The Whalebone Theatre, by Joanna Quinn

 

I first read The Whalebone Theatre a couple of years ago. Lots of people had enjoyed it, and I did too, but it probably suffered a bit from something akin to 'tall poppy syndrome': do you know what I mean? It's when you hear so many good things about a book/film/place that when you eventually read it/see it/visit it, there's no way it can live up to all those high expectations. Also, I read very quickly, and I think I probably raced through it for the story and didn't accord it the time and attention it so richly deserved.

So I'm glad that my friend Penny Dolan mentioned earlier this week that she had read it recently, and, already having it on my Kindle, and being in search of a book to read while away on holiday, I was able to dive straight into it.

Reader, I'm so glad I did. It is a remarkable book. Of course, that's already established - it's been a huge best-seller - but it's one thing people telling you a book is good, and quite another to find it out for yourself.

In case you haven't come across it, it's a family saga, a little bit in the vein of Elizabeth Howard's Cazalet Chronicles, in that it tells the story of the fortunes of a well-to-do (to start off with) family, starting just after the end of the first world war, and finishing after the second. In particular, it focuses on Cristabel, a small child at the beginning, a grown woman by the end. But no character is neglected: each is gradually revealed in all his/her complexity - all reveal hidden depths, or indeed levels of shallowness. 

And because of the range of characters, Joanna Quinn is able to explore what is happening on both the national and international stages, in what seems like a perfectly believable and natural way. Old family friend Colonel Perry is key in this. He is a significant figure in one of the intelligence organisations, so he knows what's going on, and is also able to propel some of the other characters into particularly interesting places - notably, into wartime France. He's cool and perceptive, and clearly very fond of the Seagrave family - an enigmatic, pivotal character, though at first he seems like a bit of a bystander.

The writing is subtle and beautiful. I loved the way the author described the slowly unfolding relationship between Flossie, Cristabel's younger half-sister, and a German prisoner of war. They are two gentle characters, and theirs is not a dramatic affair, but it's a very moving one. And the descriptions of the Dorset landscape are simply gorgeous. (I'm sorry for not quoting in illustration of this, but useful as Kindle is, it doesn't easily lend itself to finding quotes.)

But it's not all gentle. Cristabel is a wild creature, prickly and tough: not surprisingly as her mother died at her birth, and her stepmother, Rosalind, ignores her as much as she can. The last section of the book, when she becomes an SOE agent in France, is very powerful - particularly towards the end, when she is searching for her beloved brother, Digby, in Paris, as the allies are marching to liberate the city. There were tears, I must confess, and it's a while since a book has made me cry.

Apart from this being a really good read and a beautifully written book, though, it made me think how valuable fiction can be in shining a spotlight (appropriate: I haven't mentioned about Cristabel's interest in the theatre) on historical events. Because history isn't just about the figures who set great events in motion: it's also about the countless millions of ordinary people who are affected - and often suffer - as a result. People sometimes ask writers which book they would like to have written: well, I would most certainly love to have written this one.

The One True Thing, by Linda Newbery

 

This is a book about a family, the Harpers. Like most, the Harper family might seem fairly ordinary at first glance - but in fact it's seething with conflict and secrets. The Harpers live in a lovely old house near Oxford called Wildings, and the novel begins and ends in the lyrically described garden which surrounds the house. At the beginning, Bridget, the mother, is gazing at this garden which she loves so much: 'Against the wall the clematis and climbing rose were fully out, the deep purple of Etoile Violette against the pink-flushed clusters like hedgerow dog roses. Next year she wouldn't see them...In three weeks it would be midsummer, and from that turning point her life would wind down as the days shortened...' So we meet Bridget just as she has found out that she's dying, and we are instantly intrigued and engaged: who is this woman? If this is the end of her story, where will the story go next?

Well, it moves on six years, with a new character, Meg, taking centre stage. Meg, to her surprise, has received a message that Anthony, Bridget's husband, is now also dying - and wants to see her. Meg and Anthony have never liked each other - Meg, a stone carver, was Bridget's friend, emphatically not Anthony's - and neither she nor any of the three Harper children, Rob, Suzanne and Jane, can imagine why Anthony wants to see her. When she arrives he is no longer able to speak, and so there is a mystery here: what did he so badly want to say to her?

