The Olive Tree by Lucinda Riley

August 22, 20164 Comments

I wasn’t sure, when I first heard about The Olive Tree, whether I really wanted to read it or not. I’ve enjoyed most of Lucinda Riley’s previous novels but part of the appeal is the way she intertwines past and present, linking the lives of modern day characters with ones who lived in times gone by. The Olive Tree is not like that; it has a contemporary setting, with the action taking place mostly in 2006 with a few chapters bringing us right up to date in 2016. I thought I would miss the historical element, but actually, once I started reading, I found I didn’t mind that it was a different sort of book and I ended up enjoying it anyway (although not quite as much as the historical ones).

The Olive Tree is the story of a family holiday in Cyprus. The setting couldn’t be more idyllic – a house called Pandora, with its own pool, a sunny terrace and a beautiful view – but the holiday itself is the holiday from hell. As its Greek name suggests, Pandora holds a lot of secrets and some of them are about to be revealed.

Pandora belongs to Helena Cooke, the novel’s main female character, who is returning to the house for the first time in years, having recently inherited it from her godfather. Almost as soon as she arrives, however, she wonders whether coming back was a mistake: Alexis, with whom she had a teenage romance in Cyprus more than twenty years earlier, is still living nearby and still seems to have feelings for Helena. Her husband, William, is not going to be pleased!

Someone else whose life has been thrown into turmoil by the presence of Alexis is Helena’s eldest son, thirteen-year-old Alex. Alex has never known the identity of his biological father…could it be Alexis? As Alex retreats to the privacy of his tiny bedroom to write in his diary and pour out his hopes and fears, another troubled family arrives to stay at Pandora. They are the Chandlers: William’s alcoholic best friend, Sacha; his long-suffering wife, Jules, and their two children, one of whom is Alex’s worst enemy. With the additions of Chloe, William’s teenage daughter from a previous marriage, and Helena’s friend Sadie, who is getting over a break-up with her latest boyfriend, it’s going to be a difficult summer!

At nearly 600 pages, this was a surprisingly quick read, which is something I’ve found with most of Lucinda Riley’s novels; she knows how to tell a good story and how to hold the reader’s attention from one chapter to the next. I don’t think the book needed to be quite so long (the Sadie storyline, for example, added very little to the overall plot) but otherwise I did enjoy spending time getting to know the Cooke and Chandler families. There were some twists in the story towards the end and although I’d had my suspicions, I was still surprised by some of the revelations.

Interspersed throughout the novel are passages from Alex’s diary and I particularly liked reading these sections. I found Alex an intriguing character; having been assessed as a gifted child with an exceptionally high IQ, sometimes he seems much older than thirteen, but in other ways – such as his attachment to his toy rabbit, Bee – he feels very young and insecure. I think if the whole novel had been narrated by Alex it might have been too much, but I always looked forward to returning to his diary entries – they were written with such a unique combination of humour, wisdom and vulnerability.

This isn’t my favourite Lucinda Riley novel but with its sunny, summery setting it was a perfect August read. I’m now looking forward to reading The Shadow Sister, the next book in her Seven Sisters series, which is coming out later this year.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy of The Olive Tree for review.

Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby

August 18, 20166 Comments

Poor Caroline, published in 1931, is the third book I’ve read by Winifred Holtby. I read both South Riding and The Land of Green Ginger in 2011 and enjoyed both (particularly the wonderful South Riding) so I don’t know why I’ve waited five years to try another of her novels! I enjoyed this one too, although the setting and subject of the book make it very different from the other two I’ve read.

The Caroline of the title is Caroline Denton-Smyth, an elderly spinster who has founded the Christian Cinema Company with the aim of reforming the British film industry. With feathers in her hat and beads around her neck, peering at the world through a pair of lorgnettes, Caroline is a figure of fun – someone to be pitied and certainly not taken too seriously. Caroline herself, however, takes the Christian Cinema Company very seriously indeed and is determined to make it a success. And so, despite having no money herself, she sets out to encourage others to invest in the company and to put together a board of directors.

