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  Book 3 of the Raj Quartet So, after already reading about 1,000 pages about two assaults on English women during the uprising of the Indian people in Mayapore in 1942, you may wonder what more the author Paul Scott can possibly have to say on the matter.  Well, this time the main focus falls on Miss Barbara (Barbie) Bachelor, who was a teacher in one of the Mission schools in Mayapore, but moved to the British army station at Pankot on her retirement.  She moved in 1939, so was not living in Mayapore at the time of the assaults, but took a very keen interest in any news relating to them as the elderly lady who had been beaten by a mob was a friend of hers from the Mission school. On retirement, Barbie lost the right to live in her accommodation but, just ahead of her final day at the school, she noticed an advertisment in the Ranpur Gazette placed by another older lady seeking a companion to share her bungalow.  The arrangement seemed heaven sent so Barbie wasted n...

  I'm having an enforced rest from working my way through Paul Scott's Raj Quartet because I couldn't find book three when I went to the library on Wednesday.  I picked this one up because it's by the same author as the A Man Called Ove, and that was one of those books that has stuck with me, so it seemed like a safe bet. Fredrik Backman has quite a distinctive writing style as he manages to deal with the darkest of subjects with a light touch that somehow doesn't diminish the impact.  His books are translated from Swedish, and the dialogue flows well without losing that directness that I associate with nordic people.  My Friends is set in an unnamed town on the coast of Sweden, and it neatly blends the stories of a group of people who were teenagers twenty five years ago with present day events happening to an eighteen year old called Louisa. Don't let the thought of so many teenagers put you off.  This is no tale of hoodies, fast food and smart phones, more a ...

Book 2 of the Raj Quartet   There are a couple of phrases that I would bet the author, Paul Scott, has never had occasion to use: 'to cut a long story short.....' and 'let me cut to the chase....'  Never one to keep an answer to a question to a few short lines when three pages will do, and it seems every character in the book has the capacity to talk at length on any given topic.  No thought is spared consideration and everyone is an amateur psychiatrist.  However, it somehow works and I was captivated for another 530 pages. The book is set in India in 1942 in the immediate aftermath of the events described in The Jewel in the Crown.  A young English woman, Daphne Manners, was raped by a gang of men on the night of a civil uprising, and by the start of Book 2, a group of young men have been arrested and sent to prison without trial.  The arrested men included Hari Kumar, who had been in a relationship with Miss Manners but she has persuaded him to say nothi...

 Book one of the Raj Quartet This is a novel that you have to commit to concentrating on because the level of detail is outstanding and every word counts.  It's over five hundred pages of finely typed print, so that high level of concentration has to be sustained over quite a few days.  I usually read a book in a week, but it took me two to read this one and it is just one of the four books that make up the Raj Quartet. It's set in India, 1942, which is right in the middle of the Second World War, and the country has been unsettled by the continued occupation by the British, and the idea of self-rule is gaining supporters.  The police and military are struggling to keep control of the population and British people are setting up contingency plans to establish places of safety in the event of an uprising. In late summer when the heavy rains began, two events happened in Mayapore that shook the British to their core.  The population had been gathering in numbers a...

 This is Book 3 of the Godkiller Trilogy, so if you haven't read the other two books, it's going to be hard to keep up with what's going on with this one.  I have reviewed the first two already and they can be found at the following links:                           Godkiller                           Sunbringer There are six main characters that feature in all the books and they are: Lessa Craier who was a nobelwoman turned pirate after her home was burnt to the ground by a god; Lessa's daughter Inara whose father was a god and so she carries some god-like powers: Arren the king who carries the flame of the god Hestra in place of his heart; The knight Elo who once worked quietly as a baker but now command's the king's army; Kissen the godkiller and lastly Skedi, the small god of white lies, who is bonded with Inara and keeps her safe. The land of Mi...

 I have managed to get to the ripe old age of 67 without ever reading any books by Agatha Christie, and was starting to feel as though I was missing out on something.  This feeling was bought about by a series of programmes fronted by Lucy Worsley that covered the life of Mrs Christie, particularly the period of time when she went missing from home.  Everyone Lucy Worsley interviewed spoke enthusiastically about her books, and I suppose not surprisingly, there is even an Agatha Christie Society who can probably recite whole chapters off by heart.  Then, last Wednesday when I went to the library, there were two big piles of Seven Dials sitting on the 'recommends' table so I almost felt that fate had intervened. Anyway, in the end I didn't really enjoy it, although to be fair it was first published in 1929 and the language is very much of its time.  The conversation is in the 'what ho!' style with most of the lead characters living in big country houses and having...

  I think I'm missing something in this novel.  It made the Booker Longlist last year, and the cover is plastered with praise from other authors, but I struggled to find what was so special about it.  My heart didn't stop because it was so vivid (as apparently happened to Oisin McKenna) and I wasn't mesmerised while I was reading it like Michael Cunningham and I was surprised to read that Jemimah Wei wanted to live in it forever. Oh well, I guess Tash Aw can't win us all. It's not a bad book, and it is certainly not often that I have read something by a Chinese author, so it offers me something different to think about.  The story is about a teenage boy, Jay, and his family who inherit a family farm in the south and go to stay there while they consider what to do with it.  Jay has the opportunity to explore his sexuality once he is away from home and he soon finds himself in a relationship with Chuan, the son of the farm manager.   Being away from his ...

