May Round-Up

 A fiction month with a smattering of poetry and only two library books. But.... two ebooks. Yikes!

I began the month with SJ Bradley's Maps of Imaginary Towns. It isn't published yet so I won't blog until publication day - September 27th 2024. It's a diverse short story collection where the majority of stories are open ended and begging for the reader to form not necessarily their own conclusion but their own interpretations of what might happen next. 

Next up Was Stacey Halls' The Foundling. I had recently read The Household which motivated me too seek out another of her books. I did blog about this one! https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-household-stacey-halls.html 

Claire Douglas' The Wrong Sister was a Tandem Collective mail out. I'd never read any of this author's books before but I hope to rectify this. I was gripped. It was genuinely unputdownable. https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-wrong-sister-claire-douglas.html

I like to walk. But as I've aged and arthritis has taken such a hold I find myself needing to sit down more frequently to let my hurting joints recover a bit. I'm happy to view the natural landscapes abut I also like to read. And so I have the kindle app on my phone. I don't enjoy reading on a kindle but I've found that reading a couple of chapters allows my body to recharge enough to carry on walking. It takes me a longer time to read a book this way but I will admit to finding it enjoyable. I finished Linda Huber's The Cold, Cold, Sea a tense missing child story.

Kate Grenville's A Room Made of Leaves was my next read. A delightful piece of antipodean hisfic.

https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2024/05/a-room-made-of-leaves-kate-grenville.html

Poetry was my next stop. It is for a blog tour in June so the blog post will be ready a little later. Christiana Jasutan is a young poet and This is where I find the softest hurt is her debut collection exploring the relationship between the body and the world using a variety of style and form. 

Lying Perfectly Still by Laura Fish isn't published until October 2024 so my review is not due yet. It is about Koliwe who leaves the UK for a job as an aid worker in Swaziland. The novel examines some of the corruption within the system. 

Another Kate Grenville story. This time The Secret River which tells the tale of one of Grenville's ancestors sent to Oz as a convict in the nineteenth century. I reviewed it. https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-secret-river-kate-grenville.html

A new book by Sarah Perry is always a treat. I reserved this at my local library. and they had to send out to another library to get a copy! Ambitious, complex and beautifully written, Enlightenment had me rapt.

I was lucky enough to be sent a finished copy of Liv Constantine's The Next Mrs Parrish. But first I needed to read The Last Mrs. Parrish! And quick. So I did. But on the dreaded kindle. That's two books on the kindle this month. What's happening to me?!

The Secret River - Kate Grenville

If I'm honest the enduring feeling I have after reading this book is one of anger. Not because it isn't a good book! Goodness me, no. But anger at what was done to the Aboriginal people of Australia. And yet the book is a story of one man overcoming the, odds and fulfilling in part, his dream. 

The protagonist, William Thornhill, is a convict sent to New South Wales. The character is inspired by one of Kate Grenville's own ancestors. In making the best of his situation Thornhill becomes enamoured of a piece of land that he wishes to have for his own. To the settlers and convicts it seemed that all you needed to do was claim it for yourself and, hey presto, you're a landowner. But the taking of the land is really tantamount to theft - theft from the indigenous people who have tended it for generation after generation. 

It's a novel breathtaking in its descriptive beauty of the antipodean landscape yet graphic in its treatment of the brutality afforded the Darug people. It's an uncompromising tale with an undercurrent that suggests impending doom all the way through. 

What Kate Grenville does so cleverly with the character of Thornhill is make us believe that his humanity might win through and that he is not as base as some of his vile compatriots. So the reader doesn't necessarily dislike him for that hope remains.

His wife, Sal, was one of my favourite characters, loyal to her husband yet surely in an undesirable. situation not of her own making. I suppose that anyone in such circumstances will strive to do the best they can. Here making a living from the land was almost the only option but there was no sense of the settlers working in tandem with people already working that land. Instead they foisted their own ways without consideration.  Sal seems to be one of the few who might just make an effort to co exist.

Broadly the novel exposes the clash of cultures and the disastrous outcomes that can cause. It's solid prose that is slow in places but conjures expertly the tenor of the times. The research is impeccable and there is no faltering for the reader of the sense that you are there in nineteenth century Australia. 

My thanks to  Canongate books for a gifted copy. 

And I Will Make of You a Vowel Sound - Morag Anderson

 

In recent years, perhaps credit must go to the #MeToo movement, women’s voices are much more prevalent than they may have been in the past. So it’s no surprise that poetry, too, celebrates and documents the lives of women. Which brings us to this collection of poems by Moran Anderson. 

From the very first poem in the collection 'A Woman Stops Writing a Poem' (very relatable for an errant scribbler such as myself) the moods and theme of the collection is cemented. Celebrating, perhaps, chronicling, maybe, but offering voice certainly to the disempowered females from now and then. A paradox of gracefulness and fierce anger Anderson looks at all the stages of womanhood. 

