“I exist in the eye of the storm, the calm in the centre of a perpetual hurricane of cars and lorries heading for the M6, the north and Scotland, or south to Penzance and Land’s End. I sometimes wonder if they don’t go on the motorway at all, that I hear the same vehicles circling endlessly, a kind of multiple Flying Dutchman, doomed to travel for ever. I don’t regret for one minute that I am no longer one of them.

I call my caravan Dunromin, in the solid tradition of all those semi-detached streets that form the vertebrae of the country, because that’s exactly what I’ve done. Stopped roaming. I’ve anchored myself in the middle of one of the few patches of land where no one goes, among well-established birches, ashes, sycamores, surrounded myself with nettles and claimed sanctuary …”

A story about someone who has steeped to one side of society. That’s something that Clare Morrall writes about so very, very well, and I was eager to read on.

Quinn Smith lived quietly, in a caravan in the middle of a roundabout, close to a motorway service station that offered all of the simple amenities that he needed.

His old-world charm, his unassuming nature, and his inbred politeness  won over the staff.  And so he was able to take advantage of  the washroom,  dined on unfinished meals and rejected produce, and read abandoned newspapers and magazines.

It was a simple, quiet life, but it was knocked off kilter by an eager young reporter from the  local newspaper. She wanted to write a series about unusual people. And wouldn’t the man whose history nobody knew, the man who lived such an unconventional life,  be a wonderful subject?

What she didn’t know was that Quinn had been a child star.

His mother had been a writer. A hugely successful writer of children’s books, starring her children, Quinn and his triplet sisters, Hetty, Fleur and Zuleika.

She had twisted her children’s lives into fantastical shapes.

The books were still loved years after they were written. Academics wrote about them. And visitors flocked to family’s childhood home, turned into a tourist attraction by the National Trust.

The stories were idyllic, and the reality should have been. But it wasn’t.

But Quinn’s mother had little time for her children, or for the fourteen foster children who passed through their lives. There were definite echoes of Enid Blyton …

The consequences – some positive and some negative – of the newspaper story change Quinn’s life, and make him realise that he must look for the answers to questions about his childhood that have troubled him for a long, long time.

The story mixes Quinn’s past, present and future together nicely.

The writing is as beautiful and as perceptive as I had expected, and full of intriguing characters, charming stories, lovely details and bittersweet emotions.

Fascinating questions are thrown into the air. About how we view the past and how it shapes the present. About where the line between fact and fiction lies. About the importance of home and family. And about other things that I can’t quite put into words.

Sometimes the story rambled. Sometimes it became a little too fanciful. And I notices a few loose threads.

But its strangeness and charm kept me holding on. I had to finish a novel that shone such a wonderful light on humanity

The ending was bittersweet and exactly right.

And now I have forgotten the wrong notes and I am happily remembering the notes that rang true.

This is wonderful, and not at all what I was expecting from a historian turned novelist.

This is deliciously dark Victoriana.

I was pulled straight away into 1840, into the dark, crowded, dirty streets of East London.

The Man of Crows, a serial killer who has done terrible, terrible things to earn that soubriquet walks the streets and the city lives in fear.

Catherine Sougeil lives with her uncle in Spitalfields and she is troubled. She remembers a happier time when she lived with her parents in the country and she fears that she attracted the evil that brought that time to an end. She wonderful why Grace, her maid, has left her and why the Belle-Smiths were so willing to part with her. And she broods on The Man of Crows, sure that she understands what drives him to kill. Sure that she could, should do something …

Catherine is such a complex, intriguing character.

The narrative twists together her present her past, and the world around her.  A complex puzzle becomes not clear, but maybe a little less opaque.

This is not a straightforward narrative. It move through time. Perspectives shift. Threads appear and disappear. Reflecting maybe the confusion in Catherine’s head.

The atmosphere is wonderful: unsettling, dreamlike, sinister …

The prose is rich with period detail, with vivid descriptions.

I walked the streets of Victorian London. I looked into hearts and minds. I saw, I heard, I smelled, I touched, I tasted so many extraordinary things.

Evocative is, I think, the word I’m looking for,

I turned pages backwards and forwards, reading and re-reading, trying take everything in, trying to solve the puzzle.

There was always something to infuriate and something to intrigue.

Finally there was a resolution. Of sorts.

There were things that I didn’t understand. Questions left unanswered. Missing details.

I had to let them go.

The Pleasures of Men is a strange novel, and it is flawed, but there is much to hold the interest and attention, much to delight the senses.

And it is an intriguing debut novel.

