Summer on the River by Marcia Willett

I've always been meaning to read a book like this, the kind with an attractively artsy cover that makes you think of summer holidays. You feel you will be in for a gentler kind of story, the characters are probably taking time out from their working lives, there will be summer romance and lots of walks along the seaside, in this case in Dartmouth. What's there not to like?
    Summer on the River is the story of Evie and her family by marriage: in particular Charlie who reminds Evie so much of her gorgeous late husband, Tommy, and Charlie's difficult wife, Ange, so good with the London wine business but a bit mean. Ange is not keen to share the Merchant's House, which has been in the family for generations, but which Tommy left to Evie in his will, shock horror! Worse still, Evie has let the house to Charlie's cousin and doppelganger, Ben, recently separated and a bit hard up.
    Things get interesting when Ben meets Jemima, an attractive letting agent. When Jemima mistakes Charlie for Ben on a later date, sparks fly and there is obvious chemistry between them. It seems as if history repeats, as the scenario is similar to when Tommy met Evie, and they embarked on a long-term, extra-marital affair. What a shame it is Charlie, already married and with his life dictated by the need to run the family business with wife Ange, and not Ben who is a free agent.
    Into the mix Willet adds a family secret, which Tommy left Evie to sort out; as well as an unhinged stranger with a vendetta of his own against Evie which goes back to her years as a junior history lecturer. So there is plenty going on for the characters and a carefully orchestrated plot that keeps the reader amused until the last page.
    In the background there is Dartmouth, lovingly described, from busy regatta scenes, to tasteful bars and cafes as well as charming gardens. Architecture gets a look-in too, as characters are treated to tours of the Merchant House, Jemima's flat with a view and Evie's renovated boathouse full of light and overlooking the water.
    So much to enjoy with the setting, but unfortunately, I rather tired of the characters and all their indecisiveness - to spill the beans or not spill the beans; to begin an affair or not begin an affair - limping through the book chapter after chapter. There was such a lot of infidelity talked about, I was ready to assume Ben and Charlie were more than just cousins, after all why were they constantly mistaken for each other, or had everyone left their specs at home?
    Summer on the River made a pleasant break from the more meaty fare and chilling mysteries often on my bedside table. It was nice to be in Dartmouth, a place I've never visited, and Willett lays it all out vividly for the reader. But the dialogue was too saccharine for this reader and the characters too irritating so I probably won't be lured by this kind of cover again. A pity.

The Green Road by Anne Enright

The Green Road is a little gem of a novel, managing to be entertaining as well as crafted, with engaging characters, all of whom belong to the same family: the Madigans from County Clare. They all converge on the family home one Christmas because their mother, Rosaleen, has decided to sell the old house, a decision that throws them into a chaos of emotions.
    Before all that happens, though, we are treated to the individual stories of Rosaleen and her four children. Dan upsets his mother at the beginning when he decides to become a priest. Years later he's in New York, living with his old girlfriend from home, while dabbling in the gay scene. Enright's perspective on New York in 1991 and the terrible shadow of AIDS is told through the eyes of Greg, HIV positive and lamenting the friends he has lost. The tone is pitch perfect, vivid and moving.
   And suddenly it's Constance, the older daughter, still living near her mother with a family of her own.  Her scattered thoughts as she waits for a mammogram appointment fill in the details of her life and her concerns for her mother and the difficulties around their relationship. For Rosaleen isn't easy. She's deprecating and demanding at the same time - no wonder her children have almost all deserted her.
    After Constance, we are swept to Mali where Emmet, Rosaleen's younger son, works with an aid organisation, living with his girlfriend, Alice. He loves Alice but finds it difficult to show this. Emmet has an offhand manner which helps him deal with the horrors of his surroundings, but it doesn't help his relationship. His younger sister, Hanna, an actress in Dublin, is quite the opposite, full of temper and passion - as a child she had a tendency to burst into tears over anything; now as an adult she is inclined to drink.
    They are a family of contrasts and they bounce off each other wonderfully when they all come together, bound by the awkwardness of dealing with their mother. Sneaking in is the story of Rosaleen's devotion to her late husband, Pat Madigan, a humble farmer and socially beneath her.
    The novel sets the scene for a potent mixture of tense emotions and discord, as well as concern and reconciliation in the family's last Christmas together in the old house. There is a load of humour too - I loved Constance's endless return trips to the supermarket and her outburst when it is revealed that she has forgotten to buy coffee grounds.
    It's so very real but magical none the less. This is because of Enright's wonderful writing. I shouldn't be surprised, she's a Booker winner after all and this book was also long-listed and Costa nominee to boot, and deservedly so. Enright could make a grocery list interesting.
 