This is not a novel with a lot of plot; the enjoyment is in getting to know the various people who become involved with Caroline’s business venture in one way or another. First there’s Basil St Denis, an idle, pleasure-seeking young man whose lover, Gloria, persuades him to leave his life of leisure in Monte Carlo to become chairman of the company. Then there’s Joseph Isenbaum, who hopes that joining the board will increase his standing in society and help to secure a place at Eton for his son. Hugh Macafee is an obsessive Scottish scientist who has invented the Tona Perfecta, a new film technique which he is desperate to put to use, while the American scenario writer Clifton Johnson is a greedy, unscrupulous man who, like the others, is interested only in what he can get out of the company.

Not a very pleasant collection of people so far, but there were two more whom I found slightly more likeable: Caroline’s much younger cousin, Eleanor de la Roux, newly arrived in London from South Africa with an independent fortune to invest, and Roger Mortimer, the young priest who falls in love with Eleanor and who is also the object of Caroline’s own affections – leaving her open to even more ridicule, as she is old enough to be Father Mortimer’s grandmother.

Each of the characters I’ve mentioned is given a chapter of his or her own, so that we have the chance to see things from several different points of view and add to what we know of Caroline, of the other characters and of the Christian Cinema Company. Although the opinions of Caroline differ from character to character – some view her with scorn, some with pity and some with frustration – each chapter ends with the same words: poor Caroline!

Caroline is an unusual heroine; being almost seventy-two at the time of our story, she devotes herself to her cause with an impressive amount of energy and enthusiasm, yet this devotion makes her unrealistic about what she is likely to actually achieve and blind to the things which are more important in life. She is not always a nice person and, as her family like to point out, she has spent a lifetime borrowing money from people knowing that she will never be able to give it back. Despite all this, I had a lot of sympathy for Caroline and couldn’t help admiring her as well as feeling sorry for her. Even though it seemed obvious that the Christian Cinema Company was doomed to failure, for poor Caroline’s sake I wanted it to succeed.

Reading Poor Caroline has reminded me of how much I like Winifred Holtby’s writing. I’m glad I still have a few more of her novels to look forward to – if you’ve read any of them please let me know what you thought!

The People in the Photo by Hélène Gestern

August 12, 201612 Comments

August is Women in Translation Month and although I hadn’t made any formal plans to take part, I found myself reading a translated novel by a woman this month anyway – one I’d been interested in reading for a while. Hélène Gestern’s The People in the Photo was originally published in French in 2011; this Gallic Books edition is an English translation by Emily Boyce and Ros Schwartz.

Hélène Hivert lives in Paris, where she works as an archivist. She has never known her mother, who died when Hélène was very young, and for some reason her father and stepmother have never wanted to talk about her. When Hélène finds a photograph of Nathalie, her mother, taken at a tennis tournament in Interlaken in 1971, she’s intrigued. There are two men in the photograph whom she can’t identify, so she places a newpaper advertisement asking if anyone can provide more details.

Stéphane Crusten, a Swiss biologist living in England, responds. One of the men in the photo is his father, Pierre, who is now dead, and he recognises the other as a close friend of his father’s. What Stéphane doesn’t know is why Hélène’s mother is in the picture with them. Corresponding at first through letters and emails and later by telephone and in person, the two begin to piece together the fragments of information they have in an attempt to discover the connection between their parents. Gradually, as they delve into their family histories and more old photographs come to light, the true story of Nathalie and Pierre is revealed.

The People in the Photo is a beautiful, moving novel. The story is told in epistolary form, through the letters and emails Hélène and Stéphane send to each other, and it was nice to watch two people being drawn together in this way, forming a bond in writing before they had even had the chance to meet. The photos they discover are not included in the book, but they are described in such careful detail that I could picture them quite clearly in my mind, and I liked that aspect of the novel too.

