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I suppose if I'm going to pick up a book with Granta written on the spine and a dead bird on the cover, then I ought to be prepared for something challenging, but this story is just weird.  I suspect I think it's weird because the whole thing just sailed right over my head, but generally speaking, I like to read for pleasure and there is not much of that to be found in here. It's one of those books that is not about just the story-line but has references that are used to hammer home a heavier point.  In this case, there are pointers towards anti-Semitism, which is a topic that is very much front and centre at the moment, but I'm not convinced the narrator of this story will have said anything to resolve that issue (well not to me anyway). We never know the narrators name, or where the book is set, apart from a mention of it being a northern territory cut off from most of the population.  The story tells of a woman who is the youngest of several children who has come ...

  Charles Ignatius Sancho was a real person who lived in the eighteenth century, and the author has taken the few details known about his life and turned them into a work of fiction.  According to the Preface, Sancho was 'a lucky African orphan, who despite being born in abject slavery, rose to become a leading light of the early abolitionist movement.' The content of the book comprises of Sancho's diary pages written for his son Billy, and he really did have an extraordinary life for a black person living in London at that time.  He became so well known that he had his portrait painted by Gainsborough, and in addition to his campaign for the abolition of slavery, he also composed and played music and had his writing published. He was married to Anne Osborne and they had eight children, although not all survived to adulthood.  Anne doesn't appear in the book until the second half, but their exchange of letters while she is attending to a sick relative on a sugar plan...

Imagine Hugh Grant wearing those big black spectacles that he wore in the film, The Gentlemen , then make him as angry and moody as Gordon Ramsey and as terminally selfish as Boris Johnson, and you might start to get a feel for the ageing artist Ray.  Ray is one of the London Arts crowd and, although he hasn't actually done much in way of art over the last few years, he considers himself to be a notable artist and he rules his family through his manipulative behaviour. His wife, Lucia, is also an artist (think Helena Bonham-Carter), who is actually quite successful in her own right, but she and her three adult children have been conditioned by Ray to see themselves as lesser beings, barely worthy of his attention. His daughter Leah is completely absorbed in Ray's constant needs and rages against her two siblings for never doing enough to help daddy.  As you read through the book, there will be plenty of times where the whole family dynamic will infuriate you, but never too the...

I had high hopes for this one, but I'm sorry to say that it fell short of my expectations. The story is set in France during the Second World War, and describes the period when the Germans invaded France and stationed hundreds of soldiers in St Malo.  The Nazis had decreed that any books found in France that were deemed to be subversive were to be gathered in and destroyed and the local librarian, Jocelyn, sets about saving as many as she can.   The author is Spanish, so the book has been translated into American English and, to me, that didn't sit very well as the language of French and German people. The outline of the story sounds good, but I found the characters one dimensional and some parts of the plot were not very credible.   Mario Escobar has a masters degree in modern history, so he has a good working knowledge of the facts relating to the Second World War, but I found myself constantly questioning whether some of the events would ever have happened....

  Oh my goodness this is good!  So cleverly constructed and convincingly written that it is almost impossible to put down because you just need to know what on earth is going to happen next. We all like our privacy, but imagine if someone had found a way to get into your house while you are out, and then find a way to hide themselves to the point where they can actually live in your space and get access to everything you own.  In the book, Juno is that person, and she is a homeless woman who is slowly dying and she can't face another winter living outside in the park.  Juno gets into a family home by chance, but when she chooses to stay, she finds herself getting more inquisitive every day.  Every family has secrets, but what if they are hiding something that could blow their lives apart if it comes to light?  Juno finds that secret, or at least she thinks she does, and from then on she digs and delves into every secret place in the house.  It isn't lo...

This was a wonderful read and I discovered it with perfect timing for Halloween week.  It tells of an unexplained death within the close island community of Saoirse Island that sits in the estuary waters of Puget Sound on the west coast of the United States; and it comes with just the right amount of mystery and magic to keep me hooked to the very last page. Saoirse Island life is bound up in tradition and folklore with the older women still teaching their granddaughters how to set spells.  Fourteen years before the story begins, four teenage friends, August, Emery, Dutch and Lilly, graduated high-school, and August and his girlfriend Emery were planning to leave the island the following morning to get August away from his violent and controlling grandfather. The night before they were due to leave, the great orchard belonging to the August's family caught fire and after the fire was out, Lilly's body is found among the trees.   Her death may have been murder but mys...

  The author took the idea for this book from the true story of the mission to liberate prisoners from a train headed to Auschwitz.  The central characters are a fictitious family, but they were created to represent the real prisoners who were a mix of men, women and children from all walks of life. The mistreatment of Jews has been well documented in both fiction and non-fiction books, but Pam Jenoff's book highlights the extreme bravery of ordinary people who were trying to do all they could to help people who would almost certainly die if no-one did anything.  The book tells of resistance fighters who help allied airman to escape and they are supported by a whole network of people who pass on covert messages or simply leave visual signals to indicate danger.  Every action could mean imprisonment or death for those involved so everyone involved is risking their own life to help others. The book gathers tension as it goes on, and by the closing chapters there i...