Balancing Act by Joanna Trollope

You can't help feeling a little bit sorry for Susie Moran, the matriarch a the centre of this family drama. She's the successful head of her own pottery company with three talented daughters all involved in the family business. But now in her fifties she's eager to keep her finger in the pie and give her sense of creativity a bit of a boost. When a cottage comes up for sale that has connections to her old family pottery in Staffordshire, she snaps it up without involving her daughters, causing ructions that last well through the book.
    Personally, I didn't have a problem with Susie's decision and thought a bit of diplomacy all round would have sorted out her daughters, though I did worry a bit about poor old Dad. Jasper Moran has married a force to be reckoned with in Susie; she has turned a fairly moribund spongeware pottery into a thriving success story. Jasper elected to stay home to raise his daughters in their London house, his sound-proof basement studio a place to meet his fellow bandmates for the odd session, but really his musician career has been on hold for thirty years.
    The girls are just as talented as their mother, and beginning to want more of the business pie. Cara and her husband Dan run the commercial side of things, and have ideas about how to grow the business they are dying to try out. Ashleigh does the marketing, but is exhausted by her young family. When hubby, Leo, suggests he stays at home for a year, she can focus more on her work and decides she should have a more results-based salary.
    That leaves Grace, the artistic one who works at the pottery in Staffordshire. She's a bit beleaguered by a relationship that is going nowhere and tends to be pushed around by her bossy family. When their long-lost grandfather turns up out of the blue, his name being mud for having deserted Susie when she was a baby, it is Grace who feels expected to put him up at her flat.
    With a combination of restlessness, resentment, bitterness and dissatisfaction circling among the various characters, the scene is set for plenty of drama and a bit of a shake-up. The reader knows that no one will want to return to how things were at the beginning of the story and along the way there will be Trollope's amazing way with dialogue, and characters brought to life who earn the reader's sympathy. Even grandfather Morris is appealing with his stories of living hand-to-mouth on the beach in Africa, and his reasons for leaving are weirdly complex.
    Morris and Grace's boyfriend Jeff both deserve plenty of recrimination, but other males come to the rescue: Ash's lovely husband Leo and Grace's coworker Neil, for starters. The three daughters are almost from a fairytale, a modern, realistic fairytale; like fairytale traditions, the youngest is the most interesting, possibly for being more richly drawn. It's all classic Trollope - I didn't start the book with any great expectations, and while it didn't make the earth move, it was very satisfying none-the-less and surprisingly hard to put down.

The Drowning Lesson by Jane Shemilt

I had my doubts about this book in the opening pages as I couldn't quite warm to the main character and narrator. Emma Jordan is an obstetrician and mother of two young girls, Alice and Zoe. Husband, Adam, is also a doctor and their relationship is strained by the urge Emma feels to constantly compete with Adam career-wise. There is no doubt she is very good at what she does and there is little wonder she is driven when the story flips back to show glimpses of her relationship with her father. The drowning lesson of the title gives you a clue.
    Emma is one of those brilliant doctors who works with machine like accuracy but has something missing when it comes to relating to people: not remembering the name of the woman whose baby she has just delivered or noticing that Alice is suffering stress. When Adam plans a sabbatical year in Botswana, Emma is reluctant to take the time away from work to join him, but her falling unexpectedly pregnant and a problem with Alice at school help to change her mind.
   This back story is woven in with the terrible event at the start of the book when Emma arrives at their Botswana house to find her baby boy, Sam, has been abducted. A window has been smashed so it looks like strangers have taken the child who has a distinctive strawberry birthmark on his cheek.
    While the police are soon on the spot, there are hardly any leads and Emma's mind ranges over a variety of suspects: the nanny Teko, who turned up out of the blue and whom the girls took an instant liking to; Simon, the girls' tutor who has suddenly left the area; Adam's secretary, Megan, who had been overwhelmingly kind in arranging things from London, doesn't escape scrutiny either. Meanwhile the police question the elderly gardener and Alice becomes even more withdrawn and blames her mother for everything.
    The novel takes every woman's worst nightmare as the basis for a tense and gripping read. And while I found Emma a difficult character at first, that changed as the book progressed because she is really interesting. Adam and girls are also well rounded, coping or not coping in various ways.  The eventual solution to the mystery is only half the book as Emma learning that there is more to life than winning is a core part of the story. This could have been all rather obvious and clumsy, but Shemilt avoids these pitfalls - perhaps due to the spare, straightforward narration that suits Emma's developing character so well.
    While this might not have been my first choice of reading matter, once I'd picked it up it was hard to put down and I rattled through the final chapters. It would be a terrific TV drama series over several Sunday nights, too.

The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

The reader at the centre of this novel is Guylain Vignolles, just an ordinary man whose life has been made difficult by the name his parents gave him at birth - a spoonerism away from Villain Guignol which translates as 'ugly puppet'. He suffered the kind of teasing at school that robbed him of his confidence, and now in his thirties Guylain works in a book recycling plant, managing the Zerstor, a monstrosity of a machine that noisily gobbles and pulps the books no one wants to read anymore.
    The work is bad enough for anyone, his boss is abusive, his co-worker sneering and uncouth. And on top of that, Guylain loves books. To make up for what he has to do to them each day, he salvages odd pages and reads from his collection on his daily commute by train, out loud.
    Most of the time it seems Guilain's readings go unnoticed by his fellow travellers, until one day two old ladies collar him and ask him to read at their home. He imagines another Paris apartment, probably a bit more commodious than his own tiny garret, and is surprised to find himself in at a retirement home.
    His readings are very popular and the audience ask questions and take an interest in him. What's more they mispronounce and mishear his name so that it becomes nothing that conjures up the 'ugly puppet' of before. Things are looking up. But when Guylain discovers a lost USB drive on his train, his life takes another course altogether. In order to return the drive to its owner, Guylain downloads its content and suddenly we are in the journal of Julie, who is just as disillusioned with her lot as Guylain. Julie is looking for a white knight to rescue her from her dismal job as a toilet cleaner in a shopping mall.
    The book is a charming fable about the power of literature to uplift and transform people's lives. But it is full of humour too - that particular French style of humour which sees the funny side of the potentially miserable. Take Guylain's former co-worker, Giuseppe, who's legs were lost in an unfortunate accident when he was unblocking the Zerstor. His apartment is lined with shelves of books: identical copies of the same book that was made from the pulp which was the bi-product of his accident.
    Or the security guard, Yvon, who has a passion for reciting French classical literature and speaks in Alexandrine verse. (I imagine in an Englsh story, the character would choose iambic pentameter.) Guylain is a good friend to both which is just as well or the reader could never forgive his inability to find himself a girlfriend or a decent job.
    The Reader on the 6.27 takes an afternoon to read, and once begun I found it difficult to put down. I'm not sure quite what it was that drew me in, possibly it was the 'Amelie'-like quirky Frenchness, or the desire you feel for Guylain's life to turn around. You know there is a happy ending coming up, but there is enough wit to keep your brain happy as well. And the writing is stylish and clever. What more could you want?

