Category: Read

My Week in Books – 10th October 2021

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of To All the Living by Monica Fenton as part of the blog tour. 

Tuesday –  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Bookish Pet Peeves but I went slightly off piste with  Bookish Pets. Courtesy of Aries Fiction, I also hosted a giveaway for a paperback copy of Odin’s Game by Tim Hodkinson.

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. 

Thursday – My Throwback Thursday post was my review of The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay.

Friday – I shared my write-up of historical novelist Kate Mosse‘s appearance at Henley Literary Festival 2021.

Saturday – I published my review of Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers. 

Sunday – I shared my write-up of BBC reporter turned novelist John Simpson‘s appearance at Henley Literary Festival 2021.

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

New arrivals

The postman has been a frequent visitor this week… and there may have been a bookshop visit or two. 

A Memory for MurderA Memory for Murder by Anne Holt (Hardcover, Corvus & Readers First)

When former high-powered lawyer turned PI Selma Falck is shot and her oldest friend, a junior MP, is killed in a sniper attack, everyone – including the police – assume that Selma was the prime target. But when two other people with connections to the MP are also found murdered, it becomes clear that there is a wider conspiracy at play.

As Selma sets out to avenge her friend’s death, and discover the truth behind the conspiracy, her own life is threatened once again. Only this time, the danger may be closer to home than she could possibly have realised…

Liberty TerraceLiberty Terrace by Madeleine D’Arcy (eARC, Doire Press & Midas PR)

Set in a fictional area of Cork City from 2016-2020, Liberty Terrace captures the highs and lows of everyday life from both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting readers to consider what it means to be human and to live within a wider community.

A former solicitor with experience as a Census Enumerator in 2016, Cork native Madeleine D’Arcy took inspiration from the Irish Census originally scheduled in April 2021 but now postponed until 2022 for Liberty Terrace. D’Arcy has created a rich tapestry of stories all set in and around the fictional street; the residents of Liberty Terrace come and go over the years – their lives ebbing and flowing around each other in ways that are sometimes funny, sometimes dark and often both. 

The cast of characters includes retired Garda Superintendent Deckie Google, a young homeless squatter, the mother of an autistic child working part-time as a Census Enumerator, the dysfunctional Callinan family, an ageing rock star, a trio of ladies who visit a faith healer, a philandering husband, as well as a surprising number of cats and dogs.

Black DropBlack Drop by Leonora Nattrass (eARC, Viper via NetGalley)

This is the confession of Laurence Jago. Clerk. Gentleman. Reluctant spy.

July 1794, and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Political radical Thomas Hardy is to go on trial for treason, the war against the French is not going in Britain’s favour, and negotiations with the independent American colonies are on a knife edge.

Laurence Jago – clerk to the Foreign Office – is ever more reliant on the Black Drop to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter has been leaked to the press, which may lead to the destruction of the British Army, and Laurence is a suspect. Then he discovers the body of a fellow clerk, supposedly a suicide.

Blame for the leak is shifted to the dead man, but even as the body is taken to the anatomists, Laurence is certain both of his friend’s innocence, and that he was murdered. But after years of hiding his own secrets from his powerful employers, and at a time when even the slightest hint of treason can lead to the gallows, how can Laurence find the true culprit without incriminating himself?

The Red MonarchThe Red Monarch (Brontë Sisters Mystery #3) by Bella Ellis (eARC, Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley) 

The Brontë sisters’ first poetry collection has just been published, potentially marking an end to their careers as amateur detectors, when Anne receives a letter from her friend Lydia Robinson.

Lydia has eloped with a young actor, Harry Roxby, and following her disinheritance, the couple been living in poverty in London. Harry has become embroiled with a criminal gang and is in terrible danger after allegedly losing something very valuable that he was meant to deliver to their leader. The desperate and heavily pregnant Lydia has a week to return what her husband supposedly stole, or he will be killed. She knows there are few people who she can turn to in this time of need, but the sisters agree to help Lydia, beginning a race against time to save Harry’s life.

In doing so, our intrepid sisters come face to face with a terrifying adversary whom even the toughest of the slum-dwellers are afraid of…The Red Monarch.

MatrixMatrix by Lauren Groff (Hardcover)

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, 17-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?

Girl AGirl A by Abigail Dean (Paperback)

Lex Gracie doesn’t want to think about her family. She doesn’t want to think about growing up in her parents’ House of Horrors. And she doesn’t want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings.

It’s been easy enough to avoid her parents – her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can’t run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings – and with the childhood they shared.