Acknowledging  the influence of several different poets Anderson observes females from childhood through the stages of life and differing social standings and situations. From neglected children Mandy at Number 9 - 'Dry-mouthed from want of milk she learns to fear her mother’s breast,' - to the loss of a child from the sibling perspective, Portrait of my Father with a Saw - 'Loss—a thorn that cannot be drawn by clenched teeth or the heat of a daughter’s need.' - Anderson delves deep into that intuitive place that allows the poet to give voice to a plethora of emotions and perceptions that might otherwise go unnoticed. The Scottish heritage is never far from the surface of the poems, historically and culturally, 'Bleak Greenock morning skulks the empty dock, herringbone sky billows like the Nancy’s sails.' and 'You walk worn muscles to the corrugated camp, pray for sleep’s deep trench, stroll with me on Donegal’s bladderwrack shores.'

I found The Shoplifter very powerful. Succinctly the writer has expressed the paradox of being a woman and being a mother, where the two states might converge or diverge. But I think one of my favourite poems in the collection is No Ordinary Tuesday 2001. That Tuesday was September 11th and I think it resonated with me so acutely because I was in Canada at the time and watched events unfold in real time on the TV in utter disbelief. The poignancy of the protagonist acknowledging her unborn child against the death leap of a woman from one of the towers is so pertinent, so subtle.

But perhaps it is the concluding poem that really does it for me! Prefaced by a quotation from the Scottish Dylan Thomas, W.S. Graham Last Boat Home it also gives us the title of the entire collection and, if I may, I'd like to quote in full.

'LAST BOAT HOME

for Katherine

‘Bear these words in mind

as they bear me soundly

beyond my reach’

- W.S. Graham

Though I fade like sailors’ footprints, 

do not moulder
under grief’s woollen blanket.

When the ocean knocks at your wind-scraped door

 rise to greet me,

the first Atlantic bite.

When simmer dim’s lamp is trimmed bright and clear,

 find me trailing west—
the last knuckle of light.

When words freight your untilled tongue, 

sit by a rogue of stones at Scurrival
and sing.

In the bittersweet lull between two days, 

open your mouth
to salted air—

and I will make of you a vowel sound.'

My thanks to Isabelle Kenyon at Fly on the Wall Press for a pdf of this collection to be published on May 24th 2024 available from 

https://www.flyonthewallpress.co.uk/product-page/and-i-will-make-of-you-a-vowel-sound

A Room Made of Leaves - Kate Grenville

 

As with Restless Dolly Maunder I had the sense that Kate Grenville was once again giving voice to another ordinary woman unwilling to be defined by marriage, the age and the culture she was born into. 

John Macarthur is a real historical figure, (I know this because I googled him!) who married Elizabeth Veale a Devonshire  farm lass and relocated to Australia. The story is based on the frank and expansive memoirs of Elizabeth. 

The marriage is not a happy one. Macarthur is a devious and almost vindictive man but both he and Elizabeth forge a marriage that seems to flourish on the outside whilst Elizabeth hides her true feelings. Her husband reads all her outgoing letters so she cannot even confide in her best friend. But where there is a will there is a way and Elizabeth finds outlets and fulfilment of a kind.

John Macarthur gained some attention for being the founder of the Australian wool industry yet the backbone of these achievements were surely down to Elizabeth. 

Structurally the book relies completely on the diary form which as the authors note advises us is constructed from Elizabeth's journal. 

'I've done nothing more than transcribe the papers in the box. Of course, I had to use my imagination where the faded old ink was impossible to read, and I spent considerable time arranging the fragments in what I judged to be the best order, but beyond that I've let Elizabeth Macarthur tell her own story.'

Elizabeth McArthur certainly had a way with words then but I cannot help wondering whether the ink was faded throughout the entire manuscript! 😉 There is an intriguing quotation from Elizabeth Macarthur before the book begins - 'Do not believe too quickly!'  

As one might expect from Kate Grenville the writing is confident and assured. She knows how to tell a story and her research is impeccable. I found myself engaged with Elizabeth but also with the indigenous people of the Antipodes. In fact if I had a criticism of the book I would have liked more of these people and their struggle. The battle of Parramatta is documented and Pemulwuy, the Aboriginal Resistance leader features. But as the story of one woman who makes the best of her situation it is superlative.

My thanks to Canongate Books for my gifted copy.

The Wrong Sister - Claire Douglas

 

I am not one to bandy the term 'unputdownable' around willy-nilly. It's oft used and I have found it to be a misleading term. Sometimes I've found it applied to certain books and discovered that they are in fact extremely putdownable!  But this book is - unputdownable!

I am new to the work of Claire Douglas and I see that she is quite prolific. If her other books are anything like this I shall be seeking them out forthwith!

I think that it is complex and detailed plotting that drives this book forward so compulsively. Whereas some books are very much character driven the characters here seem to be at the mercy of the plot and it's labyrinthine whims. They are full of secrets and as unreliable as characters in these type of thrillers are. Often they re hard to like but I always believe that the reader doesn't need to be emotionally invested in them if they are to remain objective about the story as a whole. 

