France's Reading 2023

[poppy]

18 hours ago, France said:

Michael Ondaatje is a poet as well as a novelist, memoirist and essayist which is probably why he has written so few novels. It probably is also responsible for the way he writes which is sublime, unshowy, simply yet every sentence is  perfect. 

 

 

 

The English Patient is one of my favourite books.  

Warlight certainly sounds another very good read.

[France]

Jigsaw, a semi autobiographical novel by Sybille Bedford has to rank amongst my all time favourite books. Her biography by Selina Hastings unfolds a truly extraordinary life, Sybille was German and brought up by her dilettante father after her mother bolted, then after he died she went to live with her restless and unstable mother, eventually settling in Sannery sur Mer in the south of France which was peopled by a lot of writers including Aldous Huxley who Sybille worshipped. Sybille's mother became addicted to morphine and after Sybille could no longer look after her went into an asylum leaving Sybille aged about 19 on her own. Sybille was a keen pursuer of women (to put it mildly, she was still falling in love in her 80's), spoke three languages, was fiercely intelligent, was very knowledgeable about food and wine, obviously had masses of charm for she had masses of friends, many of whom supported her financially throughout her life and she must also have been an utter monster at times, arrogant, selfish and a raging snob. It all came together to make a superb writer, she didn't write her first novel until she was in her 40s (A Legacy is almost as good as Jigsaw), she was also a travel writer, journalist and specialised in court writing, apparently they were billiant. Jigsaw was written in her 80s and she wrote an autobiography the year before she died aged 95.

Selina Hastings is a good biographer and I thoroughly enjoyed this, but if you haven't come across Sybille Bedford before do try Jigsaw.

[France]

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morely is a short novel published in 1917 about a harrassed woman who is fed up of running the family farm and looking after her brother who is an author. She buys a traveling bookshop to stop him getting his hands on it and because she feels like a break. This book is an absolute delight, I can't imagine anyone not reading it with a smile on their face!

It's part of the Gutenberg project too so you can download it.

[France]

Catching up!

 

Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsely.  I'm not a great fan of Agatha Christie's books, they're readable but nothing I'd search out,  but I am interested in her as a person. This is a highly readable biography with a distinctly feminist slant and Lucy Worsely is a very entertaining writer. I enjoyed it a lot.

 

The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly. 

From the blurb "Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family's insistence. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of The Golden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried—gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore's pelvis remained hidden.

The book was a sensation. A community of treasure hunters called the Bonehunters formed, obsessed to a dangerous degree.  A man died. The book made Frank a rich man. His daughter, Nell, became a recluse.

But now the book is being reissued with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. Nell is appalled, and terrified. Frank finally reveals the whereabouts of the missing golden bone. And then all hell breaks loose."

 

As I've already said psychological thrillers are no longer my cup of tea but I really couldn't put this one down. It sagged a little bit towards the end, too much explanation, which is why it isn't a five star read, but I still kept on obsessively reading. I'll be looking out Erin Kelly's other books.

 

Murder under the Tuscan Sun - Rachel Rhys.  What a come down after The Skeleton Key! Banal writing, a ridiculously obvious baddie, even more obvious leaden plot twists. I made it to half way though then read the' last chapter to see if it was just was boring at the end. It was.

 

[France]

The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudsley by Sean Lock and Clara and Olivia by Lucy Ashe  have quite a lot in common in then they've both been highly recommended by review sites, they're both very readable, very pleasant, charming and ultimately don't really lead anywhere. Nice reads but not memorable.

 

Some of you may remember the notorious Hitler Dairies from the early 80's which were supposed to be the discovery of the century, Stern Magazine in Germany paid a fortune to acquire them, and which turned out to be very obvious fakes to those who took a close look. No one did for some time because they were all too excited about the "potential".    Selling Hitler by Robert Harris was a bit too long and detailed in places, especially when reading on a Kobo, but wow what an eyeopener into to the mindset of those who so convince themselves that they about to make a fortune that they ignore all the glaring pointers that things are going very, very wrong. Instead in an effort to prove that they're right they just go on piling up the mistakes, or in this case, chucking more money the forger's way so he could produce even more 'proof' in the way of diaries chock full of errors, written in exercise books using a type of chemical on the paper that wasn't used until after the war and with letters stuck to the front that were supposed to be AH, and were in fact FH and made of plastic (also not invented when Hitler was "writing" these dairies). And then when everything does hit the fan there's a corporate rush to nail a couple of, usually lower ranking, scapegoats while the rest of the bigwigs get off scot free, or maybe even with a promotion. Just like bankers.

 

As ever, Robert Harris is an excellent writer and this is an interesting read.

