~Longbourn Jo Baker Named after the house in which the Bennet family lived, this is a sobering portrayal of what must take place behind the scenes in order to make the household of a respectable family run smoothly. A world where something as simple as an afternoon walk in spring upstairs, requires an afternoon of cleaning muddy boots downstairs. And how an evening excursion to a ball creates all manner of excitement and giddiness for the young ladies attending, but also creates a mountain of laundry and sewing and patience for their servants who must make it all happen – not…
Category: <span>READING</span>
~Never Let Me Go Kazuro Ishiguro In the late 1990’s Kathy H, 31, narrates the story of her two closest childhood friends and their days at Hailsham, a boarding school set in the quiet isolation of the English countryside. It was a privileged school, we are told, and its students understood that they were special. And while it is a classic coming-of-age story, it takes place in a world built on unsteady ground, where things don’t quite add up. The narrative unfurls gently with hints of this and glimpses of that: an odd scene, a suggestive word, a strange question.…
Welcome to Glorious Tuga Francesca Segal London research vet, Charlotte Walker, travels to Tuga to study the endangered gold coin tortoise. Tuga is a tiny British territory reachable only twice a year via a very long boat ride. On her trip over, Charlotte suffers from horrible seasickness and is tended to by Dan, a doctor nervously returning to Tuga after 15 years in order to take over island doctor duties from his Uncle. Upon landing on the tropical paradise the two are swept into the warm embrace of a bevy of quirky islanders and enveloped in the sweet scent of…
The bucolic town of Eyam is nestled in the gently rolling hills of the Derbyshire dales. With its rambling roses and stone cottages, there isn’t much to differentiate its quaintness from other small towns in the area—except that Eyam has a tragic tale to tell. In 1664 the deadly plague known as the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, had returned once again to bedevil. It was to be the last major outbreak of the disease in England, but as it went on its way, it took 100,000 Londoners with it: one quarter of the city’s population at the time. For the…
~Ninety-Nine Glimpses Of Princess Margaret Craig Brown This biography is a whimsical and highly entertaining mix of fact and fancy. It comes at its target from a myriad angles via diaries, biographies, palace announcements and lists — as in the possessions auctioned after her death or a chapter about the phrases coined in the year of her birth. And scattered throughout are re-imaginings of what might have happened if, say, she had married Peter Townsend. If you’ve watched The Crown you’ll have enjoyed Helen Bonham Carter’s magnificent portrayal of Princess Margaret in which she comes across as witty and whimsical, a…
Instructions for a Heatwave Maggie O’Farrell A family drama set against the infamous British heatwave of 1976. Robert Riordan, recently retired, husband to Gretta, gets up from the breakfast table one morning, leaves the house to buy a newspaper and doesn’t return. Gretta, the Irish matriarch of this family that has settled in London, calls her kids who then return home—including Aoife, the youngest, who hasn’t been seen in several years and currently lives in New York. From here we learn the backstories of each sibling and how they interact with each other. Michael Francis, a history teacher who put aside…
~Say Nothing Patrick Radden Keefe A brilliantly written, hard to put down account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland between the 1960’s and 1998 Good Friday Agreement. At its centre is the story of Jean McConville, a 38 year old, recently widowed mother of ten who is kidnapped in front of her children and never seen again. With a back and forth timeline Keefe unravels the details of the kidnapping, setting it against the harrowing history of the IRA, Sinn Fein and the antagonism of Protestant Unions vs Catholic Republicans, while also giving the backstory of a myriad villains involved…
~The Ocean At The End Of The Lane Neil Gaiman The beautiful, magical story of a seven year old (unnamed) boy who, unable to process the traumatic events of an adult world, turns all he sees into a kingdom of monsters and hunger birds, of worms coming out of his foot, little girls who might be eleven years old or a billion and a body of water which might be an ocean or a pond. It’s a lyrical and haunting embodiment of childhood fears and the struggle to comprehend the cruelties of a child’s landscape, fraught with loneliness and insecurities.…
Now that the shorter days and cooler weather are well and truly upon us, it’s time to curl up in a comfortable corner with a book. I know that summer/beach reading gets all the love, but it’s the fall and winter seasons that are my favorites. To be hunkered down with a good book, a warm drink, and the glow of a fire is my idea of bliss. And I’m going to make an assumption here that most avid readers have some sort of a comfort category. That one genre that pulls you back time and time again when what…
A small selection of books set in England which are as light and airy as sponge but nicely grounded in solid writing. They are not going to blow your mind with their deep insight, they may not be Lincoln in the Bardo clever and their endings might be a little too neat and tidy, but sometimes, especially now that the holiday season is upon us, that is exactly what an afternoon cup of tea requires. And maybe a plate of biscuits. Definitely a plate of biscuits. ~Mr Rosenblum Dreams in English Natasha Solomons In 1937 Jack Rosenblum, along with his…