My 15th blog birthday!

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Just a quick post today to mark the 15th anniversary of She Reads Novels! I never imagined when I published my first post back in October 2009 that my blog would still be here in 2024. I’ve seen a lot of changes in the book blogging community during that time and sadly many of the blogs I remember from when I first started are no longer around, but I’m still happy doing what I do here and am not planning to go anywhere!

Thank you to everyone who has read, commented or engaged in any way with my blog over the last 15 years – and let’s look forward to the next 15!

Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark by Celia Fremlin – #1970Club

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Today is the first day of 1970 Club, hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Stuck in a Book, and I’ve decided to begin with a book by an author who is rapidly becoming a favourite. I’ve read two of Celia Fremlin’s novels, Uncle Paul and The Long Shadow, and loved both, so I was curious to see what I would think of her short stories. Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark is a collection first published by Gollancz in 1970 (although some websites say 1972, most say 1970 as do the copyright page and preface of the edition I read) and contains thirteen stories. While some are stronger than others, I can honestly say that they are all excellent.

The stories in this collection all have domestic settings, dealing with topics such as marriage, adultery, motherhood, and ageing, and all of them rely on the power of imagination to create a sense of unease. Although some of the stories hint at the supernatural, they are still grounded in reality. Fremlin has a real talent for taking ordinary, everyday situations and using them to build tension and fear.

The book gets off to a great start with The Quiet Game, the story of Hilda Meredith, a woman living in a flat in a high tower block who is struggling to keep her two young children quiet. Faced with constant complaints from the neighbours who claim they can hear every sound the children make – every shout, every laugh, every footstep – Hilda’s mental health begins to suffer as she desperately searches for games that can be played in silence:

From the point of view of the neighbours, it was she who was the cause and origin of all the stresses. She wasn’t the one who was being driven mad, Oh no. That’s what they would all have told you.

But madness has a rhythm of its own up there so near to the clouds; a rhythm that at first you would not recognise, so near is it, in the beginning, to the rhythms of ordinary, cheerful life.

I won’t tell you what happens to Hilda, but this story sets the tone for the rest of the book. Although the thirteen stories are all different and memorable in their own ways, they could all be described as psychological suspense, taking us deep inside the characters’ minds. At the same time, they have perfectly crafted plots, often with a surprise twist in the final paragraph that changes the way we think about everything that came before.

One of my favourite stories was The Baby-Sitter, in which a mother is persuaded to leave her young daughter with a babysitter for the first time so that she and her husband can spend the evening at the theatre. However, she’s not convinced that the tall, stern-looking Mrs Hahn is the right person to be left in charge of little Sally, who has been having nightmares about a ‘Hen with Great Big Eyes’. Her misgivings about Mrs Hahn grow stronger throughout the evening, but is she worrying about nothing? Yet another parent/child story – and another highlight – is Angel-Face, where a woman becomes exasperated by her stepson’s insistence that he is being visited by an angel every night. Things take a more sinister turn when it emerges that he thinks angels have beaks…

Celia Fremlin was in her fifties when this collection was published and three of her stories share the theme of growing older. In For Ever Fair, a story with a humorous twist, a middle-aged wife becomes jealous of her husband’s infatuation with a younger woman, while The Last Day of Spring and Old Daniel’s Treasure are both poignant tales with elderly protagonists and touch on the subject of dementia. Yet Fremlin writes equally convincingly about young characters: in The Hated House, sixteen-year-old Lorna has been left at home alone for the first time and is looking forward to a night without her father’s shouting and her mother’s obsessive cleaning and tidying. Then the telephone begins to ring continuously and an unexpected visitor arrives at the front door:

It was a light, a very light footstep on the garden path that next caught at her hearing; lightly up the steps, and then a fumbling at the front door. Not a knock; not a ring; just a fumbling, as of someone trying to unlock the door; someone too weak, or too blind, to turn the key.

“Be sure you bolt all the doors…” In her head Lorna seemed to hear these boring, familiar instructions not for the fiftieth time, but for the first… “Be sure you latch the kitchen window…Don’t answer the door to anyone you don’t know…”

There are still another six stories that I haven’t mentioned, but I think I’ll leave you to discover those for yourself if you read the book (which I hope you will as it’s such a great collection). As well as 1970 Club, I’m counting this towards the RIP XIX challenge as many of the stories are very unsettling and perfect for the time of year!