And it all begins with a prologue. I love a prologue! It whets your appetite but as you become immersed in the book you can forget about it until something you read triggers it, reminds you and you go, oh yeah! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's have a little blurb.

'Tasha and her older sister Alice might look alike but they couldn't be more different. Tasha's married with two children and still living in her home town near Bristol, while Alice is a high-flying scientist traveling the world with her equally successful husband. But each would trust the other with their life.

So when Tasha and husband, Aaron want a break and Alice offers to stay in their home with the kids, Tasha knows they're in safe hands.

But she couldn't be more wrong.

The call from home is unexpected:Alice and her husband Kyle have been attacked. Alice is in intensive care. Kyle is dead. 

Rushing to Alice's bedside, Tasha finds the police trying to piece events together. She can't think why anyone would attack her sister. Then the note arrives, addressed to Tasha.

It was supposed to be you....'

And the problem, I suppose, with reviewing a book like this is that's it is all too easy to give things away. The more complex a plot the bigger the risk that becomes so I've got to be careful! The narrative offers us perspectives from several of the characters and you need to pay attention, also to the time frames. 

One of the ways in which a book like this works is to offer clues but also to try and send the reader off into the wrong direction. To do that there has to be a lot going on and there really is here. But the writing is tight and structured so you never get the feeling of floundering in a maze that can so easily happen and frustrate the reader. Here, as the plot develops, it's like the reader is being taken down a narrowing tunnel to a not quite obvious conclusion. In some books it's easy to see where that conclusion is headed and having 'guessed' correctly the reader can feel pretty smug, but that wasn't the case here. The twists were unexpected and not obvious. I would doubt many people were able to surmise the perpetrator accurately. There were suspicions and anyone in possession of some specific scientific knowledge might have been able to do so but I was not that person!!

I found it very entertaining and was able to escape fully - one of those books where you are in such a rush to finish it to find out whodunnit but there's a sense of disappointment when you have finished it! 

My thanks to Tandem Collective for a copy of the book.

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The Wild Swimmers - William Shaw

 

My brother lent me my first William Shaw book (I say lent, I’ve yet to return it!) It was the first in the Breen and Tozer series, A Song for Dead Lips. I read it, finished it, went straight out and bought the next three! I loved them. I wanted the series to go on. But nothing lasts forever, does it? So, I tenderly placed them on my bookshelf nestling together ….in the correct order of course…. and I moved on to other books.

 

But then one day I was sent an advanced reading copy of The Trawlerman by William Shaw (also accompanied by a copy of Grave’s End). I think it was in response to a social media offer for the book. Ok, I might not have started them in the right order, but I didn’t care for I became totally hooked on the Alex Cupidi series. Alex is the daughter of Breen and Tozer! Is that a spoiler? Sorry if it is. I was ecstatic! It felt like one series I had loved was allowed to develop into another that I loved equally. So off I went to get hold of the other two books in the series, oh and The Birdwatcher which features a character from the Cupidi series in a standalone.

 

I knew the Wild Swimmers was due to hit the bookstands in May and, Reader, I was ready!! BUT….but….but… the wonderful Elizabeth Masters at riverrun books sent me a proof which had me hyperventilating with excitement.

 

So, what is it about this series that so stokes my reader infatuation? Firstly, they are set in a part of the country where my paternal family hail from. I know these places. I’ve been visiting them since I was a kid, and it fills me with delight when places I know feature in books that I read. I can picture the locations and I think it enhances the overall experience. But location alone can’t elevate a book without there being some substance beyond that sense of place. Take the locations away and would I still love these books? Yes, I would.

 

Alex is a great character, flawed, yes, real, yes but also determined and intelligent when it comes to solving crime. She’s open and self-critical particularly as a parent for Zoe, her daughter, who is another of the series’ recurring characters. Fascinating depiction of a teenager. The series also has tight and twisty plots that has the reader thinking and surmising. The seamier underworlds that most areas possess to a degree are explored alongside the respectable which may not always be respectable!

 

The Wild Swimmers possesses all the elements that made the previous books in the series so compelling for me. Although Alex is the main character she doesn’t dominate the narrative. There is a sub plot here that allows a couple of the other characters to take a step up from their supporting roles to inject a scrumptious bit of tension and anxiety whilst meandering smoothly alongside Alex’s current investigation. Some parts will have you on the edge of your seat whilst others will have you yelling ‘No!’ at the pages! 

It's a book to pay attention to because the clues are there. And whilst I didn’t identify the perpetrator right away, I was heading in the right direction which made me feel pretty smug.  I refuse to divulge too much more. To suffice I will offer the basic blurb.

 

‘The body of a local woman is found washed up on the Folkestone shoreline. Cupidi must discover the missing link between a group of wild swimmers, an online dating profile and a slippery killer who feels remarkably close to home.’

 

And if that doesn’t whet your appetite I don’t know what will! If you’re a lover of crime fiction and you’ve never read any of this series I do recommend them. 

 

Thanks to Elizabeth Masters at riverrun books for a gifted copy.