The Blurb (from Goodreads):
My Thoughts:
I’ve been reading The Iliad and The Odyssey again this year, as I am writing a novel which draws upon the ancient Cretan myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur and so am immersing myself in all things Greek. A friend recommended this book to me, as a way of helping me understand Homer. I read it slowly, over many months, a chapter at a time. It spins together poetry, history, linguistics, mythology, psychology and memoir into an absolutely dazzling examination of these two ancient and influential poems. Adam Nicholson writes beautifully, and knows so much, and thinks so deeply – his passion and erudition is astounding. I found myself underlining passages of his prose, and making notes, and trying to learn from him. I feel this is a book you could read again and again, and always discover some fresh insight.
Here is just one: “The Iliad’s subject is not war or its wickedness but a crisis in how to be.”
You might also like to read my review Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place by Philip Marsden:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-review-rising-ground-a-search-for-the-spirit-of-place-by-philip-marsden
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
She's a woman in a man's world ...
Sydney, 1946. Billie Walker is living life on her own terms. World War II has left her bereaved, her photojournalist husband missing and presumed dead. Determined not to rely on any man for her future, she re-opens her late father's detective agency.
Billie's bread and butter is tailing cheating spouses - it's easy, pays the bills and she has a knack for it. But her latest case, the disappearance of a young man, is not proving straightforward ...
Soon Billie is up to her stylish collar in bad men, and not just the unfaithful kind - these are the murdering kind. Smugglers. Players. Gangsters. Billie and her loyal assistant must pit their wits against Sydney's ruthless underworld and find the young man before it's too late.
My Thoughts:
Billie Walker is a former war correspondent who is trying to rebuild her life back in 1940s Sydney after the death of her husband. She has taken over her father’s private investigation bureau, and is making her living tailing cheating husbands and wives. One day a woman comes to her in desperate need. Her son has gone missing, and she wants Billie to find him. The case is a lot more complex and dangerous than Billie had imagined, and leads her both into Sydney’s high society and its grimy underworld. The action is fast-paced, and full of vivid period detail that really brings post-war Australia to life. Tara Moss loves 1940s style, and makes her own clothes, and this knowledge of the fashion of the times added an intriguing thread to Billie’s character. Plus there’s the subtle possibility of a romance developing with the detective also working the case, which adds a pleasant frisson of intrigue. The story is really cinematic – in fact, it’s crying out for a glamorous TV series in the style of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. I really hope someone makes it!
Get Your Copy of Dead Man Switch HereYou might also like to read my review of The Passengers by Eleanor Limprecht:
VINTAGE BOOK REVIEW: The Passengers by Eleanor Limprecht
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
The classic novel, international sensation, and inspiration for the film starring Anthony Quinn explores the struggle between the aesthetic and the rational, the inner life and the life of the mind.
The classic novel Zorba the Greek is the story of two men, their incredible friendship, and the importance of living life to the fullest. Zorba, a Greek working man, is a larger-than-life character, energetic and unpredictable. He accompanies the unnamed narrator to Crete to work in the narrator’s lignite mine, and the pair develops a singular relationship. The two men couldn’t be further apart: The narrator is cerebral, modest, and reserved; Zorba is unfettered, spirited, and beyond the reins of civility. Over the course of their journey, he becomes the narrator’s greatest friend and inspiration and helps him to appreciate the joy of living.
Zorba has been acclaimed as one of the most remarkable figures in literature; he is a character in the great tradition of Sinbad the Sailor, Falstaff, and Sancho Panza. He responds to all that life offers him with passion, whether he’s supervising laborers at a mine, confronting mad monks in a mountain monastery, embellishing the tales of his past adventures, or making love. Zorba the Greek explores the beauty and pain of existence, inviting readers to reevaluate the most important aspects of their lives and live to the fullest.
My Thoughts:
Every year I set out to read a great classic of literature that I have not read before. This year I chose Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, primarily because it is set in Crete in the 1950s and I am currently working on a novel set in the same magical island in the 1940s. I saw the movie a long time ago, and have watched the iconic dance scene numerous times since. It was interesting to go back to the source of the story.
