Tag Archives: novels set in the 1950s

#BookReview ‘Our Noble Selves’ by Kate Atkinson #FestivalofBritain #historicalfiction

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London 1951. The war is over and the Festival of Britain is soon to open. Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson immerses you into this grey time of shortages when on the streets the spies are still busy.Kate AtkinsonJournalist Harry Flynn had a bad war on the Burma railway. Unable to settle on his return to London he finds himself part of the organising team for the soon-to-open Festival of Britain. Charged with locating, ordering and delivering various sundry items required by the site’s designers, he tries to make a new life. Following an impulsive proposal and a quick ceremony, Flynn has a failed marriage behind him and continues to be unsuccessful in love.
Surprisingly for a novel by Atkinson, it takes a while to get into the story proper. At the halfway point, the pace changes. When not one woman but a second and then a third, go missing – a girl Flynn took out for a drink, a work colleague and his neighbour in the upstairs flat – he is the common denominator in the three police investigations. He doesn’t tell anyone about the missing hour on the night after his date with the missing girl or about a blood-stained scarf he doesn’t remember finding. Not understanding what is going on, Flynn feels helpless, ‘was he just a pawn in a larger game? A game where it felt like there were no rules at all.’
The Festival office is populated by a hotpotch of people, recruited for various nefarious reason, because of who they know, because they’re sexy, because they’re important or know someone who is, because of what they did in the war. The Festival is intended to shine a bright light on London and dismiss this daily greyness with fairground rides, dancing and food. But it is an event of smoke and mirrors, like the wartime double and triple agents still operating in London. Nothing is as it seems. The sumptuous Festival Cake is uncookable. One roomset is home to hundreds of rats. Someone is using an assumed name. And Flynn is being blackmailed.
There is so much to like in this book. The Shakespeare and poetry references, the Boy’s tutoring in grammar and pronunciation – awnithollojist, tiepogrifi – and Carswell Orange Blossom, the Festival cow. Atkinson has especial fun with the eccentric catalogue items requested by designers; a ‘Pyrex heat-resisting pudding dish (James A. Jobling and Co. Ltd, Sunderland)’ and ‘model animal, toad (Peggy Tearle, 202 London Road, Leicester).’
I have two favourite characters. Fourteen-year-old Boy, whose name Terence is rarely used, is the general dogsbody, fetching and carrying, soothing the frayed atmosphere with wise sayings learned from his mother. Veronica, Flynn’s thirteen-year old step-daughter, is a gem. Whisky-drinking, pulp fiction-reading Veronica turns out to be unafraid, independent and curious. While Flynn hesitates, she uses her initiative and says the unsayable.
A book of two halves. Reading a Kate Atkinson novel means to read on a number of layers, her wry wit combines with historical detail and the wartime stories of those involved in the Festival. Can a festival make everyone feel better about the greyness of their lives, will celebrating historical landmarks and achievements make people feel proud and empower them to make a better life going forwards?
Imperfect, full of laughs and wit, it left me feeling this is two books woven into one. See Atkinson’s Author’s Note at the end for an explanation of how this novel evolved.

Read my reviews of these other books by Kate Atkinson:-
A GOD IN RUINS
LIFE AFTER LIFE
NORMAL RULES DON’T APPLY
SHRINES OF GAIETY
TRANSCRIPTION
BIG SKY #5JACKSONBRODIE
DEATH AT THE SIGN OF THE ROOK #6JACKSONBRODIE
… and try the #FirstPara of EMOTIONALLY WEIRD

If you like this, try:-
‘When the Germans Come’ by David Hewson
‘The Light Years’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #1CAZALET
‘The Rescue Man’ by Anthony Quinn

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview OUR NOBLE SELVES by Kate Atkinson https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-a8R via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- William Boyd

#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. Rachel Joyce 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

#BookReview ‘Brooklyn’ by Colm Tóibín #historical #romance

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I absolutely love Brooklyn and give it 5*, which I rarely do. For me, 5* means true excellence. There is a spareness to the writing of Colm Tóibín which includes essential detail and excludes extraneous. I would not wish a single word to be changed or paragraph to be deleted, no passages seem surplus to requirement or confusing, no characters’ names are forgotten. Colm TóibínThere is no dramatic action, no mystery, no cliffhanger, simply the story of a young Irish girl who goes to Brooklyn and what happens to her there. Yes there is romance, but not in the commercial fiction sense of the term. Romance is just one element of the story.
It is 1950s rural Ireland. It is arranged by her elder sister and a family priest, that Eilish should go to America. It is deemed she has few prospects in Ireland. Brooklyn is a wonderful portrayal of 1950s Ireland and America, the attitudes, the social mores, the prejudices.
The drama comes from observing Eilish’s every step, her every thought, wondering what she will do next. The drama is in the small things. She feels so real. I wanted to say, ‘take a risk’ and ‘don’t’ and ‘go for it’. From the first few pages I was reeled in until I could not put the book down.
This is the sort of book which, having finished it, I almost wish I hadn’t read it; only so I can re-

Read my reviews of these other novels by Colm Tóibín:-
NORA WEBSTER
HOUSE OF NAMES

If you like this, try:-
‘Old God’s Time’ by Sebastian Barry
‘Water’ by John Boyne #1ELEMENTS
‘Shrines of Gaiety’ by Kate Atkinson

And if you’d like to share a link to THIS post, try:
#BookReview BROOKLYN by Colm Tóibín http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1TQ via @SandraDanby