However, this was not a perfect book; it did have a few flaws which stopped me from loving it as much as I’d hoped to. First, I thought it was very predictable – maybe not for Hélène and Stéphane, who were genuinely shocked by each revelation, but definitely predictable for the reader. This in itself wouldn’t have been a big problem, but I also found the plot very contrived and too reliant on coincidences, on photographs which turned up just when another clue was needed and on circumstances which conveniently prevented secrets from being revealed until after the next letter was received.

In the end, though, none of this mattered too much. It’s still a lovely, emotional story and once I started reading it I didn’t want to stop until I reached the final page and had learned all the secrets of the people in the photo.

Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp

April 6, 201618 Comments

After reading The Nutmeg Tree a few months ago, I was desperate to read more books by Margery Sharp, so the news that several of her novels were being reissued by Open Road Media came just at the right time for me. I have been lucky enough to receive a copy of Cluny Brown for review via NetGalley, but official release day is Tuesday 12th April so not long to wait!

What I remember most from The Nutmeg Tree is its heroine, the wonderful Julia Packett. Cluny Brown is another memorable character – an intelligent, free-spirited young woman who refuses to ‘know her place’. To the dismay of Uncle Arn, who has brought up the orphaned Cluny, she’s the sort of girl who goes for tea at the Ritz on her own just to see what it’s like and who spends a whole day in bed eating oranges because she’s read in a magazine that it provides revitalisation. Uncle Arn is a plumber, a hard-working man leading a conventional life, and he’s unsure of the best way to deal with Cluny.

It is eventually decided that what Cluny needs is a job – and so she finds herself taking up a position as parlourmaid at Friars Carmel, a country house in Devon which is home to Sir Henry and Lady Carmel and their son, Andrew. With her ‘height, plainness and perfectly blank expression’, Cluny makes a perfect Tall Parlourmaid and soon settles into her new life, taking the neighbour’s dog for walks on her day off and forming a friendship with Mr Wilson, the local pharmacist.

But Cluny is not the only new arrival at Friars Carmel. The Polish academic Adam Belinski has been invited to Devon by Andrew, who is afraid for his friend’s safety. It’s 1938 and with the situation in Europe growing increasingly unsettled, Belinski (who becomes known to the family as The Professor) needs refuge from the Nazis. Andrew himself is still a bachelor but contemplating marriage with the beautiful Betty Cream….and it’s not long before Betty also decides to visit. Life at Friars Carmel is about to become much more complicated!

I loved Cluny Brown as a character. Like Julia in The Nutmeg Tree, she’s a real individual and doesn’t conform to the expectations of others, but at the same time she’s friendly, warm-hearted and always has the best of intentions. Her story is played out during a time of social change and unrest with Britain on the brink of war – and as the novel itself was published in 1944, this adds an interesting angle.

The conclusion to Cluny’s story surprised me, all the more so because what eventually happened was what I had initially expected to happen before Margery Sharp began to lead things in a different direction. I was quite happy with the ending, but I’m not sure whether Cluny would be happy with it once a few years had gone by; it would have been nice if Sharp had written a sequel, both for the pleasure of meeting this set of characters again and also so we could see whether everything did work out for Cluny.

I think I enjoyed The Nutmeg Tree slightly more than this one, but I have been impressed by both of the Margery Sharp books I’ve read so far and am looking forward to reading more of them. I just need to decide which to read next, now that so many tempting titles are being made available to us again.

The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor

March 21, 20169 Comments

I always believe in giving an author a second chance, so after a failed attempt at reading William Trevor’s Love and Summer a few years ago, I have still been interested in trying more of his work. As March is Reading Ireland Month (hosted by Cathy and Niall) and Trevor is an Irish author, this seemed a good time to give another of his books a try.

Published in 1976, The Children of Dynmouth is set in a typical English seaside town full of ordinary people leading ordinary lives – at least on the surface. Fifteen-year-old Timothy Gedge, who wanders the streets of Dynmouth watching and listening, knows what is really going on behind closed doors and inside people’s heads…and he’s not afraid to use that information to his own advantage. As family scandals, hidden passions and secret affairs are brought to light, the adults and children of Dynmouth begin to wonder what Timothy’s motives really are.

