Reading Roundup for May 2025

 

And here we are at the end of another month...

The Thief of Farrowfell by Ravena Guron

This book will be a delight to middle grade readers who enjoy fantasy.  If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

More Than Murder by Jayne Chard

This is a fun and entertaining cosy crime book from a debut author.

If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

A moving account from Mary as she watches her son be crucified.

Troubled Times for Tilly by Kay Seeley

Troubled Times for Tilly is set in Victorian London and is an enjoyable read.

If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

Be Mine by Lizzy Barber

This is a powerful and compelling novel that I couldn't put down. It was my favourite read this month.

If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

Not Moving Out by Jon Rance

I enjoyed reading this rom com very much and it has a lot to offer.

If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley

As you would expect from the author and historian, Lucy Worsley this book has been expertly researched and written.

If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

The House at River's Edge by Rachel Burton

I  love a dual time line narrative when it is well done, as it definitely has been in this book.

If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

Remember by Patricia Shanae Smith

 I rarely give books a five star review but this one was well deserving.

If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy's Story by Peter James

I was rather disappointed by this book.

Libby and the Parisian Puzzle by Jo Clarke

I enjoyed this book very much. It is aimed at middle grade readers and it's my granddaughter's favourite.

The Woman Who Met Herself by Laura Pearson

This is a gorgeous book, simultaneously full of heartbreak and joy. 

If you would like to read my review you can find it here.

Books I am Partway Through

Rainbows and Lollipops by Mo Fanning

The Last Train to Freedom by Deborah Swift

Great and Horrible News by Blessin Adams

The Rabbi's Suitcase by Robert Kehlmann

The Girls of Summer by Katie Bishop - #BookReview

 

It's TOO HOT to be outside for long. Sweat is starting to dampen my scalp, thickening in the roots of my hair and pooling in the crevices of my collar bone. My t-shirt sticks to my spine and my arms are tinged pink, an ungainly line of skin beginning to blister along the top of my thigh in the almost unseasonable blaze of sun. I curl my toes into the damp sand and feel the sharpness of a small shell against the sole of my foot.

Please, don't let him have left without me, I think, I'll do anything. I need him to come for me.

From my spot on the sand I can just make out the dock. Rising out of the sea is the rickety wooden platform where I disembarked months ago, seasick and tired...

***

Rachel has loved Alistair since she was seventeen.

Even though she hasn't seen him for sixteen years and she's now married to someone else.

Even though she was a teenager when they met.

Even though he is almost twenty years older than her.

Now in her thirties, Rachel has never been able to forget their golden summer together on a remote, sun-trapped Greek island. But as dark and deeply suppressed memories rise to the surface, Rachel begins to understand that Alistair - and the enigmatic, wealthy man he worked for - controlled much more than she ever realized.

Rachel has never once considered herself a victim - until now.

***

This is such a powerful novel that I hardly know where to begin. It is a book that is highly relevant to todays society and to the #MeToo campaign. 

Written in chapters alternately titled 'Then' and 'Now' it is a story of manipulation, control and deception. Consequently, it does not always make for comfortable reading. That said, the author treats the subject with sensitivity.

The main character, Rachel, is an innocent abroad and cannot see how she and her friends were being lured into a situation that they had not anticipated. She, in particular, becomes completely embroiled in the attentions of Alaistair, a man twenty years her senior, and is completely blind to the situation that is playing out around her. 

The descriptions of the stunning scenery were beautiful and a distinct contrast to the dark theme of the story. However, with the story being told from the perspective of Rachel, to whom life appeared wonderful, it is important that the author was able to portray her view of the surroundings and relationships. 

As the reader, I flitted between wanting to hug Rachel to giving her a strong wake up call. I was completely absorbed in the book and found Rachel a frustrating character. Her inability to later comprehend what had happened to her, how she had been used and abused and how she let this impact her future life in the way that she did made me feel rather exasperated with her at times. 

This is a sedately paced and atmospheric novel which is sufficiently compelling to ensure that I was fully engaged by the story. It has been well written and is an excellent debut from Ms. Bishop.

ISBN:  978 1787636002

Publisher:  Bantam

Formats:  e-book and hardback

No. of Pages:  353 (hardback)

Support Independent Bookshops - Buy from Bookshop.org *

About the Author:

Katie Bishop is a writer and journalist based in Birmingham, UK. She grew up in the Midlands before moving to Oxford to work in publishing in her early twenties.

