Come Home Charlie and Face Them - R F Delderfield

Set in the 1920s, written in the late 1960s, this is the kind of book that is rather hard to pidgeonhole now, in a world taken over by blood and gore, killers, vampires, etc. But the story here is likely to stay with you longer than many of that genre. 

Charlie is a bank clerk, at the bottom of the ladder and with only 40 plus years of boredom and ledger entry work to look forward to.  He's lodging with the bank manager, Evan Rhys-Jones, who has a mouthy wife and a lumpy daughter.  But it's the lumpy daughter, Ida, who gives Charlie his first sexual encounter, and this opens the way for other happenings; not least of all his infatuation with the gorgeous Delphine, who runs the local cafe with her brother Beppo.  Somehow, Charlie and Delphine come up with a seemingly foolproof idea for robbing the very bank Charlie works in and therefore gives him to chance to have Delphine all for himself, always.

The book starts with the end..... rather like that old movie trick where the screen disolves and the story proper then starts.  I liked that.  I wanted to smack Charlie, silly young man that he was, taken in by a pretty face or the chance of a lay, but I was absorbed most of all by a beautiful writing style - one that is not fashionable today, but one that makes for comfortable reading, all the while wanting Charlie not to go on with this crazy idea.  Whilst aware that he is being led on by Delphine, I defy anyone to realise the well-crafted end of the tale before the author!  Enjoyed very much, and if another Delderfield crosses my path, will definitely read it.

A new way to display Christmas cards!

This is from a lovely blog called Morning Creativity - the blogger is Erland from Norway, and he has some brilliant ideas over morning coffee, hence the name of the blog.

When I saw this I thought how lovely it would be to display Christmas and/or birthday cards, and you could make as many as you like, make them as long as you like, and roll 'em up and use them year after year.  Brilliant!  What d'you think?  What I think is "Thank you, Erland - you are a genius!"

The Paperbark Shoe - Goldie Goldbloom

Do you ever wonder about what is happening in another place whilst you know what is happening in yours? The Toads are a farming family in Australia, two parents, two kids and another on the way, fighting to make enough money to live on and feed themselves. Into their lives come two Italian prisoners of war, two of the 18,000 POWs sent to Australia between 1941 and 1947. Toad never joined up - he's too short. Gin, his wife is an albino, a trained concert pianist who never got to play for money, incarcerated in an asylum (where Toad first came across her) by her stepfather because, well...... read on and find out why. When the POWs become part of their lives, love and lust rears it's head, and for around a year, the air quivers with the longing, the wanting, the doing - and all the while Gin has to get on with life, Toad has to keep farming, and the two POWs have to keep working. Toad has a strange fantasy; he keeps ladies' corsets in the barn. Gin dreams of being truly loved, rather than taken from behind like an animal (and Toad see's no wrong in this - he's a farmer, this is what animals do). Whilst they are living their strange little life on the other side of the world, Italy is changing sides, the partisans are trying to fight off the Nazis, and there in the outback they hear so little of the the actuality. Sadly, neither does anyone else, for in the nearest township, gossip spreads like wildfire about Toad and the nasty little setup he allows out on his farm.

Reading this novel is rather like shutting your fingers in a drawer. You can see what's coming but you can't get your hand away in time. It's a beautifully imagined book, about a dreadful time in the World's history, written with a skill which makes you continue to turn a page for "just a little more".

On the Other Side: Letters to My Children from Germany 1940-46 by Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg

If you have read Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson (published as this one is by Persephone), a telling exploration of what it was like living in London during  WW2; you could do no better than read this shorter book which tells you what it was like living in Hamburg, Germany, at the same time.  Did you know that Germans were subjected to food rationing?  At the start of the war each person could expect 60grms semolina/oats, 125 grms butter per week - and 1lb meat/sausage per month - anything else, vegetables, eggs, fruit - would be what you could lay your hands on.  by the end of the war the meat ration had shrunk to 1/2lb per month, accompanied by whatever else could be found.  Did you know that as well as the near-total distruction of Dresden by the RAF, most of Hamburg, where Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg  lived, plus many other large towns were also continually bombed until not very much remained?  For all those books (and there are many) written about life in WW2 in the UK from the point of view of housewives, soldiers, doctors, midwives, shopkeepers, children etc., there is very little available from the same point of view in Germany.  The Book Thief, a good fiction and one I recommend is one of them, but this is non fiction, and so gives you a real point of view.  From the radio messages in the early days of continued bombing telling Germany that "everything is going to be restored ever so much more beautifully than before" to the never ending tramp to the shelters every time the sirens sounded, wearing several layers of clothing in case your building was bombed plus any food you could carry for the same reason:  this was the hell that ordinary Germans too, lived with.

