2021 has been another strange year for us all and I am not going to dwell on covid, lockdowns and restrictions. We constantly hear about it in the media and the last thing you need is to hear me waffling on about it too.
For me it has been a year of joys and sadness. We have had the joy of a family wedding and now a baby on the way to look forward to in the new year. Sadness, as I lost a beloved friend who I miss.
However, as I reflect on the passing of another year, I am grateful for so many things. My family who I love very much and who love me in return. My wonderful friends who enhance my life on a daily basis even though we are not always able to be together. Finally, I am grateful we have warm homes, clothes to wear and food on the table. I consider myself blessed.
I am also grateful to you, the followers of my blog. I am appreciative to each and every one of you who take time out of your hectic lives to read my blog. You are what make my blog worthwhile.
According to my reading log I have read 90 books during 2021. Of those books, there are twelve which really stood out for me. So, without further ado and, in no particular order, here they are.
In the dying days of the old asylums, three paths intersect.
Henry was only a boy when he waved goodbye to his glamorous grown-up sister; approaching sixty, his life is still on hold as he awaits her return.
As a high-society hostess renowned for her recitals, Matty’s burden weighs heavily upon her, but she bears it with fortitude and grace.
Janice, a young social worker, wants to set the world to rights, but she needs to tackle challenges closer to home.
A brother and sister separated by decades of deceit. Will truth prevail over bigotry, or will the buried secret keep family apart?
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives. As the result of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to be forever defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows; to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet, the hatred of their neighbours endured. For Bideford, it was said, was a place of witches.
Though 'pretty much worn away' the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn, ignored, reviled, and extinguished but never more than half-forgotten, it seems that the memory of these three women - and of their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – was transformed from canker to regret, and from regret into celebration in our own age. Indeed, their example was cited during the final Parliamentary debates, in 1951, that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration and incantation, by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common.
In this book, John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate, and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
Anna lives with her husband and their dog by the shores of a lake in the idyllic Swedish countryside. But her youth is far behind her, her husband rarely speaks and their children have long since left home and live at a distance. She fears that even the translation work which keeps her going will soon dry up.
In the hope of opening up a new chapter in her life, Anna advertises in the personal column of a newspaper for a male pen friend. She is gratified to receive a number of replies and begins exchanging letters with a widower called Bo. The outcome is both surprising and convincing.
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
Stella and Connie are strangers, brought together by two traumatic events - cruel twists of fate that happen thousands of miles apart.
Stella lives with her mother, a smothering narcissist. When she succumbs to dementia, the pressures on Stella's world intensify, culminating in tragedy. As Stella recovers from a near fatal accident, she feels compelled to share her trauma but she finds talking difficult. In her head she confides in Connie because there's no human being in the world that she feels closer to.
Connie is an expat living in Dubai with her partner, Mark, and their two children. On the face of it she wants for nothing and yet ... something about life in this glittering city does not sit well with her. Used to working full time in a career she loves back in England, she struggles to find meaning in the expat life of play-dates and pedicures.
Two women set on a collision course. When they finally link up, it will not be in a way that you, or I, or anyone would ever have expected.
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
The Darlings by Angela Jackson
When Mark Darling is fifteen years old, he is golden boy, captain of the school football team, admired by all who know him. Until he kills his best friend in a freak accident.
He spends the next decade drifting between the therapy couch and dead-end pursuits. Then along comes Sadie. A mender by nature, she tries her best to fix him, and has enough energy to carry them both through the next few years.
One evening, Mark bumps into an old school friend, Ruby. She saw the accident first hand. He is pulled towards her by a force stronger than logic: the universal need to reconcile one's childhood wounds. This is his chance to, once again, feel the enveloping warmth of unconditional love. But can he leave behind the woman who rescued him from the pit of despair, the wife he loves? His unborn child?
This is a story about how childhood experience can profoundly impact how we behave as adults. It's a story about betrayal, infidelity and how we often blinker ourselves to see a version of the truth that is more palatable to us.
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
At fourteen, Adunni dreams of getting an education and giving her family a more comfortable home in her small Nigerian village. Instead, Adunni's father sells her off to become the third wife of an old man. When tragedy strikes in her new home, Adunni flees to the wealthy enclaves of Lagos, where she becomes a house-girl to the cruel Big Madam, and prey to Big Madam's husband. But despite her situation continuously going from bad to worse, Adunni refuses to let herself be silenced. And one day, someone hears her.
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
When Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert was liberated in 1945, a Jewish-American soldier gave her a banknote on which he'd written 'Good luck and happiness'. And when her great-grandson, Dov, decided to use social media to track down the family of the GI, 96-year-old Lily found herself making headlines round the world. Lily had promised herself that if she survived Auschwitz she would tell everyone the truth about the camp. Now was her chance.
In Lily's Promise she writes movingly about her happy childhood in Hungary, the death of her mother and two youngest siblings on their arrival at Auschwitz in 1944 and her determination to keep her two other sisters safe. She describes the inhumanity of the camp and the small acts of defiance that gave her strength. From there she and her sisters became slave labour in a munitions factory, and then faced a death march that they barely survived.
Lily lost so much, but she built a new life for herself and her family, first in Israel and then in London. It wasn't easy; the pain of her past was always with her, but this extraordinary woman found the strength to speak out in the hope that such evil would never happen again.
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
All Beth has to do is drive her son to his football match, watch him play and then drive home. But the knowledge that her former best friend lives nearby is all-consuming. She can't resist. She parks opposite the house, and is still there when Flora and her children return home.
Except... something's not right.
Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily were five and three years old. Today, they look exactly the same - they haven't changed at all. How is this possible?
Beth knows it isn't - yet she also knows what she saw, and that it was real. And, having seen it, how can she forget?
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
For years, rumours of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.
The Binding by Bridget Collins
Imagine you could erase your grief. Imagine you could forget your pain. Imagine you could hide a secret. Forever.
Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a letter arrives summoning him to begin an apprenticeship. He will work for a Bookbinder, a vocation that arouses fear, superstition and prejudice - but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.
He will learn to hand-craft beautiful volumes, and within each he will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there's something you want to forget, he can help. If there's something you need to erase, he can assist. Your past will be stored safely in a book and you will never remember your secret, however terrible.
In a vault under his mentor's workshop, row upon row of books - and memories - are meticulously stored and recorded.
Then one day Emmett makes an astonishing discovery: one of them has his name on it.
The Binding is an unforgettable, magical novel: a boundary-defying love story with a unique literary event.
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life, dreaming of greater things. But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and as she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different, he is clearly no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin
brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.
Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.
Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief.
If you would like to read my review of this book please click here.
(header photo courtesy of Jason Leung/Unsplash)
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