Cornflower Books

Cornflower Book Group - March 2012

 

    "The fascination of [Dorothy L. Sayers's] books is not only in the solving of bizarre crimes in out-of-the-ordinary locations (an advertising agency, an Oxford women's college, an East Anglian belfry), but also in the character of her detective, the super-sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. He is a languid, monocled aristocrat, whose foppish manner conceals the fact that he has a first-class Oxford degree, was in army intelligence during the First World War, collects rare books, plays the piano like Rubinstein, dances like Astaire and seems to have swallowed a substantial dictionary of quotations. He is aided and abetted by his manservant Bunter, a suave charmer adept at extracting confidences from the cooks, taxi-drivers, waitresses, barbers and vergers who would collapse in forelock-tugging silence if Wimsey himself ever deigned to speak to them. Several of the novels describe the unfolding relationship between Wimsey and the crime novelist Harriet Vane. Seldom have detective stories been so preposterous or so unputdownable."

    So says the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide in its entry on Dorothy L. Sayers, and that prompted me to choose one of her works for the Cornflower Book Group's March book. Bearing in mind - again according to the Guide - that some readers prefer the stories which don't feature Harriet Vane, I've chosen what is said to be one of the best of the other novels, The Nine Tailors, published in 1934.

    "When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch St. Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how he came to be there.

    The lore of bell-ringing and a brilliantly evoked village in the remote fens of East Anglia are the unforgettable background to a story of an unsolved crime and its violent unravelling twenty years later."

    That's enough for me to want to pick it up and read forthwith - and test that 'unputdownable' claim above - and I hope that this choice will find favour with lots of people. If you haven't read along with the group before perhaps you'll feel like doing so now; we're not scary or intimidating, I hope, we just like to share our thoughts on the book in question, and while opinions often diverge, any debate is friendly and respectful.

    Surely every library will have a copy of this book in their system (those whose catalogues I've checked do), and for those who want their own, shops and internet retailers will supply it easily: I see that The Book Depository are currently charging slightly more than Amazon but they offer free international delivery; Amazon US has it, too. There are also plenty of used copies available, there is a Kindle version, and for fans of audiobooks, a BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation.

    We'll be talking about Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows from the 25th. of February, so let's begin our discussion of The Nine Tailors four weeks after that on Saturday, 24th, March. Please join us.

TBR: Q

    Full marks for a very stylish cover! This is Q: A Love Story by Evan Mandery, the latest addition to the TBR pile, and an interesting-sounding novel which comes with a warning from The New York Times - "a word to the tear-prone: don't attempt to read the ending in public".

    It's a tale of "time travel and true love" about an unorthodox professor who is also a writer of little acclaim. When he meets his future self and is advised by him not to marry Q (Quentina Elizabeth Deveril), the love of his life, what should he do - "evade future misery or maintain present bliss?"

    Set in New York, this is "an epic love story fashioned on quantum foundations. The novel wears its philosophical and narrative sophistication lightly: in exuberant, direct and witty prose, Mandery brings an essayist’s poise to this fabulous romance. And, finally, Q has an ending that will melt even the darkest heart".

    You can read more about the book on Evan Mandery's website, but I've read the prologue and beyond to get a feel for it and I've found the first person narrative sunny in mood and self-deprecatory in tone and thus very appealing. As to the plot - how intriguing!

Living in inverted commas

    Just a quick word about the Timewatch programme Debutantes, made around ten years ago and screened again last night, which is available on iPlayer (click on the title) until the 4th. of February. It recalls the last season before the war, and its contributors include many delightful ladies, getting on in years at the time of making, of course, who were debs in 1939 - there are also one or two 'debs' delights'. My post title comes from a remark made near the end describing that period in the girls' lives just before everything was to change.

    I mention the programme because one of those who took part - look out for Lady Bowman - is, I am pretty sure, the former Christian Grant who as Christian Miller wrote one of my top favourite memoirs, the wonderful A Childhood in Scotland about life at Monymusk House (the book was the subject of a very early Cornflower post). Also there, in a brilliant double act with her late husband, is Deborah Devonshire, someone whose name and books have often graced these pages - there's a choice bit from around the 24 minute mark in which they discuss charisma and style, and which couldn't have been any funnier if it had been scripted.