Whilst working as an assistant editor she started writing articles in her spare time, going on to be published in the New York Times, Guardian, Independent and Vogue.

Katie started writing The Girls of Summer during the first UK COVID lockdown, after becoming increasingly interested in stories emerging from the #MeToo movement.

The novel is inspired by her own experiences of backpacking, and by her interest in how personal narratives can be reshaped and understood in light of cultural and social changes.

In 2020, Katie moved back to the Midlands, and now lives in Birmingham with her partner. She is a full-time writer.

(book courtesy of the publisher)

(Author photo and information courtesy of the author's website https://www.katiebishopwrites.com/)

Support Independent Bookshops - Buy from - Bookshop.org*

*Disclosure: I only recommend books I would buy myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post contains an affiliate link from which I may earn a small commission.

The Tunnel by A. B. Yehoshua - #BookReview - Translated by Stuart Schoffman

"The father ladles the thick red tomato sauce with floating yellow egg yolks into two deep, white dishes, and makes room on the table, next to the cheese, for the brain scan. And as the storm rages outside, and daylight grows dim, he turns on a reading lamp so the son can study the convolutions of his father's brain like the innards of a computer."

Zvi Luria has begun to lose his memory. At the beginning he only makes small mistakes, forgetting first names and taking home the wrong child from his grandson's kindergarten, but he knows that things will only get worse. He's 73 and a retired road engineer. His neurologist hints at the path his illness might take and suggests ways of combatting it, with the help of his wife, Dina.

Dina, a respected paediatrician, is keen for him to return to meaningful activity, and suggests he volunteers to work with his old colleagues at the Israel Roads Authority.

This is how Luria finds himself at the Ramon Crater in the Negev desert planning a secret road for the army with the son of his former colleague. But there's a mystery about a certain hill on the route of this road. Who are the people living there and why are they trapped? And should the hill be flattened and the family evicted, or should a tunnel beneath it be built?

With humour and great tenderness, A. B. Yehoshua depicts the love between Luria and his wife as they confront the challenges of his illness. Just when Luria's sense of identity becomes more compromised, then does he find himself on this extraordinary adventure involving people even more vulnerable than himself, enabling a rich meditation on the entwined identities of Israeli Jews and Palestinians and on the nature of memory itself.

Yehoshua weaves a masterful story about a long and loving marriage, interlaced with biting social commentary and caustic humour.

***

I enjoyed reading this book very much indeed. It's gentility was mesmerising and the writing and translation from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman is superb. 

Perhaps wrongly, I would not ordinarily rush to read a book about an elderly man who is grappling with the onset of dementia. My presumption would be that it would be rather depressing as, in reality, it is something that many of us may have to face one day. How wrong that assumption would be as this is a novel that is sensitive, compassionate and full of love. It is often humorous and exquisitely moving.

The book begins with Luria, along with his wife, receiving his dementia diagnosis from the neurologist who advises this elderly retired man to return to work and to be passionate with his wife. Volunteering to assist in designing a road with the company that he used to work for brings the titular tunnel into focus. Not only does the book deal with the designing of a tunnel, which at no point becomes dull, but it is also a metaphor for what Luria feels is happening with his deteriorating brain as he realises that whole sections of his memory are disappearing.

As his condition deteriorates throughout the book we see him become increasingly disorientated. Witnessing his attempts to come to terms with what is happening to him was extremely poignant.

I loved the characters in this book. Luria could be anyone's grandfather. There were several times in this book that I would have happily hugged him.

It is intelligently written and thought provoking. It does not shy away from the Israeli and Palestinian conflict but considers it with awareness and sensitivity. 

An excellent novel that I highly recommend.

ISBN: 978 1912600038

Publisher: Halban

About the Author:

Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A. B. Yehoshua is the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories and several plays and volumes of essays. He has won prizes worldwide and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and adapted for film and opera. An outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies, he continues to speak about and search for solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.







About the Translator:

Stuart Schoffman, a journalist and screenwriter, moved to Jerusalem in 1988. His latest translations of Israeli fiction are To the Edge of Sorrow (Schocken) by Aharon Appelfeld and The Tunnel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by A.B. Yehoshua.

