Library Loot

Marg and Eva are both away, but Library Loot has its own momentum!

(Edit: Marg is back, with a library book and with Mister Linky!)

I’ve been a little disorientated because the library has been rearranged. My autopilot needs adjusting! But I still managed to bring home three new books.

Here they are:

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

“When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England George instantly takes to their new life, but Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill at ease with the racial segregation and the imminent dawning of a new era. Her only solace is her growing fixation with Eric Williams, the charismatic leader of Trinidad’s new national party, to whom she pours out all her hopes and fears for the future in letters that she never brings herself to send. As the years progress, George and Sabine’s marriage endures for better or worse. When George discovers Sabine’s cache of letters, he realises just how many secrets she’s kept from him – and he from her – over the decades. And he is seized by an urgent, desperate need to prove his love for her, with tragic consequences…

Another book I liked the look of of the Orange Prize longlist and ordered.

The Stone Cutter by Camilla Läckberg

“InThe remote resort of Fjallbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman’s net. But the post-mortem reveals that this is no accidental drowning! Local detective Patrik Hedstrom has just become a father. It is his grim task to discover who could be behind the methodical murder of a child both he and his partner, Erica, knew well. He knows the solution lies with finding a motive for this terrible crime. What he does not know is how this case will reach into the dark heart of Fjallbacka and tear aside its idyllic facade, perhaps forever.”

The third book in a series that I have grown to love. So it was lovely to find a copy on the new books shelf before I’d even realised it was out.

The Maintenance of Headway by Magnus Mills

“‘It’s a matter of procedure,’ I explained. ‘Strictly for the record. You don’t get sacked from this job unless you did what Thompson did.’ ‘What did he do then?’ ‘We never mention it.’ In Magnus Mills’ brilliant short novel he transports us into the bizarre world of the bus drivers who take us to work, to the supermarket, to the match and home again. It is a strange but all too real universe in which ‘the timetable’ and ‘maintenance of headway’ are sacred, but where the routes can change with the click of an inspector’s fingers and the helpless passengers are secondary. The journey from the southern outpost to the arch, the circus and the cross will seem as familiar as your regular route, but then Magnus Mills shows you the almost religious fervour which lies behind it, and how it is fine to be a little bit late but utterly unforgivable to be a moment early.”

I can’t quite explain it, but there is something every special about Magnus Mills’ books.

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?

Secret Son by Laila Lalami

Secret Son tells the story of Youseff El Mekki.

He has grown up in the slums of Casablanca with his mother, and now he is going to college, working and dreaming of a better life.

He believes that his father died in an accident, before he was born, before he had a chance to marry his mother. But he discovers that story is not true, it was a fabrication by his mother to try to protect them both. His father is very much alive.

Indeed he is a wealthy, if somewhat shady, businessman. A man who has a daughter, who is asserting her independence from her parents, and a man who has always wanted a son.

His father welcomes his son, installs him in a luxury flat, and finds him a job. And Youseff falls in with his plan, neglects his studies, his friends his mother.

The trouble is, his father tells no-one else about his new-found son. Well how could he? And, inevitably, when things go wrong Youssef has a long way to fall.

His mother stands by him, supports him, but when he falls in with bad company that may not be enough to save.

It’s a simple story, but one built on classic lines. And it drew me in from the very first page and held me, swiftly turning the pages, until the very end.

Laila Lalami writes lovely, clear and elegant prose, and her story is very well-balanced. Plenty to hold the interest without there ever being too much to keep track of, and everything that is there is needed to make the story complete.

She evokes both the poor and the wealthy streets of Casablanca simply but very, very effectively.

But most of all this is a story driven by its characters, and they worked very well. Youssef was a terribly believable young man. I admired his mother, and felt for her as her son uncovered her secret and moved away from her, not really understanding that she had done her best for him, had given him so much. I cared less for his father, but his behaviour was understandable, if not likeable.

