My Week in Books – 8th October 2023

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MyWeekinBooksOn What Cathy Read Next last week

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Reading Goals I Still Want to Accomplish Before the End of the Year.

Wednesday – I published my review of historical novel, Adama by Lavie Tidhar. 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 Five Favourite September 2023 Reads.

Saturday – I took part in the monthly #6Degrees of Separation meme, forging a chain from I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith to A Wake of Crows by Kate Evans. 

New arrivals

A bumper week thanks to a trip to Henley Literary Festival and Henley’s excellent Oxfam Bookshop. 

Mrs Quinn’s Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford (ARC, Michael Joseph)

Jennifer Quinn has a secret. Her love of baking has just won her a spot as a contestant on a primetime TV show. It’s only the second time in fifty-nine years that she’s kept something from her beloved husband Bernard.

She’s about to be whisked into an unfamiliar world of cameras, timed challenges and celebrity judges. She could be in with a chance of being crowned the best baker in Britain.

But, as Mrs Quinn’s quiet ambitions turn into unexpected stardom, the other secret she’s been keeping is in danger of resurfacing. It was supposed to stay hidden forever.

Will Mrs Quinn rise to the challenge? Or, will her success become a recipe for disaster?

Swwetness in the Skin Mrs Quinn's Rise to Fame

Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi Robinson (ARC, Michael Joseph)

Fourteen-year-old Pumkin Patterson lives in a two-room house in Kingston Jamaica with her devoted grandmother, her beloved Aunt Sophie, and a mother who could not care less about her. When her conniving estranged father shows up Pumkin’s only real escape is baking – while making sweet potato pudding and apple turnovers she can forget the fighting at home.

When Aunt Sophie is offered the chance to move to France, she promises to send for Pumkin as soon as she can afford to. But when things take a turn for the worse in Pumkin’s household, she’s determined to raise the money herself. Her mother is determined to make her stay, but will her friends, neighbours and talent for baking be her escape?

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (Viking)

It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.

Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home – and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma – a devastating choice between duty and one great love.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (Bloomsbury)

There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.

As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like ‘petrol bomb’ and ‘rubber bullets’. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.

Pure by Andrew Miller (Sceptre)

A year of bones, of grave-dirt, relentless work. Of mummified corpses and chanting priests. A year of rape, suicide, sudden death. Of friendship too. Of desire. Of love . . . A year unlike any other he has lived.

Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller (Penguin)

1976: Peggy Hillcoat is eight. She spends her summer camping with her father, playing her beloved record of The Railway Children and listening to her mother’s grand piano, but her pretty life is about to change.

Her survivalist father, who has been stockpiling provisions for the end which is surely coming soon, takes her from London to a cabin in a remote European forest. There he tells Peggy the rest of the world has disappeared.

Her life is reduced to a piano which makes music but no sound, a forest where all that grows is a means of survival. And a tiny wooden hut that is Everything.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: Byron and Shelley: Stories by Glenn Haybittle
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Wolves of Winter by Dan Jones
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Murder Wheel by Tom Mead
  • Book Review: Sanctuary Motel by Alan Orloff

#6Degrees of Separation From I Capture the Castle to A Wake of Crows

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It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

In Capture the CastleThis month’s starting book is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. As usual, it’s a book I haven’t read – although I get the feeling everyone else in the book world has! Given it has a 17-year-old protagonist, Cassandra Mortmain, it would probably today be classed as a Young Adult novel but Dodie Smith is also famous for her children’s book, The Hundred and One Dalmations.

The L-Shaped RoomSo my first link is to another author – Lynne Reid Banks – who wrote children’s books, notably The Indian in the Cupboard, but also adult novels, the most well-known probably being The L-Shaped Room. (I remember owning this paperback edition with its evocative cover.) Lynne Reid Banks also wrote a biography of the Brontës, Dark Quartet, the relevance of ‘quartet’ being that it includes Branwell Brontë, not just his more famous sisters.

The Infernal World of Branwell BronteAnother author to have been fascinated by Branwell is Daphne du Maurier. Her book, The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, charts how Branwell’s ‘precocious flame of genius flickered and burned low’ resulting in his early death from a combination of laudanum and alcohol.

A Gift of PoisonHowever, Branwell is alive and well, at least in his sister Charlotte’s memories, in Bella Ellis’s historical fiction series which imagines the Brontë sisters as amateur lady detectives. The third and final book in the series is A Gift of Poison.

The Tenant of Wildfell HallA Gift of Poison is set in 1847 at the point when Emily and Anne (but not Charlotte) have had their first books – Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey – accepted for publication. Anne’s second and last novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is probably more well-known.

TakeCourageAnne died in May 1948, her dying words whispered to Charlotte, by now her only surviving sister, being “take courage”. Fittingly, Take Courage is the title of Samantha Ellis’s biography of Anne.

A Wake of CrowsAnne Brontë is buried in Scarborough, a place she loved. The seaside town of Scarborough is also the location for crime novel, A Wake of Crows by Kate Evans.  As it happens, Scarborough has a castle with which fact I hope I have captured your attention!