Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"

Adele Russell serves behind the counter in a haberdashers and lives over the shop. It wasn't always like that though as it's only a few years since she was a wealthy heiress engaged to marry an earl, but after her father's financial ruin and his death in a fire her fiancé broke off the relationship and Adele was lucky to be taken in by her old nurse. It's taken some time to come to terms with what happened and Adele has reconciled herself to her lowly position until she finds an invitation to a masked ball. What harm would there be in her wearing her mother's ball gown and domino, just for a taste of how things used to be? Full review...

Cinema Blue by Sue Rulliere

Frankie is a twenty nine year old woman living in Paris and working in a supermarket while she tries to put her life back together after a split from her husband. The split, and what led up to it, was clearly distressing, and exactly what happened is revealed through a series of flashbacks to the time when Frankie was Francesca, whose life was controlled by her husband, JP. The news that JP has had an accident throws Frankie into confusion, because it seems that he turned to drink after she left him and she blames herself. In the meantime, Frankie is entering into a relationship with the enigmatic Antoine, who appears to be doing something rather strange in the flat below hers. Will Frankie be able to retain her new identity? Will the relationship with Antoine go anywhere, or is he just as bad for her as JP was? Full review...

Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar

Fantasy

The plot is simple - the werewolf of the title is 17 year old Kalix, exiled from her family due to her involvement in the head of the clan’s death. Her elder brother has set a price on her head, and is pursuing her with all sources he can muster. It sounds horrific? It is indeed, and there are some truly gruesome scenes, as werewolves battle amongst themselves, or with the humans who come into their orbit. However, these scenes do serve a purpose (to remind us perhaps, that they are werewolves, and not humans?!), and by and large do not occupy too large a part in the narrative. Full review...

Trick Eggs and Rubber Chickens: Grubtown Tales by Philip Ardagh

Confident Readers

If you haven't been to Grubtown before, then feel welcome. As newly arrived lorry driver John Jones finds out, it's a place of exceedingly silly names for people – Blue-Ridge Handheld my favourite so far – and exceedingly silly things happening for exceedingly silly reasons. One of those silly things is John Jones arriving into town with a giant octopus on the back of his lorry – a real, live one, destined for the brand new aquarium and carwash. Another, coinciding, silly thing, is the mayor having a huge festival day for the opening of his new home, which he has just finished knitting. Full review...

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

This is a sixth novel from best-selling Turkish author, Elif Shafak. Set in twelfth century Anatolia, two famous characters from Islamic history meet in a gorgeously real world. A delicate contemporary US love story is wrapped around the rich, meaty historical fiction. Don't be misled by the dodgy-sounding title! Full review...

Trail of Blood by S J Rozan

Crime

Lydia Chin takes on a new case helping another private investigator, Joel Pilarsky, to find missing jewellery which belonged to an Austrian Jewish refugee in wartime Shanghai – she has been hired for her ability to operate in New York City's Chinese community. She is quickly drawn into Rosalie Gilder's story, told through letters written to her mother, and when Joel is shot dead the next day, being fired by the client doesn't stop her wanting to find out more. She is glad when her old associate Bill Smith, who has been out of touch for a while, returns to help her. This detective story linking past and present is compulsive reading. Full review...

Sea Creatures by Val Harris

Rowena Moon and her husband Brendan lived on the Cornish coast with their three children, Jenna, Charlie and Olivia. Brendan was an artist – and a reasonably successful one. Rowena ran a local café and the children had the freedom of the local beach. It sounds like, and probably was, an idyllic childhood until one day Rowena disappeared without warning and without explanation. It was devastating and affected each of the children in different ways as they grew up. Twenty two years later the five are reunited and the mystery of their past unravels. Full review...

Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones by Bobbie Darbyshire

Three people are travelling on a train heading to Inverness. Their destination is the town's library where the book group meets on the last Friday of each month. They each have their own reasons for going but none of them realise that the weekend is going to have far reaching consequences for them all. Full review...