Zorba the Greek is told from the point-of-view of a wealthy young man who lives too much in his head – he is cerebral, philosophical and reserved. On the boat to Crete, he meets a working class Cretan who is earthy, passionate, and spontaneous – this is, of course, Zorba. The book is mainly a record of their conversations and experiences together. They talk about life, death, love, loss, and the nature of God. Zorba likes to talk, as much as he likes to eat, drink, dance, sing, play his santuri and make love. He is a braggart and a cheat, but also very funny at times. The book is deeply misogynist - women are not treated well in the book. Zorba seduces an old whore who later dies. The unnamed narrator seduces a beautiful young woman who then has her head cut off by a villager. One could argue that this is realistic reflection of the time and the place (though I cannot believe a woman can get her head hacked off in 1950s Crete and the murderer allowed to go scot-free). What troubled me most was the lack of any real feeling in the book. Both men are strangely undisturbed by the death of their lovers – they both shrug philosophically and go on with their lives.
There are, nonetheless, many beautiful passages in the book. It is at its best describing the Cretan landscape, and celebrating the simple pleasures of life:
‘I looked at Zorba in the light of the moon and admired the jauntiness and simplicity with which he adapted himself to the world around him the way his body and soul formed one harmonious whole and all things – women, bread, water, meat, sleep – blended happily with his flesh and became Zorba. I had never seen such a friendly accord between a man and the universe.’
You can also read my review of Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-mythos-the-greek-myths-retold-by-stephen-fry
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, HAMNET is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.
Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.
Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.
My Thoughts:
Maggie O’Farrell is a new discovery for me. I read her breathtaking memoir I Am, I Am, I Am last year and bought Hamnet the moment I had finished. It was already on my radar, having won the Women’s Prize last year and having been reviewed so positively by many of my friends.
It tells the story of the death of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, and how his loss comes to inform the writing of the play ‘Hamlet’. As Maggie O’Farrell notes in her epigraph, in Shakespearean times the names ‘Hamnet’ and ‘Hamlet’ were the same. Although the book is named after the eleven-year-old boy who dies, the narrative focuses mostly on the story of his mother Agnes (the famous Anne Hathaway of the thatched cottage and second-best bed). She is a wild spirit, a witch, a woman of the woods and the fields, barely able to scratch her name. Her grief at the loss of her son is one of the most heartrendingly true depictions I’ve read:
What is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you at any time, like a thief or brigand. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe. Never take for granted that your children's hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play. Never for a moment forget they may be gone, snatched from you, in the blink of an eye, borne away from you like thistledown.
Maggie O’Farrell writes beautifully, but what I love most about this book is the boldness of her artistic vision. She uses the device of the omniscient device brilliantly, sliding in and out of heads and points-of-view with utter confidence. One of my favourite vignettes is the way she follows the journey of the plague bacillus in the body of a flea from a monkey’s fur to the glass beads that Hamnet’s twin sister Judith fingers with such excitement. She also chooses not to name William Shakespeare once. He is the Latin tutor, the husband, the father, the player. He is just a man, a man who makes mistakes, who is unfaithful, who is full of doubts, a man who was not there when his son died. Somehow, the not naming of him is very humanising. It also foregrounds Agnes’s story – the shadowy wife, the silent woman – in this book, she steps forward to the centre of the stage, stands under the spotlight, and speaks out, telling her own story.
Hamnet also has one of the most perfect last lines ever written. Just thinking about it gives me chills. A perfectly composed and executed book, this book will be forever in my heart.
You might also like to read my review of A Parcel of Patterns by Jill Paton Walsh:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-a-parcel-of-patterns-by-jill-paton-walsh
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
The eldest was a razor-sharp novelist of upper-class manners; the second was loved by John Betjeman; the third was a fascist who married Oswald Mosley; the fourth idolized Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany; the fifth was a member of the American Communist Party; the sixth became Duchess of Devonshire.
They were the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege, they became prominent as ‘bright young things’ in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark – and very public – differences in their outlooks came to symbolise the political polarities of a dangerous decade.
