Night Road by Kristin Hannah

People on the island still talk about what happened in the summer of 2004. They sit on their bar stools and in porch swings and spout opinions, half-truths, making judgements that aren't theirs to make. They think a few columns in a newspaper give them the facts they need but the facts are hardly what matter.

Lexi and Mia are inseparable from the moment they start high school. Different in so many ways - Lexi is an orphan and lives with her aunt on a trailer park, while Mia is a golden girl blessed with a loving family and a beautiful home. Yet they recognise something in each other which sets them apart from the crowd and Mia comes to rely heavily on Lexi's steadfast friendship. Something which, at first, worries Mia's mother, Jude.

Mia's beloved and incredibly good-looking twin brother Zach finds life much less complicated than his sister. Jude thught she'd never have to worry about her son, that he would always sail through life easily achieving whatever he, and his family, wanted and expected - but then he fell in love.

The summer they graduated is a time they will always remember and one they could never forget. It is a summer of love, best friends, shared confidences and promises. Then one moment changes them all forever. As hearts are broken, loyalties challenged and hopes dashed the time has come to leave childhood behind and learn to face their future.

I recently read The Nightingale by this very talented author which I thought was a fantastic read so I came to this book with very high expectations. To be honest, I found the beginning of the book very predictable but then an event happens in the plot which had me gripped to the very end.

What I think really sets Ms Hannah apart is the way in which she focuses her story line almost completely around the characters. Through dialogue and narrative she fleshes them out to the point that, as a reader, I almost felt I knew these characters and was emotionally caught up in their lives.

It is a sad story which deals with privilege and deprivation, the consequences of love in all it's forms and the huge part that forgiveness of ourselves and others has upon us.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I did The Nightingale, but it was worth reading not only by adults but I think mature teenagers would also get alot from this book.

ISBN:  978 0330534970

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

About the Author:

Kristin Hannah is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-one novels, including the blockbuster Firefly Lane, Night Road and Home Front. She is a former lawyer turned writer and is the mother of one son. She lives in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii with her husband.

The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee

Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in extremist political activism. Compelled by an idealistic desire to change his life and the world around him, all he leaves behind before disappearing is a note.

The ageing patriarch and matriarch of his family, the Ghoshes, preside over their large household, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface of their lives the sands are shifting. More than poisonous rivalries among sisters-in-law, destructive secrets and the implosion of the  family business, this is a family unravelling as the society around it fractures. For this is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable change, the chasm between the generations and between those who have and those who have not, has never been wider.

I found this to be a weighty read - both in size and depth.

I was very grateful for the family tree which is included at the beginning of this book as I think I would have been quite confused by all the different characters, of which there are plenty. This enhanced my appreciation of the minutiae of the lives of the people in this household and whilst I cannot claim to have really liked any of them I did at least understand how they had become the people they were.

I like books which are set in India but I found very little in terms of the rich atmosphere which could have been a real asset to this book. I wanted to be able to drink up the sounds and smells of India but I found this sadly lacking.

However, this has been very intelligently written and the author has a clear understanding of the socio political factors of the time.

What I loved about this book was the way Mr Mukherjee's prose flows on the page. It is beautifully written with a poeticism I could lose myself in. I would read his other novel for that reason alone as this book has been well crafted and is simply lovely to read.

ISBN: 978-0099554486

Publisher: Vintage

About the Author:

Neel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta and now lives in London.. His award winning first novel A Life Apart, was published in 2010. The Lives of Others is his second novel.

Forever Yours by Daniel Glattauer

Judith, in her mid-thirties and single, meets Hannes when he steps on her foot in a crowded supermarket. Before long he turns up in the exclusive little lighting boutique that Judith runs with the help of her assistant Bianca.

Hannes is an architect - single and in the prime of life. Not only is he every mother-in-law's dream, but Judith's friends are also bowled over by him. At first Judith revels in being put on a pedestal by this determined man who seems to have eyes only for her. But as time goes by, she finds his constant displays of affection increasingly wearying and his intensive attention becomes oppressive and overwhelming.

In the end she feels cornered, controlled and stifled. All her attempts to get him out of her life fail. He seems to follow her all the way into her dreams, and when she wakes up he's already waiting on her doorstep to pamper her afresh.

I quite liked this book. It has a real eeriness about it and challenged what I was thinking throughout.

The prose is written with a crispness which I think added to the book. The language needed no embroidering or poeticism. In fact, it would have detracted from the intensity of the characters. Both Judith and Hannes are well drawn out characters and I really enjoyed the way the author shifted the emphasis from one character to the other.

However, one criticism I have of this book is that there are times that the dialogue reads like a script rather than a novel and I felt this detracted from the flow of the dialogue.

I found this an enjoyable book. It is never going to make it into my top ten for the year but I keep thinking about it and mulling the plot over in my mind so maybe that speaks for itself. It is worth a read and I would love to hear your thoughts on this book if you read it.

ISBN: 978-0857052490

Publisher: MacLehose Press

About the Author:

Daniel Glattauer (born 1960) is an Austrian writer and journalist. He was born in Vienna, where he still lives and works. He is a regular columnist for Der Standard. He is best known for his novel Love Virtually and its sequel Every Seventh Wave. His literary work were translated in more than 35 languages and have been sold over 1 million times.

The Report by Jessica Francis Kane

On a March night in 1943, on the steps of a London Tube station, 173 people die in a crowd seeking shelter from what seemed to be another air raid. When the devastated neighborhood demands an inquiry, the job falls to magistrate Laurence Dunne.

In this beautifully crafted novel, Jessica Francis Kane paints a vivid portrait of London at war. As Dunne investigates, he finds the truth to be precarious, even damaging. When he is forced to reflect on his report several decades later, he must consider whether the course he chose was the right one. The Report is a provocative commentary on the way all tragedies are remembered and endured.

