My Week in Books – 21st April 2024

whatcathyreadnext

My Week in Books

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I shared review of Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson, a coming-of-age story set in Jamaica. 

Tuesday – I went off-piste for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday with a list of Books I’ve Read That Have Won Literary Prizes.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading. 

Thursday – I shared my Q&A with Gary Corbin about his latest crime novel, Under the Banner of Valor, which will be published on 7th May 2024. 

Friday – I published my review of historical novel, The Paris Peacemakers by Flora Johnston, as part of the blog tour.

Saturday – I shared my review of A Better Place by Stephen Daisley, one of the books on the longlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

New arrivals

Verve Books tote bag with copies of The War Widow by Tara Moss and The Damages by Genevieve ScottTwo souvenirs from the Verve Books book bloggers event on 17th April.

The War Widow by Tara Moss (Verve Books)

WWII may be over, but journalist Billie Walker’s search for a missing young man will plunge her right back into the danger and drama she thought she’d left behind in Europe.

It’s 1946, and though war correspondent Billie Walker is happy to finally be back home in glamorous Sydney, for her the heady postwar days are tarnished by the loss of her father and the disappearance of her husband, Jack. To make matters worse, newspapers are now sidelining her reporting talents to prioritise jobs for returning soldiers.

Determined to take control of her future, she reopens her late father’s private investigation agency, and, slowly, the women of Sydney come knocking. At first, Billie’s work consists of tailing cheating husbands. But when a young man goes missing, Billie finds herself on a dangerous new trail that will lead her to the highest levels of Sydney society, and down into its underworld. As the risk mounts, Billie realises that there is much more than one man’s life at stake. Though the war was won, it is far from over. 

The Damages by Genevieve Scott (Verve Books)

What I remember best about that week in January is trying to keep track of all the lies I told…

1997. Ontario has been hit by a days-long, life-endangering ice storm, and on Regis University campus, with classes cancelled, the students are partying. In the midst of it all, eighteen-year-old Ros’s roommate Megan goes missing. As a panicked search ensues, Ros is blamed for not keeping a closer eye on Megan, and the incident casts a shadow over the next two decades of her life.

2020. Ros’s former partner, Lukas, the father of her eleven-year-old son, is accused of a sexual assault. The accusation brings new details of an old story to light, forcing Ros to revisit a dark moment from her past. Ros must take a hard look not only at the father of her child, but also at her own mistakes, her own trauma, and at the supposedly liberal period she grew up in.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Spotlight: Land Marks by Maryann Lesert
  • Book Review: James by Percival Everett
  • Book Review: Mania by Lionel Shriver

Book Review – A Better Place by Stephen Daisley

whatcathyreadnext3 Comments

About the Book

Book cover of A Better Place by Stephen Daisley

The old people in the district would often say that Roy was not quite the same after he come back. There was a brother. A twin brother, Tony. Tony Mitchell, different boy but a good rugby player. Bit of a mental case, they said, but Roy would have none of it. He always stayed close to Tony when they were growing up.

They both went off to fight, must have been 1940. Only the one come back, though. Crete, they thought. We lost Tony over there.

Format: ebook (224 pages) Publisher: Text Publishing
Publication date: 4th July 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find A Better Place on Goodreads

Purchase A Better Place from Amazon UK

My Review

A Better Place is one of the books on the longlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024. It’s a book I would probably never have come across were it not for its inclusion on the longlist. (You can find a full list of the longlisted books here.)

In the author’s hands, war is a machine that consumes human beings. ‘Screaming. Explosions. The spraying of sand and dust. Charging soldiers being shot to bits.’ The scenes on the battlefield are brutal, graphic and harrowing but they also feel absolutely authentic. And the horrors aren’t just confined to the combatants but to civilians as well. Many of the male characters’ behaviour is challenging, especially that of Roy’s comrade, Manny Jones. But there are also moments of unexpected tenderness and self-sacrifice.

Before reading this book I knew very little about the involvement of troops from New Zealand in World War 2. One of the things that struck me was the very particular bond of comradeship that existed between soldiers hailing from the same regions of New Zealand.

Roy is plagued by guilt at what he believes was his failure to save Tony despite the fact that, being brothers, they should not have been assigned to a position so near to the enemy. He’s sure that Tony would never have left him behind had the positions been reversed.

It’s difficult to say much more about how the story unfolds without giving too much away. What I can say is the reader always knows more about Tony’s fate than Roy does. This allows the author to take the reader beyond the battlefields of Crete, North Africa and Sicily to Silesia where there are experiences just as gruelling and cruel.

When Roy returns home to New Zealand’s North Island after the war he adopts a solitary existence, farming a piece of land allocated to him by the government. It’s as if he doesn’t want to engage with a world that doesn’t have Tony in it. When Roy eventually discovers what happened to Tony, it confounds his expectations in more ways than one.

A Better Place is not an easy read because of its subject matter but the writing is wonderful. It definitely deserves its place on the Walter Scott Prize longlist.

In three words: Powerful, moving, visceral
Try something similar: Patrol by Fred Majdalany

About the Author

Author Stephen Daisley

Stephen Daisley was born in 1955 and grew up in the North Island of New Zealand. He has worked on sheep and cattle stations, on oil and gas construction sites and as a truck driver, among many other jobs.

His first novel, Traitor , won the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. Coming Rain won the Ockham Prize in 2015. Stephen lives in Western Australia. (Photo/bio: Publisher author page)