    By the way, if the subject as a whole interests you then I can recommend 1939: The Last Season by Anne de Courcy.

The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

 

    "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."

    Those lines from Middlemarch form the epigraph to William Nicholson's brilliant novel The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life which is set over six days in May, 2000 in a village in Sussex. On the face of it it's 'an everyday story of country folk', or to be more exact the generally well-heeled, upper-middle class members of a small rural community, those whose lives coincide at the school gates, on the commuter train to London or while picking up the Sunday papers at the village shop.

    Laura is happily married to Henry, a documentary maker, and divides her time between looking after their two children and occasional work as a specialist in antiquarian books, but a letter arrives out of the blue from Nick, the lover who let her down so badly twenty years earlier when they were students. Nick - a successful art dealer now living in the US - is back in England and wants to see Laura again, but he was everything to her and he walked away from their relationship, so what should she do?

    Then there's Liz, a journalist, whose daughter Alice is taught at the local prep school by Alan, a would-be playwright, and Liz's mother Mrs. Dickinson whose path crosses with that of a tenant farmer who is a subject of fascination to Laura and Henry's son Jack, the consequences of which involve the vicar who has lost his faith and who becomes the subject of a news item in which Liz played an instigating role ....

    So you see that that inter-connectedness forms the background mesh through which the various protagonists' stories are woven. It is there and in the very telling of their tales - those shifts, some minor but significant, some of major consequence, which can occur in any life on any day - that this book is so successful. There's an honesty to it, a lot of humour, a great deal of sharply accurate, sensitively perceptive dissection of the human condition and the workings of the minds of ordinary people - their thoughts, hopes and fears, their lusts and longings, their feelings of dislocation, of being somehow not on the path they were meant to tread; on another level, there's even a marvellous account of Laura's expedition to the better London shops to buy an outfit to wear at Glyndebourne, a scene with which many women will nod in sympathy! But it's that 'secret intensity', that 'roar ... on the other side of silence', which makes the book unusual and provides its major dimension, so beautifully balanced and intelligently played out, so marvellously entertaining and sparklingly done, and which holds the reader so effortlessly; I was genuinely sorry to reach the end.

    Happily, though, there is more where that came from in the shape of All the Hopeful Lovers which sees some of the characters return, eight years on, and then the third in the loose series, The Golden Hour. As you see, I am hooked.

Contraltos, mezzos, and the circus comes to town

   A little 'cold collation' for the end of the week, and I'll preface this with apologies to contraltos everywhere! -   

    Anyone who is reading Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows (our book group book for February) may have noticed the passage quite early on where the family discuss the whimsical notion of 'homes for bad musicians':

" 'Homes for bad musicians, what a terrible idea,' said Mamma. 'The home for bad contraltos would be the worst. People would be afraid to go near it at night, the sounds coming from it would be so terrible, particularly when the moon was full.' "

    If I hadn't known the source I'd have sworn that that came from an Alexander McCall Smith novel - don't you think it's just his style and sense of humour?

                                            ~~~~~

    That gives me an excuse to veer away from books and on to music directly for a moment and mention a recent album, David Dubery: Songs & Chamber Music, which features a very old friend of mine, the mezzo soprano Adrienne Murray. I haven't heard it all yet but the excerpts I've listened to do show what a lovely voice Adrienne has, and the collection has literary links such as settings of poems by Robert Graves and a waltz entitled "Mrs. Harris in Paris" (see Paul Gallico's books, post on the first one here).

                                            ~~~~~

    Just announced, some exciting news from Bloomsbury - they have launched Bloomsbury Circus, a new imprint to publish "mostly fiction, unashamedly literary, always fresh and sometimes surprising". Featuring both established and debut authors, this year will see the launch of nine titles, with up to four new releases a month from next year.

