Tag: Reading Challenges

Book Review – Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

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About the Book

Everyone in the village said nothing good would come of Gabriel’s return. And as Beth looks at the man she loves on trial for murder, she can’t help thinking they were right.

Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken.

It was Frank who picked up the pieces and together they built a home very different from the one she’d imagined with Gabriel. Watching her husband and son, she remembered feeling so sure that, after everything, this was the life she was supposed to be leading.

But when Gabriel comes back, all Beth’s certainty about who she is and what she wants crumbles. Even after ten years, their connection is instant. She knows it’s wrong and she knows people could get hurt. But how can she resist a second chance at first love?

Format: Hardcover (320 pages) Publisher: John Murray
Publication date: 4th March 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The book moves back and forth in time, shifting between the trial of an unnamed defendant for the murder of an unnamed victim in 1960, Beth and Gabriel’s love affair as teenagers in the 1950s and the events of Beth’s ten year marriage to Frank.

There’s a wonderful innocence about Beth and Gabriel’s teenage romance through the heady heat of one idyllic summer, even if it’s not long before it is consummated. However, Gabriel’s mother doesn’t approve of the relationship. She sees a different future for her son, one that doesn’t involve marriage to a local girl. Summer comes to an end and Gabriel sets off for university leaving Beth thinking their relationship will persist. But events conspire to break them apart and she finds herself alone and facing an uncertain future. Frank, the young man who has been her devoted admirer ever since they were at school together, becomes her rescuer. He doesn’t care what’s happened in the past, he’s just overjoyed that he’s finally with Beth and they can set up home together on the family farm.

Running a farm is hard, physical work involving long hours. It doesn’t help that Frank’s younger brother, Jimmy, rolls in drunk most nights and doesn’t pull his weight. And only Frank seems able to control Jimmy’s angry outbursts.

Despite its uncertain beginnings Beth and Frank’s marriage is a success built on a foundation of love, mutual attraction and moments of joy. But it is also marked by a tragedy that has left them both with deep-seated psychological scars. Frank buries himself in work whilst Beth’s profound grief leaves her barely able to function, mindlessly completing the round of daily chores.

When Gabriel arrives back to live in the house he grew up in, Beth finds it impossible to resist the thought they might still have a future together. After all, they were supposed to have a life together weren’t they? It’s a kind of madness that makes her blind to any consideration of the possible consequences – with dire results.

I couldn’t really warm to Gabriel who seemed self-absorbed and indifferent to the consequences of his actions. And although I felt empathy with the teenage Beth and the circumstances she finds herself in, and immense sympathy for the tragedy that occurs later, I found it hard to forgive some of her decisions. For me the real hero of the book was Frank, the epitome of steadfast love, forgiveness and understanding despite bearing the burden of his own guilt. (The rural setting and love triangle gave me Thomas Hardy vibes, in particular Far From the Madding Crowd. There’s a Gabriel in that, of course.)

Broken Country is a beautifully written book that combines an intense, heartbreaking love story with elements of a thriller. It’s a very cleverly constructed book with a number of revelations kept for the final chapters. Although I didn’t find events after the trial particularly credible, they do set things up for an emotional ending that left even cynical old me slightly tearful. But then I always cry at the end of The Railway Children even though I know what’s coming.

I received a review copy courtesy of John Murray via NetGalley.

In three words: Emotional, dramatic, intense
Try something similar: The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

About the Author

After several years of living and working in London as a journalist and writing Pictures of Him and Days You Were Mine, Clare, her husband and three children moved to an old farmhouse in Dorset. The house, the ancient fields surrounding it and the farmers who have a deep connection to the land inspired the setting for Broken Country. (Photo: Goodreads)

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Book Review – The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

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About the Book

A house is a precious thing . . .

It’s been fifteen years since the Second World War and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed and the conflict is well and truly over. Alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel lives her life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep, as a guest – there to stay for the season . . .

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house – a spoon, a knife, a bowl – Isabel’ suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to desire, leading to a discovery that unravels all she has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva nor the house are what they seem.

Format: Hardback (262 pages) Publisher: Viking
Publication date: 28th May 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The Safekeep has made a frequent appearance on literary prize lists, including the Booker Prize 2024, the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025 and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025.

Isabel’s controlled way of life is governed by routine and detail. The sole occupant of the family home she has become in a way its curator, recording and preserving her mother’s treasured possessions. It connects her to the past, perhaps chains her to the past. But it may not be her future because her brother Louis will inherit the house from their uncle who bought it after the war when he chooses to settle down. Up until now that has seemed a distant prospect because Louis’s personal life has seen a succession of girlfriends come and go. But when he arrives with Eva, Isabel fears everything may be about to change.

The development of Eva and Isabel’s relationship, from hostility (at least on Isabel’s part) to something much more intimate, is a study in building a sense of simmering tension and emotional intensity. Whereas Isabel finds the attentions of her neighbour Johan distasteful she has an entirely different response to even a mere glance from Eva. Eva seems to have the key to unlocking in Isabel something that has been buried deep inside her, something perhaps even she herself didn’t recognise. It’s an awakening on every level.

I’m not a prude but I wasn’t completely convinced that the sex scenes needed to be so explicit. For me, the author had already created a sufficiently intense feeling of eroticism in other encounters between Eva and Isabel.

I wasn’t expecting the plot development that occurs in the final third of the book but it is so clever in the way it makes sense of disparate pieces of information scattered through the earlier parts of the book. For me, learning about Eva’s motivations was the most powerful and thought-provoking element of the book. I also found the way her story was told – in fragments and random thoughts – completely credible, which is not always the case for me with this particular narrative device. She has an obsession that has become the sole objective of her life, to right a wrong that up until now has gone unpunished or even acknowledged in Dutch society.

Although set in 1961, I didn’t get a strong sense of the period in the way you would usually expect from historical fiction through references to fashion, culture, external events, etc. However, the book does demonstrate how the impact of war can be longlasting and manifest itself in multiple ways. It explores complicity, brings home the geographical extent of the war and demonstrates how, even for those who survived Nazi persecution, many other things were lost. Also, that secrets have a way of finding their way to the surface and can change everything.

Given all that had gone before, I wasn’t expecting the book to end the way it did. Having said that, the idea of the possibility of reconciliation is a hopeful one.

In three words: Intense, atmospheric, sensual
Try something similar: Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

About the Author

Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher. She currently lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, On (Not) Reading Anne Frank, received a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2018. The Safekeep is her debut novel and was acquired in hotly contested nine-way auctions in both the UK and the US. Rights have sold in a further twelve countries. (Photo: Goodreads)

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