Tag Archives: women’s fiction

#BookReview ‘The Seven Sisters’ by Lucinda Riley #romance

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In its scope, The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley reminds me of Eighties family mega-stories, paperbacks as thick as doorstops. This is the first in a series; the first five are already published. I recommend suspending your ‘instinct for the literal’ and throwing yourself into the world of the book. Some of the story set-up seems unrealistic – unbelievable wealth, mysterious father, beautiful adopted sisters – this is not a normal world. But I quickly became caught up in the historical story. Lucinda RileyPa Salt has died suddenly; he is the fabulously wealthy, secretive, reclusive adoptive father to six sisters whose origins are a mystery. Only when he has gone do they realise they should have asked him for information. Each of the sisters is given a clue and a letter. Also in the envelope is a triangular-shaped tile. The Seven Sisters is the story of the eldest D’Aplièse sister. Maia’s clue is a map reference that takes her to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where she meets an enigmatic elderly woman.
The book came alive for me with the story, eighty years earlier, of Izabela Rosa Bonifacio. Izabela, daughter of a nouveau riche coffee merchant in Rio, is facing an arranged marriage. Desperate to see more of the world before she settles down to a stifling life of marriage to a husband she doesn’t love, she persuades her father and fiancé to allow her to travel to Paris with her friend, Maria Elisa, daughter of architect Heitor da Silva Costa. This section of the novel enthralled me; the design and sculpting of the Cristo sculpture for the top of the Corvocado mountain, all based on historical fact.
I connected with Izabela in a way I didn’t with Maia. Maia uncovers the story of Izabela with the help of Brazilian author Floriano Quintelas, whose latest novel Maia has translated into French. In the course of her research, Maia must face the shadows of her own past, her regrets and shame, in order to move on. I enjoyed Izabela’s story but at the back of my mind I queried its relevance to Maia; Izabela was too old be her mother. I missed a direct connection to Maia and this frequently took me out of the world of the story.
That connection does come but as the story finished I was left with almost as many questions as at the beginning. The last chapter is devoted to the second sister, Ally, with new mysteries for the second book in the series.

Read my reviews of the other novels in Lucinda Riley’s ‘Seven Sisters’ series:-
THE STORM SISTER #2SEVENSISTERS
THE SHADOW SISTER #3SEVENSISTERS
THE PEARL SISTER #4SEVENSISTERS
THE MOON SISTER #5SEVENSISTERS
THE SUN SISTER #6SEVENSISTERS
THE MISSING SISTER #7SEVENSISTERS
ATLAS: THE STORY OF PA SALT #8SEVENSISTERS

… plus my reviews of these standalone novels, also by Lucinda Riley:-
THE BUTTERFLY ROOM
THE GIRL ON THE CLIFF
THE LOVE LETTER

… and by Lucinda Riley & Harry Whittaker:-
THE HIDDEN GIRL

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ship’ by Antonia Honeywell
‘Yuki Chan in Bronte Country’ by Mick Jackson
‘The Sapphire Widow’ by Dinah Jefferies 

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My Porridge & Cream read: @janedavisauthor #books #literaryfiction

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Today I’m delighted to welcome novelist Jane Davis. Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy.

“My list of favourite novels may change, but it is always topped by Pat Conroy’s, The Prince of Tides. Ignore the terrible film version – the book has everything. Family secrets, flawed characters, a doomed love affair.

“I read it for the first time many years before I contemplated writing, but it was books like this (and here I include the novels of John Irving and Michael Chabon) that must have sowed the seed.

“The first thing to say is that my choice is not your typical comfort read. The quote ‘We read to know that we are not alone’ is attributed to at least three different people. Perhaps that’s because it’s a universal truth. I find myself drawn to books about misfits and underdogs. (My latest ‘new favourite book’, Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession, considers how gentle people survive in a world that is fast-paced and competitive.)

Jane Davis“The Prince of Tides has the power to transport the reader from the very first line.

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my point of call.