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

State of Wonder is the story of Marina, a research scientist for the pharmaceutical company, Vogel, and it begins with the arrival of an aerogram letter. Her boss and secret lover, Mr Fox, shows her the letter which brings the news that her colleague and friend, Anders Eckman has died of fever in the Amazonian jungle. Anders had been sent to find out about the progress of a research project to develop a new fertility drug that would give older women the chance to have children.
    The project is headed by maverick scientist, Dr Annick Swenson, who years ago had been Marina's head surgeon in the obstetrics ward where Marina had made the terrible error that ended her hospital career. Marina has very mixed feelings about Dr Swenson, and is therefore not too happy about being sent to Brazil, at the request of both Mr Fox and Anders' wife, to learn the details of her colleague's death.
    Dr Swenson has been incommunicado, partly because of the remote location of the Amazonian tributary where she is carrying out her field work, and because she doesn't want any interference from Vogel until she has finished. Years have passed with very little communication, and the location of Dr Swenson is in doubt, but there is at least an apartment in Manaus, supplied by Vogel, which is somewhere for Marina to start.
    Marina arrives in sweltering Manaus from a chilly Minnesota to find her luggage has gone to Madrid. She discovers a helpful taxi driver and a not so helpful Australian couple who live in Dr Swenson's apartment and guard her privacy. It will be weeks, possibly months, before she can expect Dr Swenson to return for supplies. When she eventually does, and Annick reluctantly agrees that Marina can tag along with her back to the site of her research, the story really gets going.
    Marina finds herself battling nightmares caused by the anti-malarial drugs, and losing more of her clothing, so that she is attired in the loose shifts worn by the tribal women who are pregnant for most of their lives thanks to the addictive tree bark they nibble. She has to put up with Dr Swenson's unsympathetic and disparaging comments, but slowly finds favour. Does Annick even remember Marina from their former work together?
    Then of course there are the dangers inherent in the Amazon, from giant anacondas, to the poison arrows fired by a nearby tribe, the terrible heat and the very real danger of getting lost. Marina is a reluctant heroine, which makes her interesting and the situations she finds herself in are described with a dry humour.
    Patchett doesn't have to preach about the dangers of western interference on an endangered way of life, or the greed for pharmaceutical solutions to western problems, minor hiccups compared to those experienced by Amazonian people. Her story speaks for itself, but it does so with plenty of wit, action and many surprising revelations. It's a terrific read, and I was only sorry it had to end so soon. Happily there are other well-regarded novels by this author to enjoy, including Bel Canto which won an Orange Prize and which is also set in South America.
 

The Household Spirit by Tod Wodicka

The Household Spirit is a story about neighbours - two very different neighbours, each with a peculiar problem. Fifty-year-old Howie Jeffries lives next door to Emily Phane on Route 29 in New York State - two solitary houses adrift on a road on the way from somewhere to somewhere else and not in itself a destination.
    The Phanes and the Jeffries have never been neighbourly in all the thirty odd years Howie has lived there. His wife's baking was rebuffed when the Jeffries first moved in, and the Phanes' odd household, an elderly couple that didn't get on, and then old Peter Phane on his own bringing up his granddaughter, has long been a source of speculation.
    Howie's solitude is disturbed when Emily Phane returns from her studies in Boston to nurse her dying Peppy, and after his death is unable to return to her former life. Emily has a night-time affliction, a sleeping paralysis which brings her disturbing visions from which she is unable to wake.
    She drifts through her days, filling her house with plants, losing weight and looking unkempt. When Howie rescues her after she sets fire to her house, he finds he can help her with her problem, while Emily helps him with his.
    Born with a face described by his ex-wife as 'the last face on earth', Howie had learned early on that his smile could make children cry, the kind of face not uncommon on a Nazi war criminal. As a result he has always been extremely shy, living a quiet life doing shift work for the local water company. Divorced for twenty years and only in occasional contact with his ferocious artist daughter, he spends a lot of his spare time fishing and dreaming about the sailboat he will buy one day.
    This could seem a quirky feel-good novel about two awkward characters, but Widicka's lively dialogue and original storyline add a ton of drama. There's a cast of interesting characters: Peter Phane who was in his day a well-respected journalist and has a string of elderly girl-friends; Harriet Jeffries the daughter Howie accidentally took to a Maroon 5 concert; Ethan, Emily's sort-of Korean, but not really, boyfriend, a solid brick of a bloke who won't ever let her down. There are plenty more.
    Wodicka's prose adapts cleverly to capture his characters - the youngsters' tone is hip New York with interesting use of social media; Howie is so little used to talking to people he makes up his own idioms that sit oddly on the page by comparison. As he opens up to people, his conversation slowly becomes more natural.
   The story builds to a curious denouement in a snowed in New York City which can be read more than one way or perhaps it is just a little to clever for me. Anyway I recommend any reader to make up their own mind about the ending, which is like the novel as a whole, utterly original and thought-provoking.