Tellingly, Hamburg was a town that was not supportive of Hitler and his ideas.  Towards the end of the book this mother and letter writer records her thoughts thus:  "Our beautiful and proud Germany has been crushed, ground into the earth and smashed into ruins, whilst millions sacrificed their lives and all our lovely towns and art treasures were destroyed.  And all this because of one man who had a lunatic vision of being 'chosen by God'.  May he and his followers be caught in just retribution."

"Tilli" Woldff-Monckeberg was an educated woman married to a professor of English, the stepfather of Tilli's children that were outside Germany during the war years.  She didn't write books, but every word of hers is worth reading - every word she recorded (in the form of letters to those children) were for the eyes of her children only but now they are here for us all to read, thanks to her youngest daughter, who discovered them, edited and published them in the 1970s.
  
You should look here  to read more, but don't let this little book slip under your radar.

Sleeping at the Starlite Motel - Bailey White

I don't know how I found this video of an interview with Bailey White but have a look 

When I listened to this quiet, unassuming schoolteacher from Georgia, I wondered to myself what she wrote, and what her style was?  So, as you do, I clicked on that button and bought Sleeping at the Starlite Motel.

It's not a novel, but neither is it a book of short stories, although if you treated each little tale as a short story you wouldn't go far wrong.  These little "rememberings"; are they one hundred per cent true?  or is the truth embroidered?  It really doesn't matter, because all of them reveal a Southern way of life and even though I have never been to that part of the States, if I did, I would recognise it straight away! I loved finding out that her father was a Hollywood B movie scriptwriter, and that her mother spotted her father's feet in a ghost film!  I loved her tale of sneaking out of a computer training course and going off to the dog track.  In fact, for different reasons, I loved each chapter.  It's the kind of book you might read a chapter of each night in bed whilst dropping off with a smile on your face.  There is nothing to race to the end for, there is no gasp of horror as you turn a page, but for me, it was just a lovely find.

A Virtuous Woman - Kaye Gibbons

Forget about love as in chick-lit.  Forget about happy ever after.  Here is a small book, and inside it's pages you will learn of a love that is probably like many others, but unlike anything you have known.  In alternate chapters, Ruby and Jack Stokes tell the reader how they feel about each other.  Ruby tells the reader how she met Jack, how she settled with him and what she is doing now that she has been diagnosed with lung cancer.  Jack tells you that Ruby was the love of his life - for it is clear from the first couple of paragraphs that Jack's telling starts after Ruby has died.

Hard to say where and when the book is set, but that does not really matter.  Certainly the author lives in North Carolina, and I'd say that the book was set there, sometime in the 1940s or 50s.  What is necessary is that you read this short book slowly, so that you don't miss the beauty amongst the words.  Written in the colloquial style of the place they live in, it takes a little while for the rythym to click, but when it does, you'll get it.  And the last chapter?  read that slowly, because it involves three people's thoughts and is written in a stream of conciousness style.  Unless you have a heart of stone, I defy you not to be moved by this bitter-sweet gem of a book.

NB For non US readers, towards the end of the book the word "haint" appears a couple of times.  It's a spirit, or a haunt.........

The Botticelli Angel - Harry Cauley

I borrowed this lovely read from a friend, and so glad I did.  It's set in America, in the 1920s, in the years before the Depression when John Tree, a grifter (but not a good one), a sometime teacher with a false diploma, and an eye for a pretty woman, comes across an angel.  An angel whose mother has just been waiting for another angel to take him to heaven.  John Tree can do that;  but his heaven just happens to be California.  For if he can get the angel to Hollywood, he can make a fortune.  His adventures across America, with Michael, a simple soul with small boney growths on his shoulder blades are a joy to read.  The village of Paradise, the circus folk, the visit to the Grand Canyon all hold joy for Michael, who asks, at every one of them, "is this heaven?".

Harry Cauley has a light touch writing style and a lovely sense of humour as he takes us along for the ride through all the ups and downs of the journey to California.  Told in the first person, John Tree struggles with his own morals whilst he protects Michael but only because he sees money at the end of the journey.  Funny and heartbreaking in turns, this is an odd little novel which really does deserve more readers.  Make one of them you!