    As to the look of the books, Alexandra Pringle, editor-in-chief, says, "Bloomsbury Circus books will be published as unusually-sized trade paperbacks with photographic covers, wide flaps and colour printing inside the cover. They will have all the beauty of a hardback with the ease-of-read – and price – of a trade paperback. And there is a lovely new logo – our goddess Diana dangling on a half-moon trapeze".

    Click on the link above to see this year's books - the one I'm particularly looking forward to is Rook by Jane Rusbridge (whose first novel, The Devil's Music, impressed me very much - post here). Set in Sussex, this is "a mesmerising story of family, legacy and turning back the tides".

    So, "much to entertain, amaze and enjoy" - roll up, roll up!

Winners

    Thanks to all those who entered the draw for copies of Cliff McNish's very scary story The Hunting Ground. I've pulled names out of the hat in the usual fashion, and the winners are:

    Litlove

    The Victorian Librarian

    Dark Puss

    The Bibliomouse  (Sarah C.)

    Simon S.

    I already have real names and addresses for The Victorian Librarian and Dark Puss, but if everyone else would email me (the link is under 'ABOUT' in the right hand sidebar) and give me their details, I'll pass them on to Orion who will be sending out the books. One last thing, The Hunting Ground is published by Orion's young adult imprint, Indigo, and as I said in my post on it, it's not one to give to younger children.

                                              ~~~~~

    On the subject of winners, and following on from last night's brief post on the Costa Book of the Year, on this morning's edition of Breakfast on Radio 3 Petroc Trelawny asked listeners whether they take particular notice of the winners of the major book prizes, whether they make a point of buying those books straightaway, and if so, how soon they then read them.

    It's a question which had occurred to me, too, and while I would certainly like to read Andrew Miller's winning novel Pure, I'd do so on the basis of the book per se, not because it has won the prize. While of course the publicity generated by the award may be the very thing which brings the book to a reader's attention, the accolade itself is not enough for me to pick up a book which on the face of it doesn't particularly appeal. That said, subsequent favourable reviews from trusted sources may persuade me to revise my initial opinion, so I suppose it's a cumulative process, one which demonstrates the power of blogs even where books have the massive spotlight of a major literary prize shining on them.

Pure and simple

    Just announced, the Costa Book of the Year 2011 (and there's more on it on the BBC website) is Pure by Andrew Miller, a historical novel set in Paris in 1785, "so gripping you'll put your life on hold to finish it"! 

    A young provincial engineer is charged with the excavation and destruction of the city's oldest cemetery, now overflowing and insanitary, but there is more to this labour than a simple job of work.

    Reviews praise, among other things, "the exquisite writing". Have you read it? I'm keen to do so.

Good lines: on literary digestion

 

"... the man belonged to that extraordinary class of readers who have perfect literary digestions, who can devour anything printed, retaining what suits them, eliminating what does not, and liking all impartially because, since they take what they want from each, they are always actually reading the same book (she had a cousin who was like that about the theatre, and she remembered how her aunt used to complain, saying, 'It's no use asking Cousin Florence whether the show at the stock company is any good this week; Cousin Florence has never seen a bad play') ..."

From The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy.

    I've come down with some species of lurgy so my analytical faculties aren't up to scratch at all today, but I think the first part of that passage - on 'perfect literary digestion' - presents an interesting idea, and one I'd never thought of in quite those terms. As to the bit about 'always actually reading the same book', I don't quite get that. Any thoughts?

Cornflower Book Group - Lady Audley's Secret

 

    I'm not surprised that Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon has been in print since publication in 1862, when it was an immediate success, and that it became one of the best-selling novels of the nineteenth century, for it's a cracking tale!

    Yes, its prose is at times florid and over-written and its authorial voice is often quite 'chummy' in its commentary, and of course we know from early on what it is that the eponymous Lady Audley is keeping secret, but it's the very gradual dénouement which makes the reader turn the pages as Robert Audley "learns the business of life" by acting detective and discovering what really happened to his friend George Talboys who disappeared on a visit to Audley Court.

