#BookReview ‘The Missing Pieces of Nancy Moon’ by Sarah Steele #mystery

Leave a reply

If you’re looking for a little escapism, a trip to the Riviera of the Sixties, then The Missing Pieces of Nancy Moon by Sarah Steele is for you. A family mystery spanning two generations is unravelled by Flo, Nancy Moon’s great-niece, who treads in her aunt’s footsteps across Europe following the clues. It all starts with a photograph. Sarah Steele Told in two timelines, it is Nancy’s story that came alive for me and I would have been happy if the book had focussed solely on Nancy. Brimming with nostalgia for life in the 1960s, the Riviera, Paris, Nice, Venice, Capri, Steele tells of Nancy’s trip as companion to Pea, a teenage girl sidelined by her distracted artist father and disinterested step-mother. It is clear Nancy is running from something and, though this is billed as a historical romance, it is essentially a tale of grief and moving on.
Clearing her grandmother’s house after her death, Flo finds a photograph of her grandma Peggy and three friends. One is a complete stranger. The next discovery is a cache of dressmaking envelopes. Each is dated and inside are cut-out dress pieces and other momentoes left by Great-Aunt Nancy, photographs, postcards and oddments. Flo has never heard of Nancy Moon. Why was she never spoken of? Flo, grieving not only for the death of Peggy but for the break-up of her marriage and the loss of a baby, decides to follow Nancy’s trail across Europe.
The motif of dressmaking patterns is underlined by Steele’s beautiful descriptions of Sixties dresses, swimsuits and fabrics. We see Nancy wearing the original version of the home-made garment, and then Flo following in her footsteps wearing a contemporary version of the same outfit. At the beginning there are so many characters introduced that it’s disorientating. It took me a while to unravel them until halfway through when I realised I simply wanted to read Nancy’s story.
So, an intriguing story idea weakened by the sudden switching of narrator and timeline intended to introduce mystery. The simple addition of chapter headings with the year and location would help. In truth I figured out the mystery very early on. How much stronger this would be as a single viewpoint, traditional historical narrative without the coincidences and neat solutions of Flo’s storyline.
I was pleased I stuck with the story, despite the slow beginning. There is plenty to admire in the writing and the locations are beautiful, a real piece of escapism for armchair travellers.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Lost Letters of William Woolf’ by Helen Cullen
‘On a Night Like This’ by Barbara Freethy
‘The Art of Baking Blind’ by Sarah Vaughan

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MISSING PIECES OF NANCY MOON by Sarah Steele https://wp.me/p5gEM4-53k via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The End of the Day’ by Bill Clegg #contemporary

1 Reply

Three girls grow up living near each other in Wells, Connecticut. Dana. Jackie. Lupita. Each in a different social class. With or without wealth. With or without expectations. Privilege, no privilege. One betrayal touches their lives and has ramifications for the next generation. The End of the Day by Bill Clegg is about the fragility of loyalty when teenage bonds are tested by love, jealousy, indiscretions, secrets and lies. ‘To end a friendship, it just takes someone willing to throw it away.’ Because when a decision is taken, more than one life is affected. Bill CleggClegg has written a genealogical story wrapped up in two timelines, the years not defined but basically the Sixties and the Noughties. An elderly woman, frail and confused, sets out from New York on an excursion. Another old woman wakes in her family home to a beautiful passage of memories. A taxi driver in Hawaii ignores the repeated messages left on her mobile phone. These three are connected by a youthful flirtation, a pregnancy, arrangements made and lies told, assumptions made. A fascinating story, characters so believable, but the details lacking in clarity – perhaps because so many lies have been told. In the Noughties are mother and son Alice and Hap. Hap’s life takes two momentous turns when his father is seriously ill in hospital, the same hospital where his wife has just given birth to their baby daughter. A little girl still, significantly, without a name.
The first half is a slow read with beautiful writing that at times edged towards the self-indulgent. The book, though not long, felt long. I wanted occasional clarity of story and shorter paragraphs. I was unclear about the different houses featured – the childhood homes of Jackie and Dana and the area in which they lived. Perhaps the author knows it so well he forgot to be clear for the reader. The story moves location and year without specification which can be disorientating.
In re-reading the notes I wrote after finishing the book, I found I had twice written ‘lacking clarity’. The story is a sad one, of connections made, lost, and unknown, but for me it could be more touching with a clearer narrative spine. That said, the story stayed with me days after I finished it – always a good sign. The parallels between the generations, the vulnerability of a baby dependent on adults for the truth of its origins, the duty to protect and the urge to run from an old life. An okay story wrapped up in exquisite writing.

