I hadn’t read any stories by Claire Douglas but thought that The Couple at No 9 might be an interesting place to start. It certainly came after a lot of marketing hype – especially online – including soundbites that did not reflect the considerable length of the book itself.

It is the story of a young, pregnant girl - Saffron Cutler – who moves into a Cotswolds cottage with her boyfriend and begins to renovate it, including the building of an extension, until all works stop after two skeletons are found buried in the garden when its new foundations are being dug out.

The story is really about the interplay of human relationships, especially between Saffron and her rather flighty mother, Lorna, who jets in from Spain, and her grandmother Rose who very definitely harbours old secrets as deep as the new hole in the garden. Rose is suffering from dementia and the critical issue becomes one of how much can she remember, or how much is she holding back.

A second plot strand involves a chef from Yorkshire – Theo – and his search for the truth of events surrounding his mother’s death. I’m not sure I believed in the intersection of the two stories, but he was certainly a very well-drawn character, and we accompanied him sympathetically on his mission.
The author explores the value of friendships as well as familial relationships and, especially, trust – which was tested to a suspenseful limit.

The story (and mystery) unfolds in a compelling, time-shifting structure which keeps the reader involved. I did find it slightly unbelievable in places, and there was a point about two-thirds through where my interest began to wane – probably due to a bit of padding - but the pace was picked up again as we headed, a little breathlessly, towards a surprising finishing line.
​
I thought the writing was easily accessible and the plotting was pretty good throughout, with no loose ends remaining; only my incredulity that I hadn’t managed to spot some of them flapping in the West Country breeze earlier.

I am very pleased and proud that our white family has been blessed with new members from Nigeria and India. Unfortunately, I also remember from my days growing up in the 1960s and 1970s how pleasure was more likely to have been pain and prejudice substituted for pride. In post-war Birmingham and other inner cities around the UK immigration from other countries was not welcomed, rather ridiculed, feared and hated.

It is against this background that Kit de Waal has written a memoir of her childhood: Without Warning & Only Sometimes. In her family, immigration was not just about the colour of skin, but geographical, social, and religious contempt for the country’s nearest neighbours. Kit’s mother was white and from Wexford in Ireland. Her father was black and from St Kitts. She and her brothers and sisters were, therefore, not only of mixed-race appearance for the general public to judge and dismiss, but also held in contempt by the wider family members on either side. Her mother would talk to the ‘white’ in them and her father, the ‘black.’

Throw into this mix Kit’s mentally disturbed mother being persuaded to join and then becoming the strongest advocate of a message of salvation from Jehovah’s Witnesses, and you can only imagine from a safe distance the fault line over which these children had to jump daily, never quite knowing when or where it might appear, hence the title of the book.

Though they worked hard at menial jobs, the children were born of poor parents and poor parenting. I remember well those signs outside of boarding houses and ‘hotels’ promising paradise but not for ‘blacks, Irish or dogs.’ Later, Kit turns up for job interviews via her mother’s Irish surname and is turned away immediately because of the colour of her father’s skin.

The tale is beautifully written and, as one also born in 1960, memories of the corner shops with their stern, prescriptive shopkeepers and quiet, boring Sundays which were only ‘special’ in their dullness, were refreshingly evocative. It is a world that has all but disappeared now; its idiosyncrasies reduced to details in a book which new generations of readers will be unable to relate to - barely even believe.

She also manages to describe these memories so convincingly from the viewpoint of a child from an early age through to her early ‘twenties. This isn’t a ‘look back in anger’ memoir as much as a transport yourself back and see the world through the lens of a child all over again.

I suppose there is always the temptation to believe that things could not have been quite so bad as this; that the horror of uncertainty must have been embellished if only a little, for dramatic (and commercial) effect. I was lucky enough to hear Kit speaking at a literary event recently and my opinion now is that things were probably even worse. Her brother, especially, found it hard to even think about his childhood beyond two pages of Kit’s draft, let alone allow himself to be taken back to such dark days.
​
Kit herself was friendly and down to earth and authentic, as this memoir undoubtedly is. Though still suffering from occasional anxiety (and who, after reading this, could fail to understand why) she is refreshingly upbeat and positive: a survivor. Having witnessed the results of a TV production team completely butchering her breakthrough novel – My Name is Leon – I hadn’t felt compelled to read the book itself. But I shall now.

