Book Review: The Good Liars by Anita Frank – a haunting novel where old sins cast long shadows

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

It is interesting how claustrophobic a large country house can seem in a nicely gothic suspense novel like this. In spite of extensive grounds and views that take in woods and a river, the country house at the heart of Anita Frank’s latest novel, The Good Liars, is taut with post-war misery, its inhabitants hemmed in by events of the past.

We catch up with the Stilwell family in 1920. There’s Maurice Stilwell, who is mentally damaged by his time in the trenches. He lives at the atmospherically named Darkacre Hall with his beautiful and somewhat petulant wife, Ida, and his younger brother Leonard. There’s also Maurice’s great friend, Victor, manly and debonair, who was once in love with Ida, but with Maurice’s family money, was always going to be the losing suitor.

Unlike Maurice, Leonard is sound of mind, but a physical wreck, and this is why Sarah is taken on as his nurse, a great relief to Ida, as it has been nigh on impossible to find staff willing to stay at Darkacre Hall. It is soon clear that Ida has earned the hatred of the locals because of her actions in the early stages of the war, handing out white feathers to young men who needn’t have signed up, either because of their age or occupation. Many felt compelled to enlist and some lost their lives.

It’s a chilly, gloomy house, that Sarah has come to but being a good sort, she soon mucks in, not only helping Leonard but taking on a lot of the housekeeping. You can’t help wondering if she’s too good to be true, but she’s kindly and observant which helps the story along.

Sarah is beginning to find the dark wood that dominates the Hall horribly oppressive. The incessant panelling and ancient furniture greedily absorb all glimmers of light. Everything around her appears drab and morose. Even the silverware on the table – the candlesticks, the cruet set, the cutlery – is tarnished, and though the electric lights of the low-hanging brass candelabra above them are lit, two of the bulbs have blown, meaning that, beyond the immediate table, the features of the room are concealed in dense shadow, in which anyone – or anything – might lurk without fear of detection. She finds it a most unsettling thought.

Into this setting comes a police inspector who is looking into a cold case – the disappearance of a teenage boy in the summer of 1914. There’s been a letter apparently, and new information to suggest the boy was in the Darkacre Hall grounds when he went missing. A Sergeant Verity is sent to ask further questions, and this throws the household into a spin. Maurice becomes agitated, and Leonard even more miserable.

The reader is soon aware that there are secrets everyone is hiding, events from before and during the war that have never been accounted for. While everyone else quivers and frets, Victor, the man of action, makes a bold decision. Meanwhile Sarah has a sense that there is a ghostly presence at the Hall, which adds to the atmosphere. Can the aptly named Verity get to the bottom of things?

Anita Frank builds tension expertly, switching the point of view between characters who huddle in corners, or take drastic steps. As well as a major weather event that keeps everyone even more housebound, there are one or two surprises you probably won’t see coming. And while you get caught up in the story, desperate to know how it plays out, you’re treated to some excellent writing too.

While this may not be the cheeriest novel – the dark events of a terrible war haunt every moment for the characters, in more ways than one – it is all put together really well. I will be happy to look out for more by Anita Frank – The Good Liars is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy – a novel about love and war, and crossing the line

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I had previously picked Trespasses up a couple of times but moved onto something else. I knew I wanted to read it, but I kept thinking it could never be as good as Milkman by Anna Burns, which is similarly set in Northern Ireland. Then I downloaded it as an audiobook and am so glad I persevered.

Trespasses is set in a town on the outskirts of Belfast in 1975, so we’re well into the time of the Troubles, with sectarian violence a common phenomenon. Cushla is a young school teacher at a Catholic school who moonlights at her family’s pub. It is here that she meets Michael Agnew, an older, married man, also a barrister as well as being a Protestant. So many red flags.

The two begin an affair and Michael introduces Cushla to some of his friends who are learning to speak “Irish” and Cushla being fairly fluent agrees to help teach them. All the while she is self-conscious among these people – that she stands out for her youth, for being a Catholic. But Cushla keeps Michael a secret from her family, her alcoholic mother, her brother who runs the pub. It would only infuriate Eamonn and bring disrepute on them all. She would most certainly lose her teaching position.

