Category: 20 Books of Summer

My Week in Books – 4th July 2021

whatcathyreadnext13 Comments

MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories edited by Margaret Jull Costa.

Tuesday –  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Most Anticipated Releases of the Second Half of 2021.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to have a good nose around what others are reading. I also shared an extract from The Lady in the Veil by Allie Cresswell and published my review of The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi as part of the blog tour.

Thursday – I shared my Five Favourite June 2021 Reads. 

Friday – I published my review of This Shining Life by Harriet Kline as part of the blog tour. 

Saturday – I took part in this month’s #6Degrees of Separation meme creating a chain of books starting from Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss.

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.

New arrivals

Snow CountrySnow Country by Sebastian Faulks (eARC, courtesy of Hutchinson via NetGalley)

1914: Young Anton Heideck has arrived in Vienna, eager to make his name as a journalist. While working part-time as a private tutor, he encounters Delphine, a woman who mixes startling candour with deep reserve. Entranced by the light of first love, Anton feels himself blessed. Until his country declares war on hers.

1927: For Lena, life with a drunken mother in a small town has been impoverished and cold. She is convinced she can amount to nothing until a young lawyer, Rudolf Plischke, spirits her away to Vienna. But the capital proves unforgiving. Lena leaves her metropolitan dream behind to take a menial job at the snow-bound sanatorium, the Schloss Seeblick.

1933: Still struggling to come terms with the loss of so many friends on the Eastern Front, Anton, now an established writer, is commissioned by a magazine to visit the mysterious Schloss Seeblick. In this place of healing, on the banks of a silvery lake, where the depths of human suffering and the chances of redemption are explored, two people will see each other as if for the first time.

How The One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her HouseHow the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

In Baxter Beach, Barbados, moneyed ex-pats clash with the locals who often end up serving them: braiding their hair, minding their children, and selling them drugs.

Lala lives on the beach with her husband, Adan, a petty criminal with endless charisma whose thwarted burglary of one of the Baxter Beach mansions sets off a chain of events with terrible consequences.

A gunshot no one was meant to witness. A new mother whose baby is found lifeless on the beach. A woman torn between two worlds and incapacitated by grief. And two men driven by desperation and greed who attempt a crime that will risk their freedom – and their lives. 

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: Business as Usual by Jane Oliver & Ann Stafford
  • Top Ten Tuesday
  • WWW Wednesday
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Those I Have Lost by Sharon Maas
  • Book Review: Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
  • Audiobook Review: A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

#BookReview This Shining Life by Harriet Kline @RandomTTours @TransworldBooks

whatcathyreadnext5 Comments

This Shining Life BT Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for This Shining Life by Harriet Kline. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Transworld for my review copy. Given the beautiful cover, it was quite hard to opt for a digital rather than a physical copy. However I’m always conscious that the latter are in short supply and not everyone is able to read digitally.

This Shining Life CoverAbout the Book

For Rich, life is golden. He fizzes with happiness and love. But Rich has an incurable brain tumour.

When Rich dies, he leaves behind a family without a father, a husband, a son and a best friend. His wife, Ruth, can’t imagine living without him and finds herself faced with a grief she’s not sure she can find her way through.

At the same time, their young son Ollie becomes intent on working out the meaning of life. Because everything happens for a reason. Doesn’t it?

But when they discover a mismatched collection of presents left by Rich for his loved ones, it provides a puzzle for them to solve, one that will help Ruth navigate her sorrow and help Ollie come to terms with what’s happened. Together, they will learn to lay the ghosts of the past to rest, and treasure the true gift that Rich has left them: the ability to embrace life and love every moment.

Format: eARC (320 pages)        Publisher: Transworld
Publication date: 1st July 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find This Shining Life on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

This Shining Life is an intimate exploration of the impact of Rich’s diagnosis and subsequent death on the members of his extended family. All of them struggle to cope in different ways, partly because some of them face other challenges on top of their grief at his loss, such as difficult childhood memories or caring responsibilities. The book switches between before and after Rich’s death and unfolds from the points of view of a number of family members, including Rich himself.

The most powerful of these for me were the sections told – in the first person- by Rich’s young son, Ollie. Ollie’s neuro diversity gives him an unique perspective as he struggles to interpret the words and actions of others, in everyday life let alone at a time of such heightened emotions. As he says, “I hate trying to work out special meanings. You can never be sure whether you’ve got them right of wrong”. Indeed, a particularly interesting aspect of the book is the way it explores how we interpret the meaning of words and learn to discern whether their use is literal, metaphorical or merely a ‘turn of phrase’ such as Rich’s personal favourite, ‘Life’s too short’.

Ollie, in particular, exemplifies this struggle to understand the meaning of words in his touchingly literal interpretation of his father’s remark that life is a puzzle. It’s a puzzle Ollie is determined to solve, applying himself to the task with the same determination he did to memorising the names of the members of football teams or to solving sudoku puzzles.

Rich’s desire to leave gifts behind that will communicate to the recipients what they meant to him involves much careful thought on his part. And perhaps it is that degree of thought that, in the end, means just as much to the recipients as the gifts themselves. In fact, the whole gifting process turns out to be an apt metaphor for the emotional confusion that often follows a bereavement.

This Shining Life tackles some big subjects including terminal illness, caring for people with dementia, bereavement and mental illness. However, the author always manages to stay the right side of the maudlin or sentimental. And a cover quote by an author of the pedigree of Rachel Joyce describing the book as ‘exquisitely beautiful and compelling’ is not one that can be easily ignored is it?

In three words: Tender, emotional, insightful

Try something similar: One Last Time by Helga Flatland

Follow this blog via Bloglovin

This Shining Life Graphic 2

Harriet Kline Author PicAbout the Author

Harriet Kline works part time registering births, deaths and marriages and writes for the rest of the week. Her story Ghost won the Hissac Short Story Competition and Chest of Drawers won The London Magazine Short Story Competition. Other short stories have been published online with Litro, For Books’ Sake, and ShortStorySunday, and on BBC Radio 4.

Connect with Harriet
Website | Twitter