I’m luckier than many, living in the family home and with savings to tide me over, but I still want to be careful while the future is so uncertain.

And there is treasure to be found in charity shops and second-hand bookshops for very little money.

Look what I found last week:

I’ll take things from the bottom up, as that’s pretty much the order that I found them.

The name Eudora Welty caught my eye, and I found an intriguing book. One Writer’s Beginnings. An American book that somehow found its way over the Atlantic to Cornwall. A book drawing on three lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1983, about listening about learning to see, about finding a voice. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?!

I borrowed London War Notes: 1939 to 1945 by Mollie Panter-Downes from the library, but I wanted a copy of my own. And I found one - ex library but in pretty good condition. It really should be in print and would sit nicely along the author’s short stories from the same period in the Persephone list …

My fiance spotted Concerning Agnes: Thomas Hardy’s ‘Good Little Pupil’ by Desmond Hawkins first. I know nothing about Agnes but I love Hardy and so this book, from a local press, seemed well worth the investment of £1.50.

If I’d been working I would have rushed out to buy the new Vintage Stella Gibbons reissues, and so I snapped up a charity shop copy of Westwood as soon as I spotted it.

And finally, Pamela Frankau was a name I recognised as a Virago author. I have yet to read any of her books but I have read a lot of praise as so when I spotted a title I didn’t recognise in a blue numbered penguin I had to take a look. I Find 4 People seems to be autobiography written as fiction, with the author writing about herself in the third person. I was charmed, and so the book came home.

An exceptionally good week, and an excellent haul for less than £10.

There are so many wonderful books in the world, so many wonderful books still to come that I want to only hold on to the very best. The books that I want to pick up again and again, the books inspire an emotional reaction whenever I see or think about them.

So I selected a hundred books from the ridiculous number that I had unread. Books I wanted to read but probably didn’t need to keep. Those books went into my home library, to be read or rejected, and then passed on for others to read.

Forty books left the premises last year, so I’m adding forty more for 2012.

I realised when I chose them that I was getting closer to my goal: having the books I wanted to keep on shelves, and reading books that I wanted to read but not keep promptly before letting them go.

But I’m not there yet.

I’m introducing the books ten at a time. Do let me know if I have a book that you’ve loved and I’ll try to make it a priority. Or a book that you’ve hated and I should think twice about.

Who Saw Him Die? by Sheila Radley

Cuthbert Bell, the village drunk, has been killed by Jack Boodrum in a road accident. In unravelling Jack’s and Cuthbert’s past, Inspector Quantrill and Sergeant Hilary Lloyd uncover secrets that shatter the peace of the little Suffolk town.

I picked this one up a couple of weeks ago. A charity shop had three books for a pound. There was one I wanted, one my fiance wanted, and so I looked for a third. This was the one that caught my eye.

Mother Love by Domini Taylor

When Angela Turner marries Kit Vesey she is drawn into a web of lies and deceit, with horrific results for her and her family. For Kit’s mother, Helena, is divorced from her husband, Alex, a prominent conductor, and Kit has been leading a grotesque double life … It is only when Alex is knighted that Helena comes to realise the extent of Kit’s betrayal and the rage of an abandoned wife and neglected mother is unleashed …

A very tatty copy appeared in a bargain bin and it reminded me of the tv series, so I had to pick it up.

Tom Brown’s Body by Gladys Mitchell

When an unpopular teacher at a private boy’s school is found murdered, only Mrs. Bradley can solve the mystery in this classic crime caper from the redoubtable Gladys Mitchell.

I read one book by Gladys Mitchell years ago and I always meant to read more but I never did. So when this appeared in the art gallery book sale for less than the price of a library reservation it seemed sensible to buy it. But as Gladys Mitchell wrote so many books I daren’t keep it after reading in case I’m tempted to start a collection!

Hothouse Flower by Lucinda Riley

As a child Julia Forrester spent many idyllic hours in the hothouse of Wharton Park estate, where her grandfather tended the exotic flowers. So when a family tragedy strikes, Julia returns to the tranquility of Wharton Park and its hothouse. Recently inherited by charismatic Kit Crawford, the estate is undergoing renovation. This leads to the discovery of an old diary, prompting the pair to seek out Julia’s grandmother to learn the truth behind a love affair that almost destroyed Wharton Park. Julia is taken back to the 1940s where the fortunes of young couple Olivia and Harry Crawford will have terrible consequences on generations to come. For as war breaks out Olivia and Harry are cruelly separated . . .

I loved ‘The Girl on the Cliff’ and so I picked up this one too. But I passed that book on and so I think I must let this one go once I’ve read it as well.

