Hester and Harriet by Hilary Spiers

I'm not usually attracted by the Christmassy covers found on books published with the festive season in mind, or indeed, Christmas stories in general. However Christmas can intensify family issues that are already there, and as such makes a good basis for drama. Hester and Harriet is a refreshingly different Christmas story, about two widowed sisters, happy to see the festive day out in quiet self-indulgence at home by the fire.
    Hester is the terse, thin one who cooks; Harriet is the dumpy, secret cookie eater ex-school teacher, kindly but occasionally given to the odd socialist rant. The two are hilarious together with their snippy dialogue and enjoyment of Hester's fine cooking, which the reader gets to enjoy as well.
    So, to Christmas Day: the sisters reluctantly haul themselves out into the chill, Harriet driving badly as usual, expected to share the festive meal with cousins, George and Isabelle. Their cousins mean well, but the food will be terrible, the company worse. Fate intervenes when passing the old bus shelter, now home to a derelict ex-classics master named Finbar, they find instead a young girl and her baby.
    Happy for an excuse to turn back home anyway, the sisters take in Daria, who is from Belarus, and her little chap, Milo. Daria is reluctant to tell the women why she is hiding in a bus shelter, and she seems fearful of strangers. Life gets more complicated when George and Isabelle's teenage son Ben turns up on their doorstep, having had a major falling out with his parents about his wish to chuck in school and study horticulture instead.
    The women have no children of their own, so there is a hilarious learning curve in front of them. Fortunately Ben is surprisingly good with Milo and gets Daria to talk, and Hester and Harriet begin to formulate a plan to help her. Ben is so impressed by the food Hester prepares he starts to help in the kitchen and is allowed to stay for a few days anyway until something can be sorted out with his parents.
    Spicing up the novel is the hint of danger in the lurking stranger who seems to be spying on Daria and asking questions around the village. The problem of refugees from political struggles abroad and their exploitation in Britain gives Harriet plenty to get on her high horse about, and even in their tiny village of Pellingham, dark deeds are afoot which the sisters are sure to get to the bottom of.
    The novel is sprinkled with a clutch of humorous characters: Finbar the malodorous hobo with his fanatically perfect grammar, ladies man Teddy Wilson who seems to be in a spot of bother and his wife Molly who drowns her sorrows in drink, to name a few. The plot may take a while to get going, but there is still plenty to amuse with the characters playing off each other, smart and witty dialogue and an atmospheric setting. Quite a good antidote to the usual Christmas fare, but a good read any time of the year.

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

I was wondering what new problems Simsion would throw at his incredibly smart but socially inept hero, Don Tillman, in his sequel to the runaway hit, The Rosie Project. Don and Rosie, now married, are living in New York where Don has a post in the genetics department at Columbia University, and where Rosie has enrolled as a medical student. They have managed to find an apartment they can afford that meets Rosie's requirements for space and location and married life seems to be, well, rosy.
    When Rosie announces she is pregnant, this unplanned event throws all of Don's careful planning and timetabling into disarray and he reacts badly, causing a chain of events that could spell disaster. They are thrown out of their apartment, Don has to undertake a course of counselling at the risk of deportation and he hasn't figured a way to tell his Aussie mate, Gene, that Rosie is not happy about him staying with them during his sabbatical in New York.
    Don manages to keep all of the above secret from Rosie, yet as Rosie's pregnancy progresses, she seems to be drawing further and further away from him. Soon winning Rosie back is added to his list of challenges.
    That is pretty much the story in a nutshell, and not much more than what you get from reading the publisher's blurb. The book is peppered with a cast of memorable characters and this plus Don's knack for solving one problem with another gives the tale plenty of oomph. The housing problem for instance is solved by Don's promise to look after an aged English rock-star's on-tap beer by moving into his downstairs apartment - it smells a bit, and sometimes the Dead Kings get together for a practise session on the floor above but it is in every other way ideal.
    There are some hilarious scenes around Don's social worker, Lydia, who has decided he is unfit to be a father and sends him to anger management classes where he impresses the lads with his Aikido skills. To avoid adding stress to Rosie's condition, Don uses a daring piece of subterfuge to convince Lydia he is safe to stay in the US. Meanwhile Don's Dean requests his help monitoring a parenting study run by lesbians with a highly political agenda. Don's clinical intellectualism refuses to allow any leeway and he finds himself caught up in a new battle which will have crucial implications later on.
    The story builds up to a wonderful climax in the beery apartment, and Don will be torn in all kinds of directions as he tries to look after his friends while saving his marriage. His big-heartedness in this regard makes him yet again a brilliant and complex hero while the humour never lets up. Narrating the entire story in Don's singular voice takes some doing and Simsion pulls it off brilliantly. The novel is highly entertaining while rejoicing in the things that make us all unique individuals.

