Tag: Reading Challenges

Book Review – Country People by Daniel Mason @johnmurrays #20BOS26

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About the Book

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family.

So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, who possesses, in Kate’s, words, ‘a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere’. Soon he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales – from a ghostly tree surgeon, to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress, and a photographer of snowflakes – until at last he stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he begins to suspect, might not be a legend at all.

Format: Hardcover (320 pages) Publisher: John Murray Press
Publication date: 7th July 2026 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

I like to imagine Daniel Mason sitting at his desk in his room at Stanford University eating an apple (an ‘Osgood’s Wonder’ in case you’re curious). In front of him is a receptacle, possibly an object found while foraging or perhaps a gift from a grateful PhD student. It contains pieces of paper, each with a different genre written on it, intended to be a source of inspiration for his next book. Will he pluck out ‘historical fiction’ meaning he embarks on something like The Winter Soldier again? Or will it be ‘short stories’ meaning another collection along the lines of A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth? He pulls out a piece of paper. It reads ‘contemporary fiction, but make it funny’.

I found it impossible to write a ‘traditional’ review of Country People. Instead here are ten things I loved about it:

  1. The route planned by Miles for the family’s three week journey to Vermont taking in ‘twenty-seven states, eighteen important wildlife areas, a national park no one had ever heard of [and] forests in states popularly conceived of as having no forests’
  2. The family’s introduction to the convenience food of rural America: ‘hot dogs the color of an old lady’s nail polish’, ‘energy drinks with fascist fonts’, ‘Pennzoil-colored meat sticks’
  3. Miles’s insatiable curiosity and childlike enthusiasm for mastering new skills: scything, skate skiing, learning the Basque language
  4. The eccentric characters: drama teacher Nausicaa, mastermind of the local school’s fully inclusive production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Titus Andronicus having being rejected as unsuitable); The Rat Man of Vermont; snowflake photographer Bentley; Hugh, nature trail guide and hollow-earther
  5. The humour: the transcripts of calls to the local radio phone-in programme The Miscellanous Minute, ‘the only Minute that’s actually an Hour’; Kate’s friend Miranda’s published works including ‘Trends in Mini-Horses’, ‘Can-Throwing Behaviours of Rural American Males’ and ‘Community Threads: Tracing Social Change Through Clothing Labels’
  6. The heartwarming history of Miles and Kate’s relationship and the challenges they have faced and overcome together
  7. The meetings of the Jeremiah Wylkes Society
  8. The Easter eggs’ for those who’ve read North Woods
  9. The family’s transition from outsiders to ‘country people’
  10. The curtain call for everyone you’ve encountered in the book that demonstrate just how immersed Miles has become in the local community

Country People made me smile, even laugh out loud on a few occasions which is rare for me. I can’t wait to find out what genre Daniel Mason picks for his next book. I’m pretty sure I’ll read it whatever it is.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of John Murray Press via NetGalley. Country People is book 5 of my 20 Books of Summer.

    In three words: Clever, funny, heartwarming
    Try something similar: North Woods by Daniel Mason

    About the Author

    Daniel Mason is a physician and author of The Piano Tuner (2002), A Far Country (2007), The Winter Soldier (2018), A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (2020) – a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize – and North Woods (2023). His work has been translated into 28 languages, awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Piano Tuner was produced as an opera by Music Theatre Wales for the Royal Opera House in London, and adapted to the stage by Lifeline Theatre in Chicago.

    His short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All Story, Zyzzyva, Narrative, and Lapham’s Quarterly, and have been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a National Magazine Award and an O. Henry Prize.

    A Clinical Assistant Professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry, his research and teaching interests include the subjective experience of mental illness and the influence of literature, history, and culture on the practice of medicine.

    Connect with Daniel
    Website

    Book Review – The Millionaire Waltz by Anthony Quinn @AbacusBooks #20BOS26

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    About the Book

    London in the 1920 a young woman treads the path between danger and desire.

    Against a backdrop of thuggish blackmail, constricting high society and the gillter of a London still fragile from the war, Edie Greenlaw is trying to decide what she wants from the world. The closer the prospect of marriage with her handsome war hero fiance becomes, the less fulfilling it seems.

    Defying caution she goes to the aid of a friend and entangles herself in a dangerous demi-monde of sexual extortion and violence.

    Format: Hardcover (416 pages) Publisher: Abacus
    Publication date: 6th August 2026 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

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    My Review

    The Millionaire Waltz was not quite what I expected based on the book description. Edie’s entanglement with the ‘dangerous demi-monde’ doesn’t take place until quite far into the novel although, to be fair, the seeds are sown when Edie becomes friends with a man, who like many others at that time, must hide his sexuality.

    Much of the book focuses on Edie’s relationship with her fiance David, a successful solicitor from a wealthy family. She loves him but has growing misgivings about the prospect of marriage and what it will mean for her theatrical ambitions. Her solution is to repeatedly defer the date of the wedding, unaware of what will ensue as a result.

    I admired Edie’s feisty spirit, sense of adventure and determination to retain her independence but I’m afraid I found her a largely unsympathetic character mainly because of her treatment of David. Okay, so he has rather conventional views about marriage but I didn’t think he deserved how things turned out. Rather mean-spirited of me, I know, but I wasn’t altogether unhappy about how things ended for Edie.

    For me, the most enjoyable part of the book was the vivid depiction of theatre life. The struggle to get an audition, the disappointment of being turned down for parts, the succession of dismal digs when part of a touring production, the demanding directors, the petty rivalries. On the other hand there are the lifelong friendships formed, the sense of satisfaction of delivering a line perfectly, and the excitement of opening nights.

    Those who’ve read the author’s previous novel, Curtain Call, will welcome the appearance of theatre critic for the Chronicle newspaper Jimmy Erskine, renowned for his often waspish reviews of West End theatre productions. The 2023 film The Critic starring Sir Ian McKellen was the author’s own adaptation of Curtain Call and I found it impossible not to picture Sir Ian whenever Jimmy appeared in the book. Another character from Curtain Call, which is set a decade or so after this book, also features in The Millionaire Waltz, and there are walk-on parts for notable figures of the period such as Ivor Novello and Noel Coward.

    Edie mostly moves in privileged circles, a seemingly endless round of cocktail parties, soirees and weekend house parties. But just occasionally she gets a glimpse of the realities of life for those less fortunate than her, or those for whom the impact of the First World War is a burden they will carry for the rest of their lives.

    If I’m honest I was hoping for more of the suspense and ingenuity of the author’s previous book The Mouthless Dead. Having said that The Millionaire Waltz is an engaging story, full of colourful characters which effortlessly captures the milieu of 1920s London.

    I received an uncorrected proof copy courtesy of Abacus. The Millionaire Waltz is book 13 of my 20 Books of Summer.

    In three words: Entertaining, evocative, spirited
    Try something similar: A Little London Scandal by Miranda Emmerson

    About the Author

    Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. From 1998 to 2013 he was the film critic for the Independent. His novels include The Rescue Man, which won the 2009 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award; Half of the Human Race; The Streets, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize; Curtain Call, soon to be a feature film starring Ian McKellen and Gemma Arterton; Freya, Eureka, Our Friends in Berlin and London, Burning. He also wrote the recent Liverpool memoir Klopp.