Here’s my review of DID YOU EVER HAVE A FAMILY?, Bill Clegg’s first novel.

If you like this, try:-
‘A Sudden Light’ by Garth Stein
‘Summertime’ by Vanessa Lafaye
‘We Are Water’ by Wally Lamb

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE END OF THE DAY by Bill Clegg https://wp.me/p5gEM4-523 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Streets’ by Anthony Quinn #historical #sociology

6 Replies

The Streets by Anthony Quinn is part sociology, part history, part mystery, part political discussion. Set in the 1880s, it sets a fictional tale within true history, the sort of thing hated by historians themselves who fear that readers will believe it is all true. They should credit we readers with the ability to recognize fiction from fact. This is a story encompassing poverty, pride, crime, corruption, community and, almost, eugenics. Anthony QuinnDavid Wildeblood has a new job. He is an inspector, a fact-collector, charged with touring the North London borough of Somers Town, conducting interviews and collating information to be published in Henry Marchmont’s weekly news sheet The Labouring Classes of London; living conditions, work, income, religion, diet, pastimes, crime, health etc. Marchmont is based on Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor and Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People of London. At first Wildeblood is an outsider and woefully naïve, until he stumbles on costermonger Jo. Soon Wildeblood learns the argot, the alleys to avoid, and how to best submit his report to Marchmont’s loyal assistant Mr Rennert. Then he stumbles onto a scheme in which criminal landlords defraud their tenants, refuse to repair their properties then clear the streets for redevelopment leaving the inhabitants homeless. When a local man organizes a protest, he is later found drowned in the river. Wildeblood is warned by a reporter friend, Clifford Paget of The Chronicle, that his life may be in danger but he continues to investigate.
Wildeblood’s time in Somers Town is juxtaposed with his, albeit tenuous, relationship with his wealthy godfather Sir Martin Elder and Kitty, his daughter. The two stories come together as he recognizes a connection between a social charity providing poor city dwellers with a day trip to the countryside, and what is happening in Somers Town. The tentacles of property exploitation, fraud and social engineering spread around London. At times the sociology and politics of the author intruded into my head and the exposition distracted me from the story but, like all Quinn’s novels, the characters are a delight.
The description of The Streets as a ‘thriller’ though, is misleading. This is a thoughtful considered novel. Well-researched, it feels as if this book is close to the author’s heart; perhaps too close. For me, it was a slower, worthy read, compared with his other novels and less accessible.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of these other novels also by Anthony Quinn:-
CURTAIN CALL
FREYA
HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE
MOLLY & THE CAPTAIN
OUR FRIENDS IN BERLIN
THE RESCUE MAN

If you like this, try:-
‘The Walworth Beauty’ by Michèle Roberts
‘The Penny Heart’ by Martine Bailey
‘Birdcage Walk’ by Helen Dunmore

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE STREETS by Anthony Quinn https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3e2 via @SandraDanby