The intertwined stories of their lives – recounted in masterly fashion by Laura Thompson – hold up a revelatory mirror to upper-class English life before and after World War II
My Thoughts:
I first became aware of the controversial and fascinating lives of the six Mitford sisters when Mary Hoffman, a writer friend of mine, took me to see their graves in the cemetery in Swinbrook, a village in the Cotswolds near where the family grew up. Only four of the six sisters are buried there – Nancy the Writer, Unity the Nazi, Diana the Fascist, and Pamela the Boring One. The other two sisters are known as Jessica the Communist and Deborah the Duchess, I kid you not.
After Mary told me something of their lives, I became so interested that I read a few biographies about the family. Unity and Diana ended up having cameo appearances in my novel The Beast’s Garden, which tells the story of the secret underground resistance to Hitler in Berlin during the Third Reich. Both Unity and Diana were avid supporters of Hitler and the Nazis, and Unity shot herself in the head when England declared war on Germany (Diana spent most of the war in prison).
The Mitfords were an impoverished aristocratic family with seven children (the only son, Tom Mitford, could be nicknamed the One Who Everyone Forgets).
Nancy (b. 1904) was a bestselling novelist and biographer; Pamela (b. 1907) was a country woman who bred chickens; Tom (b. 1909) was killed in action during the Second World War; Diana (b.1910) was considered one of the most beautiful women of the age and left her first husband Bryan Guinness (of the Guinness beer fortune) to marry Oswald Moseley, founder of the British Union of Fascists; Unity (b. 1914) was in love with Hitler and tried to commit suicide the day war broke out (she survived another nine years); Jessica (b. 1917) eloped with her cousin Esmond Romilly to serve in the Spanish Civil War and was later active in the American Civil Rights movement; and Deborah (b. 1920) become the Duchess of Devonshire and ran Chatsworth House, the house famous for playing the role of Pemberley in the 2005 film with Keira Knightley).
No wonder people find them fascinating!
If you have never heard of the Mitford sisters, this is may not the place to start as the author assumes the reader is familiar with the lives, loves and hates of the six young women. (Start by reading Nancy’s novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in A Cold Climate, and then move on to Jessica’s autobiography Hons & Rebels.)
However, for someone who knows the background and is familiar with previous biographies, this book offers fresh material in the form of interviews with the last two surviving Mitfords, Diana and Deborah, before their deaths. And Laura Thompson does not pass judgement on the six sisters and their sometimes disastrous choices – she allows them to speak to us in their own words, through quotes from letters and diaries and intreviews, so we may draw our own conclusions.
You might also like to read my review of Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley:
BOOK REVIEW: Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Fiercely independent Daisy Chance has a dream—and it doesn’t involve marriage or babies (or being under any man’s thumb). Raised in poverty, she has a passion—and a talent—for making beautiful clothes. Daisy aims to become the finest dressmaker in London.
Dashing Irishman Patrick Flynn is wealthy and ambitious, and has entered society to find an aristocratic bride. Instead, he finds himself growing increasingly attracted to the headstrong, clever and outspoken Daisy. She’s wrong in every way—except the way she sets his heart racing.
However, when Flynn proposes marriage, Daisy refuses. She won't give up her hard-won independence. Besides, she doesn't want to join the fine ladies of society—she wants to dress them. She might, however, consider becoming Flynn's secret mistress. . .
But Flynn wants a wife, not a mistress, and when Flynn sets his heart on something, nothing can stand in his way. . .
My Thoughts:
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the last book in Anne Gracie’s ‘Chance Sisters’ quartet, and now I’m all sad that the series is over. All four books have been delightful, full of wit and romance and poignancy, with each of the four young women so distinctly different in their personalities and each travelling a very different route towards happiness. If you love sparkling Regency romances, Anne Gracie is a must-read! Start with The Autumn Bride, which introduces the characters and situation, and then read them in order.
‘Down a cobbled street in Paris, a long-forgotten apartment is found. Thick with dust and secrets, it is full of priceless artworks that have been hidden away for decades.’
It was these words – the opening sentence of the blurb on the back of the book – that sold me on this book. It’s just such a fascinating premise. I would love to find such an apartment myself – just imagine the forgotten stories hidden within.