Cushla is the story’s narrator, and her voice has that resigned self-awareness of her predicament, not just the affair, but of the difficulties of being hopeful in a country torn apart by violence. Where at any moment, British security forces might descend on a social gathering looking for Republican insurgents, or stop cars at a roadblock and cause their owners varying kinds of inconvenience. To say nothing of car bombs and random shootings and other acts of violence.

Another thread to the story is Cushla’s world as a teacher and her looking out for young Davy McGeown, one of her pupils. His home life is a constant struggle, with a parent from each side, an out of work father and neighbours who make their life hell. Through it all, Davy is bright and cheery and Cushla is drawn to help the McGeowns, in spite of the disapproval of others.

Before lessons they did The News. Cushla hated doing The News, but the headmaster insisted. He said it encouraged the children to be aware of the world around them. Cushla thought they already knew too much about the world around them. Davy stood up, always the first to volunteer. His red jumper was dark with damp at the shoulders and neckline.
There was as bomb in Belfast, he said.
He says that every day, said Jonathan, who sat beside him.
Well, today he’s right. Thank you Davy, said Cushla.
Jonathan got to his feet. It wasn’t in Belfast, he said. A booby-trap bomb that was intended for a British Army foot patrol exploded prematurely, killing two boys near the border. They died instantly.
Booby trap. Incendiary device. Gelignite. Nitroglycerine. Petrol bomb. Rubber bullets. Saracen. Internment. The Special Powers Act. Vanguard. The vocabulary of a seven-year-old child now.

The two story threads will eventually become entangled and the reader has a sense of impending doom. Well, there’s always impending doom in any novel set during the Troubles, isn’t there? It’s a bit like Chekov’s gun. And Cushla seems to take such a lot of risks. You can’t help but admire her for her determination to do what’s right by people. Michael too, with his sympathies for young men pulled in by the security forces on flimsy evidence, his attempts to help them. They are both crossing the line and some sort of reckoning seems inevitable.

This is an engrossing read with vivid and memorable characters. The banter between Cushla and her alcoholic and sentimental mother, her brother who’s trying to save the pub, the old codgers who never miss a session there, the kids at the school. The dialogue is terrific, and really comes alive as narrated by Brid Brennan who reads Davy particularly well. I’m glad I rediscovered Trespasses – the book was shortlisted for a bunch of awards, including The Women’s Prize for Fiction, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a four-star read from me..

Book Review: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano – an engaging story about sisters and finding your family

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I seemed to miss the Little Women references when I picked up Ann Napolitano’s latest novel, Hello Beautiful. Maybe I was distracted by all the basketball, but I was about three quarters of the way through when the penny dropped and it all made a lot more sense. Until then, I was wondering where it was all going as it just seems to be a nice story about a family, about love and loss, lies and betrayal, all nestling among the intriguingly varied personalities of the Padavano sisters.

None the less, this was an easy book to get lost in. The story bounces between several characters and over several decades as the Padavano girls grow up and make lives for themselves. They are a close Italian American family living in Chicago with their parents, a couple who married out of necessity – with Julia on the way – and struggle with a marriage that is broken. Into all this comes William, himself from a broken family, with parents who have never healed from the loss of his older sister, who have never been able to love him instead.

William’s character is both sad and compelling. He’s been rescued by basketball, and his height gives him a terrific advantage on the court, as well as a scholarship to study in a new town and leave his loveless childhood behind. Julia Padavano discovers him at one of her classes and somehow persuades him into a possible future as a History professor, and as her husband. Her family gives William the warmth and security he’s lacked all his life.

Willam knew all the players except the freshmen, and once or twice after finishing his sandwich he let the guys convince him to take a few shots from the corner. He knew his knee couldn’t take pivoting or even jogging from one spot to the other, so he stood still and drilled one long shot after another while his former teammates hooted with pleasure. When the ball swished through the net, William’s breathing slowed to normal, and he could pretend that he still inhabited a recognisable life.
With the basketball in his hands, he could forget that his father-in-law had dropped dead, his sister-in-law slept on his couch, and every time he saw his wife he was startled.