  Oh my Lord.  This book. I have just this minute turned the last page and I have to get something written down about it right away.  It is the most heart-breaking novel I think I have every read, and I defy anyone to read it without having their emotions wrung out by the terrible twists that pull a family apart in ways that can never be repaired. The hardest part to grasp is that any one of us could potentially have the course of our lives changed by circumstance, and even essentially good people can end up being responsible for something that can't be fixed. Corby is a the father of twin toddlers, who he adores, and he has become the primary care giver for the children after being made redundant.  He and his wife Emily can no longer afford child care with only one salary coming in, but Corby is finding it hard to get another job and after a few months he is starting to lose interest in looking.  It's stressful looking after the children and he's also becoming ...

  I liked everything about this book and I found myself picking it up at every opportunity as I almost missed it's company when I wasn't reading it.  It even took over the times when I usually scan through reels on Instagram, so it must be good. Thomas Hart is a journalist writing a weekly column for a local Essex newspaper, and he is one of those people who seem to have arrived from another era with his well pressed suits and charming manners.  He is the newspaper's longest running contributor and his editor wants him to come up with something interesting to write about as the circulation numbers are down.  The editor suggests he write something about the moon; 'Five hundred words, please, and six if the night is clear.' The moon turns out to be a revelation to Thomas, and it's almost as though he has never seen it before.  Once he starts observing it properly, he finds himself falling in love, and it is not long before he reads up on all things astronomical, i...

  Aaah!  How annoying!  I got to the end of the book before I found out that this is book three of a trilogy and it's a Lars Mytting!! I hate reading a series of books out of sequence, and now I'm not even sure if I will want to read the other two books as now I know how it all ends up.  Fortunately, the book works very well as a stand alone and I enjoyed it a lot, but why can't publishers state in big writing on the front 'Book One of trilogy' etc so readers don't get caught out. Oh well, too late now.  Lars Mytting is worth reading, even out of sequence, and this a translation from Norwegian, although that never detracts from the pace of the text, in fact the translation by Deborah Dawkin is brilliantly done.  The book begins in 1613 when a farmer comes across a dying ewe in the deep snow of the mountains, and she has used the last of her strength to protect her young lamb form the biting cold and snow piled up all around them.  Eirik Hekne carries b...

Cities of the Plain is the final volume of the Border Trilogy set in the parts of America either side of the Mexican border.  It's one of those books that you could read in isolation, but without the backstories you would be missing out on a lot of depth.  It really is worth reading all three and immersing yourself in cowboy culture. After I read the second volume I was sorry to find that young John Grady from the first book wasn't in it, and I had to get to know Billy Parham instead.  This was no bad thing and now I have reached the third book I find I can read about both of them working on the same ranch.  Time has moved on to the end of World War Two when John Grady is nineteen and Billy around thirty.  Neither served in the war as John Grady was too young and Billy was turned down at three different recruiting stations because of a heart murmur.  The ranch they are working on belongs to the very elderly Mr Johnson, who Billy has known all his life, and ...

In my last blog post I reviewed Book One of the Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy, and I said that his writing stayed in my mind long after reading the books.  Well, now I'm on Book Two, I'm starting to think that these books will not only stay in my mind, but will possibly alter it.  I feel that McCarthy knows things about humanity that can only be conveyed through story telling.  If fiction writing was described as churches, then these books would be cathedrals. Time has to be set aside to read these books because McCarthy will not be rushed.  There are long, long, monologues where a character is allowed to express their innermost thoughts on such heavy topics as the nature of God, life and the possibility of justice in the world.  There are also many lines in Spanish, and once again, McCarthy is not interrupting the flow of his thoughts to translate all that for you.  You either understand it or you don't, but it's surprising how quickly I was starting t...

  I have read all sorts of books over the years, and very few of them have stuck in my memory, but the two that I had read by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men and The Road), remain in my head.  There is something about his story telling that is so compelling, that it's very hard to put the book down, even when the text makes for uncomfortable reading. McCarthy's books are earthy and raw and All the Pretty Horses is no exception.  It's the first book of a trilogy, and just a few days after starting it I was heading back to the library to pick up volumes 2 and 3 to make sure I could read them all back to back. The story is set in the early 1930s and sixteen year old John Grady and his friend Rawlings secretly leave their comfortable homes in Texas and set off across the open country heading for Mexico.  They are both experienced with horses and have a level of maturity that helps them manage the challenges of the terrain, but everything changes when a young lad ...

