Tag Archives: books

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

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. There 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 share a link, try:
#BookReview SCRATCHED ENAMEL HEART by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4ZY via @SandraDanby

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

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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. Based 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 Hazel Gaynor @HazelGaynor https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4ZN via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 130 ‘Gilead’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“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.”
From ‘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

#BookReview ‘How to Belong’ by Sarah Franklin #contemporary

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How to Belong by Sarah Franklin considers what it is to belong – in a place, and within a family – and how not belonging affects one’s wellbeing. Like Franklin’s successful debut novel Shelter, How to Belong is set in the Forest of Dean, at times a stifling woodland location where community seems set beneath a magnifying glass in which everyone knows everyone else’s business and they rub along together. Except, they don’t if you don’t belong. This is the story of two women who don’t belong; one believes she does, the other thinks she is too different. Jo Porter grew up in the forest, daughter of the local butcher, and close friends with Liam whose single mum sometimes struggled to cope. Liam grew up learning to recognise his mum’s good and bad times and what to do when the bad periods happened, knowing there was always sanctuary provided by Jo’s parents. When Jo leaves the forest for university and then to work as a lawyer, Liam stays at home, marries Kirsty and has two daughters.
Tessa is a farrier, loving her solitary job in the open air, working with horses. When her romance in Bristol with Marnie turns sour, Tessa retreats to the country and into herself, blaming her fainting fits, her memory losses and secretly afraid she is ill.
When Jo’s parents retire, Jo surprises everyone by leaving London and the law to return to the Forest and take over her parents’ business. She rents a room in Tessa’s remote cottage. Things don’t go as Jo expected. Butchering is not her natural occupation despite having practically grown up in the shop at her parents’ knees, her landlady proves herself silent and uncommunicative, and worst of all Liam seems to be giving her the cold shoulder. Meanwhile, Tessa has crashed her van and is earning barely enough to feed herself. When Jo tries to help diagnose Tessa’s illness, things don’t go according to plan. While Tessa keeps her secrets to herself, Jo doesn’t understand her own motivation in wanting to help her landlady. Neither woman appreciates the effect that their actions have on others, neither feels comfortable in the role of landlady/lodger perhaps because they are unsure of their own identity. It’s difficult to fit into a place if you’re not sure why you are there, whether you should be there, and if you are running towards or away from something.
The contemporary setting is very different from the wartime story of Shelter. This is a character study of two women lacking self-awareness who begin to understand themselves through their new friendship. When awareness arrives, it is raw and uncompromising. At times I grew impatient with each of them, perhaps because the author had to withhold some information about them in order to maintain the mysteries from their past until the end is reached. The end, when it came, felt like a rather quick shutting of the door.
The cover of How to Belong is one of my favourites of this year, but then I love trees.

Read my review of SHELTER also by Sarah Franklin.

If you like this, try:-
‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’ by Karen Joy Fowler
‘Offshore’ by Penelope Fitzgerald
‘The Lost Lights of St Kilda’ by Elisabeth Gifford

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HOW TO BELONG by Sarah Franklin https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4Qb via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Trio’ by William Boyd #humour #Brighton

