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.

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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.

The Temptation of Gracie by Santa Montefiore - #BookReview

"England, March 2010

The muffle of cloud that had settled over Badley Compton Harbour was so dense that the little fishing boats tethered to the buoys in the middle of the bay had completely vanished."

A cookery course in the heart of Tuscany proves irresistible to Gracie Burton. She decides to plough her life savings into the week-long trip, leaving her daughter and granddaughter baffled by her impulsiveness. But having grown apart over the years, in many ways the three women barely know each other.

Travelling together from Devon to the breathtakingly beautiful Italian countryside, they take up residence at a castle belonging to the elusive Count Tancredi. Yet everything is not as it appears, and quickly Gracie's family begin to suspect that this is not Gracie's first visit.....

What secret in Gracies's past is drawing her to this small hillside town? Will she let the magic of Italy revive her adventurous past and open her heart once more? And in doing so, will it reunite the three generations of her family?

Ms. Montefiore is an excellent storyteller and it was very easy to get swept along on the current of this story. Gracie is such a lovable character and I warmed to her from the very first page.

This book deals with many issues and I was really involved in the changing relationship of Gracie, her daughter Carina and her granddaughter Anastasia. They initially present as a fairly dysfunctional bunch and I was fascinated to observe the change in their relationship as the story progressed.

Italy was almost a character in itself. I was lucky enough to take a holiday there the year before last so I was really able to place myself within this book quite easily. However, even if you have never visited Italy the author describes it in such vivid detail that you will feel as though you were there. She clearly has a real love for the place and it shines through in her writing.

The dual narrative moves in time from the present day to the 1950's when Gracie was growing up and I found myself impatient to move from one era to the next to progress the story in both timelines. In addition, the narrative also occasionally takes us back to Gracie's English village in order that we can keep up with the present day village story at the same time. For me, this elevated this book into something much more as the minor characters were pure gems in their own right.

The final chapter catches up with the self appointed village matriarch, Flappy Scott-Booth. She is a wonderful character and had me in fits of laughter and demonstrates the authors skill of being able to flesh out even her more minor characters.

I enjoyed this book very much and highly encourage you to read it for yourself. I would love to hear your thoughts on this book. Have you read anything else by Santa Montefiore?

ISBN: 978 1471169618

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

About the Author:

Born in England in 1970 Santa Montefiore grew up on a farm in Hampshire and was educated at Sherborne School for Girls. She read Spanish and Italian at Exeter University and spent much of the 90's in Buenos Aires, where her mother grew up. She converted to Judaism in 1998 and married historian Simon Sebag Montefiore in the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London. They live with their two children, Lily and Sasha in London.

Santa Montefiore's novels have been translated into twenty languages and have sold more than three million copies in England and Europe.

(author details courtesy of Goodreads)

Testament by Kim Sherwood - #BlogTour

A prize-winning literary timeslip novel about what happens after you survive. A young woman uncovers the truth about her family's past as Hungarian Jews who came to Britain in 1945.

 * * * * * * 

The letter was in the Blue Room - her grandfather's painting studio, where Eva spent the happier days of her childhood. After his death, she is the one responsible for his legacy - a legacy threatened by the letter she finds. It is from the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

They have found the testimony her grandfather gave after surviving the labour camps in Austria. And, since he was one of Britain's greatest twentieth century artists, they want to exhibit it. But Joseph Silk - leaving behind József Zyyad - remade himself long ago.

As Eva begins to uncover the truth, she understands the trauma, and the lies, that have haunted her family. She will unravel what happened to József and his brother, who came to England as refugees. One never spoke of his past - the other couldn't let it go.

Their story - and that of the woman they both loved - is in her hands. Revealing it would change her grandfather's hard-won identity. But it could also change the tide of history. This testament can lend words to wordless grief, and teach her how to live.

Kim Sherwood's extraordinary first novel is a powerful statement of intent. Beautifully written, moving and hopeful, it crosses the tidemark where the third generation meets the first, finding a new language to express love, loss and our place within history.

This is an extremely ambitious debut novel. Its scope is huge and I think the author has accomplished this through writing with skill, intelligence and compassion.

Bearing in mind the difficult subject matter, the language is beautiful and each word has meaning. Nothing is superfluous to the construction of this novel and at times I was so caught up in the lyricism of Ms. Sherwood's writing that I had to slow my reading down and re-read occasional sentences of this novel just to luxuriate in it.

There are many Holocaust novels on the shelves of bookshops but this one has a slightly different perspective to some of the others. It looks closely at self-identity and what can happen to the relationships of those who survived and also, the impact that has had on the future generations of survivors.

Evidently well researched the author has brought a myriad of facts to the novel and turned them into an amazingly accomplished and powerful first novel and I look forward to seeing what she will realize in her future writing.

ISBN: 978 1786488671

Publisher: Riverrun

About the Author:

Kim Sherwood was born in Camden, London in 1989. She studied on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, going on to teach creative writing at UEA and the University of Sussex. Kim's stories and articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Mslexia, Lighthouse and Going Down Swinging. The manuscript of her debut novel, Testament, won the Bath Novel Award in 2016.

Kim began writing Testament in 2011 after her grandfather, the actor George Baker, passed away. In the same year, Kim's grandmother began to talk about her experiences as a Holocaust Survivor for the first time. These events provided seeds for a story that grew as Kim undertook research into the events of the Holocaust in Hungary, and as extremism rose again across Europe.

Kim lives in Bath. She is s Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of the West of England. Testament is her first novel.