And if I have a small criticism, it was maybe that the characters, what they said, what they did, was often a little predictable. They almost invariably did exactly what I was expecting. And, of course, people often do just that, but just one or two gentle twists could have enriched the story.

This is a book with a lot to say. About the effects of lies told and secrets kept to protect loved ones. About class divisions and the way they determine and restrict lives. And, most of all, about loss, loyalty, and love.

It says it very well, with compassion but no sentimentality or preaching.

Secret Son is accomplished, and very readable, first novel.

It’s a book that I am pleased to have discovered, thanks to its longlisting for this year’s Orange Prize. I think its certainly worthy of that place, and that  maybe it has the potential to cross over to a wider audience.

I’m not sure though that the extra star quality needed to make the shortlist is there -but it’s a first novel, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Laila Lalami’s name there before too long.

Even The Dogs by Jon McGregor

As I try to write about Even The Dogs I find myself either completely lost for words or drowning in them. Yes, it really is that good.

“They break down the door at the end of December and carry the body away”

The story arc is simple. The death of one man. Once he had a family, a wife and a daughter, but he fell into alcoholism and they left. His home became a haven for drug addicts. And then he died. His body is discovered, there is a post-mortem and then there is an inquest. Some questions are answered, but many are not.

It is an unhappy story, and there is no redemption, but it works and you should read it. Because it is utterly real and utterly compelling.

It’s the execution that makes it work. Eyes always moving, always watching. And a chorus of fractured voices,  speaking, breaking off, pushing in again …. Slowly a picture emerges.

The man, Robert, living behind the same door with a partner, Yvonne. The couple raising an infant daughter. But then Robert began to drink. more and more. Yvonne took her daughter and left. Robert stayed, and sunk further and further into alcoholism.

Soon drug addicts moved in, offering up alcohol and food to their “landlord”. And so the downward spiral continued. Until he died, and they scattered. Their stories are told too as the events and formalities that follow such a death go on. And just what happened that night becomes a little clearer.

None of the stories are remarkable, but all are utterly believable.

The cleverness of the construction and oh so vivid, changing voices that make them work. The words are fractured, poetic, and utterly moving.

It would be true to say that it is bleak, dark and depressing; but it would also be true to say that it is a story is happening, could happen anywhere. One lapse, one misjudgment, one piece of bad luck can turn a life.

Not a pretty picture, but a striking one.

And a book that somehow, in a way I can’t quite explain, adds up to much more than the sum of its parts.

Simply extraordinary.

And a prize winner? Yes, it definitely should be.

Paperboy by Christopher Fowler

I have to confess that I have never read any of Christopher Fowler’s fiction. His early books didn’t appeal; his Bryant & May series sounds wonderful, but I haven’t quite got to it yet. So when I saw the man’s name on the literary fiction bookshelf in the library, I picked the book up out of general curiosity, just to see what it was about. I didn’t mean to borrow it, but as I scanned the early pages a few simple sentences caught my eye.

“My bedroom was filled with reading material: books salvaged from dustbins, books borrowed from friends, books with missing pages, books found in the street, abandoned, unreadable, torn, scribbled on, unloved, unwanted and dismissed. My bedroom was the Battersea Dogs Home of books.”

With that I stopped thinking of Christopher Fowler as a to be read author and started thinking of him as a fellow book lover. The book came home, and I’m very glad that it did.

At the heart of Paperboy is a boy growing up in a London suburb in the fifties and sixties. It’s not a world I remember, but the book brings it life beautifully.

And then there’s the family. Dysfunctional is probably the word, though it doesn’t suit the period. His mother struggles to hold the family together, while his father was clearly troubled and difficult to live with.   

And so young Christopher finds an escape route courtesy of the written word. First comics, then an assortment of books, until he discovers the boundless possibilities of public libraries.

His father will never understand Christopher, but fortunately his mother does, and gently encourages his reading and writing aspirations.

