Category: Reviews

#WWWWednesday – 8th November 2023

whatcathyreadnext2 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

A book received via Readers First, a book for BBC Radio 4 Bookclub and a book for #NetGalleyNovember which is also part of my Backlist Burrow personal reading challenge.

The Book of FireThe Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri (Manilla Press via Readers First)

This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so have I. I left him. I left him and now he may be dead.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful village that held a million stories of love and loss and peace and war, and it was swallowed up by a fire that blazed up to the sky. The fire ran all the way down to the sea where it met with its reflection.

A family from two nations, England and Greece, live a simple life in a tiny Greek Irini, Tasso and their daughter, lovely, sweet Chara, whose name means joy. Their life goes up in flames in a single day when one man starts a fire out of greed and indifference. Many are killed, homes are destroyed, and the region’s natural beauty wiped out.

In the wake of the fire, Chara bears deep scars across her back and arms. Tasso is frozen in trauma, devastated that he wasn’t there when his family most needed him. And Irini is crippled by guilt at her part in the fate of the man who started the fire.

But this family has survived, and slowly green shoots of hope and renewal will grow from the smouldering ruins of devastation.

The Spinning HeartThe Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Black Swan Ireland)

In the aftermath of Ireland’s financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town.

As violence flares, the characters face a battle between public persona and inner desires.

Through a chorus of unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds.

Things in JarsThings in Jars by Jess Kidd (Canongate)

Bridie Devine — female detective extraordinaire — is confronted with the most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, and a peculiar child whose reputed supernatural powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors trading curiosities in this age of discovery.

Winding her way through the labyrinthine, sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won’t rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing a past that she’d rather keep buried. Luckily, her search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where spectacle is king and nothing is quite what it seems.

Recently finished

RebellionRebellion (Eagles of Empire #22) by Simon Scarrow (Headline)

AD 60. Britannia is in turmoil. The rebel leader Boudica has tasted victory, against a force of tough veterans in Camulodunum.

Alerted to the rapidly spreading uprising, Governor Suetonius leads his army towards endangered Londinium with a mounted escort, led by Prefect Cato. Soon it’s terrifyingly clear that Britannia is slipping into chaos and panic, with ever more tribal warriors swelling Boudica’s ranks. And Cato and Suetonius are grimly aware that little preparation has been made to withstand a full-scale rebellion.

In Londinium there is devastating news. Centurion Macro is amongst those unaccounted for after the massacre at Camulodunum. Has Cato’s comrade and friend made his last stand?

Facing disaster, Cato prepares his next move. Dare he hope that Macro – battle-scarred and fearless – has escaped the bloodthirsty rebels? For there is only one man Cato trusts by his side as he faces the military campaign of his life. And the future of the Empire in Britannia hangs in the balance. 

What Cathy (will) Read Next

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.

#BookReview Held by Anne Michaels @BloomsburyBooks

whatcathyreadnext5 Comments

About the Book

1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later.

Format: eARC (240 pages) Publisher: Bloomsbury Books
Publication date: 9th November 2023 Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

Find Held on Goodreads

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Hive | Amazon UK 
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My Review

I finished reading Held nearly two weeks ago but have been struggling to write a review of this beautifully poetic but enigmatic book. I say enigmatic because characters’ thoughts often move imperceptibly between past and present. This is particularly the case in the first section of the book.

The book’s title is reflected in numerous ways: the physical act of being held, of being held in another’s memory or the force that holds two things together, such as an apple clutched in a hand. There are scenes of tenderness and intimacy, many of which are incredibly moving. One in particular, in which a woman lies in a bath cradling her dying husband, moved me to tears.

Objects, clothing or traditional customs provide connections between one generation and the next. Photography is a recurring motif. And there is subtle use of repetition with little details that bring to mind previous scenes. For example, a character remembering another person’s gestures – ‘how you held a glass, or a pen, or a fork and knife’ – or habits – ‘whether you opened and read a magazine from the front cover or the back’ – as a way of bringing them back to life, as it were. Or as evidence of intimate knowledge of another person. ‘Her small ways known only to him. That she matched her socks to her scarf even when no one could see them in her boots. That she kept beside the bed, superstitiously unfinished, the novel she had been reading the day they understood they would always be together… The boiled sweet tin she kept her foreign change in.’

Held‘s fluid narrative structure may not be to every reader’s taste but the beauty of the language (unsurprising perhaps given the author is a poet) makes it a rewarding read. Just go with the flow is my advice, as if listening to a piece of classical music that has moments of intensity interspersed with stillness.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Books via NetGalley.

In three words: Lyrical, moving, intimate

Try something similar: North Woods by Daniel Mason

About the Author

Anne Michaels’ books have been translated into more than forty-five languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. She is the recipient of honorary degrees, the Guggenheim Fellowship and many other honours. She has been shortlisted for the Governor-General’s Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice shortlisted for the Giller Prize and twice longlisted for the IMPAC Award. Her novel, Fugitive Pieces, was adapted as a feature film. From 2015 to 2019, she was Toronto’s Poet Laureate. (Photo/bio: Author website)

Connect with Anne
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