Gradually, moving effortlessly from one character to another and from one time frame to another, Linda Newbery reveals the answers to these questions and others. We get to know the quite large cast of characters: how their past histories link them together, and what is 'the one true thing that motivates each of them. For Meg, who first uses the phrase which provides the title of the novel, it is her stone carving. For Bridget, we eventually learn, it is gardening. Arriving at Wildings as a new bride, she feels at a loss: she has had to give up her job to move out here to the countryside, and though it wasn't a job she cared about, she feels she needs to be doing something. The large garden is neglected, and she wonders if she could bring it back to her life. It turns out that she can. She has a natural gift for gardening, and gradually makes a successful career out of it, often working with Meg. The pair are even invited to make a garden for Chelsea - the ultimate accolade. In contrast, Anthony, at the beginning of their life together a successful, enthusiastic university lecturer embarking on writing a book, finds that his star is waning: frustrated by his inability to complete the book, he becomes embittered and depressed.

Each of the characters needs to find his/her 'one true thing' - though it's clear that some of them probably never will: there doesn't seem to be much hope for Rob, for instance, Anthony's eldest child, financially successful but cold and unsympathetic. Jane, the youngest daughter, is consciously searching for her own one true thing, at the same time as she is searching for answers about her parents' relationship and the mystery son. But alongside those explorations - which are fascinating enough - there is a central mystery. For a long time, we're not aware of the nature of this mystery, only that it exists, and has to do with the puzzling relationship that existed between Anthony and Bridget. 

Matters come to a head when Anthony's will throws up a number of surprises - in particular, the existence of another son, hitherto unknown to the rest of the family. But this is only the beginning - there is far more to learn, and the author skilfully keeps us guessing right till the end, when we can finally guess what it was that Anthony wanted to say to Meg right at the beginning.

Running underneath this family story is the issue of climate change and environmental activism. This is never heavy-handed, but it is there: it's a bedrock concern for at least two of the characters, and clearly, for the author. Alongside this awareness of the profound threat to nature, there is a profound appreciation of its beauty: here, for instance, is Meg, remembering Bridget and how she always looked forward to the arrival of the swifts in May: 'And now it was touched with a kind of grief, because everything, everything, was under threat: but there was joy in that too, because this evening was now, here, poignant in its fragility.' The writing is beautiful, particularly the descriptions of the garden and the landscape - but also in its depiction of Meg's carving, and the stones she uses. Here, for instance, is a description of the stone she wishes to use for Bridget's headstone: 'a local limestone, iron-rich, with subtleties of colour revealed in the cutting, blue-shaded grey against ochre and rust. A stone to suit the place, to suit Bridget.'

But as well as all these fine qualities, what any prospective reader will want to know, of course, is whether or not the book is a page-turner - whether it captures and maintains the reader's attention. And it does - it is a very good read.

One last thing - the cover, by Owen Gent, is gorgeous, as are the motifs - mostly swifts, the harbingers of summer, all the more poignant for their fleeting presence - by Victoria Heath Silk, which head up every chapter.

An apology for not showing up

 There really should be snother review up by now. The reason there isn't, is that I have a slight case of the end-of-summer blues, and to cheer myself up, I've been re-reading Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series, set in Quebec. I've already written about them - here - so won't repeat myself. The thing about these books, which may cheer you up if you're feeling a bit down, is not the stories so much - it's that there's a 'gang' of recurring characters, who are funny, mostly kind, always interesting - and very good company. They live in a charming little village called Three Pines, where there is a wonderful bistro and a fantastic boulangerie. So you'll never be hungry, and you'll never be lonely. What could be nicer?

So that's where I've been, and will be till I reach the last book in the series, which is, I think, no.18. Not long now. Till then, see you in the bistro.

What you are looking for is in the library - by Michiko Aoyama

 Books set in Japan seem to be having a moment just now - there are several on the display tables in Waterstones. (If you scroll down a bit, you'll see my review of Four Seasons in Japan, by an English writer who has lived in Japan for many years.)

I read quite a variety of types of books. I've often tried to figure out why on the one hand, I like crime novels and thrillers - while on the other, I like life-affirming books about ordinary lives, where nothing obviously dramatic happens. I also read historical fiction, and non-fiction about travel, nature, and politics. I don't these days read science fiction or horror stories, though I did many years ago. And I'm increasingly unwilling to read dystopian fiction - I find real life quite worrying enough, without positing a horrendous future inhabited by feral tribes and featuring a deathly, post-industrial landscape.

It's partly to do with mood, of course - and partly to do with time of day. I want something soothing for my bedtime reading: recently, gripped by Jack Reacher novels, I've found myself waking from nightmares, and I can't be doing with that, thank you very much. Incidentally - did anyone hear Lee Child being interviewed on the Today programme earlier this week about libraries, and how important they'd been to him as a boy growing up in Birmingham? He was excellent. He said that any passing relative would be inveigled into signing up for a library ticket, so that the family could take out more books than their allotted number - even the dog had a ticket! (I remember this was a big advantage of working as a Saturday girl at the library in our town - I could take out as many books as I wanted.)