It’s a simple story, in many ways an unremarkable story, and yet it’s a story that comes completely to life because it is so perfectly observed and so packed with wonderful details. And all considered with warmth, wit, intelligence and a distinctive point of view.

I’d love to share every detail but I can’t , so let’s pick a few pages at random:

• The futility of exam questions.
• His mother’s list of favourite authors.
• The joy of a new comic and a bar of chocolate.
• The arrival of Doctor Who.
• Reasons why the era of swinging London began in 1960.
• Caravan holidays.
• The gap between British and Hollywood cinema.

Yes, all of the details that illuminated a young life are here.

This is a book that you’ll want to read from cover to cover, but it’s also a book you can dip into and enjoy a few pages at a time

I’m very sorry that I shall have to give this one back to the library.

This week end I shall be ….

… fairly quiet, because it’s been a difficult week and I need to catch up with myself.

I’ll be trying to bring down the size of my library pile. I have three library books in progress.

Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor has me pretty much speechless and stunned.

Paperboy by Christopher Fowler is a lovely memoir of a bookish child, growing up in London in the sixties. Wonderful wit and lovely details.

I’m only one chapter into The Wives of Henry Oades by Joanna Moran, but I’m already engaged by some wonderful characters and intriguing possibilities.

And then there’s knitting. Sedgemoor has a back, a left front and half a right front. So I want to press on and finish. Just half a front, two short sleeves on the collar left to do!

I have my next garment project lined up – both yarn and patter to hand – but I’m not allowed to touch it until Sedgemoor is complete.

Fyberspates yarn, a simple shape, and added interest from a cable borrowed from Elsebeth Lavold …

And then there are three intriguing older books that I picked up in my other library this afternoon.

No, I didn’t really need any more books, but I can’t get there again until the weekend after Easter and I just couldn’t leave that ticket empty.

The big blue one is An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall by Mrs Craik, a wonderful Victorian travelogue.

The little green one is A Waif’s Tale by “Emma Smith”. Not the Persephone author, this is an earlier book. The life of a woman who survives a harsh upbringing to live a remarkable life.

These will be my last Cornish books for a while. Too many other things are calling right now.

And finally there’s Miss Jemima’s Swiss Journal – an account of the first tour of Switzerland offered by Thomas Cook in 1863.

One day I’ll get back to my own books, but probably not this weekend!

But of course it won’t all be indoor pursuits. Briar loves a beach and low tide this weekend coincides with her walk times.

This is where she sits by the door when she wants to remind me that it’s time to go.

The plan is Marazion on Saturday and Godrevy on Sunday – keep your fingers crossed for dry weather for us please!

I have to indulge her this weekend, because she is barred from a lot of beaches after easter until the autumn. How do I explain to a border terrier that she isn’t allowed on the scruffy, pebble-covered town beach that she can see from the house?

A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah

I have dark shadows under my eyes, and I blame Sophie Hannah. I’ve stayed up much later than I intended for a few nights now, reading her newest book.

It’s her fifth crime novel, and in some ways it follows the pattern of the previous four by posing a seemingly unsolvable puzzle, but it other ways it is a much more serious,  more thought-provoking, more mature work than the four that came before.

The trouble is though, because it’s a mystery I don’t want to say much more about the plot than is disclosed on the jacket. So what I’ll do instead is introduce you to the main players.

Helen Yardley was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of her two infant sons. She was later released on her appeal, her conviction found to be unsafe. Now she is a figurehead for women is similar circumstances and campaigns for others to be released.

Her husband, Paul Yardley, stood by her, but they lost their daughter. She was taken away by Social Services and new parents were found for her.

Grace and Sebastian Brownlee were thrilled to be able to adopt a little girl. They would never give her up and they certainly never wanted her to find out who her real mother was.

Helen’s release was the result of a campaign by journalist and documentary maker Laurie Nattrass. He’s making a film about Helen and two other women accused of infanticide.

Sarah Jaggard was tried for the murder of a friend’s baby. She was found not guilty, and her husband, Glen, stood by her. They don’t have things easy, but they are facing the future together.