    There are some very convenient clues to keep the plot moving, and although "whatever the mystery may be it grows darker and thicker at every step", events do slot into place rather neatly; but I think that's part of the book's charm, so that while Robert is dashing about the place, jumping on and off trains, and feeling that "a hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning me onward upon the dark road", we have grown to trust the author to give us the ending we want - and so she does.

  As to the calculating, manipulative Lady Audley, the woman who has fashioned a new identity and plays the part she has written for herself, her step-daughter Alicia's appraisal of her is spot on:

"'She is a vain, frivolous, heartless little coquette,' said Alicia, addressing herself to her Newfoundland dog, Caesar, who was the sole recipient of the young lady's confidences; 'she is a practised and consummate flirt, Caesar; and not contented with setting her yellow ringlets and her silly giggle at half the men in Essex, she must needs make that stupid cousin of mine dance attendance upon her. I haven't common patience with her.'" Caesar, it must be said, shared this opinion, showing he had more sense than George and Sir Michael! (The picture is Lion: A Newfoundland Dog by Landseer, by the way).  

    What did you think of the book? Was it just a little too pat for you, or were you comfortable in it, and glad to be along for the ride? After a slowish start, did you like the ending which "leaves the good people all happy and at peace"?; a deliberately popular move on the part of the author, I should think. Are you now inclined to read more by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, for example The Doctor's Wife, her version of Madame Bovary?! I certainly am.

                                            ~~~~~

    The cake to go with this book is here.

One of eleven

 

    I'm very pleased to see that Waterstones' 11, the book chain's selection of the best of recent debut fiction (which was announced last night), includes Eowyn Ivey's marvellous The Snow Child. Although I read it last month I've yet to post on it as I was waiting until closer to publication - it'll be out quite soon - but it's a special book which deserves the prominent place on the shelf that being one of the eleven will ensure it gets.

A haunting tale - would you like to read it?

 

    More books to give away!

    Last February I read The Hunting Ground by Cliff McNish and here's what I had to say about it:

    "Warning: don't give this book to younger children, and don't read it yourself if you're on your own, particularly in a large old country house, or are of a nervous disposition - it is truly scary!

    That said, I enjoyed [the novel] very much and I raced through it as if I, too, were pursued by the ghostly presences of Glebe House. It has all the classic elements of the sinister, supernatural story, the big, crumbling house which has been shut up for years, a tragedy in the past, the pages of a diary found by the current occupants. It tells of Elliott and Ben moving into the ancient building while their father carries out restoration work there; although they otherwise have free run of the place, they may not enter the forbidding East Wing, long boarded up but holding a strange fascination for the boys. The huge and labyrinthine adjunct to the main building is not all that draws the youngsters, though, for throughout the house there are menacing portraits of a previous owner, the man who built the wing - always dressed in hunting attire, always holding a weapon and always with his prey at his feet. And then there's the estate graveyard close by ...

    As the saying goes, better the devil you know, etc., and true enough, when you're not sure who or what you're up against, exactly who your adversary is, then fear is limitless. That's where the first half of the book is particularly successful, for as the boys experience strange, unsettling happenings, and they seem to be in thrall to a power they cannot identify or understand, the book makes genuinely chilling reading. As it moves on, so the boys make discoveries which let the story open up for them, and for the reader, and it's here that the question of who - or what - they can trust becomes crucial.

    Fast-paced, thoroughly gripping with as many twists and turns and dead-ends as the dreadful East Wing itself, [...] read it on a warm summer afternoon when you have plenty of company!"

    The book has just come out in paperback, and Orion, its publishers, have kindly put up five copies to be given away, though they will be doing the posting and have specified that the draw is open to readers in the UK and Eire only. To enter, please leave a comment here naming a 'haunting tale' that you've read - it doesn't have to feature ghosts or the like, just be a story that has lingered in the memory; if no book has affected you in that way, no matter, just pop your name in the hat anyway, and I'll draw the winners in a few days' time.

And the winners are ...

