“The bedroom is strange. Unfamiliar. I don’t know where I am, how I came to be here. I don’t know how I’m going to get home.”
From ‘Before I Go to Sleep’ by SJ Watson
Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘True Grit’ by Charles Portis
‘Sea Glass’ by Anita Shreve
‘I’ll Take You There’ by Joyce Carol Oates
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#Books #FirstPara BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP by SJ Watson http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vw via @SandraDanby
This novel by Carys Bray starts with a wonderful description of twelve-year-old Clover watering her father’s allotment on a hot summer’s day. It is the beginning of the summer holidays and it is the first time she has her own front door key and is allowed out on her own. I smelt the dust, could see the shimmering heat and feel the cool of the water splashing from the tap. 
It is not a book in which a lot happens; rather it is a sensitive portrait of a single father and his daughter and how the past refuses to be ignored.
After a school trip to the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool, Clover decides her holiday project will be to curate an exhibit of her mother. She has no memories of her mum, who died soon after Clover was born, and her father never talks about the past. Clover never used to mind about this, not wanting to press him and cause distress. But now, poised on the edge of womanhood, her curiosity mounts. And so she ventures into the spare bedroom, a repository of the unwanted and unused. Amongst the piles of old clothes and broken things, she discovers objects which enchant her, things which belonged to her mother. From these pieces she compiles a picture of the mother she never knew.
What follows is an enchanting tale of a motherless girl, her bus driver father, neighbour Mrs Mackerel (what a great name), grandfather and unpredictable Uncle Jim. It took me quite a while to sort out who is who. We see Clover’s life through the lens of her childlike but observant eyes, balanced by the story of her father Darren who feels the daily struggle of a man raising a daughter alone: how to tie a towel turban on her head, what to tell her about boyfriends. It is a very real story about an ordinary family, touching but sometimes caustic, funny and believable. It could be a mawkish read about long-term grief, but Clover energises the story. Her family is surviving, despite the difficulties it faces. Darren’s sections tells us the truth about the things Clover finds, which makes some of her museum exhibits so poignant. I loved the scenes between Clover and schoolfriend Dagmar at the allotment, though Mrs Mackerel’s malapropisms became a little wearing towards the end.
If you like this, try:-
‘The Girls’ by Lisa Jewell
‘Somewhere Inside of Happy’ by Anna McPartlin
‘Beginnings’ by Helen J Christmas
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#BookReview THE MUSEUM OF YOU by Carys Bray via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2bp
World War One, a speciality of Pat Barker, is present in every page of this tale of war veteran 101-year old Geordie, living through his final days with his grandson Nick. Woven through Geordie’s story are the threads of Nick’s life, his extended family involving wife, step son and half-siblings. In the modern day there are tensions between siblings, as there were between Geordie and his brother. 
Pat Barker is an author who does not flinch from showing the human reactions that in real life we prefer to hide: sibling jealousy, sibling hate and underlying it all, selfishness. How these emotions affect this family, from 101-year old Geordie to his great-grandson Jasper, a toddler, is fascinating and often a difficult read.
A sideline from the main story is the life of the family who lived in the house where Nick has just moved with pregnant wife Fran, Fran’s son Gareth, and Fran and Nick’s son Jasper. Also visiting is Miranda, Nick’s daughter. I said the family ties were twisted. Tidying an overgrown rose on the wall of the house, Nick unveils a plaque labelled ‘Fanshawe’. This is the name of the family who lived in this house, Fanshawe made his money from armaments. When parents and children strip wallpaper off the walls, they unveil a portrait of a family. Is it the Fanshawes, or is it them? And so Barker introduces the ghostly strand with uncanny echoes between then and now.
This is a slim volume, read quickly, but not so quickly as to miss the delicacy of Barker’s writing. Here is Nick on his grandfather: ‘Nick feels he’s never known him, not because they’ve been distant from each other – far from it – but because they’ve been too close. It’s like seeing somebody an inch away, so that if you were asked to describe them you could probably manage to recall nothing more distinctive than the size of the pores in their nose.’
A slim volume with such acute observations about human nature, Another World makes you feel uncomfortable and ask questions of yourself. I read every novel Barker writes. Her ‘Regeneration’ trilogy, including the 1995 Booker Prize-winning The Ghost Road, is a must.
