The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

The Crossing Places is the first book that features forensic archaeologist, Ruth Galloway, in Elly Griffiths' series of murder mysteries set in Norfolk. Ruth works at the local university and has a particular interest in the henge circle that was discovered near her isolated home right on the marshes. This is a landscape where sea and land meet and according to the religion of the ancient people who built the henge it is also the path between life and death. A perfect spot for burial rites and human sacrifice then.
    When a child's bones are discovered on the marshes, Inspector Harry Nelson requests Ruth's help to date them. It is obviously not a new death, and Nelson hopes to solve a ten-year-old murder, that of Lucy Downey, a little girl taken from her bed in middle of the night. It is the case that haunts Nelson the most, possibly because of the letters that the murderer has sent him over the years, full of references to literature, archaeology and the Bible.
    The bones turn out to be around two thousand years old, and at the burial site are Iron Age artefacts, which is great for Ruth and her archaeologist friends, including her old teacher and mentor, the Norwegian Erik Anderssen. There will be more for Ruth and co to get their teeth into, more finds including an ancient pathway, giving plenty of scope for Griffiths to describe the customs and beliefs of the early people who lived here.
    Ruth sees her job as something akin to detective work, but when another little girl goes missing from her home and more letters arrive with references to ancient burials and the marshes, she is soon involved in a modern day crime. Inspector Nelson with his brusque north of England manner and Ruth with the confidence that comes from her academic expertise are an incongruous pair. Rather overweight and dressed for practicalities as opposed to style, Ruth is the world away from the kind of woman Nelson is used to, but the two make a connection.
    The reader suspects this will be the first of many crimes they will solve together and it is fortunate the two soon develop a grudging respect for each other. Plot-wise there aren't so many surprises but I enjoyed this fairly light and easy read, and I like the main characters, Ruth with her cats and solitariness and Nelson with his bad-tempered impatience but undoubtable integrity.
    Best of all is the setting: what is it about the Norfolk marshes that is so appealing? Possibly it is the danger of the rushing tide that threatens to swallow up anyone caught off the narrow paths of safety. There are shades of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone here, which just adds to the chilling atmosphere and creates a reliably escapist novel.

Life Class by Pat Barker

With the release of Noonday, I thought it was about time I caught up with the first title in Pat Barker's second war trilogy, Life Class. It follows the story of talented artist, Elinor Brooke, her friend Kit Neville, a daringly different painter who is making waves on the art scene, and art student, Paul Tarrant. Both young men are drawn to Elinor, but she is cooly stand-offish, leaving Paul to throw himself into an affair with Teresa, an artist model and friend of Elinor's.
    Paul is from the north and a less genteel background, though his savvy grandmother was able to fund his schooling and has left him enough money to study art. This is where we find him, at London's Slade art school suffering under the critical eye of life-class teacher, Henry Tonks. Paul has a few good techniques up his sleeve, but his appreciation of human anatomy is hopeless and Tonks wonders why he is wasting his time there.
    It is the glorious summer of 1914, but the clouds of war are on the horizon. Dissatisfied with their lives for various reasons both Kit and Paul are desperate to see some action and eventually find themselves in France, Kit doing some war-reporting and Paul as an orderly in a field hospital. Barker really comes into her own recreating the smells, sounds and terrible sights as well as imagining the pain of wounded men being cared for in appalling conditions. There is never enough anaesthetic and the wounds horrific and barely imaginable.
    Before leaving London, Paul and Elinor had grown closer, and much of the latter part of the book consists of the letters they write to each other. Elinor refuses to have anything to do with the war effort, much to her parents' disgust, and carries on devoting her time to her painting. Paul is drawing too, but his subject matter is the terrible events he deals with day by day, which are surely unfit for public view. Both in their own ways are struggling with the role of art in the terrible human calamity that is war. There are glimpses of the Bloomsbury Group, described as a bunch of 'conchies', when Elinor becomes friends with Ottoline Morrell.
    Barker is a brilliant storyteller, her characters so distinct and intense. I love the way Elinor's point of view is loaded with the visual, and we see the world through her artist's eyes. Not that the language is ever wordy or overly descriptive, leaving the characters to get on with things. Which they do. The story builds, following Elinor's relationship with Paul on one hand, and as the danger of the front intensifies on the other. The question of whether relationships can survive a war that irrecoverably changes those caught up in it will surely be the subject of the next book in the series, Toby's Room, another to add to my 'must read' list.

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.

Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar

At the start of this novel about the famous Bloomsbury sisters, Virginia Woolf is said to have decreed that she was the writer, and Vanessa the painter. Priya Parmar has given Vanessa Bell a literary voice in the form of this imaginary diary - a fascinating portrait of the Bloomsbury Group, which included Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, Ottoline Morrell and others. It is also the portrait of the falling out that occurred between the two sisters - a story of jealousy, madness, passion and grief.
    It begins in the year 1905 with the four Stephen siblings having recently moved to a house in avant-garde Bloomsbury, much to the consternation of more conservative relations. There is Vanessa, the older daughter, her brother Thoby, younger brother Adrian and mentally fragile Virginia. Vanessa justifies the move as a means to save costs - they may have to dip into their allowances if Virginia has another of her breakdowns, the last of which had led to time in hospital.
    The four are a happy and well-matched bunch, the boys popping down from Cambridge having garnered a group of lively and clever friends, who soon meet at the house on Thursdays. Daringly, the sisters don't dress for dinner and are the only females in soirees that go on into the small hours. But mostly what they seem to do is talk and what a lot to talk about there is, with Impressionism giving way to Fauvism and new ideas about politics and feminism to consider.
    Clive Bell is considered rather starchy by the group - this may be because he seems to be more of a red-blooded male than the other chaps - women are so formidable, perhaps it's the corsets or is the women's suffrage movement that puts the other lads off. And it seems all the women they are know are brilliantly talented in one way or other. But Bell is different, coming from hearty country gentry, and he quickly falls in love with Vanessa.
    Parmar's Vanessa Bell shines as a wonderful character. She's the sensible one who sorts out the household economics and worries about her sister. As well as calm and kindly, she's interesting, with her painterly eye and sensitive observations of other characters. Unlike Virginia. She maybe the burgeoning writer of classic novels we still read today, but Virginia is desperately possessive. Her jealousy over Clive which drives a wedge through Vanessa's marriage - though to be fair, Clive is easily swayed - is pure selfishness. She wants Vanessa for herself.
    Much of the book is written as Vanessa's diary, which could have given the book a somewhat halting pace. But I found myself quickly swept along, the book almost impossible to put down. Intermingled with Vanessa's diary entries are witty letters between Lytton Strachey and Leonard Woolf, a servant of the empire in Ceylon, but eventually heading home. There are also poignant letters from Roger Fry to his mother, telegrams and correspondence between the sisters and their friends.
    This is a well-researched and enthralling novel, and knowing that there is so much more to tell - the book finishes in 1912 - I wonder if there is a possibility of a sequel. I certainly hope so.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Lila is the third novel in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead trilogy, the first of which tells the story of John Ames, an elderly minister who is writing his family story for his young son. He has married for the second time late in life and he may not live long enough to see his son grow up.
    Lila is his wife's story. Told from Lila's point of view, it is at times a harrowing tale, but also one of those stories where the human spirit triumphs over adversity, which Lila experiences in spades.
    Lila is a neglected child, rescued if you can call it that, some would say kidnapped, by a passing drifter. Doll lives a hand-to-mouth existence, moving from town to town and picking up odd jobs. She has a scarred face and is illiterate, but no one can doubt her love and devotion to Lila. The two make a strong bond, but times become tough indeed when the 1930s Dust Bowl hits. They team up with a family driven off their farm and the group pool their resources, though Doll and Lila are barely tolerated.
    I have never read a novel where I recall such vividly recounted poverty - a lack of food and shelter experienced by ordinary folk who are just trying to get by. But somehow the two pull through and Doll even manages to stay in one place long enough for Lila to get a smattering of education. We learn that Lila is surprisingly bright, but fear drives them on again, Doll always looking over her shoulder and hiding her distinctive face in the shadows.
    These early years in Lila's story are recalled in flashbacks. Now a mature young woman, perhaps in her thirties, though this is never clear, Lila has made her way to the town of Gilead and meets Reverend John Ames. The two strike up a friendship and share interesting discussions about God and his purpose.  Lila helps herself to a bible from the church and alights on the grimmer texts from the Old Testament which resonate with her own struggles. She completely lacks what you might call social graces, but her intelligence and questioning nature have Rev. Ames scratching his head.
    Robinson is writer who stands out for her empathy and her ability to create an extraordinary character who has been through so much and who can think so deeply about it all. The love story that underpins the plot is delicately done, running parallel to the story of Lila's past, it all coming seamlessly together. She is also wonderful at creating a sense of time and place, the small town of Gilead, the Dirty Thirties, rural life in Iowa. It reminded me a little of Harper Lee, and Steinbeck with a hint of Pygmalion.
    For a book that really makes you think, Lila is also a pleasure to read, and I shall be hunting out the previous books in the trilogy, both of which have won literary awards. No surprises there!

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Station Eleven is one of the more original novels I've read in some time. It describes a world where a deadly flu virus has killed more than ninety-nine per cent of the Earth's population. But this isn't a simple dystopian/survival novel, although it has elements of that. It's also somewhat 'six degrees of separation' as it follows the lives of several people caught up in events on the last day before the flu wreaked havoc.
    And it all begins on stage at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto with the Act Four death of Arthur Leander due to cardiac arrest. Although Arthur will not be around for the 'end of the world as we know it' that follows, he is the character that connects the others, one way or another.
    Leaping on stage to give CPR, is Jeevan Chaudhary, a trainee paramedic. Jeevan was at one time a paparazzo who stalked Leander, one of the most celebrated actors of his day and with a gossip-worthy social life. It is through Jeevan, that the reader gets to take in the dawning horror of the pandemic, the panic hoarding of groceries, the final decision to abandon the city in an attempt to survive.
    Also on stage is child actor, Kirsten Raymonde, who is still playing Shakespeare twenty years later with a travelling orchestra. The world has altered enormously, people preferring to live in small settlements, some ruled by fear or menace, to protect themselves from marauding bandits. The players are armed with crossbows and Kirsten carries several knives at her belt, which she has learned to throw with deadly accuracy.
    The novel switches back and forth between the nail-biting future and a more decadent past, centred on our famous actor, introducing more characters who will somehow play a role in what transpires later on. One of these is Arthur's first wife, Miranda, who works for a shipping company, and spends her free hours creating a richly imagined alternative world called Station Eleven, in the form of intricately drawn graphic novels.
     Kirsten has a couple of copies, much read and dog-eared, to go with her small collection of memorabilia - the press cuttings featuring Leander, and the snow-globe she has carried in her backpack since that fateful night in Toronto. But she isn't the only one who harkens back to the past. The players find Shakespeare relevant to the new world they finds themselves in, and their motto: Survival is Insufficient, is a quotation from Star Trek.
    The story moves on in this zig-zag manner throwing up more connections between the characters as the orchestra, escaping from a cult leader and his team of thugs, converges on a disused airport. This is the home to one of the larger communities of survivors, and here Mandel has created a brilliantly atmospheric setting. It is good to know that if you find yourself in an airport when civilisation comes to an end, there is a lot of useful stuff on hand.
    Station Eleven is a wonderful book in which you can completely immerse yourself, combining the page-turning action of a survival story with complex characters and thoughts on nostalgia and celebrity culture. It is, not surprisingly, another of the novels I have read recently that have made the long-list of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - the short-list will be announced in a few days.

