Clear by Carys Davies - Review

This book was the June choice for my book club and I was intrigued to read it. It's a novella, so didn't take me very long to read at all. I really reminded me of everything I've read by Claire Keegan in that there's barely a wasted word which I think is a real talent. 

The book is about John Ferguson and his wife Mary. The book is set in Scotland in 1843. John is a Church of Scotland minister but he has been part of the nearly 500 preachers who broke away to form the Free Church of Scotland. This decision means that John has lost his housing and income, so he and Mary are a bit down on their luck. She asks her sister if she can help, and so it is that Mary's brother in law, whose name I forget right now, gets him a job. He will have to travel to a remote island between Scotland and Norway. This period in history was also when the Highland Clearances happened, when people were evicted from their homes by greedy landowners so that the land could be used for grazing. 

There is just one tennant left on this island - Ivar. He speaks a dialect that no one seems to know anymore, although John does try to get some kind of language teaching before he sets off. He is given a rifle, to be used only if Ivar gets angry. He takes with him a photo of Mary, his notebooks where he is translating the gospels into Scots Gaelic, and a few provisions. He gets very seasick on the way over but is eventually on the island. 

Ivar is the only member of his family left on the island. His mother and sister have already emmigrated to Canada and he hasn't spoken to anyone else is around twenty years. The rent collector has left him alone for years and he has a cow and a horse left and otherwise lives on his own wits. He lives in a tiny shack with a bed and a fire and all of that. His most treasured posession is a teapot that is kept up on a high shelf. I actually loved the story of the teapot when it was revealed late on in the book - I thought it was perfect. 

John slips and falls shortly after arriving and Ivar rescues him and his posessions. John is in some kind of coma and sleeps for days in Ivar's bed. Ivar observes him and looks through all his things. He falls in love with the photo of Mary and puts her up on the shelf with the teapot. John eventually comes around but finds that he can't tell Ivar why he's really there - to evict Ivar. 

Instead, the two wander the island and John tries to learn Ivar's language. His notebooks got ruined when he fell, but the pages are usable, if a little bit crinkly. So John starts to write down Ivar's language. And the two do really start to fall in love. 

Mary, meanwhile, is obviously worrying about her husband but knows that the money he will be paid for doing this job will go towards setting up John's church, so she understands why he had to go. She tells the story of how she and John met and fell in love - but the marriage isn't without its problems. 

I won't say more because I just really liked how the book unfolded and would recommend it. I am giving it five out of five. 

Gone For Good by Sarah Crossan - Review

I started reading this book ages ago and then stopped for some reason, but then it was downloaded on to my Kindle so when I was on the plane and had finished The Wedding People, I only had a few books to choose from so decided to go back to this. It did take me a bit of time to get back into it, but I read quite a lot on the plane and then I was hooked so had to read the rest of course. 

The novel is told in verse like all of Sarah Crossan's novels. My only criticism of this is that I just want more! I want more detail in the book and verse novels just don't have the space for it! I think it's so clever to write with these constraints though. It takes quite some skill as a writer!

The book is about Connie, a teenaged girl. She is abducted from her bed in the middle of the night and taken to one of those camps for 'wayward' teens. She has been having a difficult time as her mother died and her dad quickly got with someone else - Wendy - who has been making unwelcome changes to the house. Something happened and Connie got into trouble, and now she's at a camp. She's certain that her dad wouldn't have sent her there but the camp counsellors waste no time in telling her that that's not true. Connie is heartbroken and really needs to heal.

Life is of course brutal in the camp. There are sadistic staff and one of her roommates, who I think was called Florence, or similar, is the type of person who snitches on everything that happens. People start to tell Connie that the previous occupant of her bed, Becky, has gone missing and no one knows what happened to her. Connie starts to unravel the truth, but it's slow going. And she has to suspect everyone, including dishy British guy Alex. 

I liked the book a lot and am glad I got round to reading it. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach - Review

 

My friend Janet does a round up monthly of books that are 99p on Kindle and she often has recommendations, and it often costs me about a fiver when I go through and buy a few. It's like the opposite of a problem, really. Anyway she had recommended this so I bought it, and I picked it up towards the end of May when I was on holiday in Morocco. Weirdly there was a woman sitting round the pool who was reading this in paperback. I would probably have spoken to her about it but she was asleep! 

I read the end of this while travelling back from Morocco, so I got really into it because I read so much while I was on the plane. My friends were sleeping so I had plenty of uninterrupted time! 

The novel is about a woman called Phoebe Stone. She has recently got divorced from her husband. Max. They are both academics and he has been having an affair with someone in the department. They have had a difficult marriage with a bunch of failed IVF treatments. Phoebe is completely bereft and really struggling with life, and then her beloved cat (Harry? Henry) dies. She leaves his body in the cellar and sets off to a luxury hotel. She once read about the hotel in a magazine and decides she will go there to kill herself. 

