Category: Reviews

#WWWWednesday – 14th August 2024

whatcathyreadnext6 Comments

WWWWednesdays

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!

Currently reading

Finding DorothyFinding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts (Quercus) #20BooksOfSummer24

Hollywood, 1938: As soon as she learns that MGM is adapting her late husband’s masterpiece, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, for the screen, Maud Gage Baum sets about trying to visit the set. Nineteen years after Frank’s passing, Maud is the only person who can help the producers stay true to the spirit of the book – because she’s the only one left who knows its secrets…

But the moment she hears Judy Garland rehearsing the first notes of ‘Over the Rainbow’, Maud recognizes the yearning that defined her own life story, from her rebellious youth as a suffragette’s daughter to her coming of age as one of the first women in the Ivy League, from her blossoming romance with Frank to the hardscrabble prairie years that inspired his famous work.

With the young actress under pressure from the studio as well as her ambitious stage mother, Maud resolves to protect her – the way she tried so hard to protect the real Dorothy.

The InstrumentalistThe Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable (Bloomsbury via NetGalley)

Venice. 1704. In this city of glittering splendour, desperation and destitution are never far away. At the Ospedale della Pietà, abandoned orphan girls are posted every through a tiny gap in the wall every day.

Eight-year-old Anna Maria is just one of the three hundred girls growing up within the Pietà’s walls – but she already knows she is different. Obsessive and gifted, she is on a mission to become Venice’s greatest violinist and composer, and in her remarkable world of colour and sound, it seems like nothing with stop her.

But the odds are stacked against an orphan girl – so when the maestro selects her as his star pupil, Anna Maria knows she must do everything in power to please this difficult, brilliant man. But as Anna Maria’s star rises, threatening to eclipse that of her mentor, the dream she has so single-mindedly pursued is thrown into peril…

From the jewelled palaces of Venice to its mud-licked canals, this is a story of one woman’s irrepressible ambition and rise to the top, of loss and triumph, and of who we choose to remember and leave behind on the path to success.

Recently finished

Heart, Be At PeaceHeart, Be At Peace by Donal Ryan (Transworld) #20BooksOfSummer24

‘I said it before. Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise…’

Some things can send a heart spinning; others will crack it in two.

In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding.

But a fresh menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way. Young people are being drawn towards the promise of fast money whilst the generation above them tries to push back the tide of an enemy no one can touch… (Review to follow)

What Cathy Will Read Next

To Calais, in Ordinary TimeTo Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek (Canongate) #20BooksOfSummer24

Three journeys. One road.

England, 1348. A gentlewoman is fleeing an odious arranged marriage, a Scottish proctor is returning home to Avignon and a handsome young ploughman in search of adventure is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais.

Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe. As the journey unfolds, overshadowed by the archers’ past misdeeds and clerical warnings of the imminent end of the world, the wayfarers must confront the nature of their loves and desires.

Book Review – normal rules don’t apply by Kate Atkinson

whatcathyreadnext1 Comment

About the Book

Book cover of normal rules don't apply by Kate Atkinson

In this first full collection since Not the End of the World, we meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man whose luck changes when a horse speaks to him.

With clockwork intricacy, inventiveness and sharp social observation, Kate Atkinson conjures a feast for the imagination, a constantly changing multiverse in which nothing is quite as it seems . . .

Format: Paperback (240 pages) Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 23rd May 2024 Genre: Short Stories

Find normal rules don’t apply on Goodreads

Purchase normal rules don’t apply from Bookshop.org [Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops]

My Review

This was a book club pick and almost without exception members enjoyed this engaging collection of short stories. For many, this was their first time reading Kate Atkinson’s work.

From the very first story the reader is immersed in a world where unpredictable things happen but often in the most everyday of situations, such as in a Waitrose supermarket in the opening story, ‘The Void’. Even when you’re dead, as in ‘Blithe Spirits’, it turns out there are rules of time and place you might not expect.

I loved the interconnections between the stories some of which are so ‘under the radar’ you might only pick up on them on a second reading. My favourite involved an 18th century patterned wallpaper. One character, Franklin, appears in a number of stories although his life does not necessarily follow a linear pattern, alluding to the final story, ‘What If?’.

One of my favourite stories was ‘Spellbound’ in which a fairy tale is combined with a depiction of the stresses and strains of contemporary family life, and whose last line filled me with delight at its cleverness. There are some memorable characters, such as the eponymous heroine of ‘Shine, Pamela! Shine!’ who the author manages to make both a figure of fun and someone for whom you have sympathy. The only story I didn’t care for was ‘Existential Marginalization’ but only because I found it genuinely creepy. However, other book club members who don’t mind dark aspects to a story loved it.

As well as all the clever interconnections, there are some recurring themes including motherhood and the environment. The latter is most obvious in the story ‘Gene-sis’ (superbly clever title given what unfolds) in which the damage humans wreak on the planet is seemingly beyond even the Creator to prevent.

normal rules don’t apply (including of punctuation) is a really enjoyable collection of short stories whose myriad interconnections means it’s best read as one continuous whole rather than dipping in and out of individual stories. And it’s a book that would definitely repay rereading to pick up all the little connections between stories you missed first time around.

In three words: Playful, inventive, entertaining
Try something similar: In This Ravishing World by Nina Schuyler

About the Author

Author Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is one of the world’s foremost novelists. Her most recent novel, Shrines of Gaiety, set in the aftermath of the First World War, is a Sunday Times bestseller. She won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum.

Her three critically lauded and prize-winning novels set around the Second World War are Life After Life, an acclaimed 2022 BBC TV series, A God in Ruins (both winners of the Costa Novel Award) and Transcription. Her bestselling literary crime novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie, Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? and Started Early, Took My Dog, became a BBC TV series starring Jason Isaacs. Jackson Brodie later returned in the novel Big Sky.

Kate Atkinson was awarded an MBE in 2011 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.