Tag: literary fiction

Book Review: Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves by Rachel Malik

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boston

Tender story of the land, friendship and secret lives

About the Book

Publisher’s description: During the Second World War, Rene Hargreaves leaves her children with her aunt and boards a train without buying a return ticket, so sure is she that she never wants to see her husband again. Instead she starts a new life as a Land Girl on Starlight Farm. She finds its owner Elsie Boston and her country ways strange at first, yet as their relationship develops they become inextricably dependent on each other, long after the war has ended. When their shared life is suddenly threatened by a visitor who comes to stay and events that follow, they must begin to fight a war of their own against not just their community, but the nation’s press and the full force of the law.

Book Facts

  • Format: Hardcover
  • Pages: 320
  • Publication date: 27th April 2017
  • Genre: Literary, Historical Fiction

My Review (5 out of 5)

The story is based on the life of Rachel Malik’s own grandmother but, as she states, the book is ‘a fiction and not a speculation and it should be read as such’. Initially, it took me a while to adapt to the rhythm of the author’s writing style: ‘For they were all gone: two sisters married and third moved away; three brothers, dead such a long time ago – their names engraved on the memorial to prove it; her mother and her father as well’. However once I did, I really became immersed in the story and totally engaged with the two main characters, Rene and Elsie.

From the start, Elsie is an enigmatic character, cherishing her solitude and resisting intrusion from neighbours, seeing this as ‘encroachment’. At the same time, she has a ‘lonely power’ that proves strangely attractive to Rene: ‘Elsie wasn’t quite like other people, but that didn’t matter to Rene’.   Elsie’s strangeness is communicated in small ways, such as by gestures. When Rene first arrives at Starlight Farm: ‘She had offered her hand to Elsie, and Elsie had reached out hers but it wasn’t a greeting – Elsie had reached out as if she were trapped and needed to be pulled out, pulled free’. Gradually, they find each meets a kind of need in the other – Elsie, for companionship and a conduit to the outside world, and Rene, for refuge from her past: “Elsie knew that Rene fitted. A stranger to be sure, but one who didn’t make her feel strange.’

The development of Elsie and Rene’s relationship over time is tenderly observed without explicitly stating its nature.  Instead their growing mutual dependence is indicated by small things, like shared evenings listening to radio plays or the way they address each other: ‘A “we” was creeping into their talk, sometimes an “us”‘.  Eventually, Rene shares more details about her own history and the choices she has made. The War beings tumultuous change but also new beginnings for the pair. Then a figure from Rene’s past disrupts their way of life and brings with it grave consequences that puts their life together under an unwelcome and potentially life-changing spotlight.

This book is probably not everyone’s cup of tea (not that there isn’t plenty of tea drinking in it) but I absolutely fell in love with it.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, Penguin Books UK, in return for an honest review.

In three words: Moving, tender, engaging

Try something similar…A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale

About the Author

Rachel Malik was born in London in 1965 of mixed English and Pakistani parentage. She studied English at Cambridge and Linguistics at Strathclyde. For many years, Rachel taught English Literature at Middlesex University. Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves is her first novel.

Book Review: Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

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reservoir

Beautifully written novel about the impact of tragedy on a small village

About the Book

Description (courtesy of Goodreads): Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must. As the seasons unfold there are those who leave the village and those who are pulled back; those who come together or break apart. There are births and deaths; secrets kept and exposed; livelihoods made and lost; small kindnesses and unanticipated betrayals. Bats hang in the eaves of the church and herons stand sentry in the river; fieldfares flock in the hawthorn trees and badgers and foxes prowl deep in the woods – mating and fighting, hunting and dying. Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over thirteen years as the aftershocks of a stranger’s tragedy refuse to subside…

My Review

This is the first book by Jon McGregor I have read and therefore his writing style was completely new to me: unusual and rather wonderful.

Although the starting point for the novel is the mystery of the missing girl, the hunt for her is not the main focus of the book. Rather like a pebble thrown into a pond, it is the ripples that flow from this event – the effect on the village and the people who inhabit it – that the author concentrates on. The routine of daily life through the changing seasons is mirrored by the changes in the natural world. Particularly striking is the way the author moves seamlessly between the two:

“She wound the babies’ mobiles, and listened to the whirring tunes, watching the snails and frogs turning circles in the sunlight. She’d closed the door behind her before the music had stopped. The badgers in the beech wood fed quickly, laying down fat for the winter head.”

The book also charts the changes that affect certain families in the village: births, marriages, break-ups, deaths. Annual events take place in the village, each year less and less influenced by the tragedy of the missing girl. I liked the fact that certain phrases were repeated but with slight alterations, like a chorus with a word or two changed each time it is sung.

“The girl had been looked for; in the beech wood, in the river, in the hollows at Black Bull Rocks.”

“The girl had been looked for at the flooded quarry…She had been looked for in the caves along the river…”

“She had been looked for, everywhere.”

In spite of everything I loved about the book – the lyrical, inventive writing – I found myself ever so slightly disappointed at the end. Maybe that’s always the way with a book that promises so much!  I guess I was hoping for answers that were not provided – perhaps that was intentional by the author. I also found that, for me, as time went on the links between the missing girl and what was happening to the families in the village became less relevant, almost imperceptible…but again perhaps that was the point the author was trying to make.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers, Fourth Estate, in return for an honest review.

Book facts: 336 pages, publication date 9th April 2017

My rating: 4.5 (out of 5)

In three words: Lyrical, poetic, original

Try something similar…Autumn by Ali Smith

To pre-order/buy Reservoir 13 from Amazon, click here

jon-mcgAbout the Author

Jon McGregor is a British author who has written four novels. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was nominated for the 2002 Booker Prize, and was the winner of both the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award in 2003. So Many Ways to Begin was published in 2006 and was on the Booker prize long list. Even the Dogs was published in 2010 and his newest work, Reservoir 13, is due in April 2017.  Author Website

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