Tag Archives: book review

#BookReview ‘All My Puny Sorrows’ by Miriam Toews #contemporary

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This is a novel about depression, suicide, death, broken families, love and music. Yes, it is sad, but it is also laugh-out-loud in places. Canadian writer Miriam Toews drew heavily on her own experiences in the writing of All My Puny Sorrows and that depth of empathy shines from every page. Do not ignore this book because you think it will be depressing: it is uplifting, and you will feel sad to finish it. Miriam Toews The story centres on sisters Yolandi and Elfrieda von Riesen. Elf, the elder, is a concert pianist. Yoli writes the Rodeo Rhonda teen novels. Elf’s story – and that of the family of women surrounding the two sisters, their mother, their aunt, Yoli’s daughter, their friends – is told by Yoli. “When we were kids she would occasionally let me be her page-turner for the fast pieces that she hadn’t memorized. Page turning is a particular art. I had to be just ahead of her in the music and move like a snake when I turned the page so there was no crinkling and no sticking and no thwapping. Her words.”
We do not hear Elf’s inner voice except in excerpts from letters and poems. What we do have is Yoli’s contemplation of Elf’s request to be taken to Switzerland to end her own life. No judgements are made although Yoli runs through every gamut of emotion from sorrow to guilt to anger to exasperation to despair. She loves her sister and does not want to lose her, but if her sister is so unhappy then how can she not help her? Is Elf’s wish not hugely selfish, does she not care for the feelings of those she will leave behind? Anyone who has been close to someone with a long-term illness will recognise many of the healthcare situations and Yoli’s many meltdowns with medical authority.
It is a sad, poignant book which made me laugh out loud.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Bear’ by Claire Cameron
‘Etta and Otto and Russell and James’ by Emma Hooper
‘A View of the Harbour’ by Elizabeth Taylor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ALL MY PUNY SORROWS by Miriam Toews http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Dw via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Shroud for a Nightingale’ by PD James #crime

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Shroud for a Nightingale is the fourth Adam Dalgliesh book, published in 1971, and the first I read. It was the beginning of a love affair with PD James and following her death in 2014, I decided to re-read them all. PD JamesThe Nightingale in question is not Florence but Nightingale House, a nursing school at John Carpendar Hospital, Heatheringfield. At a student demonstration of patient feeding by intra-gastric tube, the nurse who substitutes as the patient dies a ghastly death. It is assumed to be an accident. When a second student nurse is found dead in her bed, her whisky nightcap the assumed culprit, Adam Dalgliesh is called in from Scotland Yard.
Like all James detective books, this is a complex mixture of observation of human behaviour, intricate plotting, detailed description, and totally believable characters. This is how Alderman Kealey is introduced, he, “looked as perky as a terrier. He was a ginger-haired, foxy little man, bandy as a jockey and wearing a plaid suit, the awfulness of its pattern emphasized by the excellence of its cut. It gave him an anthropomorphic appearance, like an animal in a children’s comic; and Dalgliesh almost expected to find himself shaking a paw.”
The brooding Victorian pile which is Nightingale House, set amongst woods which are rumoured to be haunted, is an atmospheric setting for a murder story involving young emotional women. So when there are more attacks and a fire, it somehow seems inevitable given the setting.
Did I work out the identity of the murderer? I had an early suspicion which I then forgot as I became involved in the various possibilities which Dalgliesh explores. PD James’s books are not formula whodunits, this story incorporates medical procedure, World War Two, ballroom dancing, blackmail. The story twists and turns as we see events unfold through different points of view though whether the truth is being withheld we do not know until the end.

Read my reviews of the other Adam Dalgliesh mysteries:-
COVER HER FACE #1ADAMDALGLIESH
A MIND TO MURDER #2ADAMDALGLIESH
UNNATURAL CAUSES #3ADAMDALGLIESH
THE BLACK TOWER #5ADAMDALGLIESH
DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS #6ADAMDALGLIESH
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
THE PRIVATE PATIENT #14ADAMDALGLIESH

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:-
‘Curtain Call’ by Anthony Quinn
‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley #1GEORGIECONNELLY
‘Nightfall’ by Stephen Leather #1JACKNIGHTINGALE

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE by PD James http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1zU via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’ by Karen Joy Fowler #contemporary

