A Little Love Song - Michelle Magorian

  Not quite sure how Michelle Magorian does it, but she touches my heart every time.  I had never heard of this until someone said that they tried to re-read it every year because it was life affirming.  Having read and loved "Goodnight Mr Tom", and some of her others, I took a chance on this one, and loved it.

Rose is 17 and still at school - her sister Diana is 21 and the beauty of  the family.  They don't really like each other very much, and then in 1943 they are sent away to the coast for three months, out of danger, whilst their widowed mother joins an ENSA troupe to entertain UK troups overseas.  Rose discovers several things in those three months - the diary of a lady who lived in the cottage once;  puppy love is not always the way you think; your sister is a nice woman; and you can grow up almost overnight.  If ever there was a book I would have wanted to read at 14/15 - this is it.  But it wasn't written then.  In an easy to read manner, Magorian will introduce Rose to sex, to friendship outside her normal circle and many other things that would stand her in good stead.    It's a lovely story - with a few tears to shed along the way, wonderful descriptions of happenings which seemed to me just exactly right.  A glorious and quick Summer read that I hope will stay with you the way its going to stay with me. 

The Fine Colour of Rust - P A O'Reilly

Loretta. Single mum since the husband walked out some time ago. Left with her two kids and no maintenance. But at least she's got a part time job, and friends, in the rural Australian town of Gunapan. There's Norm, the old guy down the road with a patch of skin cancer on his forehead, and there's Helen, a good friend to drink a glass of wine with when things get bad. Loretta is always campaigning to save the school, and again its under threat of closure. But it's hard to get many people to be enthusiastic, really, especially as there are whispers of a new country spa development just up the road from town, where jobs might be had......

Loretta is a heroine I loved. She's just like a lot of us. She's a bit overweight, she's none too hot in the housekeeping department, she loves her kids (even though she dreams of dumping them and riding off into the sunset on the back of a Harley Davidson), She wishes she could afford new clothes, and her car is falling apart around her as she ferries the kids back and fore to school.

Norm is a good friend, who is covered in the grime of many years of having a scrapyard in his own backyard. Loretta keeps a bar of soap especially for Norm to wash his hands when he pops over for a cup of tea, or supper. When Norm has the patch of skin cancer removed, it's the catalyst for many happenings, and when his son comes home from prison after 14 years inside, things change - but not as you might expect.

The book is set in Australia, but you will recognise the characters from anywhere in the world. It's a lovely read with a couple of laugh out loud moments and I romped through it.
[copy of my Amazon review]

Curry and Chocolate, although not necessarily in that order!

A week in Normandy, around10 miles from a small town called Falaise, the birthplace of William the Conquerer as he is known in the UK!  Those 10 miles led us off the main roads, up country lanes full of wild flowers and birdsong to our destination.  Beds and bathrooms for all,  comfy seating, a huge woodburner for the cooler evenings, and plenty of food, laughter, wine and chocolate (well, not chocolate every night!).

Adam, flushed with success at his first attempt at a roast leg of lamb for 15 persons, with veg!

It's very hard to say whether Peter is disgusted at Margaret's gravy spillage or not.  She is clearly delighted!

So serious - must be putting the world to rights!

And yet more intelligent conversation - probably about the quality of the wine.......

The problem is, life is not all serious discussion, But I never did find out what this particular joke was.....

 and even the camera holder was laughing here (sorry girls!)

And then you have a few glasses of wine, you think its clever to do what kids do, and at our age, frankly, it's not funny!!!



AND NOW...... THE CHOCOLATE TASTING!!!

Bett wondering why there isn't a box each! (Its a tasting, Bett, not a pig-out!)

No, no, that praline had a nasty aftertaste....

But the champagne truffle, well........Mmm mmm!

AND THEN ...... IT WAS CURRY NIGHT - DRESS ACCORDINGLY

Aging Bollywood star Shagmi Patel, Col Mustard (hamming it up) and a great thinker from Bengal

The cross dresser who was no better than he ought to be, and his lovely Memsahib.....

and two other lovely Memsahibs!

Just a tie and a hat, and here comes Pandit Nehru!

Pearl of India, wearing the Pearl of India, in the company of one so young he is obviously a student on leave from Oxford!

Rice for 15 is a big order, Jan!

Chefs of the Taj Mahal restaurant........

Mr Shagmi Patel, his lovely Memsahib Mitoo, and that great thinker again (is that alcohol I see???)

And, in the dying light, the cast of our evening....twice!

Laughing a lot is better than crying.  That was a good evening, and the curries not half bad, either!

Just two of our lovely evenings..... But I just have to mention the stone martins..... Our lightest sleeper, kept awake every night as Mummy stone martin had chosen her bedroom walls to raise a brood behind (actually I think, several Mummy stone martins had broods in there) ... and they are nocturnal.  What a racket!  Never again, as they say.  Look them up on t'internet. 

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend - Matthew Green

Max is eight. He is probably somewhere at the lower end of the autistic scale, but wherever that is, his parents know that something is not quite right. His Dad wants him to grow up and play baseball, and watch Rambo films, and his Mom just wants him to be happy. He has no friends....... STOP! He does have a friend, a friend who is nearly six years old, called Budo; and Budo, along with hundreds of thousands of others in existence at this moment, is Max's imaginary friend. Yes, that's right, there are others, and Budo meets several of them. Some are clever, some are not, and they all have one thing in common - they exist exactly as they have been imagined. Big, small, heroic, stupid; whatever their imaginers imagined - here they are.

