Tag Archives: contemporary fiction

#BookReview ‘The Cheesemaker’s House’ by @JaneCable #contemporary #romance

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The Cheesemaker’s House, the debut novel by Jane Cable, starts with a mystery and turns into a ghost story. After her divorce, Alice moves with her dog William to a village in North Yorkshire. Newly-arrived, she walks the dog beside the River Swale and sees a naked swimmer. She watches, feeling like a voyeur but unable to leave. Then suddenly he disappears. Jane CableFeeling guilty that she didn’t search, or call for help, she drives into town where she goes into a coffee shop down a side street. And is served by the mysterious swimmer. Disturbed by his presence and at the same time attracted to him, she cannot work out how he left the river without her seeing or how he got to town before her.
This first mystery is followed by others, competently handled by this first-time author who draws a fond picture of life in rural North Yorkshire. My only minor quibble would be that for three-quarters of the book, the meaning of the book’s title was lost on me.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Jane Cable:-
ANOTHER YOU
ENDLESS SKIES

Also by Jane Cable, writing as Eva Glyn:-
THE COLLABORATOR’S DAUGHTER
THE CROATIAN ISLAND LIBRARY
THE MISSING PIECES OF US

If you like this, try:-
‘The House at the Edge of the World’ by Julia Rochester
‘Butterfly Barn’ by Karen Power
‘Somewhere Inside of Happy’ by Anna McPartlin

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

#BookReview ‘Doppler’ by @erlendloe #contemporary

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Doppler by Erlend Loe defies description, but I’ll have a go. It’s about Doppler, a Norwegian guy who after the death of his father has an accident on his bike and subsequently turns his back on civilization to live in the forest. Erlend LoeDoppler’s sole companion is Bongo, an elk calf which he feels responsible for having shot Bongo’s mother for food. The conversations with Bongo made me smile. It’s a tale about family, grief, alienation and a gradual warming towards civilization again, or so you think. No matter how much Doppler wants to be alone, he seems to attract people around him.
It’s a charming tale with a cutting edge. Doppler is happy in the forest but is a keen observer of the society he has rejected. Forced to communicate again with his pregnant wife and two children, he struggles to cope with modern society and his responsibilities, Teletubbies add Bob the Builder included. His teenage daughter Nora, named after an Ibsen character of course, insists on talking to him in elfish. His son Gregus forgets the television and instead helps him carve a totem pole, intended as a memorial to Doppler’s father but which comes to represent the three male generations of Dopplers and Bongo.
I read it quickly and wished it was longer, a book that will yield more for re-reading I think.

If you like this, try:-
‘I Refuse’ by Per Petterson
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Eckback
‘Burial Rites’ by Hannah Kent

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DOPPLER by @erlendloe http://wp.me/p2ZHJe-yD via @SandraDanby

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

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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 

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

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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