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 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?

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 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 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.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller’s Orange Prize winning novel is both a love story and a war story. And whoever said 'all's fair in love and war' couldn't have come up with a better story to illustrate the point, complicated as it is by the hand of fate and the capriciousness of the gods.
    While this is definitely the story of Achilles - immortalised by Homer as the greatest Greek warrior of his day and a key figure in the war the Greeks waged on Troy - the story is told from the point of view of Patroclus and includes a fascinating retelling of the lengthy siege the Greeks inflicted on Troy.

    You will remember it all began when Helen was abducted by Paris; she was his prize for choosing Aphrodite in a beauty contest. Helen was the ‘face that launched a thousand ships’ as well we know, and they were Greek warships brought from numerous Greek kingdoms, all converging on Troy to regain not only Helen for her husband Menelaus, but to defend Greek honour and teach the Trojans a lesson.
    At first I had to get over my recollections of the movie Troy which cast Brad Pitt as Achilles - an alpha male Holywood idol kind of Achilles. Miller’s Achilles is not like that. With the goddess, Thetis, for a mother, this hero has amazing fighting skills that always find their mark. But he's also sensitive and musical and his unusual golden hair and green eyes give him an ethereal beauty. She takes us back to Achilles' youth and the development of his love for Patroclus, his boyhood friend and lover, which plays an important part in his fate at Troy.

    Patroclus has had a difficult start in life. He is a disappointment to his father and when he accidentally kills another boy, is exiled to Phthia where its king, Peleus, fosters a number of boys, one of whom will eventually be chosen as companion for his son, Achilles. Surprisingly to everyone, Achilles chooses Patroclus. When Patroclus joins Achilles for lessons with the centaur Chiron, he begins to get over his inferiority complex and develops skills of his own.
    The two become inseparable, but when the war on Troy is declared, Achilles, in spite of Thetis' efforts to hide him, must muster an army from Phthia and join the fleet. Patroclus of course goes with him. Achilles lives under the curse of all that makes him great and his fate, as written by the gods, cannot be avoided.
    Miller is a classical scholar and has done her research to make this so much more than a sword and sandals drama. The relationship Patroclus has with Achilles is tender and makes the story poignant and real. She does wonders showing how the efforts of man to create his own destiny are in constant battle with the whims of the gods, which may have seemed strained and artificial in less skilled hands. The power play that develops between Achilles and Menelaus' brother, Agamemnon, who is proud and cruel, makes the story hum along.
    You can see the lasting appeal of these classical stories written so long ago by Homer and others such as Virgil and Aeschylus. There is plenty of fodder here for some more classical adaptations - the genial but wily Odysseus, for instance, would make a terrific subject for another book, to say nothing of what happens next to the family of Agamemnon.
    In the acknowledgements, Miller states that this novel has been a work in progress for ten years. I sincerely hope that she has learned to speed up the process, because I would love to see some more of these stories brought to life as she has so vividly with The Song of Achilles. This is a haunting story that will stay with this reader for a long time.

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

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

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.
 

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?

Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe

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

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.
 

Civil to Strangers by Barbara Pym

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

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 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.

Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

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

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

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

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

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