The Trivia Man by Deborah O'Brien

The trivia man of the title is Kevin Dwyer, a one-man quiz team extraordinaire. Kevin has folders full of data that he has been collecting for a large part of his forty-eight years. Initially he hoarded this information (tide tables, weather data, assorted statistics, etc.) for the joy of acquiring knowledge but with the growth of pub quizzes, he has found his perfect pastime. As a bonus trivia gets him out of the house and almost socialising.
    At the Clifton Heights Sports Club trivia competition Kevin soon shows his mettle and is instantly head-hunted by several attractive women to give their team a competitive edge. So far he's managed to hold them off, but when he meets school teacher, Maggie Taylor, a reluctant member of Teddie and the Dreamers, he begins to waver.
    It doesn't take long to figure out that Kevin is somewhere further along the Asperger's Spectrum continuum than what society classes as 'normal'. He has only one friend - his young nephew Patrick. Eight-year-old Patrick seems to be turning out rather like Kevin, much to the horror of Kevin's sister Elizabeth, who has always regarded her brother as altogether weird.
    Like Kevin, Maggie is also single, preferring reading and spending quiet nights in with her dog. She has been coerced into joining a colleague's trivia team for her knowledge of movie history, and because she's an attractive woman in her early fifties who needs to get out more. The karaoke interval that occurs in the middle of each quiz night has Kevin and Maggie hiding out and the two start to get acquainted.
    At first this seems like a simple 'rocky path to true love' kind of story. Maggie must first get over her long-term obsession with a previous boyfriend, the glamorous motivational speaker, Josh Houghton, a cad of the first water. And Kevin reluctantly finds himself dating his sister's friend Danni, surely an 'opposites attract' plot twist. Danni is as socially forward as Maggie is retiring, while Kevin's complete inability to dissemble makes him quite the opposite of popular favourite Josh.
    However O'Brien is clearly also interested in the issue of what it's like to be different in a society that seeks to have us conform. She avoids using the word Asperger's, just as Maggie avoids reading psychological assessments of 'special needs' students until she gets to know them. It seems that labels confuse and obscure the truth of what people are really like.  For this reason both Maggie and O'Brien get a thumbs-up from me.
    The handling of this issue lifts the book above the ordinary. I found The Trivia Man a bright, light read and hard to put down. The humorous episodes at the weekly trivia nights, and especially the quiz questions were a definite plus. I look forward to trying more books from this author.

In a Real Life by Chris Killen

In a Real Life is the story of three characters, Lauren, Paul and Ian over two time periods: 2004 and 2014. The novel cuts back and forth between these two critical years, using a lively mix of alternating view points, past and present tense and first and third person narration. The chapters are short so in no time you are swept into the novel which opens with the break-up of Paul and Lauren This happens when Lauren goes to bed having left a list of PRO's and CON's about Paul on the living room table, which of course he happens to see when he comes home from his bar job.
    His bar job is one of the CON's - there are seven in total - while there is only one PRO: that he would never cheat on her. Fast forward to 2014 and there's Paul, having published a novel, teaching creative writing, so no longer working in a bar, but contemplating infidelity with a nineteen year old student, which means he seems to have swapped around some of his good points and bad points.
    Lauren goes off to Canada on the spur of the moment, but begins an email correspondence with Ian, Paul's flatmate. Ian is in the music industry, playing in a band, writing songs, but by 2014 he has lost his job in a record store and has to move in with his more successful sister, Carol. It's a crumby box room and he has to sell his guitar to pay his board. He's also lost touch with Lauren, after a stream of emails that promised more than friendship. All three characters seem to have lost touch, in fact.
    By 2014 Lauren is working in a charity shop, still looking for Mr Right with little hope of finding him. The course of the novel fills in a few of the gaps: what caused the falling out between Lauren and Ian for starters. We have sympathy for Ian in particular: he seems a nice guy but his life has struck rock bottom, Lauren has a knack for getting into situations with men without really thinking them through, while Paul seems to be acting out a role in 'Men Behaving Badly'. It is a toss-up who is worse, Paul or Carol's boyfriend, Martin who gives Ian a job in telemarketing. This is a particularly unpleasant industry and it says a lot for Ian that he is so bad at it.
    The novel highlights the way we communicate/fail to communicate using social media and the Internet, and is an interesting snapshot of Generation Y. There is plenty of humour in the little messes each character gets into, although at times this made me cringe, particularly Paul's hopeless acts of deceit towards his girlfriend, his younger lover, his boss and even his publisher. And surely characters like Paul and Ian should steer clear of Facebook or at least should think rather than drink before posting a status.
    What kept me going with the story was the obvious 'unfinished business' between Ian and Lauren that lurks in the background. Paul shows a willingness to make amends to all and sundry, but seems to be hellbent on picking up more bad points than before. In Paul, Killen has created a classic example of literary pretentiousness reminding me somehow of that Groucho Marx saying: 'Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book - and does.' I am glad however that Chris Killen wrote this book - it is so refreshingly honest and good fun.

Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd

Lynn Shepherd's first foray into mystery fiction inspired by nineteenth century literature reads very like a Jane Austen novel. One of the first things you notice is the pains she has taken to sprinkle through the book occasional outmoded usages - words such as sopha (sofa) and twelvemonth (a year), to name but two. The first half of the book is a bit like a reworking of Austen's Mansfield Park, with an overhaul of the characters.
    Most notable of these is Fanny Price, whom Kingsley Amis described as 'a monster of complacency and pride, who under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel'. Here Fanny is an heiress, with an immense fortune when she comes of age and her pick of suitors. You would think this would make her happy. She's nice looking, has nice things to wear and balls to go to, but all that entitlement seems to have turned her into quite the calculating shrew.
    Fanny's aunt, Mrs Norris, has pushed forward her stepson, Edmund, as Fanny's suitor and the two are informally engaged, but neither seem terribly happy about that. Mrs Norris is snooty or fawning depending on who she is talking to, and the Bertrams whose seat is Mansfield Park are pleasant but not very smart. Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram think Fanny demure and generally lovely, but when Mr Rushworth, a character for whom the term popinjay seems to have been invented, starts paying court to Fanny, her true colours begin to emerge.
    Much of the story is told from the point of view of Mary Crawford, who is staying with her sister, the vicar's wife, along with her brother, Henry, who has been contracted by Sir Thomas to redesign the gardens of Mansfield Park. Mary is attractive, kindly and sensible in equal proportions and soon makes friends with young Julia Bertram while catching the eye of Edmund.
    The novel could quite happily carry along in this vein, a comedy of manners with a bit of social commentary and romance on the side. There's plenty of goings on and intrigue when it comes to who might marry whom. But in the middle of the book Shepherd throws in a murder and the novel takes a darker turn. The Bertrams engage the services of 'thief-taker' Charles Maddox, who you might recall is the uncle of Shepherd's private investigator from her later books, also a Charles Maddox. The older Maddox is uncompromising, stopping at nothing to get to the truth, and suddenly the book has a distinctly different tone.
    Murder at Mansfield Park is another terrific read from Lynn Shepherd - well researched and cleverly plotted. Her characters are multidimensional too. There's nothing like throwing a murder at them to see who shines and who turns into a quivering mess. But what I like best about her books is Shepherd's impeccable writing which so perfectly captures a sense of period, plus a wry Jane Austen humour. She writes the kind of book that is both a lot of fun and remarkably intelligent - is that why so many literary authors are turning to mystery writing?

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

Pym is often described as a 20th century Jane Austen. Perhaps this is more obvious in Jane and Prudence as the eponymous Jane sees herself as a bit of matchmaker. Although she doesn't quite get into as much trouble as Austen's Emma does, and as Pym puts it when describing the modern novel, the ending is not obviously a happy one, with a number of possibilities still on the table.
    The story begins with Jane and Prudence, who were at university together, at an Oxford reunion. Here their old tutor, Miss Birkenshaw, remarks about what her students have gone on to achieve. A number, like Jane, have married clergymen, others have their work in a ministry or have dogs, while a question mark hovers Prudence. Jane feels Miss Birkenshaw might have said that Prudence has her love affairs.
    As she and her husband settle into a new parish, Jane begins to look around for a suitable husband for Prudence, now twenty-nine - an age when she could so easily miss the marriage boat altogether.
    Prudence meanwhile lives in a tastefully decorated flat in London, where she works as an assistant for a Dr Grampion, editing books 'nobody could be expected to read'. She has secretly been in love with her employer who one evening when they were working late, had laid a hand on hers and said, 'Ah, Prudence.'
    Pym creates amusing little scenes around Prudence's workplace, where the older ladies, Miss Clothier and Miss Trapnell, fuss about whether the typists will manage to bring in the tea on time, or if Mr Manifold can be prevailed upon to share some of his tin of Nescafe when the tea has run out. This is the early fifties and rationing is still the bane of everyone's existence.
    Similarly in Jane's village, there is always the worry of what to have for dinner, Jane usually relying on opening a tin, but rescued by the wonderful Mrs Glaze, the housekeeper whose nephew is the village butcher. Mrs Glaze consequently knows whose turn it is for liver, and who will be having 'a casserole of hearts' that evening.
    The scene is set for plenty of humour as Jane lines up potential candidates for when Prudence comes to stay, lured by a fundraising whist drive. The most obvious seems to be the recently widowed Fabian Driver, who has had a few love affairs himself but has a nice house on the green. There is also young Mr Oliver who looks palely interesting when reading the lesson, and the local MP, Edward Lyall. So many possibilities.
    It could all be a bit silly if it weren't for Pym's wit and the lively dialogue that captures the time; the daft preoccupations of parish life, starkly contrasting with quotations from Jane's academic speciality: the poetry of the seventeenth century.  Contrast gives the book a bit of oomph in many ways - the two main characters, one from the town and one from the country - and the contrast between people's expectations and what transpires. Jane and Prudence is a delightful read, redolent with subtle wisdom, that will leave you in a better place.