“We know immediately that it is a novel about place. In fact, it’s a story where the setting is key. What unfolds in this epic and multi-layered family saga couldn’t have happened anywhere else. We know that a man is torn. Place is part of the narrator. It’s impossible for him to separate himself from it, and his family is part of its history. He is damaged, and it pains him to remain, but he cannot tear himself away.

I grew up slowly beside the tides and marshes of Colleton.

“To me, those lines are hypnotic. They seem to be saying, ‘Breathe. Pace yourself.’ Trust is established – or lost – so quickly. I can hear the narrator’s voice. He’s speaking directly to me. I don’t yet know the name Tom Wingo, but already I’m committed to accompanying him wherever his journey takes him. It is that simple.

“Because the story is told partly through conversations with Tom’s sister’s Savannah’s psychiatrist, it’s a story in which cause and effect is very much in evidence. In order to save his sister, Tom must break the promise that his mother extracted from her three children: never to reveal what happened on the island that night a man they refer to as “Callanwolde” escaped from prison. The call to action happens at a point when Tom has just learned that his wife is having an affair with a colleague, and so we meet him at what is already a low ebb. This may be a challenging read, but it’s also a story of survival, healing, honour and redemption. There is a sense that order is restored, and that is where the ‘comfort’ comes from.

“Odd though it may seem, I have never read another book by Pat Conroy. The Prince of Tides is so perfect, I’d be afraid of being disappointed. Instead, I return to it time and time again and never fail to uncover something that I’ve missed.”
Amazon UK

Jane Davis’s Bio
After her first novel Half-Truths and White Lies won an award established to find ‘the next Joanne Harris’, it took Jane a little while to work out that all she really wanted to be was a slightly shinier version of herself. Seven further novels followed, which straddle contemporary, historical, literary and women’s fiction genres, and have earned her comparisons to authors such as Kate Atkinson, Maggie O’Farrell and Jodi Picoult. Jane’s favourite description of fiction is ‘made-up truth’.

Jane Davis’s links
Website
Facebook 
Twitter
Pinterest
Get a FREE copy of her time-slip, photography-themed eBook, I Stopped Time, when you sign up to her mailing list

Jane Davis’s latest book
Jane DavisIt has taken conviction to right the wrongs.
It will take courage to learn how to live again.
For the families of the victims of the St Botolph and Old Billingsgate disaster, the undoing of a miscarriage of justice should be a cause for rejoicing. For more than thirteen years, the search for truth has eaten up everything. Marriages, families, health, careers and finances.

Finally, the coroner has ruled that the crowd did not contribute to their own deaths. Finally, now that lies have been unravelled and hypocrisies exposed, they can all get back to their lives.

If only it were that simple.
Amazon UK

What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Rob V Biggs loves ‘Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame
Linda Huber loves ‘A Cry in the Night’ by Mary Higgins Clark
Sue Moorcroft loves ‘A Town Like Alice’ by Nevil Shute

 And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Why does author @janedavisauthor re-read A PRINCE OF TIDES by PAT CONROY? #books https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Br via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Because I could not stop for Death’

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This lyrical poem by Emily Dickinson sees the poet meet Death who, as a gentleman caller, takes a leisurely carriage drive with her. It was first published posthumously under the title ‘The Chariot’ in Poems: Series 1 in 1890, the edition assembled and edited by her friends Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Here are the first two verses.
‘Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility.’

The poem has since been set to music by Aaron Copland as the twelfth song of his cycle The Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

 

‘The Picador Book of Funeral Poems’ ed. by Don Paterson [UK: Picador]

Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn
‘Lost Acres’ by Robert Graves
‘The Roses’ by Katherine Tempest

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#BookReview ‘Whistle in the Dark’ by Emma Healey #mystery #suspense

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Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey begins with an ending; a sixteen-year old girl, lost in the Peak District, has been found and is in hospital with her parents. Healey tells the story of the aftermath as Jen, Lana’s mother, tries desperately to unravel the truth of what happened to her daughter. In the face of Lana’s reluctance to speak, Jen’s desperation evolves into obsession and the story circles into myth, obfuscation and misunderstanding. For the reader, there is a lot to unravel. Emma HealeyTold entirely from Jen’s POV, by halfway through I was beginning to question Jen’s state of mind and whether she was an unreliable narrator. There is a lot of smoke and shadows in the telling of this story, interwoven with the crystals of Jen’s friend Grace, the fibs of Lana’s schoolfriend Bethany, the pragmatic questioning and Instagram comments by Jen’s mother Lily, and Jen’s fertile imagination. There were times when it felt a little like being whizzed around in a washing machine. But through it all shines Healey’s ability to draw pictures with words, “The heavy summer foliage that lined the motorway seemed to have taken on its own light, as if the sun had splintered into a thousand pieces and hung, glowing, on the trees. The whites of things, of dresses and china cups and tablecloths, was dazzling.”
I admit there were times in the final third when I just wanted the story to get on with it, to find out where Lana had been for those four missing days. I became as mystified as Jen and could understand her distraction, her inability to judge the truth of what was happening around her as Healey loads on the mysteries. Did Lana return home with an invisible friend? Or a ghost? Jen reads speculation online that something mystical had happened to Lana; she was abducted by aliens, had taken the stairs down to Hell, or stepped into a time circle. This was coupled with my feeling of indulgence on the part of the author, that some short anecdotes were included because they were interesting rather than essential. And then comes a wonderful snippy sentence that brings you back to the heart of everything; for example, when Jen is driving north, “Well, if she cried enough, Jen thought, at least she might not need to wee again for another forty miles.”
An interesting read. A study of the parental difficulties caring for a troubled teenager, where the line stands between caring and invasion of privacy, of how and when to trust a troubled adolescent and when to step in. A veritable minefield. Lana has a history of cutting and an overdose attempt before the disappearance; post-disappearance, Jen alternates between anger and frustration, and treading on eggshells. The online stalking, the shadowing on the walk to school, the listening at the bedroom door, all reinforce the lesson that a snooper often finds something unexpected, something worse, something that should remain private until revealed. A reminder that often the most simple explanation is true.
An interesting read and competent second novel, but not a compelling page-turner like Healey’s wonderful debut Elizabeth is Missing. 

And read my review of ELIZABETH IS MISSING, also by Emma Healey.

If you like this, try:-
‘Reservoir 13’ by Jon McGregor
‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd
‘Doppler’ by Erlend Loe

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
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First Edition: Rebecca

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Never out of print, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is loved for its opening line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” It is a timeless combination of romance, jealousy, intimidation, mystery & death. First published in 1938 it was an immediate hit and sold nearly 3 million copies between 1938 and 1965. Ultimately, there are a lot of secondhand editions out there. It has been translated into Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian, German, Portugese, Spanish, Persian, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Greek, Latvian, Dutch and Czech. That’s quite a list. Daphne du Maurier

This first UK edition [above right] comes with a Menabilly headed letter from du Maurier which briefly discusses her Christmas and New Year, and is signed ‘Yours sincerely, Daphne du Maurier’. Rare, it is for sale [at time of going to press] by John Atkinson Books for £2,750.

The story
A naïve young woman marries wealthy older widower Maxim. When he takes her to his home, Manderley, the unnamed narrator, the young wife, learns about the first Mrs de Winter, Rebecca. Housekeeper Mrs Danvers continually tries to undermine the second Mrs de Winter, showing her contempt for the young woman, her inefficiency, her mousiness, her naivety. Believing Maxim still loves Rebecca, the new wife is encouraged by Mrs Danvers to wear a replica of one of Rebecca’s dresses to a costume ball.

The film
The best known film adaptation of Rebecca is the 1940 movie starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Daphne du MaurierDirected by Alfred Hitchcock, Rebecca won 11 Oscar nominations and won two – for Best Picture and Cinematogrophy. Watch the trailer here.

Daphne du MaurierVarious television adaptations include the 1979 BBC production [above] starring Jeremy Brett as Maxim, Joanna David as the second Mrs de Winter, and Anna Massey as Mrs Danvers. Watch the first episode here.