When she gets there, there is a week long wedding going on. The bride, Lila, is outraged that Phoebe is there and staying in the best suite. Phoebe says she is going to kill herself and Lila is further outraged because that will ruin her wedding. Phoebe takes a bunch of her cat's painkillers and lays down to die, listening to the start of the wedding celebrations that is happening below. 

She doesn't die and heads down to the hotel hut tub. She flirts with a man there and tells him she would like to fuck him, but he tells her he's involved with someone else. In the morning, Lila comes to talk to her. Half the wedding party are hungover and Lila would like Phoebe to come and join a boat party to make up numbers. Phoebe eventually goes and then meets the groom, Gary - who is of course the man in the hot tub from the night before. 

Phoebe gets roped in to be Maid of Honour when Lila's cancels, and Lila tells everyone that she and Phoebe know each other from the gallery where she works. Phoebe ends up getting massively involved in everyone's drama. Gary has a daughter and his wife died; he is still close to her brother Jim. Juice, the daughter, doesn't like Lila and the feeling is entirely mutual. It's a whole mess!

The book is compelling and interesting. I liked Phoebe and felt really sorry for her; life has dealt her a rough hand and her ex husband is a proper dickhead. I liked the story a lot and would definitely read something else by the same author. I've seen that this has been optioned for a film too, and I would definitely watch it. I'm giving this five out of five. 

The Women by Kristin Hannah - Review

In February 2023 I read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and thought it was absolutely brilliant. I must have said this to my friend Stacey at some point and she read it and loved it too. She told me about The Women at some point and said that among her friends, those that had read it first had preferred it over The Nightingale, and vice versa. She had preferred The Nightingale because she knows France better and coule imagine it really well - which is one of the reasons I loved it too! However The Women is set in the Vietnam War and one of my special interests is the Vietnam War, so I was really keen to see what I thought. 

I started this book on the day that I went on holiday to Morocco with two of my friends. The flight is four hours and they both slept or dozed, so I got a big chunk of reading done. On holiday itself, though, we were busy the first few days and were going to bed early, so I had less reading time than I might have. I finally finished it on the 25th, the Monday of our week away. I loved it and would really recommend it. I can't choose between the two books because they're both great!

The book is set in the late 1960s. Frances McGrath is the youngest child and only daughter of a rich family that live in California in a pretty fancy community. Frankie's brother, Finley, is about to join the Navy. The family is a military family and her father, Connor, has a wall of familiy photos in his offce, where all the man are in their military uniforms and the women are only shown on their wedding days. Her mother is quite cold and obsessed with getting Frankie married off so she can carry on the country club life. 

Frankie has trained as a nurse but wants something more out of life. After seeing off her brother to the Navy Frankie decides she will sign up. However, the Navy won't take her until she's been nursing for over two years. But the Army have no such compulsions and before too long she's in basic training. Her parents are shocked and appalled and beg her to reconsider but no, Frankie is off to Vietnam. 

She arrives at an army hospital not too far from Saigon. She's billetted with two women whose names I now forget, but one of them is white and one is Black. They start to show her the ropes. In the treatment areas she is thrown in at the deep end - men arrive desperately injured, quickly evacuated from fighting via helicopter, and have to be assessed immediately. Some can be saved and some need to be comforted as they die. It is chaos and there's more blood and guts than Frankie thought possible. 

She quickly learns lots of nursing and becomes a skilled and capable nurse. She parties with other nurses and doctors, trying to unwind from the horrors that she's seen. She nearly has a dalliance with a man but he's married and Frankie won't do that. She goes out into the nearby villages with other medics to treat some of the locals and to vaccinate the children and so on. 

Later in the book she is moved up north in Vietnam to a place that is much closer to fighting and where things are even more difficult. I don't want to spoil anymore of the first half of the book but Kristin Hannah really gets across the horror, the chaos, the exhaustion, the constant living on edge, etc. 

The second half of the book is about Frankie's life once she gets home. She tries to get a job but finds that her learning in Vietnam counts for little. She suffers from nightmares and clearly has PTSD, like a lot of Vetnam vets do and did. She tries to access Veteran help but is told it's not available to her as she wasn't 'in combat'. She's repeatedly told that 'there were no women in Vietnam'. More than once she loses her temper because SHE WAS THERE.

She gets involved in the anti war protests, which I found really interesting too because I didn't know a lot about it. I didn't know so many veterans turned on the war once they were home, disgusted by what they had been put through. 

I loved Frankie and rooted for her the whole way through. I loved the personal things she went through and I thought the depiction of the war was so well written. I would recommend this book so much and am giving it five out of five. 

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix - Review

I think my friend Sarah bought me this book for my birthday, just because she saw it and thought I would like it. I picked it up in mid May, although I then had to put it down because I had to read books for blog tours, so I didn't finish it until the 21st of May. I do think it was a bit too long and could have been edited down a bit, but generally I really liked it. 

The novel is set in 1970 in a maternity home for pregnant teenagers. Neva is six months pregnant when her parents find out, and her dad drives her to Miss Wellwood's Home in Florida, and abandons her there. All the girls there are given the names of plants so that they do not know each other's true originas - Neva becomes Fern. She is rooming with Rose, who wants to keep her baby and who has wild ideas about running off to California with her baby's dad, and Holly, who is thirteen years old, about to turn fourteen, and who is, at the beginning of the book, mute. There are tons of other girls around too. 

The girls are made to work around the home. They have to meet with the doctor, who patronises them and dismisses all their health concerns. If he feels they are putting on too much weight he puts them on a diet. Miss Wellwood owns the home after the death of her father - she is nasty and non sympathetic. There's a nurse and a social worker too. Girls must work until just before their due dates, when they are permitted to rest. They go to birth their babies, give them up for adoption, and are permitted to rest at the home for a little longer before returning to their families. All their parents have stories about where their daughters are - looking after a sick aunt is a popular cover story. 

The mobile library visits every couple of weeks and Miss Parcae is the librarian. The home insists on 'worthy' books for the girls, but one day Miss Parcae gives Fern a book called How to Be a Groovy Witch. Along with Rose and Holly, and a new girl, Fern tries to do some incantations and spells. And surprisingly, they seem to work. But Miss Parcae isn't who she seems and the girls are in danger...

I did really like the book but I also thought it was too long. It needed editing down a bit. I did like Fern a lot and I loved the stories around the other girls. I thought it had a little of the Magical Negro trope in the form of the two women who work in the kitchen of the home and I would like that to be unpacked a little more in reviews, especially reviews by Black people. But I generally did like it and found it very creepy and gothic. I'm giving it five stars for pur enjoyment. 

The Heartstopper Yearbook by Alice Oseman - Review

I was passing through the library - fortunately Penistone Library is open again so my craft club can meet there again! - and noticed this book in the Young Adult section. I've read all the Heartstopper books and really enjoyed them, and I of course love the TV show so I picked this up. I read it very quickly but it isn't very long and quite a lot of it is drawings. But I loved it!

There are lots of words from Alice themself, including and introduction and including a lot of chat about their artistic process and their story planning. There's Nick and Charlie in their first incarnation, years and years ago, and loads of chat about how the artwork moved on to what we've seen in the comics and the books. 

There are also little snapshots about some of the secondary characters in the books, like Darcy and Tara, which I also thought were really cute. This was a cute little look into Alice's work and what goes on behind the scenes in making a story like Heartstopper. I'm giving it five out of five because it was just cute!

PS did you know that I have three Heartstopper leaves tattooed on my arm? One yellow, one green, and one blue. They're adorable. I hope one day I can show them to Alice at a convention! 

My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney - Review

I saw Alice Feeney talk about this book at Stockport Noir back in January and I really liked the sound of it so I requested it at the library. It finally came in - it was in high demand - and I read it at the beginning of May. 

The very beginning of the book is good. Eden Fox and her husband Harrison have recently moved to the seaside - I imagined it to be like Dorset or Devon but I'm not sure if it's specified - and are living in a gorgeous weird old house called Spyglass. Eden is about to have an exhibition of her art in the town they have moved to, and she goes for a run to run off some nerves. When she gets back to the house, her key won't go in the lock. She knocks, and Harrison answers with a woman who looks eerily like Eden next to him. He says that's his wife and he doesn't know Eden at all. She is obviously extremely confused and the police are called, but she can't prove that SHE is Eden Fox and this woman is an interloper. 

Then there's Birdy's point of view. She has been told she is dying and she is pretty alone in the world after the death of her only relative, her mother. But then a long lost grandmother dies and she inherits Spyglass. She doesn't think she's ever been, but when she gets there she realises that she has, that she spent time there when she was a child. She is sorting through her grandmother's mail when she finds a card outlined in black. It's from a company that says it can predict exactly the day when you will die. As Birdy is dying she gets in touch with them. 

It turns out that Harrison, Eden's husband, is the owner of the company that can predict your death, and also that  Birdy is a police officer who then starts investigating what's going on with Spyglass. 

The book just lot its way for me. There's loads of plot holes and ridiculous things happening and so many coincidences that it really stretched the bounds of possibility for me. I'm not the only one - the internet is full of people complaining about this book. I wouldn't reach for anything else by Alice Feeney because this just didn't impress me that much. I'm giving it three out of five.