Landscape with Solitary Figure by Shonagh Koea

Shonagh Koea's novels are difficult to pigeon-hole. Many of them deal with a similar protagonist, a woman of middle age, solitary and happy to be so, often avoiding the people who threaten to unsettle her peace. There will be events from the past that bubble away in the background, and this backstory is slowly revealed in Koea's wry and carefully considered prose.
    And so it is with Koea's latest novel. Ellis Leigh lives by herself in a bungalow by the sea, when a letter from a man she knew ten years before disturbs her calm. In the intervening years, Ellis has made a much needed escape - from another town by the sea that was once home, when she had a husband and young child. She has mistakenly returned thinking she will be happy there again, but the town is unwelcoming, its inhabitants sneering or frosty to the point of nastiness and even the climate is harsh.
     Her short time here, while she inhabits a beautiful house she has filled with fine furnishings and antiques, ends because of an act of singular cruelty.
    But now after all this time, Martin Dodd, tall and impeccably dressed and with a mellifluous voice that caresses every syllable, has had the gall to write her a letter. If she had known the letter was from him, she'd have bunged it unopened in the bin. Suddenly the past comes flooding back and the reader is treated to a slow unravelling of events as the story is filled in like patchwork.
     Having escaped to the city, Ellis mulls over what has happened and Koea treats us to rich descriptions of interiors and gardens, of fabrics and furnishings, which help make Ellis's story all the  more vivid. I love the small incidents, such as how Ellis acquired a particularly sought-after type of clivia, or a description of a garden party where her young son is bullied, the truly awful birthday party, in another garden - there are lots of gardens after all. And each one adds to the atmosphere, for this is a very atmospheric novel.
     This is not one of those books that seems to be full of dialogue - Ellis is too solitary for that- but when we are treated to them, the conversations are often darkly funny. Poor Ellis is treated to some rather off hand and belittling comments. It's only her son in London who is kind, sending money for airfares every other year, while a friend of his lets her use her apartment in Paris for a holiday - for once a place where Ellis feels safe.
    Koea creates a narrative on a fairly small scale, and perhaps this adds to the claustrophobia that is Ellis's over-riding fear, but it is a picture delicately wrought - rather like the cover of the book. You won't get carried away on a tide of action and sudden swoops of storyline that leave you breathless in a novel by this writer. It is more like something you savour - one of the fine wines that Martin Dodd waxes lyrical about perhaps. You have to be really good at what you do to write a book like this. And Koea is very good.

Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe

Humour can be so difficult to get right, but Nina Stibbe does it superbly in her novel, Man at the Helm, which is a kind of 1970s Love in a Cold Climate. The story is told by Lizzie Vogel, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, thanks to the fortune her father's business reels in.
    Sadly her parents have fallen out of love - they were young iconoclasts together when they married, but the demands of the family business have turned Lizzie's dad into a different kind of person.
    Divorce sees Lizzie and her mother, her sister and brother (Little Jack) packed off to a house in the country in Mrs Vogel's ancient Mercedes, Geraldine. It's a grand house, with a gardener, Mr Gummo, but it's too far to travel for housekeeper, Mrs Lunt, who hates children but makes wonderful jam tarts, and it is the end of the nanny era.
    What's more the village is not ready for a divorcee among their ranks - even the vicar warns Mrs Vogel that while the family may attend services, she would not be eligible to join their women's fellowship group. The village families discourage their children from forming friendships with the Vogel children so it's just as well they have each other.
    Mrs Vogel, sinks into the depths of despond, sun-bathing and becoming addicted to tranquillisers, which means not a lot of mothering, let alone housekeeping, happens. But she's still young and beautiful (shaking her hand causes men to fall in love with her) so the girls hatch a plan to find a new 'man at the helm'.
    After much debate, the girls gradually add men to the list, most of whom are already married, but that seems to be no impediment.  They are after all desperate not to be made wards of court, and will try anyone. The vicar makes the list and even Mr Gummo - though only if all else fails. Which it nearly does, and love comes, as it always does, from the least likely direction.
    Man at the Helm is a refreshing, delightful novel, gently humorous offering a steady stream of chuckles rather than uproarious hilarity. A lot of this is down to Stibbe's lovely use of language - whimsical and original - which she uses to create the narrative voice of ten-year-old Lizzie. And the 1970's era is nicely brought to life here, along with small town life. It's altogether more-ish, like Mrs Lunt's jam tarts, just the ticket for the silly season.

Civil to Strangers by Barbara Pym

Published posthumously, I was quite prepared for Civil to Strangers to be somewhat ordinary, by Barbara Pym's standards, that is. It was her second novel, after Some Tame Gazelle had unsuccessfully gone the rounds of the publishers, and like this one, no doubt languished in the attic - until recently.
    Of course if you don't like Pym, this won't bother you at all, and if you do like Pym, then you have the pleasure of a new one, decades after her death. And also the sorrow of realising that she could never be aware of the success she would enjoy today.
    Civil to Strangers is wonderful in that it doesn't appear to have been written by someone still perfecting her style. The writing has all the features we recognise in Pym, the small village, in this case it is Up Callow, where a lot of the action is centred around the rectory and its clerical types. There's a lovely scene in church where the sermon about embroidery, of all things, is mulled over by various members of the congregation. And there is Pym's trademark irony and her likeable if rather silly village characters and their little concerns, all bound together in a light, elegant style.
    Mostly, this is the story of Cassandra, who is really nice. She's quite nice looking, does things properly without fuss and always manages to say the right thing. She's married to Adam Marsh-Gibbon, a writer of difficult to understand novels, and as such the couple are much admired because Adam gives their village a bit of fame in the broader world. But Cassandra worries that she loves her rather self-centred, artistic husband more than he loves her.
    When an exotic Hungarian stranger takes up residence in one of the village's more notable properties, the village is abuzz with gossip. Thirty-year-old Angela Gay, who fears she may be left on the shelf, has found charming the austere young curate, Mr Paladin, an uphill battle so she soon switches her attentions to Mr Tilos the Hungarian. Unfortunately, Tilos falls for Cassandra instead.
    In the background the village characters ponder and discuss these goings-on, particularly Mrs Gower, who as the widow of an academic enjoys a degree of prestige, and Angela's uncle, Mr Gay, a handsome man of sixty who never quite realised his dream of marrying for money. With characters like these it isn't surprising Pym is sometimes likened to a modern Jane Austen.
    The drama moves to Hungary and there are amusing scenes on a train when Cassandra befriends some churchly types in an attempt to avoid Mr Tilos's advances. There are misunderstandings, dawning realisations and reconciliations, while one or two new romantic attachments develop in the background. Who knew village life could be so dramatic?
    You come away from reading a Pym novel feeling warmed and amused without any affront to your intelligence - there's even a smattering of literary quotations for fans of the classics. And with Pym's lively dialogue and whimsical style you can happily reread a Pym novel because like Cassandra's embroidery, it is so much richer for the inclusion of plenty of stitches.

Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

I had quite a Jane Austen obsession there for a bit, and while Sense and Sensibility was never one of my absolute favourites, I was fairly interested when Joanna Trollope, another author I have regularly enjoyed, announced she was doing a modern version of the Austen novel as part of 'The Austen Project'. And who better! You know you are in safe hands with Trollope when it comes to character, relationships and lively dialogue.
    In this update, you've got the Dashwood family, three gorgeous young women and their more creative than practical mother, thrown out on their ear by mercenary relations who have inherited the family pile. This is due to a lack of foresight on the part of the girls' late father. Trollope replaces primo-geniture as the reason behind the girls losing their beloved Norland with their being illegitimate. Other updates include the power of social media, and the more superficially snobbish characters are more concerned with money than having a title.
    But the heart of the story is the contrast of the two sisters, each  experiencing problems along the path to true love - the older Elinor being the drearily sensible one, while her sister Marianne, is astonishingly impulsive and passionate. It was always a very contrived idea, and it is fortunate that Elinor has beneath her quiet and pragmatic veneer, a warm heart, and that Marianne learns eventually to consider other people's feelings and develops some strength of character.
    However I found the cast of ridiculous and often unpleasant characters very tiresome. I couldn't quite believe that so many of them - the scheming Lucy who won't give up Edward without a fight, the ditzy, insensitive Charlotte and her gushy sister Mary, wife of the tiresomely jolly Sir John, to say nothing of the odious Nancy - could have so few redeeming features. Edward was always a wimp, but this is explained away by his repressive mother, yet another nasty.
    The characters are all just a bit too extreme and verging on the cardboard cut-out. Then again they were probably like this in Austen as well, only the modern reader has the luxury of putting this down to the Regency period while being able to enjoy Austen's elegant and witty prose. Sadly there isn't a lot of wit here - the characters are all too dumb or lovelorn for that, although the dialogue is snappy and the prose reasonably elegant - which is what we would expect from Trollope. This makes the novel a quick and easy read, but somehow Austen was always rather more satisfying.
    Will I be returning for more in The Austen Project? Not just yet, I imagine, but then again I am curious about how Persuasion might turn out and who would have picked Val McDermid for Northanger Abbey!

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

Excellent Women is classic Barbara Pym, a novel concerning the seemingly small world of Mildred Lathbury, one of those capable, sensible women who people turn to for help in a crisis. She can be depended on to provide cups of tea and even meals, and helps out with jumble sales at the local church where she is close friends with the vicar and his unmarried sister, Julian and Winifred Malory.
    At thirty-one, Mildred is considered a spinster - this is the 1950s after all - and with a small legacy, she has enough to live on while doing charitable work for a society that helps impoverished gentlewomen.
    All this makes Mildred sound rather dull, and yet as a narrator she is anything but. Not only is she witty and can come up with a pertinent quotation at the drop of a hat, she is perceptive about the motives of others and her own feelings as well.
    As the story begins, Midlred's old school chum has just moved out of the neighbouring flat and new neighbours - the glamorous Napiers - are moving in. They're going to have to share a bathroom, so establishing a cordial neighbourliness early on is important. And sure enough, there are soon pleasant chats over the teacups and Mildred discovers that the Napiers have marital difficulties.
    Helena Napier made one of those hasty war-time marriages, swept off her feet by the charming Rockingham Napier, but years later, she finds him shallow. Her anthropologist colleague, Everard Bone is so much more stimulating. Rockingham however finds Helena messy, lacking in domestic skills and is careless with his cherished period furniture.
    Meanwhile at the vicarage, Julian and Winifred are dazzled by their new lodger, Allegra Gray, who seems so suitable in every way, being a clergyman's widow and attractive to boot. Could Julian begin to rethink his vow to remain an unmarried vicar?
     Midred's ability to act as a sounding board and readiness with the tea pot means that much of what happens is told through conversations. She is tugged one way and then another, charmed by the Napiers and then called to act as a go-between; ignored for weeks by the Malorys in favour of their new lodger, only to be the one they turn to when it all turns to custard.
    We meet a cluster of hilarious minor characters - the no-nonsense Sister Blatt, who punctuates conversations with the a disdainful snort or clickings of teeth; Everard Bone's dotty mother and her paranoia regarding birds - it seems no character is without their peculiar quirks.
     Excellent Women is very entertaining in a quiet, understated way, and is a good reminder of how daftly misguided people can be, even with the best intentions. On top of this we have Pym's quaint and fast vanishing world, in itself a source of fascination.