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It is 1968. In Paris, students are rioting. The Vietnam war continues while in America, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King have been assassinated. This is the timeframe of Trio, the very readable latest novel from William Boyd. Set in Brighton where a film crew is shooting Emily Bracegirdle’s Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon, the leading lady, Anny Viklund, is in bed with her co-star, pop singer Troy Blaze. The director’s wife, Elfrida Wing, is partaking of vodka from her secret stash in a Sarsons white vinegar bottle, rather than getting on with writing her next novel. The producer, Talbot Kydd, lays in his bath and tries to remember the dream he was having about a young man, pale and limber.
The story follows these three characters, each of which is living a life of pretence. Talbot has a wife in Chiswick and a secret apartment in Primrose Hill. Elfrida, once lauded as ‘the next Virginia Woolf’, writes lists of book titles but no more. Anny has an unfortunate taste in older men and when her ex-husband goes on the run, she finds herself questioned by the FBI. Day by day, Boyd weaves together the twists and turns of these three people, set against the filming of Ladder, the title of which incidentally no one understands. Sub-plots abound. When the film’s accountant warns Talbot that someone is stealing film stock, he employs an eccentric local detective. Meanwhile Elfrida, in search of the real Virginia, traces Woolf’s footsteps on the last day of her life. Anny, who cushions herself from the real world with a succession of uppers and downers, seems impossibly young. The film is the motif which unites the three but we see their individual character arcs develop in unexpected ways.
An entertaining quick read from a master of characterisation and humour who draws a recognisable picture of Brighton’s contradictions, style and sleaziness by the sea. Boyd has been a favourite of mine since A Good Man in Africa in 1981 and Trio reminds me of his early novels which showed the ability to combine a light comic touch with a darker, deeper emotional storyline.

Here are my reviews of other William Boyd books:-
ANY HUMAN HEART
LOVE IS BLIND
NAT TATE: AN AMERICAN ARTIST 1928-1960
ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS
SWEET CARESS
THE BLUE AFTERNOON
THE DREAMS OF BETHANY MELLMOTH
WAITING FOR SUNRISE
GABRIEL’S MOON #1GABRIELDAX
THE PREDICAMENT #2GABRIELDAX
COLD SUNSET #3GABRIELDAX

… and try the #FirstPara of ARMADILLO

If you like this, try these:-
‘How to Stop Time’ by Matt Haig
‘Wigs on the Green’ by Nancy Mitford
‘The Only Story’ by Julian Barnes

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview TRIO by William Boyd‪ https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4XP via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Tuscan Contessa’ by Dinah Jefferies @DinahJefferies #WW2

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The Tuscan Contessa by Dinah Jefferies is a story of women at war where trust, between women, between strangers, is at the core of everything. Although the book’s title refers to Contessa Sofia de’ Corsi this is also the story of Italian-American Maxine, recruited by English special services to the fight against fascism in Tuscany. Once there and charged with assessing the ability and armaments of Italian partisans, Maxine she finds the fight is not only against the Germans but between Italian groups suspicious of each other. It is 1943 and in the exquisitely beautiful Tuscan countryside, trust is in short supply. Strangers may be spies or escaping Allied soldiers, the penalty for helping enemies has been followed by retaliation – massacres of villagers by the Nazis. Maxine, with her odd sounding Italian accent, must prove her worth if she is to do her job. She must also learn who to trust. When Maxine’s radio engineer James is wounded, he is sheltered by Sofia in her isolated castello. And so though very different characters, Maxine and Sofia find themselves on the same side; one is young, energetic and full of zeal, the other more cautious and concerned with protecting her husband’s legacy and castello. Neither can imagine the horrors they will see, and the risks they must take, before the war is ended.
The power of Jefferies’ story comes from the juxtaposition of the brutality and blood of war with the beauty of the Italian countryside. The stately villas of Sofia – Castello de’Corsi and in Florence – contribute both atmospherically and practically to the story, offering glimpses into the pre-war and wartime life, as well as hiding places and storage for contraband. And while the women hide their bottled fruit and vegetables, and knit secretly at night – jumpers and socks to keep the partisans warm throughout winters spent hidden in forests and caves – there is the uneasy feeling that some villagers continue to support the fascist cause and inform to the Germans. While Maxine goes on increasingly perilous missions with the partisans, Sofa must handle the unwelcome attention of a German officer whose smiles glint with the promise of sadism.
The book is the result of copious research and visits to locations and gives a clear and often difficult-to-read portrayal of real Tuscan villages during the German occupation. Jefferies shows the complicated moral dilemmas for Italians fighting first one enemy and then another, as the enemy hated at the beginning of the war becomes by 1943 the only hope of salvation. Every woman lives in a constant state of ‘not knowing’; not knowing who to trust, not knowing if a loved one is away fighting, injured, captured or dead. And meanwhile, daily life continues. Children are loved, babies are beget, love is declared and food is made and eaten. In the background is the gossip of reprisals and villagers killed, while in the foreground the women of Castello de’ Corsi continue to exist. As spring arrives with blue skies and beautiful wildflowers, the killing continues.
A moving story of women in wartime facing impossible odds, finding hidden courage and a dash of recklessness in order to fight the enemy. And the recognition of the line which, when crossed, means that your own life ceases to matter when the death of an enemy is preferable. Trust, between women, between strangers, is at the heart of everything.