Timothy Gedge is a sinister creation, at the heart of all the tension in Dynmouth, although it’s never quite clear whether or not he is fully aware of the trouble he is causing and the inappropriateness of his actions. The first real indication that something is badly wrong comes when we learn that he is planning to enter the annual Spot the Talent contest with a gruesome ‘comedy act’ which no decent person could possibly find funny. When several obstacles are placed in the way of his act – the lack of a curtain for the stage, for example, and the need for a man’s suit and a wedding dress – Timothy goes to great lengths to get what he wants, regardless of who gets hurt in the process.

With no father in his life and a mother who neglects him, Timothy has been left to fend for himself and has grown up to be a lonely, awkward teenager facing the usual fate of Dynmouth’s young men: a lifetime spent working in the town’s sandpaper factory. The people of Dynmouth can’t get away from him as he tries to connect with them in any way he can; he is everywhere they turn, listening to private conversations, staring through windows, inviting himself into their homes, asking questions, hiding in the shadows and lurking in the background at funerals. Nobody likes him and nobody wants him there, but as a representation of all that is wrong with society, he can be seen as everybody’s responsibility and everybody’s problem.

Timothy is an unsettling character – and this is an unsettling novel. It’s a short book at under 200 pages, but long enough for the author to build up a complete portrait of life in a small community in 1970s England, to introduce us to the people who live there, and to add undercurrents of danger and foreboding, so that by the end of the novel we go away with a very different impression of Dynmouth than we had at the beginning.

The Children of Dynmouth is a disturbing but thought-provoking book and one which left me with a lot to think about after I turned the final page. I would like to read more by William Trevor, so your recommendations are welcome. I’m prepared to try Love and Summer again too, as I think I was probably just in the wrong mood for it the first time.

The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell

March 15, 2016March 15, 201623 Comments

As someone who loves the work of the Brontë sisters, I was both intrigued by and wary of a book described as “A witty modern love story which draws from the enduring classics of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights”. Modern novels inspired by classics can sometimes be very good, but they can also be very bad, so I was interested to see what this one would be like. I’m pleased to report that I enjoyed it, but with one or two reservations.

Our narrator, a young American woman called Samantha Whipple, is (supposedly – this is fiction) the last living descendant of the Brontë family. The novel opens several years after the death of Samantha’s father, the eccentric author Tristan Whipple, from whom she is believed to have inherited a vast Brontë estate which includes previously unseen drawings and manuscripts. Samantha knows this is untrue; her inheritance consists of something known only as The Warnings of Experience – what exactly this may be, she has no idea.

Arriving at Oxford University to study English Literature, Samantha is told that there’s a shortage of accommodation and is given a room on the fifth floor of a windowless tower decorated with an eerie painting she calls The Governess. Things become eerier still when her father’s old copies of the Brontës’ novels start to mysteriously appear in her room – novels which she believed to have been destroyed in the fire that killed her father. It seems that Tristan Whipple, from beyond the grave, is sending Samantha on a literary treasure hunt – and with the reluctant help of her tutor, James Timothy Orville III, she begins to follow the clues.

There’s so much in The Madwoman Upstairs for a Brontë fan – or a fan of literature in general – to enjoy. Samantha and Orville, who have very different views about reading, have lots of fascinating discussions, asking questions to which there is no right or wrong answer, such as whether the intentions of the author or the reader’s own interpretation is more important. In particular, they talk about the Brontës and their novels, exploring the themes and symbolism and how the sisters drew on their own lives and experiences for inspiration. I liked the fact that Anne, who is usually given less attention than Charlotte and Emily, was the most prominent of the sisters in this book, and Catherine Lowell has some theories about her which I had never come across before. This was all very interesting and I liked this aspect of the book much more than the mystery element – or the romance, which was quite predictable.