For my reviews of other Pat Barker novels, click the title below:-
BLOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN
DOUBLE VISION
LIFE CLASS #1LIFECLASS
TOBY’S ROOM #2LIFECLASS
NOONDAY #3LIFECLASS
THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS #1WOMENOFTROY
THE WOMEN OF TROY #2WOMENOFTROY
THE VOYAGE HOME #3WOMENOFTROY
UNION STREET
If you like this, try:-
‘The Lie’ by Helen Dunmore
‘Wake’ by Anna Hope
‘A Long Long Way’ by Sebastian Barry
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#BookReview ANOTHER WORLD by Pat Barker http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1NY by @SandraDanby
How to describe The Translation of Love by Lynne Kutsukake? What a charming and unusual novel it is, if at some times a trifle confusing. The setting is unusual, post-war Tokyo when the country is being run by the US General MacArthur and at times it reminded me of Rhidian Brook’s wonderful The Aftermath set in post-war Berlin. It is about war and what it does to us, how a broken society can ever begin to heal, how the young will ever be able to live a normal life, when the word normal ceases to exist. 
Sensitively written, each page draws a picture of Tokyo from a different point of view – Aya, a Japanese-Canadian schoolgirl feels the odd one out in her new school; her classmate Fumi misses her elder sister who left home to find work; Sumiko has a job in a dance hall dancing with the GIs but is ashamed to tell her family what she is doing; Kondo Sensei, the teacher of the younger girls and also part-time translator and writer of letters; and Matt Matsumoto, the Japanese-American soldier who translates the letters sent to General MacArthur by Japanese citizens.
Letters are an important tool in this story which is essentially a young girl’s quest to find her sister. When Fumi finds out that Aya can write in English, she asks for her to write a letter to General MacArthur asking for his help to find her Sumiko. As the letter changes hands and Matt and a colleague become involved in searching for Sumiko, the story unfolds gently against a terrible backdrop of bomb damage, poverty, starvation, pride, culture clash and above all the determination to survive.
It was a while before all the Japanese characters, and some of the Japanese vocabulary, started to fall into place. A touching story inspired by the letters written by Japanese citizens to MacArthur, it draws a picture of a period in Japanese history of which I knew nothing.
If you like this, try:-
‘The Bird in the Bamboo Cage’ by Hazel Gaynor
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE TRANSLATION OF LOVE by Lynne Kutsukake via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2cE
Today I’m delighted to welcome contemporary women’s novelist Sue Moorcroft.
“I wish I still had my dad’s copy of A Town Like Alice. It was one of those Reader’s Digest leather-bound books, bright red with gold. Sadly, I lent it to someone. 
A Town Like Alice was the first adult book I read. I was nine. I watched the film one afternoon with Dad and he told me he had the book. As a bookworm, when the film finished the obvious thing to do was locate it in the bookcase and carry it off to my room. If I close my eyes I can still see the red ribbon to mark reading progress and the dark blue and white pattern on the inner cover.
In A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute taught me a lot about storytelling. He showed me that a story arc doesn’t have to contain a mystery (Famous Five) or a school (Malory Towers) and can be set against the ugliness of war and yet contain one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever read. That love can triumph over seemingly impossible odds, even over man’s inhumanity to man. It taught me a lot about characters having flaws and acting like real people, too, when Joe and Jean finally found each other again and realised they still had their own issues to deal with.
I bought the book again when I lost touch with Dad’s copy. It wasn’t in print so I had to buy it second-hand but I reread it every few years, whenever I feel it’s faded in my mind enough that I’ll enjoy it all over again. I wouldn’t like to guess how many times I’ve lived the story of Jean and Joe!
A Town Like Alice began a lifelong love affair with the works of Nevil Shute. I have every one, even those published posthumously. The social niceties are a bit dated, now, but every one is a great story.”
Sue Moorcroft’s Bio
Award-winning author Sue Moorcroft writes contemporary women’s fiction with occasionally unexpected themes. A past vice chair of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and editor of its two anthologies, Sue also writes short stories, serials, articles, writing ‘how to’ and is a creative writing tutor. She’s won a Readers’ Best Romantic Read Award and the Katie Fforde Bursary.
Sue Moorcroft’s links
Website
Blog
Facebook
Twitter
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Sue Moorcroft’s latest book
For Ava Bliss, it’s going to be a Christmas to remember …
On a snowy December evening, Sam Jermyn steps into the life of bespoke hat maker Ava Blissham. Sparks fly, and not necessarily good ones. Times are tough for Ava – she’s struggling to make ends meet, her ex-boyfriend is a bully, and worst of all, it’s nearly Christmas. So when Sam commissions Ava to make a hat for someone special, she makes a promise that will change her life. She just doesn’t know it yet …
‘The Christmas Promise’ by Sue Moorcroft [UK: Harper Collins]
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:-
Claire Dyer
JG Harlond
Shelley Weiner
‘A Town Like Alice’ by Nevil Shute [UK: Vintage Classics]
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Why does @SueMoorcroft love A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute? http://wp.me/p5gEM4-260 via @SandraDanby #reading
Agatha Raisin. The PR supremo and city lady, is now retired to the Cotswolds where she reaps havoc as a cross between Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes and Hattie Jacques’ Matron in the Carry On films. Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage is fifth in this series by MC Beaton, and it is helpful to read them in order because of ongoing story threads. 