The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go

Justin Go's debut is one of those novels that have you hooked on page one.  Tristan Campbell, twenty-three and recently graduated, is at a loose end when he receives a solicitor's letter from London. It informs him that a legacy might be his if he can prove he is descended from one Imogen Soames-Andersson, who hasn't been seen since she disappeared in Europe shortly after the First World War. The will is unusual in that it has allowed a period of eighty years to find a suitable heir.
    Tristan takes up the challenge, bringing to the solicitors whatever documentation he has as well as memories of his English grandmother Charlotte, who was never very happy in California. He'd always believed that Charlotte was the daughter of Imogen's sister, Eleanor, but a childless married woman at that time might well have brought up an illegitimate child for her sister, and Tristan sets out to prove it. The only problem is he has a mere two months before the legacy is bequeathed to assorted charities.
    Tristan's journey takes him to London, Sweden, Paris and the site of the trenches of Picardy, as well as Berlin and even as far as Iceland. Interspersed with his search is the story of two star-crossed lovers. Imogen is nineteen when she meets Ashley Walsingham, who is about to join his regiment as an officer fighting in the Somme. Imogen is a feisty young woman who doesn't believe in marriage, and follows Fabianism and other revolutionary ideas of the time.
    She does believe in love and her passion for Ashley leads her to give him a difficult choice: her or the army.  Ashley loves Imogen as much as she does him, but when he is severely wounded fate interferes and Imogen is lead to believe the worst. The war has an affect on their relationship that it seems can't be healed, though neither will ever forget the other.
    Tristan slowly makes odd discoveries, letters that have never been posted and others that have never been read. He finds photographs and Ashley's VC, among other memorabilia, but nothing seems to be quite the evidence he needs. In the meantime he meets a young French woman who makes him stop and think about the whole enterprise while upsetting his emotional equilibrium. There is an echo here of Ashley and Imogen while Tristan's headstrong and impetuous behaviour mark him out as a likely descendent.
    The Steady Running of the Hour is a beautifully wrought story full of anguish and self-realisation. While the reader knows a lot of what has happened, just as Tristan does, right at the beginning, there are still plenty of revelations. Tristan's journey is one of discovery in more ways than one, and the story is both compelling and original. I can't remember when I read a more affecting story of love and loss - perhaps The English Patient? - and this novel will linger in my mind for some time to come.

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.

The Kindness by Polly Samson

I enjoyed Polly Samson's recent novel, The Kindness, more than I expected - it's one of those books where you just have to keep reading to find out what really happened. It is largely the story of Julian, a young English literature student whose life is never the same after he bumps into Julia, a married woman about ten years older than he is.
    Julian can't take her eyes off Julia because she is strikingly beautiful and looks terrifically dramatic when he comes across her exercising her husband's hawk who is named, prophetically, Lucifer. Julian has been reading Milton's Paradise Lost, and there are references to Adam and Eve throughout Polly Samson's beguiling novel. The two soon become lovers and Julian discovers he must rescue Julia from a violent marriage.
    Although young, Julian is more than up for the task and with a baby on the way he remains positive and energetic because he and Julia are so in love. Beginning a family has its ups and downs, but Julian discovers a talent for rewriting the stories of history using the voices of eye-witness dogs. He is a runaway success at this and when his old family home, Firdaws, comes on the market he decides to risk everything to buy it.
    Firdaws really is paradise, but it might just be paradise lost if things don't improve - Julia is hating having to commute to her garden design business in London and then their daughter Mira becomes ill. Her illness creates a turning point and in the story and everything seems to spiral downwards from there.
    Around this ill-fated couple Samson has created a cast of characters that tempt and persuade or generally make things difficult for Julian and Julia. These include Karl, the friend who saved Julian's life when he was attacked by wasps and Katie, Julian's ex-girlfriend, suddenly single again when Firdaws is up for sale. Julian's mother Jenna challenges family members to swim the river that runs through the land nearby and wouldn't you know it, the river is home to a snake.
    There are forbidden fruit too - figs ripening and attracting more wasps, and oranges grown by Julia in her greenhouses. The fields are lush and reflect the changing seasons but Julia also makes beautiful settings for her family in their London flat. All of this adds loads of atmosphere.
    The Kindness is a story about betrayal and misunderstanding where everything hinges on an event that happens early on, with the jumps forward and back in time that have you guessing just enough to keep you reading on. There's even more to wonder about with the similarity of the main characters' names or working out which particular event is the 'kindness' of the title.
    I had my doubts about Julia - is she a terrible temptress or is she just as much a victim of bad luck as Julian? With his imaginative talent and boyish passion for love and life, Julian seems to earn more of our sympathy.
    But in the end it doesn't much matter what we think of the characters as they seem to be the playthings of bigger things like luck and fate, coincidence and bad-timing wrapped up in a carefully wrought storyline. These components are brought together by the fine writing talent of Samson who has created a unique and intelligent novel.