I do worry a little when the marketing blurb pushing a new book speaks of it being ‘charming,’ or ‘uplifting’ and, especially ‘feel good.’ For me, however good a book may have been imagined, crafted, and targeted, that connection between myself and the characters through to the author does not always resonate. If we are literally not on the same page, then the words will never quite join up. The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page alleviated my worries quite early on.

As somebody who likes to write as well as read, I have so often shared the view that everyone has a story to tell. Here is a book of ordinary stories within a quite extraordinary story. The author worked in advertising, as I did. She ran a shop, as I did (flowers for her, sweets for me). We share a love of history, and she also knows the Cambridge area where the book is set as well as I do. I think she must have been gathering material and making notes as I try to do. In short, I felt an immediate connection with the writer and the characters she created firmed up that relationship rather than coming between us.

And what characters they are! From the main protagonist Janice, who is a cleaner, to bus driver Euan and the eccentric, wonderful Mrs B, not to mention a dog called Decius, whose perceived expressions made me laugh out loud again and again. Collecting each of their stories, Janice revisits her own but, rather than editing it to make it fit with where she finds herself now, her honesty enables her to understand it and herself better to finally bring her salvation, even as her current situation seems to be crumbling all around her.

The strands of comedy and tragedy weave together, as in the best dramas where we cheer the ‘ordinary’ ambitions of Janice and Euan whilst lamenting the bad behaviour of those who consider themselves to be entitled enough to consider them ‘just’ a cleaner or ‘just’ a man who drives the bus.

I did find the reveal of Janice’s earlier story a little clunky as I did the back story of Euan which I think could have been filled out more without necessarily slowing the pace of the plot. Having said that, they and Sally won me over. The ending was great if sad because it was the end.
​
I’d recommend the book to those wanting an accessible, light touch covering the meaty issues of real life; a bit like the best fairy tales which entertain each generation of us while delivering moral guidance which all of us need from time to time.

One of my earliest memories is of being carried on my father’s shoulders along the cliffs towards a white lighthouse at Hunstanton in Norfolk. A little further on, and a little further around the coast, we had a holiday in Happisburgh whose own red and white striped version was perilously close to the rocks below. This building had been designed to warn of imminent danger to those already on the sea. It too was at risk of joining them – imminently.

In The Lamplighters Emma Stonex captures that fine line between the comfort of the light, faithfully kept burning by three lighthouse keepers, and the discomfort of life and death being such close neighbours. I had only really seen lighthouses and their keepers in a somewhat romantic light previously, and this novel is indeed atmospheric as it leads us into a vanishing and vanished way of life.
 
After a period of twenty years the narrator of this book is looking back at events in Cornwall in 1972 when our three keepers seemingly disappeared into thin air. Our appetites are immediately whetted by discovering that the only entrance door had been locked from the inside and all the clocks had stopped. There is some dispute about whether or not there had been bad weather in the area at the time, but the simple fact remains: they are gone.
 
We try to unravel the mystery with the help of the men’s partners who each have their own secrets – some independently as they try to move on, others closely connected with each other. All the time the sea surrounds the lighthouse just as they are each surrounded by doubt and a sense of hopelessness in the face of the unrelenting tides.
 
The book is undoubtedly beautifully written with phrases such as ‘when night yawns for morning and the sea starts to separate from the sky.’ That younger, romantic version of myself was immediately taken back to the coast and these strange monoliths with their unspoken truths. I felt that I was actually there in Cornwall, remembering my first visit to an aunt in Penzance just a year before this fictional event took place.
 
I raced through the first part of the book, intrigued of course by the central plot, but also where each of the key characters had been and where they were going. I really felt that I knew them well and understood the pain of their loss, expressed though this was in quite different ways. As an exploration of loneliness and the effects of isolation, it was outstanding.
 
I did think the second part was too long and could definitely have been shorter in the final third, although the denouement and choice of endings as back stories revealed themselves was gripping and kept me guessing right up until the end. I especially loved the way we discovered who the writer was, and why.
​
For any readers seeking a good mystery with a healthy mix of romance and reality, while exploring themes of anxiety and depression, I would heartily recommend this story. I felt a sense of loss when I finished it too.

​Science lessons at school were not generally enjoyable for me. Biology made me pass out whereas Physics made me cry out with frustration. I could understand Chemistry - up to a point. I must admit that even that was still quite a low point in my education and was way down on my preferred periodic table of lessons, with English and History usually combining to make me feel happy instead.

When I read the marketing endorsements for Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus it was really the unusual juxtaposition of science with TV in its own exploratory period that made me sit up and take notice (which I occasionally did in those long-ago classes when not using the Bunsen burners to pointlessly burn hundreds of defenceless spills – a sort of metaphor for my own life back then). Chemical terms are used throughout the book, but I literally jumped over them, happy in the knowledge that our main character – Elizabeth Zott – understands what she is talking about with such authority. The book races along and I had as little inclination as ever to pause for descriptions of method and apparatus.

Elizabeth is a research scientist thwarted by the misogyny of 1950s America and still in the 1960s as she becomes an unwitting feminist hero in her role as the host of a TV cookery show. The programme airs in the afternoon slot immediately before ‘housewives’ everywhere need to galvanise themselves to ensure their husbands’ suppers are on the table the moment they walk through the door. Elizabeth is also strikingly beautiful which leads to both men and women wanting to pigeonhole her even more.

Elizabeth has met and fallen in love with her kindred spirit, Calvin, and a brilliant daughter - brilliantly named Mad for short – is the result of their experiments. Calvin’s back history provides a simmering background to the novel, while Elizabeth, her daughter and curious dog Six Thirty take centre stage.

Achingly funny in places, I loved the introduction of secondary characters such as her down-trodden neighbour and equally eccentric doctor, but her TV producer Walter Pine was probably my favourite of all. He was as mystified by the autistic certainty of Elizabeth as he was captured and concerned in equal measures by her uncontrollable zest for life in largely unforgiving circumstances.

I didn’t really like the ending – and not just because it was the ending. I felt that things unfolded far too quickly. We needed to be put through more tests before arriving at the author’s (and our) results. I got a real feel for early 1960s live television shows but would have liked a little more historical context to this, and in the early part of the story set in the 1950s. I felt that for all the undoubted accuracy (I assume) of the science, some aspects were too thin and skated over before the ice could melt.

In conclusion, this isn’t just a story about a woman trying to make it in a man’s world – then or now – it is a tale of something or somebody quite different from us landing in our everyday lives. It is about how we handle that difference. History shows that we have so often handled that badly. Unsurprisingly I learned more from that subject than the indisputable evidence that science is all around us: it makes us who we are and how we are with others, even if we don’t often talk about it.

I read this book in one sitting on a plane from London to Miami in January. I have never managed to do this before. Perhaps it was the strength of the in-flight coffee or my eager anticipation of a holiday in the sun after four years? I think both of these aspects would have helped, but The Only Story by Julian Barnes whisked me away long before we landed, and I think that would still have been the case if my feet had remained firmly on the ground.

Looking back over fifty years of his life, we begin our story in the claustrophobic home counties of England of the 1960s when Paul is just 19 and falls in love with Susan, a married woman of 48. He believes himself to be in a love which is concealed – initially from each other – and then from friends and, especially, their families. Part of the attraction – for we readers and for them – is how this will inevitably impact on middle-class convention (hiding its own dark secrets). This is as much a coming-of-age novel as it is an understanding of times that were about to be changing.

 Part two of the book begins when we follow Paul and Susan, full of hope as they are, out of the tedious expectations of small village life and tennis club rules to London where things begin to unravel for them both, together and independently. The final section effectively illustrates our narrator’ attempts to find new loves and addressing the central theme of whether it is better to ‘love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less?’ He thinks this to be the only real question left in a life unfulfilled.

 Good or bad ‘first love’ can of course define our lives. The tenderness of discovery, harnessed with a seemingly innate fragility can render subsequent comparisons ‘less than’ – believe me, as a romantic soul I am hooked by those feelings each time I relive them through books and films. The wiser me – the reflective and far less singular Paul in me – believes that though love may be packaged in perhaps more knowing ways as we head through life, it is still love: love that stands a far better chance of enduring.

 I had previously read The Sense of an Ending by the same author and this is similarly beautifully written. Those early days of summer capture us entirely as do the clouds rolling in and blocking out the sun. They come as a pair, do they not? I think he captures the warmth and the chill of what it is to truly know another, to live through another – to become another. It might not be the only story that matters in life, but it certainly feels like that at the time.

 I did find the later section of the book both disappointing and tedious. Disappointing because the cracks in Paul’s character, hinted at previously, became ravines when we so hoped that they would be mere ditches for us to continue to jump over. The change in narrative style from first to second person does convey distance but not, for me, difference. I never really did like Paul but grew to detest him, which meant I was far less sympathetic to his contemplations even had there been a pervading sense of injustice. Tedious because – attempting to depict the tricks of memory or not - I found his musings circular or, at least, repetitive. I suppose they were always going to be.
​
 Overall, it was a challenging read, but I’d sensed the ending long before we landed, and this was a less rewarding journey than the one I was taken on in his previous book. Perhaps this should have been retitled ‘The First Story’ instead?
 

I sometimes struggle with my perception of Booker Prize-winning books: will they be ‘too clever’ for me, or will they open my eyes in ways that ‘lesser books’ fail to do? Will I go beyond the covers with a truly open mind, or do I embark on the fictional journey with baggage in my mind telling me that it will either not be as good as other learned people say it is… or it will be even better?

I had picked up copies of Shuggie Bain in Waterstones a number of times, read the blurb and picked though a few of the pages, before deciding that the colloquialisms and sometimes impenetrable Glaswegian phrases would be in the ‘too difficult’ box for me to understand. Then, one day, I set these worries aside and went for it, proudly carrying my copy back to my lovely house in the Worcestershire countryside before settling down and quickly descending into a world of addiction, poverty and hopelessness.

Shuggie’s mother, Agnes, is an alcoholic – a condition which becomes worse as we turn the pages on a helpless situation. Rejecting her first husband and moving her family out of her parents’ tiny flat in Glasgow to a former mining community on the city’s edges felt like a one-way street with few real alternatives to left or right. Shuggie effectively becomes his mother’s carer, and the development of that gentle, caring nature accompanies a discovery and awareness of his own sexuality. We care for Shuggie because he is doing his best in the face of remorseless poverty of kitchen cupboard and spirit.

It would be easy to assume that Agnes’s alcoholism renders her far less to blame for what unfolds in the book than the addiction itself; this is compounded by the fact that Agnes is a beautiful-looking woman – and plenty of men look, and take, and leave, including Shuggie’s father. Thankfully his half brother does what he can for Shuggie before, like his sister, seeing how hopeless the fight is to rescue Agnes, he can clearly see that he needs to save himself. However, I found Agnes somewhat superior and not a little arrogant, which made her even more of a target to be knocked down by just about everybody she came into contact with.

Set mainly during the time of the Thatcherite mine closures in the early 1980s there are some obvious parallels with ‘Billy Elliot,’ although I found the grinding poverty of working-class existence and joyless resistance to change controlled by others far more compelling on these pages than on a silver screen. There seem to be no silver linings here, even when we meet Shuggie again some ten years later.

I did indeed struggle with some of the language, but clearly that is the essence of the book’s authenticity. I found the unrelenting darkness of the novel hard to see through for much of the time and I cannot say that it was a joy to read; certainly not ‘beautiful’ as one or more of the Booker judges described it. However, Shuggie’s resolve in the face of all that ‘life’ threw at him, from desperate hunger to bullying to loneliness to the possible sexual violence he too would encounter in the future, was as incredible as it was heart-breaking. 

I believe the book was better than my learned friends indicated that it was, and I feel that my horizons have been suitably stretched way beyond the hills I see from my window; like many readers of this book, I’m sure, I thank my lucky stars that they, along with time and space, shine down more brightly on me than the subjects of such frightening shadows.

​I’ve just caught up with Still Life and what a worthwhile destination!

I know little about art and art history, but, like so many people I suppose, I ‘know what I like.’ That sounds a bit limp doesn’t it? Well, there is nothing limp about the characters and their journeys in this quite wonderful book which takes us from a war-torn Italy to contrasting experiences in different parts of London and then back to the vivid light and shade of Florence once more.

I did get a little bogged down with some of the artistic/Firenze references, especially later in the book, but it didn’t detract to the extent that I no longer wished to visit Florence. I do. More so having read this book.

The characters are extremely well-drawn - even (especially) when taken out of their usual geographical contexts. We follow each one as they make their own journeys forward, sometimes after much reflection on experiences that were or might have been. 

It felt very much as though we were looking at a still life painting with the author’s warm and beautiful words bringing each of the components to life and telling their stories. And what stories they are – funny and engaging and often poignant – as real life is, still or otherwise.

Strong women with attitude and ambition are given the chance to fight back against the seemingly pre-ordained control of men. I loved that this ran across societal lines in the way that it did. Peg is someone I won’t forget for a very long time. 

My favourite character, though, was the quiet and contemplative Pete, who I really identified with (apart from the fact I cannot play the piano). I found myself willing him along that unknown path to happiness that only arrives with real meaning.

The writing style of the book is a little unnerving at first and needs to be persevered with. However, I quickly found myself wishing I could be as bold and adventurous with language as she is and removed from the little island of security I’ve created for myself.

Perhaps the central message of the book is one of hope. Against all the natural and unnatural preferences this little band of brothers and sisters come up against, still they move forward, encouraged to do so by all of us mere readers, heartily wishing that life was really like that. 

I was more than thirty years late to this book (story of my life!) and only started to read it after seeing a conversation about it on social media. My London flatmate of almost forty years ago declared it one of her favourite books; I am still in touch with her even if I am out of touch with so many wonderful books yet to be explored…

She is from Scotland and the clue is in the title, being the Latin name used by the Roman Empire to refer to that part of Great Britain lying north of the River Forth. Certainly the reader is drawn in by the beautifully-described landscape before witnessing the ever-present destructive qualities that nature hides coyly up its sleeves: winds, rain and the beguiling waves of the sea.

Janet is a destructive child – often self-destructive – but also creative in a largely, unnoticed way by her family who have clearly made up their minds about her rather than trying to at least understand better why she thinks the things she does and does the things she cannot help but do (even though she recognises that these acts are ‘wrong’ and will result in yet more punishment).

This is a coming-of-age story where a lonely child tries to navigate her way through both familial and contemporary groups, each of which desires to impose their own norms and expectations upon her. We applaud (and are relieved by) Janet’s absolute resolution to remain independent. Others label this eccentricity, which is their lazy shorthand for non-conformist – or perhaps fear that there may be more to life than they have yet discovered (and Janet is nothing if not an explorer).

We laugh out loud at Janet’s views of the world around her, whilst also admiring her bond with nature. Her befriending of a kindred soul – a jackdaw – was one of the loveliest passages in the book for me. Her sensitivity was never going to work in a cold, dark Scottish castle where Gothic horrors arrive in the form of nastiness, spite and drink as coping mechanisms.

We really want Janet to survive, though we also know that she won’t. The story builds carefully towards its climax and then we are left with nothing: a hole in our lives as readers probably greater than the one left behind for her family to reassure themselves that they always knew her life was destined to be short.

I did get a bit bogged down with some of the literary and classical references – often beautiful and apt though they were – as I felt it slowed the pace of the book much more than the many raw descriptions of nature that Janet noticed all around her -  while most of the other characters saw only themselves as players rather than the stage’s scenery against which they played out their much duller lives.

I did though love it that her safe place usually came in the form of books. How that comfort still resonates!
​
All in all, an enjoyable read which transports the reader to the widespread glories of upper Britannia whilst acknowledging that difference can be so defining – and not always in a good way.

I haven’t yet seen the Apple TV+ adaptation of this book which I read some months ago. I always worry that the visualisations of director/creative team will not match those conjured up in my mind by the prose itself. To convincingly bring to the screen the ethereal, almost eerie atmosphere conveyed by these words alone would be a triumph indeed.

I enjoyed many aspects of this Gothic novel, set in late Victorian times, and set in the claustrophobia of East London and Essex’s Blackwater Estuary, offering time, space and fresh air.

Cora Seabourne and William Ransome are well-drawn and quite believable characters, as is Cora’s son Francis who is as curious as I was to find out where the legend of the Essex Serpent really came from.

I liked the science v religion debate throughout, especially when the Essex villagers turned on Cora for supposedly encouraging the monster to return, rather than God for letting them all down.

The other aspect of scientific discovery centres on gruesome medical operations back in London and it is this contrast between medical progress and science with belief and superstition which makes it such a fascinating read.

We are meant to be cheered by Cora’s relationship with William after her suffering at the hands of her controlling husband died. Human machinations of the conflict which provides the backbone to the story, Cora and Will barely agree about anything – drawn together seemingly in order to fight their way apart again. But there is a consensus that lives should be lived as fully as possible. The book is about liberation of the spirit at the very least.
​
We have to admire Cora’s independence at a time which would – and did – unsettle men and women alike, and I was with her right until the end.