SaveSave

#BookReview ‘The Midnight Library’ by @matthaig1 #contemporary

3 Replies

I loved the concept of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig as soon as I read the blurb. A young woman finds herself in the mysterious midnight library where she can choose a book, live a version of her life as it might have been and so mend the regrets and disappointments she has with her life already lived. Matt HaigNora Seed has had a horrible day and wishes she was dead. She has let everyone, including herself, down. Her brother isn’t talking to her. She’s lost her job. And her cat is dead. ‘Every move had been a mistake, every decision a disaster, every day a retreat from who she’d imagined she’d be. Swimmer. Musician. Philosopher. Spouse. Traveller. Glaciologist. Happy. Loved.’ She has a long list of things she can’t do and no list of what she has achieved.
Instead of dying Nora meets the enigmatic Mrs Elm, librarian at Nora’s school nineteen years ago. Between life and death, explains Mrs Elm, there is a library. ‘Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices.’ In a kind of literary Sliding Doors combined with It’s a Wonderful Life, Nora walks into lives she may have lived. Each life contains people and places Nora knows but who she feels out-of-touch with or is assumed to have a knowledge or skill she doesn’t possess. Consequently, she spends a fair amount of time fibbing and winging her way through situations, trying to keep her rather strange secret and lying to people she is supposed to care about. The deal with the midnight library is that if she feels disappointment in the life she is sampling, she will be returned to the library.
In a predictable character curve, in each life Nora visits she learns something about herself. Some lives we see in detail, others in half a page. This left me unsatisfied. I wanted more, for her to stay longer in situations, to see what she learned. I was left feeling this is a novel combined with a mental health guide to living with depression and regrets. Matt Haig is a successful non-fiction author about the subject but sadly I finished this novel feeling I had bought a novel and been given a self-help guide. In some places, the exposition got in the way of Nora’s story. That said, Haig has a light hand at writing comedy and there are some wonderful moments that made me chuckle. One being Nora’s telephone conversation with her film star boyfriend. The other is when she finds out what being a ‘spotter’ in the Arctic really means.

Read my reviews of these other Matt Haig novels:-
THE HUMANS
HOW TO STOP TIME

If you like this, try:-
‘In the Midst of Winter’ by Isabel Allende
‘The Lie of the Land’ by Amanda Craig
‘The Perfect Affair’ by Claire Dyer

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY by @matthaig1 https://wp.me/p5gEM4-50r via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Charlotte Brontë A Life’ by Claire Harman #biography

2 Replies

How did Charlotte Brontë create the character of Jane Eyre? Was Villette really based on a doomed love affair in Brussels? How much of the real author is in these novels? If you have read Charlotte Brontë’s books, you will have asked yourself these questions. The biography Charlotte Brontë: A Life by Claire Harman provides some fascinating answers. Claire HarmanThis is the first biography of Brontë I have read and I wish I had read it sooner. Harman tells the enthralling story of the family whose losses, grief, hardship, isolation and disappointments populate the novels of the three sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne. It is impossible to write about Charlotte without writing about the family, and particularly about Emily, Anne and brother Branwell. Everyone knows the headline facts about the Brontës – Haworth parsonage, mother and siblings dying, Branwell’s addiction, and the imaginary kingdoms of Angria and Dondal in which the children lose themselves. But Harman makes the history accessible, telling the life of Charlotte in chronological order starting briefly with her father Patrick.
There are clear references to real life appearing in the novels and Harman casts light on the writing process of Charlotte and her sisters. For a novelist, this is required reading. Some of Charlotte’s experiences written about in letters appear directly in her novels, along with paragraphs lifted from journals and lines and passages lifted from works earlier abandoned. Harman extensively quotes Elizabeth Gaskell – who wrote the first biography of Charlotte Brontë published in 1857, based largely on Charlotte’ letters sent to her friend Ellen Nussey – and Charlotte’s correspondence with friends and her London publisher.
It is a tragic story but Harman is never over-sentimental. She is excellent at pairing characters, incidents and emotions in the novels with Charlotte’s real life.
A must read for anyone who is a fan of the Brontë novels.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Girl at the Window’ by Rowan Coleman
‘Miss Austen’ by Gill Hornby
‘The Vanished Bride’ by Bella Ellis #1BronteMysteries

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookRreview CHARLOTTE BRONTË: A LIFE by Claire Harman https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Xi via @SandraDanby

My Porridge & Cream read… @MaggieCobbett #books #Yorkshire

Leave a reply

Today I’m delighted to welcome Yorkshire novelist Maggie Cobbett. Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is The Beloved Vagabond by William J Locke.