The Opposite of Falling by Jennie Rooney

In Jennie Rooney's novel, The Opposite of Falling, flight is a motif that connects three characters. Ursula Bridgewater has, in her early twenties, been jilted by her fiancé, a man with no substance according to Ursula's brother. Her reaction is to travel. It is the 1860s and Thomas Cook is beginning to take tour parties abroad.
    Ursula begins quietly with a trip to Wales and is encouraged by the friends she makes to travel again. Restless and unfulfilled when she is at home, travel becomes something to exercise her brain - if only she could stop writing those letters to her ex-fiance, now happily married and a father of two.
     Ten years later, Ursula is excited at the idea of another Thomas Cook expedition, this time to the United States, but who should she take with her? Having helped her maid, Mavis, into private enterprise, Ursula decides a sensible replacement would be the ideal travel companion.
    Sally Walker has been teaching at the convent which took her in on the death of her mother, but has blotted her copybook with Sister Thomas. She jumps at the chance to work for Ursula, who is kindly and treats her like an intelligent person. Sally is a hopeless shrinking violet, though, for although she has thoughts and desires, she is quite unable to express them.
    On the other side of the Atlantic Toby O'Hara grows up with the memory of his daring mother flying  a bat-inspired contraption built by his father - a toy-maker and would-be aviator - a flight that ended in her death. While flying machines are put aside by his dad, Toby as a teenager is drawn to ballooning and other air-born possibilities.
    The three characters meet in Niagara, to a background score of rushing water and it is here that they all discover how to take flight in a more metaphorical sense. This may make the novel seem overly contrived, and in a sense it is all about how its characters find what they really want in life and develop the courage to reach for it.
    Fortunately the narration of The Opposite of Falling is quirky and charming in an E M Forster kind of way that is very engaging. Rooney uses a detached style of writing about her characters that is slightly old-fashioned, rather than the stream of consciousness, present tense story-telling prevalent in many modern novels. (I enjoy this too as it gives a very immediate feel to a story.)
    You have to be really good at your craft to make a traditional style like this work and Rooney never puts a foot wrong. This is a small book, but very polished and poised. I liked it a lot.

A Little Murder by Suzette A Hill

If Barbara Pym had decided to write a murder mystery, it might have turned out a bit like A Little Murder, with its drolly amusing characters and persistent digs at ‘polite’ society. The murder in question concerns the death of aging social butterfly and high-class good time girl, Marcia Beasley, found shot dead in her home, naked with a coal scuttle rammed on her head.
    Marcia’s sensible niece, Rosy Gilchrist, is horrified of course – not that the two were ever close as attested by Auntie’s will, which left everything to a home for donkeys. The story takes place eight years after World War II, and Marcia’s wartime history soon rears its head. Perhaps not surprisingly Marcia used her glamorous looks in an undercover role, under the bed covers that is, worming secrets out of the enemy.
    At first you might be forgiven for thinking that Rosy is going to do a bit of sleuthing to get to the bottom of things. A dinner with Marcia’s ex-husband, and a visit from a fellow wartime spy, calling himself Richard Whittington, bring to Rosy’s attention Marcia’s surprising wartime career. But while she may have been an affective spy, Marcia was also known to be reckless.
    Whittington reveals that Marcia fell for one of her pillow talkers, sabotaging an op behind enemy lines. Could this be the reason for her murder, or was it a need to suppress potentially dangerous secrets? Rosy, well aware of the latent scandal in her aunt’s past, would like the whole sorry episode to evaporate. But Whittington and another chum from the war years, dachshund-toting, cigar-smoking Vera, are sure Marcia must have left an incriminating document in Rosy’s care – if only anyone knew where to find it.
    The novel is more comedy of manners than edge of the seat whodunit with a cast of farcical characters, including fastidious Felix, florist to royalty and his supercilious special friend, Cedric. There are the vapid Saunders who throw wonderful parties, and Marica’s dreary neighbours the Gills, who bore everyone with fundraising whist drives. Hill throws in just enough murders to keep you turning the pages, and while the pace might have been improved with a little less of the Felix and Cedric banter, the wittily stylish prose and 1950s London setting add plenty of entertainment.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Debut novels can sometimes be such a breath of fresh air, a new voice with a different story to tell. The Rosie Project is just such a book, at times very funny, but also poignant and certainly romantic in a screwball comedy kind of way.
    The story is told entirely from the point of view of Don Tillman, a genetics professor. He is tall, fit, and looks a bit like Gregory Peck, but at almost forty he is still seeking a woman to share his life with. The problem is he has Asperger Syndrome - this reveals itself in his excessively ordered life, timetabled to the minute, a difficulty with small-talk, and an overactive brain that can turn out complex mathematical calculations at the drop of a hat.
    He has only two friends, Gene, head of the Psychology Department at Don's university, who happens to be a serial womaniser in spite of being married to Don's other friend, Claudia, who coaches Don with relationships and introduces him to her female friends.
    When it occurs to Don he can solve the wife problem with a questionnaire as a way to save time and factor out any unsuitable punters (smokers, women who can't do maths, vegetarians, the list goes on), he launches himself into the Wife Project with zeal. Then he meets Rosie. Suddenly hormones intrude and the Wife Project is put on hold. Rosie is very attractive, in spite of being a barmaid, a smoker and a vegetarian.
   Rosie wants help with tracing her biological father, a daunting problem as her late mother had something of a reputation. They narrow down a list of candidates to around fifty fellow med students who were all at the same graduation ball. This becomes The Father Project.
   What transpires is a series of hilarious scenes as the pair secretly gather samples from each candidate for gene testing. At one point, the two sign up to be bar staff at a conveniently timed med school reunion. Don exceeds all expectations as a newbie cocktail maker and becomes the life and soul of the party. At the faculty ball, Don arrives with a new candidate from the Wife Project who is perfect in every way except for a passion for ballroom dancing with more comic results.
    Simsion cleverly choreographs his scenes so that they have enough sensitivity that Don isn't simply the butt of every joke. This is in large part due to Rosie, who has her own demons and is refreshingly honest. She blatantly enjoys their exploits together for with Don there's never a dull moment - when he isn't being infuriatingly difficult. Which is quite often.
    And it is much the same for the reader. Don is so interesting, and the characters of Rosie and Gene such a contrast, they make his unusual way of looking at life seem even more unique. Yet he still engages our sympathy by being at times introspective enough to examine the aspects of his character that are challenging to others. When he finally embarks on The Rosie Project, he does so with all the energy of his previous endeavours, and becomes a true hero.
 

Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night by James Runcie

    
I wish more mystery writers would package their fiction in bundles of short stories like this - it makes such a nice change as they are ideal for picking up and putting down again. You can read a story a night, or leave the book for a week or two if you are busy.
    Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night is the second instalment in James Runcie's Grantchester ecclesiastical whodunit series. Set in the 1950s and beyond, it features Sidney, a priest, or Canon actually, in his thirties with a living at Cambridge, where he also teaches the odd divinity class. This means he gets to mingle with the dons and students as well as the members of his parish.     Maybe it's his naturally curious personality, or it could be his sharp intelligence, or perhaps it is being friends with policeman and backgammon buddy, Geordie Keating, but sooner or later Sidney becomes embroiled in crime.
    In this collection, Sidney takes a funeral for a Cambridge don who falls from a rooftop during a daring climbing escapade. It is one of those 'did he fall, or was he pushed' sorts of stories with a brilliant twist at the end. Just so you don't think it's murder all the way, the next story concerns the suspected arson of a barn rented by a down-at-heel photographer.  Hildegarde, a German widow Sidney has been quietly courting, comes to visit in the next story but gets caught up in the murder investigation of a maths professor found dead in his bath. Could defective wiring be at fault?
    There's a story about a poisoned cricketer, the first Pakistani to bowl a hat-trick for the Grantchester side - which includes a wonderful piece of cricket commentary, when Sidney is asked to umpire. Sidney's other love interest, the glamorous socialite Amanda, announces she is engaged to a scientist at work on cutting-edge theories about the universe. Sidney soon suspects he might not be all he's cracked up to be but how to tell Amanda? The final story throws Sidney into a serious situation with the Stasi in East Germany, when a visit to Hildegarde goes pear-shaped. How will this impact on Sidney's relationship with the woman he wants to marry?
    Among the usual characters are Sidney's Dovstoevsky reading curate, Leonard, and the housekeeper, Mrs Maguire, who rules the roost and has Sidney careful not to offend, because in spite of her sharp tongue and a tendency to rearrange his papers, she's a pretty good cook.
    While they might not be edge of the seat reading, the stories are very warmly humorous, with lots of interesting digressions into subjects like maths, physics, music and of course, cricket. This work-out for the brain makes the stories even more satisfying, and with the atmospheric setting of Cambridge in the 1950s, the Grantchester Mysteries are hard to resist.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

In her acknowledgments at the back of the book author Helen Simonson passes on her thanks to the writer that first taught her 'to appreciate the beauty of the sentence'.  One of the things I particularly liked about Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is that Simonson writes such beautiful sentences which not only capture the tone of Major Pettigrew so well, but have a rhythmical cadence that shows you an author who cares about her craft. These sentences are also imbued with a lovely wry humour, and one reason it works so well is because of the pitch and rhythm of the syntax. This is something I first discovered in P G Wodehouse when I was a girl, and possibly even Jane Austen, and have rediscovered in other masters of comedy from Kingsley Amis to Bill Bryson.
    Actually Jane Austen is the first author I thought of as I read this book, because it is a novel about the trials of true love especially in the context of the expectations of society. Major Pettigrew is a widower of sixty-eight, when his younger brother dies suddenly. He is so upset by the news that he answers the door in a floral housecoat that belonged to his late wife, to find himself almost collapsing on the tiny shoulder of of Mrs Ali from the village shop.
    So begins a friendship, and maybe it took such a moment of weakness for it to blossom because Pettigrew is such a traditional, stiff-upper-lip army type that he would never have thought of openly courting the attractive Pakistani widow who sells him delicious loose tea and other comestibles. In spite of their different cultures they find they share a joy in reading and both have a similarly ironic sense of humour.
    But we all know that the course of true love is never easy and both the major and Mrs Ali have problems to deal with first. For the major, there is the issue of the Churchills, a pair of beautifully hand-crafted hunting rifles that were given to his father by a grateful maharaja in India just after the Partition. The major's father left one rifle to each of the boys, on the proviso that they be reunited upon the death of either one of them, and then handed on together to the next generation.
    But the Churchills are of course worth a lot of money and Bertie's wife, Marjorie, as well as the major's son, Roger, would like some extra cash. The major loves his Churchill and the thought of collecting its pair has been one consolation at his brother's death. How will he stand up to Marjorie and Roger, with whom he has an awkward relationship at the best of times?
    Meanwhile, since the death of her husband, Mrs Ali has been slowly handing over the reins of her shop to her scowling nephew, Abdul Wahid. He's a devout Muslim who has been trying to reconcile his soul with the disgrace he has thrust upon his family, some years ago. Mrs Ali is keen to smooth over the difficult waters that prevent his happiness. While the major wants his family to uphold tradition, Mrs Ali wants to encourage her various relatives to break a few rules so that people can live and let live.
    These niggling difficulties are complicated by the coming events of a dance at the golf club, a shooting party hosted by the local lord of the manor, and the arrival of a wealthy American businessman. The usual village characters are all there too: the vague vicar and his busy-body wife, the blushing spinster, the golf club cronies of the major. If there's one fault in this book it is that these characters are so classic that they verge on cliche.
    Luckily the story hums along towards a magnificent climax, where we get to see the major in the action he has trained for, with some lovely touches of irony, of course.

