… I was struck down by a migraine on Friday night and for the last 48 hours I haven’t wanted to pick up a book, nevermind a computer.
I’m beginning to feel more like myself again, so tomorrow I’ll start catch up with the backlog in my reader and bring things a bit more up to date here.
But for now I just want to sleep…
Posted in Thoughts & Ramblings
Sarah’s childhood was destroyed when Charlie, her older brother went missing. One minute he was there and the next minute he was gone. Sarah was the last person known to have seen Charlie, and her mother has always believed that there was something that Sarah knew and would not tell, and blamed Sarah for the loss of her son.
Her mother turned to drink and her father left, and then died. Sarah stays to support her mother. A woman who shows no care, indeed shows disdain and even contempt, while she maintains her missing son’s bedroom as a shrine.
Now Sarah is a teacher. And a twelve-year-old girl from one of her classes, has gone missing. Again Sarah is again one of the last people to have seen the missing child. And then Sarah finds a body.
Old memories are stirred up. Sarah tries to help, and help she does, but that draws her further and further into the case. Are the two disappearances linked? And is it Sarah that links them?
Both stories are compelling and, though they are disturbing, it is quite impossible to stop turning the pages.
It works well because the characters, their motivations, their behaviour, are so well realised. There’s a good sized cast – teachers, pupils, neighbours, police, media – and it’s well used, but this is Sarah’s story. And although there were moments when I wanted to give her a good shake and point her in a different direction, I understood why she did what she did. And I felt for her when she wanted to help, when she wanted to reach out to the parents of the missing girl, but had to hold back. She couldn’t keep away from the case though, and that led her into trouble.
The story rings true. The details are right, and the twists, when they come, are in no way contrived. They flow naturally out of that story. And just as you think you have things figures out something else comes to light that makes you think again. It really is very well judged. Yes, there are one or two things that you know should not happen, particularly when Sarah finds out too much, but Jane Casey just about gets away with it, because the characters, the psychology and the emotions are always right.
Well she gets away with it until the ending. Overblown and melodramatic. Such a shame, because a striking, low-key ending that would have fitted the book perfectly was there for the taking. And after the way she handled the rest of the book I am quite sure that Jane Casey could have pulled it off.
That ending downgraded this from a great psychological mystery to a good one. But it’s still a fine debut, and I don’t doubt that Jane Casey has the potential to produce something top class before too long.
Marg is coordinating Library Loot this week.
I’m still trying to keep my library pile under control,so just three books came home this week:
The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick
“Based on fact, this is the story of William Marshal, the greatest knight of the Middle Ages, unsurpassed in the tourneys, adeptly manoeuvring through the colourful, dangerous world of Angevin politics to become one of the most powerful magnates of the realm and eventually regent of England. From minor beginnings and a narrow escape from death in childhood, William Marshal steadily rises through the ranks to become tutor in arms to the son of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. A champion on the tourney field, William must face the danger and petty jealousy targeting a royal favourite. Dogged by scandal, banished from court, his services are nevertheless sought throughout Europe and when William’s honour is vindicated, he returns to court and wins greater acclaim and power than before. A crusader and the only knight ever to unhorse the legendary Richard Coeur de Lion, William’s courage and steadfastness are rewarded by the hand in marriage of Anglo-Irish heiress Isobel de Clare, 19 years old, the grandaughter of kings and his equal in every way.”
Danielle wrote very warmly about this one and I love the period, so when a shiny new copy appeared I just had to pick it up.
Mr Golightly’s Holiday by Salley Vickers
“Many years ago Mr Golightly wrote a work of dramatic fiction which grew to be an international best-seller. But his reputation is on the decline and he finds himself out of touch with the modern world. He decides to take a holiday and comes to the ancient village of Great Calne, hoping to use the opportunity to bring his great work up to date. But he soon finds that events take over his plans and that the themes he has written on are being strangely replicated in the lives of the villagers he is staying among. He meets Ellen Thomas, a reclusive artist, young Johnny Spence, an absconding school boy, and the tough-minded Paula who works at the local pub. As he comes to know his neighbours better, Mr Golightly begins to examine his attitude to love, and to ponder the terrible catastrophe of his son’s death. And as the drama unfolds we begin to learn the true and extraordinary identity of Mr Golightly and the nature of the secret sorrow which haunts him links him to his new friends.”
