Cornflower Books

Calling all authors

    I've got my 'PLR social media advocate' hat on today, reminding authors to ensure that all their books are registered for PLR by tomorrow's (i.e. 30th. June) deadline. Illustrators, editors, translators, and audiobook narrators may also be eligible, so check the criteria here, and writers, ensure that any new editions of your books, e.g. paperback or audiobook, anything with a different ISBN, have been registered.

75 from 75

    For the 75th. anniversary of the magazine Parade, Ann Patchett and her colleagues at Parnassus Books have put together a list of the 75 best books (fiction and non-fiction) of the last 75 years. You can find their choices here, and a supporting article here.

    Any favourites on the list? I can claim to have read a measly 12 of the 75 - some gems among them - but as a whole the Parnassus selection is well worth keeping as a reminder of gaps in one's reading, and books to look out for.

Interesting arrivals: 4

   

    "What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris from 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation and secrets until - finally - with France's liberation came renewal and retribution. Yet, even at the darkest moments of Occupation, with the Swastika flying from the Eiffel Tower and pet dogs abandoned howling on the streets, glamour was ever present.

    It was women, more than men, who came face to face with the German conquerors on a daily basis - perhaps selling them their clothes or travelling alongside them on the Métro, where a German soldier had priority over seats. How did these women react to their subjugators? What made them collaborate or resist? And did they have any choice? By looking at a wide range of individuals from collaborators to resisters, actresses and prostitutes to teachers and writers, Anne Sebba shows that women, whether they were Nazi wives, spies, mothers, mistresses, or fashion and jewellery designers, had to make life-and-death decisions every day, and often did whatever they needed to survive.

    Some women, like the heiress Béatrice de Camondo or novelist Irène Némirovsky, converted to Catholicism; others like racing driver Violette Morris embraced the Nazi philosophy; Coco Chanel even retreated to the Ritz with a German lover. A young medical student, Anne Spoerry, gave lethal injections to camp inmates but was also known to have saved the lives of Jews.

    But this is not just a book about wartime. Sebba also explores the aftershock of the Second World War and the choices demanded. How did the women who survived to see the liberation of Paris come to terms with their actions and those of others? Although politics lies at its heart, Les Parisiennes is above all an account of the lives of the people of the city and, most of all, its women and young girls."

    Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba will be published on 14th. July.

Interesting arrivals: 3

 

    If you were one of many who enjoyed Suzanne Joinson's debut novel A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar (there's a post on it here and my interview with Suzy here), then you'll no doubt be glad to know that Suzy's second novel is now out. The Photographer's Wife is "a beautiful and gripping story of love and betrayal, set in 1920s Jerusalem and 1930s Sussex:

    Jerusalem, 1920 - in an already fractured city, eleven-year-old Prudence feels the tension rising as her architect father launches an ambitious - and wildly eccentric - plan to redesign the Holy City by importing English parks to the desert. Prue, known as the 'little witness', eavesdrops underneath the tables of tearooms and behind the curtains of the dance-halls of the city's elite, watching everything but rarely being watched herself. Around her, British colonials, exiled Armenians and German officials rub shoulders as they line up the pieces in a political game: a game destined to lead to disaster.

    When Prue's father employs a British pilot, William Harrington, to take aerial photographs of the city, Prue is uncomfortably aware of the attraction that sparks between him and Eleanora, the English wife of a famous Jerusalem photographer. And, after Harrington learns that Eleanora's husband is a nationalist, intent on removing the British, those sparks are fanned dangerously into a flame.

    Years later, in 1937, Prue is an artist living a reclusive life by the sea with her young son, when Harrington pays her a surprise visit. What he reveals unravels her world, and she must follow the threads that lead her back to secrets long-ago buried in Jerusalem. The Photographer's Wife is a powerful story of betrayal: between father and daughter, between husband and wife, and between nations and people, set in the complex period between the two world wars."

Interesting arrivals: 2

 

    "Mrs. Laetitia Rodd is the impoverished widow of an archdeacon, living modestly in Hampstead with her landlady Mrs. Bentley. She is also a private detective of the utmost discretion. In winter 1850, her brother Frederick, a criminal barrister, introduces her to Sir James Calderstone, a wealthy and powerful industrialist who asks Mrs. Rodd to investigate the background of an 'unsuitable' woman his son intends to marry - a match he is determined to prevent.

    In the guise of governess, she travels to the family seat, Wishtide, deep in the frozen Lincolnshire countryside, where she soon discovers that the Calderstones have more to hide than most. As their secrets unfold, the case takes an unpleasant turn when a man is found dead outside a tavern. Mrs. Rodd's keen eyes and astute wits are taxed as never before in her search for the truth - which carries her from elite drawing rooms to London's notorious inns and its steaming laundry houses.