The Hidden Child by Camilla Läckberg

Crime writer Erica Falck is shocked to discover a Nazi medal among her late mother’s possessions. Haunted by a childhood of neglect, she resolves to dig deep into her family’s past and finally uncover the reasons why. Her enquiries lead her to the home of a retired history teacher. He was among her mother’s circle of friends during the Second World War but her questions are met with bizarre and evasive answers. Two days later he meets a violent death. Detective Patrik Hedström, Erica’s husband, is on paternity leave but soon becomes embroiled in the murder investigation. Who would kill so ruthlessly to bury secrets so old? Reluctantly Erica must read her mother’s wartime diaries. But within the pages is a painful revelation about Erica’s past. Could what little knowledge she has be enough to endanger her husband and newborn baby? The dark past is coming to light, and no one will escape the truth of how they came to be…

I’ve borrowed all of Camilla Läckberg’s other books from the library, but there was a long queue for this one and so when I saw a copy in a charity shop I grabbed it. Which doesn’t make too much sense, because I would have reached the front of the library queue by now and I haven’t picked up my copy.

The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse

When Lucas inherits Stoneborough Manor after his uncle’s unexpected death, he imagines it as a place where he and his close circle of friends can spend time away from London. But from the beginning, the house changes everything. Lucas becomes haunted by the death of his uncle and obsessed by cine films of him and his friends at Stoneborough thirty years earlier. The group is disturbingly similar to their own, and within the claustrophobic confines of the house over a hot, decadent summer, secrets escape from the past and sexual tensions escalate, shattering friendships and changing lives irrevocably.

I love big house books and I read some great reviews of this one. I meant to wait for it to appear in the library, but when I saw I charity shop copy I picked it up.

The Pleasure Dome by Josie Barnard

Belle is bright, funny – and a hopeless mess of self-doubt. A situation not improved by having a glamorous television presenter for a mother. In a bid to shock her mother and hijack some attention for herself, she gets a job as a dancer at the Pleasure Dome, a glitzy champagne strip joint in Soho.

Pokerface, Josie Barnard’s first novel, was cleared from the decks last year. A great book but I was happy to pass it on. So it made sense to add this one in this year. I must confess that it has been waiting for so long that I really can’t remember where I came from.

The Harlot’s Press by Helen Pike

London, 1820: George IV is to be crowned King at last. But will his estranged wife Caroline be allowed to join him as Queen? The city is in turmoil, as her radical supporters rally to her cause and threaten to overturn the government… Into this tumultuous world is thrown Nell Wingfield, a gutsy seventeen-year-old printer of political pamphlets. Nell has recently returned home after a six-month absence that she would rather not explain. After her mother s death, she was duped into working at one of the Houses of the Quality , the brothels on St James s, turning tricks with men at the heart of the English establishment. When one of them a key protagonist in the plot to keep Caroline from the throne – was found dead in his bed, it was time for Nell to leave. But, back on Cheapside, she finds that the family print shop, far from providing a sanctuary, has become a hotbed of dangerous radical activity. Nell’s troubles, it seems, have only just begun…

My fiance is a volunteer gardener, and he found a bag of books dumped among garden waste. This was one of them.

The Diviner’s Tale by Bradford Morrow

Cassandra Brooks is a single mother-of-two, a schoolteacher and a water diviner. Deep in the woods as she dowses the land for a property developer, she is lost in her thoughts, until something catches her eye and her daydream shatters. Swinging from a tree is the body of a young girl, hanged. But when she returns with the authorities, the body has vanished. Already regarded as the local eccentric, her story is disbelieved � until a girl turns up in the woods, alive, mute and identical to the girl in Cassandra’s vision. In the days that follow, Cassandra’s visions become darker and more frequent as they begin to take on tangible form. Forced to confront a past she has tried to forget, Cassandra finds herself locked in a game of cat-and-mouse with a real life killer who has haunted her for longer than she can remember.

This one came from the bag in the gardens too.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades later, a friendship grows between Mariam and a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter. When the Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear. Yet love can move a person to act in unexpected ways, and lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism.

This came from the LibraryThing Secret Santa a couple of years ago. If I hadn’t been given a copy I would have borrowed it from the library rather than buying a copy, and I think I should be fine letting this one go.

******

And that’s it for this batch. Any thoughts?