Although about a small boy, this book, narrated by Budo himself, is not a children's book. But it will give you an insight into chidren's minds - the secret places that they cannot tell you about, which is why some of them invent imaginary friends, and why some of them hang around for a long time. And sometimes, they get to look out for a child who is in great danger. Max is in danger, and only Budo can save him.

Matthew Green (in the UK, Dicks in the USA) has pulled off an extraordinary feat of fiction. He has given life to a friend that a child has invented - so much so that I loved Budo as much as any character I have read about. Matthew Green is a teacher, in New England, and somehow I know that he loves his job, loves kids and must be an inspiration to the kids he teaches. And he may not be trained as one, but what a philosopher he is. Whilst reading this book I was asked to believe in imaginary people, to consider life after death(or not), to consider how loss affects us all. I read Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend in 24 hours, getting up at 6.30 am this morning to finish the last 50 pages. Jodi Picoult says "You've never read a book like this before", and whether you are a fan of hers or not, that is certainly true. What I am however, is a fan of Matthew Green - forever, because of this moving story, which let me inside the mind of a child.

 

[copy of my Amazon review]

Spring comes and brings a worry for next Winter

"I think we had better call the papers" said Willie, "for some big ones are knocking down our Winter shelter, and they are not our big ones, but some big ones with very nasty instruments of torture - quick, put your hands over your ears!   Eeeeek!  that is hurting my ears!"  What was hurting Willie's ears was an industrial grinder, but you wouldn't expect a woodmouse to know that.  The big ones in the house where Shermouse Holmes lived in the garden were taking down an old garage, the very garage that lots of the woodmice sheltered in every winter, for it was warm and dry.  This could be a real problem next year - where would they go to get out of the storms?  All that remained now was the hard concrete floor, no camping chairs to nibble on, no boxes to shelter in, and really, no hope at all for next Winter.  "I am going to call Mr Cheeeeeek at the Daily Fieldwhiskers", said Willie, "mousepeople need to know!"

Copyright SusanMaclean



Alice's Tulips - Sandra Dallas

December, 1862, and Alice's husband of one year, Charlie, has gone off to fight the Confederates at the beginning of the American Civil war leaving Alice with Mother Bullock, Charlie's mother.  She's only 20, and just does not know how she is going to bear it all.  She's strong-willed, and says what she thinks, which does not endear her to her mother-in-law - but you have to do the best you can in these circumstances.

Told in the first person, and entirely by letters to her much loved sister Lizzie, we soon build up a picture of small town Iowa, those women left behind, and their reactions to every damned thing that happens.  Gossip is rife, and this will certainly ensure that Alice falls foul of most of the town, especially when a local man is found dead.  How Alice keeps going with her head held high,  nurses her mother-on-law through illness, and does other acts of kindness are described in the letters without an ounce of conceit (well, perhaps a little, she does like pretty clothes and she is opinionated!).  She and Lizzie obviously discuss sex too in their letters, it's not described, but referred to, including the result of a coupling with her husband that Lizzie can't cope with, having two very small children already....

Not hard to read, with chapter headings giving a little potted history of quilt patterns; this is not only a tale of hope over desperation, but a little gem containing snippets of the history of that time stitched into the quilts the quilting group make to send to soldiers. 

 

The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak

How are you with books that tell you things you didn't want to know, books that (just) might make you cry, books told by Death?  Death is the narrator of this tale, and as he will tell you himself, he was kept very busy indeed in Europe during World War Two, gathering the souls of the dead.  But d'you know what?  Death has a heart.  He gathers the souls very gently, and even though he's busy all the time, sometimes the living, left behind, affect him more than they should.

The Book Thief is, I think, a tremendous achievement.  Set near Munich, Germany, It's the story of Liesel, a child of around 10, who arrives, with her mother, at the home of a strange couple indeed.  And then, her mother walks away. Mama - the new (step)mother, swears like a trouper, has a temper, and cooks badly.  Papa, the new stepfather, plays the accordion and smokes all the time.  Liesel can't run away, she has nowhere to run to, and it is never clear why this happened, and indeed, whether she had a father in the first place; but she has been lodged there for her own safety, that you can be sure of.    She goes to school, she makes friends - especially Rudy, who falls for her the moment he meets her, but never does get that kiss he craves.  They go scrumping apples together, they go stealing together, and they watch groups of Jews marching (or more often stumbling) to Dachau.  As the war progresses, you will find out how people back from the Russian front dealt with their losses, how people who were poor even before the war deal with no livelihood and no food, and how older people were "encouraged" to take on jobs which although not as soldiers, certainly involved wearing uniforms, all the while under the shadow of the swastika whether or not they even supported the Nazi party.  And who was going to say they didn't?

The author is Australian, but second generation European, and he has used events related by his parents as the starting block for this tremendous book.

For those of us who were on the "winning" side of World War Two, this book is a smack round the ears, to remind us that no-one wins a war.  Politically there is a victor, but everyone is a loser,  whether they loose their life, their families, their home, their mind, their friends.  This book will tell you what it's like to be bombed, but it will not take sides.  This book will tell you how different people cope with the same adversity.  This book will make you realise that people are people the world over, and when Death comes, he does not see the country you are faithful to, the colour of your skin, the church or temple you worship at. But to remind you - Death has a heart, and sometimes it nearly breaks.