We also have Sylvie, Julia’s closest sister. Unlike Julia, Sylvie fails to push herself towards college, instead immersing herself in novels and helping out at the library where she kisses random boys among the shelves. Her dream is to find one, intense true love, and until then isn’t interested in dating. At home, her mother spends her life in the garden, growing saleable produce, her father quoting Walt Whitman and drinking too much. There are also the twin sisters: artistic Cecelia and nurturing Emeline.

The future seems settled for Julia and William, when a series of events upset the applecart and cracks appear in the extended family. Then, as so often happens, life goes on around the cracks, characters settle in and hunker down until another earth-shattering event brings the past back into focus and there is potential for a reckoning, and for healing.

I am glad that I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out which sister was Meg or Jo, Beth or Amy, as it wouldn’t have done me any good as things turned out. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But this was a nice read, if a not particularly compelling one. It is a story where emotions run high, either expressed outwardly, or contained and mulled over or contained and ignored.The characters of the sisters and particularly William, are all easy to engage with, and interesting.

There are themes around mental health – how do you get over a childhood that is missing love? And about finding your place in life as a young person, of being accepted for who you are. I found quite a lot to like but the story did lag a little around the middle – the stretched-out timeline doesn’t help. Fortunately it all picks up near the end with the hope of at least one reconciliation and some impetus from the younger generation. I’ll be interested to check out another novel by Ann Napolitano. Hello Beautiful is a solid three-star read from me.

Book Review: After the Funeral – a short story collection that’s as compelling as any novel

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I rarely seem to pick up short story collections these days. There are always so many brilliant new novels coming out all the time, and you get used to the way the plot teasingly unfolds with the longer form, the unrolling of scenes and the character development. But sometimes a short story is just such a wonderful thing. A small, complete entertainment. It can say a lot too.

And that’s what you get with Tessa Hadley’s latest collection, After the Funeral. These twelve stories are for the most part family stories, delving into the reactions and emotions when something happens that upsets the applecart in relationships, between siblings, between parents and daughters and with couples. The subtle undercurrents of the class system are also there. Things are suitable or not suitable, or plainly ludicrous in a particular milieu.

Several stories have children dealing with parents acting alarmingly. The title story has two daughters whose world changes after the sudden death of their father, leaving their beautiful mother, who is something of an airhead, to provide for her family. It’s the 1970s and women didn’t necessarily equip themselves with career prospects back then. A family connection soon sets her up with a job in the office of a dentist. Of course the dentist falls in love with her. In “Cecilia Awakened”, Hadley perfectly captures that feeling you have when you discover as Ceclia does at fifteen, what an embarrassment family holidays, and in particular, parents, can be.

Many of the stories have their roots in the last decades of the twentieth century, while others dip back into the past from the present day. In “The Bunty Club”, three sisters return to the family home when their mother is dying in hospital. They are such different characters, and in a few deft paragraphs, Hadley vividly describes their characters as older women, bookish Pippa, capable Gillian and glamorous Serena – what drives them apart and what can bring them together again.

— Bathroom’s empty! Gillian said. — You should get in before Serena embarks on any aromatherapy. I wish she’d wash the bath out when she’s finished.
— She’s up already, Pippa said. — Look! Worshipping in the garden.
Gillian came to stand beside her. They were spying, and meant to say something dry and funny about their sister, taking advantage of watching her unseen: dancing in the long grass, flitting like a sprite in her black cotton tiered skirt and satiny top – which she’d most likely got from a charity shop, because she was solemn about waste and recycling.

“Funny Little Snake” is set in hippy era London, and is a heart-breaking story of middle-class neglect of a young child, and the woman who attempts to rescue her. In fact there isn’t a lot of good parenting on offer in the collection – distant or missing fathers, mothers wrapt up in their own lives, families recreating themselves after loss or divorce. Tessa Hadley’s writing is too crisp and sharp for the stories to seem downbeat; interesting developments make them crackle with energy.

I’d already enjoyed an earlier novel, The Past, by Tessa Hadley, which was another brilliant look at a family and shares some of the themes on display here so I was expecting to enjoy this collection. I read these stories one after another, but a collection like this could happily sit on the bedside table, ready to be dipped into again and again. But they are so moreish, I dare you not to keep reading until they’re all finished. After the Funeral gets four and a half stars from me.