In 1997, a Carlton Television production [below] cast Joanna David’s daughter, Emilia Fox, as the second Mrs de Winter, with Charles Dance as Maxim and Diana Rigg as Mrs Danvers. Daphne du Maurier

Other editions

Read here why Rebecca is the ‘Porridge & Cream’ comfort read of novelist Jane Lambert.

Daphne du Maurier

 

‘Rebecca’ by Daphne du Maurier [UK: Virago]

If you like old books, check out these:-
‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte
‘A Passage to India’ by EM Forster
‘Watership Down’ by Richard Adams

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First Edition: REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier #oldbooks https://wp.me/p5gEM4-39q via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Vanishing Acts’ by Jodi Picoult #contemporary

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This is the first book by Jodi Picoult which I have read, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I would describe Vanishing Acts as long, intriguing, multi-layered. Is it the greatest? No, but it makes me want to read more of her books. Her multiple-perspectives mean you get a 360° view of a situation and see how different people view the same thing, something we are not always privy to in real life. Jodi PicoultDelia Hopkins lives in New Hampshire with her widowed father Andrew and her daughter Sophie. She works with her own search-and-rescue bloodhound to find missing people. She is about to marry Eric, a friend since childhood. Everything seems happy, except for strange dreams which she cannot explain. ‘I am little, and he has just finished planting a lemon tree in our backyard. I am dancing around it. I want to make lemonade, but there isn’t any fruit because the tree is just a baby. How long will it take to grow one? I ask. A while, he tells me. I sit myself down in front of it to watch. He comes over and takes my hand. Come on, grilla, he says. If we’re going to sit here that long, we’d better get something to eat.’ Fitz, a journalist, who also grew up with Delia and Eric, cannot explain the significance of the lemon tree. But the puzzles keep coming, after a policeman knocks on the door and arrests her father for kidnapping.
This is a story about repressed memory and triggered memory, the difference of which is central to the court case which is the core of this novel. It is about trust, instinct and loyalty and how sometimes the hardest thing to do is the right thing to do.
It is a long book and some sections felt over-written, a style I sometimes find with American authors; using two metaphors where one will do. But the plotting is excellent and the rope of tension pulls you mercilessly onwards.

And read the first paragraphs of VANISHING ACTS and NINETEEN MINUTES, both by Jodi Picoult.

If you like this, try:-
‘Somewhere Inside of Happy’ by Anna McPartlin
‘Something to Hide’ by Deborah Moggach
‘Crow Blue’ by Adriana Lisboa

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#BookReview ‘The Last of the Greenwoods’ by Clare Morrall #contemporary

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Clare Morrall is so good at writing about people on the margins. In The Last of the Greenwoods, Johnny and Nick Greenwood are estranged brothers who live separately in two abandoned, adjacent railway carriages; with shared kitchen and bathroom. They are adept at avoiding each other. Clare MorrallNick lives in Aphrodite on the right, Johnny in Demeter on the left. Aphrodite has horizontal blinds at the windows, open at a slant so someone inside can look out but no-one outside can see in. Demeter’s windows are unknowable with permanently drawn curtains. The carriages sit amidst trees and shrubs, hidden from the main road in Bromsgrove, West Midlands. They have been the brother’s world since they were boys. Until one day, into the lives of these emotionally separated but geographically close brothers comes a letter which reignites haunted memories. “The floor is vibrating under his feet, there’s a sensation of motion, as if the train has started to move. What’s happening? Is he slipping backwards, losing his place in the present and tumbling back to the past? How can this be?”
The letter is from their older sister, Debs; the sister who was murdered when the boys were children. As the brothers consider whether the letter is real, a fake, or a joke we learn more about their background via Zohra, the postwoman who delivered the letter. Zohra has a past of her own which she tries to forget. What brings together these seemingly disparate story strands? Trains? And what effects change in the lives of the Greenwoods and Zohra? Trains.
Slowly, with exquisite and often humorous detail, Morrall unravels the mysteries of the past, building a picture of these people’s lives. They are ordinary people but in telling their story she makes them extraordinary, reminding us that the life of each of us has a story to tell and that elements of life can be repetitive. “Are they doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again – play, replay, round and round on an endless loop?”
Running throughout is the question of verifiable identity: the woman who returns could be Deb, or Deb’s friend Bev pretending to be Debs; and who are the girls who harassed Zohra on social media, did they use their real names or not? The brothers consider how they can accept Debs, do they need evidence, DNA proof, or can they trust their instincts? And why are the two brothers not talking?
Another masterful Morrall novel.