The Lovers of Amherst by William Nicholson

William Nicholson has carved a niche for himself writing intelligent novels about relationships, following a collection of interconnected characters over several generations. He does historical settings really well, and this novel features two time periods, the first is present day from the point of view of Alice Dickinson. She's a London copy writer researching the characters from the second time period for a screen play - the 'lovers of Amherst' of the title: Austin Dickinson (no relation) and Mabel Todd.
    Mabel is the young wife of an academic newly arrived at Amherst College and Austin the much older and unhappily married brother of American poet Emily Dickinson. It is 1885 when the two fall in love, meeting secretly in Emily Dickinson's house. Emily approves of their passion and while she is too much of a recluse to meet Mabel in person, she listens to their trysts through the dining room door. Who could resist writing a screenplay about that?
    Alice has her own issues with love. While she has broken the heart of Jack Broad, they remain friends and Jack offers her a contact in Amherst: the handsome older lecturer, Nick Crocker, who was once romantically involved with Jack's mother. Of course the inevitable happens, and Nick and Alice mirror the story of Austin and Mabel, told in alternating chapters.
    While this would make enough fodder for a reasonable love story, the novel goes a lot deeper than that, with discourses on the nature of love and happiness. Alice begins to learn the workings of her own feelings, chorused with snippets of Emily Dickinson's pithy and insightful poetry.
    It becomes a novel full of quotations and while I enjoyed lingering over the verse attempting to make connections to what is happening and for the glory of the poetry itself, I did tend to skim over Austin's and Mabel's effusive love letters - they wrote all the time to each other apparently. I also had reservations about the awkwardness of Alice and Nick's relationship, their often terse conversations, the see-sawing emotions.
    Towards the end though it begins to make more sense, as other characters step in, offer insight and help Alice grow up a little. I liked the advice Jack gives Alice about her screenplay.  As an English teacher who teaches 'narrative structure', he suggests she needs to start by figuring out how the play will end and that will define the story as a whole. Alice of course finds that the ending isn't quite how she'd originally imagined it and Nicholson ties this in nicely with an interesting conclusion to the novel as well.
     The Lovers of Amherst is well researched and evokes brilliantly its Massachusetts college town setting. The writing is assured and the characters well rounded and interesting, reminding me it is time I read some more of these interconnected novels. You can tell Nicholson really cares about his cast of characters, as he can't seem to let them go. I am reminded a little of Mary Wesley in this respect and wonder where Nicholson will take us next.

Edwin and Matilda by Laurence Fearnley

Subtitled 'an unlikely love story', Fearnley's novel begins with Matilda and Jacob having their wedding photos taken. It's Edwin's last job before retiring as a wedding photographer and from the outset Matilda is strikingly unusual. She's unusual because she is small and thin to the point of fragility, her hair a very short crop and she's wearing a dark blue dress, not the normal white. And while a few insults fly between her groom and some well-oiled members of an adjacent wedding party, she is making a film with her video camera, of leaves.
    Weeks later, the couple haven't collected their photos - this happens from time to time - but Edwin is more preoccupied by the article about Franz Joseph glacier he happened to see in a tourist magazine. It showed a picture of the mother he hasn't seen since he was a child. For Edwin is rather unusual too. He was raised by his father, a doctor at a tuberculosis sanatorium among the hills of Otago where the air is dry and healing. His mother had disappeared when he was seven and he had been told by his father that she was dead.
    Edwin has put off doing anything about finding his mother for eight years, preferring to wait until he is retired. He decides his first port of call is the sanatorium where he lived as a boy, but on the way he drops by Matilda's house to deliver the photos. She doesn't want them of course, her marriage didn't go ahead, and somehow, because she wants to make a documentary, she ends up joining Edwin on his quest.
    The two seem strangely drawn to each other, and the novel gently takes you through their gradual courtship, but the novel has a lot more to it than that. Because the two of them each have a heart-breaking back-story that is slowly and carefully revealed. The story behind the defection of Edwin's mother is told as Edwin clumsily makes his way to Franz Joseph, with Matilda and her video camera.
We discover what he discovers as he discovers it, while Matilda ponders how much she will tell him, and when, about her own past. She too has had a difficult relationship with her mother and then there is the tragedy of her illness.
    Fearnley is a lovely writer, her prose is spare and simple, allowing her characters to tell their own story. It is a very compelling read - I found I couldn't put it down. The atmosphere of the sanatorium through a child's eyes, of the wide open spaces of Otago, the cramped spaces of motel units and the awkwardness of sharing a car with a comparative stranger are vividly laid on the page for the reader through the book's sensitive characters. While yes, the relationship of Edwin and Matilda is unusual - even, as the cover would have it, unlikely - the truthfulness of the story-telling makes it work.
 

