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  With the exception of 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, I don't really enjoy novels based on the exchange of letters and this book didn't get to join my very short list of exceptions. The problem I had with this particular book was that I found the whole premise hard to believe.  Tina is a lonely farmer's wife whose best friend has recently died, and she regrets the fact that they never managed to visit the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark.  She and her friend Bella had often spoken of taking a trip to see the Tollund Man, whose Iron Age remains were found remarkably preserved in a peat bog in 1950. People often dream of visiting the Trevi Fountain or the spring cherry blossom in Japan, but it's not very often I hear of someone spending half a lifetime dreaming of a visit to a long dead body.  Tollund Man was found with a rope around his neck so the poor man was the victim of murder and now his remains lie in the museum for all to see.  People gawping at the a...

  I don't know who it is that selects the books on the 'Libraries Recommends' table but these days I rarely get far beyond it as the choices are so good.  This last one finally dragged me away from the historical novels and I was plonked right back in the present in the company of a very quirky teenager. Linda lives in a town near Duluth Minnesota, very close to Lake Superior and not too far from the border with Canada.  She enjoys her outdoors lifestyle and is happy trekking through the woods or setting out on the local lake in her canoe.  Her family used to be part of a religious community that lived together in the woods, but most of the members eventually moved away and she rejoined mainstream life. Across the lake from Linda's family's lot there is a lodge that has been rented by a family with a little boy, but the father seems to be away most of the time.  Linda often sees the mother and child and becomes friendly with them to the point that the mother, Pa...

  Turns out this is not my sort of book at all and I only finished it because it was short.  I picked it up because it's one of those classics that I knew the title of but had no idea what lay between the covers. It is written in 'lyrical' prose, which is to say, very flowery with multiple references to classical writing.  I spent half the book wondering what the whole thing was about because my mind was either wandering or I was skim-reading and consequently missed a lot of the drift. Once I did cotton on that it was about a young woman having an affair with a married man, I lost all sympathy for her because a man who is prepared to cheat on his wife is not worth any amount of purple prose.  The novel was inspired by Elizabeth Smart's own affair with the British poet George Barker, and maybe she felt she had to write it in order to explain her own actions.  Barker does not seem to be much of prize, but she stayed with him for eighteen years (although they ...

  If you were going by the cover alone, you would probably pick up this novel because of the attractive design and the equally attractive name of Zachary Cloudesley.  To be honest, that is exactly why I picked it up and once I started reading, I was not disappointed. This is a quest novel starting in 1754 and takes the reader from London to the far flung reaches of the Ottoman Empire.  It is exactly the kind of novel that I imagine would be considered by Netflix for a feature film, as it ticks all the diversity boxes, but somehow blends everything in so well that the whole book doesn't strain with the effort of being overly woke. I was hooked from the first chapter as the book opens with a woman in labour with all the associated difficulties that stem from life in the mid-eighteen century.  Back then, it didn't matter what class of woman you were, or which kind of midwife you could afford, childbirth was a tricky business and there were no guarantees for anyone's saf...

  I nearly didn't read this, as the first few pages seemed heavy, and I didn't feel in the mood for a book about a lonely old man who seems to have had enough of life.  I would certainly have read something else if I had another fiction book to hand, but I didn't, so I was almost forced to give it a go as I don't like to go a day without reading. As it turned out, it was heavy, and as with so many novels set in Ireland, there were plenty of instances of harm caused by the Catholic church that were covered up and ignored until people simply accepted that it was part of their lives.  Sometimes I wonder why the Catholic church was not drummed out of Ireland years ago after all the revelations of abuse that have come to light in recent years.  The institutions such as orphanages and laundries must have affected almost every member of the population in some form or another, and yet no one felt they had the power to stop it. Physical and sexual abuse of vulnerable chi...

  When I started reading the first book in this trilogy, Wolf Hall, I was a little nervous of Hilary Mantel and I wasn't sure that I was up to the task, but now I am a convert and I can't wait to get on to the third and last book. Set in the time of Henry VIII, this book covers the period of Henry's second marriage to Anne Boleyn as seen from the perspective of Oliver Cromwell.  Cromwell is getting older and he has become Master Secretary and the King's go-to man whenever there is anything difficult to be done.  Cromwell played a key role in fulfilling Henry's wish to have his first marriage annulled, and when Anne Boleyn failed to provide the much anticipated male heir, Cromwell is again asked to get Henry free from his marriage.  When the King divorced Katherine, his first wife, she was allowed to go and live out her years in relative obscurity, as she was not accused of any personal wrongdoing, but it is very different for Anne.  She is accused of adultary, i...

  Oh dear, I should never have read this straight off the back of Wolf Hall.  This book is such nonsense in comparison that I may not even have finished it if I had anything else to read. The writing is not so bad but the whole concept of using the  Brontë sisters as amateur detectives is a real stretch of the imagination that I felt exasperated with it right from the start.  In her defence, the author admits there is no evidence to suggest that the sisters did any such thing, but on the other hand, there is no evidence to say that they didn't. The mystery the dear sisters have to solve is the apparent bloody murder of a young bride in a neighbouring village.  Even though they have no right to get involved at all, they dash off to visit the house and insist on having a good snoop around to look for clues.  Over the course of the story, they lie to their father in order to get out of the house for days at a time and then help themselves to whatever private p...