Tag: England

36. ‘A Dark Adapted Eye’ by Barbara Vine.

Dark adaptation; a condition of vision brought about progressively by remaining in complete darkness for a considerable period, and characterised by progressive increase in retinal sensitivity. A dark adapted eye is an eye in which dark adaptation has taken place.

James Drever; A Dictionary of Psychology.

Barbara Vine, who of course is in fact the amazingly skilful Ruth Rendell, has built the most astonishingly complex novel from this concept, with characters and a plot that remain with you long after you have finally put down the book with a sigh of regret that it is finished. I had not read this one previously, and was delighted to find it during an attempt to find something else entirely – Mum and I both adored a good crime novel, especially one of the great British writers in the genre. P.D.James is a particular favourite of mine, and when she died a few years ago, I re read all her novels, most of which came off Mum’s bookshelves, but sadly it seems Mum got rid of them when she moved out of the house as there were none at the flat. However, this little gem of a novel remained, and I have to say I loved it!

It is a difficult novel to review in that almost anything I say about the characters will in some small way affect you, the readers, pleasure in uncovering the twists and turns yourself when reading it. It opens with a family arising in the morning and going about their business in the full and awful knowledge that their aunt and sister will die that morning – and continues to uncover the tangled skeins of lies and deceptions and desires that have led to this morning.

I found myself pondering the title, and the opening paragraph with which I have also opened this blog post, more and more as I progressed through the book. The relevance is clear; we can convince ourselves of almost anything if we think it and believe it and say it enough, and indeed this family live in a construct that is eventually astonishing, and certainly not what it initially appears to be. The conventionality of their lives is in fact underlaid by overwhelmingly passionate desires and feelings, afternoon tea and cake on a nicely laid table about to burst asunder with uncontrollably boiling sulphurous acid, and the author does a wonderful job of keeping the tea on the table while giving us, the reader, tantalising glimpses of what’s going on under the table.

I did find the first probably third of the book rather confusing at times, a lot of characters are introduced, but it is an enjoyable challenge keeping up with who is who and how they are related. As one progresses through the novel, all becomes clearer (sort of), and it’s apparent that this is a device the author has deliberately employed, it is in fact completely necessary to the plot.

One of the things I like the most about our great British female crime writers is the attention to detail, the trimmings as it were, with which they illustrate their work, and this novel is no different. It is set in post war austerity Britain in the 1950’s, pre contraception, pre womens rights…and I find myself again not wanting to say too much and give away the plot….it is written by a woman, about women, and most of all about an eventually lethal struggle between women, and it is magnificent.

In short, I thoroughly recommend this book! I have no idea when Mum read it as she has not initialled and dated this one inside the cover, but I’m fairly sure she bought it in the mid Nineties and read it immediately after visiting me in Australia as it contained an Australian bookmark, just the sort of thing Mum would have picked up while on holidays. It was a lovely treat to find that inside it, as well as the book itself.

As always, if you would like to add this superb thriller to your own book collection, please get in touch with me either here or on our Facebook page, whereupon I shall wrap it up securely in brown paper and string and post it to you as a gift with much love from both Mum and me. I am almost a year into this project now and enjoying it as much as ever, and I would like to add, I am so thrilled by the support you have all shown for it – thank you all!

Here’s an Amazon link if you have missed out on claiming this book but would like to purchase it, it’s only £3.99 on there, or of course you could pop into your local library for it, heaven knows our libraries need supporting or even more of them will close and what a dreadful thing that would be.

Lots of love, Becky XXX

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32. ‘sorry’ by Gail Jones.

Oh my goodness. Off to the great Southern Land again, and this time, in tears by the end of the book. That doesn’t happen very often!

Mum had a great interest in Australia, visiting me there several times. She read Australian authors with delight, I remember her joy at discovering the work of Peter Carey, and she particularly loved Bill Bryson’s marvellous book, Down Under, reading it at least twice! This wonderfully lyrical and poetic novel is new to me, however it is one Mum read in 2008, so it ‘made the cut’ so to speak, when Mum down-sized her library. That means she loved it and intended to re read it at some point.

I’ve just finished it – I began during the week, but it is such a ‘big’ read for a fairly slender volume, that I put it aside until I had time to curl up on the sofa with no distractions and thoroughly read it. I am glad I did so, as it is fabulous. The author, Gail Jones, has won many prizes for her work, and this novel was shortlisted for six major prizes in Australia and the UK on its publication in 2008. Her writing style, in this novel at least, is breath-taking. I found myself on many occasions going back and re-reading sentences to fully appreciate them, and her subject matter  provided a brilliant counterpoint to Rabbit Proof Fence which was my last review. Fantastic.