    Thankyou to everyone who entered the draw to win a presentation pack of Roald Dahl stamps. As usual, I numbered your comments as they came in, then used the random number generator to pick the winners, and they are:

    Margaret Powling

    Barbara

    Oxslip

    The Victorian Librarian

    Margaret 46

    If you'd all be so kind as to email me (see the link under ABOUT over there on the right) and give me 'proper' names and addresses, I'll pop the packs in the post to you.

    Tomorrow I'll have yet more things to give away, so please stay tuned.

Digging deep

 

    If you are one of the many who loved The Blackhouse (post here), then I think it's safe to say that volume 2 of Peter May's Lewis trilogy, The Lewis Man, will not disappoint!

    All of us who have been eagerly awaiting the sequel to that very dramatic first book will have been wondering whether the author would pull off a second story with the aplomb shown in the earlier one; I'm so glad to tell you that he does.

    The novel begins with the discovery of a body in a peat bog on the Hebridean island, but contrary to first expectations the corpse has not been there for thousands of years - this is a comparatively recent death, a murder, and DNA evidence links the remains to an elderly islander who is suffering from dementia. Detective Fin Macleod is back on Lewis having left the police force and his Edinburgh life behind him. What he cannot jettison, though, are his memories, those of recent tragic events, and other painful ones from further back, ones peopled by the very friends and neighbours he has returned to in his small community in the north of the island.

    When Fin is called in in an unofficial capacity to help ascertain the identity of the murder victim and that of his living near-relation who cannot now be who he seems, his interest in the case will turn out to be more than just professional. As the mystery is unravelled, so old scores will be settled, and here's where Peter May shows his skill with an intricate plot and with the unfolding narrative, for as the action moves back and fore from the present day islands to the Edinburgh of the 1950s (click here for more on the locations), it's a neat tale he tells and one which will have you on the very edge of your seat.

    Roll on volume 3, say I, and if you go to the publisher's website and sign up you'll get an extract of that book, The Chess Men, ahead of its autumn release. I'm at the head of the queue.

Editorial

    A few months ago I was commissioned to edit a non-fiction manuscript for publication later this year. I can't tell you much about it just now, but the book is taking shape and I'm learning a great deal in the process - and enjoying it enormously, even the painstakingly slow parts. Today has been a very full day of editing, and the work has taken me, virtually speaking, hither and yon - for example, this book (which I now want to read) cropped up in a footnote to the text, and what relation that has to what is essentially a very Scottish piece I'll leave you to guess or discover in due course! Such tangential connections do go to show that something which on the face of it has quite a fine focus is in fact a conduit into many other worlds. But then again, what book is not exactly that?

First impressions - The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott

 

    Described as "Little Women meets Water for Elephants" and as "a novel about art and women, and personal fulfilment and the thrill of performing", Marina Endicott's The Little Shadows is a nicely chunky 500 pager which tells the story of "three sisters making their way in the world of vaudeville before and during the First World War. Setting off to make their fortune as a singing act after the untimely death of their father, the girls, Aurora, Clover and Belle, are overseen by their fond but barely coping Mama.

    "The girls begin with little besides youth and hope but evolve into artists as they navigate their way to adulthood among a cast of extraordinary characters - charming charlatans, unpredictable eccentrics, and some who seem ordinary but have magical gifts.

"Marina Endicott lures us onto the brightly lit stage and into the little shadows that lurk behind the curtain, and reveals how the art of vaudeville - in all its variety, madness, melodrama, hilarity and sorrow - echoes the art of life itself."

    I haven't read Marina Endicott's earlier novel Good to a Fault which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, but I've certainly read very good things about it, so I was keen to see her new book which will be out in the UK early next month; here's how it  begins:

    " 'Keep moving,' Mama told them. 'You will only be cold if you are slow, and we must get on. He won't wait.'

    So they went quickly over the half-frozen field, in gritty snow that crunched underfoot but stung on their cheeks, and rubbed like sand between their hats and collars. Three girls in a row behind one round-bundled woman, who bent to the wind and made good headway on short, flicking legs. Aurora slid between snowbursts, smooth-sailing as a swan over a white lake. Bella was the smallest, hurrying to warm her hand by tucking it into Mama's pocket; Clover behind them, slowest and least desirous of their destination.

