Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

A tale of the fragile space that fills the gap between the past and the present, the living and the dead. Here there is no certainty of which is dream or waking and anything imagined can be as real as what you see in front of you (if indeed you know what it is you see).

I read this twice. Once to get the frame of it and then to fill in the gaps, but even still, there was no telling if I had it right.

I don't want to define this book or tell you what I think it all means because I want it to stay a fluid concept in my mind. That's how I think it works best; no labels, no neat little boxes, just a glimmer of an idea passing through like light on water.

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Violeta by Isabel Allende

Published: 2022, Bloomsbury Genre: Fiction Themes: South America, family relationships, business My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If I ever tell my life story, I will take a leaf out of Violeta's book and make sure you understand that everybody loved me, and despite all sorts of questionable behaviour on my part, I leave the world as a winner. This is the story of a hundred year life. Violeta is approaching the end, but before she goes she is determined to write out her life story for someone she loves dearly. You don't get to know who that special someone is for most of the book, but that just serves to give the narrative a little twist. I didn't much like the character of Violeta but I understand that people who don't go round upsetting the apple cart don't make for very interesting stories. With such a great time span to play with, Isabel Allende had plenty of scope for changing Violeta's circumstances and adding in references to world events to keep the reader...

Holding by Graham Norton

Published: October 2016, Hodder and Stoughton Genre: fiction Themes: Ireland, crime, secrets, relationships, family My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ I went into the library looking for a book by Graham Norton as I keep seeing positive comments about his books on Twitter, and I felt I might be missing something. Holding seems to be his first book, and the library copy has a Radio 2 Book Club sticker on it, and I think it's fair to say that it's a perfect book for that reading group. It's a chatty style of writing that I could imagine would be how Graham would recount a tale if he was in conversation with someone, and there are sufficient strong elements to the plot-line to keep it interesting to the end. When I first started reading I thought it was going to be a bit thin on plot, as much of the story involved character descriptions, and I was starting to wonder how it was going to pull together. Then the dramatic events began to unfold and, once I could see how everyon...

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

Publisher: Head of Zeus, 2021 Genre: Fiction Themes: Ancient Pompeii, slaves, brothel My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If, like me, you spent most of your history lessons looking out the window and didn't really absorb very much about the ancient Roman Empire, nil desperandum, as you will still manage perfectly well with this book. Set in first century Pompeii, the story follows the life of Amara, a young Greek woman who has been shipped to Pompeii as a slave and then bought by the owner of The Wolf Den brothel. As the daughter of a doctor, she was bought up in relatively comfortable circumstances, but a series of terrible events turned her life upside down and she is now trapped in an endless cycle of fear and degradation with almost no hope of escape. Amara is one of a group of slaves working in the Wolf Den, and they do what they can to protect one another from serious harm, but Amara knows that if she wants anything better for herself, she must make the brothel ow...

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