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Love, lies and lemon pies by Katy Cannon

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Love, Lies and Lemon PiesLove, Lies and Lemon Pies by Katy Cannon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a charming book that will appeal to readers of Louise Rennison, Jacqueline Wilson and Holly Smale and the cover design establishes this. Lottie has had a tough year as she and her mother have tried to recover after the death of Lottie’s father in an accident. Concerned about her progress her school gets her seeing a counsellor and involved in an after school cooking club.

There is a gentle humour in this book and a romance as well but the characters also have problems to overcome whilst aiming to win a school bakeoff competition. Each chapter begins with a recipe and the book has been described as combining the Breakfast Club and the Great British Bakeoff. Fun read.

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Harry Potter, #8)Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was pretty much what I expected. It’s a play, it isn’t written by J.K. Rowling and the characters are adults. The plotline centres on Harry’s son as he begins at Hogwart’s making friends with Draco Malfoy’s son. Being Harry’s son is difficult as is being Draco’s. It features time travel, the difficulty of avoiding making unintended changes in history and a few alternate versions of the characters’ lives. I wouldn’t have thought this would be the easiest of scripts to stage with magical effects and constant changes of scene. I’ve no doubt it is spectacular though. Parent/child relationships are examined in the book – is it a curse to be the child of someone famous/notorious? And parenting when you have no model for it can be a difficult venture. Overall an OK read especially if you don’t have unrealistic expectations.

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2121 by Susan Greenfield

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2121: A Tale From the Next Century2121: A Tale From the Next Century by Susan Greenfield
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Baroness Greenfield is a prominent neuroscientist. In this novel she extrapolates knowledge of brain research to create a plausible future society in which humans divide into two groups according to their perception of the value of brain activity over sensation. Whilst it was interesting to read Greenfield is not a stylist and this dystopian narrative was somewhat laboured.

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Love & Friendship: In Which Jane Austen’s Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated

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Love & Friendship: In Which Jane Austen's Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely VindicatedLove & Friendship: In Which Jane Austen’s Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated by Whit Stillman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this reworking of Jane Austen’s epistolary novella Lady Susan. The title evokes her hilarious juvenilia Love and Freindship, although the first part of the novel is not written in letters, but ostensibly by the nephew of Lady Susan as a narrative vindicating her in the face of the scandalous version given by the spinster authoress (Jane Austen). This nephew writing about his aunt deliberately evokes the biography of Austen written by her nephew. The nephew author (who, it transpires, is in prison) also provides Austen’s novel as a counterpoint to his narrative with annotations explaining how Austen prejudices the reader against Lady Susan.

Lady Susan is a widow who has spent all her husband’s money and now relies on extended visits to relatives and friends to live in the style she expects. She is determined to marry her daughter off to a dim but wealthy noble and flirts outrageously breaking up marriages and attachments in her wake. She is viewed with suspicion by her relatives but is able to charm men into viewing her actions benignly.

A fun read which promises to be a great film with Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan

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The Woman Who Ran by Sam Baker

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The Woman Who RanThe Woman Who Ran by Sam Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this thriller inspired by Anne Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I found it a much better read than The Girl on the Train which had me crying out with incredulity. Baker uses domestic violence as the taboo area that has friends and family criticising the heroine for leaving her spouse rather than the alcoholism of Bronte’s novel. We only gradually find out about this as Madame Grahame experiences migraines so bad that she has holes in her memory. These are eventually filled in by the investigative work of recently retired journalist Gil. There are some implausible aspects of the plot but I found myself absorbed by the story.

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Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

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Me Before YouMe Before You by Jojo Moyes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book sucked me in good and proper. It’s a love story in the end and all the warnings about needing tissues are justified. It’s a poor girl / rich boy story. It’s a rise above the knockbacks story. It’s the ultimate if you love someone let them go story. A very compassionate story.

Lou Clark has just lost the job she loved at the cafe in her home town of Stortfold (couldn’t help but think of Bishops Stortford with that name). She has never really been anywhere or done much. Will Traynor on the other hand is rich and has packed as much into life as possible but he is now suffering the consequences of a motorcycle accident. Lou’s new job is looking after Will. The novel traces this relationship and is not afraid to deal with the problems faced by people suffering from the consequences of severe accidents. One reviewer on Goodreads claims that Moyes is saying that a disabled life is not worth living but she does not say that. She contrasts characters who think that with characters who don’t and Lou’s grandfather stands as a direct contrast to Will in the whole quality of life scenario. I think Moyes deals successfully with a difficult subject and manages to touch delicately on a sensitive topic.