Book Review: Cutters End by Margaret Hickey – a gripping new Aussie Noir series with a troubled cop

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It’s hard not to pick up a book with a cover showing a dry Aussie outback setting. Those small towns in the rural backwaters of Australia just seem to seethe with all kinds of tension. Broken hearts and lost dreams, the struggle with a harsh environment wearing people down, young people abandoning home for the cities. You can’t help wondering if the author will be the next Jane Harper (author of The Dry).

With Cutters End, we’re in opal mining country, an industry on its last legs, the kind of place you pass through on the Stuart Highway heading north to Alice Springs. It’s also the place where a local hero and father met an unexplained death, discovered trapped beneath his vehicle and apparently burned to death. Back in 1990 this was explained as an accident at the inquest, but Suzanne Miller, a TV host with a flagging career, says it’s time for a reinvestigation. Michael Denby saved her and her mother from floodwaters when she was a small child and he deserves better.

DS Mark Ariti, similarly with a flagging career, is on leave when his superior officer discovers that he knew one of the witnesses at the time – one Ingrid Mathers who Mark dated at high school. Mark’s bumped up to Acting Inspector and sent to re-interview Ingrid and to see if he can jog her memory about the days around New Year 1990 when she was hitchhiking with her friend Joanne. But Ingrid’s not very forthcoming, although the reader has the inkling that she’s got a secret or two.

Mark catches up with Joanne, now living the high life in Sydney, similarly reticent. Why don’t the two women talk to each other any more? More clues pull Mark back to Cutters End, and the Mendamo Roadhouse, once owned by creepy Gerald, where Ingrid hitched a ride with somebody called Ron or Don. He bounces ideas off his new sidekick, DC Jagdeep Kaur, and picks up gossip at the three rather disappointing pubs in Cutters End.

Finally, Cutters End. The Stuart Highway a blade cutting through the centre of town, railway line alongside it like a rival sibling. Two main streets, a petrol station, the town hall, council offices, a supermarket, dingy motel, a primary school and, in the back streets, houses with sad facades and secret interiors.
The opal mining boom was bust, had been for decades, and although the welcome sign read ‘Cutters End, a town on the move!’ Mark doubted it. This town, like many across the country, had the look of a dying dog waiting to be shot. But still, he knew too well that dogs don’t die easy – those pleading eyes, that sense of loyalty and long history. The faded pride of what they once were.

When the woman at the service station where you get the best coffee in town tells Mark to find out about the two missing girls, the story goes in an interesting new direction. More than a couple of young women seem to have disappeared from the area, all of them hitching a ride and chancing their luck with whoever picks them up. Did they just move on and then take off overseas without letting anyone know? Build a better life? Or is there a more sinister explanation?

The story is peppered with interesting local characters: John Baber, the kindly ex-school teacher turned van driver who local businesses rely on for deliveries; mentally damaged Foobie who takes inappropriate pictures of people and becomes a source of useful information; Sergeant Darryl Wickman, the town’s long-serving police officer who has a way with the townspeople and a wise-cracking relationship with Jagdeep.

But it’s the undercurrent of evil so typical in these stories that has you on edge. The ugly circumstances of Denby’s death, the casual misogyny and disregard for vulnerable young women, the tight-lipped attitudes of the locals. Mark is struggling to make headway in all directions, either with his case or in his marriage, and like so many cops in these sorts of novels, never seems able to say the right thing.

There are evocative reminders of the time, not only the terrible haircuts and ugly sweaters, but also the real-life backpacker murders in New South Wales and the serial killer Ivan Milat. These crimes happened around the same time that our fictional Denby was killed. They conjure up all kinds of thoughts and feelings around how we protect our young people from predatory behaviour, about violence against women and whether anything much has changed for the better.

Cutters End is the first in a series about troubled cop, Mark Ariti. It’s a terrific read if you enjoy authors like Jane Harper, Garry Disher, Chris Hammer and Sarah Bailey, and a welcome addition to the genre. There are a couple more to look forward to (Stone Town and Broken Bay) with The Creeper out later this year. Can’t wait. Cutters End is a four star read from me.

