Family – Cristina Sanders' blog

A Marriage at Sea – book review

A marriage at Sea, by Sophie Elmhirst

Maurice and Maralyn Bailey are an odd couple. “Love, when it works, can feel like such a terrifying fluke,” and that is certainly the case in this story. He is eccentric, moody, lacking confidence. Several years older, his life is narrowing and “loneliness had closed around him like a case”. She “coloured in his gaps“. Lucky him. She’s terrific, outgoing, brave and smart. But Maralyn falls in love with Maurice, and it feels true. For some reason, women seem to love an oddball.

They go sailing to get away from the confines of their English life and, in a move that seems inevitable for the pair, sell the bungalow, have a boat built to their specifications and head off into the blue. They’re running away from a difficult England where they feel they don’t fit, and New Zealand is the chosen destination, via a long ocean voyage. They leave in the summer to catch the trade winds across the Atlantic. I was quickly caught up in this story, always a sucker for a tale of life at sea but also I wanted to find out how long it would take for Maralyn to throw Maurice overboard.

Bad Archive – book review

Bad Archive, by Flora Feltham

Here’s another interesting look at how we view history, seems very much the topic du jour (see What We Can Know), this time by local author Flora Feltham, contained in a set of wandering essays that I enjoyed tremendously. Just the title, Bad Archive, tells you that this is going to be an opinionated work with something awry – slanting truths perhaps, ironic labels on ordinary things. Just the way I like my archives.

My Three Rivers – book review

My Three Rivers, by Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe

This book was a real surprise. Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe’s book on life in NZ’s early outback is subtitled “Jottings of a rural woman 1884-1968”. It sounds like it could be a bit staid. A little bit domestic. Grandmotherly, perhaps. But Shirley is a tour de force, a gutsy and practical woman with a hell of a life story and a cup that is never half-empty, despite the extremes of her life, but always, just like those bloody rivers, filled right to the brim and overflowing. She has gusto, does Shirley, and has a young, friendly voice. I wish we’d been friends. I’d have followed her anywhere.

Home Truths – book review

Home Truths, by Charity Norman

Home Truths is everything I expect from a Charity Norman thriller. It’s compelling and chilling. Also, and this is the frightening thing about many of Charity’s stories, it’s very close to home. It could happen to any of my friends. It could happen to me. And yes, it could happen to you.

Bird Life–book review

Bird Life, by Anna Smaill

This is a book set in Tokyo. The descriptions of the city are detailed and fabulous, from the vending machines to the ritual greetings and the culture of shopping for therapy, the tingling sounds and twinkling sights of Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Asakura; all totally immersive. The plot (though there isn’t much of a plot, this is more psychological exploration) follows a few months in the lives of two women, Dinah and Yasuko: both of whom have fairly alarming psychosis. The narration alternates between these women, and although we are told they are very different – one is Japanese, middle-aged, charismatic; the other a dowdy kiwi not much older than the other’s son (and hold that thought) – their disconnected mental states and inability to offer any rational opinion do make them feel a bit like they speak with the same voice. They both teach English to Japanese students at the same language school and quickly become intimate friends.

Tom Lake–book review

Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett

Another great read from Ann Patchett. I loved The Dutch House, so was minded to enjoy this new work. And I did, though maybe not quite as much.

Tom Lake is really a tribute to Thornton Wilder, who is a bit out of my frame, not being a big reader of Americana, but no matter. The story centres around his play, Our Town, that feels very pancakes-on-the-griddle homely and probably doesn’t have the connotations for non-Americans that those folksy folk enjoy. Our narrator, Lara, finds herself (almost accidentally) type-cast as the fresh faced young woman in Our Town, first in her home town and later at Tom Lake, a theatre company in Michigan. She is Emily, the sweet thing. She can’t seem to pull off anything else.

Small Things Like These – book review

Small Things like These, by Claire Keegan

The Magdalen laundries, tool of the Catholic Church and Irish state, was closed down in 1996, in abject disgrace. In 2013 the Irish government gave a much belated apology to the women who had suffered in these prisons of forced labour. Women who had ‘fallen’ and needed to be removed from society. Some thirty thousand women are estimated to have been incarcerated, their babies adopted out. A shocking number of babies died.

Fallen. That word. Young women ‘fell’ pregnant. Their fault for being a bit clumsy, tripping up because they weren’t paying attention.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: