Songbirds of Florence by Olivia Spooner
Like a very many others, Songbirds of Florence is in my Christmas shopping basket. It’s a gift for a darling Italian friend, who is far too busy this week to read my posts. I think everyone is buying this book (and it was still at number one on 14th December, so they really are) for one simple reason. Because it will make the recipient feel good. Merry Christmas!
Continue reading “Songbirds of Florence–book review”James, by Percival Everett
Do you think you know the story of Huck Finn? Think again. In this marvelous book by Percival Everett, the adventure is turned on its head and you find yourself reading a totally different story that seems to come tumbling out from between the lines of Twain’s. It’s still an adventure story, in which a boy called Huck and a slave he calls Jim run away by floating down the Mississippi river and get into all sorts of trouble, but this time the point of view belongs to James. The pair become true friends, they look out for each other, care for each other, discuss ideas and try to see the other’s point of view, but the world is different when the one telling the story is a piece of property which needs to be returned to its owner.
Continue reading “James – book review”The Writing Desk, by Di Morris
I bought this hardcover book on sight at the launch. I want it on my bookshelves immediately to start showing to people. The book itself feels like a treasure, a brand new presentation of an old world, with heavy shiny paper, crisp print and a sharp layout, illustrating a family story from the 1850s to the current day. There are old photos and copies of telegrams, letters, tickets, and all sorts of ephemera, full-page background designs in a range of heightened sepia and all overlaid with panel-squares of exquisite drawings and minimal text, just enough to tie a story through all the pictures. And what a story.
Continue reading “The Writing Desk – Book Review”Sewing Moonlight, by Kyle Mewburn
This is such a beautifully written book. So elegant, with space to breathe between the lines. I had the feeling, when I finally put the book down, of having been read to while I sat with my eyes closed.
It’s the early 1920s when our man in exile, Wilhelm, sails across the world from Germany and up the Clutha River until his progress is stopped dramatically. There are lots of ways to arrive in a town and this bizarre arrival has a strange ring of truth. He decides this is a sign he should give up the travels and put his feet on the ground here, in a place called Falter’s Mill. It’s as good a place as any to build a new life from scratch and find happiness.
Continue reading “Sewing Moonlight – book review”Talking in Ōkiwi Bay
It was a real honour to be invited to speak at the Eastbourne Historical Society’s 2024 AGM, held yesterday. This is a very active society full of researchers, historians and writers whose lives revolve around the eastern bays of Port Nicholson, and yes, I felt a decided frisson in the meeting being held on the edge of what was Ōkiwi Bay, the stomping ground of my man, Ōkiwi Brown, himself. Or their man Ōkiwi Brown, I should say. They were a delightful audience, many bought a copy of my book and I do hope they jump right into the text and start arguing with it. I’ve already had one great lead to follow up – ‘who shot Burke’s wife?’ was a question from the floor I couldn’t answer (love those) but has me buzzing now. I’ve posted a transcript of the talk, here: Turning History into Fiction.
Continue reading “Turning History into Fiction”The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley
Yes, it’s only June, but The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley gets my book of the year so far. It’ll be a hard one to beat. Great premise, excellent characters and the hottest sex I’ve read in years. The chap in question has been dragged out of 1845 into the near future, complete with fabulous side-whiskers, a cheeky dimple, and Victorian social attitudes. Our narrator likes his nose. He had a kind of resplendent excess of feature that made him look hyperreal. She is to be his bridge.
Continue reading “The Ministry of Time – book review”Ōkiwi Brown, by Cristina Sanders
*Currently on the Longlist for the Ngaio Awards!*
The Burke and Hare anatomy murders terrified Edinburgh in the 1830s – innocents smothered and packed fresh for the anatomist’s knife. Burke was publicly hanged before a crowd of thousands. William Hare, after turning king’s evidence against his erstwhile partner, was released. Somewhere south of Dumfries near the small river port of Annan, he was set down from a cart and told to walk on to England and never return. There, he disappears from history.
The Girl From London, by Olivia Spooner
I started this on a Tuesday night and ended up crying in a café on Thursday morning. I can’t remember when I’ve been so moved by the ending of a story. There is a book within the book. When the former ended a bit too neatly I was a slightly disbelieving, until I realised that actually, well, I’m giving no spoilers, but it’s a war story, after all. I’m not usually known for my tears.
The whole story ties in well with my current interest in stories of those who immigrated to New Zealand down the years, and why they came. Children evacuees from London bombings? I had no idea. Can you imagine sending your children out of a bomb zone, and not to the close countryside, which would be wrenching enough, but through a war-infested sea to an unknown land at the far ends of the earth? And yet people did.
Continue reading “The Girl From London – book review”Love in the time of cholera, by Gabreil Garcia Marquez
Love in the time of Cholera is different to every other book I read and for that, alone, I am glad to have read it. Set across decades around the turn of the 20th Century, amid the plagues, wars and the environmental catastrophes of Caribbean Columbia, the story is of lives full of lusty passion. The thing is, I originally read this book in 1985 when it first came out and I was young and naive. Times have changed and I have changed and in the post ‘me too’ environment ‘Love in the time of Cholera’ feels like a misnomer. ‘Dysfunctional sexual obsession in the time of Cholera’ is more accurate, though not so catchy a title.
Continue reading “Love In The Time of Cholera–book review”My Friends, by Hisham Matar
Any book that offers a description of a face ‘like a landscape liable to bad weather‘ has got my love. This is a writer with poetry in his soul. ‘We shared the city the way honest labourers share tools,’ he says of two young men finding their way around London. He describes a nurse who ‘would gently tuck in my bedsheet like a skilled cook filleting a fish.’ This is classy writing.
Continue reading “My Friends – book review”
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