France's reading 2022

[Madeleine]

I know what you mean about Kate Ellis, I like her books, the settings are nice and I like the historical sub plot which runs alongside the main story, but I agree there is something missing, I can't put my finger on it.  I like Elly Griffiths as well, they have more humour so I enjoy those a bit more.

[France]

A quick, very quick update on read books as I have to leave soon to visit my husband in hospital.

 

 Smoke and Ashes by Akbir Mukajee is the third in his series about an opium addicted English policeman and his Indian sidekick in 1920's Calcutta. I really enjoy this series, it's well written, makes you think, highlights the downsides of colonialism without being didactic and has good plot lines. If you haven't come across these before start with the first book, A Rising Man.

 

Murder Before Evensong by Rev Richard Coles  Goodness this is total rubbish. I bought it as a Kindle cheapie because I'd heard him reading an extract and he does read very well. A waste of 99p and fours hours or so.

 

The Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd  A book group choice that I wouldn't have read otherwise. Set at the beginning of the troubles and the hunger strikes on the border between northern and southern Ireland it's a dual time story, in the present Fergus is studying for A levels hoping to become a doctor, his brother is on hunger strike and he discovered the body of a child while digging for peat. The second part is the story of the child, a neolithic girl. For me that part was less interesting but allin all a good read but probably not an author I'll search out again.

 The Lady of Adderley by Robert Barnard , Death Wore White by Jim Kelley , The Dead Will Tell by Linda Castillo and My Word is My Bond by Roger Moore were all picked up at a charity secondhand book sale. Roger Moore was amusng, particularly if you like fart jokes (my husband found it hilarious, Linda Castillo, set among the Amish community was good but you do wonder just how many murders can take place amongst such a small group of people, the other two were OK.

71. Blue Monday - Nicci French

 

 

[lunababymoonchild]

I hope that your husband is alright

[poppy]

8 hours ago, lunababymoonchild said:

I hope that your husband is alright

 

Me too, France 😘

[France]

He had a stroke last week, fortunately my daughter had popped in to see him and discovered him in time for him to get to hospital and them to start the treatment that dissolves the clots - it has to be done within six hours or it's useless. He's recovering but is still very weak.

[lunababymoonchild]

1 hour ago, France said:

He had a stroke last week, fortunately my daughter had popped in to see him and discovered him in time for him to get to hospital and them to start the treatment that dissolves the clots - it has to be done within six hours or it's useless. He's recovering but is still very weak.

I know how frightening that is. I'm glad that he was seen in time and hope that he continues to improve

[France]

I've already expressed my opinions about Blue Monday by Nicci French elsewhere so won't repeat them, suffice to say I won't be continuing with the series.

 

Death in the East by Akbir Mukherjee is the fourth in his series about Sam Wyndham and constable Banerjee and imo is the weakest though most reviewers don't appear to agree with me. It's a dual time line story with a murder in the East End in 1905 that was one of Wyndham's first cases and  Assam in 1922 where Wyndham is trying to dry out from his opium addiction. I found it all a bit slow until the two themes converged and then it absolutely ripped along. A decent read and I'll be reading the next one.

 

Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor has been lauded to the skies as brilliant Australian Noir etc etc. Parts of it are very good but it meanders about, there's too much back story in some places and a good 40 unnecessary pages at the end after the murder has been solved. Jane Harper may have called it "a stellar debut" but she's far, far better than this.

[France]

If you like Anne Tyler then you'll  probably love French Braid about various members of a Baltimore family, one character's take on events at a time. If you find her inconsequential and short on plot lines you really won't enjoy this one. I'm firmly in the first camp, I don't know what it is about her writing but she grabs my attention with the descriptions of the minutiae of family life just as keenly as any thriller writer. I particularly enjoyed this one because of all the shifting perspectives showing different sides to a story, all equally vaild.

 

The Last One to Disappear by Jo Spain is the literary equivalent of mass produced vanilla ice cream, OK at the time but completely unmemorable.

