A Library of Lemons, by Jo Cotterill

Now, I have to admit that it's some time since I read A Library of Lemons. As you will have noticed, things have been happening in Britain lately, and like many others, I've suddenly become addicted to news and comment programmes, and to following discussions on Facebook - some of which, I may say, have become very heated: and not just the ones about Brexit and the turmoil in the Labour Party. Somehow, the whole tenor of discourse seems to have become more extreme: people are becoming more angry, less kind. It's all very worrying.

I've also been away a fair bit, and will probably post about some aspects of my travels as time goes on. But for now - A Library of Lemons. This is a VERY GOOD BOOK. I will admit that Jo Cotterill is a friend - when you're a children's writer, you tend to get to know other children's writers. But I wouldn't be writing about it if I didn't think it was good - not just good, in fact, but special.

Special in what way? Well, it's a contemporary story about a girl who loves reading and writing - Calypso. Since her mother died, her father has taken refuge in keeping Calypso - and life - at a distance. He is wrapped up in the book he is writing - about lemons - to the extent that he often forgets about minor details like shopping for food. Calypso follows his example by keeping herself separate from her classmates; anyway, her life is so different from theirs that this isn't such a difficult thing to do.

Then a new girl arrives at school - Mae. She is warm and friendly, and she makes it clear that she wants to be Calypso's friend. She too loves writing: the girls bond, and Calypso finds her reserve melting when she meets Mae's family - particularly her mother, who welcomes Calypso with warmth and generosity.

Well, of course things go wrong. But they don't go wrong in an obvious way. For instance, a well-trodden path would have been for Mae to get bored with Calypso, and become tempted away by other, more popular girls. But what happens is far more subtle than that. Somehow, there's real truth in how Jo writes - she doesn't choose the obvious option. One of the exciting things about reading is that sometimes, you read a sentence or a paragraph and you think: 'Yes! I've felt like that, but I never put it into words - in fact I'd forgotten about it, but now I see that's just how it was'. And this happens over and over again with this book. Pretty much at random, here's an example.

...Mae and I... it feels strange to say 'Mae and I', even in my head... we had a conversation. And then it broke. Did I break it? I don't know. Sometimes the rules of conversation are too hard to work out. It's easier to stay silent, or alone.

'Sometimes the rules of conversation are too hard to work out.' That sort of brings me back to where I started...


PS By a funny sort of coincidence, another friend has written a book about lemons which is probably exactly the book that Calypso's father was trying to write. It's The Land Where Lemons Grow, by Helena Attlee, and it's a lovely book, rich with stories about every kind of citrus fruit you've ever heard of and lots you haven't!

You really couldn't make it up...

Yesterday, I watched Theresa May making her first speech as Britain's new prime minister. What she said was unexpected: she talked about unity - about bringing people together and healing divisions. It all sounded rather good, and for the first time since the referendum result three weeks ago, I allowed myself to feel a little bit of hope that perhaps there might be just a tiny glimmer of light on the horizon.

And then, an hour or so later, she appointed Boris Johnson as Foreign Minister. Here he is.

And here's a link to some of the reactions to this news.

This is the man who employed his considerable gifts of persuasion to persuade the British people into voting to leave the European Union - in, it would appear, a cynical attempt to further his own career. This is the man who walked away when, against his expectation, he succeeded, and it all started to look a bit too difficult. This is the man who has unforgivably insulted world leaders, including Barack Obama, and who has never run a Government department.

So that's it. I've had it. Life in Britain has become so much stranger - and not in a good way - than fiction, that if a talking animal or boy wizard walked in through the door right now, I wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Back to books it is.

So that was the result...

... and this is pretty much how I feel about it.

No more words at the moment - but Shakespeare's keep echoing through my mind:

'Lord, what fools these mortals be!'