Couldn’t put it down and cried heaps. What more could you ask in a book?

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One Long Thread by Belinda Jeffrey

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One Long ThreadOne Long Thread by Belinda Jeffrey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m not really sure why this novel is classified as a YA novel. Yes the protagonist is 17/18 years old but the tone is nostalgic and the vocabulary does not ring true as that of a teenager. This is the story of three generations of Ruby Moon’s family and Jeffrey uses textiles as an important source of imagery of the links between characters – the one long thread of the title.

The central character is a twin and the narrative covers about a year of her life when her parents split up each taking one twin. Ruby remains in Melbourne with her father while her sister moves to Darwin with her mother who has become increasingly religious and ends up living within a strict religious cult. Ruby finds herself cut off from her twin and has to find her place in greatly changed circumstances. She is a gifted seamstress something she shares with her mother and creating garments becomes increasingly important. Her sister is involved in an accident which leads to Ruby turning to her grandmother in Tonga for answers and escape.

Jeffrey has written a reflective novel which covers some interesting areas. At times the analogies with aspects of the textile industry/silk industry are somewhat laboured and repetitive structures made me think I was rereading something I had already read. This is not a book for everyone but a thoughtful reader, particularly one interested in textiles will find it a rewarding read.

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The Fictional Woman by Tara Moss

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The Fictional WomanThe Fictional Woman by Tara Moss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is fitting that I finished reading this book on Australia Day when only 30% of the honours went to women. Moss’ first non-fiction book combines memoir with a discussion of the female stereotypes which limit women’s full participation in society by creating social norms that many people do not question especially if they are white males who benefit from the status quo. Each chapter deals with a particular idea of women, shows how this has manifested in Moss’ own life and gives a critique of how the idea limits not just women but society as a whole.

This is a very readable book. Moss’ personal stories give a human interest to her well-researched treatise. Occasionally she does labour the point about being more than a model but one can well-understand that as an issue she has had to deal with for so long it is one she still feels strongly about. Her discussion of the hidden issue of miscarriage struck a particular chord with me. I think that the discussion of gendered toys could have been broader. Why is it that toys are more gendered now than they were twenty years ago? Overall a timely and thought-provoking book worth reading by a wide audience.

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The Torch by Peter Twohig

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The TorchThe Torch by Peter Twohig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a sequel to The Cartographer, Twohig’s debut novel centred on an eleven-year-old boy from Richmond in Melbourne with an encyclopedic knowledge of the drains which he uses to evade retribution from a murderer he witnessed in action. This time he is trying to find the boy who burnt down the family home forcing Blayney and his mother to move in with her father, former boxing champion and local crime boss, Archie Taggerty. The ‘torch’ of the title is both Keith, the young pyromaniac, and his father whose firelighting has been far more strategic. Once again Blayney gets involved in adult crimes whilst engaged in a rich fantasy life which helps him compensate for the death of his twin which he blames himself for. It is an entertaining read with a highly individual narrative voice full of humour and inventive similes.

It is a while since I read the first book and it picks up where the last one left off. It took a bit of time to remember who the characters were. The central character now twelve seems much more knowing than what I remember from the earlier book. Knowledge of the underground drains in Melbourne is once again crucial and the contrast of the female characters’ experiences during WW2 and as wives is very telling. Husbands frequently shoot through leaving women to bring up children alone. Blayney acquires a girlfriend but it’s really a boy’s world.

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The Mobile Library by David Whitehouse

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Mobile LibraryMobile Library by David Whitehouse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
An enjoyable read with some testing of one’s credulity. The central character, Bobby Nusku, a twelve-year-old boy, lives unhappily with his father and his father’s girlfriend. He is bullied at school where he has one friend who has a plan to turn into a cyborg to better be able to protect his friend Bobby. This leads to a series of escapades involving broken limbs. Ultimately the cyborg-boy, Sunny, moves away leaving Bobby once again friendless.

When Bobby witnesses a disabled girl who lives near him being bullied by the same bullies who have bullied him, he starts to get to know her (Rosa) and her mother(Val). Val works as a cleaner of the mobile library and accompanying her allows Bobby to borrow and read books which feed his imagination. This is one of the two main ideas of the narrative: how stories form us and give us maps for living. The other is what defines the concept of ‘family’. The book has a number of negative pictures of “real” families (families based on biological ties) and presents choosing who is in one’s family as an alternative to unsatisfatory familial relationships.

There is a strong sense of old-fashioned children’s adventure stories to the second half of the book which is a roadtrip up to Scotland and down to the south coast of England and implausible plot development but it is fun to read.

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