The Separation by Dinah Jefferies

The Separation is one of those wonderfully escapist novels that packs in an atmospheric setting, in this case, 1950s Malaya. It conjures up the somewhat dissolute expat way of life, the gin-slings and infidelity, which was probably just a way of coping with the heat. It reminded me a little of those old black and white movies where you can hear jungle drums and crickets in the background while the plantation owner mutters, The natives are restless tonight.
    Although half of the novel is set in England. This is because it is told from the point of view of two main characters. First there is Lydia Cartwright, who with her Rita Hayworth looks, has been a bit naughty and started an affair which she hasn't kept very secret. She has been visiting a friend who is ill, when she returns to find hubby Alec and her children gone, the house left empty with no note, so she begins to panic.
    The British District Officer tells her Alec and her young daughters have gone north to Alec's new posting in Ipoh, where the natives truly are restless - with Communist insurgents undermining British rule with guerilla tactics. So Lydia, must make the dangerous journey to join her family alone, even having to borrow cash from her worldly friend, Cicely, as Alec has taken most of their money.
    We read about Lydia's desperate journey where she witnesses atrocities when her bus is attacked. She finds herself taking care of a small boy, Maznan, whose mother has joined the rebels, when a striking man of mixed race joins her and helps her; I imagined a kind of Yul Brynner.
    But while Lydia is making this arduous journey, her daughters, Emma and Fleur, are travelling by cargo ship with Alec to England. This part of the story is narrated by eleven-year-old Emma, who with her wild red hair reminds her father too much of Lydia and as such she never seems able to please him. On the journey the family becomes friendly with amicable Veronica, who seems to have an attraction for Alec, and her creepy brother, Mr Oliver, who has wandering hands.
    In England, Emma finds it hard to settle in the cold climate and cramped house that they share with Alec's parents. Grandma fortunately is a kindly old soul but Emma is always in trouble, until boarding school seems to be the only solution. The school, run by nuns, is particularly bleak, and Emma finds it hard to cope with bullying on the one hand, and the harsh regime on the other, but at least she makes a friend in perpetually naughty Susan. On top of everything, her father has led his daughters to believe that their mother has abandoned them and is missing, believed dead.
    There is a lot going on in the story - we have Emma's dealing with adolescence and her missing mother, who she never really gives up on, amid difficult relationships with the adults in her life. And then there's Lydia's desperate search for her family, and a terrible bombshell that causes her to teeter on the edge of madness. How she copes and pulls herself together when one awful thing happens after another gives her a chance to grow strong and is a key part of the story. But how to navigate a path to the truth when everyone seems to be either lying or hiding a woeful secret of their own makes Lydia seem doubly blighted.
    The Separation is a captivating story which makes you keep reading to see what happens. Feelings run high, there's a ton of drama and missing links that make for tantalising if not very demanding reading. The Malaya setting is brilliantly recreated here, a testament to the author's research and her own childhood years spent in the colony.