I’ve always meant to read Salley Vickers but she’s never quite made it to the top of my list of priorities. This caught my eye when I was looking for something else. The book I was looking for wasn’t there, so I picked this one up, really liked the look of it and brought it home.
Ruby’s Spoon by Anna Lawrence Pietroni
“This is the tale of three women – one witch, one mermaid and one missing – and how Ruby was caught up in between. When Isa Fly appears in the doorway of Captin Len’s Fried Fish Shop, thirteen-year-old Ruby is entranced. Isa comes from the coast where the air is fresh; unlike Ruby’s home in Cradle Cross, its factory furnaces pumping and filthy slits of canal water sending up a stink. Isa is on the hunt for a missing person, and Ruby is eager to help, convinced she will be repaid with an adventure at sea. But some of the townsfolk are instantly suspicious of the outsider with her shock of white hair and glinting mirrored skirts. They have their own lost relatives to mourn, and don’t take kindly to Isa’s ability to leave their Ruby spellbound. Undaunted, Ruby introduces Isa to Truda Blick, the bluestocking graduate who has just inherited the town’s button factory, where carcasses are rendered down and bones turned into buttons. Blickses is on the verge of collapse, and Truda has her work cut out. Ruby is desperate to help Truda and Isa but her alliance with the women is pushing the town to the brink of riot. All the trouble began, it seems, when Isa Fly arrived in Cradle Cross…Only Ruby knows enough to save them all. But first she must save herself.
I knew as soon as I saw this that it was going to be my sort of book, and so in went the order. And this week it arrived!
Have you read any of these? What did you think? Which book should I go for next? And which are you curious to know more about?
And what did you find in the library this week?
Posted in Library Talk
Tagged Anna Lawrence Pietroni, Elizabeth Chadwick, Salley Vickers
Well, I must thank whoever it was at the Bodleian Library who asked P D James to write a book about British detective fiction in aid of the library. She accepted and she has given that venerable institution a tiny gem. A series of eight beautifully-written and well-reasoned linked essays.
Of course eight essays could never encompass the whole history of the genre, but Baroness James writes in the main about what she knows, and she does it with great authority and, equally importantly, with love.
First she considers where it all began, tracing a path including Jane Austen’s Emma, The Moonstone, Caleb Williams, Sergeant Cuff and the real-life Mr Whicher to the detective stories of the twentieth century. And what makes a detective story? How many possibilities are there? More than I realised, and I am looking back at favourite books now with fresh eyes.
And so to specifics. Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown. Conan-Doyle is given great credit for his creation, but the author is quite prepared to point out a few weaknesses, and I have to say I agree with her. She points to “The Speckled Band” as a story that was terrifying “but “frankly incredible.” Yes! I remember, years ago, my class’s English teacher giving us half the story and then having us write the solution. Mine was so much better than Conan-Doyle’s! The contrast with Father Brown shows best detectives off to their best advantage. I have never read Father Brown, but clearly I must.
Then it was on to the Golden Age, and a wonderful appreciation of the age and the style, taking in all of the obvious big names and a few less obvious ones. Why have I never read “Trent’s Last Case” by E C Bentley? It’s definitely time to check the library catalogue! There’s a nod the hard-boiled American contemporaries of Inspector Appleby, Professor Fen, Francis Pettigrew, et al. And a fair hearing for American criticisms of the British style.
Next comes what is maybe the strongest part of the book. An appreciation of the four grande dames: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh. P D James clearly knows the work of all four well, and she highlights the strengths of each, as well as gently pointing out a few weak points. She clearly has a soft spot for both Harriet Vane and Lady Amanda Fitton. Of course, these must have been the authors, the stories, the characters she read when they were brand new and she was a young woman.