    Dickensian in its scope and characters, The Secrets of Wishtide brings nineteenth century society vividly to life and illuminates the effect of Victorian morality on women's lives. Introducing an irresistible new detective, the first book in the Laetitia Rodd Mystery series will enthral and delight."

    The Secrets of Wishtide (which will be out soon) is by Kate Saunders whose work includes the award-winning Five Children on the Western Front, a follow-on to E. Nesbit's Five Children and It stories.

Interesting arrivals: 1

   

    Many of us are fans of Sarah Moss's work and will be glad to know that she has a new novel - The Tidal Zone - out on 7^th July. Here's the gist:

    "Adam is a stay-at-home dad who is also working on a history of the bombing and rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. He is a good man, and he is happy. But one day, he receives a call from his daughter's school to inform him that, for no apparent reason, fifteen-year-old Miriam has collapsed and stopped breathing. In that moment, he is plunged into a world of waiting, agonising, not knowing. The story of his life and the lives of his family are rewritten and re-told around this shocking central event, around a body that has inexplicably failed.

    In this exceptionally courageous and unflinching novel of contemporary life Sarah Moss goes where most of us wouldn't dare to look, and the result is riveting - unbearably sad, but also miraculously funny and ultimately hopeful. The Tidal Zone explores parental love, overwhelming fear, illness and recovery. It is about clever teenagers and the challenges of marriage. It is about the NHS, academia, sex and gender in the twenty-first century, the work/life juggle, and the politics of packing lunches and loading dishwashers. It confirms Sarah Moss as a unique voice in modern fiction and a writer of luminous intelligence."

    For anyone not acquainted with Sarah Moss's novels, there's a post on Night Waking here and one on Bodies of Light here. I've yet to read Signs for Lost Children, the third book in that excellent 'series'.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction: the winner

    If you've been following the longlist and shortlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction you may like to know that the winner, announced last night, is Simon Mawer for Tightrope.

    Tightrope follows Marian Sutro, who has survived Ravensbruck and is back in dreary London trying to pick up the pieces of her post-War life. It is Simon Mawer’s tenth novel; his seventh, The Glass Room (which many of us read in 2012), was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize in 2010.

The Judges said:
    ‘Tightrope is a spy story in the grand tradition, sweeping the reader irresistibly into the harrowing life of a secret agent in World War Two. Impeccably researched, it perfectly inhabits its time and place. It is a worthy winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

    Marian Sutro, who made her first appearance in The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, is a commanding character, enigmatic and fascinating. Damaged by her experiences, by the dangers she has faced, by those who have betrayed her and those she has been forced to betray, Sutro walks the tightrope between the people in her life who have sent her into danger, those whom she must fear, and those she seeks to protect.

    Tightrope, however, is more than a very good spy thriller. We are used now, in a century already scarred by wars, to the concept of post traumatic stress disorder. There was no such diagnosis in the aftermath of the twentieth century's terrible wars, but it afflicted millions, nevertheless. Simon Mawer has given us, in the character of Marian Sutro, a study of how the terrifying events she endured in her youth shaped and transformed the rest of her life.'

Always lovely to get comments such as ...

   

     ... this one from LizF on the recent post flagging up publication of Sue Gee's latest novel Trio:

"Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post which inspired me to read Trio. I have just finished it, after reading as slowly as I possibly could, to make it last longer, and have loved it SO much that I am convinced it will be one of, if not THE Book of the Year for me. The writing, the spirit of place, the characterisation, the whole historical atmosphere have combined to make it a magical read for me which I am sure will remain in my memory, and on my bookshelf, for many a year. Just magical! Now on a mission to track down the other Sue Gee books I have bought over the years so I can catch up on what I have been missing."

    I haven't read Trio yet, though I may begin it today (having just come to the end of a long biography of Elizabeth Goudge); but great to hear it's so good.

    Thanks, Liz!

Sitting pretty

    'Booked Bench' - available to order here.

Uncommonly good

   

    "Had the dogs not taken exception to the strange van parked in the royal grounds, the Queen might never have learnt of the Westminster travelling library's weekly visits to the Palace. But finding herself at its steps, she goes up to apologise for all the yapping and ends up taking out a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett, last borrowed in 1989. Duff read though it proves to be, upbringing demands she finish it and, so as not to appear rude, she withdraws another. This second, more fortunate choice of book awakens in Her Majesty a passion for reading so great that her public duties begin to suffer. And so, as she devours work by everyone from Hardy to Brookner to Proust to Samuel Beckett, her equerries conspire to bring the Queen's literary odyssey to a close."

     That's Alan Bennett's delightful novella The Uncommon Reader, one of today's Kindle bargains; if you haven't already had the pleasure of reading it I suggest you take a look - it's a treat.