And here are my reviews of some of Dinah Jefferies’ other novels:-
DAUGHTERS OF WAR #1DAUGHTERSOFWAR
THE HIDDEN PALACE #2DAUGHTERSOFWAR
NIGHT TRAIN TO MARRAKECH #3DAUGHTERSOFWAR
THE SAPPHIRE WIDOW
THE TEA PLANTER’S WIFE

If you like this, try these:-
‘The Burning Chambers’ by Kate Mosse
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson
‘The Tuscan Secret’ by Angela Petch

Here’s a link to share THIS post:
#BookReview THE TUSCAN CONTESSA by Dinah Jefferies @DinahJefferies https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4Xa via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Machines Like Me’ by Ian McEwan #AI #scifi

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Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan is an awkward book to review. Some elements jarred and dragged me off the page but curiosity drove me on to the end. When I finished it I realised I felt let down because I’d been waiting for a twist that didn’t come. Ultimately this book is out of the same drawer as Nutshell, a single clever premise which promises more. Charlie works from home, living in a rented flat, making money by dealing money online. From a distance, he loves his upstairs neighbour Miranda. They are brought together by Charlie’s purchase of a robot; synthetically human, the male robot is one of the very first batch commercially available. Miranda agrees to ‘share’ him. Once Adam is plugged in and charging, his personality can be selected online. Charlie and Miranda share this equally, neither knowing what features the other selected. Adam is part child, part flatmate, soon co-worker and asker of awkward questions. He also becomes an inconvenient love rival. As Charlie and Miranda share the ownership of Adam, in parallel they also become involved in the life of a neglected human child, Mark, first encountered in a local playground.
The setting is an alternative world. It is the 1980s. Britain lost the Falklands War, Alan Turing lives on, the internet exists and everyone has mobile phones. I admit to finding the alternative world rather jarring and kept pausing to take in the random turns of history. I’m not convinced this added to the plot about artificial intelligence and its impact on humans – would the book be stronger if it was set today?
Written in the first person, we are limited to Charlie’s take on the world. I would like to have heard the voices of Miranda and Adam too. The first 50 pages are a slow read as the alternative world is established. Then as the story progresses, I was waiting for the twist; the cover blurb promises that Miranda lives with a terrible secret. But when the secret is revealed – by Adam, who does his detective work at night by searching online databases – it was not what I expected. I had been harbouring suspicions that Miranda was really a female version of Adam, an Eve.
Ultimately it is a story of truth and lies, and where the line of loyalty begins and ends. Ultimately it is the robot which asks difficult questions the humans cannot live up to. His is a straightforward right/wrong approach to moral questions with no space of white lies or unspoken truths. Towards the end Charlie says, ‘I was responsible for bringing this ambulant into our lives. To hate it was to hate myself.’ But the machine had already stepped across the line from ‘it’ to ‘him’.
A thought-provoking, flawed read.

