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  Published: 2020, Picador Genre: Fiction Themes: Scotland, Scottish weather, Scottish holiday park, families My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤ It's raining. Several families are on holiday in wooden lodges overlooking a loch in Scotland. It keeps raining. Mothers and fathers attempt to keep their children amused/safe/dry. Plenty more rain. Sarah Moss introduces us to all the families who have taken up temporary residence in the little settlement of lodges and. through their individual chapters, we come to understand who they are and what they think about. Did I mention the rain? The woods around the lodges are living, organic ecosystems that move and breath just as much as the humans. Rain drips off the leaves and makes patterns in the water. The story takes place over a period of just 24 hours and for every family there are micro-risks snaking through their ordinary day.  You know something bad is coming because there are hints everywhere, but just remember patience is a virtu...

  Published:  2020, Faber and Faber Genre: Fiction Themes:  love, domestic violence, Trinidad, relationships My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If you distilled this story down to it's purest element, you would find a mother's love glistening strong and bright.  A love that refuses to give up, even when life seemed intent on testing it to destruction. Set in Trinidad, this is the emotionally charged story of Betty, who finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage to Sunil, and although she can deal with his drunken violence against herself, a line is crossed when he starts to mistreat her little son Solo.  Sunil was a good man when they married, with his dashing good looks and charming ways, but once he took to drinking regularly with his brother, it didn't take much for his temper to flare and she knew it wouldn't be long before her skin was bruised and sometimes bones broken.  He was always sorry of course, and he knew a shady doctor who would patch Betty ba...

Published: 2019, Penguin Random House Genre: Fiction Themes: Gender, relationships, race, sexual identity, social attitudes My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ The dedication in this book is: ' For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our bretheren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of our human family.' Those last five words are the essence of it.  Whoever we love, whatever we look like, dress like, act like.  We are members of our human family.  We should be able to be who we want to be without judgement.  Except we're not there yet and there is still a long way to go.  This book helps to give context to some of the different ways people find love, and how that does not necessarily remain the same for a lifetime.   Bernadine Evaristo introduces us to a great many vibrant people, and you ...

  Published: 2018, Penguin  Genre: Fiction Themes: Romance, Vermont, small town community My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ If you are looking for a book that gives you romance, a shaggy dog, happy endings all round and a recipe for Burnt Sugar Cake with Maple Icing written out in full at the back, then this is the book for you.   There is also a helpful reminder that men won't find you attractive if you persist in wearing dungarees  with comfortable shoes and if you learn to bake cakes everyone will like you. In the spirit of 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all' I will leave it there.  Not my kind of book I'm afraid but HelloGiggles found it 'Downright delightful... it has everything you want: sweetness, charm and a side of romance.'

  Published: 1998, Simon and Schuster Genre: Fiction Themes: Mother and daughter relationship, betrayal, teens, friendship My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤❤ This book will resonate with anyone who has ever dreamed of a perfect future where they find someone wonderful to love and then, in reality, end up pinning all their hopes on the back of the wrong person.   It is so easy to go forward blinkered by that sunlit mental image of a happy home and smiling partner, constantly making excuses for the reality seen by those nearest and dearest.   Details are glossed over or mentally re-written, actions excused and everything adjusted just enough to keep the dream alive. This is a story of broken dreams, manipulation and inappropriate relationships and how, so often, the people who cause the problems walk away and do not pay the emotional cost. Isabelle has these dreams, but for the moment, she lives with her teenage daughter Amy in the smallest acceptable house in Shir...

  Published: 2020, Bloomsbury Genre: Fiction Themes: Marriage, relationships, trust, death My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ After reading the opening pages of the book I started thinking, 'If this is monogamy, then I'm doing it wrong!'  Annie has divorced her first husband and has ' learned to sleep around.  Happily.  Enthusiastically.  Fairly indiscriminately too, so that later she couldn't call up the names of some of the men she'd had sex with.'   But after all that, she is starting to yearn for something else, a deeper connection, and maybe even to consider a monogamous relationship again. Then she is introduced to Graham.  Graham is a big bear of a man who owns the local bookshop and enjoys all the comforts the comforts life has to offer.  His bearded face is lively and expressive and he is full of laughter and smiles as he works his way around the guests who have been invited to the opening of his store.  As soon as they meet there is a conn...

  Published: 2020, Penguin Books Genre: Fiction Themes: Slavery, American Southern States, supernatural powers My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ Over the last year I have read several books that tackle the unimaginably difficult topic of slavery, and I have every respect for authors who give a voice to all those people who had no voice for the whole of their lives.  The Water Dancer carefully captures life for the slaves living on a huge plantation in Virginia, where the owner grows tobacco as a main crop, and has so many 'Tasked' working for him that their humble cabins form an entire street.  This is where we find young Hiram who is the son of the white estate owner and his enslaved mother has just been taken away to be sold. Ta-Nehisi Coates then introduces an unexpected twist to the story of Hiram and that is the ability to perform 'Conduction' and transport his body out of danger when he is under great stress.  I have to confess that I struggled with a fantasy ele...