Anyway, back to quiet books, of which this is one. It takes the form of a series of stories about an unconnected group of characters, each of who feels 'stuck' in their lives. Each of them happens to go to a small library, where they encounter a rather mysterious librarian, Sayuri Komachi. 'Her skin is super-pale - you can't even see where her chin ends and her neck begins - and she is wearing a beige apron over an off-white, loose-knit cardigan. She reminds me of a polar bear curled up in a cave for winter... She is looking down at something, but I can't see what exactly.'

The thing she is looking down at is an object made by felting. When someone comes to her asking for a book on a particular subject, she will recommend one for them. But she will also recommend one which is nothing to do with what the customer has asked for, and she will also give them one of these small felted objects. And somehow or other, the unexpected book and the object will between them reveal - or help the customer to discover - what it is they need to do to change their life. Some of the customers meet, or their lives cross in some way - and that's essentially it.

So - nothing obviously dramatic. But a message emerges about hope, and the possibility that you  can make small changes which will make a big difference - at whatever stage of life you are at. It's clever, subtle, gentle and joyous. It might be just what you need in times like these.

Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett (but taking in Lee Child along the way.)

 I've recently been following some of the BBC Maestro courses about writing, and very interesting I've found them. (For more about these courses, see here.) The last one I did was with Lee Child, the author of the Jack Reacher books.

Now, I'd never read any Jack Reacher books before starting the course, but I've read several now. There's lots to say about them, but the thing I particularly want to focus on is that once you start one, you really don't want to put it down - at least I didn't. This despite the fact that I found the violence a bit much - there were times when I felt I needed to be reading from behind the sofa, or with one eye closed.

But that apart, they are really impressive. The prose is spare, the characterisation is strong, the plots are intricate and clever. 

In the course, Child is very clear about the sort of fiction he's writing and why he's writing it. Of course, one driver is that he always wanted to be a best-seller, and that he undoubtedly is. But another is this. At one point he discusses the difference between popular fiction and literary fiction. The latter, he says, is addressed to people who are already readers - who love books. These readers, he says, know that sometimes they will have to be a little patient. Their books may start slowly: you may have to work at getting into them - though when you do, the rewards may be great.

But the kind of reader he's chasing is not this kind. He is after the person who doesn't read very much at all. If this kind of person picks up a book - say to take on holiday - s/he will not be patient. S/he will want to be hooked from page one. At the end of every paragraph, every chapter, s/he will need to be enticed into reading on to the next. And if the writer has done his/her job, at the end of the book, they may have become a reader - someone for whom reading has become a joy and a habit.

Perhaps it was because I have so recently come across Lee Child that I find myself at a little bit of a loss with this latest book by Ann Patchett. 

It concerns a family who have a cherry farm in Michigan: Lara, Joe, and their three grown-up daughters. During one summer, as they pick the cherries, the three daughters nag their mother into telling them the story of a romance she had as a young actress with a fellow actor, who later became hugely successful, called Peter Duke. The youngest daughter in particular is obsessed with Duke, in a way that I never quite understood.

And so Lara tells the story (though not quite all of it). The narrative moves between the present and the past. It explores first love, different kinds of love, the mystery of what our parents were like before we knew them, the process of finding out what we really want to do with our lives. It's beautifully written: the farm is vividly realised, as is Tom Lake itself (the setting of that early romance). The characters are complex and interesting - particularly the older generation: I didn't feel I got to know the daughters, but perhaps that was partly because they didn't have much to do except listen.

And yet, and yet: I started this several times before I gave myself a metaphorical slap on the knuckles and told myself to just get on with it. I enjoyed reading it, but at the end, I thought - well, very nice, but actually so what? A pleasant read, but I'm very aware, when I look at the reviews, and hear the enthusiasm of friends who are great fans of Ann Patchett, that I'm missing something. I don't have that sense at the end that ah yes, this is telling me something important, something I didn't even know that I didn't know - if that makes any sense. And this isn't just a comparison between apples and pears, between Lee Child and Ann Patchett - a book certainly doesn't have to be a thriller to leave you with that sense that you've been made to see the world in a slightly different way.

Perhaps it's just me. So please, all you Ann Patchett fans out there - explain to me what I'm missing!

Madensky Square, by Eva Ibbotson

 

This book is quite luscious. I've just finished it, and I really wish I hadn't. As I mentioned in my last post, about The Seal on the Beach (and probably in lots of others too) the key for me  to a good book is that it creates a whole world: one I can enter and be absorbed by. The world of this book is a particularly lovely one: it's a square in pre-first-world-war Vienna. Now, it so happens that I've been to Vienna. I'm not a massive fan of cities, but there was something about Vienna that I loved. Actually, it probably derives from going to see The Sound of Music when I was fourteen. I loved the look of Austria: the mountains, the castles, the lakes - and the romance of patriots resisting the Nazis. And in real life there were the cakes. And the beautiful buildings and fountains. And the smell of lime blossom. And the glittering paintings of Klimt.