A Commercial Enterprise by Sandra Heath

Caroline is a Lexham, but she's not one of the Lexhams as her father made a rather unfortunate marriage. In consequence she's rather surprised to be invited to the reading of her uncle's will. She didn't know him, had no expectations and probably wouldn't have gone to London if she hadn't been trying to escape the attentions of a pressing suitor. The journey there is trying, but she's rescued by Sir Hal Seymour who gives her a lift in his carriage. It might have got Caro to the reading on time, but she made an enemy of his mistress who had hopes of becoming his wife. Full review...

The Mage in Black (Sabina Kane) by Jaye Wells

Fantasy

After betraying the Dominae and siding with a Mage over the Vampires, Sabina Kane finds herself on the run. Leaving behind everything she knows, she travels with Mage, Adam, to meet the other half of her family – her twin sister, Maisie. Though the Mages welcome her with open arms, Sabina, used to the cold, displeasure of her Dominae Grandmother, can't quite accept their open affection, or their conviction that she has a destiny. Her only focus is on revenge, developing her Mage powers so she can defeat her Grandmother. Full review...

A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Bass-playing, 20 year-old Tassie Keltjin is studying an eclectic range of subjects (Geology, British Literature, Sufism, Soundtracks to War Movies and Wine Tasting) in post 9/11 USA when she lands a job as a child minder for chef, Sarah Bink who is adopting an African-American baby. A Gate at the Stairs is at times a very funny and at others a sad reflection of growing up in modern America. Full review...

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton

If you are the type of person who wants their novels to start at the beginning, build character and plot before coming to a satisfying 'they all lived happily ever after' ending, then avoid this book at all costs. You will hate it. But I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a first time novel as much as this one. It is ambitious, daring and complex, and yet it works beautifully. Full review...

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Ten years ago, Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible revealed the grim politics in the Congo. The Lacuna has a similarly political theme, this time turning her focus on Mexico and the USA in the 1940s and 1950s. Full review...

Last Train From Liguria by Christine Dwyer Hickey

The heroine in this novel is Bella. She's a rather unassuming young woman who has had a rather unassuming childhood - save for the fact that she was motherless at an early age and her relationship with the father is a little strained, to say the least. Bella needs to breathe. So she leaves the drizzle of England for the blue skies and heat of Italy. Her father has propelled her into gentle employment there. She's tentative about the whole thing but warms to it by degrees. Full review...

Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

For some reason I find myself unable to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, and see where we go from there. Of course, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities of what happens thereafter, in the hereafter. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'. Full review...

It's Beginning To Hurt by James Lasdun

Short Stories

It's Beginning to Hurt is a collection of sixteen short stories, all bound together by the theme of hurt in various forms. It is James Lasdun's third collection of short stories and, chances are, if you are a fan of the short story then you will have read something by him before. Full review...

This Is How by M J Hyland

Things weren't going too badly for Patrick Oxtoby. He's intelligent and did well at school. Then his Gran died. He started getting pains in his shoulder and things rapidly went downhill from there. He drops out of university to become a mechanic. By the time we meet him as a 23-year-old, he's become a loner who cannot communicate his feelings and who cannot seem to fit himself into society. Now his fiancee has left him (and you can see her point) and he finds himself in a seaside boarding house in an unnamed English town, hoping to start a new life. Then, one night he commits an act of violence (you can see it coming) and his life goes from bad to awful. Full review...

After the Party by Lisa Jewell

It's been eleven years since Ralph and Jem finally became an item at the end of Lisa Jewell's first novel Ralph's Party. After buying a house in South London and having two children their once exciting, romantic and crazy relationship has gradually become consumed by responsibility and domesticity. Jem has become bogged down with motherhood and running a home and just wishes Ralph would help out a bit as she struggles to start working again. Ralph, unsure of his role in the family, has gradually drifted away both physically and emotionally from Jem and his children, preferring to spend as much time as possible painting in his studio. Full review...

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

Historical Fiction

Although this is a work of fiction, the whole distasteful and deeply upsetting subject of slavery is a fact, therefore, at times I felt as if I were reading a true account.

