retail business, Lux who insists Art call his Aunt Iris. And so these four mis-matched, total and almost strangers, spend Christmas together.
As in Autumn there are some passages which made me laugh out loud. This time it was Sophia’s eye test at the optician after having seen a disembodied head floating in her peripheral vision; and the incident with her Individual Personal Advisor at the bank who was unable to give her advice. There is the grumpiness of growing old, observing a youth obsessed by irrelevances while forgetting the basic things that matter, and things that don’t work. There is the dislike of big business selling us stuff we don’t need in the guise that it’s essential, un-missable, while re-making new stuff so it looks like more valuable old stuff. “But now the world trusts a search engines without a thought. The canniest door-to-door salesman ever invented. Never mind foot in the door. Already right at the heart of the house.” The theme of winter runs throughout; the death of autumn, the decay that comes from lack of care and effort, the decline of relationships, the winter of ageing, nuclear threat and political division.
If you like a linear story and loose ends tied, then perhaps Ali Smith is not for you. If you are prepared to relax into a story, trust the author and wait to see what happens, then try her. She is experimental, quirky, not afraid to try something different.

Click the title to read my reviews of other books by Ali Smith:-
AUTUMN #1SEASONALQUARTET
SPRING #3SEASONALQUARTET
SUMMER #4SEASONALQUARTET
COMPANION PIECE #5SEASONALQUARTET
HOW TO BE BOTH

If you like this, try:-
‘Barkskins’ by Annie Proulx
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson
‘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 WINTER by Ali Smith https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3eb via @SandraDanby

First Edition: The Hundred and One Dalmations

#BookReview ‘The Last of the Greenwoods’ by Clare Morrall #contemporary

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Clare Morrall is so good at writing about people on the margins. In The Last of the Greenwoods, Johnny and Nick Greenwood are estranged brothers who live separately in two abandoned, adjacent railway carriages; with shared kitchen and bathroom. They are adept at avoiding each other. Nick lives in Aphrodite on the right, Johnny in Demeter on the left. Aphrodite has horizontal blinds at the windows, open at a slant so someone inside can look out but no-one outside can see in. Demeter’s windows are unknowable with permanently drawn curtains. The carriages sit amidst trees and shrubs, hidden from the main road in Bromsgrove, West Midlands. They have been the brother’s world since they were boys. Until one day, into the lives of these emotionally separated but geographically close brothers comes a letter which reignites haunted memories. “The floor is vibrating under his feet, there’s a sensation of motion, as if the train has started to move. What’s happening? Is he slipping backwards, losing his place in the present and tumbling back to the past? How can this be?”
The letter is from their older sister, Debs; the sister who was murdered when the boys were children. As the brothers consider whether the letter is real, a fake, or a joke we learn more about their background via Zohra, the postwoman who delivered the letter. Zohra has a past of her own which she tries to forget. What brings together these seemingly disparate story strands? Trains? And what effects change in the lives of the Greenwoods and Zohra? Trains.
Slowly, with exquisite and often humorous detail, Morrall unravels the mysteries of the past, building a picture of these people’s lives. They are ordinary people but in telling their story she makes them extraordinary, reminding us that the life of each of us has a story to tell and that elements of life can be repetitive. “Are they doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again – play, replay, round and round on an endless loop?”
Running throughout is the question of verifiable identity: the woman who returns could be Deb, or Deb’s friend Bev pretending to be Debs; and who are the girls who harassed Zohra on social media, did they use their real names or not? The brothers consider how they can accept Debs, do they need evidence, DNA proof, or can they trust their instincts? And why are the two brothers not talking?
Another masterful Morrall novel.

Click the title to read my reviews of these other novels by Clare Morrall:-
AFTER THE BOMBING
NATURAL FLIGHTS OF THE HUMAN MIND
THE LANGUAGE OF OTHERS
THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED
THE ROUNDABOUT MAN

Read the first paragraph of ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR here.

If you like this, try:-
‘If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go’ by Judy Chicurel
‘The Lie of the Land’ by Amanda Craig
‘Skin Deep’ by Laura Wilkinson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LAST OF THE GREENWOODS by Clare Morrall https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3iT via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock’ by Imogen Hermes Gowar #historical

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Quite a few things in The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar are not as they seem. The mermaid, which may or not be real, is actually dead and quite gruesome. And the story starts with shipping merchant Mr Hancock, not Mrs. He is a widower. This story about London in 1785 is a full-on feast for the senses and at first is a bit overwhelming: wind ‘sings’, raindrops ‘burst’, skin is ‘scuffed and stained’, a face is ‘meaty’. But then I fell into the life of Jonah Hancock and wondered when the mermaid, and Mrs Hancock, would appear. Soon the captain of the Calliope, one of Jonah’s ships, returns homes without the ship but with a mermaid.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock overflows with contrasts: Deptford and Mary-le-Bone are villages outside London, whales are dismembered and rendered beside the river but in nearby Blackheath the air is to be treasured. It seems unlikely that the path of Jonah, conservative, hard-working, will intersect with Angelica Neal, a former upper class prostitute. But thanks to the mermaid, they meet and their lives take different turns as a result. Gowar juxtaposes sumptuous silks, satins and pearls of the girls at Mrs Chappell’s high-class brothel, where they are tutored at some expense in dancing and singing, performing masques for their high-paying clientele; with the potatoes peeled and stockings darned by Jonah’s niece Sukie and maid Bridget. The beauty of the whores, the ugliness of the mummified mermaid. Contrasts are everywhere.
The story is slow to build and I admit to skipping some paragraphs of description, many dedicated to situations and characters with no bearing on the main storyline. But then I would stop and admire a sentence like this, ‘Overnight, Deptford’s heady miasma had begun to settle, like silt in a puddle, but sunrise stirs it back up again and Mr Hancock stumps through that great rich stink of baking bread and rotten mud and old blood and fresh-sawn wood with the cat trotting on her tiptoes beside him.’ Over-stuffed with imagery, but beautifully written. I enjoyed the final third but was left regretting threads and characters left dangling that could have enriched the story; Tysoe Jones and Polly particularly.
This is a bawdy morality tale set in Georgian London that issues the warning to be careful what you wish for and compares inner and outer beauty, man’s treatment of women and the exploitation of a mermaid for money. The story is predictable, given the tradition of mermaids, and because of this the pacing would benefit from more audacious plot twists and turns. I liked Jonah and wanted to shout to him, ‘have nothing to do with her.’ He is simply too nice.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Quick’ by Lauren Owen
‘An Appetite for Violets’ by Martine Bailey
‘The Wicked Cometh’ by Laura Carlin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MERMAID AND MRS HANCOCK by Imogen Hermes Gowar https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3lK via @SandraDanby

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SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS

Sharing thoughts on the books I read, new authors, favourite authors, classics re-visisted

Category Archives: book reviews

#BookReview ‘Corpus’ by Rory Clements #thriller #WW2

#BookReview ‘Days Without End’ by Sebastian Barry #historical

#BookReview ‘Fred’s Funeral’ by Sandy Day #genealogy #family #WW1

#BookReview ‘Vanishing Acts’ by Jodi Picoult #contemporary

#BookReview ‘Beneath an Indian Sky’ by Renita D’Silva @RenitaDSilva #historical #India

My Porridge & Cream read: Fiona Morgan

#BookReview ‘Winter’ by Ali Smith #SeasonalQuartet #contemporary

First Edition: The Hundred and One Dalmations

#BookReview ‘The Last of the Greenwoods’ by Clare Morrall #contemporary

#BookReview ‘The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock’ by Imogen Hermes Gowar #historical

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