So the square in the book is the square of the title. And the characters of the book are (mostly) the people who live in the square. Which points to another successful element of many of the books I particularly like: the gang. You have it in Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway books, in Mick Herron's Slow Horses series, and in Colin Cotterill's Dr Siri books (for reviews of these, do make use of the search box). And in The Lord of the Rings, of course. In Madensky Square, the 'gang' is headed up by Susanna, a beautiful and very skilled dressmaker, who also narrates. She has a successful business, and she's also a lovely and charismatic person with a sharp sense of humour. And she's very kind. You're probably thinking she's too good to be true, but  somehow, she isn't - or at least I didn't find her so. Some of the other members of the gang are Nini, her irascible, stylish, tough-as-old-boots anarchist assistant; Edith, a bluestocking under the thumb of her ghastle mother; Alice, a milliner and Susanna's best friend, who is hopelessly in love with Edith's small, bandy-legged father; and Herr Huber, a large and very kind butcher who is hopelessly in love with the very beautiful other-worldly Magdalena. And of course there is Susanna's lover, the Field Marshal. There are quite a few more - it's a big cast of characters. 

The book is very definitely character-led, rather than plot-led: there are lots of stories, but there isn't really a single narrative that drives it, other than the story of Susanna's life. It's Vienna itself, and particularly the square, with its chestnut trees and fountain and statue, which underpins the whole thing. Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna in 1925, but she and her mother fled the city for England in 1934 - they were Jewish, and her mother was a writer whose work the Nazis had banned. So perhaps the beautiful city of the book is in a sense a dream city, the unattainable setting of a lost childhood. It's utterly delightful.

The Seal on the Beach, by Mara Bergman

 

Full disclosure: Mara Bergman is an excellent editor as well as a writer, and some years ago, she edited two of my books, The Willow Man and Warrior King. But much as I like Mara, I wouldn't be reviewing her book if I didn't think it was something very special.

It tells the story of Maggie, a little girl who is on holiday at the seaside with her aunt and uncle. We soon find out that, much as she is enjoying her holiday, all is not well in Maggie's world; her baby brother is seriously ill, and her mother is consequently having to spend alot of time in the hospital - with the baby, and away from Maggie.

One day, she goes for a walk with her uncle and aunt and spots a baby seal, alone on the beach. Worried, they tell the lifeguards, who are reassuring: the mothers often leave their babies alone on the beach while they go hunting for food: this one's mother will come back, they assure Maggie - everything will be fine.

But Maggie isn't so sure. She feels a connection to the seal - she dreams about it at night - and she is worried about it. She goes back to check on it, and it is still there, but it's becoming listless and sad. The lifeguards, prompted by her, call the RSPCA, who came to the rescue and take it away to be cared for.

So then the two stories - of the sick baby seal and Maggie's sick baby brother - run in parallel, and are both resolved happily at the end.

It's a simple enough story, so what makes it stand out? Partly, of course, it's the emotional heft - it's not overdone, but we very much feel for Maggie. But it's also, I think, to do with the solid, real world which Maggie inhabits. When I first read this story, just last night, I emerged feeling that I had been inside this world and out of my own - and for me, that's one of the most important things I want from a book: I want to be immersed in a different world to such an extent that for a while, I quite forget my own. That this happens is partly because of the strength of the story - but also because of the space which is taken by Mara to describe the detail of this world and make it real. For example:

Then a walk along the sand's

    pebbles and seaweed.

Maggie found a bright yellow shell

    and a smooth white stone,

Like a gull's egg.

    Another, sleek black and blue.

It's seen, of course, through a child's eye: the colours and the textures are what Maggie notices - she doesn't know what kind of shell it is: she doesn't need to, and neither do we.

And notice too the way the words are set out: this is not quite poetry, and not quite prose. It's somewhere in between the two. (Like that bit of the shore between the sea and the land - liminal.) And it creates a spell, an atmosphere, which again binds this world together. It is, literally, enchanting.

There is one thing that puzzles me. Maggie's father is not mentioned at all - where is he? The only hint I could find was this:

She wished she could make 

    everything all right, the way it used to be. 

Before the baby got sick.

Before

    everything

        went

            wrong.

Was Maggie's father one of the things that went 'wrong'?

I hope I've not given the impression, though, that this is a heavy, message-laden book. It really isn't. It's full of the delights of the seaside, the joy of a child's feelings for other small animals, and it's full of hope.

And I haven't mentioned the illustrations, by Brita Granstrom, which are just lovely, and full of details that children will love to pick out. Really, a beautiful book.