Try these reviews of other McEwan novels:-
NUTSHELL
THE CHILDREN ACT
WHAT WE CAN KNOW

… and read the #FirstParas of:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CEMENT GARDEN
THE CHILDREN ACT

If you like this, try these:-
‘Summer House with Swimming Pool’ by Herman Koch
‘Butterfly on the Storm’ by Walter Lucius
‘Reservoir 13’ by Jon McGregor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MACHINES LIKE ME by Ian McEwan https://wp.me/p5gEM4-47c via @Sandra Danby

#BookReview ‘Miss Benson’s Beetle’ by Rachel Joyce #adventure

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What an uplifting read is Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce, an author who never fails to deliver a read that is both thoughtful and chuckle-out-loud. It is a tale of failure, friendship, the spirit of adventure and never-say-die. Above all it is a story of not giving up, never allowing yourself to be defeated. Margery Benson has never fit in, never married. It is 1950 and she is a teacher at a girls’ school, mocked and ridiculed by pupils, never liked by colleagues. Alone now after the death of her aunts who raised her after the death of her parents, she knows she lacks self-worth but doesn’t know how to change things. The one thing that gives her pleasure is remembering time spent as a child with her father who encouraged her to read. Her favourite book was Incredible Creatures, an illustrated guide to extinct and ‘never found’ animals. Margery fell in love with a gold beetle suspected to be living on the Pacific island of New Caledonia.
A sequence of events sets the middle-aged Margery on an ocean liner bound for Australia in search of both the beetle and a purpose for her life. After interviewing and rejecting three unsuitable people for the job of her assistant, Margery is resigned to travelling alone. Until she is joined at the last minute by probably the most unsuitable of the three applicants, Enid Pretty. ‘Her hair was a stiff puff with the perky hat pinned on top; about as useful in terms of sun protection as a beer mat on her head.’ Unbeknown to both women, they are being followed by someone else. And unbeknown to Margery, Enid has another reason for wanting to leave the country in a hurry.
I read this at a pace as the women negotiate prejudice, snobbishness, barriers and phobias. Joyce doesn’t spare the at times graphic detail of two unsuitable women on a tropical island facing cyclones, eels, hunger and illness, trekking through the jungle, in search of a beetle that probably doesn’t exist.
A joyful book.

Read the #FirstPara of MISS BENSON’S BEETLE

… and here are my reviews of other novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH
PERFECT
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

Try the #FirstPara of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert
‘Doppler’ by Erlend Loe
‘Highland Fling’ by Nancy Mitford

And if you’d like to share a link to THIS post, try:
#BookReview MISS BENSON’S BEETLE by Rachel Joyce https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4UW via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Sounds of the Day’ by Norman MacCaig #poetry #Scotland

Great Opening Paragraph 129 ‘The Paying Guests’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The Barbers had said they would arrive by three. It was like waiting to begin a journey, Frances thought. She and her mother had spent the morning watching the clock, unable to relax. At half past two she had gone wistfully over the rooms for what she’d supposed was the final time; after that there had been a nerving-up, giving way to a steady deflation, and now, at almost five, here she was again, listening to the echo of her own footsteps, feeling so sort of fondness for the sparsely furnished spaces, impatient simply for the couple to arrive, move in, get it over with.”
From ‘The Paying Guests’ by Sarah Waters

Read my review of THE PAYING GUESTS

Here are two more #FirstParas by Sarah Waters:-
AFFINITY
TIPPING THE VELVET

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte
’Personal’ by Lee Child
‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE PAYING GUESTS by Sarah Waters https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4eA 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

Tag Archives: books

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

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

Great Opening Paragraph 130 ‘Gilead’ #amreading #FirstPara

#BookReview ‘How to Belong’ by Sarah Franklin #contemporary

#BookReview ‘Trio’ by William Boyd #humour #Brighton

#BookReview ‘The Tuscan Contessa’ by Dinah Jefferies @DinahJefferies #WW2

#BookReview ‘Machines Like Me’ by Ian McEwan #AI #scifi

#BookReview ‘Miss Benson’s Beetle’ by Rachel Joyce #adventure

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Sounds of the Day’ by Norman MacCaig #poetry #Scotland

Great Opening Paragraph 129 ‘The Paying Guests’ #amreading #FirstPara

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