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.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

I don't often read this kind of thriller - there is so much tension that you know you're not in for a relaxing sort of reading experience. On top of that, The Girl on the Train has all these characters who aren't very likeable.
    First off there's Rachel, our main narrator. After a failed marriage she's in a bad way having lost her job because she's an alcoholic and she doesn't have the wherewithal to do anything to fix her life. She keeps up a charade to her flatmate Cathy of a normal working woman taking the train to work each day, but the reader knows this would be impossible on the amount of wine and ready-mixed gin and tonics she consumes.
    To make matters worse she can't seem to let go of her husband and continues to phone and leave him messages, even hanging around outside her old house. Naturally this upsets his second wife, Anna, who wants to be left alone with her husband and baby.
    Then there's the fantasy world Rachel dreams up about the couple she calls Jess and Jason, who she can see from her commuter train when it stops at a signal. Jess and Jason epitomise the kind of loving relationship she would like to reinvent with her ex-hubby, Tom, made more real to Rachel by their proximity just along the road from her old house, the house Tom now shares with Anna.
    But one day Rachel sees something from her train that shocks her and soon after, Jess, whose real name is Megan, disappears. Rachel becomes a bit like an amateur sleuth - she has time on her hands after all - and contacts Megan's husband, not Jason but Scott, and does even more cringe-worthy hanging around and snooping, fuelled by all the alcohol she gets through.
    Further down the list of unlikeable characters we come to Megan, who narrates part of the story in the months before her disappearance, and we learn that Megan is at least as flaky as Rachel. Other chapters are narrated by Anna, who can be smug and unsympathetic.
    However what makes these women unreliable also makes the plot hum along. With Rachel there are her blanks in memory, the humiliation of people's disgust over events she cannot recall. As she puts the story together of Megan's disappearance, she begins to wonder if she had a hand in it herself. And why does she experience so much lurking fear?
    The police of course are no help at all. They want Rachel to keep her nose out of things, but they don't seem to be getting anywhere and don't believe anything she tells them. She's a pathetic fantasist and a drunk, so you can't blame them.
    I can see the appeal of a book like The Girl on the Train as it reels you in from the opening chapters and is superbly engrossing. It gives you a grim view of marriage, of the kind of stifling suburban misery that goes on in behind closed doors and the cruelty that lurks in what seem to be the happiest of relationships. But there's too much happening for the reader to dwell much on any of that and you just have to get to the end to see what happens.
 

Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

I like novels when characters venture out of their normal habitat and have to establish themselves in a new one that isn't quite what they were expecting. You know this will be a good foundation for adapting, self-discovery and perhaps even unexpected happiness.
    Which is pretty much what happens to Rebecca Winter, who at fifty-nine finds she simply cannot afford to go on living in her upmarket New York apartment. There are the maintenance costs for a start, as well as the monthly fee for her elderly mother's nursing home, plus the New York lifestyle she has enjoyed for years. As the photographer famous for her 'Still Life with Bread Crumbs' she has had a good income in the past, in spite of a divorce that left her to provide for her young son alone.
    Now, however, that income stream has dwindled to a trickle. In an effort to live more simply and cheaply so she can save for retirement, Rebecca lets out her apartment and heads for the country, taking up a year's lease on a cottage in the woods she has seen only in photos on the Internet. Big mistake.
   The cottage is cold, dark and lacking in creature comforts - a bed that sags and a lack of blankets, to say nothing of a tiny electric range. Can you really cook without gas, and how to fit the Thanksgiving turkey into the tiny oven? There's no phone signal and she can't get the Internet either, which might turn out to be a good thing. Then there's the racoon in the ceiling.
    Jim Bates, the helpful roofer, sorts out the racoon and between Jim and Sarah, the chatty anglophile who runs the Tea for Two cafe, Rebecca slowly settles in and makes a life for herself, adapting like anything. And the rustic woodland environment inspires new photographic endeavours. She grows her hair out of its chic New York bob and buys cheap but practical clothing from Wall Mart.
    On her regular walks she spots some unusual shrine like crosses here and there, each with some memorabilia of childhood, a photograph or a high school year book, that make oddly interesting photographs. Caught up in their pictorial potential, Rebecca doesn't take time to question who might have put them there, or the reason they strangely disappear soon after she finds them.
    You can be sure the significance of the crosses will be important later on. And Rebecca will learn a lot about herself, her art and people in general. By the end a whole new set of possibilities beckon and she will have some decisions to make. Not that the reader should be surprised, as we know that it's that kind of book pretty much from page one.
    Anna Quinden is an elegant and observant writer, and this is a charming, witty and wry kind of story, balancing humour with moments of poignancy. She doesn't really break any new ground, but her characters are interesting enough and I enjoyed the jokes that are at the expense of the chattering classes. After all, deep down, who among us doesn't want to escape all the silliness of everyday life for a cottage in the woods?