    Everything in the little town was whirling and bright, late-afternoon whiteness unusual here where it did not snow deeply, being too far west into desert. But they could see through the squall the brick building of the Empress Theatre, and the black frame around its door, and the white placard tacked up on the door:

    Cleveland's Star Union Vaudeville

    And now they could hear a plink-plink-plink timpani of notes with depth removed by distance, and a soaring, scooping voice doing arpeggios. Aurora felt her own voicebox contracting in time, one octave up, tenor to soprano, reaching and then cascading down..."

    So the girls audition for Mr. Cleveland, and Marina Endicott introduces her characters in a vivid scene of backstage nerves, hopes and superstitions as they take their turn amidst a motley bunch of performers. There are the has-beens, the troupers, those on the up, the ones still doggedly touring the circuit just to make ends meet, and into this world of greasepaint and variety acts, silver-shelled footlights and dingy dressing-rooms come the three young girls. It's a promising beginning - a rich, warm, busy scene - and I look forward to reading on.

Good lines: the reviewer's lot

 

    "...Mr. Hodge sent Donald fairly frequent parcels ... on such subjects as the Civilization of the Andes, Rambles in old Perugia, Ten Days in Soviet Russia, Is the Soul Immortal?, the Fundamental Principles of Rugby Football, and Some Notes upon Surrey Rock-Gardens.

    All of these Donald read carefully and reviewed carefully, resisting with stern determination the immoral advice of Mr. Harcourt on the subject of reviewing.

    'Read the publisher's jacket first,' said Mr. Harcourt, preaching his scandalous gospel. 'That will usually give you the author's name and some sort of idea of what the book is about. If the jacket says that the book is an illuminating, unique, sensational, thought-provoking exposé from within of the political situation in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, then the odds are about three to one that the book is about Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. About once in four times they put the wrong cover on and you find that it's a book of short stories called Tikkity-Tonk, Old Fish! or a reprint of the Epistle to the Romans, but more often than not they get it right. Very well, then. You've got the subject. You then look at the index of chapters. That gives you the scope of the book, shows you whether it covers the religious question, or gives a list of the hotels, or has a bit about peasant costumes, or goes in for trade statistics ... By this time you've got the whole substance of the book and then all you've got to do is read the last two paragraphs of the last chapter, to see whether the author thinks the Sub-Carpathian Ruthenians are good eggs or bad eggs, and there you are.'

    But Donald refused to subscribe to this pernicious doctrine, and steadily ploughed his way from cover to cover of each book that was sent to him, and his reviews, if not flashy or full of epigrams, at least arrived punctually; which is much more important from the editorial point of view than all the epigrams that ever were stolen by the twentieth-century reviewers from Wilde, and by Wilde from Whistler, and by Whistler from Octave Mirbeau.

    Mr. Ogilvy usually sent novels for review, and Donald slogged through some pretty fearful stuff during these months. But the titles fascinated him, and he wrote a short article, and got it accepted by a literary weekly, on the trend of fashion in novel titles. He himself had entered the literary profession just as one fashion was giving way to another. The dying mode had dealt in vigorous, slashing, totally irrelevant names such as The Charioteers caught Soul, Rat-riddled, bilge-bestank (an exquisite long-short story of a modern Aucassin and Nicolette), and Shame, shame, Belshazzar! The new fashion was more shadowy and elusive and emasculate, like faded ladies or very modern poets, and Donald had to review a lot of books with names like And she said so too, So they all went on, It was rather a Pity, hein? and He shrugged; he had to."

From England, Their England by A. G. Macdonell.

Friday reads x 4

 

   The 'current reading' list there on the right is slightly over-populated at the moment, but each book is a real pleasure, so I'm not complaining.

    I'm racing to the finish with Lady Audley's Secret and am quite gripped! There is still time to read it for our book group discussion which begins next Saturday, so if you haven't already done so, grab a copy of this Victorian page-turner and join in.

