Jennifer Donnelly - A GATHERING LIGHT

 reviewed by Corinna christopher live on bookshow 16th May 2013

The story opens at the lakeside Glenmore Hotel where the body of a young women, Grace Brown  is found, presumably drowned.  It is 1906 and the book is based on a real murder.  The setting is  the Adironback mountains in the U.S.A. and the narrator of this lovely book is Mattie .  Just before Grace embarked upon her fatal boat trip she handed a bundle of letters to Mattie and asked her to dispose of them.  In due course Mattie was to discover these were letters to her lover.

Mattie is the daughter of a local farmer and the eldest girl with three sisters and an older brother who had left home after a quarrel with his father.  Her Mother died of cancer a few years ago and Mattie has the responsibility of looking after the home together with Abby, Lou and the baby of the family Beth.  On their farm they have many different animals and also grow a lot of crops so that each of the girls has to work quite hard.  Pa is a man of few words and has not really got over losing  his wife so  that he is expecting his daughters to cope with everything. 

Mattie is a clever girl who loves to write and read and would like to go to college.  She has the encouragement of her local teacher and manages to win a place in a good college.   She has a  school friend Weaver  a black boy also keen to study but even in this remote area racism rears it’s ugly head and there are unpleasant incidents.  Money is always in short supply and therefore Mattie takes a holiday job at the nearby hotel . It is while there that she reads Grace’s letters and tries to make sense of the tragedy.

Mattie develops a close friendship with Royal the son of a neighbouring farmer and in due course he asks her to marry him.  Up till then all she can think of is escaping to a different life, but how to surmount all the obstacles.  Her mother made her promise to look after the family and Royal cannot understand why she needs all that learning.  Pa will not consider allowing her to leave .  I will leave the reader to discover what takes place

There are excellent descriptions of rural life and several interesting other characters who take part in the narrative.   It is an engrossing and spellbinding

story with the very real and convincing voice of Mattie .

The book is both a murder, a mystery and a romance. A book to lose yourself in and thoroughly enjoyable  This first book by the author has received many glowing reviews.

Anne O’Brien - THE FORBIDDEN QUEEN

 reviewed live on show by Corinna Christopher 16th May 2013

A wonderful way to absorb history since I did not know too much about this lady.  The time is 1415 and Katherine de Valois , a French princess is about to become a dynastic pawn in relations between England and France.  Brought up by a cold and unloving Mother and a father who is loosing his mind she has until her mid teens led a miserable life. 

Blessed with good looks and innocence she is married off to Henry   He however, is not a loving husband and is more interested in fighting France on foreign shores. In the first year Katherine manages to produce a son but is soon widowed when Henry dies in France victim of a soldier’s disease.

There follows much political intrigue since the Mother of the future king is an important figure.  Desperate for love and affection she embarks on a passionate affair with Edmund Beaufort.  With the royal dukes circling her person this liaison is doomed to fail. 

Later on she is drawn to Master Owen Tudor the Master of the household who is always present

supervising domestic matters.  A handsome dark Welshman who worships the young Queen.  Against all the odds they fall in love and in spite of much opposition marry.  The young king meanwhile is being brought up away from his Mother.

Katherine and Owen produced  several children and their eldest son Edmund married Margaret Beaufort whose son Henry Tudor  was the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty

Katherine was a sad figure and little was written about her other than the facts of her brief life.  She died at the age of 35 at Bermondsey Abbey where she lived in her last years. In her own words she suffered from “ a grievous malady in which I have been long…..troubled and vexed”  It was thought the same illness of her father.  She was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The author has breathed life into this tragic figure with meticulous research .  The reader is taken into the past and lives with Katherine in her authentic daily life surrounded by servants and noblemen, always striving to find herself in a foreign land.  There are excellent helpful family trees at the beginning of the book and
lots of interesting notes at the back.   A very enjoyable history lesson with lots of passion and drama.

Anne O'Brian - The Forbidden Queen

Reviewed live on bookshow by Maggie Perkovic May 16th 2013
This has been reviewed before, but I wanted to add my interpretation of the book.
I thought it was very good, very well researched and very well written.
The story of Katherine of Valois who wed Henry V and on his death later wed Owen Tudor is
an excting and also a romantic one. She sort of hero worshipped Henry V, but his passion was
for fighting so after he died it was a lonely and unhappy Queen Dowager who fell for Owen Tudor.
She was expected to keep herself with dignity while her young son grew up, which meant love
was out!!! However she and Owen Tudor fell in love and married in secret braving the wrath of the
King's brothers and the full council. Katherine had four children, before succombing to a fatal
disease leading to madness which had destroyed  her father. She left Owen and died shortly
after in Bermondsey Abbey, her new baby died as well.
The author paints a portrait of medieval life and in particular a lady whose life in France was difficult
as a child, and who had to learn how to live in England and become a Queen and mother.
Engrossing!!!!