My main problem with this book was the character of Samantha herself. Homeschooled by her father and with no friends her own age, she’s awkward, outspoken and lacking in important social skills. I didn’t dislike her; some of the things she says are quite funny, and I particularly liked her response when asked if there are any leading men in her life (“several, but they’re all fictional”). However, I couldn’t understand why someone who appeared to have no passion for literature and claimed not to like any authors had chosen to study English Literature and how she could possibly have been offered a place at one of the world’s top universities. I thought her conversation with Orville at their first tutorial session was unrealistic – I couldn’t imagine speaking to a tutor like that!

Of course, the whole portrayal of university life in this book is unrealistic. Apart from her one-to-one meetings with Orville, Samantha seems to receive no other form of tuition and doesn’t have any interaction at all with any of the other students. And would Oxford really house a new student alone in an ancient tower which is part of a weekly tour? [Edited to add: maybe some of this is more normal than I’d thought]. Luckily, I was able to overlook the more implausible parts of the plot and concentrate on enjoying the literary analysis and Brontë references. If you can do that too, I think you’ll find this an entertaining read with some fascinating insights into the lives and work of Anne, Emily and Charlotte.

I received a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

March 11, 201622 Comments

Having read Kate Atkinson’s two most recent books, Life After Life and A God in Ruins, as well as some of her Jackson Brodie mysteries, I’ve been curious about her earlier novels and was pleased to see this one from 1997 on the library shelf. I knew nothing about this novel before I started to read it and I think that was a good thing because this is a story packed with surprises, plot twists and weird and wonderful occurrences. I have done my best here to give you an idea of what the book is about without giving too much away.

Human Croquet is narrated by sixteen-year-old Isobel Fairfax who lives with her family in a house called Arden in a small town somewhere in the north of England. Isobel’s family consists of her brother, Charles, their Aunt Vinny, and their father Gordon, who has recently returned after a long absence, bringing with him a new wife, Debbie. Gordon’s first wife, Eliza – mother of Isobel and Charles – disappeared years ago, although her presence at Arden can still be felt in small and unexpected ways. Throughout the novel we move between the Present (Isobel’s life in the 1960s) and the Past (in which we learn more about the early days of Gordon’s marriage to Eliza and the events leading up to her disappearance).

Now, this might all sound quite straightforward so far, but I’ve promised some surprises, plot twists and weird and wonderful occurrences – and yes, there are plenty of those! One of the first indications we get that something is not right in Isobel’s world comes when she finds herself suddenly slipping through time, briefly emerging in another period before just as suddenly returning to her own time. Charles, who is obsessed with the paranormal, is envious, telling her she must have experienced a time warp. But this is only the beginning of a series of increasingly bizarre things which happen to Isobel and her family. Things also become darker and darker as Isobel tries to make sense of what is going on and the truth about Eliza is slowly revealed.

Human Croquet is a wonderfully creative and imaginative story in which Atkinson plays with time and with our perceptions of what is real and what is unreal. The novel is rich in literary references and allusions; the name of Isobel’s home, Arden, brings to mind the Forest of Arden in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and both the Shakespearean theme and the forest/tree symbolism continue throughout the book. Even the title, Human Croquet, has a meaning which only really becomes clear right at the end of the novel and which made me think again about Isobel’s role in the story.

My favourite thing, though, about this – and all of Atkinson’s books – is the characterisation. Isobel’s narrative voice is very strong and distinctive, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and peppered with witty observations, self-deprecating humour and clever wordplay. Through Isobel’s eyes the rest of the Fairfax family, as well as their friends and neighbours, come to life in vivid detail. Among the most memorable are the people next door, timid Mrs Baxter and her daughter Audrey, both of whom live in fear of the sinister ‘Daddy’. The Fairfaxes are not the only troubled family in Human Croquet; this is definitely not a happy story, so I was pleased to find that there are some lighter moments to alleviate the darkness.

I haven’t read anything by Kate Atkinson yet that hasn’t impressed me; I’m looking forward to reading the rest of her earlier books, as well as Started Early, Took My Dog, the only Jackson Brodie novel I haven’t read yet. What is your favourite Kate Atkinson book?