Tag Archives: book review

#BookReview ‘Ferney’ by James Long #romance #timetravel

3 Replies

I missed Ferney by James Long when it was first published in 1998 and so came to it with some anticipation. I was not disappointed. Set on the Somerset/Dorset border, Ferney tells the interlinking tale of Gally, her husband Mike and elderly countryman Ferney. James LongIt’s a difficult book to review without giving away too much of the story, suffice to say it combines modern and ancient love stories in a setting so evocative of this mythical magical part of the world. It makes you believe in the power of true love.
Young couple Mike and Gally find a rundown cottage at Penselwood and move into an old caravan next door while the builders renovate. The countryside seems to dispel Gally’s nightmares and her sadness at a miscarriage, in fact the countryside seems to be a character in itself and is an integral part of the story. History, folklore and nature are woven into a love story across the centuries.
I know I will read it again and again, it is an uplifting story stuffed with history from Saxon times via witchcraft and rebellions. Just when you think you have worked it out, something unexpected happens. It is tender, touching, and right up until the last page you wonder how the story will be resolved.

Read my review of the sequel to Ferney, THE LIVES SHE LEFT BEHIND.

If you like this, try:-
‘Master of Shadows’ by Neil Oliver
‘The Beekeeper’s Daughter’ by Santa Montefiore
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson

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

#BookReview ‘Stay Where You Are & Then Leave’ by John Boyne @JohnBoyneBooks #WW1

10 Replies

I’m sure Stay Where You Are & Then Leave will be the first of many books about the First World War which I will read over the next two years [written in 2013], and what a one to start with. Written by John Boyne, probably best known for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, this is a touching story of a boy’s determination to help his soldier father. John BoyneDestined to become a children’s classic, it is a tough tale with a tender touch. Boyne doesn’t shy away from the difficult subjects of enemy aliens, conscientious objectors, loss, injury, death and fear. On July 28th 1914, war is declared. It is also Alfie Summerfield’s fifth birthday. His biggest wish is to go one morning with his father Georgie on the milk cart with his horse Mr Asquith. Life changes for Alfie and his mother without Georgie. As the years pass, Alfie stops believing the grown-ups who say the war ‘will be over by Christmas’. Then his father’s letters stop arriving. Alfie’s mother says Georgie is ‘on a special mission and cannot write’ but Alfie doesn’t believe her. He doesn’t like being treated as a child, so he decides to do something about it.
This is a story about belief, empowerment, and the strength of children in adversity.

Read my reviews of these other novels by John Boyne:-
A HISTORY OF LONELINESS
A LADDER TO THE SKY
A TRAVELLER AT THE GATES OF WISDOM
ALL THE BROKEN PLACES
THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES… Curious? Read the first paragraph of THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES here.
WATER #1ELEMENTS
EARTH #2ELEMENTS

If you like this, try:-
‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd
‘Ghost Moth’ by Michele Forbes
‘Nora Webster’ by Colm Tóibín

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND THEN LEAVE by John Boyne @JohnBoyneBooks https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4bh via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Lost Girl’ by @SanguMandanna #scifi #YA

Leave a reply

I admit to never having heard of The Lost Girl by Sangu Mandanna until seeing it mentioned in ‘favourite read’ lists on a few blogs. I ordered it purely on that basis and had no idea it was a YA novel. It is a romantic story of love and loss, grief and identity, set in the UK and India, with sinister echoes of Frankenstein. Sangu Mandanna Eva is an ‘echo’, a non-human ‘woven’ by a mysterious organization called The Loom which makes copies of real people for their family in case the loved one should die. The idea is that the ‘echo’ slips into the dead person’s shoes so minimising the family’s loss. Of course it is not that simple. Mandanna handles a difficult subject well, not avoiding the awkward moral issues which litter the dystopian story premise. The world is disturbingly almost normal, littered with everyday familiar references. Eva, who lives in the Lake District, is the echo for Amarra from Bangalore. I found it quite an emotional read, not just Eva’s situation but her guardians, her familiars, and Amarra’s friends in India. What seems a simple premise at the beginning, done with the best intentions, becomes increasingly dark as the story develops and the true horror of Eva’s situation is explained.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘The Bear and the Nightingale’ by Katherine Arden #1WinternightTrilogy
‘The Magicians’ by Lev Grossman #1TheMagicianstrilogy
‘The Queen of the Tearling’ by Erika Johansen #1Tearling