An Academic Question by Barbara Pym

I think I may have mentioned that I'm a big fan of Barbara Pym novels. Virago, bless them, have been reprinting the thirteen novels Pym wrote in her lifetime, so now I've had the chance to catch up on a few that I'd not come across before. 
    One of these is An Academic Question, which was published posthumously. Pym never thought it would be published at all, as when she wrote it in 1971, she was very much out of fashion. She thought it too 'cosy' to have any chance of acceptance and it was left as a draft. It was years later that her friend, Hazel Holt, tidied up the various drafts and notes into a publishable manuscript.
    An Academic Question is narrated by Caro Grimstone, whose husband, Alan, is an anthropology lecturer at an English provincial university.  Caro is feeling jaded by her lack of fulfillment as a wife and mother when she takes up the offer to read to an invalid at a retirement home. This Mr Stillingfleet happens to be an expert anthropologist himself, with a chest full of notes he refuses to allow anyone to see, including Alan's head of department. Spotting an opportunity to further his career, Alan steals some of the old boy's research and the rest of the novel follows the moral dilemmas this action throws Caro's way. On top of all this, she is concerned about her husband's interest in an attractive colleague, Iris Horniblow.
    Caro receives plenty of advice from well-meaning friends, including the spectacular mother and son duo, Kitty and Coco, who once led a charmed life on a Caribbean island, and Kitty's sister, Polly who keeps a rundown second-hand shop and has a soft spot for hedgehogs. Dry humour sets the tone for the story, which follows Caro's awkward dealings with academics and librarians, until a series of chance happenings leads to a sensible resolution.
    An Academic Question is a delightful comedy of manners with the odd 'laugh-out-loud' moment. As Anne Tyler so nicely put it on the back cover, Pym is 'the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life.'

The Essence of the Thing by Madeleine St John

The Essence of the Thing, by Madeleine St John managed a nomination for the Booker Prize in 1997. (It competed with the truly superb Europa by Tim Parks, and both of these lost out to The God of Small Things by Andurati Roy - I have a copy of this that I have never managed to read.)
    Essence is the third of St John's novels, and since I have been reading them in order, there is sadly only one to go. There is something to be said for the smaller novel, in this case a mere 235 pages - you can finish it in a day or two and there isn't time for the story to get too flabby. St John's novel has no spare words. It remains sharp and witty and leaves a lot to the reader's imagination. I for one appreciate the faith the author has in the reader to fill in the gaps.
    The story concerns a couple, Jonathan and Nicola, and what happens when Jonathan tells Nicola he doesn't want to live with her anymore and that he will buy her out of their Notting Hill flat, originally her flat, and can she leave as soon as possible please. Of course, Jonathan is a prat, but he happens to be, as Nicola points out to her best friend, Susannah, the prat that she loves.
    Nicola is desolate and the book is mainly about how she departs the flat, talks to friends, and because she isn't a prat they are happy to help out, and how eventually she pulls her life together again. There are scenes with each of the unhappy couple's parents who have hopes for their children. His parents think it is time they settled down. Nicola is perhaps not quite what one might have hoped, but nice enough. Nicola's parents likewise hope for a wedding. 'Why doesn't he have done and marry her?' declares her father.
    There are clever comparisons between different sectors of the middle classes. Jonathan's friends, Alfred and Lizzie are well-off professionals and too busy to have another child. Nicola's friends, Susannah and Geoff, are liberal, academic types and 'too poor' to produce a sibling for nine-year-old Guy. Geoff's friend, Sam, borrows his power tools, and does some amusing mental comparisons of the 'keeping up with the Jonses' kind.
    All this is achieved in short chapters, often containing a single scene using dialog and little else, which makes it a bit like reading a play at times. The dialog is pitch perfect - natural but able to move the story along nicely. And often laugh-out-loud funny. The ending is thoughtfully open-ended.
    St John's novels achieve a lot in a small sphere - ordinary people just thinking and talking, which can be a breath of fresh air if you've just been reading an epic fantasy novel as I have. In this sense, she is a kind of modern Jane Austen and reminds me a lot of Barbara Pym, and I am at a loss to decide which I like best.