And then its on with a look at how the detective novel has evolved since the Golden Age and the detective novel today. The author has much to say about the form, and I was fascinated by her thoughts and the insight they showed, but she is a little less willing to give opinions of her contemporaries and the generations that followed. Though Ruth Rendell, Ian Rankin and Sarah Paretsky all receive kind words. Her heart clearly lies with the Golden Age, but she is generally positive about the state of the detective novel and possibilities for the future.
If you want a comprehensive guide to detective fiction you will need to look elsewhere. But if you want an appreciation of the form written with intelligence and insight this book will do very nicely. Because it has clearly been written by a somebody who loves reading, writing and writing about detective fiction
Yes, I’m still reading. Progress has been a little slower. Partly because I’ve been busy, and distracted by other things. And partly because I know I’ve reached the stage of the book where things are well set up and yet nothing is going to be resolved any time soon.
Which isn’t to say I’m not enjoying the journey. I am, very much. In a Victorian soap opera with modern resonances sort of way.
I finished last time with Nell and her grandfather running away again. And again Nell didn’t want to go, but was pulled along by her love for her grandfather.
They are taken in this time by Mrs Jarley, the proprietor of a travelling waxworks show. Nell is employed and her grandfather accepted for her sake. This gives Dickens the opening for some wonderfully staged scenes and vivid descriptions as Nell finds out what her job entails:
‘That,’ said Mrs Jarley in her exhibition tone, as Nell touched a figure at the beginning of the platform, ‘is an unfortunate Maid of Honour in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, who died from pricking her finger in consequence of working upon a Sunday. Observe the blood which is trickling from her finger; also the gold-eyed needle of the period, with which she is at work.’
All this, Nell repeated twice or thrice: pointing to the finger and the needle at the right times: and then passed on to the next.
‘That, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Mrs Jarley, ‘is jasper Packlemerton of atrocious memory, who courted and married fourteen wives, and destroyed them all, by tickling the soles of their feet when they were sleeping in the consciousness of innocence and virtue. On being brought to the scaffold and asked if he was sorry for what he had done, he replied yes, he was sorry for having let ‘em off so easy, and hoped all Christian husbands would pardon him the offence. Let this be a warning to all young ladies to be particular in the character of the gentlemen of their choice. Observe that his fingers are curled as if in the act of tickling, and that his face is represented with a wink, as he appeared when committing his barbarous murders.’”
“The feeling which beset the child was one of dim uncertain horror. She had no fear of the dear old grandfather, in whose love for her this disease of the brain had been engendered; but the man she had seen that night, wrapt in the game of chance, lurking in her room, and counting the money by the glimmering light, seemed like another creature in his shape, a monstrous distortion of his image, a something to recoil from, and be the more afraid of, because it bore a likeness to him, and kept close about her, as he did. She could scarcely connect her own affectionate companion, save by his loss, with this old man, so like yet so unlike him. She had wept to see him dull and quiet. How much greater cause she had for weeping now!”
Back in London Mr Quilp is still plotting. He installs Dick Sniveller as a clerk with his solicitor Sampson Brass, the better to keep an eye on both of them.
And so we enter Mr Sampson’s less than salubrious offices. He works alongside his sister Sally, a formidable woman, clearly much sharper than her brother and frustrated by the fact that she must be second in command and take charge of domestic affairs. Sally Brass is a wonderful creation.
“Her usual dress was a green gown, in colour not unlike the curtain of the office window, made tight to the figure, and terminating at the throat, where it was fastened behind by a peculiarly large and massive button. Feeling, no doubt, that simplicity and plainness are the soul of elegance, Miss Brass wore no collar or kerchief except upon her head, which was invariably ornamented with a brown gauze scarf, like the wing of the fabled vampire, and which, twisted into any form that happened to suggest itself, formed an easy and graceful head-dress.
Such was Miss Brass in person. In mind, she was of a strong and vigorous turn, having from her earliest youth devoted herself with uncommon ardour to the study of law; not wasting her speculations upon its eagle flights, which are rare, but tracing it attentively through all the slippery and eel-like crawlings in which it commonly pursues its way. Nor had she, like many persons of great intellect, confined herself to theory, or stopped short where practical usefulness begins; inasmuch as she could ingross, fair-copy, fill up printed forms with perfect accuracy, and, in short, transact any ordinary duty of the office down to pouncing a skin of parchment or mending a pen.