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If you can, read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler without reading any reviews or comments beforehand. There is a mammoth twist, which is best avoided. I am one of the lucky few who didn’t read a spoiler before I started reading, I knew only that it was about sibling love. But even so, I did spot the surprise way before it happened, and consequently then read on waiting for the ‘twist’ promised on the cover. Which left me a little deflated. I don’t know why, I expected the twist to be near the end. Karen Joy FowlerThis is a very clever story, packed with philosophy, contemporary references such as Star Wars to Korean vocabulary. Rose is a student, looking back at her childhood and the disappearances, at different times, of her sister Fern and her brother Lowell. The story darts around the timeline and Rose tells different versions of her life story as she comes to terms with her life so far. Mostly this method of storytelling worked for me, but on a few occasions I admit to losing patience with Rose who I found an irritating unreliable narrator. I kept reading because the story is unusual, but my incredulity was stretched at times.
The best bit? The very last paragraph makes it worthwhile reading on, but I can’t say it’s a book I enjoyed.

If you like this, try:-
‘Frog Music’ by Emma Donoghue
‘Vinegar Girl’ by Anne Tyler
‘A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES by Karen Joy Fowler http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1tq via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Girls’ by @lisajewelluk #thriller

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It’s a long time since I read a Lisa Jewell novel. I loved her first, Ralph’s Party, which still sits on my bookshelf along with four of her other books. I gave up reading somewhere about Vince and Joy, turned off by the pink chick lit branding and feeling that I had grown-up beyond the subject matter. Lisa JewellThen I heard that The Girls was ‘something different,’ and it is. Satisfying dark, mysterious, unspoken danger lurks above the heads of the girls – Grace and Pip. The setting is outwardly comforting: a communal garden surrounded by houses and apartments, where residents mingle and have barbecues together, where children roam safe from roads and strangers. But are they safe? And what is the threat?
The two girls and their mother move to an empty apartment after the family home is burnt down by their father. He is now in psychiatric care, they lost all their belongings and walk cautiously into this cliquey community where everyone seems to know everyone else. Grace and Pip unknowingly trample onto secrets and the dynamics of teenage relationships, their mother Clare stumbles around the edge of tangled adult relationships, struggling to be there for her daughters while dealing with the betrayal of her husband. And at the centre of daily life is the garden, the hub of the wheel around which this community turns.
Then one hot summer’s day, Grace’s 13th birthday, it all comes to a head.
I finished this in two sittings, reading late into the night. A satisfying family thriller with hints of the truth and plenty of dodgy things to be suspicious about.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

And here are my review of two other thrillers by Lisa Jewell:-
I FOUND YOU
THEN SHE WAS GONE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Museum of Broken Promises’ by Elizabeth Buchan
‘Wolf Winter’’ by Cecilia Ekback
‘Five Days of Fog’ by Anna Freeman

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

#BookReview ‘Wilderness’ by ‪Campbell Hart @elharto #crime

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A blizzard, wild Scottish countryside, bleak landscape. A disappearance. Old rumours. This is an accomplished debut crime novel by an experienced journalist. In Wilderness, Campbell Hart has written a novel set in Glasgow, a place he obviously knows well as it comes alive off the page. Campbell HartDetective Inspector John J Arbogast, fits the profile of detectives in crime novels today: he drinks, is politically incorrect but has his soft side. When he goes to a lap dancing joint, little does he realize he will be back there shortly. On duty.
The story opens with a bitter winter, -14 degrees Celsius and a snow storm. A bus is diverted off the motorway. The last two passengers on board – a woman and young girl – and the bus driver, go missing in the blizzard. And then a local farmer and his son, clearing the road with their tractor, trying to help the stranded bus, find something they didn’t expect. Wilderness explores the world of trafficking and paedophilia as the story traverses from Glasgow to a remote farm and to Turkey, in 2010 and back in time when three young Turkish teenagers are on the cusp of adulthood.
An accomplished debut. If I am being a bit nit-picky, I would suggest another copy-edit is needed – just a few punctuation errors, but nothing that stopped me enjoying the story. Pleased to see this will be a series.