The Forever Girl by Alexander McCall Smith

The Forever Girl deals with unrequited love, an aching longing in the heart of its main character, Clover, which begins when she is around six years old. The story takes place on the Caribbean island of Grand Cayman among the expat families who make comfortable livings in banking and property development. Clover's father, David, is Scottish, a banker who works long hours, while her expat American mother, Amanda, plays a lot of tennis and swims in their pool. Their Jamaican housekeeper, Margaret, looks after the house and takes Clover and her brother to school.
    This might make the lives of Clover's parents seem rather shallow, but McCall Smith is better than that. He doesn't take cheap shots at accountants or people with more money than they know what to do with. He is empathetic towards Amanda, who feels neglected by her hard working husband and has a brain she doesn't get to use. Her brief dalliance with another man is treated sensitively and with understanding.
    And all the while Clover is growing up, her childhood friendship with James evolving into a crush she doesn't know how to handle, just at an age when James would rather play with other boys. Amanda sympathises and sensibly tells Clover she will grow out of it and to move on. The shift to boarding school in Scotland will surely settle the matter, but through her secondary school years and even when she goes off to university in Edinburgh, there is a lingering sadness about Clover.
   While she makes friends easily and develops a relationship with another student, this sadness seems to put a wall around her - you feel she can never be really close to anyone else. And it shapes her decision making as well, causing her to do embarrassingly awful things, making up stories and even following the object of her affections, just so she can get that little bit closer to James.
    A plot like this could have turned this into a truly dreadful sort of book, unless leavened with slapstick comedy, a la Bridget Jones, which The Forever Girl is anything but. What rescues it is the wonderful wisdom that McCall Smith throws in and the fact that Clover is oddly likeable. The subplot around Amanda is interesting, and the portrayal of a marriage in difficulty sensitively done. And then there is the expat world of Cayman Island - languid and hot, and full of discontent. It is the perfect setting for unrequited love to begin, and contrasts brilliantly with the more serious yet creative city of Edinburgh. A sojourn in Australia livens things up towards the end.
    McCall Smith is always a breath of fresh air with his originality of storyline and the philosophical musings that come through his writing. While the story is still entertaining, you reach the end of The Forever Girl feeling a little wiser - surely the best reason for reading fiction.
 

Natural Flights of the Human Mind by Clare Morrall

I cannot believe how much I enjoyed this early book by Clare Morrall, or how long it took me to get around to reading it. I was particularly impressed by her last novel, The Roundabout Man and I had always planned to read her earlier work. Natural Flights, similarly deals with oddball, damaged characters - in this case, the premier oddball is Peter Straker who lives in a disused lighthouse. Straker is so burdened by guilt he never talks to anyone, believing he has caused the deaths of 78 people around twenty-five years ago.
    In fact Straker was damaged before that happened, coping with a family where he was overshadowed by his much smarter brother and terrifying father. Now something of a hermit, he shuns all human interaction until he meets Doody (aka Imogen), who has inherited a run-down cottage in the Devon village nearby.
    The first thing you learn about Doody is that she doesn't mess about with the niceties of polite conversation. She starts yelling at Straker when she's up a ladder examining her decrepit roof, and loosing her temper, becomes entangled in weeds. Straker finds himself making a strange sound he doesn't recognise at first - it turns out to be laughter - and slowly the two develop a peculiar friendship.
    Doody is also damaged - her childhood marked by tragedy and a serious lack of love, on top of which her husband walked out on her, also twenty-five years ago. Since then she's eked out a living as a school caretaker. The cottage gives Doody a chance at independence, while she gives Straker a chance to interact with another person. Both have been quite abandoned by their mothers, though Doody maintains a somewhat heckling relationship with her successful younger brother.
    These are such unusual, difficult, yet oddly likeable characters, and as a reader Morrall really puts you through the ringer, as you hold out a faint hope for what might happen to them in the future. How can Straker even have a future when his past is such a burden? And running through his mind are constant conversations with the dead - he knows who they are because he has done his research at the library and collected newspaper articles. The only way he can keep his sanity is by counting - steps, minutes, intakes of breath - and all the while avoiding the number 78.
    The story builds towards a climax as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accident that took those 78 lives rolls around, a showdown involving a vintage plane and a busload of angry, grieving and determined relatives.
    For such a grim scenario, Natural Flights is wonderfully readable, charming and at times even humorous. Morrall manages a clever balancing act between the potentially leaden themes of loss, guilt and family dysfunction and wryly observed, quirky characters to produce a plot that slowly builds tension and drama towards a surprising and satisfying ending.
 

The Collected Works of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

If you adore reading, a novel set in a bookshop has instant appeal. If you like good, literary fiction, you will warm to the curmudgeonly owner of Island Books, the A J Fikry of the title.
    A.J. has lost his wife in a tragic car accident, and while she was happy to stock popular titles, talk to book reps and hold author events, A.J. is too much of a purist for all that. So he does't like postmodernism, post-apocalyptic settings, post-mortem narrators or magic realism; or for that matter children's books, especially ones about orphans, young adult fiction or anything with vampires. He explains all this and more when he is being mean to Amelia, the book rep who will later play a major part in his life.
    Obviously, A.J. is doomed not to prosper, even if the tourists that arrive on Alice Island every summer frequently boost sales. But he isn't too worried as he has a copy of a rare edition by Edgar Allen Poe as his insurance policy.  About the same time that a desperate mother leaves her baby in the bookshop, with a note asking A.J. to take care of her, his Poe rare edition is stolen. These catalysts drive A.J. to cut back on his drinking and interact more with the outside world.
    There is a bunch of interesting characters in this book for him to interact with. There's Officer Lambiase, the divorced police chief who used to read nothing but Jeffery Deaver, and starts a book group called Chief's Choice - it's mostly police procedurals read by other cops. A.J.'s friend, Daniel, is a womanising novelist who has never written a best seller since his first break-through novel. He's married to Ismay, A.J.'s sister-in-law, who teaches drama at the high school. She's tough on the outside but a softy on the inside, and quietly makes sure A.J. is OK. The little girl, Maya, is bookishly quirky, rather like you'd expect A.J.'s natural daughter would be.
    This novel could be saccharine, but is far too witty and smart, and with enough ups and downs and reversals of fortune to keep you interested. Each chapter begins with A.J.'s notes to Maya about a particular piece of literature he values in one way or another - another nice little extra for bibliophiles. Roald Dahl, gets a look in as well as American greats such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Flannery O'Connor, while there are a few obscure enough to have you searching Wikipedia.
    The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry is a short, Sunday afternoonish sort of novel, but it has a lot of heart and is a good reminder about the pleasure and sustenance to be found in books, and friends as well, of course. Though for some of us, they may be the same thing.