Being a Bethnal Green girl myself I was very interested to read this book as I was completely unaware of this tragedy when I was growing up there. Maybe that was due to the egocentricity of youth but I am fairly sure that I never heard anyone speaking of it. 

Also, the government of the day wanted this huge civilian disaster kept quiet for reasons of their own and this is certainly the first fictionalised account of the catastrophic events on 3rd March 1943 that I have come across. Ms Kane has done well to highlight this event and written about it so sensitively.

Her writing style is sparse and to the point which makes this a compelling read. It is a dark tale that creates real emotion in the reader as we learn  about the experience of the survivors of this devastating accident.

What I really liked about this book is the humanity which the author portrays through the characters. Whilst the government were looking for somewhere to pin the blame for the accident the author demonstrates how multi layered and complicated the disastrous events really were.

This is well worth reading and I think anyone who enjoys historical books will enjoy this.

ISBN:  978-1846272806

Publisher: Portobello Books

About the Author

Jessica Francis Kane is the author of The Report, a finalist for the 2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and a Barnes & Noble "Discover" pick. She is also the author of the story collection Bending Heaven which was published in the US and the UK. Her stories have been broadcast on BBC radio and have appeared in many publications, including Granta,Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review.Her essays and humor pieces have appeared in Salon, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency andThe Morning News, where she is a contributing writer. She lives in New York with her husband and their two children.

Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths

Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist, spends her life looking at death. But now death has found her, with the news that her long-time friend Dan Golding has been killed.

Ruth's grief soon turns to suspicion when she receives a desperate letter from Dan, sent the day before he died. He had made a ground-breaking discovery - and was petrified of the consequences.

Ruth is compelled to travel north to investigate further, alongside DCI Harry Nelson who is also drawn into the case. But where Ruth goes, so does her daughter, Kate. This time, the risks are even higher.

This is number five in the Ruth Galloway series. I have already read the first four, The Crossing Places, The Janus Stone, The House at Sea's End and A Room Full of Bones.

The more of these books I read the more I like the character of Ruth Galloway. She is portrayed as such an ordinary person with flaws and insecurities that make her very easy to identify with.

Ms Griffiths is very skilled indeed in the way that she portrays both her main characters and the more peripheral ones. In this book in the series we get to know more about Cathbad, Ruth's colleague and friend, and I really enjoyed being able to do so.

I am very impressed that five books into the series the author is able to pull off such good fiction writing. Lets face it, we have all read series where the books get weaker as the series progresses but that is absolutely not the case with these books. The twists and turns in the plot are still as entertaining and I think it takes real skill as a writer to be able to keep up the impetus.

I already have the remainder of this series on my Kindle and I am very much looking forward to reading them very soon.

ISBN: 978085738896

Publisher:  Quercus

Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway novels take for their inspiration Elly's husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist, and her aunt who lives on the Norfolk coast and who filled her niece's head with the myths and legends of that area.

She has two children and lives near Brighton.

The One in a Million Boy by Monica Wood

Miss Ona Vitkus has - aside from three months in the summer of 1914 - lived unobtrusively, her secrets fiercely protected.

The boy, with his passion for world records, changes all that. He is eleven. She is one hundred and four years, one hundred and thirty three days old (they are counting). And he makes her feel like she might be really special after all. Better late than never...

Only it's been two weeks now since he last visited, and she's starting to think he's not so different from all the rest.

Then the boy's father comes, for some reason determined to finish his son's good deed. And Ona must show this new stranger that not only are there odd jobs to be done, but a life's ambition to complete . . . 

Put simply, this book is outstanding and I loved it from start to finish. In fact, even though I have read another book since (which was also very good) my mind keeps going back to this wonderfully and eloquently constructed book.

I think I would be fair in saying that this is unlike any other book I have ever read as it is constructed in three very different ways. First, the boy in the book is a list maker so we see several of the lists he makes (anyone like me who is a natural born list maker will really get this part of the book.) 

Secondly, some of the book is presented as an interview but we only see the answers and not the questions. I know that sounds a little strange but it really does work and  helps us to understand more about Ona and the boy.

Thirdly, the rest of the book is in prose form and is completely engaging.

The characters are all very well rounded, from the 104 year old Ona to the eleven year old boy. It is the story of the unlikely friendship between these two individuals and the families in which they each belong. But it is about so much more - it's about love, friendship and grief and it made me laugh out loud and cry at the same time. It is deeply moving and I think it will stay with me for a long time.

This book is due to be published on 5th April 2016 here in the UK and I encourage you to pre-order this from your favourite bookseller as it will not disappoint. It is a fantastic read from Ms Wood and whose back canon I am now determined to read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys excellent writing.

ISBN:  978-1472228352

Publisher: Headline Review

About the Author

Monica Wood is the author of four works of fiction, most recently Any Bitter Thing, which spent 21 weeks on the American Booksellers Association extended bestseller list and was named a Book Sense Top Ten pick. Her other fiction includes Ernie’s Ark and My Only Story, a finalist for the Kate Chopin Award.

Happy Easter

I just wanted to wish those of you who celebrate Easter a happy and restful few days.

I have been a little quiet on the blog recently. I have been on a lovely holiday with family to Somerset. What a beautiful part of the country it is. We were surrounded by farmland and woke in the mornings to the gentle sounds of sheep bleating and cows mooing. It was wonderful and an opportunity to catch up with family members who have been overseas for a while.

I managed to get in some decent reading times and I will be back with reviews on The Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths and the soon to be published The One in  a Million Boy by Monica Wood. Both excellent books that I am looking forward to sharing with you.

In the meantime, I send you all good wishes for the Easter holiday.