#WWWWednesday – 27th April 2022

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

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Currently reading

The Birdcage by Eve Chase (eARC, Michael Joseph via NetGalley)

Some secrets need to be set free . . .

When half-sisters Kat, Flossie and Lauren are unexpectedly summoned to Rock Point, the remote Cornish house where they spent their childhood summers, it is the first time they have been there together since their artist father painted them in the celebrated Girls and Birdcage. Since then they have drifted apart into wildly different lives, each one determined to forget the fateful summer of twenty years ago.

But when they arrive at Rock Point it is clear they are not alone. Someone is lurking in the shadows, watching their every move. Someone who remembers what they did, and has been waiting for their return.

As the events of that summer rise closer to the surface, will the three sisters escape unscathed for a second time? Or are some secrets too powerful to remain under lock and key?

The Girl from Lamaha Street by Sharon Maas (ARC, Thread Books)

“One thing stood out in all the books I read. These children were all white. They had blue eyes and soft straight hair. Not a single child in a story was brown like me. How could that be right?”

Growing up in British Guiana in the 1950s, Sharon Maas has everything a shy child with a vivid imagination could wish for. She spends her days studying bugs in the backyard of her family home on Lamaha Street, eating fresh mangoes straight from the tree and losing herself in books tucked up on her granny’s lap, surrounded by her uncles and aunts.

But Sharon feels alone in a house full of adults. Her parents are divorced and her father is busy campaigning for British Guiana’s independence. With her mother often away for work, there’s a void in Sharon’s heart, and she craves rules and structure. The books she devours give her a glimpse of life in a faraway country: England. And although none of the characters in the books she reads look like her, her insatiable curiosity eventually leads Sharon to beg to be sent to boarding school, just like her literary heroes.

Reality comes as a shock. Being the only dark-skinned girl in a sea of posh white girls is a stark contrast to life in her warm homeland, where white people are a small minority. Sharon thrives in her new life. She does well academically, and horse-riding brings her self-discipline and joy in equal measure. But something is not quite right. Writing weekly letters to her mother, she begins to doubt whether this cold country is the right place for her. Is England really her home, and is this where she truly belongs?

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Recently finished

Mailed Fist by Robert Greenwood (Imperial War Museum)

In Place of Fear by Catriona McPherson (Hodder & Stoughton) 

Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (Raven)

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What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Magician by Colm Tóibín (Viking) 

The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism.

He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity.

Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.