From a Distance by Rafaella Barker

From a Distance concerns three main characters over two periods of time. I was enthralled by Michael, just off the ship that brought him home from the war, the second world war that is, thin and damaged. He doesn't want to go home to Norfolk, even though he has parents and a fiancée waiting for him. He just hangs around Southampton smoking and feeling sorry for himself and all the mates as well as his brother who won't be coming home. Finally he jumps on a train and finds himself in Penzance.
    I was desperate to discover what he does next, but all at once we're in present day Norfolk, in Luisa's kitchen where she's making ice cream and worrying about her nineteen year old daughter who has gone to India. What Luisa has to do with Michael will have to wait, for suddenly here we are with Kit, who has inherited from his mother a lighthouse in the same Norfolk town where Luisa lives. Kit's from Cornwall so there's sure to be a connection with Michael there, and the lighthouse mystery gives the story a bit of oomph.
    But there's such a lot of Luisa, an effusive mother and wife of Italian descent which automatically makes her gorgeous. Ice cream runs in her blood - her father ran a fleet of ice cream trucks - and Luisa experiments with unusual flavours involving herbs and rose essence. You can tell she's artistic. Kit makes a hit with Luisa's family, including husband, Tom, her children and Tom's sister, Dora. He's such a likeable guy, and the lighthouse gets everyone talking. But maybe there's just too much of a spark between Kit and Luisa!
    The story slowly gets back to Michael, who for me was far more interesting. He becomes friendly with several artists who are a breath of fresh air after the war, especially Felicity, a fabric designer who turns out to be the love of his life. How can he ever go home?
    The theme of promises made as men went off to war and the dilemma faced when they returned (can you ever go back to where you left off, or is best to start again?) hovers in the background, begging to be dealt with more fully. There's a lot of description of how designs come together, their patterns, textures and colour, and Cornwall sparkles by the sea. Ice cream also gets a fair amount of attention in the same way. There is such a lot of detail to imagine that the characters become a bit shadowy.
    I would have liked to know a bit more about Michael's demons and the girl he left behind. He is saved by Felicity, who in my mind tended to merge into another Luisia - both artistic, free sprits and both do their hair the same way.  Perhaps this is a hymn to Cornwall and also Norfolk, which has a lovely summery feel and loads of village hospitality.
    And I guess that adds to the charm. But the theme of how relationships are upset by the upheaval of war, or post-war trauma, to say nothing of how secrets from the past affect the later generations, could have been fleshed out much more in this book. This obvious omission makes From a Distance flounder from a lack of narrative drive and therefore something of a disappointment.

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Rose Lloyd has plenty to feel aggrieved about not long into Elizabeth Buchan's novel Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman. Nathan, her husband, dumps her after twenty-five years of marriage and she loses her job - both vacancies filled by her assistant, Minty.
    She's worked with Minty for several years, compiling the book review pages for a newspaper and Rose regards Minty as a friend, sharing secrets about her relationships with family and even her old-flame, Hal, a glamorous adventure travel writer. (This reminded me of an episode from 'Black Books', which was slightly off-putting.)
    Minty has used snippets from these conversations with Rose in the early days of her relationship with Nathan to argue that Rose doesn't really appreciate her husband and has never forgotten her first love, Hal. Minty is also twenty years younger than Nathan and knows what she's about in the bedroom. How could Nathan resist?
    And Rose is such a sweetie, with brains to boot. She achieved a First at Oxford, but put her career on hold while raising her children, does all the cooking and creates a spectacular garden. She drops meals into the housebound elderly gent next door and talks about the buses with him - the great love of his life. Really if anyone has been under-appreciated, it's Rose.
    So I was quite prepared for scenes of rage-induced vengeance, shredded suits, emptied bank accounts, public shaming - the works. I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this, but it certainly seemed as if Nathan had it coming. I couldn't make up my mind if it would be a good thing because it would reduce Rose to the level of the Mintys of this world and it is obvious she is so much better than that.
    A chance encounter with Hal offers yet another avenue for potential revenge, but Hal gave Rose an impossible choice all those years ago, leaving her in South America, broken hearted and ill. Poor Rose, so smart but so bad at choosing men. Thank heavens one of her best friends is a savvy Parisienne, who takes her in hand and encourages her to tart herself up a bit. Maybe glamour and success are the best revenge of all.
    There are sub-plots involving Rose's grown-up children and their relationships, and Rose is always there with a shoulder to cry on, as you would expect. Rose also worries about her widowed mother who finds the marriage break-up a terrible shock.  There's even a bit about politics and the ethics of how the media treat figures in the public eye.
   The book makes a decent fist of standing up for middle-aged women who care for others when all around them it seems people are out for themselves. The narration is all from Rose's point of view and perhaps this makes the story drag a little as she is never allowed to be as outrageous as the other characters. Joanna Trollope (the queen of this genre) creates a much livelier style through multiple viewpoints and her unerring ear for dialogue.
   Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman is a very readable book but published in 2002, it is beginning to show its age. Nevertheless I shall be interested to try one of Elizabeth Buchan's more recent titles to see how it compares.