Read my reviews of other Arbogast novels by Campbell Hart:-
THE NATIONALIST #2ARBOGAST
REFERENDUM #3ARBOGAST

If you like this, try:-
‘Jellyfish’ by Lev D Lewis
‘Found’ by Harlan Coben
‘The Farm’ by Tom Rob Smith

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview WILDERNESS by Campbell Hart @elharto http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1BL via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Unnatural Causes’ by PD James #crime

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A body washes ashore, its hands missing. A rather gruesome start to Unnatural Causes by PD James. We are introduced to a small Suffolk community comprising writers and literary critics. There are no secrets in this bitchy community, or are there? Into this maelstrom walks Adam Dalgliesh, arriving for a holiday with his Aunt Jane. PD JamesThis is one mystery where I didn’t guess the murderer correctly, the modus operandi of the first murder [yes, plural] is complicated and I didn’t connect the clues. Slightly irritating. Adam Dalgliesh is not the officer in charge which means the story felt at times remote from the detecting; he observes from outside and we are not privy to the thoughts and discoveries of Detective Inspector Reckless [what a great name].
First published in 1967, this novel offers a glimpse of pre-computerisation – authors dictating novels to a secretary to type, taking carbon copies etc. The clique of literary characters seemed at times a little clichéd, but perhaps that is the passing of time.

Read my reviews of the other Adam Dalgliesh mysteries:-
COVER HER FACE #1ADAMDALGLIESH
A MIND TO MURDER #2ADAMDALGLIESH
SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE #4ADAMDALGLIESH
THE BLACK TOWER #5ADAMDALGLIESH
DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS #6ADAMDALGLIESH
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
THE PRIVATE PATIENT #14ADAMDALGLIESH

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:-
‘Dead Simple’ by Peter James #1ROYGRACE
‘The Secrets of Gaslight Lane’ by MRC Kasasian #4GOWERDETECTIVE
‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody #7KATESHACKLETON

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview UNNATURAL CAUSES by PD James http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ex via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Marking Time’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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September 2, 1939: Germany has invaded Poland and, for the Cazalet family in London and Sussex, war seems imminent. The story is told from 1939 to 1941 from the viewpoints of three Cazalet cousins, teenagers Polly, Louise and Clary. Marking Time is second in the five-book series ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Elizabeth Jane Howard We see them growing up quickly, forced to face war and death before their time, watch their parents struggle with ordinary life and relationships and health crises which continue despite the fighting. One day a German bomber crashes into a nearby field and Christopher, a pacifist, runs out to prevent the local men from shooting the injured Germans. Afterwards, Polly and Christopher go for a walk. Polly thinks “how odd it was that when one wanted everything to be good with somebody, one started not telling them everything.” They come to understand that their parents are not just parents, but people too with their own feelings and worries. Polly wonders if “concealment and deceit were a necessary part of human relationships. Because if they were, she was going to be pretty bad at them.”
Louise is at acting school but struggles to play a character ‘in lust’ as she’s a virgin and unsure of the finer details. Then she meets a painter. Clary continues in Sussex, having lessons with Polly and growing to like and respect their tutor Miss Milliment, but she worries about her younger brother Neville who runs away from prep school. And all the time, the adults keep secrets.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
THE LIGHT YEARS #1CAZALET
CONFUSION #3CAZALET
CASTING OFF  #4CAZALET
ALL CHANGE #5CAZALET

And another book by the same author, THE LONG VIEW.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Translation of Love’ by Lynne Kutsukake
‘The Rescue Man’ by Anthony Quinn
‘The Camomile Lawn’ by Mary Wesley

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MARKING TIME by Elizabeth Jane Howard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Cy via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis #WW2 #mystery