The Paris Secret is probably best described as a contemporary romance, and so it’s full of descriptions of gorgeous designer clothes and handbags, and has a brooding French bad-boy millionaire as the romantic interest. It’s not my usual kind of book at all, but it was perfect for a plane trip of a few hours (I bought it in the airport bookshop). I ripped through it in a few hours, and enjoyed it immensely. I loved the Bindinside view of the international art world, and the scenes set in Paris, one of my favourite cities in the world. I enjoyed the romance too, which was deftly done. All in all, it was a great light read, perfect for a beach holiday.
I met Lexi Landsman at the Melbourne Jewish Writers Festival, and bought her book there (I always come home from a festival with a suitcase laden with books!) The Ties That Bind is her first novel, but I can guarantee it won’t be her last. From the heart-rending opening scene, when a child is stolen from her pram, to the emotional lump-in-the-throat ending, the story unspools swiftly and surely, the pages seemingly turning themselves.
It’s the story of a young mother, Courtney, who discovers that her ten-year-old desperately son needs a bone marrow transplant. His best chance of surviving is to find a familial match – but Courtenay is adopted and knows nothing about her birth family. She sets out on a quest to discover her origins, and uncovers all sorts of dark secrets. A really engaging and heart-warming read.
You might also like to read my review of The Winter Bride by Anne Gracie:
VINTAGE BOOK REVIEW:The Winter Bride – Anne Gracie
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Bored and restless in London's Restoration Court, Lady Dona escapes into the British countryside with her restlessness and thirst for adventure as her only guides.
Eventually Dona lands in remote Navron, looking for peace of mind in its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds the passion her spirit craves in the love of a daring French pirate who is being hunted by all of Cornwall.
Together, they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him
My Thoughts:
I loved Frenchman’s Creek as a teenager and read it again this month for the first time since. It’s a swashbuckling tale of love and betrayal, featuring a bored noblewoman and a bold pirate in the time of Charles II. Put like that, it sounds like a real bodice-ripper but Daphne du Maurier is far too clever and subtle than that. As always, her Cornish setting is wonderfully depicted and all her characters swiftly and deftly drawn. Lady Dona St Columb is beautiful, restless, and filled with longing for some kind of adventure or danger. She has left London and her husband and taken her children to the country estate in Cornwall. Slowly she becomes aware of a mystery. A French pirate is terrorising the coast. By accident, Dona meets him and falls in love for the first time in her life. But she is a wife and mother, and she cannot abandon her family for the thrill of life on the high seas. And the Frenchman attracts danger: the local people want him hanged and all who help him.
Like all Daphne du Maurier’s books, Frenchman’s Creek creates a slow but inexorable tightening of dramatic tension that makes it impossible to stop reading. Full of atmosphere and mood, with complex and believable characters that you cannot help but care about, this slender novel is a masterclass in writing romantic suspense.
You might also like to read my review of The French Photographer by Natasha Lester:
BOOK REVIEW: The French Photographer by Natasha Lester
The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills - and it can be great: you've had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar - the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild - is the person thousands turn to for advice.
Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before-published columns and a new introduction by Steve Almond. Rich with humor, insight, compassion - and absolute honesty - this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.
My Thoughts:
This is a difficult book to review, because it is such a difficult book to categorise. Basically it's a collection of columns written by the American writer Cheryl Strayed under the pseudonym Sugar. The columns are written in response to people with problems who wrote to ‘Dear Sugar’ for advice. In other words, Sugar is an Agony Aunt.
(In a complete aside, I was so fascinated by the history of the term ‘agony aunt’ I had to go and look it up. Did you know the first newspaper to offer life advice to readers was The Athenian Gazette, in 1691? And that John Dunton, the man who established it, once advised a woman afraid of a lonely old age to get herself down to the docks and hook up with a sex-starved sailor? And that Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, was the agony uncle for his magazine, The Review, in 1704? And that the term itself was not used until the 1950s? No, neither did I …)
Cheryl Strayed wrote the ‘Dear Sugar’ advice column for the online literary magazine The Rumpus from 2010 to 2012, and garnered a strong following. I first heard about her when her advice to a young wanna-be author, ‘Write Like a Motherfucker’, made the rounds on the internet. I thought it was a brilliant piece of writing, and loved that she quoted Emily Dickinson, one of my favourite poets. Then, of course, her memoir Wild was made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon and released in December 2014. Suddenly Cheryl Strayed seemed everywhere.
