The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

This week I had to turn to the one book on my shelves that I hadn't read because I haven't been well enough to get to the library to stock up. I've had some sort of virus that may or may not have been Covid, but I'm pretty much over it now and I can get back to library books next week.

This one came from the bowls club second hand bookshelf and it cost me all of 25p. The publication date inside is 2016, which is pretty recent for anything on the club shelves as most of the other books have had several anniversaries since arriving and should really go in the recycling bin.

The Gustav Sonata has a certain oddness or otherness about it that I can't quite define, but I know I am not like the people in the book. I don't know if Rose Tremain always writes in such a clinical style, or whether she adopted that way of writing to suit the characters, but it's precise and unfussy in a way that seems right for Swiss people.

At the start of the book Gustav is a little boy who has just started to go to kindergarten, and he behave in a very controlled way as his mother Emelie has taught him to master himself and not let his emotions run away with him. She tells him that this is what his father would have wanted, and Gustav has to take her word for it, as his father died when he was just a baby and the only other thing he knows is that his father was a hero. Emelie is never able to show any love to Gustav and he lives his life wondering what it is she wants from him.

One morning at kindergarten the teacher asks Gustav to make friends with a new boy called Anton who is crying and has clearly not learnt how to master himself. Gustav helps Anton to settle in and before long they become firm friends and Gustav asks Emilie if Anton can come to their flat to play. Emilie allows this and even makes a nusstorte cake, but it isn't long before she takes against Anton and doesn't want him to come again. Anton's father is a wealthy Jewish banker and they live in a large house with a grand piano that Anton is learning to play. This is in stark contrast to the small flat where Gustav lives with his mother where they don't even have room for a table to use for their meals.

Despite their differences, Anton's family encourage the friendship because Anton is an anxious boy and Gustav seems to have a calming influence on him. They invite Gustav to go with them to the mountains for a holiday and gradually take him under their wing because they can see that he has very little at home. While they are away the two boys discover the derelict remains of an old sanitorium hospital and devise a game where they invent patients and then decide if they will live or die. The game takes on a great importance in their lives and even in adulthood they think back to it.

There is a great complexity to all the characters and very little happiness, but the story is compelling and very well constructed and written. There is great power in what is left unsaid, and Rose Tremain seems to have mastered that skill by just setting out the essentials and leaving the reader to make of it what they will.

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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