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 MAN WHO DISAPPEARED
THE ROUNDABOUT MAN

Read the first paragraph of ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR here.

If you like this, try:-
‘If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go’ by Judy Chicurel
‘The Lie of the Land’ by Amanda Craig
‘Skin Deep’ by Laura Wilkinson

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#BookReview ‘The Night Child’ by Anna Quinn #mystery

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The Night Child by Anna Quinn caught me by surprise and took off racing from the first page so that I read half the book at my first sitting. But it is not a thriller, it was simply that I didn’t want to stop reading. I confess to selecting the book on my Kindle having forgotten the book blurb; perhaps I should do that more often. Anna QuinnNora Brown teaches teenagers about Shakespeare and poetry; so she knows about the imagination, imagery and dreams. Then one day at work, floating in front of her she sees the face of a blue-eyed girl, a face without a body. Quinn writes about Nora’s fear, panic, guilt, shame, with an insight into the private mind and this made me believe Nora from page one. Seeking answers, she talks to a psychiatrist and so starts an unravelling of Nora’s past, a past buried so deep she had no idea of its existence. As the revelations pick up pace, she must deal with a damaged teenager at school, decide whether to confront her unfaithful husband Paul, and reassure her six-year-old daughter Fiona. Stress layered on top of stress, which makes the child’s face appear more often. Soon she hears the accompanying voice too.
Why have Nora’s difficulties started now? Is there a connection with Fiona, who has just celebrated her sixth birthday? Is the trigger to do with Nora’s own sixth birthday? At the root of it all, perhaps not surprisingly, is the death of her mother and the subsequent abandonment by her father. The only constant in her life is her younger brother James. Raised by their grandfather in Ireland, Irish myths and Catholic saints are woven throughout Nora’s story. The present day action takes place between Thanksgiving in November 1996 and February 1997.
This is the sort of book which makes you think ‘please not that’ and turn the page to see if you have guessed correctly. The subject is not new but Quinn approaches it from a fresh angle which shows how the impact of childhood unhappiness can be repressed only to reappear with a vengeance decades later. I liked Nora. She is not a victim. At first she is afraid she is going ‘crazy’. Her primal instinct is to protect her own child, she constantly reassures Fiona that she loves her ‘beyond the stars and back’. But as the memories begin to return thick and fast in her sessions with psychiatrist David, things also unravel at home as Paul accuses her of being ‘a zombie’. David reminds her that she is in control but to ‘be careful not to scare yourself’. Where will the memories lead her and will she be able to cope?
I really enjoyed this book. It came as a bolt out of the blue after having read a series of historical novels. It is a powerful and sensitive portrayal of emotional damage and a person’s capacity to face it and recover. This is a debut, but I would never have guessed, it is written with a steady hand and full heart. The juxtaposition of Quinn’s beautiful prose, and her subject matter, is startling.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘The Hoarder’ by Jess Kidd
‘The Crows of Beara’ by Julie Christine Johnson
‘Something to Hide’ by Deborah Moggach

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#BookReview ‘Highland Fling’ by Nancy Mitford #satire #historical