  Published: 2020, Peepal Tree Genre: Fiction Themes: Islands of Central America, legend, ancient tribes, historic legacy My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤ A thousand years before the story begins, the Mermaid of Black Conch was a young woman living with her tribe on a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea.  She had yet to find a husband, and the other women in her village grew jealous of her as the sound of her voice and the sinuous movements of her dancing drew much attention from their men.  These women conspired against her, and using a powerful curse, they turned her into a mermaid doomed to swim in the depths of the oceans for all time. She remained hidden for hundreds of years, but one day in 1976, drawn to the sound of a local fisherman strumming his guitar, she raised her barnacled, seaweed-clotted head from the sea.  David Baptiste meant her no harm and returned to the same spot day after day to lure her back and gain her trust, but later he came to realise that ...

  Published:  2021, Harper Collins Genre: Fiction Themes:  Antarctic research, extreme weather, communications, injury My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤ Before starting this book you will need to switch your imagination to 'wide screen' and channel your inner David Attenborough as you picture the stark white landscape of Antarctica.  You must be prepared to mentally stand in the extreme cold and feel the force of the wind crashing against your body while you watch the field workers go about their business.  Jon McGregor will take you across the ice and snow with Robert 'Doc' Wright, a veteran of the Antarctic, and his two young researchers Luke and Thomas and very quickly you will understand the constant danger of just being in that environment. When an unauthorised expedition goes wrong, the whole team are plunged into mortal danger, and each man finds himself alone and fighting for his life against the elements.  What happens next tests the limits of their...

  Published: 2019. First time in English 2020, Bloomsbury Genre: Fiction Themes:  Spanish Civil War, love, family, Chile, political refugees My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤❤ Inside the back cover of this book it says that Isabel Allende is one of the most widely read authors in the world, and her books have been translated into at least forty-two languages selling more than seventy-four million copies.  After reading A Long Petal of the Sea, I fully understand why. The story begins in 1939, at the end of the Spanish Civil War, when half a million refugees escaped Franco by walking from Spain to France.  They walked through bitterly cold conditions, with barely enough food to keep them alive, and among their numbers was a heavily pregnant young woman called Roser who was leaving without the baby's father Guilleme.  He is away fighting for the Republican Army so her escape is enabled by his brother, Victor, who carries her carefully in the sidecar of an old motor...

  Published: 2000, Headline Publishing Group Genre: Fiction Themes:  Family, mental health, loyalty, bereavement My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤ Imagine you wrote a gripping multi-generational family story, and just as you were about to set off to the publisher with the hard-copy, the wind took your pages and scattered them all across the street.  You hastily pick everything up and head to your appointment intending to put the pages in order during the cab journey, but on the way you realise:  This works. Well, I'm sure that's not what happened at all, but that's what reading this book feels like.  You start almost at the end, then you bounce back about twenty years, then just over the page you are back to present time in a whole new setting.  The narrator can change several times within one chapter, and there are no headings to give you a steer, so there will be no skim-reading here.  Maggie O'Farrell wants your full attention, and she gets it, becau...

  Published: 2020, Myriad Editions Genre: Fiction Themes: Love story, Irish famine, slavery, nineteenth century America My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ Based on the true story of the author's great-great-grandparents, this is a fictionalised account of a forbidden love that defied all the societal rules in nineteenth century America. Sarah is a house slave working for the owner of a cotton plantation and Henry is an Irish immigrant who came to America on a coffin ship having fled the famine in his own country.  They meet on a dirt road as Sarah is returning to her owners after a few days of being rented out to a neighbour, and Henry is a jobbing blacksmith travelling along looking for work.  They both have to shelter under a tree when a violent thunderstorm brings torrential rain and Henry has his first encounter with a slave. Henry has always known hunger and poverty but until he came to America he has never known of people being owned as property and treated as th...

  Published: 2020, Penguin Random House Genre:  Fiction Themes: parenting, death of a friend, road trip, stand up comedy My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤ If you ever feel in need of a book that will give you a hug and tell you that everything will be alright, then this is the book for you.  You will quickly come to love little Norman Foreman, who is only twelve years old and suffers from terrible psoriasis, but you won't care because this is a boy who deserves to be loved. Norman and his Mum are a family of two and he has never met his father as Mum isn't entirely sure who he is: ' There's a good chance Norman's father is one of four people.  Now I know how that makes me sound, but it's a fairly reasonable alternative to the other scenario, which is that he would quite possibly have been one of several more if circumstances had allowed.' Mum (Sadie) is warm and kind with a wicked sense of humour and there is nothing in the world that she wouldn't do for Norma...