 

 

 

[France]

Still Life by Sarah Winman   is a real Marmite book, lots of people find it too inconsequential, too whimsical. I love Marmite and I adored it.  The story kicks off in 1945 when Evelyn an elderly art historian helping the allies with looted artworks outside Florence meets Ulysses Temper, known as Temp, a young soldier and their chance meeting kicks off a series of events, including a whole series of 'will they, won't they?' ever meet agains. The blurb accurately describes it as a love letter to Florence, the writing is beautiful, and there are brilliant if frequently eccentric characters and a thoroughly engaging parrot. Yes it is whimsical but it's also wholly delightful.

 

Playing Under the Piano by Hugh Bonneville was a Kobo cheapie, described as "comedy gold". It isn't though it's amusing in places and he comes over as a thoroughly nice chap. Pleasant and Undemanding.

 

The It Girl by Ruth Ware is a pacey thriller which is an awful lot better than the only other one of her books I've read (called The Woman in Cabin 10 I think). The ending is a bit rushed but still worth reading.

 

[Hayley]

On 3/31/2023 at 6:17 PM, France said:

The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly. 

This one is already on my list - I can’t wait to get it! 
 

On 6/2/2023 at 9:23 AM, France said:

Still Life by Sarah Winman 

I’ve seen some rave reviews about how beautifully this is written but discovering that it centred on a love story did put me off. I don’t generally enjoy books that have romance as their central plot. Still not sure whether I want to try this one or not! 

[France]

12 hours ago, Hayley said:

This one is already on my list - I can’t wait to get it! 
 

I’ve seen some rave reviews about how beautifully this is written but discovering that it centred on a love story did put me off. I don’t generally enjoy books that have romance as their central plot. Still not sure whether I want to try this one or not! 

It isn't a love story, as in romance, at all though how much the author loves Florence comes across very clearly. And the "will they, won't they meet again" is about Evelyn and Tremp (and she's both gay and 40 years older than him!).

[Hayley]

5 minutes ago, France said:

It isn't a love story, as in romance, at all though how much the author loves Florence comes across very clearly. And the "will they, won't they meet again" is about Evelyn and Tremp (and she's both gay and 40 years older than him!).

Ah, one of the reviews I read suggested that it was about finding love and I took that to mean it would follow one or both of them finding romantic relationships! 

[France]

 Heresy by S J Parris treads much the same routes as CJ Samson's Shardlake series, though this one is set in Elizabethan England and Giordano Bruno, the protaganist, is based on a real person. He's "different" too, Shardlake was a hunchback, Bruno is an ex monk, nominally still catholic but would be accused of heresy should the Inquisition ever catch up with him. There are a spate of murders in a college in Oxford which Bruno sets out to solve. It's well written, pacy and interesting, not quite up to Shardlake but still very well worth reading. I have the secobnd in the series in my TBR pile

 

Red Dirt Road by S R White and The Vanishing of Class 3B by Jackie Kabler were both DNF. There were undoubtedly good stories in there but sadly the story telling made them infinitely tedious.

 

The Words I Never Wrote by Jane Thynne covers much of the same ground as her Clara Vine series, two sisters, one living in Nazi Germany, the other in the UK. Misunderstandings, gradual realisation of what the Nazi regime is up etc. As ever Jane Thynne's scene setting is impeccable and the story is good too, I prefer Clara Vine though.

 

Ann Cleeves nearly always produces a winner and The Rising Tide which is the ninth in her Vera series and is a kind of locked room mystery on Lindisfarne is no exception. Thoroughly enjoyable. I galloped through it.

[France]

The Vanishing of Class 3B by Jackie Kabler is a Did Not Finish and a Do Not Bother. It sounded promising - a whole class of primary school children vanishes on a school trip but when chapter 3 or something introduces someone who praactically has "I"m a baddy" written on his forehead it's time to give up.

 

What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch What fun this was! Sheer pleasure for lovers of the series.

 

The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman This was slightly slower to get going that his previous books and even sillier in places but if you appreciate his writing and his humour (quite a few people don't) it's very enjoyable indeed.

 

 Black as He's Painted by Ngaio Marsh This is a strange one, written in the  70's it's apparently one of her most loved books but it's a bit of an eyeopener now. The plot revolves around the president of the newly independent African state of Ng'onbwana who went to school with detective Roderick Allen and a murder in the Ng'onbwanan embassy. It wasn't written that long ago but it's full of language and attitudes that you just wouldn't see in a book these days (I wonder if it'll get "edited" for modern sensibilities). It's the first Ngaio Marsh I've read and once I got past my surprise I rather enjoyed it.

 

The Midnight House by Amanda Geard This was a Kindle cheapie I got for a weekend going to and from Paris anbd it's excellent travel reading. There's nothing very surprising in it, three story lines beginning of the war, mid fifties and present, set in Ireland, which slowly unravel a mystery but it's nicely written and ideal for the metro as you don't have to concentrate too hard.