It is difficult to understand how, possessed of these combined attractions, she should remain Miss Brass; but whether she had steeled her heart against mankind, or whether those who might have wooed and won her, were deterred by fears that, being learned in the law, she might have too near her fingers’ ends those particular statutes which regulate what are familiarly termed actions for breach, certain it is that she was still in a state of celibacy, and still in daily occupation of her old stool opposite to that of her brother Sampson. And equally certain it is, by the way, that between these two stools a great many people had come to the ground.”
Mr Swiveller is quite possibly my favourite character – bright, articulate and a main with an eye to the main chance, there is clearly a good heart under the roguish veneer.
‘So I’m Brass’s clerk, am I?’ said Dick. ‘Brass’s clerk, eh? And the clerk of Brass’s sister–clerk to a female Dragon. Very good, very good! What shall I be next? Shall I be a convict in a felt hat and a grey suit, trotting about a dockyard with my number neatly embroidered on my uniform, and the order of the garter on my leg, restrained from chafing my ankle by a twisted belcher handkerchief? Shall I be that? Will that do, or is it too genteel? Whatever you please, have it your own way, of course.”
Well that seems like a good cliffhanger, and that’s where I stopped reading last night. The plot is thickening, the mix of characters and scenes is lovely, and I’m still enjoying the journey and wondering what will happen next.
Last time I wrote a Cornish book list (here) I wrote that there must be a lot more books out there. And there were – here are some more:
Daphne Du Maurier and Friends
As well as setting many novels here, Daphne Du Maurier wrote a history/travelogue Vanishing Cornwall and a photographic memoir Enchanted Cornwall. Justine Picardie‘s novel Daphne moves between Cornwall and Yorkshire. Leo Walmsley was a good friend of the Du Mauriers, and Daphne wrote warmly of his writing. Love in the Sun and its sequel Paradise Creek, both sadly out of print, are set in Cornwall
Children’s Books
It’s out of print and horribly expensive, but I must mention my very favourite children’s book – Mullion by Mabel Esther Allan. Costa nominates Ann Kelley has written a trilogy about a twelve year-old girl from St Ives: The Burying Beetle, The Bower Bird and Inchworm. And there’s a series by Helen Dunmore set in Cornwall too: Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep and The Crossing of Ingo. Plus The Wreckers by Iain Lawrence.
Crime
Christina told me that Carola Dunn has started a new series of mysteries set in a fictional town on the coast. Manna From Hades is out now and A Colourful Death is due later this year. Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley has a Cornish home. It appears briefly in a couple of books and Cornwall comes to the fore in Careless in Red. And I’ve noticed a couple more books from series that visit Cornwall: The Lamorna Wink by Martha Grimes and Death and the Cornish Flddle by Deryn Lake.
Victorians – and into the 20th Century
A few novels to add : Deep Down by R M Ballantyne, A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy, The Clay Kiln by Jack Clemo. And Mrs Craik’s An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall looks lovely. Carol reminded me that Howard Spring’s novels My Son, My Son and All the Day Long are both set in Cornwall. As is China Court by Rumer Godden. I knew that E F Benson had Cornish connections, and sure enough I found a novel that moved from Cambridge to Cornwall – The Inheritor. And I must mention John Betjeman, who loved it here, and Charles Causeley too.
Historical and Family Sagas
Malcolm Ross (known as Malcolm MacDonald in the USA) has written a number of well received Cornish novels. Details here. The Loveday series by Kate Tremayne now runs to ten volumes. And I remember two lovely historical novels by Michael Weston – Grace Pensilva and The Cage. I’ve seen an interesting contemporary family series by Jane Hatton too. The Cornish Girl by Joanna Hines is definitely set here, and I have a feeling one of two of her other books may be too. And I like the look of F J Warren‘s historical novels.