But photographer Angus Hines didn’t stand by his wife. He has his own viewpoint, and he is determined that his voice will be heard.

Ray Hines, like Helen, was convicted of the murder of her own children, and her conviction was set aside too.

What links those three women? Doctor Judith Duffy was an expert witness at all three trials, but now she has been discredited and charged with misconduct. But is it that simple?

Maybe not. Laurie Nattrass has accepted a new job and Fliss Benson finds herself promoted and in charge of the documentary. It’s a job she has good reason to not want. for personal reasons, because Laurie thinks he can still pull the strings, and because Ray Hines is pursuing her. Why?

It’s an interesting cast, and characters are one of Sophie Hannah’s strengths. Every one vivid and utterly believable.

The mystery that links then all is the murder of Helen Yardley. And of course it brings in Sophie Hannah’s series characters, detectives Simon Waterhouse and Charley Zailer, and a new dimension as Detective Inspector Giles Proust who is in charge of the Yardley murder case, was junior officer when Helen Yardley was first arrested and believes completely in her innocence.

The story that is complex, but not difficult to follow, and utterly compelling. Some elements and attitudes are entirely expected, but many are not. So you are always unsettled and always thinking and wondering. There’s so much I’d like to say, so many interesting relationships, developments and ideas, but I can’t. It would spoil it.

And it’s a story that raise a lot more questions. That maybe justice can’t be fully served by deeming people guilty or not guilty. About the seeming need to always have somebody cast as a hero and somebody cast as a villain. About how sometimes things are broken and can’t be fixed, no matter how sorry anyone might be. And gripping though the story is there are moments, and many dialogues, with the power to make you stop and think about things that are really much more important.

But the mystery never loses its hold. There are elements that are a little difficult to believe, but they work because they are psychologically true. Loose ends too, a few things unexplained, but life is like that. The ending has those same strengths and weaknesses. It’s a little melodramatic, but it’s extremely well executed and it does work.

And, though I’m tired, I’m still thinking about this book. I suspect I will be for a good while.

Library Loot

I really didn’t mean to bring home so many books this week, but there have been  too many great books on the shelves. Some I resisted, but there were four I just had to bring home. And now my ticket is full, so there will be no more loot until I take something back.

Here are those irresistable books:

The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller

“1920. The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914. Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse. Yet death and the aftermath of the conflict continue to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events that apparently led her brother, John Emmett, to kill himself, Laurence is forced to revisit the darkest parts of the war. As Laurence unravels the connections between Captain Emmett’s suicide, a group of war poets, a bitter regimental feud and a hidden love affair, more disquieting deaths are exposed. Even at the moment Laurence begins to live again, it dawns on him that nothing is as it seems, and that even those closest to him have their secrets ….”

Ilove the period, I loved the concept, so I ordered the book as soon as it appeared in the catalogue.

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

“Olivier is a French aristocrat, the traumatized child of survivors of the Revolution. Parrot the son of an itinerant printer who always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Born on different sides of history, their lives will be brought together by their travels in America. When Olivier sets sail for the New World, ostensibly to study its prisons but in reality to save his neck from one more revolution – Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil.”

Another book that sounded just perfect. I didn’t order it because I knew that a copy was bound to appear sooner or later, and this week it did.

The Twisted Heart by Rebecca Gowers

“When Kit goes to a dance class she is hoping simply to take her mind off her studies. Soon it looks like Joe, a stranger she meets there, might do more than that. But when Kit uncovers a mystery involving the young Charles Dickens and the slaughter of a prostitute known as The Countess, she is sucked back in to the world of books, and discovers how Dickens became tangled up with this horrendous crime.”

This was the bookthat called me loudest from the longlist for the Orange Prize. I love a literary mystery and the opening chapter already has me hooked.