With love to Europe

I have been away quite a bit over the last few weeks, so I haven't posted for a while. And I've been rather preoccupied by the EU referendum; I very firmly believe we should remain in the European Union, and I'm extremely worried as to what will happen if we vote to leave. I have also, like all of us, been very saddened by the killing of the MP Jo Cox.

So I haven't really the heart to post much at the moment, and will just leave you with a few pictures of Vienna, where we were recently. Walking along its beautiful streets, smelling the lime blossom, visiting its wonderful museums and art galleries, I found it difficult to believe that we wouldn't want to be part of a Europe that has such marvels in it.

See you on the other side!

The Karlskirche, with a Henry Moore sculpture in front of it.

Fountain close to the Liberation Monument, which was erected by the Russians, and which the Austrians promised to maintain when they left.

Vienna has so many beautiful fountains. This one is in the Belvedere Gardens, where a gallery houses the most beautiful paintings by Klimt, including 'The Kiss'.

The Stephansdom, in the centre.

These Shallow Graves - by Jennifer Donnelly

This book has 484 pages; I started it on Friday afternoon and finished it on Saturday morning before breakfast. Yes, I woke up early - but that time-scale should suggest what an excellent read this book is!

It's set in New York in 1890, and it's about seventeen year-old Josephine Montfort. Jo has everything: she's intelligent, and beautiful, and she comes from a prestigious and very wealthy family. She has every chance of making an excellent marriage - but she wants more than that. She wants to be a writer - a journalist.

It seems highly unlikely that she will ever be able to achieve her ambition, and in truth, marriage to her pleasant, handsome cousin sometimes doesn't seem like that bad an idea to her. But then her father is found dead and everything changes; because Jo suspects that there's more to his death than his family are being told.

She enlists the aid of a young reporter called Eddie Gallagher - and quickly finds that she is very attracted to him. Together, they plunge into the New York underworld to seek out the truth. To do this requires great reserves of courage, determination and sneakiness - all of which Jo has in spades.

The novel is brilliantly plotted. It has one of those breathtaking endings where you suddenly see how all sorts of threads have  been expertly woven together, and you feel like cheering. The characters are completely convincing - from Jo and Eddie to Fay, a pickpocket who looks as delicate as a fairy but is as tough as old boots, and the Tailor, a Fagin-like character who runs an army of child thieves.

Like many historical novels with a female central character, the author wants the heroine to have a 21st century sensibility: a desire for equality and independence. This sometimes seems imposed and a little unconvincing, but in this book, this is not the case. The times are changing, and it seems entirely convincing that a character such as Jo would be at the forefront of that.

Published by Hot Key, the book is marketed as being for young adults, but I hope it finds a much wider audience: this somewhat-advanced-in-years adult certainly loved it!

The House by the Lake, by Thomas Harding

Thomas Harding's grandparents were originally called Hirschowitz, and they were Jews who managed to escape from Hitler's Germany just before escape pretty much ceased to be an option. They were relatively fortunate; most of their family got out too. When they came to England, Erich refused to speak a word of German from that day on. For the rest of their lives, they didn't buy German cars, they didn't go on holiday in Germany, their children did not learn German, and they did not speak of the Germany they had known in the years before the war. Only Elsie, Thomas's grandmother, sometimes spoke of it; and particularly, she would tell him about a wooden house on the shore of a lake just outside Berlin, called the Lake House. It was the summer holiday home of her family, the Alexanders, and she spoke of it with longing. It was, she said, her 'soul place'. But when boundaries all over Europe were drawn after the war, the Lake House found itself in East Germany; the Wall ran across the edge of the lake, separating the house from its lakeside frontage. Even if the family had wanted to go back, it was no longer possible.

But after the wall fell, Elsie decided she was going to go back. In 1993, she took with her six of her grandchildren, including Thomas, then 25. She showed them Berlin, and, a vision in black mink and scarlet lipstick, she took them to the Lake House and introduced herself to a bemused Wolfgang, the current tenant, rather less elegant in workman's overalls and a woolly hat. She assured him she hadn't come to reclaim the house (which of course had been appropriated from her family by the Nazis), and then she looked round, eager to see the old house she remembered, still discernible beneath the changes that had been made in the nearly sixty years since she had left.