Recent Novels
Quite a few of these to add: Signals of Distress by Jim Crace, A Season of Leaves by Catherine Law,A Breath of Fresh Air by John Branfield, The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, The Main Cages by Philip Marsden, Goldengrove by Jill Paton Walsh, The Haunt by A L Barker, For The Love of Angel by Susan Penhaligon, Still Life on Sand by Karen Hayes, Martha Peake by Patrick Mcgrath, The Saffron Eaters by N R Phillips. And I must mention distinguished local author Myrna Combellack.
Memoirs
Twenty Years at St Hilary by Bernard Walke is a priest’s memoir. Letters from Lamledra by Marjorie Williams tells of life in the country during WW1. Harbour Village by Leo Tregenza is an account of life in Mousehole between the wars. Erma Harvey James is from that same generation and she has written two volumes of autobiography: A Grain of Sand and Magic in My Eyes. And C C Vyvyan is another name to look out for.
I’m sure that there are still plenty more – I’ll probably think of something as soon as I hit publish. Do let me know if you can thinks of anything good that I’ve missed. There are some areas that are still a mystery to me.
I’ve set up a masterlist on a separate page – the link is at the top of the page. I’ll add these books to it in the next couple of days, I’ll try to expand a bit where I’ve mentioned authors or subjects without listing specific books and I’ll go on adding books and details as I find them.
And this might just develop into a separate blog or a reading challenge. Would you be interested in either – or both?
Posted in Lists, Reading Cornwall
“The coast of Cornwall lay basking in the summer sunshine. The sea that in winter raged and hurled itself at the granite rocks which stood as sentinels between it and the gentle farmland, now caressed, and whispered its way in among the boulders, forming blue lagoons with purple shadows, turning to brilliant emerald where the sun caught the yellow sun below. The white gulls sailed lazily in the heavenly blue and cormorants, perched on island rocks. patiently held their wings to dry in the hot sun.
A rough track ran between two fields leading from Bell Farm to the cove. In winter when the gales brought in the seaweed, the farm men used this track to fetch it up in cart loads, mixed with dung it made good manure for the land. Now, the track was overgrown, with blue bells and red campion stitchwort like little stars and tall green ferns. The black birds sang in the privacy of the sloe trees and distant larks twittered high above the granite carn.
The farmhouse was e-shaped, facing south-west, a jutting wing on either side, to keep out the worst of the north and east gales. Outside the front door there was a small garden surrounded by a stone wall, a slate slab path ran between two plots of grass to the wicket gate. Round the edges the borders were gay with summer flowers. Scented pinks, snapdraons, marigolds and hollyhocks, pink and cream, standing like soldiers against the weather-beaten granite of the house.”
Now doesn’t that paint a wonderful picture? Bell Farm is a short book – just 122 pages – but it paints many wonderful pictures as it tell the stories of three generations of women.
Sarah, the daughter of the lord of the manor who fell in love with and married a farmer. She loved her life a farmer’s wife, but she lost her husband in a tragic accident and had to make the difficult decision to sell the farm and build a new life with her daughter Martha.
Meanwhile, after his parent’s deaths in Africa, John travelled home to Cornwall hoping to buy a farm, find a wife and raise a family. Yes, he bought Sarah’s farm and, in time, he would marry Martha.
Martha and John were happy, but they had troubles, and responsibility for the farm would then fall to their daughter Mary.
The story is simple, but very touching. The characterisation is slight, and everyone is a little too nice, a little too ready to help, but somehow that doesn’t matter. The tragedy balances the sweetness, and sometimes you need to believe in communities and that people are intrinsically good.
The pictures that it paints really make this book sing: the sea, the village, the farm, the countryside …
And the set pieces are wonderful. A funeral and the wake; the harvest; a farm sale; smuggling; Christmas. All aspects of Cornish country life are here.
Bell Farm won’t change the world, but it was a lovely book to curl up with for an hour or two on the sofa.
Well, this is book that broke my library ordering ban. The cover image, at eye level, caught my attention first, And then I saw a glowing recommendation from Sophie Hannah, an author I love:
‘I absolutely loved TWISTED WING. It was so gripping, and I was both desperate and reluctant to get to the end. I found it scary, tantalisingly unpredictable and very, very hard to put down’
I picked the book up – and saw that it was published by the wonderful Long Barn Books . I was tempted to buy but, because I rarely read modern crime novels more than once, I checked the library catalogue, found copies elsewhere in the county and placed my order.