Book Review: Goyhood by Reuven Fenton – a hilarious road-trip story full of unexpected detours

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People often expect twins to be alike – even the non-identical ones. But you couldn’t find two brothers more different than David and Marty Belkin, the main characters in Reuven Fenton’s debut novel Goyhood. We meet them during a heatwave in small-town Georgia when they’re twelve, the day that young Marty, soon to become Mayer, has an epiphany.

The boys are doing it tough, living with a mother who frequently absents herself and drinks too much. So it’s not surprising that when Marty is offered a chance to study at an Orthodox Jewish school, or yeshiva, in New York, he jumps at it.

Switch forward thirty odd years and Mayer is still a student of holy scripture, that’s all he has to do, thanks to the generosity of his father-in-law. His marriage to Sarah is not a happy one, weighed down by difficulties in conceiving a child. Things are all set to change again for Mayer when he gets the news that his mother has died. He will have to sit shiva for her and he’ll see his twin brother again for the first time in decades.

David has had a completely different life to Mayer, having to learn the lessons of life the hard way. There have been a lot of drugs and career misfires, but now he’s made his fortune in the e-cigarette market and turns up to collect Mayer at the airport looking the essence of prosperity. The two hardly recognise each other. A letter written shortly before their mother’s death reveals the bombshell that the boys aren’t technically Jewish which throws Mayer into a spin. With the help of their old rabbi, Yossi, he’ll have the chance to remedy that situation, in a week’s time.

But David’s still a wild boy at heart and persuades his twin to travel to New York with him for the appointment for his ‘conversion’ in a muscle car he nicknames Daisy. They take their mother’s ashes with them, the plan being to scatter them somewhere she would enjoy, and along the way collect an unappealing dog, but not Mayer’s luggage, which has not arrived with him at the airport. David has plans that Mayer should enjoy his week of ‘goyhood’ and live a little, while Mayer is like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

“And due to an unprecedented turn of events, we find ourselves facing an entire week with empty schedules.”
“You’re talking about a vacation,” Mayer said.
“A rehabilitation period to wrap our heads around the existential vortex we’ve fallen into.”
“A vacation.”
“A pilgrimage.”
“I don’t need a vacation. I don’t want to wrap my head around this. If it were up to me, I’d spend the week in a medically induced coma.”
“Listen, Ese, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s when the going gets tough, the tough get in the car and drive.”

The story builds in tension as Mayer is pulled in different directions – his sense that he must live according to religious principals constantly under fire. As Mayer struggles to rein his brother in, Sarah is continually on the phone about his luggage and her sudden plans to join him at his mother’s house. She would be appalled by what Marty has been up to with David and all this adds brilliantly to the story’s humour.

Meanwhile there is plenty of temptation on offer to a man who has never been tried before, particularly when the two hit New Orleans and David offers a ride to Charlayne, an attractive acquaintance of his who is about to walk the Appalachian Trail. David is the sort who lives for the moment and acts on impulse, so the road trip takes some unexpected turns.

Fenton piles on one madcap scene after another, putting our characters through their paces, and even allowing the dog, Popeye, a moment of glory. Intermingled with all this is some deep soul-searching – by the end of the book, the reader has an inkling that change is in the air for Mayer, and possibly for David as well.

It all adds up to an entertaining, feel-good read enhanced by lively dialogue as the characters bounce off each other. The writing is polished and witty and the story never lags for a moment. I enjoyed it immensely and will be keen to read more by this author. Due for release on 28 May, Goyhood is a four-star read from me..

Book Review: Zero Days by Ruth Ware – a compulsive thriller from a master of the genre

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I always enjoy reading about an interesting new business or career I’ve not come across before – the processes, the clients, the marketing. In Ruth Ware’s latest book Zero Days we’ve got a couple of business penetration security specialists – husband and wife team Gabe Medway and Jacintha (Jack) Cross. Their business, Crossways Security, tests out security both inside and out for their customers. Gabe, an expert hacker does the computer side of things, leaving Jack, pint-sized but super fit, to break in at night, testing alarms, locks and security procedures. They make a great team.

The story begins with Jack entering a client’s premises, from climbing a six foot wall, through to avoiding CCTV cameras, sneaking through doors, disabling alarms and evading the security personnel. Gabe is constantly in her ear, helping her find safe corners and exit points. She has a few close calls but ultimately gets out unscathed, a bit like a character from a Mission Impossible movie.