Edited November 18, 2022 by France

[France]

I can't make up my mind whether Cloud Cuckoo Land  by Anthony Doerr is brilliant or thoroughly overblown. It follows 5 storylines, Konstance, a young girl on a spaceship leaving a ruined earth in an attempt to colonise an earth-like planet, Omeir a young peasant who is conscripted into the sultan's army heading for Constantinople in 1452, Maria, an orphan living in the city who rather improbably learns to read Greek, and in the present day Zino who learned Greek from a fellow POW in the Korean war and has returned to his small home town and has made a play out of a Greek story for some grade school children, and Seymour, a troubled misfit, passionate about nature and owls.

 

The book undoubtedly could do with some pruning and the start is very slow indeed,but once it got going it became totally absorbing. I'm still not sure if it wasn't too clever for it's own good and would be interested to know what others thought.

 

This Charming Man by CK McDonnell is such fun. It's the second in a series set in the Stranger Times, a newspaper in Manchester that investigates the weird and wonderful, (and there's quite a lot that's weird in their offices too). This time it's vampires, which don't exist of course, so there must be some other reason for the pointy teeth and strange deaths... Funny, original, highly recommended.

 

Shamed by Linda Costillo is about 13th in her series about chief of police Kate Burkholder and the series shows no signs of flagging. I do wonder sometimes just how many murders you can have among the Amish community, they are peaceful folk after all, but this one is an absolute cracker.

[France]

 Mrs Harris Goes to Paris - Paul Gallico This is a book I would have loved when I was a lot younger but now, though it's very readable, it feels both dated and saccharinely sweet. It's about to be made into a film and will probably work.

 

There's a lot of Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead , I read it on my Kobo so can't say exactly how long it was, about 600 pages plus I reckon so if you're going to read it be prepared! There are two parallel stories, that of film star Hadley who is going to play Marion Greaves, one of the pioneering women pilots and becomes increasingly fascinated by her and Marian's story which isn't exactly what her modern day biographer thinks.  Probably 3/4 of the book is Marian and it's by far the most interesting though Hadley's is by no means boring. This was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Women's Prize for Fiction and it's beautifully written, I thoroughly enjoyed it though it did require a certain amount of stamina!

 

The Angels of Venice by Phillip Wynne Jones is marketed as a thriller and a thriller this story is not. I worked out who the baddies were almost from the first entry on the page and it has one of those plots where you start muttering 'Oh come on, surely ______ wouldn't be that stupid. However the sense of place is absolutely fantastic, you feel you can feel and smell Venice (the author lives there and obviously loves it, even though he doesn't have his rose tinted specs on) and for that alone, and the pleasant main characters this was well worth reading. I'll be looking out for other books in the series though I don't think I'd be prepared to pay full price for them.

[Madeleine]

I've read the first of the Wynne Jones books and enjoyed it, I have the others to read.  Have you read Donna Leon's Brunetti books? Also set in Venice, with the same sense of place, but more of a conventional crime thriller.  However she also doesn't look at the city through rose tinted specs, and touches on it's murkier side, but there's a nice dry sense of humour in the books, and lots of lovely food too!

[France]

I used to love Donna Leon's books then read an article in a writing magazine where she said she hadn't bothered to find out anything about how the Italian police system works. Talk about letting daylight in on the magic! She may have been joking, I hope so, but it still put me off reading any more of her books.

 

[France]

I had heard so much about Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, that it was a breath of fresh air, delightful, etc etc. I'm afraid it left me a bit underwhelmed, it was readable, some parts of it were good but it didn't have that vital can't-put-it-down factor. Partially it was because some of it was just too much, Elizabeth was too good at everything apart from making a success of her personal life, her child was way too clever, the same could be said for the dog though it was so quirky I forgave it a lot but the emphasis on what a hard time intelligent women had to be recognised in their own right in  masculine-dominated areas in  the 50s and early 60s was very heavy handed and there were glaring anachronisms. I didn't pick on some of them like Sweden not having universal child care till the 70s but DNA testing in 1961? I the book has absorbed me enough I can overlook those, not here though.