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LOST GIRL by @SanguMandanna via @SandraDanby https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4b7

#BookReview ‘The Other Eden’ by Sarah Bryant #romance #historical

1 Reply

The Other Eden by Sarah Bryant is best described as a Gothic romance/horror story, interleaved with the American South setting in Louisiana and piano music it is an unusual mixture which produces quite a page-turner. Sarah BryantI admit to finding the two sisters Eve and Elizabeth confusing at times but that did not interfere with my enjoyment of the story. By the end of the book I was still unsure which sister was which.
The descriptions of the two houses, Eden and the house on the hill, are luscious. My one quibble is that I found the characters oddly difficult to place in time. The prologue about the two sisters is dated 1905 which means the following story about Eleanor is set in the 1920s, but it seems more 19th century to me. Maybe that’s down to the old-fashioned Louisiana setting. I don’t think the cover of my edition helped that confusion, the style is oddly similar to Philippa Gregory. But don’t let my doubts put you off reading what is a rollicking Gothic mystery complete with faintings, dreams, symbolism, mysterious foreign men and beautiful piano music.

If you like this, try:-
‘Summertime’ by Vanessa Lafaye
‘Barkskins’ by Annie Proulx
‘Housekeeping’ by Marilynne Robinson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE OTHER EDEN by Sarah Bryant via @SandraDanby https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4aY

#BookReview ‘The Quarry’ by Iain Banks #contemporary #death

3 Replies

I started reading The Quarry with my emotions running high, knowing Iain Banks had completed it so near to death. But I determined to be fair, not to like it just because he died. But I did like it. A lot. The story is full of imagery: the quarry, the actual hole in the ground is the unknown faced by the two key characters: Guy, who is facing death; and his son Kit, who faces life without his father. Both stand on the edge of emptiness. Iain BanksKit is the key narrator. Described as ‘a bit odd’ and ‘socially disabled’, I liked him straight away. As often with a young narrator, the author puts words of wisdom into the words of an innocent. Perhaps Kit has more self-awareness than his elders. He is certainly an innocent who is learning quickly. The action takes place over one weekend, the limited timespan and setting in the house and edge of quarry give it the feeling of a stage play at times.
A group of friends gathers at Guy’s house, to spend time with him as he dies. But there is always a feeling that the adults want something from Kit, that no-one is being honest , that they are looking for something. This leads Kit into the quarry, the brooding threat there all the time outside the house. As they wonder whether the hole of the quarry stretches beneath the house’s foundations, and if the house will fall into it, we learn about Kit’s disputed identity. Who is his mother? The assumptions he made as a child are now being challenged, the certainty of his childhood is dug from beneath his feet just as the rock in the quarry has been extracted.
It’s impossible to read Guy’s bitterness about his own mortality and not think of Banks’s illness. But this is a tightly-written novel that I defy anyone coming to it not knowing the author to guess that the author was dying. There was only one scene where the editor’s hand was needed, Kit’s climb down into the quarry does go on a bit. But this is a minor gripe.
A fitting finale to an illustrious bibliography.

If you like this, try:-
‘Etta and Otto and Russell and James’ by Emma Hooper
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin
‘Blow Your House Down’ by Pat Barker

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE QUARRY by Iain Banks https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4b2 via @SandraDanby 

Great opening paragraph…33

Leave a reply

julian barnes - the sense of an ending 30-4-13“I remember, in no particular order:
– a shiny inner wrist;
– steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;
– gouts of sperm circling a plughole before being sluiced own the full length of a tall house;
– a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeams;
– another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;
– bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.
This last isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.”
‘The Sense of an Ending’ by Julian Barnes

#BookReview ‘The Little House’ by Philippa Gregory #thriller #mystery

2 Replies

In The Little House by Philippa Gregory, Ruth’s story starts with Sunday lunch at the in-laws and builds slowly, pulling you in relentlessly until you can’t put the book down. Tension between Ruth and her mother-in-law, a newborn baby, a chilling tale of tension within a familyPhilippa GregoryIt is deceptive in its simplicity, at various points in the story I found myself thinking ‘but they couldn’t do that’ or ‘that would never happen.’ But it does and you believe it. The denouement is startling.
The Little House is very different from the historical novels by Philippa Gregory but shares the same aspects of a pageturner: you simply want to know what happens next.