The narrative goes back and forth, starting with Aminata (or Meena as she is usually called) as a relatively old woman (what we would call middle-aged). She's in London, far from home, but she's there for an extremely important reason. The powers-that-be need her to tell her story, as a slave over many years. The hope is that other Meenas will not have to suffer the same fate. On a lighter note (and they are few and far between) Meena gets to visit some London schoolchildren. They think that she eats elephant. She is able to laugh at their naivety. Full review...

Sick Heart River by John Buchan

This was a surprise for me. It’s rare for a book to come to my attention from the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease of a 1930s novel, and one that surfaced a couple of years ago now. But when it strikes me as startlingly Conradian, updated for the times, and perfectly able to stand alongside one of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on the ball. Full review...

Little Tiger's Big Holiday by Mark Marshall

For Sharing

Little Tiger is going on holiday. Whatever will he need? Well, flying goggles, obviously. A parachute is a must. Who goes anywhere without stilts? Oh, and a helmet, in case he goes in a racing car. Item by item, his suitcase gets more and more full. His holiday sounds like it's going to be an amazing adventure. Full review...

Jacob O'Reilly Wants A Pet by Lynne Rickards and Lee Wildish

For Sharing

Like many young children, Jacob O'Reilly Wants A Pet. He'd love a dog. A cat would be great. Ooh, what about gerbils? Or an iguana? He's desperate for an animal to look after, but mum and dad don't fancy the idea. Then they suggest that he start a pet-sitting business, and all hell breaks loose... Full review...

River of Judgement by David Sartof

Finn Jackson is an oilman, an engineer and he's developed a new way of extracting oil which doesn't ravage the countryside in the way of traditional methods. He's set up a company to take advantage of this along with his friend Aaron Philips, who's the money man. He's short of an operations manager – and has been for a while – after the tragic death of Shufang Su in a site accident. She was a geologist but had apparently flouted safety regulations and you know that there are going to be repercussions from her death. Full review...

Trautmann's Journey: From Hitler Youth to FA Cup Legend by Catrine Clay

Biography

'You have to learn to be hard men, to accept sacrifice without ever succumbing'. Such did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies in the 1930s. He probably did not have in mind playing in goal at a FA Cup final with a broken neck, such is the lifetime of difference between the two references. But that lifetime, as packed and varied as it was, is in the pages of this ever-interesting and swiftly-devoured book. Full review...

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

Teens

Sophie Mercer has been sent to a boarding school for monsters after a little love spell goes horribly wrong. Hecate Hall has been set up 'to protect and instruct shapeshifter, witch and fae children who have risked exposure of their abilities'.

As in any good school story, she soon makes new friends and enemies. Her room mate is a 15 year old vampire with an obsession with everything pink, and Sophie must struggle to hide her disgust at Jenna’s blood consumption, as they quickly become good friends. She faces more difficulty with a trio of glamorous witches. Anna, Chaston and Elodie hate Jenna and they are frequently sarcastic and nasty at Sophie’s expense. At the same time though, they approach her to join their coven, and her reluctance to get involved makes her more unpopular. Full review...

Road to the Dales: The Story of a Yorkshire Lad by Gervase Phinn

Autobiography

As a teacher currently anticipating (I won't say looking forward to!) an OFSTED inspection, school inspectors aren't generally my favourite people. I'll make an exception for Gervase Phinn, though, as he's entertained me for many hours with his previous books on his time in the Dales doing the job. I was expecting his memoirs of his childhood to be equally entertaining – and feel slightly letdown, if I'm honest. Full review...

Wonderful Today: The Autobiography of Pattie Boyd by Pattie Boyd and Penny Junor

Autobiography

Pattie Boyd will always be remembered for one unique, extraordinary claim to fame. She became the wife of arguably the two most famous and revered rock guitarists of the era, George Harrison and Eric Clapton, and thus inspired three of their compositions which became three of the age's seminal love songs, namely 'Something', 'Layla', and 'Wonderful Tonight'. Full review...

Lively Elizabeth! by Mara Bergman and Cassia Thomas

For Sharing

Elizabeth is a lively little girl. She loves stomping around, making a racket and creating an awful kerfuffle. One day she does the thing that she knows she should never do: she pushes Joe Fitzhugh. Joe tumbles into Jonny, who knocks into another child, and on and on and on. Oh dear, Elizabeth! What have you done? Full review...