The Significance of Swans by Rhiannon Lewis

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In this fascinating new dystopian novella, Rhiannon Lewis expands on a short story from her 2021 collection I am the Mask Maker. When I read that short story, I actually mentioned in my review that it was one I found particularly intriguing and wished was longer, so I was pleased to learn that my wish had come true!

The book begins with Aeronwy visiting her brother at his farm on the Welsh coast. Just before she says goodbye and returns home, they spot the unusual sight of seven swans flying in formation through the winter sky. The next day thousands of disappearances are reported – not just in Aeronwy’s small corner of Wales, but all over the country and beyond.

As the days and weeks go by, the overnight ‘removals’, as they become known in the media, continue. Every morning, people awake to find an empty space in their bed, the impression left by their partner’s body still visible; every morning, adults fail to arrive at work and children fail to attend school. Aeronwy and her husband do their best to continue with their lives, hoping that whoever or whatever is behind the removals will leave them alone, but the rapidly declining population means that public services and infrastructure are affected and soon there’s no more television, no more radio, no way of finding out what’s going on in the outside world. Eventually, the inevitable happens and Aeronwy’s husband is removed. She sets out alone to make the hundred-mile journey to her brother’s farm, in the hope that he might still be alive, but what will she find when she gets there?

I don’t read many post-apocalyptic novels, but I find that most of them tend to tackle the same questions. What caused the apocalyptic event? Is there a reason why some people were able to survive and not others? If we meet another human being, can they be trusted or will they see us a threat to their own survival? Will it be possible to build a better world from the ruins of the old one? In The Significance of Swans, Rhiannon Lewis does explore these things and provides some answers, while leaving other issues open to interpretation. What makes this book different from others I’ve read is the idea of the seven swans, glimpsed by Aeronwy and her brother the day before the removals begin. The swans appear to have some significance, but what is it?

With the whole book being written from Aeronwy’s perspective, this means we only get a limited view of what is going on, particularly once communication with the rest of the world is lost and she finds herself alone with nobody to talk to. Yet it’s fascinating to see things through Aeronwy’s eyes and to watch this ordinary middle-aged woman from Wales try to make sense of her situation. I thoroughly enjoyed this unusual novella and thought it was the perfect length – long enough to develop the themes hinted at in the shorter version from I am the Mask Maker and short enough to keep things moving at a steady pace without ever becoming boring. I received a copy for review courtesy of Y Lolfa, an independent Welsh publisher. You can find out more about this and the other books they publish here.

#1970Club – Some previous reviews

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1970 Club, hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, starts on Monday and we will all be reading and writing about books published in that year. It seems to have been another great year for publishing – I have previously read and reviewed six books on my blog and thought I would list them before the week begins. If you haven’t decided what to read yet, maybe you can find some inspiration here!

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies – The first book in Davies’ Deptford Trilogy. This one is set in a small Canadian town and follows the sequence of events triggered by the innocent act of a boy throwing a snowball. I still haven’t read the other two books.

Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer – There’s usually a Georgette Heyer novel suitable for the club, no matter what year it is! This one from 1970 is not one of my favourites, but I still enjoyed it – Heyer is almost always fun to read.

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart – As a fan of Stewart’s romantic suspense novels I wasn’t sure if I would like her Arthurian books, but I actually found them equally enjoyable. This is the first of her three novels about Merlin and I loved all of them.

Ibiza Surprise by Dorothy Dunnett – Dunnett is better known for her historical novels, which I love, but she also wrote a series of contemporary mysteries featuring portrait painter Johnson Johnson and his yacht, Dolly. This one, as the title suggests, is set in Ibiza.

The Embroidered Sunset by Joan Aiken – This is an entertaining modern thriller with a plot that isn’t to be taken too seriously! It also has an ending that took me completely by surprise.