Read my reviews of these two Tudor novels by Philippa Gregory:-
THE LADY OF THE RIVERS
THREE SISTERS THREE QUEENS

Read the #FirstPara of THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL, also by Philippa Gregory.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Past’ by Tessa Hadley
‘Lord John and the Private Matter’ by Diana Gabaldon
‘The Knife with the Ivory Handle’ by Cynthia Bruchman

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LITTLE HOUSE by Philippa Gregory https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4aQ via @SandraDanby 

Great opening paragraph…32

Leave a reply

john McGahern - that they may face the rising sun 10-6-13“The morning was clear. There was no wind on the lake. There was also a great stillness. When the bells rang out for Mass, the strokes trembling on the water, they had the entire world to themselves.”
‘That They May Face the Rising Sun’ by John McGahern

#BookReview ‘The Man Who Disappeared’ by Clare Morrall #contemporary

5 Replies

Felix Kendall longs for a family, as a boy he lost his own. From the first page of The Man Who Disappeared by Clare Morrall, where Felix stands in a dark street watching a family illuminated in their dining room, curtains open, you know Felix must be the ‘man who disappeared’ but you don’t know why. Clare Morrall The characters are believable and the pages turn quickly as we follow the stories of Felix, his wife Kate, son Rory and daughter Millie as they come to terms with what has happened. I expected this to be a slow indulgent read, lyrical, beautifully written, which it is, but I raced through it in the way I am accustomed to do with thrillers.
Clare Morrall is one of my favourite authors, I’ve been a fan since her first book Astonishing Splashes of Colour was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AMAZON

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 LAST OF THE GREENWOODS
THE ROUNDABOUT MAN

Read the first paragraph of ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR here.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy’ by Rachel Joyce
‘Housekeeping’ by Marilynne Robinson
‘Ghost Moth’ by Michele Forbes

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED by Clare Morrall via @SandraDanby https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4aR

#BookReview ‘Dominion’ by CJ Sansom #WW2 #dystopian #thriller

12 Replies

You know that feeling, it happens once in a while, when you finish reading a book that was so good you want to go back to the beginning and start again? Well, it was like that for me with Dominion by CJ Sansom. CJ SansomIt was the premise that caught my attention as soon as I read the pre-publication reviews: an alternate history set in Britain in 1952, peace is made with Hitler in 1941 which changes the direction of World War Two. An alternative world. Previously I had read one Sansom novel, Winter in Madrid, which I enjoyed; three of his Matthew Shardlake mysteries sit on my to-read shelf. After Dominion, I will turn to them quickly.
The story focusses on four main characters, a scientist, a civil servant, the civil servant’s wife, and a Gestapo officer based at Senate House in London, the tall university building being the Gestapo’s London HQ with torture cells in the basement. This is a different Britain, where Jews are being rounded-up and transferred to camps in the country, where the Isle of Wight is occupied by the German army [which is still fighting in Russia], and where it is rumoured in Berlin that Hitler is either dead or dying.
To say more would risk spoiling the plot twists, of which there are plenty. The darkness of the time is shown symbolically by the Great Smog which actually happened in London, December 1952. It sheds a stifling blanket of choking fog which stops life and blinds everything more than a foot away. The smog is a metaphor of course for the blindness of the Government, and much of the population, who accept their situation with apathy and do nothing to aid the Resistance led, inevitably, by Churchill.
Sansom’s central message is about the danger of nationalism and xenophobia and what, in the extremes, they can lead to. A subject which, as he says in the Appendices, he fears is all too relevant in modern Europe.
A thought-provoking read.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

And here are my reviews of CJ Sansom’s Shardlake detective series:-
DISSOLUTION #1SHARDLAKE
DARK FIRE #2SHARDLAKE
SOVEREIGN #3SHARDLAKE
REVELATION #4SHARDLAKE
HEARTSTONE #5SHARDLAKE
LAMENTATION #6SHARDLAKE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis
‘The Bird in the Bamboo Cage’ by Hazel Gaynor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DOMINION by CJ Sansom https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4aP via @SandraDanby