The central character is Perdita, a little girl born to older English expatriate parents who don’t really want her to begin with, they almost hoped she would die at birth. As a result, her principal relationships are not with them, but with the Aboriginal women who nursed her, Billy, the ‘slow’ deaf mute son of the neighbouring farming family, and finally and most importantly, with Mary, a young Aboriginal girl from the missions who is brought in to care for her when her mother is admitted to hospital, having completely lost touch with reality. Stella lives in a world of Shakespeare, frequently quoting great chunks of plays, while her husband Nicholas, who has come to Australia as an anthropologist to study Aboriginal culture, has long since lost interest and become a mean spirited and rather nasty person, raping Aboriginal girls, and becoming obsessed with the progress of the Second World War in Europe.

The brutal murder of Nicholas in their shack is the opening scene of the novel, and the central theme. From page 1 –

‘This is a story that can only be told in a whisper. There is a hush to difficult forms of knowing, an abashment, a sorrow, an inclination towards silence. My throat is misshapen with all it now carries. My heart is a sour, indolent fruit. I think the muzzle of time has made me thus, has deformed my mouth, my voice, my wanting to say. At first there was just this single image: her dress, the particular blue of hydrangeas, spattered with the purple of my fathers blood.’

Perdita, Billy, Mary, and her mother Stella, are all there, but who did it? Perdita is the narrator, but she cannot remember, and has developed a dreadful stutter after the event, rendering her almost completely mute.

Appropriately named for the character in Shakespeare’s Tempest, Perdita finds herself aligned far more closely with the aborigines, who value life as a whole, ongoing tale, have intricate kinship bonds, and knowledge of the land on a deeper level, than with the white Australians, who have driven them from their ancestral lands and forcibly removed their children.  Aboriginal children, especially half caste, as we saw in Rabbit Proof Fence, were forcibly removed from their families and ‘schooled’ in institutions to provide service to the whites who had stolen their lands.  Perdita is aware of the injustices, having seen her father raping Mary even though she didn’t really understand what he was doing, and she finds a sense of order, love, and care in Aboriginal culture which she definitely does not receive from her own people. Reference is made to the Aboriginal view of the land and the people all belonging together, and Perdita finds solace in their acceptance of her as a part of that whole picture.

The Australian bush is brilliantly portrayed in this book. I could taste the red dust, smell the gum trees, hear the lorikeets, see the cobalt sky, and Ms Jones description of a violent storm was captivating. I loved a chapter where the children were introduced to honey ants by Mary – they are ‘her’ creature so she won’t eat them herself, but Billy and Perdita’s delight is her delight. I remember my children eating honey ants! It is a place like no other, and this author knows it well. Her descriptive passages somehow also manage to convey beautifully the Aboriginal one-ness with the land and emphasise the white Australians inability to cope with an environment they could not control.

I loved this. I recommend it most whole-heartedly. I shan’t say anything about how the story ends. I shall instead add my voice to the countless Australians who have said, sorry. What was done in the last century to the native people of a great country was truly awful – saying sorry is a very small step forward, and Ms Jones, with this magnificent tale, says it from the heart.

As always, if you would like this marvellous book, Mums copy, bought by her and read in 2008, please get in touch with me and I shall be delighted to gift it forward to you. If it has already been claimed, here is a link to purchase a copy on Amazon…

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and seriously, if anyone can talk me through adding this link more simply…please get in touch!!!!!

Don’t forget to like and follow the facebook page Mums Books. Thanks for reading, and I do hope you read this book! Much love, Becky XXX

28. ‘A God in Ruins’ by Kate Atkinson.

Thank you, Mum! This is literally the best book I have read so far this year, I picked it up at random from the shelf, sat down to have a quick look at it with a cup of tea, and finished it in one uninterrupted and unexpected five hour binge session, (the Mr had to go and buy fish and chips for supper again!) I laughed and wept, and was completely and utterly enthralled! Enough of a recommendation? It should be. This is a work by a novelist completely on top of her game.

A God in Ruins is the companion book to Ms Atkinson’s previous work, Life after Life, which I have not read but certainly intend to, however it is a stand alone book; you don’t have to have read the previous one at all to enjoy it – as I said, I haven’t yet. It tells the story of Teddy Todd as he negotiates the twentieth century after miraculously surviving the Second World War as a Halifax bomber pilot. As the blurb on the back says, ‘his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never thought he would have’.