Each of the columns in Tiny Beautiful Things are indeed advice offered in response to true-life dilemmas sent in by readers, but they are not at all like what I used to read in the back of Dolly when I was a naïve teenager. Firstly, the tone is warm, intimate and startlingly frank, as if the reader and Sugar had been friends for years and years. She shares stories from her own difficult past, including the death of her mother, her marriage breakup, her infidelities, and struggles with drug addiction. Some stories are funny. Most are poignant and even heart-breaking. I have been where you are, she seems to say. I know what is hurting you.
Here is one of my favourite quotes from the book:
“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”
Here is another:
“You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.”
Tiny Beautiful Things is indeed beautiful, but not, I think, tiny. It’s big-hearted and big-thinking and warm and wise and sad all at once.
You might also like my review of Butterfly on a Pin by Alannah Hill:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/book-review-butterfly-on-a-pin-by-alannah-hill
The blurb (from Goodreads):
Inspired by true events, this is the story of how society's 'lovely ladies' won a war.
Each year at secluded Shillings Hall, in the snow-crisped English countryside, the mysterious Miss Lily draws around her young women selected from Europe's royal and most influential families. Her girls are taught how to captivate a man - and find a potential husband - at a dinner, in a salon, or at a grouse shoot, and in ways that would surprise outsiders. For in 1914, persuading and charming men is the only true power a woman has.
Sophie Higgs is the daughter of Australia's king of corned beef and the only 'colonial' brought to Shillings Hall. Of all Miss Lily's lovely ladies, however, she is also the only one who suspects Miss Lily's true purpose.
As the chaos of war spreads, women across Europe shrug off etiquette. The lovely ladies and their less privileged sisters become the unacknowledged backbone of the war, creating hospitals, canteens and transport systems where bungling officials fail to cope. And when tens of thousands can die in a single day's battle, Sophie must use the skills Miss Lily taught her to prevent war's most devastating weapon yet.
But is Miss Lily heroine or traitor? And who, exactly, is she?
My Thoughts:
I’ve long been a fan of Jackie French’s historical novels for children, and so I was intrigued when I heard she had written a book for adults. The cover was gorgeous and the blurb told me it was set during World War I, one of my favourite historical periods, and so I bought it to read on my summer holidays.
The novel tells the story of Sophie Higgs, whose father made his fortune making tinned corned beef. When Sophie falls in love with the boy-next-door, her father decides to send her to England for the Season, to give her a chance to see the world and meet other men. She is to spend a few months with the mysterious Miss Lily first, however, to be taught how to be charming. The idea is not just to win themselves rich and aristocratic husbands, but also to use feminine wiles to affect change in the world. She and three other young women spent their days learning how to walk, how to sit, how to hold a discussion whilst eating, and how to placate and persuade.
There is a quote from various letters at the beginning of each chapter. The first reads:
“… that was when I realised that war is as natural to a man as chasing a ball on a football field. War is a scuttling cockroach, something that a woman would instinctively stamp on. Women bear the pain of childbirth, and most deeply feel the agony of their children’s deaths. Could one marshal women to fight against the dreams of war? But women have no power, except what they cajole from men.”
Miss Lily, 1908
As Sophie learns and make friends, the world lurches ever closer to war. Sophie and the other ‘lovely ladies’ must dig deep within themselves if they are to survive. And, meanwhile, Sophie falls in love …
It’s a big book but the pace rarely flags. Sophie is a captivating character, being determined, clever and kind. The historical setting is brilliantly rendered, and I just adored Miss Lily and her wry and wise reflections on life and society. I loved the book right up until the very end, when the romantic promise of the story failed to materialise.
This was partly because Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies is the first in a series, and so some narrative threads were left dangling. It was also, I think, because Jackie French did not want to give her readers too predictable an ending. A lot of writers avoid a happy ending because romantic love in novels has been so often equated with plots that are trite or sentimental or melodramatic. This is such a shame. The longing for love is such a universal human desire, and should be celebrated. I suspect that Sophie will find true love and happiness after many more suspenseful and dangerous adventures in Book 2 & 3. I hope so.
You might also like to read my review The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig:
https://kateforsyth.com.au/what-katie-read/vintage-book-review-the-ashford-affair-by-lauren-willig
