Tag Archives: Jane Cable

#BookReview ‘Endless Skies’ by @JaneCable #contemporary #romance

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Jane Cable writes with a great sense of place and her latest novel, Endless Skies, is set in North Lincolnshire, a place of wide horizons, mists and endless views. Her books always have an element of the supernatural and Endless Skies doesn’t disappoint, from shadowy figures in a field to the lingering scent of lily-of-the-valley. Jane CableRachel Ward, an archaeology lecturer, leaves her old job after a disastrous workplace affair and moves to Lincoln University. Living in a soulless box of a flat, she makes friends with Jem who lives on a barge moored on the nearby canal. Jem is a solid steady character and becomes a mentor, almost father-like figure for Rachel who has made bad choices in the past and seems set to repeat the pattern. Jem’s new lodger, student Ben, tempts Rachel’s newly sworn promise to foreswear men. Meanwhile she takes on a freelance contract for property developer Jonathan Daubney. As she researches her report on a prospective development site at an old wartime airbase, Rachel and Jonathan fall into an instant ‘hate’ relationship.
The past is ever-present in this story which explores how what has gone before is never absent from our everyday lives, whether by actions in our lifetime or events that happened long ago. Markers are there to be seen, most clearly evident in Rachel’s fieldwalking on the old airfield where pieces of old metal are scattered. As they may belong to a wartime bomber that crashed and exploded in this place, Rachel must consult a ballistics expert and dig test pits. And so the past delays the present, as Jonathan is unable to proceed with his property plans until Rachel’s report is finished. Cable handles well the personal and work conflicts between Rachel and Jonathan. Both are emotionally damaged in ways which are gradually revealed.
My favourite character was Esther, an elderly resident at the care home run by Jonathan’s mother. As a teenager in the war, Esther worked at the laundry on the airbase and she is key to our understanding of the book. As Rachel teases out Esther’s memories, the interlinked past and the present starts to make sense.
This is a contemporary romance and is firmly rooted in the present day but I would love to know more about the wartime story of Freddie, Teo and Esther. It was so uplifting to read about a firmly-rooted friendship between two women, Rachel and Esther – one young, the other elderly – and see how they enrich each other’s lives.

Read my reviews of Jane Cable’s other books:-
ANOTHER YOU
THE CHEESEMAKER’S HOUSE

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

If you this, try:-
‘Please Release Me’ by Rhoda Baxter
‘The Perfect Affair’ by Claire Dyer
‘My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You’ by Louisa Young

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ENDLESS SKIES by @JaneCable https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4RQ via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Another You’ by @JaneCable #contemporary #romance

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Novels rooted in a particular area where the place and scenery come alive off the page are favourites of mine. Studland Bay in Dorset, England is a beautiful part of the country, a dramatic coastline which is an ideal for a dramatic story. In Another You, Jane Cable uses the place to great effect. Key action scenes take place at the looming chalk cliffs, the Old Harry rocks, the sand dunes and heath. Jane CableThe time in which the story is set is cleverly chosen too, the sixtieth anniversary of preparations for the D-Day landings, preparations which took place along the south coast of England. It is a time full of memories, grief, regret and gratitude.
In this place and time, Cable sets her story. Marie is chef at The Smugglers, the pub she owns with her husband Stephen, from whom she is separated. Jude their son, a student, lives at the pub and helps out. Despite its popularity, the pub’s finances are not good and there is not enough cash to pay suppliers. Marie doesn’t understand what is happening and is stressed by this and having to deal with her difficult husband. This human story plays out alongside rehearsals for a commemorative re-enactment of Exercise Smash, the exercises conducted to rehearse for the Normandy landings. There are strangers in town, in the pub, soldiers, tanks, tourists. One day walking among the dunes, Marie meets an American soldier Corbin. Entranced by his old-fashioned manners, Marie looks for Corbin again but his presence is unpredictable, he appears and disappears. Marie also meets George, an elderly local gentleman who actually fought at D-Day, and his businessman son Mark; and then there is Paxton, another American serviceman based at a nearby tank museum, who entrances Marie and with whom she starts an affair.
Will Marie self-destruct before she confronts her husband? Will she ask Paxton why he can’t sleep at night, or Jude why he is so unhappy. Her frequent migraines and love of a glass of brandy make her an unreliable narrator, at times she is unable to see the way forward from her situation or question some of her wilder assumptions. Throughout this time, the voice of reason belongs to George. At times I found the story disorientating. In the middle of a migraine, Marie’s sense of the real is blurred, is she remembering real things, having visions, hallucinating, seeing ghosts, blacking out? Mark is a breath of fresh air in the midst of this emotional turmoil. When Marie first meets him, he is tying up his sailing dinghy. Somehow the sea, the waves and wind symbolise a freedom from the troubles on land.
A strong recurring theme throughout Jane Cable’s fiction is the way past and present inter-connect, decisions made years earlier are re-visited, things which happened to an older generation has significance today. This check-and-balance keeps the pages turning quickly.

Read my reviews of Jane’s other books:-
THE CHEESEMAKER’S HOUSE
ENDLESS SKIES

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

If you this, try:-
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson
‘Sweet Caress’ by William Boyd
‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ANOTHER YOU by @JaneCable via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2ke

#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 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