Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans

There are a lot of novels about people doing the right thing during the war, looking dashing in their uniforms, young debs suddenly flung into the secret service or the Wrens, and what have you. It's a lot less glamorous for Lissa Evans' evacuee - ten-year-old Noel Bostock who has an unglamorous name and ears like jug handles, but an extensive vocabulary.
    Noel finds himself in St Albans living upstairs in a flat overlooking a scrapyard with Vee. She's thirty-six, a widow with a chubby son who works downstairs as a night watchman so it doesn't matter that she hasn't a spare bed for Noel because he can sleep in Donald's - he only needs it during the day after all.
    It's a peculiar set-up, even more peculiar because of Vee's mother, who was so shocked by Vee's pregnancy at sixteen that she fainted, hitting her head, an injury that has deprived her of speech. She spends all day plugged into the wireless, writing letters to Churchill about where he's going wrong and what he ought to do next.
    However Noel's life in London was also unusual, having lived from the age of four with Mattie, his godmother, an elderly former suffragette with interesting ideas about education. She had ignored the calls for Noel to be evacuated, her mind starting to go, and Noel was happy to stay as he knew she needed him. When the worst happens, Noel's fate seems to be in the lap of the gods until he winds up with Vee.
    His new carer is not particularly educated - she's a bit common, to put it plainly - but has a sharp mind always darting here and there on the look out for the main chance. She's not smart enough to be very good at her get-rich quick schemes, but when Noel takes an interest the two make a winning team. The novel follows their see-sawing fortunes as the Blitz continues to wreak havoc, and Noel slowly comes to terms with his grief.
    This is a wonderful book - such a breath of fresh air - about ordinary people who are also less than ordinary, and about the strange paths love can take. The plot is original and the characters quirky, shown warts and all, and running through everything, a rich vein of comedy, which would for me make this a terrific read alone.
    But what makes the book even more superb is the quality of the writing. Evans has taken time over her prose and throws in just enough description to make the world of Vee and Noel come alive. Her imagery is spectacular too. Noel experiences fear 'like a cold scarf wrapped around his neck, a stomach full of tadpoles'; or how about this about a poorly-tuned wireless: 'the sound of a dance-band flared and receded, as if someone were opening and shutting a door'.
    Lissa Evans has been nominated for the Orange Prize (Their Finest Hour and a Half) and other awards. I do wonder if Crooked Heart will be similarly recognised - it certainly deserves to be.
 

Turning the Stones by Debra Daley

Turning the Stones could so easily have become an overwrought melodrama with its much thwarted but beautiful young heroine, a family that will do anything for easy money, a blackguardly smuggler with a heart of gold, a witch-like curse maker and a particularly nasty villain. But somehow Debra Daley's latest novel rises above all this to provide a stonking-good read.
   The reason for this is her writing style is brisk yet evocative, plus it has that slightly Irish lyricism that can be so appealing, all of which comes through the voice of Em, its much put-upon heroine. Em wakes up groggily in a man's Mayfair house, bloodstained and wearing only her shift, having lost her memory of how she got there. Soon she discovers that she is locked in and that the only other occupant of the bedroom has had his throat slashed.
    This is 1766, and Em will surely hang if she is caught, so hastily dressing she jumps out the window and flees, hoping to buy herself a passage to France with the purse she has found on the dead man's floor. Her escape and eventual rescue on the ship of Irish smuggler, Captain McDonagh, makes for a nail-biting bit of storytelling, which could have come out of a Stevenson novel.
    Interwoven with the escape story however is that of Em's background. It takes you back to Sedge Court, the Cheshire home of the Waterlands, a snootily gentile family desperate to cling to a fortune that is ebbing away as Mr Waterland takes up one hopeless scheme after another. His bitter yet beautiful wife soon realises that she needs to ensure a good marriage for her dull and graceless  daughter Eliza. But Eliza is obviously overshadowed by smart, lovely Em, the foundling she has taken care of and raised as a daughter/companion for Eliza.
    In a cruel twist of fate, Em is dumped into the servants quarters, and there is no more tutoring from the governess she has become attached to, just endless needlework and chores. Eliza's rakish brother, Johnny, has also noticed Em's obvious charms and makes plans to put them to good use. Everything is set on a collision course for the scene that Em wakes up to at the start of the book.
    But we don't only have the two story threads of Em's past and her precarious future to keep track of, however. There's also the occasional visit to the house of Kitty Conneely in Connemara, who with her witch-like incantations - the turning the stones of the title - is determined to bring Nora's daughter home, whoever Nora might be. And it is no coincidence that the ship on board which Em has found a temporary respite is headed not for France, but disappointedly for Ireland.
    Turning the Stones is a well-paced novel, full of dramatic scenes, nail-biting action and buried secrets, just as you'd expect, with shades of those early novels, Clarissa or Pamela (though I have read neither) by Samuel Richardson. The nicely turned writing balances out any tendency towards melodrama and its main character, Em, is superb - smart, witty and determined - as all good heroines should be. A surprisingly terrific read.
 

The Adoption by Anne Berry

I really enjoyed Anne Berry's first two books, The Hungry Ghosts and The Water Children, so was really delighted to get hold of her third novel. She is a brilliant writer, her language is powerful and imaginative, but she is not easy on the reader, which would suggest her books make an impact. The Adoption is no exception.
    The Adoption - now there's a title that doesn't beat about the bush - tells the story of three women, beginning with Bethan, who makes the mistake of falling in love with the German POW who helps out on her parents' farm in Wales at the tail-end of the war. It is the beginning of 1948 when she gives birth to Lucilla, a single parent under the watchful eye of her mother, her lovely Thorston banished and her daughter set for adoption. She is a sympathetic character, even if she is unable to stand up to her parents. Blighted by guilt and misery, she allows them to determine the course of her life.
    Then there's Harriet, unlovely and full of stern self-righteousness. She marries Merfyn, a fellow member of the temperance league and in spite of her fine housekeeping skills - though she's more of an incinerator than a cook - their union produces no children. Somehow they adopt Lucilla, aware of her doubtful parentage, but hopeful that careful upbringing will nip any unpleasant characteristics in the bud.
    Poor Lucilla can't help it but she's doomed to be her natural parents' child and never really fits in. She has her mother's love of the great outdoors, her passionate temperament and her father's artistic talent. These traits are not appreciated by her adoptive parents in their grim London house, and the story is a description of their incompatibility and constant battles.
    The plot weaves in present events, as Lucilla decides to trace her birth mother, with those of the past, her childhood and growing up. It is not a happy story, but thank goodness, Lucilla is a wonderful creation - rather wicked and roguish. The story of her visit to the cinema with her cousins (ghastly Frank and more convivial Rachel) along with stuffy Barbara, a potential sister for Lucilla, is hilarious.
It's a mercy that she meets Henry, and although they struggle to make ends meet, they are truly happy and create a warm and loving home for their family - complete with dogs and lots of fresh air.
   Anne Berry doesn't shirk from showing her characters warts and all. Lucilla never holds back letting everyone know how she feels and as such can be hard to handle. Bethan loses her ability to love again and Harriet, well it's difficult to imagine how anyone can be quite so nasty. Like Berry's previous books, this is a story about the terrible things people can do to each other. It is also about what it means to belong and it left me with a lump in my throat when I got to the last page. This is definitely a writer that makes an impact.