“Walking back along the promenade after a trip to the library, Rose stopped to watch the sea, standing a safe distance away from where it was sweeping up over the railings. It was a high tide, the water choppy but topped with a clear azure sky. Further down children screamed as they tried to dodge the spray but failed. A pair of herring gulls perched on the railing, their heads into the wind. They flew off, drifting into an air current until the dog that had run towards them scampered past, then they returned to the same piece of rail. “

That’s my library and my promenade, where a certain dog always runs to see off the gulls. Janie Bolitho captured my hometown, as it was back in 1999, absolutely perfectly.

And she  created an engaging heroine, who I could quite happily believe is still living just a little further around the bay.

Rose is a youngish widow who is gradually picking up the strands of a new life. She has good friends, she earns a living as a photographer, and she has taken up painting - always her first love but not the easiest way to earn a living - again.

A new artist friend encouraged Rose to go back to painting with oils, and Rose decided that a crumbling mine shaft would be a good subject.

That’s why she was out alone in the country when she heard a scream.

Rose called the police, but they found nothing. DCI Jack Pearce accused her of wasting police time, but Rose was certain of what she heard.

The situation was uncomfortable. Rose and Jack were friends who might have become something more but she pulled back. And he didn’t.

Then there was a murder. A young artists’ model was found dead. Suspicion soon fell on the  ex-lover she wanted back. And on Rose, who had a friendship with him that could easily turn into something more.

A second body was found. In the mine shaft.

As the police investigated, and Rose tried to work out what had happened, it became clear that the community of artists had many secrets and jealousies.

This a simple and uncomplicated mystery, built on traditional lines and brought to life by interesting and eminently believable cast of characters.

It was lovely to drop back into Rose’s life for a while, and to see my hometown through her eyes.

Jane Bolitho once again caught Cornwall and the Cornish perfectly, and I can feel the love with which she wrote.

I have to say that this isn’t her strongest story.

I have no problem with the main plot strand. I worked out quite early on who the murderer must be, but the mystery was solid, I was happy to watch events unfold, and there was a nice little twist at the end.

But I did have a problem with the explanation of what happened at the mine shaft.  There was rather too much contrivance.

Without that I could have read an account of what happened in the local paper and believed it. Utterly.

I’m not rushing back to the library to pick up the next book in the series, but I will be reading it. Not so much for the mystery, but because I want to follow Rose’s life, and because I love seeing my world through her eyes.

“The drizzle was gentle on her face and misted her hair as she walked up Market Jew Street. At the top she turned into Chapel Street and was cheered by a lively conversation with Tim and Katherine who ran the bookshop where she called to collect the two hardback novels she had ordered as a Christmas present to herself .”

We still have that drizzle. And we still have that lovely bookshop …

I pulled from the shelves one hundred books that I was confident I wouldn’t want to keep after reading to create my own home library. I would borrow books from the stacks and then return them to a charity shop, thus clearing the decks.

The project worked – 40 books have gone and just 60 remain – better figures than I hoped.

But I only read 9 of those books. 31 I decided I didn’t want to read.

Once they were off the shelf I realised that I didn’t need to read them. Because other books would always be there calling me more loudly. Because my reason to read them have been lost since I bought them home.

Those 31 books should not take offence. They are all I’m sure good books, but they aren’t the books for me any more.

Almost every day I discover a new book I want to read, or I think of an old book I want to read again. And so I have learned that I have to be selective, to read only the books that I am confident I love, the books that will offer me what I need.

So now I only buy books that I can’t order from the library and books that I am quite certain I will want to keep.

And I am going to keep clearing the decks.

I’m sure that I have other books that I can read, write about, and then pass on. And others that I can simply let go.

So watch out for 40 more joining the project!

How do you capture just what makes them so very, very magical?

Diving Belles is one of those books.

It hold twelve short stories.

Contemporary stories that are somehow timeless. Because they are suffused with the spirit of Cornwall, the thing that I can’t capture in words that makes the place where I was born so very, very magical.

Lucy Wood so clearly understands what it is about the sea, what it is is about the moorland. The beauty, the power, the mystery… I don’t have the words, but she does.

And she threads all of this through scenes from contemporary life. She catches turning points, moments to remember, stories that should be retold.

There’s a pinch of magic too.

So one woman may travel in a diving bell to bring home a husband lost at sea. And another may be called back home when spirit of the sea permeates her inland home.

It feels strange, it feels other-worldly, and yet it feels utterly real.

I was unsettled and I was enraptured.

I turned the pages back and forth, not wanting to leave, and because there was something elusive that I couldn’t quite hold on to.

Such lovely writing, and such a wonderful spirit.

An extraordinary debut.

I am struggling for words but, make no mistake, I am smitten.

And so when I saw Do No Harm, her second novel I was torn. I was intrigued, but I was also a little scared.

