Mrs Mac suggests...... What to read in February '19

Well - here we are on the first of February;  a month that's short of a few days, and is a sort of in-between time,  for the cold of January is certainly still around, but perhaps, just perhaps, life is bursting out again, with early things in the garden.  I had a little look around the garden yesterday, to make sure that bulbs had overwintered..... and there they were, all sorts of green shoots, so we shall have some flowers in March and April.  Hellibors have already shown their colours, I have one cream, one pale green and one red  and also three pots of white crocus to put in.  It snowed last night, and it's cold today, but they are fine and dandy in their little pots in a sheltered place.

So.  What to read in February?  It's still cold, still dark early, and it makes me want to curl up on the sofa with a good book.  Febrruary being short will mean my books should be short?  No!! not necessarily.  So for something different, perhaps you should all

go for a re-read!

I plan to re-read a couple of books this month, but the one on the top of the  pile is one first published in 1977 and this old paperback has the cover I originally read.  This is the tale of man who thinks he's a dog, or is that a dog who thinks he's a man?  I can't remember which, but I'll find out when I read         

                                Fluke by James Herbert                                    

Charms for the Easy Life - Kaye Gibbons

I loved this American tale, set in the 1930s and 40s, of three women in one family.    The Daughter narrates and tells of of how her grandmother became a midwife, an unregistered doctor with an opinion on everything;   and how her mother married the wrong man early in life – a union which resulted in the daughter who loves both her grandmother and mother, but her grandmother just a little more. 

This is not the first book by Kaye Gibbons I have read, nor will it be the last.  She is a delight to read because she talks of real people.  Not people who have seen something iffy from a train, not people who wake up with the wrong man in the bed, not dead bodies found in boots of cars.  Just real life, real people.  The kind your grandmother told you about, the kind your mother warned you  about, the kind that you have come across yourself. 

How to Look For A Lost Dog - Ann M Martin

 Rose is an autistic child, her mother left when she was two, and her father, a man of a few words drinks too much.  He can’t (or won’t) understand autism either.    But one night he brings her a gift – a dog – and Rose’s world is turned upside down for a while. 

Rose calls the dog Rain because she arrived on a rainy day, and she changes the life of this child.  But when she finds out that her father didn't get her from the dog pound, or from an animal rescue centre, she decides that Rain has another family out there somewhere.  A family whose hearts are broken because their beloved dog has gone;  just as Rose's heart will break if she finds the family - because she will have to give Rain up.  Fortunately she is helped in the task by a lovely uncle, who really is more of a father than her own has ever been.  The reason for this is made clear, but  not until very near the end of the book, and there are a lot of smiles and a lot of tears for us us before we get there.  There are certainly more books about autistic boys than girls, but we need to know about girls too - what makes them tick;  what their coping mechanisms are.  Also how others cope.  For Rose can lose her temper, and when she does, instead of swearing she shouts prime numbers, one after the other, and this is not only disconcerting, but at school very disruptive..... "would you care to step into the corridor for a while, Rose?"    Wonderful.

Mrs Mac Suggests - What to read in JANUARY 19

Happy New Year!!

Here's to some good stuff in 2019, but majorly, good health and no money problems are my two  wishes to you all.

My suggestion for a January read?  I have just read a book written for children (How to look for a lost dog - Ann M Martin), which has as it's lead character a high functioning autistic child.  It made me think, a lot, about how that child functioned in the world with people  who did not really understand how her brain worked.  So my suggestion to you is to

 

look for and read a book about autism

either fiction or non fiction, long or short - you may find that like me, you laughed because of the way the child dealt with life, and cried for the same reason.  And you will be drawn into a world where you begin to understand that we are not all the same, but perhaps underneath we are mostly no different.                                                                                                                                                      

Dear Mrs Bird - A J Pearce

Emmie and Bunty are the closest of best friends.  They share a small flat at the top of Bunty's grandmother's house  in London.  The year is 1940 and Emmie wants to be a journalist, particularly a war correspondent - working as a typist for a solicitors' office is never going to get her anywhere, so when she sees an ad for a job in the very newspaper she reads it in, she applies immediately.  After a rather strange interview she is thrilled to be offered the job.  But she didn't ask any questions, and it turns out that the job is actually typing for the Agony Aunt (Mrs Bird) of a magazine in the same group as the newspaper, and with a very low circulation, things don't bode well.

But she makes new friends, and despite the fact that Mrs Bird should never have been given the job of agony aunt (she has a huge list of subjects that she will not discuss, will not answer letters containing, and will drop straight into the waste paper bin despite there being a stamped addressed envelope from the writer) Emmie begins to think that she could help some of those women who have written.

Between her job at the magazine, and her three nights a week on the switchboard of the local fire station, Emmie and friend Bunty have time to discuss Bloomin' Hitler; go dancing; put the world to rights, and from time to time spend the night in a nearby bomb shelter.  But things are going to change.  This is wartime and some of the things they experience are, well, not very nice and hard to deal with.  Bunty is in love with a local fireman who risks his life every night attempting the put out the fires and rescue people from under the rubble of bombed out building whilst Emmie has just been "let down". But life must go on.  Tragedy will rear it's  head as it must, but as the book changes from light-hearted to heartbreaking, Emmie will do her best - after all, there's a war on.  This is the author's first book.  I'd like to read more!  Recommended. 

The Best Kind of Snow for Grown-ups.....

....is somewhere else!  Well somewhere in Canada actually..... but so beautiful, isn't it?  And my fingers are not getting frozen, nothing is turning to slush, and I am warm and dry.

So here's Seasons Greetings to everyone, and of course, 

a better New Year than last.

The Wardrobe Mistress - Patrick McGrath

It's not often that I buy a newly published book, as my shelves are still full of books yet to be read; friends pass on books they think I might like and I spot books in charity shops that "look interesting".  But on a recent visit to a book shop looking for presents for others, I found two new books that looked interesting enough to buy, and this was one - it's a good one.

Joan Grice is the Wardrobe Mistress.  Her husband of nearly 30 years, a Shakespearean actor of some reputation, has died and she is bereft.  She is the permanent Wardrobe Mistress at a small theatre, and must return to work. At home she she has the same job, for Charlie Grice was a snappy dresser, and there is a wardrobe full of his clothes  for her to cry at, to inhale his left-behind smell of, and to generally grieve about the man who is never coming back.  The year is 1947, that long-gone cold winter, and the understudy who takes over Charlie's part as Malvolio in Twelfth Night is poor, shabby and ill-dressed for the cold weather.  But..... he is Charlie Grice - how did he pick up every movement, the posture, the wobble in the voice? At first, Joan believes that Charlie is attempting to "come through" from the other side, and is drawn to the actor.  But of course, as Charlie is definitely dead, perhaps some of those lovely clothes can be passed on.  And then, one day, she finds a small item in a coat that will turn her world on it's head.