Daphne Maurier - Jamaica Inn

review by Maggie Perkovic live on bookshow 16th May 2013
This is a retro read, but what a corker!!!Written in 1936 and filmed in the 40s I think, it is a very
exciting tale set in Cornwall.
Mary Yellan is a lively young girl who was living in Helford with her mother and father running a small
farm. On their deaths she goes to live with her Aunt and Uncle who run Jamaica Inn a hostelry on the
road between Bodmin and Launceston. She remembers her Aunt as a happy lady with a mass of curly hair and a ready smile for all. When she arrives she finds a terrified and nervous white haired old lady,
who seems terrified of her husband, Joss Merlyn a giant of a man, with a serious drink problem.
The house is in tatters, and no one calls for shelter no matter how bad the weather.
When Mary tries to find the reason this, local villagers tell her it is fear!!
So who or what is going on.
As the story develops we learn that there are secret comings and goings at Jamaica Inn, Mary realises smuggling is big business in the 19 century but it is not until she follows her uncle one night and sees for herself what he and his evil associates are up to, that the full horror strikes her.
Wreckers that lure the ships on to the rocks, and then murder men, women and children that survive,
that is why her uncle cries out in his drunken stupors, and her Aunt is now a shadow of her former self.
Her only friend is the Vicar, himself rather a loner as he is an albino, but he is kind and gentle and
listens to her unhappy tale, and offers a refuge at his Vicarage.
The other character is Jem, brother to Joss, himself a horse thief, but Mary is attracted to him,
and together they form an unlikely partnership.
This is a very well written and exciting story that has you turning pages to find out what happens in the end.
Retro it may be, but brilliant, they just don't write them like this anymore!!Pity!!

Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

review by showhost may 2013

'Extremely funny' said The Times

'Delightful, funny, touching' said Spectator

Amusing & interesting says me.

From back of cover: '2 years after my mother died my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee.  He was 84 and she was 36.  she exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside'.

Basically, yes, that is what it is about as told by the youngest daughter Nadezhda.  The 84 year old eccentric father has 2 feuding daughters Vera & Nadezhda.  At first they don't believe that their father is serious about marrying this buxom blonde but they are distraught when he starts sending her money & then voluptuous, gold-digging Valentina & son Stanislav, turn up to live with their father in his/their home.  Any hopes their father had of this gold-digger, loving him, cooking for him, caring for him & his home soon turn into fantasy as she internally divides the home and turns it into more of a pig sty and they live off boil in the bag food.  BUT he is in love & we all know that love is blind.  Even when she starts to treat him badly and a few bruises appear he still buys her cars and gives her money - which he is now having to borrow off his slightly sympathetic younger daughter.

The feuding sisters want their father to divorce her on grounds of non-consummation of marriage and they take it upon themselves to go to the immigration to tell them that this marriage was a complete sham.  The father still harbours love for voluptuous Valentina though and tries to drag his heels.  The only good thing about it all is that it has brought a truce between the two sisters.

However, in-between all this we have snippets from the book which the father is writing and has been writing for some time.  He is a lover of Tractors/machines/inventors and their history in the Ukraine.  In his book is their family's struggle through the wars and how they came to be in the Uk in Peterborough.

I found the book enlightening & amusing but I didn't laugh out loud.  I enjoyed the short history of the Ukraine too. 

One sentence which raised more of a smile narrated by Nadezhda: 'I thought Valentinas baby would look like a thugette in a nappy'.

This book won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic literature 2005.

W J Burley - Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat by

 Review by Brian Lowen read live on bookshow 9th May 2013 

A steady middle-of-the-road detective story – not as action packed as Peter James and not as long and verbose as Mo Hayder. Just a steady detective story with questions, questions and more questions.

The woman was young and slim, with auburn hair arranged on her pillow. When Superintendent Wycliffe saw her, he could almost believe she was asleep – that is until he looked at her face. Although she had been killed by strangulation, someone had mutilated her face after she was dead.

As Wycliffe investigates, he finds more questions than answers. Why did a girl with expensive clothing and make up end up in such a seedy hotel down by the docks? And why was someone trying to hide her identity?

These questions are all answered as the story evolves – set in a Cornish seaside town, near Truro.

Wycliffe is supposedly on holiday with his wife when he gets himself involved in the case and takes it on – why his wife puts up with the way he treats her – leaving her on her own for long periods, I really don’t know!

Still, it is a good story – easy light reading, but not a thriller.

Mo Hayder - Gone

 

Review by Brian Lowen read live on bookshow 9th May 2013

This is a book in the series featuring Detective Jack Caffery and it appears that a female Sergeant who works in the specialist team involved in underwater searching and goes by the strange name of Flea also features in this series.

Jack and Flea were emotionally involved with each other until a terrible night when Flea’s brother was a hit and run drunk driver and Flea hid the girl’s body that he had killed. Jack got to hear of this but thought it was Flea who had run the girl over and this finished their relationship, but strangely, the killing was never reported.

The story involves the search for a man who has abducted several young girls. It is thought that he has taken them for his own sexual gratification but it turns out to be for a completely different reason which is revealed later in the story.

I still cannot really make up my mind whether I enjoyed this book or not. It is good during the action sections but there are a lot of dream sequences that I found unnecessary to the story.  It is quite a long book and doesn’t need this padding.

The action section in this last few chapters are excellent – gripping and exciting but the ending is another dream that leaves you hanging in mid air – to ensure you buy the next book in the series, I suppose.  Other authors have done this and I usually don’t mind because I want to buy the next book, but I am not so sure with this one.  Not a good page turner and rather a lot of confusing names. Perhaps I wasn’t concentrating enough!

Not for me, but I guess a lot of people will enjoy it.