But heading back to her car, she bumps into the head of security which means a trip to the police station where she tries to contact her client. The minutes tick by, and it’s the small hours before she gets home, only to find that Gabe has been murdered. Shock and anguish delay her call to the police leaving some hours not accounted for when she is later interviewed by the senior investigating officer, DS Malik. Her sister Helena implores her to get a lawyer – spouses are always the first suspect in a murder, they have the means and opportunity; all the police need is to find a motive.

Aside from the grief and shock Jack is experiencing, an email informing her of a life insurance policy to the value of a million pounds adds to her woes. And the way that Malik seems to be homing in on her during a voluntary visit to the station causes alarm bells. Suddenly it seems that the police have chosen their perpetrator, and if they lock up Jack, no one is ever going to find out who the real killer is, the same person who is framing her. With a few more security sidesteps, Jack exits the police station and goes on the run.

Inside the station it was noisy and smelled of cleaning fluid and used coffee cups. As I waited in line to speak to the officer behind the front desk, I couldn’t help scoping the place out as if I were on a job. Two exits – one to the street, unmanned; one to the interior of the station, no lock as far as I could see. There was probably an activation button under the desk. One fixed CCTV camera in the corner with a huge blind spot that covered most of the right-hand wall – not a very good design for a police station. The odd thing was that I had no memory of any of it from before. Shock had wiped half the night’s events from my brain – which felt strange, but no stranger than mechanically assessing the building’s risk profile in a world in which Gabe no longer existed.

The book is set for the most part over seven days, as Jack disguises herself, evades capture, copes with injury and tries to piece together what it was that Gabe was doing that got him killed. She has a bit of help from Helena, a busy mother of two, as well as Cole, Gabe’s best friend who was like a brother to the victim, and like Jack is devastated by the murder. At the heart of it all is some cyber crime that went a little over my head but makes for an interestingly different storyline. There are a lot more Mission Impossible type action scenes as Jack gets closer to the truth.

Zero Days was such a compulsive read, I was thankful for a weekend of cold, rainy weather. I inhaled this book, having to remind myself to eat. The writing is sharp and immediate, the tension non-stop, with first-person narration that makes you imagine yourself in Jack’s shoes. You can’t but wonder what would you would do in similar circumstances; how you would cope. The novel must surely add to Ruth Ware’s reputation as the Queen of Just One More Chapter. Zero Days is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: All Together Now by Gill Hornby – a heart-warming read full of quirky characters, humour and song

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes all you really want is a nice, “feel-good” novel – something to chase away the darker clouds of a difficult day. The best of them will have characters you’ll warm to, a plot with a few surprises and an emotional pull – tears or laughter, either way, I’m not fussy.

I haven’t been in a choir since school, but still remember the whoosh you get when a lot of people get together and harmonise in song. Gill Hornby brings her joy for choral singing into her story about a struggling choir in a dead-end town. All Together Now follows the lives of three main characters: socially-awkward Bennett, once a choir boy and now, recently single again, he’s at a loose end; librarian Annie who does all the donkey work for the choir as a way of dealing with her “empty nest”; and Tracey, who is too cool for choirs, but can really belt out a number in the privacy of her home. Tracey also has a burning secret.

The story starts off with a car accident that leaves the Bridgeford Community Choir rudderless, its choirmaster hospitalised and in a coma. There’s a county choral championship up for grabs, and a town in dire need of invigorating – but can a medley from The Sound of Music or The Carpenters be the answer?

Tracey spots the choir performing outside the station one day and it makes her cringe. She’s one of life’s soloists. When her layabout son of twenty-two goes out to work one evening, she suddenly feels liberated. She dusts off her old music collection and begins to sing. A knock on the door and there’s someone she recognises; it’s Lewis from the choir, surprisingly also a neighbour, who rather than demanding Tracey turn it down a bit, implores her to join their choir.