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First published in 1931, Highland Fling is the first novel by Nancy Mitford and the first I have read, determined to read them in order. What a breath of fresh air it was after reading two detailed historical novels, this light frothy concoction made me chuckle. Nancy MitfordAn amusing observer of manners, Mitford excels at that peculiar type of incomplete conversation between two people gossiping about mutual acquaintances in which each completes the other’s sentences. This is a novel of its time, upperclass wealth, upperclass lack of wealth, centuries of families and traditions the roots of which have been forgotten, and the juxtaposition of bluff country old-timers with Bright Young Things from London. Highland Fling is set in a Scottish castle, a closed-room setting, loved by crime writers, which Mitford uses mercilessly to compare and contrast. It is a world with which the author knows well and at which she gently pokes fun.
Young artist Alfred Gates returns from Paris to London and visits his newly-married friends Walter and Sally. Sally’s parents are called away and the three friends go to Scotland to host the parent’s shooting party. As well as the shooting guests, including stodgy old-fashioned military and aristocratic types, the younger guests include Jane Dacre who fancies herself in love with the effete Albert. Albert, who dresses in brightly-coloured flamboyant clothing which offends the traditionalists, searches Dalloch Castle for examples of Victorian decorative accessories which he photographs for his book. While the shooting guests are up at dawn and tramp around the moorland, the youngsters rise at midday and drink champagne for breakfast. Teasing, of old by young, is inevitable with the hapless victims suspicious but unable to produce proof of their tormenters. Mitford mines the humour by placing both groups in close proximity and letting them clash, on a shoot, and a visit to the local highland games.
As a first novel this gave me a taster of Mitford’s acerbic wit and observation of social manners, acute in its sharpness of both old and young, wealthy and not, though crude in some instances.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of these other novels by Nancy Mitford:-
CHRISTMAS PUDDING
LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE
PIGEON PIE
THE BLESSING
THE PURSUIT OF LOVE
WIGS ON THE GREEN

Read the first paragraph of THE PURSUIT OF LOVE here.

If you like this, try:-
‘Curtain Call’ by Anthony Quinn
‘Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day’ by Winifred Watson
‘Quartet’ by Jean Rhys

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#BookReview ‘The Last Day’ by Claire Dyer @ClaireDyer1 #contemporary

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Love is complicated, modern families are complicated, and a line cannot be drawn before and after. Whenever there is a last day, there is a first day too. That’s the theme of The Last Day by Claire Dyer, a deftly managed part-study of grief and mourning, part-teaser about how past events always affect the present. Claire DyerBoyd and Vita were married, now separated; Boyd owns an estate agency, Vita paints portraits of pets. Both have new relationships. Added to the mix is Boyd’s elderly mother irascible mother. When Boyd has a big tax bill, he and his girlfriend move back in with Vita. The collision of these three people has unforeseen results. So much of what we see at the beginning of this novel is unexplained, unravelling as the pages turn. It is tightly written with a minimal cast of characters. When you think you’ve got it worked out, there is another twist. Everyone is hiding something.
At the heart of the book is Honey Mayhew, except that’s not her real name. She is the catalyst of change. Wearing charity shop clothes and a smiling assured attitude, she goes for an interview at Harrison’s Residential and gets the job. Her connection with Boyd, as they sit in the car as it goes through a car wash, is transforming. Dangling in front of her is the temptation of a new life with an older man. Conformity. Security. Love. But Honey, addicted to horoscopes and superstition, a young twenty-seven year old, is mercurial. At times she seems more like the feisty troublesome teenager she was not so long ago. What happens to Honey as she is thrown into the very adult world of Boyd and Vita’s romance/marriage/separation/amicable friendship changes everything; it wouldn’t be a novel if it didn’t.
Living together, none of the three have bargained for the re-stirring of old memories in the house, and the tugging of anger and regret. Honey, because she is young and inexperienced; Boyd, because he is emotionally blocked; and Vita, because she considers she has moved on with her painting and her convenient relationship with Colin next door. Dyer is good at portraying the small details, the daily things. How Honey sits upstairs in bed in the morning, hearing Boyd and Vita reassume their old morning habit of coffee and crossword clues. How Boyd buys his mother some handkerchiefs for Christmas. How Vita watches families play in the park, and her bones feel heavy in her body.

Read my review of Dyer’s THE PERFECT AFFAIR and her poetry anthology YIELD.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin
‘Etta and Otto and Russell and James’ by Emma Hooper
‘Please Release Me’ by Rhoda Baxter

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LAST DAY by Claire Dyer @ClaireDyer1 https://wp.me/p5gEM4-38t via @SandraDanby