The Bride PriceThe Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta (Hardcover)

The Bride Price is the poignant love story of Aku-nna, a young Igbo woman, and her teacher, Chike, the son of a prosperous former slave. As their tribe begins to welcome western education and culture, these two are drawn together despite the traditions that forbid them to marry. Aku-nna flees an unwanted and forced marriage to join Chike, only to have her uncle refuse the required bride price from her lover’s family. Frustrated and abandoned by their people, Aku-naa and Chike escape to a modern world unlike any they’ve ever experienced. Despite their joy, Aku-nna is plagued by the fear the she will die in childbirth – the fate, according to tribal lore, awaiting every young mother whose bride price is left unpaid.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Event Review: Ed Balls at Henley Literary Festival 2021
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: A Woman Made of Snow by Elisabeth Gifford
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: An Extra Pair of Hands by Kate Mosse
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Cold As Hell by Lilja Sigurðardóttir
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Prince of the Skies by Antonio Iturbe
  • Book Review: The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta

#BookReview Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

whatcathyreadnext4 Comments

Small PleasuresAbout the Book

1957, south-east suburbs of London. Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and – on the brink of forty – living a limited existence with her truculent mother: a small life from which there is no likelihood of escape.

When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys: Gretchen is now a friend, and her quirky and charming daughter Margaret a sort of surrogate child. And Jean doesn’t mean to fall in love with Gretchen’s husband, Howard, but Howard surprises her with his dry wit, his intelligence and his kindness – and when she does fall, she falls hard.

But he is married, and to her friend – who is also the subject of the story she is researching for the newspaper, a story that increasingly seems to be causing dark ripples across all their lives. And yet Jean cannot bring herself to discard the chance of finally having a taste of happiness…

But there will be a price to pay, and it will be unbearable.

Format: Hardcover (352 pages) Publisher: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson
Publication date: 9th July 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Small Pleasures on Goodreads

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My Review

Longlisted for the Womens Prize for Fiction 2021, I’m pretty sure Small Pleasures is going to be one of my favourite books this year. For that I have to thank the team at Waterstones in Reading for selecting it for their first post-lockdown book club and making me pluck it from my bookshelves.

From their first meeting, Jean senses something in Gretchen’s husband Howard that makes her feel she can unburden herself to him despite the relatively short time she has known him. ‘She was aware that Howard was hardly an appropriate confidante, but he was so sensible and safe and unlikely to do anything at all except sympathize, that she couldn’t restrain herself.’  I loved the way their relationship progresses in small, tentative steps: a glance or touch of the hand, a compliment, a hitherto unspoken secret, a gift that is the product of ‘careful and loving workmanship’.

Clare Chambers shows such insight into the loving relationship that develops between Jean and Howard. Yes, there is passion but there are also ‘the small acts of domestic intimacy – sharing a bath, preparing a meal side by side at the stove, putting clean sheets on the bed..’ Can’t you just imagine how Jean, who has often felt lonely and the highlight of whose evenings has frequently been listening to the Light Programme on the radio with her mother, could savour such moments.

I also enjoyed the relationship that developed between Jean and Gretchen’s daughter, Margaret. Jean enjoys taking on the role of ‘unofficial aunt’ and taking Margaret on outings. Jean is constantly surprised by Margaret’s ‘charming and unexpected comments – at once innocent and profound’, even if such comments include complex words that would not usually be in the vocabulary of a young girl, and which she claims are whispered to her by angels.

Jean’s relationship with Howard gives her a glimpse of a different future, one she could never have imagined or thought she deserved. This is brought home by a holiday Jean and her mother take. In the hotel they are staying at, Jean sees another mother and daughter and the mother’s obvious complete dependence on her daughter gives Jean an uncomfortable insight into what perhaps awaits her. Despite this, Jean suffers a constant sense of guilt about her relationship with Howard, what it might do to Gretchen, and more importantly Margaret, and how this can be combined with meeting her mother’s needs. This leads Jean to make an act of great sacrifice, one which will involve giving up everything she has come to hold dear.

For me the playing out of the relationship between Jean and Howard was so completely enthralling, I almost forgot about the event that brought them together, Gretchen’s claim that Margaret is the result of a virgin birth. Whether you believe it is a possibility or are sceptical from the start, the process of trying to establish the truth will keep you enthralled and amazed at what was scientifically possible even back in the 1950s. In the end, it is Jean’s journalistic instincts and tenacity that leads to uncovering the truth.

Readers for whom, like me, the opening page of Small Pleasures remained at the back of their mind whilst reading the book, will have experienced a growing sense of unease as the months go by and a particular date draws near. I’m not ashamed to admit that the ending of the book – and a bunch of roses – reduced me to tears but I like to think the opportunity for miracles survives even in the darkest places.

There was so much I loved about Small Pleasures that I’m not going to say much more other than to encourage you to read it for yourself. However, I will share my favourite line from the book: ‘I love him, she thought with a kind of wonderment. I never intended to, but now I do’.

In three words: Tender, intimate, heart-breaking

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Clare ChambersAbout the Author

Clare Chamber’s first job after reading English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford, was working for Diana Athill at Andre Deutsch. Clare’s first novel Uncertain Terms was published by Diana at André Deutsch in 1992 and she is the author of five other novels. Small Pleasures, her first work of fiction in ten years, became a word-of-mouth hit on publication and was selected for BBC 2’s ‘Between the Covers’ book club. (Bio/photo credit: Publisher author page)

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