Tracey became aware that, rather than the raspy, throaty one that she used when she was singling along with Billy, she was using her chest voice for once, and she could feel the calming, anti-depressant effect it had on her stressed-out body. But it wasn’t until she was back in the living room, tucked up with her glass and the bottle on the sofa, that she realised exactly what it was she was singing. Christ almighty. Those bloody belters had wormed into her ear, through to her brain, down to her lungs. They had regressed her. She was regressing. For the first time in nearly thirty years, she was spending the night in alone pretending to be Karen bloody Carpenter. How sad was that?

The story follows the lives of Annie, Tracey and Bennett in parallel to the struggling choir that might just save them all. Tracey finds she’s not such a soloist after all, in the choir or in life; Bennett steps up to help save the town, and proves to his kids that he’s almost kinda cool; Annie takes a hard look at her marriage and makes a surprising discovery. And the choir gets a bit better. It’s an uplifting tale, but it’s also full of laughs and dry wit, particularly in the way the characters bounce off each other, disagree but also sing together. There are some amusing and some discordant minor characters that give the plot a bit of tension.

The story is peppered with music – the lines of songs nicely mixed in the scenes describing the choir in rehearsal so you have a sense of how it all sounds. Most of the songs are pretty familiar, but in case you don’t know them there’s a handy play-list of at the back and even a Spotify link so you can hear them as well.

All Together Now really hits the spot for a big-hearted, cheering sort of read, more character driven than a gripping page-turner, the prose bright and witty. I’ll probably not be rushing off to join a choir anytime soon, but will happily curl up on the sofa with another book by Gill Hornby. This one’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman – a carefully observed story of siblings through the decades

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In All Day at the Movies, Fiona Kidman has devised the perfect protagonist to chronicle the story of a family amid the wider social changes of her time. Belinda is a film-maker, known for her sharp eye for detail. Her story is a struggle for survival, for love and for a career, but it’s also one of those sins of the father’s stories too. The events around her arrival in the world are horrific and tragic.

Kidman takes us back to the post-war years, with war-widow Irene, striking out for a new beginning in an attempt to provide a better life for her young daughter, Jessie. Leaving Wellington and the industrial dispute that has put her father off work and caused unbearable tension at home, the two have settled on the tobacco-growing town of Motueka. They have basic housing, a kind of worker’s shack, while Irene does hard physical toil in the fields. Kidman highlights the lack of choices open to Irene, a former librarian, who settles for marriage to the creepy foreman, Jock Pawson.

“There was that girl Iris who wrote books and had babies when she wasn’t married and her life was just all sorrow, mental hospitals and … but her mother couldn’t bring herself to say the word suicide. In the end, dead, anyway. Irene’s mother had known Mrs Wilkinson, the mother of Iris, although she called herself something else, and it had been a terrible thing for her to have to lose a daughter to books. And, Irene’s mother had said, she hoped that Irene wasn’t thinking of writing books. It brought disgrace on a family.”

The story flips forward through the decades, each chapter like a short story in the chronicles of the Pawsons. We’re with young Belinda after her mother’s death and her banishment to live with a grim, sanctimonious aunt, her younger siblings, Grant and Janice left to the mercies of an unloving stepmother and a predatory father. The three siblings each take a turn with the narrative, as they try to make their way in life.

And in spite of an unplanned pregnancy, Belinda finds both love and a career, although there is still much that troubles her. We are in the midst of social change in New Zealand, with events around social justice and women’s rights a part of the wider story. As Belinda attempts to be a good wife and mother to her children, while building a career – thank God for dependable Seth at home – what has become of Janice and Grant?

They’re all walking some dark path, Belinda thinks. The marches have brought out the best and the worst in them all. ‘Are we really marching because black people in South Africa are oppressed by white people?’ she asks Nick. ‘Or are we doing it for ourselves because we have stuff and things and good lives and we feel bad about it?’

Belinda is an interesting character – one of the era when women were encouraged to ‘have it all’, but this also means being pulled in so many directions at once. Grant also seems set on a path that will see him succeed in life, if he can get past the terrible events of his upbringing. He has ambitions of becoming a pilot, and there’s a brilliant scene with four fairly refined elderly women having lunch, and the dramatic effects their actions that day have on Grant’s life to come. Meanwhile Janice seems to have one struggle after another. All three seem to belong to such different worlds – can they ever reconnect?