Secret Son by Laila Lalami

“When a young man is given the chance to rewrite his future, he doesn’t realize the price he will pay for giving up his past…Casablanca’s stinking alleys are the only home that nineteen-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, the film stars flickering on the local cinema’s screen offer the only glimmer of hope to his frustrated dreams of escape. Until, that is, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive. A high profile businessman with wealth to burn, Nabil is disenchanted with his daughter and eager to take in the boy he never knew. Soon Youssef is installed in his penthouse and sampling the gold-plated luxuries enjoyed by Casablanca’s elite. But as he leaves the slums of his childhood behind him, he comes up against a starkly un-glittering reality…”

Another book longlisted for the Orange Prize. I wasn’t sure when I first read about it, but so manypeople have been so positive about this one that I just had to pick it up.

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?

See more Library Loot here.

Ruby’s Spoon by Anna Lawrence Pietroni

You really should meet Ruby.

You’ll need to go back in time, to the 1930s, and then to Cradle Cross, a small landlocked town in England’s Black Country. At least I think you do. Ruby’s story is set in a world that is a little like that, but also like something from a different world entirely.

Her story begins at her workplace – Captin’s Fried Fish bar. Ruby is peeling potatoes for chips when a stranger arrives. A very strange stranger. Miss Isa Fly, immediately recognisable thanks to her shock of white hair and her mirrored skirts – not your usual thirties attire. And she doesn’t have a usual reason for arriving in town – she is seeking a missing relation, though that relation seems to be unknown in Cradle Cross.

Ruby comes from an unhappy family. She lives with her grandparent because her father as he has taken to living in his workshop on the canal and Ruby has been told that she must never cross the water. But Ruby dreams of the sea.

And Ruby is bewitched by Miss Isa Fly. Maybe it’s because she tells stories of the sea, or maybe it’s something more magical. They join forces and Truda Blick, the bluestocking graduate who has just inherited the town’s button factory, is drawn into the quest too.

Many of the townsfolk don’t like that and they suspect that Isa’s arrival in town has nothing to do with a missing relative. And so there are incidents, revelations, and maybe a touch of magic. More than that it would be unfair to say. But I will say that, yes, Ruby’s spoon is very important!

The story dances along, in lovely melodious prose. Clearly the author loves words and the sounds that they make. There is dialect, and at times it was difficult, but it works, it really does.

It’s a remarkable debut novel - lovely, enchanting, clever and quite unlike anything else. And along the way it makes some very good points about the strengths and weaknesses of families, friendships and communities.

But I do have reservations. For me the third person narrator didn’t quite work. It required far too much exposition and dialogue, and made the book a little bit too long for the story. If only the narration could have come from Ruby. The story would have been so much more immediate and just the right length. And I could have danced with the characters instead of alongside them.

But I’m still delighted that I met Ruby. She was lovely, her world was extraordinary, and her story was wonderful.

Once Upon a Time

“Read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time IV criteria. They might all be fantasy, or folklore, or fairy tales, or mythology…or your five books might be a combination from the four genres.”

I couldn’t possibly  say no. It feels like I’ve been waiting for this challenge, pondering books for ever.

And here are the books:

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

“After twenty years of self-effacement as a maiden aunt, she decides to break free and moves to a small Bedfordshire village. Here, happy and unfettered, she enjoys her new existence nagged only by the sense of a secret she has yet to discover. That secret – and her vocation – is witchcraft, and with her cat and a pact with the Devil, Lolly Willowes is finally free.”

Witchcraft may suggest another, autumnal challenge, but this definitely feels like a magical springtime book.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

“Welcome to Bascom, North Carolina, where it seems that everyone has a story to tell about the Waverley women. The house that’s been in the family for generations, the walled garden that mysteriously blooms year round, the rumours of dangerous loves and tragic passions. Every Waverley woman is somehow touched by magic.”

I have heard so much good about this book, and I think that this is its time.