(bio information courtesy of Jewish Review of Books)

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett - #BookReview

"The first time our father brought Andrea to the Dutch House, Sandy, our housekeeper, came to my sister's room and told us to come downstairs. 'Your father has a friend he wants you to meet,' she said.

Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish folly in small-town Pennsylvania taken on by his property developer father. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her delicacy, her brilliance. Life is comfortable and coherent, played out under the watchful eyes of the house's former owners in the frames of their oil painting.

Then one day their father bring Andrea home. Her arrival will exact a banishment: a banishment whose reverberations will echo for the rest of their lives.

As decades pass, Danny and his sister are drawn back time and again to the place they can never enter, knocking in vain on the locked door of the past. For behind the mystery of their own enforced exile is that of their mother's self-imposed one: an absence more powerful than any presence they have known.

The Dutch House is a story of family, betrayal, love, responsibility and sacrifice; of the powerful bonds of place and time that magnetise and repel us for our whole lives.

***

Having read this book and thought it wonderful I have been continually asking myself why I have never read any of Ann Patchett's books before! She has an extensive back catalogue, which I now have the joy of reading, so I am very happy about that.

The author portrayed this dysfunctional family with insight and understanding. I really liked the relationship between Danny and Maeve. They were totally believable, as indeed, were the less focal characters. 

The time span covers several decades and I particularly enjoyed seeing how Danny's character developed. His narration starts when he is still a young boy and takes us through to his adult life. We see how his character matures and changes and makes the reader question how we think we may have reacted if we had been in the same situation.

The titular house itself plays a significant part in this book, playing as compelling a role as the characters do. The descriptions were tangible and I really could see it's exterior and wander around the rooms in my imagination. I think it takes enormous skill for a writer to be able to imbue an inanimate object with such life.

The book tackles many themes, among them, family, forgiveness and loylaty. Ms. Patchett is clearly a phenomenal storyteller and writes with acute observation of the world around her. I really cannot wait to read more of her work.

Have you read any of her earlier novels? Which were your favourites?

ISBN: 978 1526614971

Publisher: Bloomsbury

About the Author:

Ann Patchett is the author of seven novels and three works of non-fiction. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction three times; with The Magician's Assistant in 1998, winning the prize with Bel Canto in 2002, and was most recently shortlisted with State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. 

She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee where she lives with her husband, Karl.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara - #BookReview

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel painter pursuing fame in the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity.

Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented lawyer yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by a degree of trauma that he fears he will not only be unable to overcome - but that will define his life forever.

In a novel of extraordinary intelligence and heart, Yanagihara has fashioned a masterful depiction of heartbreak, and a dark and haunting examination of the tyranny of experience and memory.

Some people are put off reading long books. Personally, I quite like them as I see it as a book that I can really get my teeth into. That said, by the time I am drawing towards the denouement I am usually looking forward to getting on with something new. Which is why I was surprised that when I came to the end of this totally engrossing book I was sad that it had come to an end. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that I feel slightly bereft that this cast of characters are now out of my life.

Within the unassuming cover of this book lies a novel of exquisite intensity. Bearing in mind that I finished reading this a couple of weeks ago and that I have read a couple of other books since, the fact that I am still mulling this book over in my mind speaks volumes concerning what a fantastic novel it actually is.

Each of the characters are flawed but are written with such absolute honesty that they are very easy to engage with. Although this book is about the four college classmates it focuses on Jude, whose previous life is a mystery to his friends and everyone that he knows. His life is gradually explained to the reader and the author presents us with some extremely difficult themes. However, she deals with Jude with such sensitivity and compassion that, as readers, we are able to bear these revelations.

This is an intelligent character driven novel which looks at the true meaning of love and friendship. Written with tenderness, care and compassion, the author has ensured that this a book I will never forget reading.

As always, there are not any spoilers within this review. What I will say, is that I cannot decide whether I think that the conclusion of this book was the perfect one or whether I really hated it. Have you read this? What are your thoughts?

ISBN:  978 1447294832

Publisher: Picador

About the Author:

A Little Life is Hanya Yanagihara's second book and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015 and was a finalist for the National Book Award in the same year.

She is an American novelist, editor and travel writer. She grew up in Hawaii and now lives in New York.