dittybox

I was completely absorbed in this book and read through it quickly.  The larger part of the book is set in the period just before the Second World War, and tells the story of an upper middle class family who are a solid part of the establishment. Everything changes for Hugh and Phyllis Forrester when they return to England after years abroad and they move to Sussex to be near Phyllis's sisters.  One sister, Patricia, has married a very weathy man and they live in a substantial house; while the other sister, Nina, has married a man who is in business and runs a garage, so not really the kind of man her parents envisaged for her.  Hugh's social status falls somewhere in between, but the family are still very comfortably off and fit in easily with Patricia's circle of friends. Nina and her husband Eric have become very active in a political movement and they help organise local talks and summer camps to allow people to come and find out more for themselves.  As Phyllis ...

I can tell you with some confidence that you will not have read a book like this before.  It's a short book, best read in one sitting, that is quite original and very well done. You are probably thinking to yourself that you have read so many books that there is nothing new under the sun, but I am here to tell you that there is.  Here is the story of Caroline Margaret Brookes Whitaker (known as Kitty) through her engagement to William Wallingford III (known as Bucky).  They marry in 1926 and become a coveted pair at Fifth Avenue dinner parties and cocktail gatherings, and their lives appear to be perfect although they are concealing private grief. So nothing terribly out of the ordinary so far, but I haven't told you about the format of the book yet.  Each page carries no more than a paragraph of writing set out as though it was a catalogue entry for a high class art gallery.  Every entry carries a heading to give you a time and location and then the paragraph o...

  Jean Kennedy lives in dublin, Ireland as the second eldest in a growing family.  A lot is expected of her as the eldest girl and her mother relies on her to help look after the little ones.  Her story is told in her own words and we get to know her from the age of three up until her late teens.  Jean is a good girl who works diligently at school and does as she is told at home, but life doesn't always behave fairly and from a young age she discovers that you can get into trouble no matter how good you try to be. Her parents have their own problems as her Momma struggles with her mental health, which is made worse by post-natal depression, and her father who she always refers to as HE or HIM, often makes matters worse with his judgemental attitude.  Things take a bad turn for Momma and when she is not really coping at all, HE brings home a young local girl to live in and help.  All the little ones love this girl Tilly but Jean and Momma are not sure about ...

This is not a book you would want to read if you were feeling low and looking for something to lift your spirits.  It's a bit like reading the Book of Job from the Bible as the trials and tribulations that beset the young girl in the story are harsh and unrelenting. It is set in the time when the earliest settlers were making their way across the Atlantic to America, and the girl in the story is an abandoned Dutch orphan who had been sent to a minister's family to work as a servant when she was still only four years old.  After a few years of working in the household, the girl is told by her mistress that the family would be closing up the house and sailing to America and they would be taking her with them.  It was a dreadful journey where the ship was almost lost in a storm and when they arrived at their destination the Dutch settlers were already starving and unhappy to have more mouths to feed. I won't give away the circumstances, but after a while in the new land, the...

The best way I can think of to describe this book is to get you to imagine the film The Big Short being re-written and directed by the Coen brothers.  What you would end up with is a story about banks and money markets that teeters perilously close to farce, but on reflection is frighteningly close to things that have actually happened in the world of high finance.  This is very cleverly written and is humerous throughout, although I would stop short of describing it as hilarious (as in the description on the cover, provided by the Guardian).  The central character is a Frenchman called Claude who works as a financial analyst for the Bank of Torabundo Headquarters situated in Dublin.  After the death of his parents he finds himself alone in the world and spends most of his waking hours crunching numbers for the bank.  There's nothing interesting about Claude, and this is exactly why he is targeted by an odd little man, who cliams to be a writer, and is looking f...

  Set in the exclusive seafront of Nantucket Island, this is a murder mystery involving a very rich family and a wedding.   I wasn't very familiar with Nantucket so I have had to look it up on the map and I have found that it sits just to the north of New York City and to the right of Rhode Island.  It's a summer destination for those who can afford it and the picture perfect island features cedar clad homes and cobbled streets.   So you get the picture.   Benje, who is the eldest son of the fabulously wealthy Winbury family is set to marry at his family home on Nantucket Island, and his mother has planned every detail down to the last canape and champagne cocktail.  Everything is in place the night before the wedding but when the bride, Celeste, wakes up in the morning she discovers her maid of honour has drowned overnight, and what should have been the happiest day of her life turns into the start of a murder enquiry. Some of the guests hav...

This is a short book that comes in at 178 pages and somehow I didn't feel it was long enough to properly get to know the characters.  In The Accidental Tourist and A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler describes the tiny details that bring characters to life in such a convincing way that you can practically feel the heat coming off them as you read. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad novel, and for a shorter story it's very good, but the trouble is that the author has set such a high bar for herself that I suddenly expect everything she writes to be a prize winner. Perhaps my problem is that I couldn't really get to grips with Micah, who is known locally as the 'Tech Hermit', and makes part of his living sorting out people's tech problems while the rest of his time is spent doing the maintenance for his block of flats.  He's a bit nerdy, in that he keeps his flat tidy and does his chores on set days (doesn't everyone?), but he wasn't quite quirky...

 I f Amor Towles scribbled a few notes on the back of an envelope, I would want to read it.  His writing is so well crafted that there are some passages that you can just enjoy for the choice of words. After I read A Gentleman in Moscow I was hooked and I happily recommend his books to all sorts of people because they are classically good and there is nothing in them to startle the elderly or a man of the cloth. This is a book of short stories with a novella at the end, but each piece is written with the same care as a full length novel and it is easy to switch from one to the next without any feeling of disappointment.  Sometimes with short stories I feel irritated when one story comes to and end and the next begins, because I don't feel ready to change direction, but with writing of this quality it didn't take me long to settle each time.   The novella is set in the late 1930s and artfully relates to the movies of the day.  The key character here is Evely...