Twenty years later, in 2013, Thomas decided he wanted to know more about his family's German past. He decided to go back to the Lake House. By now it was empty and it had deteriorated considerably. But he felt himself drawn to it. Why had it been his grandmother's 'soul place'? What had happened to it in the years after the Alexanders left - who had lived there?

As he sought the answers to these questions by tracing the history of the house, he found that he was also mapping the history of Germany in the twentieth century. In broad terms, most of us will know this history. But the book takes us into the lives of the people who lived it - from the aristocratic Wollank family which originally owned the estate on which the house stood, to the Alexanders who built the house and were then forced to abandon it, to Wilhelm Meisel, who became a tenant in slightly murky circumstances and was in turn affected when the communists took charge, to Ella Fuhrmann who was allowed to live in part of it as a caretaker, to Wolfgang Kuhne, who was allotted space in the house by the authorities and lived there for most of his adult years. Finally, it was abandoned to squatters, until the council stepped in and boarded it up.

The author and the house

It's at this stage that Thomas Harding revisits the house. And as he learns more about it, he becomes convinced that he wants to save it. So really, there are two narratives; the main one concerning the story of the house itself, and the secondary one concerning his mission to rescue it from redevelopment.

It's a fascinating and very readable story. It covers so much: how did Germany sink into the madness of the Nazi era? What was it like at the end of the war, when the Russians advanced? There have been excellent studies of what happened in Berlin, but I haven't read much about what it was like for civilians outside the big cities. How was it to live in the shadow of the wall? What happened if you were asked to become a Stasi informant and you refused? All these questions and far more are covered in the book.

And I'm fascinated by how Harding managed to find out so much, just between 2013 and now - and to convert it into this engrossing narrative, Sure, he had a researcher - but even so! I hope he'll be giving a talk at a festival near me some time soon...

Katy's Pony Summer, by Victoria Eveleigh

A couple of weeks ago, I was facing a choice between what sounded like a compelling - but very dark - new detective series on the TV, and a compelling - but very dark - detective novel on my Kindle. Hm, I thought. Not really feeling very noir just at the moment. What to do...? And then my eye fell on the book which Voctoria Eveleigh, whom I met last year on an authors' get-together, had sent me.  On the cover is a picture of a girl (the eponymous Katy), three Exmoor ponies, and the rolling hills of Exmoor. Just the job!

I thought I would just start it, but in fact I finished it that same evening. It's the most recent in a series - I've also read the previous one - about a girl who loves and looks after horses, particularly Exmoor ponies, and her friends and family. It reminds me of the pony books I used to read as a child, by writers such as Christine Pullein Thompson and Ruby Ferguson but these are up-to-date teenagers, with phones and everything.

It sounds such a lovely life, riding across the moors and having adventures. In this one, Katy agrees to look after a pony who has such a bad injury from a piece of wire that's ensnared its leg that both the vet and Katie's father think it will probably have to be shot. It's hard work - much harder than she anticipates when she agrees to do it, but it's worth it in the end.

There's also another story line about poachers who are after the antlers from red deer - there's a very exciting sequence at the end where Katie and her friend manage to trap them, using their knowledge of the moor to help them.

But I think the main reason I enjoy these books so much now is that Exmoor, where Victoria lives, is almost another character in the book. I'm very fond of it too - we live not far away and we've often visited it over the years. We were there a few weeks ago, and it reminded me what a beautiful and varied landscape it is - if you haven't been there for a holiday, and you can possibly manage it, you really should go. It's not as well known as the other National Parks, but it's so lovely. Reading the book took me back there for a few hours. Here are a few pictures to give you the flavour of it, for those of you who aren't familiar with it - what's particularly special is that the sea is so close, too.