Teddy is so likeable. He tries so hard to do the right thing, vows to himself that if he survives, he will live a kind and thoughtful life, and he does. He marries his childhood sweetheart, becomes a teacher and then a journalist, does everything possible for his, shall we say, difficult daughter Viola, loves his wife in a steady, dependable way. But his life. like so many others, has been irrevocably altered by his experiences, and by using the technique of jumping backwards and forwards in time, Ms Atkinson enables us to ‘know’ Teddy so well.

Her descriptive passages are awesome; especially harrowing are the detailed accounts of the horrific reality of bombing missions over Germany. Her research was clearly impeccable, and her description of the firebombing of Cologne is spine chilling. Her characters come alive on the page, and even her use of the literary trick of jumping from past to future, and back again is done so skilfully that there is no interruption to the ‘flow’ of the novel. Her characters are vividly drawn and completely engaging, her depiction of the family home, Fox Hollow, with its Growlery and roses in the Home Counties is exactly as it should be.

And finally, the ending. I cannot say more without spoiling it for you – but it is one of the most unexpected conclusions I’ve ever come across. Astonishing. READ IT!!!!

As always, if you would like Mum’s copy of this brilliant, brilliant novel, please get in touch with me either through here or the Facebook page, and it will give me immense pleasure to gift it forward to you. If you have missed out on Mum’s copy, here is a link to buy yourself one on Amazon. I promise you, this book is ten out of ten in every respect!

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27.’Year of Wonders’ by Geraldine Brooks.

What a lovely find this was last week amongst Mum’s library! I knew the name of the author thanks to her career as a journalist – she’s been a highly regarded war correspondent – but had no idea she had ventured into fiction. However, this tale is based on solid facts, and as such is refreshingly well researched and detailed in its subject matter, with the added delight of the authors marvellously written conception of how the villagers of Eyam would have been living their lives and engaging with one another during the horrors of the Black Death.

Historical fact – the villagers of Eyam, (pronounced Eem), in Derbyshire, took the heroic decision to quarantine themselves in 1666 when the plague broke out there, and thus stop it from spreading to the surrounding area. It was believed that the infection had arrived in a bolt of cloth from London, and, led by their saintly rector, William Mompesson, they lived, (and died), in isolation for a year, saving the surrounding populations from the disease.

Ms Brooks has taken this information and written a novel around it, seen from the perspective of the central character, Anna, a widowed shepherdess. It is graphical in its detail and accuracy, portraying the terror and the madness that grips the village as well as the acts of heroic compassion performed by individuals. The fictional rector, Michael Mompellion, and his fatally flawed wife Elinor develop a close relationship with Anna, who has lost her husband to a mining accident and her little boys to the plague. Anna herself is refreshingly energetic and forthright, someone you’d be glad to have on your side in a time like this.

Four fifths of the population of Eyam died that year. Their story deserves telling, and this novel does so brilliantly, mixing historical facts with an engaging story line, beautifully drawn characters even when they are horrible characters like Anna’s father and stepmother, and captivating insights into the way we lived and worked in the 17th century. Really well worth reading!

As always, if you would like to have Mum’s copy – she has noted the date Nov ’02 inside the front cover – to add to your bookshelf, please get in touch either here or through the Facebook page and I will be delighted to send it to you as a gift from Mum and I. If someone has already claimed this copy, here is an Amazon link for you to purchase a copy, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

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24. ‘Diary of an Ordinary Woman’ by Margaret Forster.

A marvellous read, and a very interesting concept – this novel was conceived by Margaret Forster after she was contacted regarding nearly a century’s worth of diaries kept by no-one famous or notable, just an ordinary woman of 98 who had lived through the turbulent twentieth century. In fact, the lady in question remains as anonymous as she ever was, because the proposition to ‘make something’ of the diaries was retracted. However, the seed had been sown, and as a result we have this magnificent book, a fictionalised memoir of Millicent King. What a read! and from an author deeply interested and engaged in chronicling the lives, the thoughts, the feelings of women, it is a winner on every level. Mum gave me the book years ago, I loved it then, and I found her copy deep in one of the bookshelves that are groaning with her library last week, did a little happy dance and then devoured it in a four hour sitting, moving only once or twice for a fresh cup of tea. The Mr had to go and buy fish and chips for his supper. Magnificent.

