Monday 29 June 2015

The Twilight Hour by Nicci Gerrard

Nicci Gerrard takes a break from crime with the novel, The Twilight Hour, where an elderly woman looks back on a lifetime of memories, not all of which she is keen to share with her family.

Eleanor’s 95th birthday is approaching and her family are planning a birthday party at her hilltop home. But first Eleanor decides that she must clear away some of those papers that she does not want her family knowing about, and she goes about lighting a fire – in the library – and consequently setting fire to the velvet curtains and doing some damage. Her family decide that the time has come for Eleanor to sell up and move, either in with them, a decision she strongly objects to, or a home. Oh, dear.

Eleanor finally agrees to sell her house, but first a clearing out must be undertaken, but not by one of her large, extended family, it must be done by a stranger. That stranger is Peter and he and Eleanor meet and a friendship is formed.

This is an endearing and delightful story, truthfully written about age and ageing. There is a humour and an honesty that is quite touching. Eleanor’s story will delight you.

Nicci Gerrard is half of the writing duo, Nicci French, a husband and wife team known for their psychological thrillers, particularly their series featuring psychotherapist Frieda Klein.

Posted by Flaxmere Library Book Chat

Catalogue link: The Twilight Hour


Thursday 25 June 2015

The Green Road by Anne Enright

“I am sorry. I cannot invite you home for Christmas because I am Irish and my family is mad.”

In her latest novel, Anne Enwright writes with wit and honesty about the Madigan family, who are called home to Western Ireland for Christmas by their cold and difficult mother Rosaleen when she unexpectedly decides to sell the family home.

Set over three decades and three continents the believable and imperfect characters will make you wince, laugh, and think about your own family relationships and dynamics….

Dan, the golden child of the family, sends his mother to her sick bed when he announces his intention to become a priest. We revisit him later in New York during the AIDS epidemic of the 1990’s, his sexuality an unspoken but open secret amongst his siblings. Emmet becomes a charity worker in various Third World war-torn countries. Hanna has a young baby, a drinking problem and post-natal depression, and Constance is a slave to her family with health issues of her own. Mother Rosaleen is needy, haughty, and manipulative, and welds a maternal power over her children that turns every sentence into a weapon.

Recently made the first Laureate for Irish Fiction, Enright was born in Dublin in 1962. After a career in television production, she took up writing full time in 1991. Her novel The Gathering won the Man Booker prize for Fiction in 2007 and the Irish Novel of the Year. With The Green Road, Irish author Anne Enright has again produced an astute novel about an engagingly dysfunctional Irish family.

Posted by Katrina H

Catalogue link: The Green Road

Thursday 18 June 2015

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

With her latest novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, we are in classic Anne Tyler territory. It is the story of the Whitshank family, told over several generations, all living in the same old house in Baltimore built by Junior Whitshank decades ago. The plot revolves around Abby Whitshank’s early stages of dementia, which brings her children home to consider their parents’ future.

The story see-saws back and forth through the generations bringing us Red and Abby’s courtship, Junior’s ambitions to set up a building business and how he meets Linnie Mae. The blue thread of the title links the generations in odd ways, creeping in as the colour of a porch swing, a wedding shirt and so on.

As a whole the story is a bit of a patchwork, with several key stories making up the whole. There is the particularly heart-breaking story of Stem’s adoption, Abby’s determination to look after him and sibling rivalry with Denny, his older brother. Denny is a recurring Tyler sort, a misfit, inclined to drift from job to job and relationship to relationship, but Tyler leaves us with a morsel of hope for him.

What I love most about the book is Tyler’s gift with dialogue, the distinctive voice each character has, and the warmth and humour that runs throughout. It’s the little details and sharp observations that create a picture of a family, which could be any family. In Tolstoy’s words: ‘All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ There is some of this in Tyler’s novel about the Whitshanks: it’s the difficulties that give the novel its substance. Perhaps she is the Tolstoy of our day.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: A Spool of Blue Thread

Thursday 11 June 2015

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Emily St John Mandel's new novel is a thrilling dystopian story that focuses on a small group of distantly connected characters. What they have in common is a link with a famous actor, Arthur Leander, who dies on stage in Toronto on the day a terrible flu virus strikes. This virus will kill ninety-nine per cent of the world's population.

The novel leaps back and forward through time - from the day Jeevan Chaudry performs CPR on Leander to years before when Jeevan was a paparazzo stalking him. Also on stage is child actor Kirsten Raymonde who turns up twenty years later with a travelling band of players, performing Shakespeare. It is a world of menace and danger, so the players are always prepared to defend themselves with crossbows and knives as need be.

Back in the past we also meet Miranda, Leander’s first wife and creator of the Station Eleven graphic novels, copies of which Kirsten carries with her in a backpack of memories. Mandel creates wonderful moments of nostalgia with characters collecting relics from the past while the players' motto, 'Survival is insufficient', is a quotation from Star Trek.

Station Eleven is an exciting dystopian novel on one level but more than that, it really touches the reader, asking you to decide what it is you would really miss if the world as we know it were to end and what your regrets might be. Not surprisingly this book has been in the running for a number of awards, and winning this year's Arthur C Clarke Award.

Posted by JAM

Catalogue link: Station Eleven




Thursday 4 June 2015

The Separation by Dinah Jefferies

1950s Malaya is the setting for Dinah Jefferies debut novel, The Separation, in which British expat, Alec Cartwright, cruelly wreaks revenge on his unfaithful wife in a way that has lasting implications. Lydia Cartwright returns home after visiting a sick friend to find her husband and daughters gone, the family bank account almost empty. Believing Alec has taken the children to his new posting in the north, she decides to travel alone to find them.

Malaya at this time is rife with insurgents engaged in guerilla warfare, and Lydia’s journey is beset with danger. Her desperation over the fate of her family amid all this strife is truly harrowing. Meanwhile the novel also tracks the fortunes of Emma, Lydia’s eleven-year-old daughter, who must adjust to the cold English climate and boarding school having been led to assume her mother has deserted them.

The two stories – Lydia’s fragile hope of one day finding her children and Emma’s difficulty settling into the new life her father has determined for them – make for engaging story-telling and for me the pages just flew by. There are numerous setbacks for Lydia and Emma and both find the path to the truth beset by obstacles. All this creates plenty of drama and suspense and the characters of Lydia and Emma captivate the reader’s sympathy. Both characters must dig deep to find new strengths they didn’t realise they had.

The Separation is a great escapist read loaded with atmosphere from a promising new author. Her new book, The Tea Planter’s Wife will be released in August.

Posted by JAM