[France]

Femina by Janina Ramirez is a fascinating feminist look at what women really did in Medieval times (medieval as in from the end of the Romans to the later Middle Ages, post Black Death). I've always considered myself reasonably knowledgeable about history but I had no idea how important women rulers were during the Dark Ages - for instance Alfred the Great's daughter was the one who consolidated the kingdom not him or that there were female Viking warriors, though admittedly neither did historians until DNA testing was done on the elaborately buried  skeleton of a warrior of importance. It's very well written, a pleasure to read and quite an eye opener in several aspects. Highly recommended.

[France]

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard.   Largely taken from the blurb as it's better than how I could give a taster: "An impulsive word can start a war. A timely word can stop one.A simple act of friendship can change the course of history.
Cliopher Mdang is the personal secretary of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, the Lord of Rising Stars, the Lord Magus of Zunidh, the Sun-on-Earth, the god. He has spent more time with the Emperor  than any other person. He has never once touched his lord, called him by name, never initiated a conversation.
One day Cliopher suggests the Sun-on-Earth has a holiday. He could have been executed for blasphemy.
The acceptance upends the world."

 

I was Kobo diving among my to read collection and had no memory of buying this book, let alone what it was about so it was something of a surprise, the first one being how long it is - 2000 pages on the Kobo. The second is that though it is hardly action driven it doesn't get boring or flag despite the length even though the last part could have been wrapped up a little more quickly. It's a gentle story and thoroughly nice, managing at the same time to stay well clear of being sickly sweet.

 

I really enjoyed it, much more so than A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet which is what's usually mentioned when talking of gentle fantasy or SF.

[France]

The Crown in Cris by Alexander Lerman is about the lead up to the abdication of Edward VIII. it's a superbly written, fluent and fascinating account of something I thought I knew a fair amount about and it turns out that I didn't. One of the things that comes across very clearly is how devastating most people, public and politicians alike, found even the idea that a monarch could voluntarily lay down his crown because of a woman of somewhat dubious reputation - and it was dubious, and how hard most of the inner circle tried to keep him on the throne even when they thought he would make a lousy and irresponsible king.  I ended up feeling quite sorry for Wallis even though "hubris" comes to mind.

 

There's a follow up to this about the Windsors during the war years which I'm very keen to read but will have to wait until it comes out in paperback.

[France]

A Game of Sorrows by SJ Maclean is the second in her series about Alexander Seaton. It's 1628, Alexander has made a new life in Aberdeen and is about to leave for a mission on the continent when a stranger arrives, proclaims himself to be his cousin and whisks him off to Ulster to help raise a curse that has been placed on his mother's family whom Alexander knows nothing about.

 

This really is first class historical fiction, it feels utterly real and people behave as of their time, there isn't that sense of 21st century attitudes in 17th century heads that bedevils so much historical fiction and the characterisation is excellent. It was an absolute pleasure to read a novel set in a period I know very little too.

 

Highly recommended but do read the first in the series The Redemption of Alexander Seaton which is set in Banff two years earlier.

 

I was saying how much I was enjoying the book at my writing group and one of the other members said she was in Shona Maclean's class at school in Banff and at the same university too. Small world!

[Madeleine]

Funnily enough I've just ordered another of her books, The Bookseller of Inverness.  She also has another series, starting with The Seeker (which features an appearance by Seaton), and I've read the first two of this and can thoroughly recommend them (I have the Seaton books as well).

[France]

I listened to The Bookseller of Inverness on Audible and it was so good that I bought the book as part of my husband's birthday present. Then I can read it myself!

 

I agree about The Seeker, it's excellent.  I'd never heard of her until I picked it up at a second hand book sale last year.

[Madeleine]

New Seeker book due out soon, I must catch up with this series!

[France]

Dead Rich   by G W Shaw  (who also writes detective fiction as William Shaw) is about life on the open waves - in a Russian oligarch's super yacht in the Caribbean. Kai, a rootless, formerly reasonably successful rock person, is invited on her father's yacht by his girlfriend, having no idea that daddy is one of the richest men in the world. It's just the first of the things he's pretty clueless about, he makes one of those mistakes so stupid that leave you wondering if this person deserves to live even in the pages of a thriller, yet at other times he seems to have almost superhuman powers of observation and ability.

 

It's billed as a page turning, heart stopping thriller and I suppose that if you read it quickly enough you might not notice some of the inconsistancies in the plot or how everything is far too neatly tied up at the end. It was all a bit too Jeffery Archer for me.

