Tag: books

#WWWWednesday – 27th November 2024

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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

Time of the ChildTime of the Child by Niall Williams (Bloomsbury via NetGalley)

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in the little town of Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from his community. A visit from the doctor is always a sign of bad things to come.

His youngest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed her chance at real love – and passed up an offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.

But in the advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter’s lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.

OrbitalOrbital by Samantha Harvey (Vintage)

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

Recently finished

Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton (Fairlight)

How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin (Quercus)

What Cathy Will Read Next

TheSeaRoadWestThe Sea Road West by Sally Rena (Endeavour Press) 

The road from the Scottish mainland to Kintillo lies across a ridge of craggy and forbidding hills, a natural barrier isolating the peninsular from the rest of the world and making Kintillo a place of both refuge and solitude.

But trouble begins when Father Macabe dies, and Father James, a new, young man arrives. Handsome and full of ideals, Father James is totally unprepared for the spell-binding beauty of the lonely country, and for the irrelevance of his philanthropic fervour to the lives of its inhabitants. For company, there is only a retired doctor, a charming and alcoholic wreck, and the inhabitants of the Hall – the Laird and his two pretty daughters.

Meriel Finlay is one of these daughters – a captivating 19 year old yearning for love and adventure. As mutual desire slowly ripens, can Father James continue to keep focus on his profession when it denies him his basic instincts?

Passions hidden below the surface, maturing in loneliness, erupt in a violent upsurge of love, hatred and jealousy which sweep through Kintillo like a storm…

Book Review – Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton #NOVNOV24

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About the Book

Book cover of Blue Postcards

Once there was a street in Paris and it was called the Street of Tailors. This was years back, in the blue mists of memory.

Now it’s the 1950s and Henri is the last tailor on the street. With meticulous precision he takes the measurements of men and notes them down in his leather-bound ledger. He draws on the cloth with a blue chalk, cuts the pieces and sews them together. When the suit is done, Henri adds a finishing a blue Tekhelet thread hidden in the trousers somewhere, for luck. One day, the renowned French artist Yves Klein walks into the shop, and orders a suit. 

Format: Paperback (160 pages) Publisher: Fairlight Books
Publication date: 1st October 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Blue Postcards on Goodreads

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My Review

I purchased this slim little volume when it was longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2021. Sadly it has languished on my bookshelf ever since. Thankfully, the Novellas In November reading event hosted by Cathy at 746 Books and Rebecca at Bookish Beck has given me the impetus to read it.

It has an unusual structure: 500 numbered paragraphs each including the word ‘blue’. Sometimes the word blue describes the colour of an object – a glass, a dress, a tie – or an element of nature – the sea or sky. At other times, it’s a phrase such as ‘out of the blue’ or ‘feeling blue’. Along the way, we also get historical detail about use of the colour blue such as the significance of its use in religious art.

Intertwined with this meditation on the colour blue are three interconnected stories. The first starts with the narrator’s purchase of an old blue postcard from a young woman named Michelle and goes on to describe their subsequent relationship (real or imagined). The second depicts events in the life of Yves Klein, the artist who originally created the postcard. The third is the story of Henri, a Jewish tailor, who makes a suit for Klein, a suit the latter considers lucky and associates with his increasing success in the art world.

Although Henri’s story is set in the 1950s, other events do not necessarily unfold in linear time, as the narrator himself admits. Some might not even have happened at all. Memory is a theme that runs throughout the book whether that’s the unreliability of memory, such as remembering things that never happened but you wish had happened, the pain caused by reliving certain memories or the memories evoked by an object – a sugar bowl, for example – or a place.

When it came to the story of Yves Klein, it wasn’t until I read a review of the book by another reader that I discovered he was a real person and that the seemingly outrageous works of art described in the book really existed and were not a satirical comment on the art world by the author. I’m not sure whether knowing Klein was a real person would have changed my view of the book’s inventiveness. I suspect it might have.

There’s a lot of humour in the book, in particular some of the means by which the author inserts the colour blue into certain paragraphs. Having said that, there is a degree of repetition.

I can see why Blue Postcards, with its imaginative structure, made it on to the Walter Scott Prize longlist, but I can also understand why it didn’t make the shortlist. Personally, I would have liked more of Henri’s story and why he takes the action he does in the final pages.

In three words: Imaginative, funny, poignant
Try something similar: Red Is My Heart by Antoine Laurain & Le Sonneur

About the Author

Author Douglas Bruton

Douglas Bruton has been published in various publications including Northwords Now, New Writing Scotland, Aesthetica and the Irish Literary Review. His short stories have won competitions including Fish and the Neil Gunn Prize. He has had two novels published, The Chess Piece Magician and Mrs Winchester’s Gun Club. (Photo: Publisher author page)

Connect with Douglas
Goodreads