Mrs Mac Suggests: What to read in DECEMBER 2019

Sorry!  a day or two late as it's December already, but due to some family emergencies I couldn't get here.... but I'm here now.

It's December, and for some folk that means snow.  Here in the SW of England it's cold but dry and perhaps with NO RAIN for a while - YAY!

So do you get in the Christmas spirit by reading something heartwarming?  Or perhaps something  quite the opposite?

I am suggesting  a book  50 years old or older should be the read for December.  Now that might be

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
or
An English Murder - Cyril Hare

but whatever it is, it sort of needs to be set around the Christmas Season.  I have just read An English Murder (1950) which was a short and sweet English Country House story.  I liked it.  Clever.

So wishing you good reading and a Cool Yule where ever and whoever you are.  Enjoy!

When The Floods Came - Clare Morrall

Isn't a well-written book with a good story and a "proper" ending a joy to read?  I devoured this one, and loved reading every single chapter.  But stop reading here if you cannot do dystopia, for this is a clever take on that subject, a really good "what if".  Around the internet I can see that this is a marmite book - mostly because this is not a heavy duty dystopia, it's not like McCarthy's The Road, King's The Stand and many others.  But for me, that was the whole point.... a quiet novel set in a boring place, with ordinary people who are getting by just fine.  Until......

Roza lives in a flat in a tower block just outside Birmingham - a part of the UK which is heavily flooded for the winter months.  It is now a very long time since a virus whiped out a majority of the population, and the Government now operates from Brighton.  Some things have remained the same - the internet still works (sort of), some things are very different (no cars, no money).  Roza's family of Mother, Father and four siblings have managed very well - not least because the tower block is empty except for them, and so scope for  scavenging from all the other flats is huge. Roza works on line for a Chinese company; Roza's Mum (Moth) teaches over the internet, and generally they get by and with no other example to go by, seem to have a decent (if a little boring) life. Roza's on-line fiance is on his way by bike from Brighton to Birmingham, sending progress reports on a daily basis.  And then after all this time, a stranger turns up at the flats.  A young charismatic man who tells them all sorts of things....... Can he be trusted?

The Trick to Time - Kit de Waal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I found this a very moving read.  I must warn readers that it does contain a short chapter dealing with still-birth and also mention of mental illness.  But these two very serious subjects are part of the whole;  and the whole is a tender, and powerful read that made my heart hurt.  This is the story of Mona's life - from the death of her mother when she was very small, the loss of her father when she was in her early twenties. It's also the story of her early marriage, which didn't last long, and what she has done since, now approaching her 60th birthday.  For a long time she has made clothes for, and painted the faces of, wooden dolls for collectors.  The dolls are made by a carpenter - a lonely man she seems to feel she must keep an eye on as he appears even sadder than she.  There's also a man about her age who likes to meet her for coffee.  She likes him, but wants nothing further from him - though perhaps he wants more from her?

It jumps about in time, but that didn't worry me at all, I wasn't lost in time, although Mona was, and she was not the only one.  I wonder what I would have done in Mona's shoes?  There are clues everywhere about what has happened, and what is still happening.  There are lovely people who support her, make her smile, and generally guide her through life, but there is also a worrying character or two who turn out quite differently than expected.

I think it's a book to read slowly, because every so often a short sentence appears, seemingly meaning little, but actually opening out Mona's life.  One of those short sentences, which appears during a visit to Birmingham just after her birthday to visit her old friend Val as she does every year, was heartbreaking.  The reader will see that Mona is not the only person in the world to have suffered - for different reasons of course - and she doesn't always think kindly of them because of that.  But all those characters make the book what it is, and make Mona's story so much more.  This is certainly one of my top ten books of the year.

 

The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford

This is not a thriller you might pick up at the airport prior to a flight.  But you should!  Although of course it depends what you like to read.  I don't read classic literature much.... but again, I don't read "airport thrillers" either.  So perhaps it's a mystery as to why I acquired and read this short novel (200+ pages).

The first thing to say is that this book has a very unreliable narrator and sometimes that makes a read very interesting indeed.  We know at the beginning of the book that this narrator has lost his wife to her "bad heart", and a good friend to a broken heart...... there are several deaths in this book, accidents, suicides, health?  Well, one thing is for sure, none of them are murders.  But that is the only sure thing in the entire read, for as the narrator is so unreliable, he weaves a tale of Gothic proportions, and you may find that from page to page you can't believe a word of it.  You should, though, because in  between the lies characters tell each other, and the unreliability of the narrator's memory (perhaps), there are truths to be untangled, and people's lives to be played with.