We meet Millicent in 1914 when she is a precocious and opinionated thirteen, and from the start she captures one’s attention – ‘her’ prose is dryly observational, at times extremely funny, and definitely captivating. She bemoans her fate, criticises her family and friends ruthlessly, and in short sounds exactly as one would expect a thirteen year old diarist to sound. Definitely very petulant and self centred. she records her disappointment at not being able to go to college, her resentment at having to take care of her younger siblings, her disgust that there are so many younger siblings – didn’t her parents have any self control? As she matures, the tone of ‘her’ writing changes as we would expect it to, and becomes more observational and less passionate.

However, the tale she is telling is against the backdrop of the two wars, the tensions in Europe between them, the horror of the Blitz, the civil rights movements, the Greenham Common women’s camp. Millicent is not a political creature, nor is she a romantic heroine. She is simply, as the title states, an ordinary woman doing the best she can with her ordinary life. And as in real life, there are great gaps where a terrible loss has left her silent.

It’s a wonderful read. Regardless of the fact that it is a work of fiction, it is nonetheless so plausible and so well written that Millicent comes alive on the pages as a believable representative of her generation, and of the ordinary people who make a nation what it is.

This one is not available to gift as usual I’m afraid; my eldest daughter arrived the day after I had finished it, listened to me raving about it, and nabbed it immediately, however, here’s a link to Amazon, or ask for it at your local library (goodness knows we need to be using our libraries or they’ll all close!). But seriously, read this. It’s amazing.

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23. ‘Regeneration’ by Pat Barker.

After reviewing ‘Noonday’ last week, and mentioning that the Regeneration Trilogy is in my top ten, and was also much loved by Mum, one of our lovely regular Mum’s Books readers told me she had never heard of it and would be looking for it. This was all the prompting I needed to go and rummage on the shelves and find Mum’s copies….no excuse needed for me to re-read this brilliant work, and so here is the first volume, ‘Regeneration’.

I’ll let you all know right away that Catherine has already reserved this book and I shall be posting it to her this week, but I’ll pop an Amazon link in at the bottom for anyone else who would like to read this…and I certainly recommend that you do, it is simply brilliant!

It is an absolutely masterful blend of fact and fiction, characters from history given additional and authentic voices by the author. This book opens in 1917, and the novel revolves around the meeting of two men. The poet and war hero Siegfried Sassoon is on his way to Craiglockhart Army Hospital where he will be treated by the psychologist W.H.R. Rivers. Both men existed, both are notable. This story explores in depth the impact they have upon one another, alongside the gruesome and barbaric background of the trenches in France, and the additional stories and experiences of other characters, both fictional and real..

It is a profoundly anti war book. In a narrative from Rivers in the final pages, we read,

‘A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance’.

Words that we would do well to remember, as we also recall the millions of young men who died on both sides with the approach of the hundred year anniversary of the Armistice.

The other characters are also brilliant – both fictional and historical. Wilfrid Owen is also undergoing treatment at Craiglockhart for ‘shell shock’, and Ms Barker tells us of help given to the young Owen by Sassoon in amending his ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ – Sassoon had been published, Owen was an unknown. The fictional Prior is a fascinating and complex creature, a working class lad who’s an officer with all the class distinctions and difficulties that that combination entailed back then, and we shall see far more of him in the next two books. His girlfriend, Sarah Lumb, a munitions worker, and her terrifying mother Ada. Burns, an affable youngster with an appalling consequence to his time in the trenches. Honestly, all superb.

It can certainly be read as a stand alone book – but I intend to re read the other two volumes now, and am thoroughly looking forward to it. If you are looking for a Great War read, you cant go past this trilogy. It has a definite massive thumbs up from both Mum and I.

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I am sure I can put these links in in a more tidy manner! Another challenge for my technically challenged brain! But that will take you to the book on Amazon UK.

As always, I welcome your comments, either here or on the Facebook page. Happy reading!

 

 

22. ‘Noonday’ by Pat Barker.

I had hoped to have this ready to publish for Fathers Day here in the UK, in memory of and honour of my adoptive father, Fred. As I told you all in my last review, I was adopted as a baby, and this book absolutely spoke to me about my adoptive Dad’s experiences as an anti aircraft gunner on the Embankment during this part of WWII – as well as those of my adoptive Mum, who was a theatre Sister in Yorkshire throughout the war dealing with the horrific injuries sustained by civilians during the bombings. My natural Mum, the Mum of Mums Books fame, remembered the later air raids remarkably clearly, and my natural grandfather was a London taxi driver who spent the war fire fighting through the Blitz.