Agatha is about to get married and she can hardly believe her good luck. And that is the key to what happens next: Agatha’s [unfortunately not] ex-husband turns up, the wedding is off, and the ex is murdered. Agatha, suspected bigamist, is now a suspected murderer too. Plus, her fiancé has done a runner.
So begins another murder hunt in which Agatha stumbles along, putting her foot in it, making mostly wrong but sometimes right assumptions, and generally stirring things up. In the course of which she reviews her first marriage, and her second marriage which never happened: had she really been in love at all?
Read my reviews of other books in this series:-
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE QUICHE OF DEATH #1AGATHARAISIN
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE VICIOUS VET #2AGATHARAISIN
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE POTTED GARDENER #3AGATHARAISIN
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE WALKERS OF DEMBLEY #4AGATHARAISIN
If you like this, try:-
THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN by Susan Hill
THE FINE ART OF INVISIBLE DETECTION by Robert Goddard
MURDER AT CATMMANDO MOUNTAIN by Anna Celeste Burke
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#BookReview AGATHA RAISIN AND THE MURDEROUS MARRIAGE by MC Beaton @mc_beaton http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ka via @SandraDanby
I love Anne Tyler’s writing. It is so simple and under-stated. She lets you slip so easily into the head and the world of her characters. This is her re-working of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Generally I dislike these artificial re-writes, but I made an exception for Tyler. After this, I may try some of the others. 
Kate is a pre-school teaching assistant and housekeeper for her distracted scientist father and teenage sister. She is dissatisfied with her life, can never seem to get things right, but doesn’t know how to change things. Admonished by her headmistress for being too frank with her young charges, she is not in the best of moods when her father introduces her to his lab assistant, Pytor. He seems a lumbering foreigner and Kate does not understand her father’s eagerness that they meet. Pytor has a problem, his work visa is about to expire and he must leave the country. Kate’s father is frantic, he simply cannot lose his irreplaceable assistant or his research project into autoimmune disorders will fail when it is so near success. What happens next is predictable except Tyler turns Shakespeare’s tale of Katherina and Petruchio into a modern tale about tolerance and freedom, without the overtones of ‘man tames untameable woman’.
Read my reviews of these other books by Anne Tyler:-
A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD
CLOCK DANCE
FRENCH BRAID
LADDER OF YEARS
REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
And read the first paragraphs of:-
DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT
BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWN UPS
If you like this, try:-
‘Some Luck’ by Jane Smiley
‘Housekeeping’ by Marilynne Robinson
‘My Name is Lucy Barton’ by Elizabeth Strout
#BookReview VINEGAR GIRL by Anne Tyler via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2bj
The Nationalist by Campbell Hart starts with an explosion, on Remembrance Sunday. The culprit: an elderly man, a veteran, wearing a suicide vest. Scottish nationalism, the treatment of veterans and policing in Scotland are the drivers of this narrative. 
This story hits the ground running and doesn’t stop. It’s a while since I read Wilderness, the first in Campbell Hart’s series about Glasgow detective John Arbogast. The Nationalist was just the tonic after a tiring week, I needed to relax into a book which moved fast and didn’t demand much from me. This took me for a ride and finishes at a sprint as the end game approaches. Right up until the end, I didn’t know how it would finish.
Arbogast is at times an unsympathetic character, his relationship with Rose, DCI Rosalind Ying, gets complicated and he retreats to alcohol. This gets him into trouble, trouble he cannot have foreseen would link him to the Remembrance Sunday terrorist attack. As pieces are pulled together, Hart keeps the mystery going until the end whilst weaving in the complicated politics in Scottish policing, resentments, ambition and dislike.