“The Beloved Vagabond by William J Locke has been a favourite of mine since childhood. The now tatty illustrated edition, published in 1922, belonged to my father and we used to read it together. It is that memory that often draws me back to it, together with the fact that Paragot, the main character, (as depicted in the wonderful illustrations by Jean Dulac, see below), bears more than a passing resemblance to Dad as he would have liked to be. An artist, writer and rover at heart, he was trapped for most of his life in mundane occupations that kept him in Yorkshire.” Maggie Cobbett

Maggie Cobbett

Paragot in Paris

Maggie’s Bio
Born in Leeds, Maggie studied modern languages at the University of Manchester and then spent many years teaching in the UK and abroad, taking every opportunity to travel more extensively in the holidays. Since taking early retirement and now based back in Yorkshire with her family, she writes short stories, articles, reviews, ‘fillers’ and even the occasional poem. Until the pandemic struck, she also appeared regularly as a ‘village regular’ on Emmerdale.

Maggie’s links
Workhouse Orphan at Facebook
Website
Amazon 

Maggie’s latest book
Maggie CobbettMaggie explains, “Workhouse Orphan, inspired by a brave young man way back in my family history and dedicated to him, tells the story of a boy forced at a very tender age to leave his siblings behind in their grim London workhouse and work down a Yorkshire coal mine. Despite the hardships he encounters, he never loses sight of his wish to reunite the family. While not originally intended to be a book for children – it’s actually suitable for anyone with an interest in social history – I’ve been told by parents that it’s made a good bedtime read and given their own offspring cause to realise how lucky they are!”
BUY THE BOOK

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.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Julia Thum’s choice is ‘The Little White Horse’ by Elizabeth Goudge
Lexi Rees chooses ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams
‘The Shell Seekers’ by Rosamund Pilcher is chosen by Carol Warham

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Why does Yorkshire author @MaggieCobbett re-read THE BELOVED VAGABOND by William J Locke? #books https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4Yt via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas #poetry

Leave a reply

Dylan Thomas’s most famous, arguably most familiar, poem is a villanelle with five stanzas of three lines followed by a single stanza of four lines, making a total of 19 lines. It is structured with two repeating rhymes, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ and ‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light’. Written in 1947 when Thomas was in Florence with his family, it is popularly thought to refer to the death of his father though his father did not die until 1952. In contrast to many poems of death, popular for reading at funerals, this speaks clearly and strongly at the anger and resentment at dying.

Dylan Thomas

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

Due to copyright restrictions, I cannot reproduce the whole poem here. Please search for the full poem in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and race at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

 
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

 
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Dylan ThomasBUY THE BOOK

Dylan ThomasThomas’s best known poem has been referenced frequently in popular culture. In the 1996 film Independence Day, the president gives a rousing speech to his bedraggled army as they prepare to fight the aliens, saying “We will not go quietly into the night.”
BUY THE DVD

Dylan ThomasIn the 2014 film Interstellar, the poem is quoted frequently by Michael Caine’s character, Professor John Brand, while Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway are sent into hyper sleep with the words, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
BUY THE DVD

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Dunt: A Poem for a Dried-Up River’ by Alice Oswald 
‘After a Row’ by Tom Pickard
‘My Mother’ by Ruby Robinson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4bZ via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Scratched Enamel Heart’ by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish #shortstories

9 Replies

Scratched Enamel Heart, the latest collection by award-winning short story writer Amanda Huggins, does not disappoint. Featuring ‘Red’, the story shortlisted for the 2019 Costa Short Story Award, the other stories include some gems. Amanda HugginsThere are three stories that stayed with me, returning to me at unexpected moments when I had moved on to another book.
‘Light Box’ is about Alice, a daughter grieving for the loss of her father but glad to be free of the stepmother she never liked, who had tried to wipe the house and their memories clear of Alice’s mother. Huggins has a wonderful simplicity of description that feels just right, such as the beach, ‘a slip of a thing, a nail clipping of pale sand beneath a wide sky.’
With a darker tone than any other story by Huggins that I recall reading before, ‘Uncanny’ is unsettling. When I remember it, it leaves a sense of discomfort. Like looking over your shoulder when walking in the dark, clutching your bag to your side. Perhaps she should try writing suspense fiction. Alan eats every night in the same café where Carol is a waitress. It starts when she comments that a blue shirt would suit him, would go with the colour of his eyes. He buys five.
The last story in this collection, ‘This Final Perfect Thing’ is unbearably poignant. A perfect, short, short story. This is what Huggins excels at, distilling human emotion into two pages that anyone can read and feel deeply too.
Huggins is a consummate story writer, as comfortable with the long form as with the briefest of flash fictions and poetry. Her settings vary from India to Japan, Istanbul to the English seaside and she makes each location real, real for her characters and real for me as I read.