Born in the early Sixties, but brought up by parents who were old enough to be my grandparents and had therefore both seen active service in the second world war, that war was very real and vivid to me. I grew up in London with an air raid shelter in the garden, and with many bomb sites in the area which had been cleared but not yet rebuilt. I grew up with the Dambusters and my Dad’s flying jacket still in the hall cupboard. And with stories like the one of the night Dad decided to transfer from the Artillery to the RAF.

As a public school boy, and coming from a family with a history of military service, he was a reservist in the OTC at the outbreak of war in September 1939, and joined the Royal Artillery as an officer, being posted to an anti aircraft gun post I think in or near Battersea, south of the river anyway. He manned that post through the period of time ensconced by this book, and, after a particularly harrowing night, returned to the Anderson hut he was billeted in to find it had been completely destroyed by a bomb. Along with everyone in it.

At this point, he said, he looked up at the sky that had rained destruction the night before and thought to himself, I’d rather be up there – and as an officer was able to transfer into the RAF, train as a pilot in Saskatchewan, Canada, and fly Spitfires for the rest of the war. Here he is. He’s twenty years old, has just gained his wings as a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF, is flying a seriously amazing aeroplane with reckless abandon, (he’ll crash three of them, flying one straight through an advertising hoarding), and has several girlfriends – within a year, he will commit the unforgivable error of sending the wrong three letters to the wrong three girlfriends. Oops! Still my hero though. Apologies for the poor picture quality – it’s a photo of a photo.

 

And, as a teenager straight out of school, he saw, and fought, the first brutally heavy Blitz in the late summer and through the winter of 1940/41, during which spell of time this amazing book is set. Reading the book, and remembering that Pat Barker is renowned for her accuracy of historical detail, I am once again filled with admiration for my adoptive parents generation. I suppose we can only hope that few of us will ever have to experience that horror, although I’d like to think we would cope just as well. And of course we must remember that there are wars and bombings and incendiary devices alive and well in many parts of the world today. Heaven help us.

After the war, my Dad gained a degree and went on to work for the Home Office until his retirement. He was instrumental in the development of drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities, cared deeply about the difficulties people face, and did his best to work to help the under privileged. He was one of the kindest souls you’d ever meet, and used the phrase ‘if nothing else, always be kind’ long before it became a Facebook meme. He was a wonderful Dad, I loved him so very much, and he loved me. And I write this review with him very much in mind. He was there.

It’s a wonderful book. I have read and loved Pat Barkers first world war trilogy, and I had no idea this volume was the third in another trilogy until I’d finished it – I just saw Pat Barker’s name in amongst Mums Books, thought ‘Great!’, pulled it out and read it in an afternoon…even missing a World Cup game to finish it. It’s gripping. I think I’d read it again as a stand alone book.

The characters are completely believable, real people. The heat of the summer of 1940 combined with the fear gripping Britain at the time that a German invasion was imminent is palpable. Moving into London in the continuing heat, one genuinely feels the terrifying awareness Londoners had that the shorter days would mean longer nights for bombings. London itself, alway dear to my heart, is beautifully described by someone obviously very familiar with its streets and passages. The blackout and everything it entailed, including, and I shall have to look this up, a passage describing how prostitutes coped with it, nailing tacks into their heels so the tap tap tap of them alerted potential customers, together with a strategically aimed narrow beam of light from a black out torch.

There is a graphic description of the characters involvement in what has been described as the second Great Fire of London, when over the 29th and 30th of December 1940, over 100,000 bombs fell on the city and the East End. Horrifying. But it happened, and this section of the book immerses you in the heat and terror, the taste and the smell of burning bricks, the incredible heat, desperation, and destruction.

I strongly suspect that the principal characters have been involved throughout the trilogy so I am deliberately trying to avoid any spoilers for you should you decide to read them all, (…and I think you should based on my experience of the Regeneration Trilogy.)

I’d recommend a Pat Barker I haven’t read simply because she is one of the best writers ever, and I certainly give this one a solid thumbs up. If you’d like to add this, my Mum’s copy, to your bookshelf, please just get in touch – the whole purpose of this blog is to share our Mums love of reading, and I will be delighted to send it to the first person who asks for it! Here is an Amazon link if you have missed out!

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The other books in the series are Life Class, and Toby’s Room, and I’m buying them.

Here’s to you Dad, and all the other heroes out there. Much love XXX