After the Bombing by Clare Morrall

People struggling with events from the past often feature in Clare Morrall's subtly nuanced novels, and what could be more harrowing than losing your family in the blitz of World War Two. This is what happens to fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, Alma Braithwaite, when bombs rain down on Exeter in 1942. Her parents are doctors, killed when the hospital takes a direct hit, as does the boarders' house at Goldwyn's School.
    The girls have been chivvied out to the safety of their shelter to await the all clear, and the sound of the raid is truly terrifying. Fortunately Alma is in the company of her best friends, lanky Marjorie (Giraffe), brazen Natalie and Jane Curley (Curls) who has a prodigious talent for playing the piano with concerts and recordings already to her name.
    With nowhere else to go, the girls are eventually found billets throughout the town, and Alma and friends find themselves under the care of Robert Gunner, a junior lecturer at the university and warden of Mortimer Hall, the hostel for the small group of undergraduates who haven't been swallowed up by the war effort. Gunner himself is only twenty-seven, but with a serious limp has been turned down by the services. He does his bit with fire duty each night, and now has the care of four young girls on top of everything else.
    The novel switches between the spring of 1942 as the girls settle in at Mortimer Hall and the unsettled feelings that run between the various occupants there to twenty-one years later when a new headmistress is set to begin at Goldwyn's School. Wilhemina Yates is determined to shake things up and make improvements but comes into conflict with the music mistress, none other than Alma Braithwaite.
    Alma has never left Exeter, never left her parent's house, where she rattles around alone with total disregard for housework, and apart from her brief stint training to be a teacher, has never left her old school. As the new school year begins, she sees she is to have young Pippa Gunner in her form class. Could this be the daughter of Robert Gunner and will their paths cross again after all these years?
    When Robert learns who Pippa's form mistress is, he too is perturbed by the thought of past events flooding back from those weeks after the bombing. And even Miss Yates has her own secret that she fears could destroy her career, and her own post-bombing trauma.
    All three characters are on a collision course that forces them to relive what happened during the war, and if possible move on to a new future. Morrall has made them each well-rounded and difficult in their own way, enough to drive the plot towards its clever ending. For even though they are impelled by what happened over twenty years ago, their confrontation is set against a major event on world stage from the present - 1963, that is - not too hard to guess what that could be!
    Initially I had been deterred by the thought of yet another book about the war, but really I should have realised that this would be an original and engaging story, with an author like Morrall at the helm. One or two recurring themes here from previous books include the power of music to transform lives, as well the problems associated with reclusive and socially awkward personalities - themes that are well worth revisiting as they make Morrall's books so interesting.

Cicada by Moira McKinnon

Moira McKinnon's impressive first novel begins when Emily Lidscombe, a well-to-do English woman, gives birth to a black baby at Cicada Springs, the holding she runs with her husband in Western Australia.  This is a challenging situation to begin with and her husband, William, reacts with rage and vengeance. Set just a few years after First World War, this is a time when the relationship between white landowners and Aborigine people is difficult at best.
    Distraught, terrified and still recovering from the birth, Emily escapes into the wilderness on horseback, accompanied by her Aborigine maid, Wirritjil. Most of the rest of the book follows their escape and survival in the relentlessly hot and arid landscape, while William sends John, his stockman, and his war veteran brother, Trevor, to hunt them down and bring Emily back.
    The two women form an uneasy alliance, and gradually Emily begins to trust Wirritjil, though she is hampered by an injured foot that threatens to turn septic. Fortunately Wirritjil knows how to keep them both alive and her bush survival skills make for fascinating reading.
    By chance, Emily and Wirritjil meet a helpful herdsman who is part of a team taking their cattle to Broome on the coast. She asks him to send a telegraph to her sister in England as Kathryn Lidscombe is smart and will know what to do. But soon the story of the missing women is out and events call for a police contingent to search as well. The pace picks up and what starts out as a survival story becomes more nail-bitingly tense as the women's pursuers close in.
    Scenes showing the harsh treatment of Aborigine people, their marginalisation on their own land, and summary punishments for minor offences are vividly recounted. But they aren't the only victims. William is disturbed by feverish dreams and fears no doubt brought about by his tuberculosis. He has been rescued by Emily's mother from a poor family, educated and cared for as a kind of pet project. The farm is to be the making of him but it is all going wrong and he'd rather be a poet. Trevor, illiterate and haunted by what he had to do in the war is also struggling.
    In fact you are hard placed to find a white character with any dignity - most are brutalised by their attempts to make a living in such a harsh terrain and their dealings with the Aborigines, seen by the whites as inferior with a potential for mischief. Kathryn is a breath of fresh air, but the main heroes are the Aborigines Wirritjil and the tracker, Charcoal.
     Moira McKinnon has an academic background in indigenous health and has researched widely to paint a brilliant picture of Aboriginal folklore, language and their close connection with the land. She obviously has a barrow to push, but this doesn't make the book a simple exposition. The story is strong enough to sweep the reader along and her descriptions of the landscape, wildlife and weather are breathtakingly real. Cicada is altogether riveting.

Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey

Emma Healey has created an extraordinary narrator in Maud Horsham, who in her eighties, is suffering from dementia. As the novel progresses, so does her dementia, with cups of tea left around the house, undrunk, and she forgets she has eaten, consuming large quantities of toast. There are messages on the kitchen wall to remind her not to cook, and there are notes in her handbag telling herself what she mustn't forget.
    The most important of these is that her friend, Elizabeth, is missing. Maud's daughter, Helen, does what she can, but in spite of her mother's concern for her missing friend, Helen is not very sympathetic - she has explained about Elizabeth before.
     Elizabeth's absence is echoed in another story thread going back to just after the war when Maud was sixteen. Living in the same seaside town, Maud and her parents are frantic with worry about the disappearance of Maud's older sister, Sukey.
    Everyone seems to adore Sukey, with her warm-hearted nature, who is a wonderful dressmaker, always looking well turned out. She is married to Frank, a bit of a shady character, dabbling in the black market, but with plenty of charm. Frank likes to do a good turn - his delivery trucks are just the ticket for moving house and with rationing in full swing, Frank's little parcels of food are a huge boost to the family housekeeping, although not approved of by Maud's father, or Douglas, the young boarder who seems to have a bit of a crush on Sukey.
    When Sukey disappears, no one knows if it is because of the 'mad woman' who chases after the girls with her umbrella, or because of one of Frank's deals gone wrong. At first it seems she might be in hiding, but as the days turn into weeks and months, Maud's family come to realise that she may well be dead.
    Somewhere in Maud's unreliable mind are the clues to bring this mystery to an end, seventy odd years later, if she can only string her thoughts together. And how is she to make Helen, the police or Elizabeth's bullying son understand?
    Elizabeth Is Missing is on one level a gripping mystery novel, but more than that it is a cleverly understood picture of what dementia might be like, and even more incredibly it comes from the pen of an author in her twenties. It is not an easy read, as Maud can be so frustrating, and it is unsettling to think that her state of mind could one day be the experience of any of us, or someone we love. Yet this is a compelling read, evocative and haunting, by a very promising story-teller.

Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud

Mr Mac and Me is to my mind the perfect kind of book. Set in 1914, it tells the story of Thomas Maggs, whose father runs a pub in a village on the Suffolk coast. There's not a lot of money to spare and pa tends to drink the profits, while his mother copes as best she can. There are two older sisters, including Ann who helps around the pub, with thirteen-year-old Thomas by far the youngest, though there are six older brothers buried in the churchyard.
    Thomas has a club foot, but it doesn't stop him roaming around the countryside, making the journey to school, and being taken on by the local rope-maker as a part-time assistant. It is a dying art, and we are reminded of the changes in store as the nation is drawn into World War One.
    Ann tearfully farewells the boy she loves as he joins the navy and we wonder if she will see him again. Everyone expects the war to be over by Christmas, and the effects of the waiting and wondering, the shock of casualty lists on a small village are nicely recounted here. And then there's 'DORA' - the Defence of the Realm Act, which has the locals on the look out for spies, and prosecutes people for showing light after dark or owning binoculars. Thomas takes Dora very seriously.
    Into Thomas's world a Scottish artist, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, arrives with his wife and the three of them strike up a friendship. Thomas does odd jobs for them, while Mackintosh's wife, Margaret, feeds him up and the two encourage Thomas's own artistic endeavour. Thomas, who yearns for a life at sea, has been covering the margins of his schoolbooks with delicate drawings of ships.
    Mr Mac and Me is very much a coming of age novel and with that there are many dawning realisations for Thomas. There is love too, as Thomas witnesses the pangs of love his sister goes through, and his own over one of the Scottish herring girls who arrive every autumn. And in the background there is the war. Slowly the everyday villager has to come to terms with the horrific casualties, and the sinking of British ships. On a still night you can even hear the guns from over the Channel.
    It is an interesting time, perfectly captured in the microcosm of a Suffolk village, and the small world of a young boy. But I was particularly drawn to the story of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a very real artist and architect who produced exquisite watercolours and designed some of Britain's much loved buildings. Forgotten and ignored in his own time, he is now something of a national treasure. Margaret's work also shines.
    Freud has made the pair quirky, charming and kindly, but also passionate, and even stubborn and difficult, as anyone who has to fight for their art can tend to be. The friendship with Thomas brings many of these qualities to life and Thomas as a thirteen year old, struggling to make sense of the world, is the perfect narrator. Mr Mac and Me is Esther Freud at her best and, to me, something of a living treasure.

Return to Fourwinds by Elisabeth Gifford

I was impressed with Gifford's debut novel, Secrets of the Sea House, and was soon happily ensconced in this story about two families across two generations. It's another book about secrets - how we love those - and begins when the Donoghues and the Colchesters get together at the Colchester's home, Fourwinds, to celebrate the marriage of their children, Sarah and Nicky.
    There's a bit of a difference in class between the two families, so it's fortunate that Sarah and Nicky are so devoted to each other, and we are in the late twentieth century after all. Soon you learn that Alice Colchester's family briefly cared for Peter Donoghue as an evacuee during the war, but this fascinating tidbit is quickly put aside when Sarah suddenly loses her voice and does a bunk days before the wedding.
    If that isn't enough to get you interested, the plot sweeps you back fifty years to Ralph Colchester's childhood in Valencia, in the early 1930s, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Young Ralph misses his father, who has fallen out with his mother and taken up an engineering job in South America. Left with scarcely a bean to support herself and Ralph, Lily has found a home for them with English banker, Max Gardiner, working as his 'housekeeper'. Mr Gardiner is kindly to Ralph, and the three socialise with other emigres, while Spain shimmers in the heat and there's a wonderful exotic sensuality about it all.
    I would have been quite happy with just Ralph's story - there is such a lot to explore with his peculiar family arrangement and the political situation in the background. But all at once it's the war (the big one) and we meet Peter, growing up in poverty in Manchester, with a tubercular mother and a drunken Irishman for a father. When he and his brother are evacuated to the countryside, Peter is taken in by the Hanbury family and is given a glimpse of another life, one full of music and learning and plentiful rations.
    While Return to Fourwinds is certainly engrossing, there is maybe a little too much going on, as we have to catch up with Alice's story and later Patricia who meets Peter after the war when he goes to London to study divinity. And of course the novel is switching forward in time to tell us where Sarah gets to, and how Nicky and parents are coping at Fourwinds.
    We chug along, filling in gaps for all these characters, until finally towards the end, there are a couple of bombshells and some fascinating stuff about what people like Max Gardiner were really doing in Madrid during the war. There is so much to like about Return to Fourwinds - Gifford is an accomplished stylist, and she has done her research to create an interesting scenario. However I can't help feeling that maybe just one big secret would have sufficed.