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Homeland by Clare Francis is set after World War Two in the quiet rural corner of England that is the Somerset Levels. A land of rising and ebbing water levels, and unworldly place of withies and willows.Clare Francis Into this walks Billy Greer on his return from the war, going back to the house of his uncle and aunt where he spent the difficult teenage years before the war. There, he finds the house and farm in disarray, his uncle dramatically aged, and his aunt upstairs confined to bed after a stroke. And he meets again the woman who made his spine tingle when they were both teenagers.
Will he stay to rebuild the farm, or will he go to the promised job in London. And what of Annie, the local girl he could not forget while he fought his way around Europe?
Underlying the telling of Billy’s story is that of the Polish soldiers, in a holding camp while they await either return to Poland or settlement in the UK. It is a difficult decision: their beloved country is unrecognizable and run by the Soviet Union, but they do not feel 100% welcome in England. Wladyslaw, a literature student who left university to join the Polish army, is an intellectual and a dreamer. But he takes a job working for Billy Greer, helping to set the rundown farm to rights. And there he meets local schoolteacher Stella who agrees to give him English lessons.
This feels like a quiet tale – and it is not a thriller in the ‘spy story’ definition – but it is a story which kept me turning the pages. There are many uncertainties: the future of the Poles, the various love triangles, locals and immigrants living alongside each other without a common language with inevitable arguments and misunderstandings. The denouement is not what I expected.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘The Translation of Love’ by Lynne Kutsukake
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HOMELAND by Clare Francis http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Dt via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘A Mind to Murder’ by PD James #crime

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A private clinic, psychiatrists and their patients: potent territory for a crime novelist such as PD James. In A Mind to Murder, second in the Adam Dalgliesh detective series, the clinic administrator is found murdered in the basement archive, a chisel through her heart. The potential murderer must be within the clinic’s staff and as they set about analysing each other’s alibis and motives, Dalgliesh arrives from a literary party. PD JamesA classic PD James, although for me a trifle slow-moving at times as the layout and routines of the clinic are necessarily explored. James continues to establish the Dalgliesh character and world, an increasingly complex, private, intellectual thing which – even in the later books – is ever-evolving and continuously surprising.
The culprit? An early suspect I had barely considered. Dalgliesh’s task is complicated by office politics, blackmail, love affairs and ambition.

Read my reviews of the other Adam Dalgliesh mysteries:-
COVER HER FACE #1ADAMDALGLIESH
UNNATURAL CAUSES #3ADAMDALGLIESH
SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE #4ADAMDALGLIESH
THE BLACK TOWER #5ADAMDALGLIESH
DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS #6ADAMDALGLIESH
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
THE PRIVATE PATIENT #14ADAMDALGLIESH

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:-
‘Wilderness’ by Campbell Hart #1ARBOGAST
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas #8COMMISSAIREADAMSBERG
‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood #2DEATHINPARADISE

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A MIND TO MURDER by PD James http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1B2 via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Light Years’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #historical #WW2

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If you haven’t read The Light Years [it is the first in a series of five], you are in for a treat. Elizabeth Jane Howard died in 2014 at the age of 90 and this prompted me to buy her series ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’. I read them on holiday, back-to-back and know I will re-read them many more times. Elizabeth Jane HowardThis is a great family saga, a glimpse of upstairs and downstairs as World War Two threatens the Cazalet family. Over the course of these five books we see the changing social geography of England through the prism of this family, the changing lives of the women and servants, wartime privations, the threat to the family timber business as they face up to the reality of fear.
Oh how I gobbled up these novels. This, the first, introduces us to the family: the patriarch William and his wife The Duchy, their three sons – Hugh, Edward and Rupert, and their wives – and daughter Rachel. As a new war threatens, the hidden wounds of the Great War have not healed and there is no appetite for another. The family gathers at the Sussex house, Home Place, which is the hub of the action. It is the summer of 1937: Hitler has annexed Austria and has his eye of Czechoslovakia.
In these tense summer days at Home Place, we meet the family via the children. Louise, daughter of Edward, the second Cazalet son, is thirteen years old and wants to play the best Shakespearean roles, she starts with Hamlet. Her mother Viola, known as Villy, leads the life expected of her, as wife and mother. “She was not unhappy – it was just that she could have been much more.” One by one we are drawn into the lives of the children, their parents, of Duchy and the Brig, all the time knowing what they don’t: that in less than two years, the ‘peace with honour’ declared by Prime Minister Chamberlain is valueless.

Read my reviews of the other books in ‘The Cazalet Chronicles’:-
MARKING TIME #2CAZALET
CONFUSION #3CAZALET
CASTING OFF  #4CAZALET
ALL CHANGE #5CAZALET

And another novel by Howard, THE LONG VIEW.

If you like this, try:-
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn
‘At Mrs Lippincote’s’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘After the Bombing’ by Clare Morrall

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LIGHT YEARS by Elizabeth Jane Howard http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Bo via @SandraDanby