Read my reviews of other work by Amanda Huggins:-
Novellas
ALL OUR SQUANDERED BEAUTY
CROSSING THE LINES
THE BLUE OF YOU
Short stories
AN UNFAMILIAR LANDSCAPE
BRIGHTLY COLOURED HORSES
EACH OF US A PETAL
SEPARATED FROM THE SEA
Poetry
THE COLLECTIVE NOUNS FOR BIRDS

If you like this, try:-
‘Staying Afloat’ by Sue Wilsea
‘The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth’ by William Boyd
‘All the Rage’ by AL Kennedy

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:-
#BookReview SCRATCHED ENAMEL HEART by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4ZY via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Bird in the Bamboo Cage’ by @HazelGaynor #WW2

8 Replies

What an engrossing story this is if you’re looking for a world to lose yourself in, a world more horrific and frightening than we can ever imagine. A war story that is at times both traumatic and heart-warming, The Bird in the Bamboo Cage by Hazel Gaynor tells the story of a teacher and pupil interned in China during World War Two, a story often forgotten and seldom told. Hazel GaynorBased on the true story of a real school – the China Inland Mission’s Chefoo School in Yantai, Shandong province in northern China – as the Japanese army invades and school life is changed overnight. Gaynor tells her fictionalised story through the viewpoints of teacher Elspeth Kent and pupil Nancy ‘Plum’ Plummer. Elspeth is struggling to write a letter of resignation, intending to return home and join the war effort, when war arrives at the school gates. At first Chefoo School proudly continues to operate under armed guard but after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and the entry of America into the war, the school is moved to Temple Hill internment camp and later to Weihsien. At each step, privations, hardships, hunger, threat and sexual exploitation threaten teachers, pupils and the wider camp community.
Elspeth and Plum offer different perspectives on what is happening and we see the growing friendship and respect between the two women, because Plum starts off a child and grows as a woman unable to remember her mother, unsure if she will ever see her parents again. The teachers truly are ‘in loco parentis’ when the school is relocated and the children learn to support each other, to endure hardship by recognising there is always someone worse off than you and that everyone is a person in their own right [pupils, teachers, guards, fellow internees, night soil women] with their own hopes, dreams and fears. They face hunger, theft and personal attack. Gaynor portrays the school’s protestant ethic with a light hand, instead making Elspeth Brown Owl of Chefoo’s Guides and using the Girl Guide Handbook’s mottos as a thematic skeleton. For each new challenge they meet there is a guiding motto to help them face what must be done.
I am not a lover of all ends being neatly tied and certainly this book is not perfect – chunks of time pass in brief summary paragraphs and at times the action seems delayed with detail of the school day – but Gaynor has created a world of prisoners and enemy that made me want to read on. Of course, we know how the war ended but we so want to know what happens to each pupil and teacher.
Essentially this is a novel about the strength and value of friendship and loyalty, the love that binds people together and enables them to survive horrific situations.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Hazel Gaynor:-
THE COTTINGLEY SECRET
THE LAST LIFEBOAT … and try the #FirstPara of THE LAST LIFEBOAT.

If you like this, try:-
‘White Chrysanthemum’ by Mary Lynn Bracht
‘The Translation of Love’ by Lynn Kutsukake
‘The Gift of Rain’ by Tan Twan Eng

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE BIRD IN THE BAMBOO CAGE by @HazelGaynor https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4ZN via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 130 ‘Gilead’ #amreading #FirstPara

4 Replies

“I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren’t very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you’ve had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to life a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. And then you said, Don’t laugh! Because you thought I was laughing at you. You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother’s. It’s a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows singed after I’ve suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.”
Marilynne RobinsonFrom ‘Gilead’ by Marilynne Robinson

Read my reviews of these novels by Marilynne Robinson:-
GILEAD
HOME
HOUSEKEEPING
JACK

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Agnes Grey’ by Anne Bronte
‘The Big Sleep’ by Raymond Chandler
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara GILEAD  by Marilynne Robinson https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4eD via @SandraDanby