Fallout by Sadie Jones

Sadie Jones has a talent for recreating a particular time and place - previously Cyprus in the 1950s, as well as post war Britain - and giving each book an authentic feel. Add some well-rounded characters and a tense plot and her books are hard to put down. Fallout, her latest, keeps up the trend with a story about four talented young people in the world of theatrical London in the 1970s.
    Luke, aka Lucasz and Lucas (his father is Polish and his mother, French), grows up in a dead-end Lincolnshire town, smart enough for Oxbridge, but reluctant to leave his needy parents - his mother lives in a mental asylum nearby, where he is a frequent visitor and never gives up on her, unlike his father who drowns his sorrows in drink and leaves all the cooking and household chores to Luke.
    Quietly Luke fills notebooks with his scribblings, collects pop music - Dylan earns his undying respect - and reads plays. He thinks he'll go on working in the paper factory as a clerk until he bumps into Leigh and Paul, just up from London and lost, looking for a local playwright. Leigh and Paul are theatre people, and because it is raining, Luke jumps into Leigh's mini, the better to direct them to the rough pub they are looking for. The three strike up a friendship, and Luke sees kindred spirits, unlike anyone else he has ever met before.
    The encounter is enough to jolt Luke out of his dull Lincolnshire routine. He throws in his job, packs his typewriter, heads for London and with nowhere to stay, looks Paul up in the phonebook.
    Meanwhile, Nina is the fatherless daughter of a failed actress, brought up by a dully sensible aunt. When she turns fifteen she decides her life must include acting and living in London, where she turns up on her mother's doorstep. She leaves an aunt who loves her but can't show her any affection for a narcissistic mother who is controlling and leaves Nina no room for friendships or for being herself. Mummy particularly dominates any attempts Nina has with relationships.
    Nina is very damaged, has little confidence but develops that fragile look that suits particular roles. Leigh is also damaged by her father's infidelity which destroyed her childhood, but copes by developing a tough outer shell that doesn't easily let anyone else in. Only Paul has had a happy and boringly ordinary childhood, except that his love for the theatre doesn't sit well with his father's more pragmatic ambitions for his son.
    Luke enjoys his friendship with Paul and Leigh, but avoids any deeper relationships, having numerous flings with the young actresses he meets. He believes his mother's mental illness stands in the way of anything deeper. When he meets Nina, all of this is turned on its head.  
    With intense and talented characters like these and the setting of 70s London where all the old rules are fast disappearing, there is plenty of scope for drama and character development. Ultimately this is a story about creative ambitions, as well as friendship and love. This is a very intense novel, almost claustrophobic, and a gripping read - not my favourite by Sadie Jones, but still well worth a look.

The Gardens of the Dead by William Brodrick

William Brodrick, once a monk turned barrister, writes the Father Anselm mystery series, about a barrister turned monk - a vocation that inspires people to unburden themselves, often with the kind of problems neither the law nor medical science can help with. Anselm lives at a monastery called Larkswood, where seated on a bench overlooking the river, these unburdenings often take place.
    The Gardens of the Dead takes Anselm back to his days as a barrister, when former colleague, Elizabeth Glendinning, turns up with a box of Milk Tray. She hands him an envelope containing a key and an address and asks Anselm to use them if she should die - which she does three weeks later.
    In doing so, Elizabeth has asked Anselm to take up where she left off to put things right regarding a brief they had worked on together over ten years before. They were defending Graham Riley, accused of luring runaway girls straight off the train to his house and then forcing them into prostitution to pay off arrears in rent.
    He's a small-time, mean little criminal, but George at the half-way house is onto him. However under examination in court, George is thrown by a question from Anselm that stirs up an event from his past. He finds he is unable to go through with his testimony against Riley. Then a year or two later, George's son is mysteriously killed and George's life is never the same. His marriage falls apart and he becomes homeless himself and is still living rough when Elizabeth finds him. Together they work on a plan to bring Riley to justice. The plan is starting to come to fruition when Elizabeth dies.
    Only seconds before Elizabeth's death of a heart condition, she makes a phone call to the police inspector who likewise has never forgotten the case. Her dying words were: Leave it to Anselm.  What follows is a sequence of events that eventually lead Anselm from one clue to another and a means to put things right.
    Anselm is the perfect investigator for a story about truth and justice, past deceptions and retribution. He has all the wisdom and kindliness to deal with those who are damaged by the past, even old Riley, plus a personal discomfort over what happened in court all those years ago. But this is also George's story, and his tenuous existence on the streets makes fascinating reading. He's a likeable man, and a record keeper - writing down his life in a series of notebooks - a way to deal with memory loss due to a beating by young thugs.
    Brodrick writes a very rich and powerful story, the best kind of mystery, and conjures up two completely different worlds - the hard life of London's docklands, petty criminals and homeless and the secluded monks who live simply and close to nature. It makes for an atmospheric read but one that leaves you a lot to think about, a bit P D James perhaps in this respect.