In the end, of course, I had to pick it up. I found a very different book, but those four words still applied.

Dark. Disturbing. Flawed. Extraordinary.

Do No Harm is the story of a doctor.

Virginia Denham is a doctor at the very top of her profession: she is a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology in a big London hospital.

Her patients were reassured by her interest and understanding, and by her professionalism.

Her colleagues and her staff were equally impressed by her professionalism, and by her intelligence and skill.

But she had a secret life, and she guarded her privacy ferociously.

A stunning opening chapter revealed a model professional, and a deeply flawed and disturbed woman. An accident waiting to happen.

The chapters that followed moved backwards and forwards through time to build a detailed picture of Virginia’s difficult life.

She was an extraordinary character: complex and frighteningly real.

I wanted to understand that character, to know what made her, and the suspense was palpable.

In the end something did go wrong. And it was devastating.

I’m deliberately holding back details.

Because this is a novel driven by characters rather than plot. And to tell any more than I have would, I think, be telling too much.

A disturbing story of a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology is not for everyone, and I half wished that I hadn’t picked it up.

The writing, the characterisation, the suspense – so much in this book was brilliant. I had to keep reading; I had to know.

I just felt that the balance was a little off: the balance of plot and character.

A flaw, but not a fatal flaw.

Because I really can’t think of another author who deals with such difficult subject matter with such insight and intelligence.

And now I am torn between pushing such dark books away and wondering what Carol Topolski will write next …

Jane was nobody’s fool.

She had been an actress, with a touring company, and she was doing well. She didn’t have much money, but she managed, she was happy doing what she wanted to do with her life.  But Jane got on the wrong side of a difficult actor, and was ‘let go’.

She was too proud, too independent, to go home  and so she took a job in a cafe. And she made a success of it, working diligently and intelligently, standing her ground against a boss who would have been all too ready to take advantage of her,  and rising above the gossiping customers who wonder why the actress is working in a cafe.

Jane went home to her father, a reserved man who had raised her alone, at the appointed time and she found a good job in hotel management. She made a success of it.

But then she met an old friend from her theatre days. A friendship becomes something more, but the romance quickly fades and Jane isn’t sorry when he leaves to go on tour.

It was a little later that she realised she was pregnant. And her father threw her out.

Jane is still proud, still independent. She finds a place to live.

“There wasn’t much to be said for the place, really, but it had a roof over it and a door which locked from the inside, which was all I cared about just then. I didn’t even bother to take in the details; they were pretty sordid, but I didn’t notice them so they didn’t depress me–perhaps because I was already at rock-bottom.”

The l-shaped room. A dingey, grubby, awkward space in a run down boarding house.  Jane could have afforded something better – she had savings, she still had her job – but she chose not to.

She planned to keep herself to herself, to keep her baby, and eventually to bring up her child alone.

But she knows she won’t be able to hold on to her job for too long, and she doesn’t know how she will cope when she has to give it up.

Jane doesn’t intend to mix with the other residents of the boarding house, but they are curious about her and in time she is drawn out of the shell she constructed for herself.

She forms friendships. With John, the affable musician who lives in the room next to hers. With Mavis, the elderly spinster who lives in the room below hers.  And with Toby, a struggling writer, who could maybe become more than a friend.

But Jane has to deal with the consequences of her pregnancy. And she can’t hide forever.

I was engrossed by Jane’s story. She was real, and I understood her, I cared about what might happen to her, and so it was wonderful to watch her coping with everything that life through at her, with new and old relationships, with her advancing pregnancy.

This is a very human, character driven story. Lynne Reid Banks does characters so very well. Each and every one is a three-dimensional human being, with a life story, with a rounded character, with strengths and weaknesses …

That made the story so very, very real.

There were moments, particularly near the end of the book, when things fell into place a little too well. But I was caught up by them and so I accepted it.

At times Jane seemed to have a little too much good luck, but things never went entirely to plan. And I think she earned some good luck. By working. By coping. By standing on her own two feet.

This is, after all, just one woman’s story. Others, in the same situation at the same time, must have encountered far more difficulties.

The important thing was that Jane grew up. I met a proud and independent young woman, I followed her though many ups and downs, and I saw her mature and become wiser, and more understanding of the people and the world around her.

In the end she had to leave the l-shaped room that she had made into a real home.

I loved this book when I read it first, in my teens, and I love it still.

I’m curious to remind myself what happens to Jane next. I really don’t remember. But I recall not liking the two sequels as much as this book the first time I read them, so maybe it’s better to go on wondering …