    As a non-fiction contrast, I'm in Italy with Tracey Lawson's A Year in the Village of Eternity, discovering - as the villagers of Campodimele have done - how to live well, and hoping to adopt as much of their modus vivendi as is possible in my very different environment.

    Back to fiction, and William Nicholson's The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life which has come highly recommended. I'm not far on with it yet but am so enjoying this portrait of modern marriage and mores, and I'm glad to know that there is a 'sort of sequel' to it, i.e. All the Hopeful Lovers.

    Last year when I reviewed Peter May's The Blackhouse (one of the Cornflower Blues of 2011), I said I hoped that he was well on with writing volume 2 of the series because I  - and a lot of other readers, as it's been hugely popular - couldn't wait for more of this trilogy. Happily, the second book, The Lewis Man, is now out and I've just begun it. An unidentified corpse has been discovered in a peat bog and the only clue to its identity is a DNA sibling match to a local farmer, but this elderly islander, now suffering from dementia, has always claimed to be an only child. When the man's family turn to detective Fin Macleod for help, he feels duty bound to solve the mystery.

    So there are my four this Friday; what are you reading, and do you typically have more than one book on the go at a time?

Wonkalicious, whizzpopping, swizzfiggling, stampcollecting!

    Did you know that Roald Dahl invented 238 'gobblefunk' words for The BFG (though not all appeared in the finished book)? Vocabulary enrichment aside, I think that is my favourite Dahl story, though it's hard to choose, and the audio version with Geoffrey Palmer (this one?) is priceless.

    Anyway, Royal Mail have just issued a lovely set of stamps featuring Quentin Blake's illustrations for Roald Dahl's books, and they have kindly sent me five presentation packs to give away.

    To enter the draw to win one, please leave a comment with the name of your favourite Dahl character or book, or any other favourite work of children's literature if you'd rather. Distance is no object - I can send the packs anywhere in the world - so do have a go.

    You may also like to enter Royal Mail's competition to win a set of Roald Dahl books.

    Good luck!

The bookshop at night

    Do watch this lovely video if you have a moment - it's such fun! (I sound like Miranda's mother ...). Full details here.

A book, a winner and a question

    Just released as an e-book, A Lifetime Burning by Linda Gillard. I have yet to read this novel but I happen to know that it is Linda's own favourite and the one she rates as her best; it's also her only venture into literary fiction so far, and it has the distinction of having nothing but 5-star reviews on Amazon, 23* of them at that!

    "A complex family drama spanning the twentieth century," "A Bouquet of Barbed Wire meets The Forsyte Saga"; here's the synopsis:

"Flora Dunbar is dead. But it isn’t over. The spectre at Flora’s funeral is Flora herself, unobserved by her grieving family and the four men who loved her.

Looking back over a turbulent lifetime, Flora recalls an eccentric childhood lived in the shadow of her musical twin, Rory; early marriage to Hugh, a handsome clergyman twice her age; motherhood, which brought her Theo, the son she couldn’t love; middle age, when she finally found brief happiness in a scandalous affair with her nephew, Colin..."

    If that has whetted your appetite, the Kindle version of the book is available for a mere £0.88.

                                                   ~~~~~

    Many thanks to everyone who entered the Cornflower Books birthday draw. Having numbered all the comments as they came in, I've used a random number generator to draw a winner, and that is Katie (fourth comment from the top), so a favourite book of mine will be on its way to her soon. Stay tuned, though, because I'll have more books to give away next week.

                                                   ~~~~~

    Click here and scroll down to 'A literary mystery of Jamesian subtlety', and you can read about Rupert Christiansen's star-studded reading group (devoted to the work of Henry James). As you'll see, the group has decided to dis-band, despite - or because of? - the fact that they meet only quarterly, and Christiansen surmises that that's because they've lost discipline: "people turned up without having read the texts, or cancelled at the last minute or arrived late and left early [...]".

    The only book group I've ever been part of is our own, but I wondered how typical the laxness RC describes is in physical groups generally - if you are or have been a member of a group, enlighten us please!

 

*Edited to add: now 26!