  Published: 2021, Harper Collins Genre: Fiction Themes: Old age, potential infirmity, options My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ Is it possible for a writer to be too technically good?  Too clever to be engaging? As with all of Lionel Shriver's work, the writing in this book is immaculate, and the concept a good one, but her exploration of potential outcomes of old age was rather exhausting and, dare I say it, I'm afraid I got a little bored after the first few scenarios.   In middle age, Kay and Cyril Wilkinson witness the long and undignified decline of Kay's father as he slowly loses his physical and mental capacity to Alzheimer's Disease.  By the time he dies after ten years of suffering, Kay can't even cry as this 'dying by degrees cheats everyone.  I feel as though he has been dead for years'.  At the start of the book the couple are both healthy medical professionals in their fifties, but Cyril's experience as a GP with many elderly patients has caused ...

  Published: 1994, Headline Publishing Group Genre: Fiction Themes: Family, childhood, 1960s, Windrush generation My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ The story jumps straight in to the daily life of the Jacobs family, as told by their youngest daughter Angela (or Anne to her father), who captures the noise and vibrancy of her childhood in London during the 1960s. Her parents arrived on the Empire Windrush from Jamaica, and they carry a feeling of difference throughout their lives. They are desperate to fit in, but never want to be seen as any trouble. Despite the Jamaican connection, much of the book is a universal story of family life in that post war era when everyone wanted to make something of themselves and do well in life.  Many of Angela's recollections reflected my own experience as a child of that time, and I could clearly remember the clothes and hairstyles that she describes so vividly.  (Yes, yes, I know, I don't look a day over thirty [pause for laughter] but Harold Ma...

Published: 2014, Bloomsbury Genre: Fiction Themes: Youth in Dublin, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, violence, crime My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤ Please note that the pills used as props in the picture are indigestion tablets. Reading this book is very much like picking a scab.  The sensible part of your brain tells you to leave it alone for God's sake, but there is this other part of your brain that makes you just keep on going even though you know it is not going to end well.   I have given this book a score of 4/5 because there is no doubt about the high quality of writing, but the subject matter is so horrible I wouldn't find myself recommending it to anyone.  The saddest part about it is that the story-line reflects reality for a great many young people who spend far too many hours a week getting 'off their heads' on drugs and alcohol. The book follows Cocker, Matthew, Kearney, Rez and Jen through the summer holidays that follow their last day at school.  They are...

  Published: 2020, Faber and Faber Genre: Fiction Themes: Social media, single parenthood, data algorithms My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤ The story in this book is a cautionary tale about the potential dangers of social media, and how it can change from friend to foe in the time it takes to install an intrusive algorithm.  Someone once told me that if anything online is free to the user, then you are the product, and that is exactly the message this book is presenting to us. DBC Pierre is the author of the book Vernon God Little that won the Man Booker Prize in 2003, and that is one of the few book that have caused me to laugh out loud as I read it.  However, I have been passing this new book over on the library 'bestseller' shelves for some weeks now, as the title didn't particularly appeal to me, and I had the impression it would be heavy going.  (It's amazing what conclusions you can come to without even reading the blurb inside the cover of a book!)  Anywa...

Published:  2020, Hodder and Stoughton Genre: Fiction Themes:  Nigeria, child brides, modern day slavery My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤ This book is written in the style of speaking used by fourteen year old Adunni who is a girl bought up in rural Nigeria, far away from modern comforts that might be found a city such as Lagos.  Her words are simple, yet powerful in the descriptions of what she sees and feels. 'I rub my chest where too many questions is causing a sore, climb to my feets with a sigh and walk to the window.  Outside, the moon is red, hanging too low the sky, be as if God pluck out his angry eye and throw it inside our compound.' Adunni lives in poverty with her Papa and two brothers and every day is a struggle for survival since her mother died.  Her mother was the main source of income for the family and she made whatever money she could by frying and selling 'puffs' at the roadside.  Without her income, Adunni's father has fallen into debt,...

  Published:  1999, Virago Genre:  Fiction Themes:  Lives of women, mother daughter relationship, love, survival My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ If you have anything else that you really ought to be doing, such as: sleeping, caring for children, going to work or providing meals, I suggest you don't even attempt to read this book.  As soon as you start reading, it will suck you under and you will be lost in its depths until the school rings and asks if you are considering picking up your children today. At the top level, the book is about the extraordinary relationship between young Astrid and her mother Ingrid, but as the story progresses it becomes clear that this book is really about what it means to be a woman.  Every aspect of female life is examined through the various characters, who range from those living in great comfort to those who scratch a living by whichever means they can.  In every life story there is a mix of good and bad, and those we mig...

  Published: 2018, Picador Genre: Fiction Themes: Singapore, teenage friendships, ambition, loss My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ Reading this book is rather like looking through a kaleidoscope as the key elements are shown from many different perspectives, but new pieces of information are constantly falling into place.  The time-line flips backwards and forwards as we follow teenage school friends Szu and Circe and discover how their lives have been influenced by a set of three horror movies staring Szu's mother, Amisa. When Amisa was a teenager herself, she was spotted by a wealthy man who wanted to make a film about a Pontianak, which is a mythical female ghost from Singaporean folklore.  The man chose Amisa because of her classic beauty and promised he would make her a star if she would agree to leave her job and come and take the lead in his film.  In the end they made three films about the Ponti, but they were not successful as audiences had tired of traditional stor...