The backdrop to the story line in Don't Make Me Laugh is the stand-up comedy circuit, but do n't go into this expecting a laugh a minute just because the characters include a (fictionally) well known comedian.  There is a serious message in here, and anyone who doesn't understand that an abusive relationship can be emotional as well as physical, really ought to read it. We have all seen the big story-lines on the news that involve internationally recognised personalities who have used their industry clout to seduce vulnerable women, but this kind of abuse can happen in any level of society and women need to know what to watch out for. In the book, radio producer Ali Lauder is just over thirty and has got herself in a bad relationship with a married man.  When that affair is found out and comes to an end, Ali is emotionally vulnerable and responds to flattery from one of the big-name comedians who is in middle age but seems comfortable and unthreatening.  Once he has her c...

  I'm not sure how someone can write a book that is both sensitive and brutal at the same time, but somehow Alana S. Portero has managed it.  It's a debut novel so she has dived in at the deep end by telling the story of a young boy convinced that he is really a girl. The book has been translated from Spanish and has become an international best seller since its first publication in 2023.  I said it was both sensitive and brutal and that is because the young person is dealt with gently, but the family home is in a run down area of Madrid in the 1980s and some people in the neighbourhood are cruel and judgemental.  The apartment blocks are filled with people from all walks of life, and violence within families is commonplace, so no-one particularly takes any notice of cries in the night - unless the crying turns to screaming.  It is mind boggling to imagine how much pain and suffering some people have to endure before anyone does anything to help them. The singer...

This book is politically relevant at the start of 2025, although Valeria Luiselli began writing it in 2014, and it was first published in 2019.  Children from Central America and Mexico try to get to America to start a new life, but if they are captured by the immigration authorities, they are deported on chartered planes that fly out from remote airfields in the desert.  Some try to escape by running away, but with nothing to eat or drink they quickly succumb to the heat of the desert. The story of the Lost Children is told through the voices of one family who are making their own journey from New York to the Mexican border.  The four members of the family are not given names until they give themselves nicknames some way along the road, and as they travel onwards, the reader only knows the children as 'the boy' (10) and 'the girl' (5).  Their parents work on projects relating to creating archives of sound and that involves recording ambient noise as well as conversa...

This is the first of two books I was given for Christmas, and once I started reading it, it was never far from my side.  Adam Kay shares some of the notes that he wrote while working as a junior doctor in obstetrics and gynaecology (OB GYN), and his experiences range from slapstick comedy to heart-breaking stories when things go wrong. Most men have a real aversion to anything to do with OB GYN, so it is all the more interesting to read how a male doctor coped in this field.  The upside of the job is working on the maternity ward with the joy of delivering healthy babies to healthy mothers, but female anatomy does not always work in the ways we expect it to, and the OB GYN doctor may be called upon to save the day (and two lives), several times during one shift.  The doctors also have to deal with all the problems that can occur in our plumbing when we are not giving birth, and many of these are not for the faint hearted.  Some of the tools of the trade look as thoug...

I'm always pleased to find a different title written by a favourite author, and this book by Sebastian Barry does not disappoint.  It's set in rural Ireland in the late 1950s at a time when modern comforts were just creeping in to Co Wicklow and many people were still living their lives as their ancestors would have done a century before. Annie Dunne is a spinster woman of sixty one who already considers herself an old woman, and as she has no close relatives to look after her in her old age, she has gone to live with her cousin Sarah on a small farm.  Before she moved to the farm, Sarah had been living with her sister Maud and her family because Maud was bedbound and unable to look after her own children.  Annie assumed she would always live there, but after Maud died, her brother in law made it clear that she was no longer welcome.  After that she had very little to do with the family until her two nephews had children of their own and one of the boys suddenly aske...

We travel back to the 1960s with this book, and into a period of time that many people my age look back on nostalgically as 'simpler times', but by the time you get to the end, you realise that a smaller world does not always bring happiness. Helen is an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital in Croydon, and for a couple of years she has been having an affair with Gil, who is not only one of the doctors but turns out to be part of her extended family through marriage.  Helen was taken in by Gil's charismatic personality but after the arrival of an extraordinary patient, she starts to view life differently. The patient is William who is 37 years old but has not left his house for around 25 years.  He had been raised by his aunts who kept him out of sight 'for his own safety', but as they grew older and less able to take care of him, William's condition deteriorated badly, and by the time he was discovered, he was vey much under weight and his hair and beard were...

  This is not so much a novel as a series of takes on the same situation that demonstrate different perspectives on racial inclusivity and 'woke' culture.  Some novels invite you in to the story in a way that makes the reader a guest in the living rooms of the characters but, to me, this book feels more like watching from afar, and although we meet the same people in different sections, there is no one person to particularly root for or empathise with. The core story is a serious assault on a man called Pegasus who had been running a collective group of squatter occupying an empty farm during the time of the pandemic.  Pegasus was struck over the head with something that appeared to be a gold bullion bar after telling Jake, who was a member of the group, that he was no longer welcome on the farm. The farm is owned by a wealthy banker who bought it with the intention of providing himself with a survivalist refuge in the event of a national emergency.  He also owned th...