Blogs

 

Wowed by Waters

Book Review “The Paying Guests” by Sarah Waters

This is one of those books that get under the skin of the characters in just a few lines, that you read just for the pleasure of the words. It moves at a leisurely pace yet it doesn’t feel slow. We get to know learn the characters gradually through brief yet incise thumbnail sketches. This for example: “His eyes were the blue of Cornish china, his fairish hair sat close to his scalp in tight little lamb-like curls.”  The atmosphere and the descriptions are just wonderful. The reader...

Read More

   

All Power to the new Poldark

  We are of the generation that watched the original series and under its spell avidly read all the Winston Graham books. And what a series it was. Those were the days when we didn’t have video recorders and no one would dare miss an episode. We were all memorised by the moody Ross Poldark, the feisty Demelza, the scheming Warleggans, the family feuding and the struggle for survival.  It was a love story with a difference. As far as I was concerned nothing could come close to the original. When I read the books I saw Robin Ellis...

Read More

Thrilled with this thriller

Book Review “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins

I saw this book in the window of Waterstones and when I bought it the assistant said “Good choice!”. How right he was! It’s absolutely brilliant. I can’t praise it enough.

As I’ve said before “thrillers” aren’t necessarily my book of choice, yet this is the third I’ve read recently, and arguably the best.

Right from the start it draws you in. The prose, so concise, so atmospheric, with just enough of an edge to make it unsettling. It’s an easy conversational...

Read More

Alice and Carroll

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Alice books, finding them vaguely unsettling. Yet I know they’re hugely popular, a timeless ageless appeal I find hard to understand. The real story surrounding the author, Charles Dodgson, writing as Lewis Carroll, is equally mystifying. There are missing and expurgated diaries, enigmatic letters, hidden photographs. Even the man himself, Charles Dodgson, saw himself as a different persona to his alter ego Lewis Carroll. And the “real” Alice, Alice Liddell, didn’t like talking about him in later life. The Alice books...

Read More

Going for Gone Girl

Review of “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn

This book falls straight into the category of a “page turner”. The style of writing took a bit of getting used to: it is very American and written conversationally and colloquially, with some expressions and references I didn’t fully understand.

It’s  a long book and the story starts slowly: we start with Nick’s voice, which introduces us to the main protagonists: Nick, his wife Amy  and Nick’s twin sister Margo (“Go”) and we are given enough back story to let us know how we have arrived...

Read More

Lone Wolf

Am I the only one who doesn’t like Wolf Hall? When I asked this question on Facebook it seemed the answer was a resounding “Yes”!

So let me tell you what I don’t like about it.

First of all it’s just so slow. Every scene seems interminable. And the time scale, particularly in the first episode, jumps around so much. One moment we’re 10 days after Wolsey has gone, the next several weeks before. It’s most confusing.

Next there are the characters. There must have been some pleasant people around at the time but in this drama there isn’t a single...

Read More

I’ve always loved reading and been interested in what makes writers write their books and novels in a certain style. Some writers, for example, explain everything to their reader step by step, introducing their characters to us by minute observation and advancing chronologically through their stories. This is particularly true of the classic novelists like Trollope and Austen. These writers often tend to use their own experiences to tell their stories, rather than relying solely on their imaginations. Then there are the writers, particularly the contemporary ones who rely totally on imagination,...

Read More

Amazing Apple Tree Yard

Book Review: Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

I noticed this book when it was being read by the passenger next to me on our flight home from Majorca. It was the title that caught my eye and I craned my neck to read the blurb, which also sounded fascinating. My fellow passenger said she had been recommended it by a friend and although she was struggling with it slightly she was enjoying it. Read More

Planting Poppy's Seed

  I’ve just finished writing my fifth novel. This one is called "Poppy's Seed" and is about a couple who have just retired. People who know me will realise that like many of my novels, it’s semi-autobiographical. In fact the heroine in this one is more like me than in any of my other books. Many writers use present and past experiences in their work. I’m not the sort of writer who can put herself into the position of imagining places, situations...

Read More

Talking of "Talking it Over"

Book Review of "Talking it Over" by Julian Barnes

  I had enjoyed “Love etc.,” by the same author so I thought I should read this, which comes before it chronologically. This book uses the same method of telling the story, that of allowing each character to “talk” to us as if we were having a genuine  conversation with them. I found this, as in the first book, a clever and innovative way of telling a story, despite the fact that it largely dispenses with conversation between characters and description of scenes. As before,...

Read More