Fiona Kidman writes with such honesty and naturalness, you are brought into the lives of these characters in a way that seems very real, and so the tragic events that happen hit hard. But there is a wry humour too as she shows the foibles of people, their awkward interactions, their obsessions.

All Day at the Movies is just one novel among a long list of novels that have made Fiona Kidman a household name in New Zealand. As well as a winner of many literary prizes, she’s now Dame Fiona Kidman, and even the recipient of the French Legion of Honour. This book may seem just the story of a family, but probably only Fiona Kidman could write a book like this. Like Belinda she has that telling eye for the detail that captures so much more. It’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng – an enthralling novel about love, duty and writerly inspiration

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This book was long-listed for last year’s Booker Prize, but it was the imagining of the life of W Somerset Maugham that caught my eye. At one time Maugham was a prolific and hugely successful author, often setting his books in the exotic locations he visited. The stories are peppered with unhappy marriages and scandals, and here he probably drew on his own experiences. Dozens of movies have been based on the stories, the latest I have come across being The Painted Veil starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts (2006).

His light may have faded in the last few decades, but Tan Twan Eng has brought Maugham to life again as one of two main characters in The House of Doors, set largely in Penang, Malaysia. It’s 1921 and Lesley, the wife of Robert Hamlyn, an old friend of the writer’s, is reluctantly hosting Maugham and his secretary/lover Gerald for an extended stay. Maugham, or Willie, as he’s called here, is at the height of his popularity, but poor investments have left him in a tight spot and desperate for material for new stories. Over the days that follow, Lesley reveals her own story from a decade before.

Lesley’s story takes us back to a visit by Sun Yat Sen, Chinese revolutionary and leader of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party), in Penang to raise funds to overthrow a despotic Chinese dynasty. Lesley gets caught up in the cause, a distraction from problems with her marriage. In the meantime her best friend Ethel Proudlock has been charged with murder for shooting an expat engineer. Both stories suggest an uncomfortable relationship between men and women, as well as between the British rule with its wider expat community and the local Chinese and indigenous populations. (The Proudlock affair inspired Maugham’s story “The Letter”, which was made into a movie starring Bette Davis.)

Lesley is an interesting character as being born and raised in Penang she speaks one or two local languages and makes an effort to understand both worlds. So she’s the best person to show Maugham around, but takes a while to warm to the writer, feeling a little unhappy with him when she makes sense of his relationship with handsome and somewhat dissipated young Gerald. With Maugham you have insight into the mind of a writer, a man with his own share of disillusionment and regret.

The silence around us, the very weave of the night itself, felt denser. Even the waves outside, fraying away the margins of land since the beginning of the world, seemed to have stilled into stone. In the hallway the weighted heart of the grandfather clock went on beating, as indifferent as an aged monk thumbing his prayer beads on their long and infinite loop.
‘Where does a story begin, Willie?’ I asked.
For a while he did not say anything. Then he shifted in his chair. ‘Where does a wave on the ocean begin?’ he said. ‘Where does it form a welt on the skin of the sea, to swell and expand and rush towards the shore?’
‘I want to tell you a story, Willie,’ I said. Yes, I thought to myself. Tell him your story. Let him write it. Let the whole world know.
The music I had just played seemed to go on unspooling in the air between us, this song that had no beginning and no ending; the song of time itself.

The novel is a story within a story, bookended again by Lesley receiving a parcel in Africa many years later. You get a sense of a carefully constructed narrative and it all works beautifully, keeping the reader guessing and enthralled. Tan Twan Eng creates a superbly atmospheric setting enhanced by gorgeous writing. There’s a love story here, more than one perhaps, but it is also an ode to Penang in the way the characters experience the lush tropical setting, the sea that seems to brim with a life of its own, the history and culture.

The House of Doors is a beautiful novel, and at only 300 pages, carries a lot of story for its word-count. It’s quite an emotional read too – love and regret, nostalgia for a place and times past. So it really packs a wallop. I loved it and want to read everything by this author, though I see I shall have to be patient as this is only his third book – his first The Gift of Rain coming out in 2007, with a big gap between his second book, The Garden of Evening Mists from 2011 and The House of Doors, from last year. Whatever the wait, it will be worth it, I’m sure. This one’s a five-star read from me.