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  Published: 2020, Picador Genre: Fiction Themes: Glasgow, poverty, alcoholism My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ Shuggie Bain is a novel about love and loyalty and hope. The kind of love that allows young Shuggie to help his alcoholic mother into her good black tights.  The kind of loyalty that makes him leap back to her side rather than stay with his traitorous father in a house where he would at least get fed.  The kind of hope that keeps him going because maybe one day his beautiful mother will get better and they can both start a new life as normal people. Young as he is, Shuggie quickly learns to do what he has to, rather than what he should do.  He doesn't comment on the 'uncles' that come calling on school-day afternoons, dangling the temptation of a few cans of Special Brew that they consider to be fair exchange for a little more than her charming company.  He knows when to make himself scarce and not to be a bother, and most importantly, he learns to manage h...

  Published: 2018, Penguin Genre: Fiction Themes: Trees and forests, logging, destruction of ecology My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ I felt I ought to go outside to get my photograph for this book because the whole purpose of it is to remind us that we are not the only living things that matter on our planet. Richard Powers gives us the stories of nine people whose lives have been altered by trees, but those stories are really only secondary to the message in the book. THERE IS ONLY ONE EARTH AND WE ARE MESSING IT UP I don't remember a time when I read something that made such an impact on me.  By the time I was a third through the book I was starting to see the damage here in my town - let alone the rest of the world!  Trees hacked back because the fallen leaves are a nuisance, grass dug up and replaced with plastic grass that doesn't breath, concrete covering more and more space... I could go on.  What most people don't realise is that nature knows what it is doing if ...

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...

  Published: 2021, Simon and Schuster Genre: Fiction Themes: witchcraft, curses, love My rating (out of 5): ❤❤ I don't usually annotate books (mostly because they belong to the library and it would be frowned upon) but there are times when I was reading this book I just want to grab a pen and scrawl 'REALLY???' in the margin. For instance:  One of the principal characters, Kylie, wants to end a curse that has been put on her family so she seeks out a man who is known to be an expert in curses.  Because of his surname she suggests that they may have a common relative from centuries ago.... 'Tom realized who she was.  The seven-times great-granddaughter of a witch who had been married to his six-times great-grandfather.' Well obviously. Anyway, Kylie belongs to a family where the women are bloodline witches and the curse hanging over them was set to prevent them having their hearts broken through love.  They must avoid falling in love and if they don't abide ...

Published: Penguin, 2021 Genre: Fiction Themes: Ugandan Asians, family business, family dynasty My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ This made me consider how much our lives can be influenced by those who came before us.  Decisions made by parents and grandparents can influence where we live; our moral boundaries; and how we view, and inwardly judge, others.  Even if we decide to do everything differently, there are times in our lives where we feel the pull of the family compass and all we want to do is to return to a familiar path. This is a debut novel and I struggle to understand how anyone can write so well at such a young age.  Hafsa Zayyan must be under 30 as this book won the Merky Book Prize and that is only open to people aged 16 - 30.  Apparently she wrote the whole thing in 6 months while continuing to work as a dispute resolution lawyer, and she is writing convincingly about a totally different culture to her own. The book is set in the present and follows Sameer ...

  Published: 2021, Penguin Random House Genre: Fiction Themes: White Supremacy riots, Thomas Jefferson, Monticello My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ Ah, Thomas Jefferson.  Spokesman for democracy, American Founding Father, principle author of the Declaration of Independence and Third President of the United States.  All-round good bloke right? Well, maybe not quite so all-round as he had a bit of a blind spot when it came to owning people.  Mr Jefferson owned more than six hundred African American people during his adult life and they were all put to work in and around his magnificent house, Monticello.  If you look up Thomas Jefferson's page on the White House website there is no mention of these people at all, and quite near the top of the text there is a quote from one of Jefferson's private letters where he states: 'I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'  No wonder Jocelyn Nicole Johnson ...

  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...