 

Business As Usual by Jane Oliver really is a breath of fresh air. Written in 1933 it's an epistolary novel about Hilary Fane who come to London for a year to earn her own living while her fiancé finishes his medical studies in Edinburgh. She eventually gets a job in a thinly disguised Selfridges, ending up in their lending library. She's a great character, forthright, full of humour, bossy  gets on the wrong side of her co-workers sometimes and is delightfully human. Not a long or heavy read, it hasn't dated at all and I really enjoyed it.

[willoyd]

4 hours ago, France said:

I had heard so much about Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, but DNA testing in 1961? I the book has absorbed me enough I can overlook those, not here though

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it a DNA research project she was working on, rather than DNA testing? But yes, plenty of anachronisms.

It all depends, as you say, on whether one is prepared to overlook them.  Sometimes I am (as here, and as with some superb anomalies in Connie Willis's time travel books), other times I'm not (I remember ripping Terry Hayes's thriller "I Am Patriot" to pieces because of the mistakes).

[Hayley]

On 11/23/2022 at 10:40 AM, France said:

Cloud Cuckoo Land 

I’ve been tempted by this one before and I’m intrigued by your review! It might have to go on my 2023 list.

 

I hope your husband is recovering well! 

[France]

15 hours ago, willoyd said:

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it a DNA research project she was working on, rather than DNA testing? But yes, plenty of anachronisms.

It all depends, as you say, on whether one is prepared to overlook them.  Sometimes I am (as here, and as with some superb anomalies in Connie Willis's time travel books), other times I'm not (I remember ripping Terry Hayes's thriller "I Am Patriot" to pieces because of the mistakes).

Amanda had her DNA tested to see if she was her father's daughter. I don't care about Connie Willis's anomalies either or about Hilary Mantel's use of modern speech in the Wolf Hall, but was driven crazy by Philippa Gregory putting 21st Century thinking into the head of a 16th century girl in the other Boleyn Girl.

[France]

13 hours ago, Hayley said:

I’ve been tempted by this one before and I’m intrigued by your review! It might have to go on my 2023 list.

 

I hope your husband is recovering well! 

Thank you, we were really afraid he'd end up in a wheelchair but amazingly enough he has made a full recovery.

 

[France]

I did a bit of Kobo diving recently and randomly selected one of the books I'd bought on a special offer and hadn't got around to reading yet. I landed on Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin , the story of Violette, a cemetery keeper who leads a contented solitary life looking after graves and growing plants. Then Gabriel turns up to fulfill his mother's last wish that her ashes but should be spread not on the grave of her husband but on the grave of someone Gabriel has never heard of. This was a runaway best seller in France, unusual as it's a long book and the French don't usually go for hundreds and hundreds of pages, but I can see why it appealed to so many. There's huge charm in the book, Violette, though a bit wet in places, is immensely appealing, the love story between Gabriel's mother and her lover is very moving and there are a couple of other plot lines which I won't mention for risk of spoilers. However it's far too long for my taste, and half way through the author began to head hop between Violette, the husband who abandoned her years ago and other characters which didn't add a lot.

 

It's worth trying though, the translation is excellent (apart from French children calling their mothers Mommy), much of the story is lovely and I won't forget it in a hurry.

[willoyd]

3 hours ago, France said:

Amanda had her DNA tested to see if she was her father's daughter. I don't care about Connie Willis's anomalies either or about Hilary Mantel's use of modern speech in the Wolf Hall, but was driven crazy by Philippa Gregory putting 21st Century thinking into the head of a 16th century girl in the other Boleyn Girl.

It's a few months since I read it, and I don't have my copy any more, so thanks for putting me straight.  Yes, a distinct anachronism.  It's the sort of thing I would normally pick up, being the rather pedantic reader I am, but missed that one (and several others by the sound of it when I've gone away to read up on them!).  I was lucky enough to have got wrapped up in the book, so suspect that's why - even though they're pretty glaring!  I enjoyed it a lot, but can so empathise with how things worked out for you.

BTW, I agree on Philippa Gregory - I felt the same with a couple of her other books I've tried with book groups - not an author I'm going to persist with.

Edited December 23, 2022 by willoyd