Read my reviews of other Arbogast novels by Campbell Hart:-
WILDERNESS #1ARBOGAST
REFERENDUM #3ARBOGAST
If you like this, try:-
‘Due Diligence’ by DJ Harrison
‘No Other Darkness’ by Sarah Hilary
‘Dead Simple’ by Peter James
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#BookReview THE NATIONALIST by Campbell Hart @elharto http://wp.me/p5gEM4-21L via @SandraDanby
Early Warning opens with a funeral, Frank Langdon, the patriarch. A funeral is a great introduction to the characters, a reminder of Some Luck, the first part of this trilogy. This, the second instalment by Jane Smiley of the life of Frank and Rosanna Langdon’s family, focuses on their children and grandchildren. And it is a sprawling family. Not just who they are but WHO they are, their relationships, their quirks, their oddities. 
Smiley is an excellent observer of human behaviour, she reminds me of Jane Austen’s interpretation of family connections, secrets, tensions and disguised emotions. And it is all written in such an unassuming, subtle way. The death of a parent is a landmark in anyone’s life, a reminder of mortality, and in this book we see the maturing of the five Langdon children – ambitious, tricksy Frank; farmer Joe; home-maker Lilian; academic Henry; and youngest Claire. Smiley has a way of writing these characters from birth to maturity, through changing times, the social and political upheavals of Sixties and Seventies America, without losing the essence of personality. And what a cast it is to handle. Not once did I lose the thread of who was who, except with the appearance towards the end of a character called Charlie. I examined the family tree at the front of the book, no Charlie. The mystery is answered at the end, and sets up part three of the trilogy, Golden Age.
Frank and Andy’s troubled marriage produces troubled children: Janet who becomes entwined in a dodgy religious sect, argumentative twins Michael and Ritchie. Joe has to manage not only the family farm but also the additional land inherited by his wife. The Cold War affects grain prices and he considers whether to borrow money to plant seed when the crop may not earn enough to fulfil the loan. Lillian and Arthur’s son Tim goes off to Vietnam, meanwhile Arthur continues to cope with the emotional stress of his Government intelligence job and what comes with it, the prior knowledge of horrible secrets, dirty tricks and bribes. Henry confronts his sexuality, but will he tell his conservative family? Claire, the youngest, marries a doctor who wants to control her life, and that of their sons, in a protective instinct which becomes overwhelming.
It is impossible to summarize a plot which strides the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the Civil Rights movement and AIDS, but Smiley handles the transition – with one year for each chapter – with ease.
This is a big book [over 700 pages] but few big books are this easy and pleasurable to read. Jane Smiley has already won the Pulitzer, with this trilogy she enters the territory of ‘greatest living’ American author.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON
Click the title below to read my reviews of other novels by Jane Smiley:-
A THOUSAND ACRES
SOME LUCK [LAST HUNDRED YEARS #1]
GOLDEN AGE [LAST HUNDRED YEARS #3]
If you like this, try:-
‘A Town Called Solace’ by Mary Lawson
‘A Spool of Blue Thread’ by Anne Tyler
‘Gilead’ by Marilynne Robinson
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview EARLY WARNING by Jane Smiley http://wp.me/p5gEM4-217 via @SandraDanby
What a tangled web some families weave. A Mother’s Secret by Renita D’Silva is a fragrant tale of mothers and daughters stretching from England to India. Gaddehalli is a tiny village in Goa but I could smell the spices, hear the wind in the trees, and see the buffalos in the fields as if I was there. 
This novel about identity starts with a young girl, Durga, who must stay with her grandmother in Gaddehalli after an accident to her parents. The ruined mansion where she lives, which is avoided by the locals as haunted and full of bad luck, is the centre of this story. The modern-day strand follows Jaya, a young mother in England mourning the loss of her baby son and whose mother Sudha has recently died. Sudha was an emotionally-withdrawn mother, but when Jaya discovers some of her mother’s hidden possessions, including diaries, she pieces together the story of Sudha’s early life. Jaya is looking for the identity of her own father; she finds so much more.
From the beginning, it is a guessing game: how is the story of Durga connected to Kali, Jaya and Sudha? Halfway through, all my ideas of the twist had been proven wrong and I was wondering if the storylines would come together. At times I got the girls confused, but I read the second half of the novel quicker than the first and the twist, when it came, was a big surprise. A clever novel about families and how the important, simple things in life can sometimes be forgotten because of pride, selfishness or shame.
Read my reviews of these other novels by Renita D’Silva:-
A DAUGHTER’S COURAGE
BENEATH AN INDIAN SKY
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:-
‘Yuki Chan in Bronte Country’ by Mick Chapman
‘Crow Blue’ by Adriana Lisboa
‘Love and Eskimo Snow’ by Sarah Holt
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A MOTHER’S SECRET by Renita D’Silva @RenitaDSilva http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2b0 via @SandraDanby
SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS 