5th April
OK so it's Easter Monday, Spring is here and we've had a light flurry of snow!
But I've been busily reading and listening over the last couple of months and have enjoyed some cracking good stories. Here's a selection of the best literary fiction so far - all of these won critical praise and were recommended by one source or another:
Having been completely absorbed by The Burning Chambers, I was looking forward to this, the second part of Mosse's Huguenot Trilogy. Minou Joubert's story resumes with the family preparing to travel to Paris for the wedding of Henri of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois, sister to the young King of France. But an assassin lurks in the woods, an old friend in Amsterdam is murdered and Vidal, Piet's one-time-friend-now-enemy is determined to prevent him from gaining his inheritance. Add to this a wilful daughter whose curiosity is the main driving force in her life and Mosse's ability to evoke the bustle of the city as well as the peace of the countryside and this instalment is as dramatic and engaging as the first; it barely strikes a wrong note. Can't wait for the final part of the trilogy.
Lakshmi Shastri has left her home and her abusive husband making her living as a Henna Artist and therapist, looking after the needs of her 'ladies' in the city of Jaipur in the mid 1950s but she knows how fragile her world is as a women relies entirely on her reputation and if that is questioned ... Her independent way of life is threatened when her younger sister, whom she did not know existed, arrives following the death of their parents and throws Lakshmi's carefully ordered world out of balance. A well crafted and beautifully observed exploration of how friendships and jealousies play a significant role in a male-dominated world, I really enjoyed this story.
Louise Hare: This Lovely City
When Lawrie Matthews steps off the Empire Windrush in 1948 he is full of hope, for a good job, a good home, a wife and family; he is, after all, a well educated young man with a respectable background. But reality doesn't quite match up to his expectations: a job as a postman is hard won and he can only afford to rent a small room in Brixton; he does meet and fall in love with Evie and the band is getting a few gigs so things are looking up until he finds a dead baby in a local pond which sets in motion a series of events that threaten his happiness and even his own life as the vindictive DS Rathbone targets him as the likely suspect. A powerful exploration of life in the Jamaican community in post war London peopled with believable characters and highlighting the injustices which spring from prejudice. Right up there with Small Island by Andrea Levy which has similar themes.
Nora is sad and lonely but when she decides to kill herself, she gets the chance to explore a series of different lives by making different choices, some small, some large: saying yes to coffee or her fiance; keeping up with her swimming or studying glaciology to see if there is a life which makes her happy. A cleverly worked story of what-ifs: those moments in life when we make decisions that take us down a particular path but leave us wondering how life might have been different if we had made a different choice. A sympathetic reading by Carey Mulligan.