Evernight by Claudia Gray

Teens

I'm at a complete loss how to review this book. I'm very tempted to take a tip from my favourite movie critic Roger Ebert who, on occasion, has been known to suggest that you should watch a film then read his review if it's full of twists and hard to describe without spoilers. I'm actually thinking that's not a bad idea here – but will try my best to provide a review with as few clues as possible to the twists and turns, just in case two sentences aren't enough to convince you. This may not be easy, so bear with me! Full review...

The Noise of Strangers by Robert Dickinson

In a dystopian Brighton where the Council and the Amex company are the only major employers, and council departments have very different purposes to those they have in our own country today - notably the sinister Parks - four couples share dinner parties and discuss as little as possible, due to the problems they have trusting each other. When a Councillor is killed in a car crash, and one of the couples witness it, it triggers a by-election which leads to political manouevring which they're all caught up in. Full review...

Rugby Football during the Nineteenth Century: A Collection of Contemporary Essays about the Game by Bertram Fletcher Robinson by Paul R Spiring (Editor)

Sport

The mid-nineteenth century represented the sporting equivalent of the 'big bang' in terms of winter sports in England, giving rise to the development of what today we call rugby union, football and rugby league, all from the same origin. Perhaps due to its popularity amongst the public schools of the day, rugby union for many years claimed the moral high ground, advocating amateurism and an emphasis on playing the game rather than providing a public spectacle. Indeed, the arguments over the dangers of professionalism, which initially led to the split into rugby league from the Northern clubs, continued in union for well over a hundred years right up to the former England captain Will Carling's description of the powers that be of the RFU as 'old farts'. In 1896 Bertrand Fletcher Robinson, together with contributions from a few leading players of the day, wrote Rugby Football which was the first volume in a successful nine-part series on Sports and Pastimes that was written for the Isthmian Library. This edition is effectively a facsimile of that book, with the addition of an introduction, penned by Patrick Casey and Hugh Cooke and compiled by Paul Spring. Full review...

All That Follows by Jim Crace

Leonard Lessing is a sofa socialist. He avoids corporate brands both in food and in clothes. He abides by all the right-on boycotts. He signs petitions. He does free gigs at benefit concerts. He gives donations - you know the kind of thing. Once, eighteen long years ago in Texas in 2006, he came very close to some real direct action. But he bottled it. And now, the frozen-shouldered jazzman-on-sabbatical finds his less-than-glorious radical past catching up with him right there in his living room, on the TV. Maxie Lermon, he of Austin 2006 and no stranger to violent agitprop, is in the UK, just up the road from Leonard, and he's taken a family hostage as a protest against the upcoming Reconciliation Summit. Full review...

The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman

Historical Fiction

When Elizabeth I's most trusted men fear for her safety and think there's a possibly supernatural plot against her, the obvious man to investigate it is Dr John Dee, her astrologer and consultant in the hidden arts. Aided by his former pupil – and Elizabeth's reputed lover – Robert Dudley, he travels to Glastonbury to try and find the bones of King Arthur. Glastonbury, however, has never recovered from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the execution of its beloved Abbot Richard Whiting, and many residents view the pair with suspicion. The exception to this is Nel Borrow, who treats Dudley when he's ill and becomes the first woman Dee has ever been interested in romantically. Can the three stop the villainous plot? I'll leave you to find out… Full review...

The Baby Diaries: Memories, Milestones and Misadventures by Tess Daly

Home and Family

One of the many side effects of pregnancy seems to be the need to read everything you can get your hands on about pregnancy and babies. I know that when pregnant with my daughter I trawled the library for any baby books they had, scoured the internet nightly for due date calendars, week by week guides and baby name dictionaries. I also became an obsessive baby-watcher, interested in any celebrity baby news and willing to speak to anyone 'normal' that I met who was pregnant too or who already had children. This book is aiming to be a sort of catch-all for pregnancy obsessives I think, as it's a mix of pregnancy and birth advice and information alongside of Tess Daly's memories from her pregnancies with her two daughters. Full review...

The Clay Dreaming by Ed Hillyer