Tag: contemporary fiction

#BookReview This Shining Life by Harriet Kline @RandomTTours @TransworldBooks

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for This Shining Life by Harriet Kline. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Transworld for my review copy. Given the beautiful cover, it was quite hard to opt for a digital rather than a physical copy. However I’m always conscious that the latter are in short supply and not everyone is able to read digitally.

This Shining Life CoverAbout the Book

For Rich, life is golden. He fizzes with happiness and love. But Rich has an incurable brain tumour.

When Rich dies, he leaves behind a family without a father, a husband, a son and a best friend. His wife, Ruth, can’t imagine living without him and finds herself faced with a grief she’s not sure she can find her way through.

At the same time, their young son Ollie becomes intent on working out the meaning of life. Because everything happens for a reason. Doesn’t it?

But when they discover a mismatched collection of presents left by Rich for his loved ones, it provides a puzzle for them to solve, one that will help Ruth navigate her sorrow and help Ollie come to terms with what’s happened. Together, they will learn to lay the ghosts of the past to rest, and treasure the true gift that Rich has left them: the ability to embrace life and love every moment.

Format: eARC (320 pages)        Publisher: Transworld
Publication date: 1st July 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

This Shining Life is an intimate exploration of the impact of Rich’s diagnosis and subsequent death on the members of his extended family. All of them struggle to cope in different ways, partly because some of them face other challenges on top of their grief at his loss, such as difficult childhood memories or caring responsibilities. The book switches between before and after Rich’s death and unfolds from the points of view of a number of family members, including Rich himself.

The most powerful of these for me were the sections told – in the first person- by Rich’s young son, Ollie. Ollie’s neuro diversity gives him an unique perspective as he struggles to interpret the words and actions of others, in everyday life let alone at a time of such heightened emotions. As he says, “I hate trying to work out special meanings. You can never be sure whether you’ve got them right of wrong”. Indeed, a particularly interesting aspect of the book is the way it explores how we interpret the meaning of words and learn to discern whether their use is literal, metaphorical or merely a ‘turn of phrase’ such as Rich’s personal favourite, ‘Life’s too short’.

Ollie, in particular, exemplifies this struggle to understand the meaning of words in his touchingly literal interpretation of his father’s remark that life is a puzzle. It’s a puzzle Ollie is determined to solve, applying himself to the task with the same determination he did to memorising the names of the members of football teams or to solving sudoku puzzles.

Rich’s desire to leave gifts behind that will communicate to the recipients what they meant to him involves much careful thought on his part. And perhaps it is that degree of thought that, in the end, means just as much to the recipients as the gifts themselves. In fact, the whole gifting process turns out to be an apt metaphor for the emotional confusion that often follows a bereavement.

This Shining Life tackles some big subjects including terminal illness, caring for people with dementia, bereavement and mental illness. However, the author always manages to stay the right side of the maudlin or sentimental. And a cover quote by an author of the pedigree of Rachel Joyce describing the book as ‘exquisitely beautiful and compelling’ is not one that can be easily ignored is it?

In three words: Tender, emotional, insightful

Try something similar: One Last Time by Helga Flatland

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Harriet Kline Author PicAbout the Author

Harriet Kline works part time registering births, deaths and marriages and writes for the rest of the week. Her story Ghost won the Hissac Short Story Competition and Chest of Drawers won The London Magazine Short Story Competition. Other short stories have been published online with Litro, For Books’ Sake, and ShortStorySunday, and on BBC Radio 4.

Connect with Harriet
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#BookReview The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett @ProfileBooks

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The Uncommon ReaderAbout the Book

Had the dogs not taken exception to the strange van parked in the royal grounds, the Queen might never have learnt of the Westminster travelling library’s weekly visits to the palace. But finding herself at its steps, she goes up to apologise for all the yapping and ends up taking out a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett, last borrowed in 1989. Duff read though it proves to be, upbringing demands she finish it and, so as not to appear rude, she withdraws another.

This second, more fortunate choice of book awakens in Her Majesty a passion for reading so great that her public duties begin to suffer. And so, as she devours works by everyone from Hardy to Brookner to Proust to Samuel Beckett, her equerries conspire to bring the Queen’s literary odyssey to a close.

Format: Hardcover (128 pages)             Publisher: Profile Books
Publication date: 6th September 2007 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Humour

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My Review

The Uncommon ReaderI spotted this lovely little copy in my local Oxfam bookshop and couldn’t resist bringing it home with me. The Uncommon Reader was republished in a new paperback edition in March 2021 to mark the Queen’s 95th birthday.

Sprinkled with humour, as well as recounting the Queen’s newfound love of reading, the book provides a behind-the-scenes look at life in a royal residence. I especially enjoyed the role reversal that ensues when the Queen’s ‘amanuensis’ Norman Seakins, a lowly palace employee whom she initally meets in the travelling library, organises a literary soirée. Unexpectedly, the Queen finds herself tongue-tied in the presence of authors whose books she’s read, in the same way members of the public often do when meeting her during royal visits.

Not only is The Uncommon Reader a delightful story, it’s also a love letter to reading. Here are just a few of Her Majesty’s thoughts on the subject, as imagined by the author.

“Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.”
“Books are not about passing the time. They’re about other lives. Other words.”
“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”

As someone who finds it hard not to finish a book, I was in sympathy with the Queen’s view, “Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato – one finishes what’s on one’s plate”. I could also identify with her observation that one book can lead to another or, as she puts it, “doors kept opening wherever she turned”. However, what I couldn’t share was her experience of having met literary luminaries such as E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot or Ted Hughes.

The Uncommon Reader is a gem of a book well worth finding a few hours of spare time to read between visiting a cheese factory or attending a tree-planting ceremony. And, like all good reads, it has a great ending.

In three words: Charming, funny, tender

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Alan BennettAbout the Author

Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for the stage, including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of King George Ill (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay The Madness of King George) and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. At the National Theatre, The History Boys won Evening Standard, Critics’ Circle and Olivier awards, and the South Bank Award. On Broadway, The History Boys won five New York Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critics’ Circle Awards, a New York Drama Critics’ Award for Best Play, a New York Drama League Award and six Tonys including Best Play. The film of The History Boys was released in 2006. Alan Bennett’s collection of prose, Untold Stories, won the PEN/Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, 2006. He was named Reader’s Digest Author of the Year, 2005. (Photo credit: Goodreads)