I Coriander by Sally Gardner

“Her idyllic childhood ends when her mother dies and her father goes away, leaving Coriander with her stepmother, a widow who is in cahoots with a fundamentalist Puritan preacher. She is shut away in a chest and left to die, but emerges into the fairy world from which her mother came, and where time has no meaning. When she returns, charged with a task that will transform her life.”

This has been waiting for me in the library for a while. Another book that has found its time.

The Mermaid’s Child by Jo Baker

“Growing up motherless in an isolated community, Malin Reed has always been made to feel different from everybody else. The fact that, according to Malin’s father, the absent mother was actually a mermaid only makes matters worse. When Malin’s father dies, leaving behind nothing but his stories, Malin’s choice at last becomes clear: stay, and never feel at home, or leave and go in search of mermaids and the fantastical inheritance that, up to now, has always seemed completely out of reach.”

I live by the sea, so there had to be a mermaid somewhere.

Iron & Gold by Hilda Vaughan

“Lured from her underwater home, to become a farmer’s wife in the Brecon Beacons, the fairy bride discovers that both her difference and her acquired familiarity breed marital breakdown and tragedy.”

I’ve been promising myself this book for this challenge for ages.

Five wonderful books. What could be better?

Another town, a new bookshop … and now I need more bookshelves …

If you have ever visited Cornwall, or if you ever plan on visiting Cornwall, there are a lot of places you might want to see. St Michael’s Mount, The Eden Project, The Minack Theatre, Jamaica Inn, Tintagel, Lanhydrock House, The Lost Gardens of Heligan, The Tate St Ives, The National Seal Sanctuary….

But, unless you have a particular interest in mining history you probably wouldn’t choose to visit Redruth. It’s a grey, inland, impoverished former mining town. But you really, really should go there.

Why? To visit The Redruth Bookshop. I read a while back that it was Cornwall’s largest secondhand bookshop and realised I needed to investigate. Last week I did. It looked unremarkable from outside, but when we went in we discovered that it went, back and back and back, and that it was packed full of wonderful books. I could have brought home a car full, but I was restrained and settled for these:

Recent paperback fiction was at the front of the shop. I picked up Devil by the Sea by Nina Bawden to add to my Virago bookcase, plus the first three novels by Salley Vickers. I knew as soon as I discovered her not so long ago that I would want to read and own all of her work so it was lovely to find three lined up. And older editions with lovely covers. 

And as I went further back in the shop I found the older books. 

Back at the beginning of the year everyone seemed to be reading Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster. The library had a copy, but I was in the middle of an ordering ban, and virtuously stuck too it. And maybe virtue was rewarded, because I found a very pretty edition from the 1930s. 

I have an unread copy of Peyton Place tucked away. I remembered Verity writing warmly about it not so long ago, and mentioning that Grace Metalious had written a sequel that was now out of print. So when I spotted a copy of that sequel I had to pick it up. 

And then there was a trio of books by Virago authors that Virago has not seen fit to reissue. The Bridge by Pamela Frankau (in a very pretty 1950s dust jacket), Alone We Embark by Maura Laverty (a wartime economy edition) and Potterism by Rose MacCaulay (a tragi- farcical tract!). All look wonderful. 

I recognised the name Norman Collins, because Penguin reissued his book London Belongs To Me last year. So I picked up Bond Street Story, and the opening paragraphs painted such a wonderful picture of the rush hour in London (I love Cornwall, but sometimes I miss my old London life) that I really couldn’t put it down again. 

Now it probably won’t come as news that I love Margery Sharp‘s writing. So imagine my delight at finding THREE of her books to add to my collection – The Foolish Gentlewoman, Britannia Mews and Cluny Brown. 

Now here is where I was really restrained. There were six books by Monica Dickens that I hadn’t come across before, but I made myself select just one. The Heart of London was the winner and looks absolutely wonderful. 

And finally there was an elderly copy of An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott. It was only 50p, so of course it came home. It missed the photocall because my mother pounced on it. She says that it is lovely – and I hope to get it back one day! 

That’s it! And I shall be looking for an excuse to visit Redruth again very soon…