The Child from the Sea by Elizabeth Goudge – I love Elizabeth Goudge and this was the first of her books I read. It tells the story of Lucy Walter, a mistress of King Charles II, and is beautifully written, with some lovely descriptions of Wales.

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Have you read any of these books? What else have you read published in 1970 – and will you be taking part in 1970 Club next week?

Midnight in Vienna by Jane Thynne

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It’s 1938 and Stella Fry has just returned to London from Austria, where she has been working as a private tutor for a Jewish family in Vienna. With the worsening political situation in Europe, the family decided to leave for the safety of New York, and Stella has found herself back home with no job. Famous mystery writer Hubert Newman is advertising for someone to type up his new manuscript and Stella applies for the position. After meeting with Newman and being offered the job, she is shocked when she learns the next day that he has been found dead. Another shock follows twenty-four hours later when she receives the manuscript of his new book, Masquerade, and finds that he has dedicated it To Stella, spotter of mistakes.

Harry Fox is a former Special Branch detective who left the police force under a shadow, but is still carrying out unofficial intelligence work, spying on suspected communists. He has reason to believe that Hubert Newman’s death was not a natural one and when his path crosses with Stella’s and he discovers that she had lunch with the author the day before he died, the two team up to investigate.

I really enjoyed Midnight in Vienna; the only negative thing I can say about it is that Stella was a bit too trusting of strangers and too quick to put herself in dangerous situations without thinking of the consequences. The biggest example comes very early in the novel when, having only just met Harry Fox, she agrees to travel back to Vienna alone on the trail of someone possibly implicated in Hubert’s murder – at a time when everyone else is trying to get out of Austria. However, I can forgive this because the Vienna sections of the book are so well done, perfectly illustrating the mood in Austria during that period which followed the annexation by Nazi Germany.

With Hubert Newman being an author, there’s also a literary element to the novel. Newman (a fictional character, by the way) is a member of the Detection Club, a real-life society of prominent British mystery writers, and Harry Fox’s investigations lead to a meeting with one of the founding members, Dorothy L. Sayers. She only makes a brief cameo appearance but I thought the way Thynne portrayed her character was very convincing. As well as the literary world, we also get a glimpse of the theatrical world of the 1930s through Stella’s actress friend, Evelyn, so there’s a lot going on outside of the central mystery.

This is the first of Jane Thynne’s novels I’ve read. It seems that most of her previous books are similar wartime/espionage thrillers and having enjoyed this one so much I’m sure I’ll be reading more of them. I’m also wondering whether there will be a sequel to this book as I think there’s plenty of scope for some of these characters to return for a second adventure.

Thanks to Quercus for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 44/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Six Degrees of Separation: From Long Island to The White Devil

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It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with Long Island by Colm Tóibín. I haven’t read it, but it’s a sequel to Brooklyn, which I have read and enjoyed. Here’s what it’s about:

A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island and in that moment everything changes. Eilis and Tony have built a secure, happy life here since leaving Brooklyn – perhaps a little stifled by the in-laws so close, but twenty years married and with two children looking towards a good future.

And yet this stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created. For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind. Did she make the wrong choice marrying Tony all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path?

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There are lots of directions I could have gone in from this month’s starting point, but I’ve decided to link to another novel about an Irish immigrant living in New York: Norah by Cynthia G. Neale (1). It’s set in the 1850s, much earlier than the Tóibín novels, and follows the story of Norah McCabe who left Ireland during the Great Famine to start a new life in America. This is actually Neale’s third book about Norah, but I hadn’t read the first two and that didn’t seem to be a problem.

Almost the same name but a different spelling: my second book is Nora Bonesteel’s Christmas Past by Sharyn McCrumb (2). This is a novella set in the Appalachian Mountains and blending crime, history and folklore. Nora Bonesteel, an elderly woman with ‘the Sight’ is helping her new neighbours celebrate a traditional mountain Christmas when they are interrupted by the arrival of the Sheriff who has come to make an arrest. It’s part of McCrumb’s Ballad series and I read some of the full-length novels in the series years ago, before I started blogging.

The word Ballad leads me to Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (3), a collection of poetry first published in 1798 and revised in 1802. This edition of the book contains both the original and revised versions, which I think will be of more interest to the academic reader than the casual one. It includes some of both poets’ most famous poems, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.