[France]

The Bandit Queen by Parini Shroff.  Goodness this is fun! Geeta is living peacefully as a widow in a rural Indian village until other members of her loan group decide they'd like to be widows too... It's an adventure story, a revenge thriller, very funny in places and takes some extremely surprising turns. An absolute pleasure.

 

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris. And what a disappointment this was. Robert Harris is on my automatic buy list, this is a man who can make a book about a group of modern cardinals locked up in conclave to elect a pope exciting so how did he manage to make a cat and mouse story of the pursuit of two of the regicides who signed Charles I's death warrant so tedious? It was far too long, he kept drifting off into side stories that kept distracting from the plot and generally lacked pace. the one thing that was really interesting was his descriptions of the Puritan colonies in New England which make me very glad I didn't have to experience them.

[willoyd]

4 hours ago, France said:

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris. And what a disappointment this was. Robert Harris is on my automatic buy list...

He hasn't been for a while for me.  I too often find that the basic premise of the book offers much, but whilst the exposition is often fine, the ending all too often underwhelms (and reading The Second Sleep for one of my book groups only confirmed that).  He lost me a while ago , although, given my fascination with that time period, I had been tempted to give it a go. Maybe not!

[Brian.]

15 hours ago, France said:

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris. And what a disappointment this was. Robert Harris is on my automatic buy list, this is a man who can make a book about a group of modern cardinals locked up in conclave to elect a pope exciting so how did he manage to make a cat and mouse story of the pursuit of two of the regicides who signed Charles I's death warrant so tedious? It was far too long, he kept drifting off into side stories that kept distracting from the plot and generally lacked pace. the one thing that was really interesting was his descriptions of the Puritan colonies in New England which make me very glad I didn't have to experience them.

 

11 hours ago, willoyd said:

He hasn't been for a while for me.  I too often find that the basic premise of the book offers much, but whilst the exposition is often fine, the ending all too often underwhelms (and reading The Second Sleep for one of my book groups only confirmed that).  He lost me a while ago , although, given my fascination with that time period, I had been tempted to give it a go. Maybe not!

 

I also tend to agree. I started with Fatherland which I thought was great and then the Cicero trilogy which I also really enjoyed. Looking back at my records I thought The Second Sleep was ok but I do remember feeling it was quite a sloppy plot in the end. His more recent books definitely feel like they were a rushed affair when writing and could have been edited into something more concrete.

[France]

11 hours ago, willoyd said:

He hasn't been for a while for me.  I too often find that the basic premise of the book offers much, but whilst the exposition is often fine, the ending all too often underwhelms (and reading The Second Sleep for one of my book groups only confirmed that).  He lost me a while ago , although, given my fascination with that time period, I had been tempted to give it a go. Maybe not!

The Second Sleep was on a par with this one! And derivative too.

[France]

The Venetian Game by Philip Gwynne Jones  is the first in a series featuring Nathan Sutherland, translator and part time honorary consul in Venice who is asked to look after a parcel by a shady customer which of course leads to a mystery. The mystery part is fairly run of the mill but what is outstanding is Venice. The author lives there and a feeling for the city imbues every page, he doesn't merely describe it, he puts you there. Very well worth reading just for that!

 

Traitor King by Andrew Lownie is about the Windsors after the abdication. It's pretty obvious what Mr Lownie's opinion of the Windsors is from the title but even so this is a real eyeopener. I  knew that they were deeply selfish, were antisemitic and pro German but I had no idea to what extent. They were also arch spongers, he was a drunk and very boring, both of them were extravagant to an eye watering degree and I finished the book feeling that Britain really dodged a bullet when Edward VIII abdicated.

[France]

Reading The Bear Pit by S J Maclean was a bit of a mistake as I thought it was number 2 in her series about Damien Seeker and was too far into it to put it aside once I realised it was in fact number 4. No wonder I couldn't "remember" the back story. That mystification apart it was an excellent read despite a slight jumping the shark incident near the end. It also has one of my all time heroes in it (not saying who as it would be a massive spoiler). I thoroughly enjoy her writing she has the knack of immersing you in her period without modern intrusions or info dump.

 

On the other hand Tall Bones by Anna Bailey was total tosh. It sounded great, girl disappears in small town America and the investigation throws up all sorts of hidden things in the woodwork. The writer says she lived in a small town for a year when she was a teenager but it does not seem to have given her any insights into what people are like, what really motivates them. The book is crowded with lazy stereotypes, the drunk, the homophobic priest, the racist trailer park owner, the girl who suffers racist abuse because her father was Mexican, the Romanian guy who somehow doesn't get abused, the closet homosexual, the beaten up child, more child abuse... I could go on. I gave up caring who did it at about 25%, limped on to half way through and read the last two chapters to see who did. The end was stereotypes on steroids.