The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna

When an Englishwoman arrives in the small Croatian town of Gost with her family, she surprises the locals with her delight in the blue house she has bought as a summer retreat, a cottage that hasn't been lived in for over a decade. With her husband stuck at work in London, Laura will need someone to help with repairs - and luckily, her neighbour, Duro Kolak, is soon on hand to help out, becoming the hired man of the title.
    Duro lives alone in a shack nearby with his two dogs, making ends meet by doing odd jobs and hunting, though really he can turn his hand to anything. He can speak English too, which is just as well for Laura, who is surprised when shopkeepers cannot understand her requests.
    Over the weeks that follow, Duro helps renovate the house, fix the roof, and organise an electric water pump. In the outbuildings the family discover an old car, a red Fico, which Duro resuscitates much to the delight of bored teenager, Matthew. Laura's daughter, Grace, uncovers a mosaic on the outside front wall of the house and a tiled fountain which Duro encourages her to restore.  He takes the family to the waterhole he swam in as a boy and on outings to nearby towns.
    On the surface, the story seems to be about the relationship, often awkward, between the English family and this helpful local. One can't help but wonder why this intelligent, middle-aged man continues to live in a town which his own family have deserted. He doesn't really have any friends either - he chats tensely with Fabjan, owner of the local bar whom he patently despises. There is an obvious rift between Duro and his old schoolmate, Kresimir. Duro seems too genial to be an obvious loner. And why are the local people of Gost so curiously unhelpful towards the English family, who bring a little extra money to a town with little economic viability?
    Just as the mosaic's picture emerges, so too does Duro's own history, a story bound up in events of the war for independence of the early 1990s when Gost was surrounded by Serbian forces. The war took its toll on many families, including Duro's own, as shells were lobbed at houses and snipers took potshots at innocent people. It also brought out a simmering resentment which turned ordinary people against their neighbours, leading to unspeakable acts of violence.
   The truly awful nature of these events is slowly revealed, interwoven with the experiences of the English family, and the restoration of the blue house, which becomes a stark reminder of things the people of Gost would rather were left dead and buried. Everyone except Duro, that is.
    While he is an easy character to scoff at - Laura's husband calls Duro her 'pocket Romeo' because of his short stature, and he is certainly vain with his daily regime of chin-ups, press-ups and stomach crunches - Dura turns out to be a real hero. Perhaps it is the tragic events that have dogged his life, but instead of becoming bitter, or running away, Duro stands watch, waiting and daring to remember.
    Animatta Forna has written a wonderful novel about the lingering effects of war, what it can do to a community and how individuals carry on with their lives afterwards. She is a stunning writer, creating the place of Gost in the reader's imagination, a summer landscape full of flowers, odours and heat. The serious nature of the story leaves you wanting to know more about events that you may dimly remember being played out on TV screens twenty years ago. It is as if, like Duro, she is daring you not to forget. On top of this The Hired Man is a terrific piece of storytelling - I found it really hard to put down and will be eager to read Forna's previous books.

The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood

Every so often you come across a book that grabs you from the first sentence and all day, wherever you are or whatever you're doing you're thinking about when you can snatch a few minutes to read some more. It was like this for me with Benjamin Wood's debut novel, The Bellwether Revivals.
    Which is interesting when you consider that this is one of those books that begins with its ending, an event that looks bad - at least one dead body, and another person being given oxygen by paramedics, while Oscar, our young protagonist says: 'It's over now.' It's a grim scene, but mercifully short, and a couple of pages later we're at the beginning, being gradually led into Oscar's world, his work at Cedarbrook, where he's a carer for the elderly and infirm, and his passion for the town he has adopted as his own - Cambridge.
    He's walking home one night, when he is drawn by organ music into a service at King's College Chapel. Further along his pew is a beautiful girl whom he chats to afterwards. Before long he is immersed into the world of Iris Bellwether and her brother Eden, the talented organist.
    Iris is a med student, her brother studying music and both come from a well-to-do background in contrast to Oscar's working class roots. If you think Iris is lining him up as her 'bit of rough', though, that really isn't the case either, because Oscar is a reader. He borrows books, one at a time, from Dr Paulsen, his favourite patient at Cederbrook. When he meets Iris and Eden he's studying Descartes.
   The Bellwethers turn out to be a little dysfunctional. The father is hard on Iris and spoils Eden; the mother is remote and self-absorbed. Eden has that dangerous mix of genius and madness - he dabbles in a kind of musical hypnotism, which he believes can be used to cure people and likes to experiment - no wonder he's pleased to invite Oscar to a little party. And no wonder Iris comes to depend on Oscar - he's sensible, caring and self-reliant.
    Meanwhile Dr Paulsen receives a letter from the love of his life, the renown psychologist, Herbert Crest. Paulsen has every one of Crest's books and Oscar becomes engrossed in one which concerns a personality disorder that seems very like Eden's. Soon Iris and Oscar are hatching a plan to do help Eden before he does something really dangerous. Can Crest be convinced to help them?
    We know the story of the Bellwethers is headed for disaster, but somehow the book is no less fascinating for it. Perhaps this is because the characterisation  is so good - Eden's ebullient German friend, Marcus, and the easy-going American, Yin, are superb foils for the uptight Bellwethers. Their witty interactions remind you that most people are, in fact, generally normal. The story of a young man making his way in an alien environment, in this case a world of the privileged and dazzlingly clever, is a classic story that we never seem to tire of. Benjamin Wood however manages to make his version original. A finalist in the last Costa Awards, I bet I am not the only one to be including The Bellwether Revivals in my list of best books for the year.
   