Did the book live up to all of that? Yes and no.
The opening was striking. A university student murdered in her own room and another student catatonic beside her. You might expect the story then to follow the police investigation. But if you did you’d be wrong. This book takes two different, and much more interesting paths.
First it follows the lives of the friends of the two students involved. This would be so easy to get wrong, but Ruth Newman gets it just right. The characters,their interactions, student life, all utterly believable.
And then it follows forensic psychiatrist Matthew Denison as he treats traumatised patient, student Olivia Coscadden, certain that she can identify the murderer, that he has to draw the truth out. Olivia’s story proves to be shocking and quite unexpected.
Now this is the point at which I have to be careful what I say so that I don’t give too much away.
Twisted Wing is very well written, perfectly paced and a genuine page turner. The plot twists – and there are many – are startling and very well handled. There were just a couple of things that I felt lacked a little credibility, but I can’t say what without giving away too much of the plot, and they certainly didn’t spoil the story.
And the ending is very clever. All in all this is a very polished debut.
I’m afraid though that the story was just a little more violent, a little more graphic, than I felt was necessary. Not to the degree that I have to say it was wrong – of course murder is brutal, and that shouldn’t be disregarded – but it took away from the pure shock of a the life of a young woman with a bright future being callously cut short, with her friends close by, in a place where she should have been completely safe.
Reading her blog though, I think that Ruth Newman has produced the book that she intended:
“I love Morse, but this isn’t your standard police procedural – the story’s mainly told from the point of view of the students who find themselves being picked off one by one. It’s nice and violent too (I don’t do genteel poisonings), though we’re not in Bret Easton Ellis territory just yet!”
And, I have to say, she has done it very well.
I’m trying to keep the library pile down. But I keep finding wonderful books. So what can I do? Here’s this week’s loot:
The Unspoken Truth by Angelica Garnett
“Real life and fiction meet as Angelica Garnett vividly evokes what it is to grow up in the shadow of artists. Her family appear in different guises in the stories, but at the centre of each one is Garnett herself. She is naive and foolish as Bettina, desperately seeking acceptance into the grown-ups circle (“When All the Leaves Were Green, My Love”); shy and cautious, but finally disloyal, as Agnes (“Aurore”); a hesitant, uncomfortable Emily (“The Birthday Party”); and a contemplative, even witty older woman, full of appetite and guilt, as Helen (“Friendship”). Spanning an entire life, each story reveals a figure trying to understand her place not only within the polished circle of her family, but in an ever-changing world. Sharply observing a colourful social milieu and the vibrant characters that populate it, these are stories about family and friendships, yet also curdled relationships and small betrayals. A fictional counterpoint to her acclaimed memoir, “Deceived with Kindness”, here is a portrait of a woman seeking an understanding and acceptance of her past.”
It was on the wishlist, it appeared and so it came home!
Love In The Sun by Leo Walmsley
One for my Read Cornwall campaign. Leo Walmsley was a Yorkshireman, but he lived in Cornwall for a number of years. he was a contemporary of Daphne Du Maurier, and here’s what she wrote about this book.
“”Love In The Sun” will make other writers feel ashamed. And, curiously enough, old-fashioned too. It is a revelation in the art of writing, and may be one of the pioneers of the new renaissance in the world of novels, a renaissance which shall and must take place in our time if the novel is to survive at all. While we struggle to produce our complicated plots, all sex and psychology, fondly imagining we are drawing modern life while really we are as demode as jazz and mah-jong. Leo Walmsley gives the weary reader a true story, classic in its simplicity of a man and a girl who possessed nothing in life but love for each other and faith in the future, and because of these things, were courageous and happy.
They converted an old army hut for their home, they made a garden, they grew vegetables, they used driftwood for their fire in winter, they caught mackerel for their food in summer, the sea and the soil sustained them during the long months so that the man could write his book and the girl could have her baby; and when both were accomplished life continued as before, the garden was trenched, the fishing lines were baited, fame and fortune had passed them by, but hope, and courage, and love were with them still. When we come to the end of the story, we know that the man will write other books, the girl will have other babies, flowers will continue to grow in their garden, they will go on living and loving, and creating thins because, like the plants in the soil they are the very stuff of life itself.