Wordsworth and Coleridge, along with Robert Southey, were known as the Lake Poets because they lived in England’s Lake District. In The Shadow Sister by Lucinda Riley (4), our narrator, Star D’Aplièse, investigates the story of an ancestor who grew up in the Lake District and was a friend of the children’s author Beatrix Potter. This is one of my favourite books from Riley’s Seven Sisters series in which each book focuses on one of the adopted daughters of the mysterious Pa Salt.

A simple link to another novel with the word ‘shadow’ in the title next – Shadow Girls by Carol Birch (5). This is a ghost story set in a school in 1960s Manchester. I enjoyed it, but the supernatural element is only introduced very late in the novel and it’s much more ‘school story’ than ‘ghost story’ which won’t appeal to everyone.

The White Devil by Justin Evans (6) is also a ghost story set in a school – the famous boys’ school, Harrow. One of the new boys at Harrow discovers that he closely resembles Lord Byron, who attended the same school two centuries earlier. I loved the setting, the atmosphere and the Byron connection, but felt that the lack of strong characters let the book down.

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And that’s my chain for October! My links have included: Irish immigrants in New York, the name Nora/Norah, ballads, the Lake District, the word Shadow and ghost stories set in schools.

In November we’ll be starting with Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.

The Examiner by Janice Hallett

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It’s September 2023 and six students are preparing to start Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course. The course is led by Gela Nathaniel who has personally selected her students from different backgrounds to ensure a range of skills and artistic knowledge. There’s Jem Badhuri, an ambitious and enthusiastic young woman who works mainly in sculpture and sound; Alyson Lang, already an experienced and talented artist; Jonathan Danners, whose family own an art gallery; Cameron Wesley, a marketing executive trying to juggle the course with his job; Ludya Parak, a graphic designer and single mother; and finally, Patrick Bright, a man in his fifties who runs an art supplies shop.

Almost as soon as the course gets under way there are hints that something is wrong. Some of the students seem to be hiding secrets and tensions quickly develop between them. Then, five of the group go on an overnight trip to Somerset to visit a museum and it’s not clear whether all five have returned again. Is the missing student still alive or have they been murdered and the others are covering it up? As the course comes to an end, Ben Sketcher, an external examiner responsible for giving an independent assessment of the course and the students’ grades, is given access to all the communications between Gela and her class and must decide whether a crime has been committed.

The Examiner is written entirely in the form of emails, WhatsApp messages and transcripts of chats from the Royal Hastings University messaging app, Doodle. This makes it easy for Hallett to conceal the truth from the reader because each character only reveals what they want the others to know and they aren’t necessarily always being honest. Clues do eventually begin to emerge but the full picture doesn’t become clear until Ben has read every message and every email. Readers of Hallett’s The Appeal or The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels will already be familiar with the epistolary format she uses and to be honest I think it’s something you either love and connect with immediately or you don’t. If you didn’t enjoy her other books this one probably won’t change your mind. Personally, I find them unusual and imaginative – and very gripping, as the short length of the emails and chats makes it difficult to stop reading!

The Multimedia Art course is a year long and during that time the students are given various assignments and projects to complete. Their responses to these are provided in the book and although I know very little about multimedia art I enjoyed reading them as they give a deeper insight into each character. I was particularly intrigued by Jem’s work with soundscapes and binaural audio and Patrick’s experiments with resin. Gela’s notes as she examines and grades each project are also interesting as they give us clues about how she views each student and her relationship with them. Why does she show such favouritism to the overqualified Alyson, for example? Why does she make so many allowances for Cameron, who barely attends the course and makes very little effort when he does?

When I eventually discovered what was going on behind the scenes of Gela’s Multimedia Art course I felt slightly let down because it seemed so far-fetched and not what I had expected. Still, the fun was in getting there and watching the dynamics play out between the six students along the way. Although The Twyford Code and The Alperton Angels are still my favourite Hallett novels, I did love this one as well; it’s maybe not the best place to start with her books, but I think existing Hallett fans will enjoy it as much as I did.

I’m counting this as my third book for this year’s RIP challenge.