Category: Reviews

#WWWWednesday – 29th November 2023

whatcathyreadnext

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

A book from my TBR pile and my final NetGalley title for the #NetGalleyNovember reading challenge.

The Forgotten Letters of Esther DurrantThe Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn (Orion)

An abandoned woman…

1951. Esther Durrant, a young mother, is committed to an isolated mental asylum by her husband. Run by a pioneering psychiatrist, the hospital is at first Esther’s prison but soon becomes her refuge.

A forbidden love…

2017. When free-spirited marine scientist Rachel Parker is forced to take shelter on a far-flung island off the Cornish Coast during a research posting, she discovers a collection of hidden love letters. Captivated by their passion and tenderness, Rachel is determined to find the intended recipient.

A dangerous secret…

Meanwhile, in London, Eve is helping her grandmother, a renowned mountaineer, write her memoirs. When she is contacted by Rachel, it sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to reveal secrets kept buried for more than sixty years. 

Three women bound together by a heartbreaking secret. A love story that needs to be told.

the bindingThe Binding by Bridget Collins (ebook, The Borough Press via NetGalley)

Emmett Farmer is a binder’s apprentice. His job is to hand-craft beautiful books and, within each, to capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory.

If you have something you want to forget, or a secret to hide, he can bind it – and you will never have to remember the pain it caused.

In a vault under his mentor’s workshop, row upon row of books – and secrets – are meticulously stored and recorded.

Then one day Emmett makes an astonishing discovery: one of the volumes has his name on it.

Recently finished

Second Sister by Chan Ho-Kei, trans. by Jeremy Tiang (Head of Zeus)

The Diver and the Lover by Jeremy Vine (Hodder & Stoughton)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Leftover WomanThe Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok (Viper)

asmine Yang thought her daughter was dead at birth. But five years after she was taken from her arms, she learns that her controlling husband sent the baby to America to be adopted, a casualty of China’s one-child-policy. Fleeing her rural Chinese village, Jasmine arrives in New York City with nothing except a desperate need to find her daughter. But with her husband on her trail, the clock is ticking, and she’s forced to make increasingly risky decisions if she ever hopes to be reunited with her child.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Whitney seems to have it a high-powered career, a beautiful home, a handsome husband and an adopted Chinese daughter she adores. But when an industry scandal threatens to jeopardise not only Rebecca’s job but her marriage, this perfect world begins to crumble.

Two women in a divided city, separated by wealth and culture, yet bound together by their love for the same child. And when they finally meet, their lives will never be the same again…

#BookReview The Diver and the Lover by Jeremy Vine

whatcathyreadnext1 Comment

About the Book

It is 1951 and sisters Ginny and Meredith have travelled from England to Spain in search of distraction and respite. The two wars have wreaked loss and deprivation upon the family and the spectre of Meredith’s troubled childhood continues to haunt them. Their journey to the rugged peninsula of Catalonia promises hope and renewal.

While there they discover the artist Salvador Dali is staying in nearby Port Lligat. Meredith is fascinated by modern art and longs to meet the famous surrealist.

Dali is embarking on an ambitious new work, but his headstrong male model has refused to pose. A replacement is found, a young American waiter with whom Ginny has struck up a tentative acquaintance.

The lives of the characters become entangled as family secrets, ego and the dangerous politics of Franco’s Spain threaten to undo the fragile bonds that have been forged.

Format: Hardback (368 pages) Publisher: Coronet
Publication date: 3rd September 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Diver and the Lover on Goodreads

Purchase links

My Review

The author has taken an actual historical event – the making of Salvador Dali’s painting Christ of Saint John of the Cross, which is in the collection of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow (but currently on loan to the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain) – and surrounded it with a generous helping of fiction. For example, there is an imagined role for Dr Tom Honeyman, the man who acquired the painting for the museum, in a particularly dramatic scene towards the end of the book.

The main leap of authorial imagination is that the man who in real life acted as the model for the painting, Hollywood stuntman Russell Saunders, was replaced by a young American waiter. This provides the opportunity for the author to introduce a love story – albeit one of the ‘love at first sight’ variety whose credibility I often struggle with.

The Diver and the Lover is the author’s debut novel and it does show in places, such as the inclusion of the occasional “information dump” – I don’t think I really needed to know how many bullets a minute a Lee Enfield rifle fires – and a rather over-the-top female villain.

For me, the most compelling character in the book was Ginny’s older sister, Meredith. The story of her early life is tragic but the response to her mental breakdown is even more tragic and a shocking indictment of the attitude to mental illness at the time. Ginny’s gentle support of her sister’s recovery is moving even if Ginny doesn’t fully understand the reason for Meredith’s intense interest in Salvador Dali’s work.

The events surrounding the making of this particular painting were completely new to me and I enjoyed this aspect of the novel. (Having an image of the painting in the book would have been helpful but I imagine rights issues perhaps didn’t make that possible.) The story also filled in some gaps in my knowledge of Salvador Dali’s life, for instance the consequences of his support for General Franco’s regime. In the book he comes across as an intensely self-absorbed and rather petulant individual. ‘To Dali an occasion was special once her arrived. It ceased being special once he left.’ However, one glance at the painting demonstrates it is the work of an artistic genius.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Coronet via NetGalley.

About the Author

Photo: BBC Radio 2 website

Jeremy Vine is one of the UK’s best-known broadcasters. He presents a weekday show on Radio 2, radio’s most popular news programme. He also presents Jeremy Vine on Channel 5, a daily current affairs programme. Jeremy is an accomplished journalist and writer and has previously published two works of non-fiction. He lives in Chiswick with his wife and their two daughters.

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