Yes, Leo Walmsley has filled me with shame. Our cheap artificial plots, distorting human nature to make it suit the jaded palate, must go on the scrap-heap. We are not worthy to be called writers if we cannot do what he has done in “Love In The Sun”, and show the novel-reading public that the simple thins of life are the only thins that matter, and that a man’s work, and his wife, and his baby, and his plot of earth, are more important than the drama and passion of the whole world, and that the world itself is not, and never has been the merciless vortex that so many of us make it out to be, but is and always will be a place of supreme adventure.”
So what do you make of that? Can you see why I had to bring it home?!
And that’s not all …
The Missing by Jane Casey
“Jenny Shepherd is twelve years old and missing…Her teacher, Sarah Finch, knows better than most that the chances of finding her alive are diminishing with every day she is gone. As a little girl her older brother had gone out to play one day and never returned. The strain of never knowing what has happened to Charlie had ripped Sarah’s family apart. Now in her early twenties, she is back living at home, trapped with a mother who drinks too much and keeps her brother’s bedroom as a shrine to his memory. Then, horrifically, it is Sarah who finds Jenny’s body, beaten and abandoned in the woods near her home. As she’s drawn into the police investigation and the heart of a media storm, Sarah’s presence arouses suspicion too. But it not just the police who are watching her…”
For the second week in a row Sophie Hannah made me bring a book home. Here’s what she said about this one:
“Compulsive, menacing and moving – a very satisfying psychological thriller.”
Martha, Eric and George by Margery Sharp
I can’t say too much about this one. It’s the third book in a wonderful trilogy, and if I told you anything it would give away significant details about the book that preceded it. And I was very careful not say too much when I wrote about that book here.
What I will say is that Margery Sharp is a wonderful issue and it is appalling that only one of her books is in print.
Will somebody please reissue a few more?!
And there is a wonderful site, devoted to Margery Sharp here.
Have you read any of these? What did you think? Which book should I go for next? And which are you curious to know more about?
And what did you find in the library this week?
Eva is in charge of Library Loot this week. And she has a wonderful selection of books that you really should see.
The Abbess of Crewe if a very short book – just 128 pages – but there’s an awful lot going on.
In a convent in the north of England the Abbess of Crewe is dying. And so there will be an election. Who will be the new abbess?
Alexandra thinks the position is hers by rights. She is tall, elegant and aristocratic and she has been sub prioress. Definitely the heir apparent. And, usefully, she introduced electronic surveillance to the convent so she knows exactly what is going on.
But Alexandra has a rival. A very different rival. Felicity is small, plump and common and has a simple vision. All you need is love. Well she is having an affair with a Jesuit priest.
Now remember that Alexandra sees everything. She knows that Felicity has a casket where she keeps her love letters. And so her eager supporters, Walburga and Mildred, arrange a burglary.
Two young Jesuits perform a reconnaissance and bring back Felicity’s silver thimble as proof of their success. But Felicity notices the loss and she is prepared for them when they come back for the letters. She flees from the convent, alerts the authorities and becomes a media celebrity.
Will Alexandra, the newly elected abbess, be called to account? Well what do you think? Does this sound familiar?
Maybe it would help if I told you that the Abbess of Crewe was written in 1974? Yes, Muriel Spark has written a wonderful satire of Watergate.
It’s brilliantly done. The story stands up in its own right as well as mirroring real events. And it’s packed full of intrigue, gossip and great wit. So clever and so funny.
And yet this little book seems to have slipped through the net in the most recent round of Muriel Spark reissues. Well, it’s not her greatest work – some references are dated and the brevity and the need to mirror real events mean that it can’t quite hit the heights of her best books – but Muriel Spark a little off her best is still quite remarkable.
The Abbess of Crewe is a fine piece of writing, a striking period piece, and an entertainment with much to say. Hopefully a new edition will see the light of day before too long.
