Tag: advance review copy

#BookReview The Forgers by Bradford Morrow

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The ForgersAbout the Book

The rare book world is stunned when a reclusive collector, Adam Diehl, is found on the floor of his Montauk home: hands severed, surrounded by valuable inscribed books and original manuscripts that have been vandalised beyond repair.

Adam’s sister, Meghan, and her lover, Will – a convicted if unrepentant literary forger – struggle to come to terms with the seemingly incomprehensible murder.

But when Will begins receiving threatening handwritten letters, seemingly penned by long-dead authors, but really from someone who knows secrets about Adam’s death and Will’s past, he understands his own life is also on the line – and attempts to forge a new beginning for himself and Meg.

In The Forgers, Bradford Morrow reveals the passion that drives collectors to the razor-sharp edge of morality, brilliantly confronting the hubris and mortal danger of rewriting history with a fraudulent pen.

Format: Paperback (256 pages)                          Publisher: Grove Press UK
Publication date: 5th November 2020 [2014] Genre: Crime, Mystery

Find The Forgers on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*link provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Previously published in the US in 2014, The Forgers is set in the slightly obsessive world of antiquarian book collectors and dealers who, according to the book’s narrator, share “little else than a rabid passion for the printed page”. But not just any old printed page; we’re talking rare first editions, unpublished manuscripts, private letters and volumes inscribed by the author.

The narrator, Will (although he is rarely referred to by name), is a self-confessed forger.  As he declares, “I myself was once a forger.  Undeniably, and even unashamedly, triumphantly a forger.” He has a high opinion of his own ability, considering the forged inscriptions he adds to books to be ‘improvements’ and works of art in their own right.  Reflecting on one of his creations, he says, “A forgery of this high quality is, to my mind, as informed by genius as any of your everyday authentic originals.  It’s just that the creativity involved is of an altogether different variety.”

Given the above, the reader may well consider his testimony suspect from the outset. Will’s one redeeming feature is his devotion to Meghan, the sister of the murdered man, for whose sake he has undertaken to leave his nefarious past behind.

These worthy intentions are disrupted by the arrival of accusatory letters from a man whom Will comes to think of as his ‘epistolary nemesis’, rather in the manner of Sherlock Holmes’ arch-enemy Moriarty. An apt comparison, since Will is an expert on the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle. After all, he’s forged enough of them.

The author creates an air of increasing unease and tension as Will tries to discover the identity of his mystery correspondent and becomes increasingly paranoid about the threat he poses. There is also some playful humour.  Reflecting on his progress at learning to operate a printing press, Will reports, “To say I took to it like a duck to water would be to employ a cliché – a lame duck of a cliché, at that.”

The book includes misdirection and red herrings in the manner of Agatha Christie and, although it started off promisingly, I have to say it rather fizzled out and I was left with a sense of anti-climax as I turned the final pages. The Forgers is an entertaining read and interesting as a portrait of the darker side of the antiquarian book world but not the completely satisfying mystery I’d hoped for.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Grove Press and Readers First.

In three words: Clever, playful, humorous

Try something similar: The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

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Bradford MorrowAbout the Author

Bradford Morrow is the author of eight previous novels, including The Forgers and The Prague Sonata. He is the founding editor of Conjunctions. A professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow at Bard College, he lives in New York City. (Photo credit: Goodreads author profile)

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#BookReview When I Come Home Again by Caroline Scott @simonschusterUK

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When I Come Home Again BT Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for When I Come Home Again by Caroline Scott. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part and to Simon & Schuster for my digital review copy via NetGalley. Do also check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Joules at Northern Reader.

When I Come Home Again - Graphic 3About the Book

How can you know who you are, when you choose to forget who you’ve been?

November 1918. On the cusp of the end of the First World War, a uniformed soldier is arrested in Durham Cathedral. It quickly becomes clear that he has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The soldier is given the name Adam and transferred to a rehabilitation home where his doctor, James, tries everything he can to help Adam remember who he once was. There’s just one problem. Adam doesn’t want to remember.

Unwilling to relive the trauma of war, Adam has locked his mind away, seemingly for good. But when a newspaper publishes Adam’s photograph, three women come forward, each just as certain that Adam is their relative and that he should go home with them.

But does Adam really belong with any of these women? Or is there another family waiting for him to come home?

Based on true events, When I Come Home Again is a deeply moving and powerful story of a nation’s outpouring of grief, and the search for hope in the aftermath of the First World War.

Format: Hardcover (496 pages)           Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: 29th October 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance

Find When I Come Home Again on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*link provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

I loved Caroline Scott’s book, The Photographer of the Lost, so I was prepared for an emotional story and beautiful writing in this, her second book; I wasn’t disappointed. Once again the focus is the period after the First World War and the long-lasting effect of the conflict on the lives of so many.

Appropriately, as we approach Remembrance Sunday, the opening scenes of the book depict the journey of the coffin containing the body of the Unknown Warrior prior to its interment in Westminster Abbey. For some, the possibility the body may be that of a lost loved one brings solace, pride even. But for others, including the three women featured in the book, it does nothing but add to their fierce conviction that their missing brother, son or husband is not the body in the coffin, is not dead and will return some day. Often this in the face of advice from others to accept their loved one is gone and move on with their lives.

I loved how photographs play a part in the story, providing a link to the author’s first book. There’s the photograph published in the newspaper of the man given the name Adam Galilee that raises such fervent hope in those who have lost loved ones. And there are the photographs cherished by those families – of brothers, sons, husband who went to war and never came back – produced as evidence that Adam belongs with them. Or the photographs of parents, places or children placed in Adam’s hands in the hope of provoking a response, a flicker of recognition or a glimpse of his life before.

The scenes in which the three women who believe that Adam is their husband, son or brother come face to face with him for the first time are full of emotion and anguish. Their certainty, even though they cannot all be right, is heart-breaking to witness. But the author also conveys the emotional impact these encounters have on Adam himself, knowing the disappointment it will bring if they evoke no memories for him. Equally, the reader witnesses the effect on James Haworth, the doctor in charge of Fellside House, whose dogged determination to uncover Adam’s true identity threatens his own peace of mind.

The theme of memory runs through the book. Whether that’s the memories – good and bad – evoked by a particular place, the “muscle memory” of throwing a pot on a wheel or playing a piece by Chopin on the piano, the memory of a face but without the ability to put a name to it, or the act of remembrance in general. As long as someone is remembered, are they ever really lost? The book also poses the question whether memory can always be relied upon or, in wanting something so much to be true, it can become distorted. “Grief and hope are powerful emotions. What we see is sometimes what we want to see.”

When I Come Home Again is a beautifully crafted, emotional story that is also a timely reminder of the damaged minds and bodies that are the legacy of war.

In three words: Tender, insightful, emotional

Try something similar: The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

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thumbnail_Caroline Scott author photo - credit Johnny RingAbout the Author

Caroline completed a PhD in History at the University of Durham. She has a particular interest in the experience of women during the First World War, in the challenges faced by the returning soldier, and in the development of tourism and pilgrimage in the former conflict zones. Caroline is originally from Lancashire, but now lives in south-west France.

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