This is the story of four friends, who meet at the turn of the 20th century in a spa town in Europe, and remain in each others company for nine years.  It's only as you read on, you find that one or all of them are not as first described, none of them are likeable and there are secrets a-plenty.  Eventually they are all revealed, but you will be half way through before the pennies start to drop!

Despite it's "of the time" language (written in 1905 and published in 1915), this is a clever book, and a real page turner.  But ...... keep your wits about you at all times, as secrets and lies are revealed, then changed, then dismissed.

Gravetye Beauty and Clematis Wilt

Gravetye Beauty is just the most wonderful clematis.  Not a loud shouty double, but a beautifully formed long bell of a flower which gradually opens and separates into separate petals.  And the colour!

Well.  put one in new this Summer about a week before a really hot spell, but watered it regularly, and also inserted a 12 inch pipe into the soil so that watering was made easier, and that the plant could suck up as and when it needed a drink.  It's a late bloomer, so most of September it was glorious, had grown to about eight feet and was covered in buds and flowers. Then we had a couple of really rainy days and I didn't leave the house.  And when I did? - Gone, all gone, sagging, dead and sorry for itself.  I knew what clematis wilt was, but had never had it in this garden. Looked it up on the internet, and all descriptions fitted.  So now is the time to chop it right down to 12 inches or less (in any case it's group is texensis, so either now or in Spring it should be cut down anyway) and check for dead leaves anywhere in the area.

Ah well, next year perhaps?!!

Mrs Mac suggests - What to read in OCTOBER 2019

   

Well here we are then at the beginning of Autumn/Fall and the end of September.  It didn't take me very long to decide what I should suggest to you for October, because in my pile of "got to be read soon" books is something that has come along just at the right time;  especially as Renée Zellweger is receiving plaudits now for her film portrayal of Judy Garland.  I haven't seen it, haven't heard her singing voice either, but I'm prepared to go along with others who say this film is worth seeing. 

However, I don't suggest films to see, I suggest books to read.  So on the subject of  what to read this month, how about reading

A book that although fiction, contains real people

 In that pile, I find I have a new book.  It's the story behind The Wizard of Oz; so I'll be reading:

Finding Dorothy - Elizabeth Letts

  

 

The Toy Makers - Robert Dinsdale

 

This is a magic tale, and a book I devoured.  It may sound like and look like a book for children but it isn't.  I'm so glad to have read this one, which will surely be in my top ten reads for 2019. Magic, enchantment, sibling rivalry, the War to end all wars. All of these things are within the pages of this very special book. If you cannot deal with magic realism perhaps not for you. But if you loved Harry Potter ..... you might just like this, even though it's nothing like it. Maybe you just believe in magic - and maybe you are anti-war.  

The toy makers of the title are Papa Jack, a refugee from Eastern Europe and his two sons Emile and Kaspar. They own and run a wonderful toy Emporium in London, a toy shop full of enchantment -  open from the first frost of winter to the first snowdrop of spring every year - a shop full of wonders - every toy made by Papa Jack and his sons. As the book opens we are in the early stages of the Twentieth Century, and a runaway teenage mother-to-be gets a job at the Emporium in 1906.

 
The years go by and we are coming up to WW1.  But that war  was foreshadowed by the war the two brothers were fighting from childhood onwards with toy soldiers which just went on and on into adulthood as the story progressed. So the years pass and WW1 begins. Things will never be the same. I found that part very truthful - that siblings can think they love each other and want the same thing, but as time passes it's not always the case.  And when one of the brothers was turned down by the recruiting officer and the other wasn't at the beginning of WW1, I could see the spitefulness growing.  And I knew there would be difficulties ahead because of that war.

When Papa Jack died, the signal for all out war between the brothers sounded, but really it was very one sided, for one wanted the fight, and the other didn't.  I had a great sadness for Cathy the runaway teen who married one of the brothers, who had a husband returned to her from the war in body but not mind.

All in all, a magical read.  Enchanted by the toys, enjoyed the characters, and loved the Emporium.  But it's also  just the most clever anti-war book.  At every stage the pros and cons of soldiering and warfare step off the pages, and I could see, when a group of soldiers cannot think for themselves they must do as they are told..... but what if they do begin to think for themselves?  Stranger things have happened.