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…
~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.…
~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…
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…
Read More Seven British Historical Murder Mystery Book Series
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…
Read More Charming And Quirky English Novels To Accompany Your Afternoon Cup of Tea
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! Because The Salt Path was a book chosen purely for its cover, I didn’t even realise this was a memoir until I started reading. Instinctively I balked, but it quickly turned into an unputdownable read and one that will surely stay with me for a very long time. Raynor Winn and her husband Moth lose everything due to a bad investment and a friend’s betrayal. After years of fighting in the courts which…
~The Night Tiger Yangsze Choo In 1930’s Malaysia, smart and ambitious Ji Lin works as a dressmaker’s apprentice but dreams of becoming a nurse. At night she moonlights as a dance hall girl in order to pay off her mother’s mahjong debts. One evening, while dancing with a rather unsavory character, she accidentally comes into possession of a severed finger in a jar. Meanwhile, eleven year old Chinese houseboy, Ren is tasked by Dr. McFarlane, who is on his deathbed, with finding his masters severed finger so it can be buried with him, thus preventing his soul from eternally wandering the…
During a summertime trip to France a couple of years ago, I was able to visit the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, 15 miles outside of Limoges. It was here, on the warm sunny afternoon of Saturday, June 10th in 1944, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, 75 years ago today, that the Nazis murdered 642 villagers. Only seven people were lucky enough to survive. The villagers were brought together in the main square, believing that this was yet another routine identity check. Instead, the men were separated out and taken to six barns. Here, they were machine gunned and the bodies,…
By Its Cover is a series of posts wherein I read a book based solely on my love of the cover. No reading the jacket, no checking reviews! I have no idea why, but I initially assumed the figure on the cover of this book was a satyr, half-man, half-goat, because I thought it had hooves. It wasn’t until I really paid attention that I realised that they were simply shoes and this was just a man. Having read the book, I’m no wiser as to what the cover represents but the quirkiness energy of the man with his umbrella, set…
~Once Upon a River Diane Setterfield On the banks of the river Thames is a pub, The Swan, where the locals have turned storytelling into something of a sport, meeting up to while away the long, cold winter nights with the promise of a good tale. But you know what they say, truth is stranger than fiction and so on the evening of the winters solstice, a real story starts to unfurl before their very eyes. A large man, dripping blood and river water, walks through the door of the pub carrying what turns out to be the body of a dead…