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

Swimming Home is the second novel I have read from the 2012 Mann Booker Prize short-list and so there are no surprises that it is taut, finely written, with an evocative setting and an intriguing cast of characters. 
    At first glance, Deborah Levy's new book could be seen as just another story about the middle classes behaving badly on holiday. Joe is a famous poet and emigre Jew who escaped the Holocaust as a child. He arrives at their rented Riviera villa with his war-correspondent wife, Isabel, and their teenage daughter, Nina, to find a beautiful and quite naked young woman swimming in the pool. Actually, she is floating motionless at the bottom which causes consternation in the family and also for their guests, Mitchell and Laura.
    Isabel is the only person with the presence of mind to jump in and see if the girl is all right. The young lovely turns out to be Kitty Finch, a mentally fragile young woman that Isabel invites to stay. Unfortunately, Kitty turns out to have an unhealthy obsession with Joe's poetry, seems to be anorexic, and is the walking embodiment of the kinds of demons Joe has been battling for years. 
    Both are afflicted by depression, and it is depression that is the lurking evil in the book, ready to destroy the lives of its characters. Isabel also has her problems - her career has seen her witness terrible things, she has missed out on being a mother to her daughter, and has put up with her husband's repeated infidelity.
    Mitchell spends money like water, money he doesn't have, while Laura frets about their shop and the likelihood that they'll have to close it.
    Meanwhile the sun always shines, there are orchards and beaches to explore and Nina is growing up. The feeling of being young and on holiday in a beautiful place is very real here -  you can almost hear the cicadas and feel the sun on your face. Nina is a sensitive girl who dotes on her father, while worrying about the interloper, Kitty Finch. 
    Tension builds when Kitty insists Joe read her poem, 'Swimming Home', which Joe tries to ignore for as long as he can. He knows he will have to read it eventually, just as he knows he can't ignore her beauty and youthfulness, or their shared affliction.
    It seems the characters are headed for disaster. Can Isabel come to the rescue yet again, or perhaps Nina, who seems so sensitive to what is happening? 
    Swimming Home is a slim volume - you can read it in an afternoon - but there is a lot going on beneath its impeccably crafted surface. I'm sure it deserves its place on the Booker short-list, but if I were you I would skip Tom McCarthy's gushy introduction, which might make you imagine the book to be rather more high-brow than it really is.
    By the way, The Guardian supplied a set of six compelling video clips, explaining why each of the short-listed titles should win the Mann Booker Prize, as it did for this one:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2012/oct/11/swimming-home-booker-prize-video

The Light of Amsterdam by David Park

I felt like reading a Christmas book and was attracted by David Park's The Light of Amsterdam with it's blue Delft cover art. This is a novel about three sets of characters from Belfast who visit Amsterdam just before Christmas. All are anxious or depressed and find a change of heart and new resolution from their time away.
    First off, there's Alan who teaches art at a university. He's recently divorced and feeling sorry for himself for making a mess of his marriage and because he's been told by his boss to improve his act. To top it all off, he has to take his teenage son, Jack, with him to Amsterdam because his ex is going to Spain with her new partner, whom Jack can't stand. Jack is a sort of Goth/Emo who is making a mess of school and dabbling in drugs and self-harm. How is Alan supposed to talk Jack into going to the Bob Dylan concert which is the main purpose of his visit?
    Then there's Karen, who has low self-esteem perhaps because she works as a cleaner in a rest home, has been 'asked' about the missing bracelet belonging to one of the patients, and is struggling to pay for her share of her daughter's wedding. This is the daughter she raised single-handed, after the father dumped her when she was three months' pregnant. She is going to Amsterdam with her daughter's hen party and she is particularly unhappy about having to dress up as an Indian squaw for the duration.
    Richard and Marion are a couple with grown-up children who are taking a well-earned break from their busy garden centre. They plan to visit the flower markets and can afford a nice hotel. However Marion has been worried that Richard is drifting away from her, and imagines all kinds of goings-on between her husband and one of the pretty Polish girls they employ at the shop. She decides to take a bold step while they are in Amsterdam to help rekindle their relationship.
    So none of our main characters are very happy, in fact the book begins in a rather gloomy fashion, perhaps reflecting the setting of Belfast in December. Once they arrive in Amsterdam, the weather is unseasonably warm and the characters slowly thaw in an enchanting city where anything seems possible. Karen and Richard make a small, tentative connection, while Richard and Marion are seen occasionally in the distance. But mostly the three main characters are shown through their thoughts - thoughts that are often going round in circles of anxiety, with odd bursts of hope and determination.
    As you can see, this is not a book where a lot happens. It has a particularly slow beginning. However David Parks is a great creator of atmosphere and builds drama and tension cleverly towards a mildly cheerful ending. Amsterdam shines through his prose. But most of all, he has huge empathy for his characters who are ordinary folk the reader can identify with. I don't know if the book was released just in time for Christmas, but for anyone going away to recharge the batteries, this is a timely reminder of of how getting away from it all can give you a bit of perspective. Which reminds me: there is some nice stuff about art as well.