My Week in Books – 19th March 2023

MyWeekinBooksOn What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I published my review of historical mystery, No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby.

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Books On My Spring 2023 To-Read List.

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 review of espionage thriller, The Spy Across the Water by James Naughtie as part of the blog tour. 

Friday – I published a feature on the books longlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2023

Saturday – I shared my review of historical novel, A Complicated Matter by Anne Youngson.


New arrivals

God's Children Are Little Broken ThingsGod’s Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu (Wieldenfeld & Nicolson) Longlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2023

In this stunning debut from one of Nigeria’s most promising young writers, the stakes of love meet a society in flux.

A man revisits the university campus where he lost his first love, aware now of what he couldn’t understand then. A daughter returns home to Lagos after the death of her father, forced to face her past – and future – relationship with his longtime partner. A young musician rises to fame at the risk of losing himself and the man who loves him.

Generations collide, families break and are remade, languages and cultures intertwine, and lovers find their ways to futures; from childhood through adulthood; on university campuses, city centres and neighbourhoods where church bells mingle with the morning call to prayer.

These nine stories of queer male intimacy brim with secrecy, ecstasy, loneliness and love in their depictions of what it means to be gay in contemporary Nigeria.

The MonkThe Monk by Tim Sullivan (ARC, Head of Zeus)

To find a murderer, you need a motive . . .

THE DETECTIVE
DS George Cross has always wondered why his mother left him when he was a child. Now she is back in his life, he suddenly has answers. But this unexpected reunion is not anything he’s used to dealing with. When a disturbing case lands on his desk, he is almost thankful for the return to normality.

THE QUESTION
The body of a monk is found savagely beaten to death in a woodland near Bristol. Nothing is known about Brother Dominic’s past, which makes investigating difficult. How can Cross unpick a crime when they don’t know anything about the victim? And why would someone want to harm a monk?

THE PAST
Discovering who Brother Dominic once was only makes the picture more puzzling. He was a much-loved and respected friend, brother, son – he had no enemies. Or, at least, none that are obvious. But looking into his past reveals that he was a very wealthy man, that he sacrificed it all for his faith. For a man who has nothing, it seems strange that greed could be the motive for his murder. But greed is a sin after all…


On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Book Review: The Romantic by William Boyd 
  • Book Review: Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
  • Book Review: The Settlement by Jock Serong
  • Book Review: Birthright by Charles Lambert

#WWWWednesday – 15th March 2023

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

The RomanticThe Romantic by William Boyd (Viking) Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023

Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss.

Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is.

This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.

A Complicated MatterA Complicated Matter by Anne Youngson (eARC, Doubleday via NetGalley)

I used to believe the world had been created for me; every stone and grain of sand. As I grew older, I began to think of myself as something tacked on to the edge.

1939, London: From McPhail’s Passage to Kensington’s Grand Palace Hotel, Rose Dunbar is evacuated from her humble home on the Rock of Gibraltar and dropped into a chaotic city of falling bombs, perplexing class rules and bad weather. Despite being ‘flagrantly foreign’ to the locals, she becomes an efficient go-between for the upper-class ladies helping out with the war effort and her own tribe of noisy displaced families.

It is only when she is shifted to the countryside to become secretary to the plain-speaking and sightless Major Inchbold that Rose’s dizzying journey to womanhood will become more surreal than ever, as she drinks tea at the vicarage, shields her best friend from abuse and stands up for the lower orders. But Rose’s greatest dilemma is yet to come, as she must decide where her home – and her heart – really lies.


Recently finished

No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby (Aria) 

The Spy Across the Water by James Naughtie (Head of Zeus)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

The SettlementThe Settlement by Jock Serong (Text Publishing, Australia) Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023

On the windswept point of an island at the edge of van Diemen’s Land, the Commandant huddles with a small force of white men and women.

He has gathered together, under varying degrees of coercion and duress, the last of the Tasmanians, or so he believes. His purpose is to save them—from a number of things, but most pressingly from the murderous intent of the pastoral settlers on their country.

The orphans Whelk and Pipi, fighting for their survival against the malevolent old man they know as the Catechist, watch as almost everything about this situation proves resistant to the Commandant’s will. The wind, the spread of disease, the strange black dog that floats in on the prow of a wrecked ship…

But above all the Chief, the leader of the exiles, before whom the Commandant performs a perverse, intimate dance of violence and betrayal.

In The Settlement, Jock Serong reimagines in urgent, compelling prose the ill-fated exploits of George Augustus Robinson at the settlement of Wybalenna—a venture whose blinkered, self-interested cruelty might stand for the colonial enterprise itself.