Book Reviews From The Bookbag
Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of author interviews, and all sorts of top tens - all of which you can find on our features page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the recommendations page.
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American Adulterer by Jed Mercurio
I've often wondered how history would have viewed Jack Kennedy if he'd died a natural death rather than by an assassin's bullet. As an extension of that I've also thought that he might not have lived that much longer had nature been allowed to take its course. He's one of the most-written-about Presidents of all time and finding a new angle – even a fictional one – is not easy, but Jed Mercurio has looked at Kennedy's adult life through the prism of his sexual peccadilloes and his health. Full review...
Besotted by Joe Treasure
It is late August 1982, the day when O level results come out. Michael Cartwright already knows he has failed his exams and is dreading his parents finding out. He, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and their younger sisters are on the family holiday, staying with their mother's parents in Kilross, County Cork. To escape boredom and his parents' anger, he wanders round the village, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training to be a priest, and lively Peggy O'Connor. He has his first kiss and a bit more with Peggy. The family soon goes home to Cheltenham, but their brief visit to Ireland will have far reaching significance. Full review...
Landed by Tim Pears
I have hesitated to write this review because, truthfully, I am not entirely sure that I know what happened at the end. I read it all. I actually read the end several times. And then I skipped back to the middle, just to check something, before trying the end again. I have decided to just believe in what I think happened, and since I don't want to spoil it for other readers then I don't have to make a complete fool of myself writing down what it is I think! And actually, that mysteriousness is part of the charm of the story. So, slight confusion aside, I still gave this book four stars, and this is why... Full review...
The Eternal Prison by Jeff Somers
This book stands out in the high-energy, hard-edged sci-fi adventure/thriller genre, in that it covers two stories at the same time. In one chapter we have Avery Cates, practically the best gun-for-hire in his post-apocalyptic North America, being told to kill one of the most protected and important people left in the world, by other, almost as important people, in the cruel mix of powerplays that make up the current politics. In the other corner is Cates, being thrown in prison - one of those basic, hell-on-earth, surrounded by miles of desert, prisons. Here, too, he will be told to do jobs for other people... Full review...
Birthright: The True Story That Inspired Kidnapped by A.Roger Ekirch
They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and it is not unusual for novels to be based partly on fact. So it was in the case of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, Sir Walter Scott's Guy Mannering, and at least three others, all of which can point to the saga of James Annesley for inspiration. Full review...
Secret Son by Laila Lalami
Secret Son is the story of Youssef El-Mekki, the slum-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is dead, so when he finds out his mother has lied to conceal the fact that he was born out of wedlock, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate son's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wanted. Full review...
Star Crossed: Aries Rising by Bonnie Hearn Hill
Ordinary teen Logan McRae discovers an old book called 'Fearless Astrology'. Can the book help her and her friends get the boys they want, catch the vandals who are shocking their school with pranks, and win her the approval of cantankerous English teacher Mr 'Frankenstein' Franklin? This is a novel written for teens – of course it can. Full review...
January (Conspiracy 365) by Gabrielle Lord
Callum is wandering along home on New Year's Eve when crazed itinerant accosts him.
They killed your father! They'll kill you! You must survive the next 365 days!
The man is carted off in an ambulance, and Cal tries to shrug off the incident but it's not easy. How did the man know his name? How did he know that Cal's father was dead? Who could possibly want to kill a run of the mill adolescent like him? What is the Ormond Singularity that the man kept shouting about? And the thing is, Cal's father had written to him shortly before returning home already in the throes of a fatal illness. His father was vague on detail, but is pretty sure he was on to something big. Could there be a connection? Full review...
Changeling: Blood Wolf by Steve Feasey
Trey is the last living hereditary werewolf - or so he thinks. So when he discovers he has a long-lost uncle, he shrugs off all objections from his vampire guardian, Lucien and catches the first available plane to Canada. When he arrives, he finds that not all werewolves are fearsome, forbidding and courageous creatures. And they're certainly not all family-friendly. His uncle is old, half-blind and alcoholic. He lives in filth and he couldn't give a fig for Trey. But there is a pack out there, and it's vicious, bloodthirsty and rapidly spinning out of control. Full review...
Savannah Grey: A Horror Story by Cliff McNish
Savannah Grey is doing her best to settle into her latest foster placement - Annette is really nice; she's warm and kind and respects her adolescent charge's privacy. But Savannah has perenially itchy feet and she finds it difficult to make lasting relationships. She's never had a boyfriend and friendships are often fleeting. Nina is the only one that seems to stick around. Then her throat gets sore. Then Annette tells her that she's making odd noises at night. Savannah knows her body is changing and she's developing powers that she doesn't understand. Then the leaves start to swirl for no apparent reason and the birds to behave oddly. Full review...
Frightfully Friendly Ghosties by Daren King
Pamela Fraidy has gotten herself locked in the attic with a leggy spider. Her fellow frightfully friendly ghosties are doing all they can to help her, but it's not easy to pick up a key and carry it up the stairs if you don't have a body. In the process of rescuing their friends, they also decide to make friends with the still-alives who inhabit their house. The ghosties are fed up of the still-alives being so mean - running off screaming every time the ghosties say hello. Full review...
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Balram Halwai, a Bangalore entrepreneur (of sorts) and a natural philosopher, hears that there is a planned visit from the Chinese leader to India to learn the source of Indian entrepreneurial talent. Balram knows that the story he will be told by the Indian leader will be a long way from the true story of modern Indian life, and so resolves, over the course of seven nights, to write to the Chinese premier with the story of his life and his own journey from a poor son of a rickshaw driver to the head of his own business. Full review...
The Missing by Jane Casey
In 1992, Sarah Finch's twelve year old brother Charlie says to her Tell mum I'll be back soon.
Sixteen years later, his family are still waiting to find out what happened to him. Now in her twenties, Sarah is teaching at a local private school while looking after her uncaring mother, who since Charlie's disappearance has slid into alcoholism. Full review...
The Trout Opera by Matthew Condon
Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of Buckley's Crossing hotel and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across the bridge.
The Judges, despite their initial prominence and convincing back-story giving them a valid reason for being in Buckley's Crossing, will not really concern us. They are there to represent a type: a visitor to small town Australia, a fisherman from the city, a seeker after something in the Snowy that probably isn't fish.
We shall, however, be concerned with the giant trout. Full review...
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
Just before the First World War a little girl was found abandoned on the wharf after a dreadful sea voyage from England to Australia. She appears not to know her name – or is unwilling to tell it – and all she will say is that a mysterious lady she calls the Authoress had promised to look after her. There's no trace of her though and the little girl was taken in a by a friendly family. She forgot all about the events until many years later when her adopted father told her what had happened. Full review...
William and Mary: Heroes of the Glorious Revolution by John Van der Kiste
At school I remember spending a lot of time on the Tudors and the early Stuarts – obviously great favourites of the history teacher and then galloping unceremoniously through the intervening years until we reached another meaningful period – the Victorian era. The importance of William and Mary was completely overlooked in favour of a quick mention of the fact that William wasn't in direct line of succession to the throne and Mary had never wanted to marry him in the first place. Their successor, Queen Anne I remember simply as 'tables'. Full review...
Playground by Samuel Bonner
Jonah grew up in London but his mother, getting increasingly worried about social disintegration and increasing crime, has moved them up to Nottingham. Jonah is a bright lad and halfway through a media course, but he's finding it difficult to fit in. He's also finding the new racial mix a problem - there's palpable tension between black and brown-skinned people on campus, and he often feels alienated and a bit like a fish out of water. Full review...
The Man Who Disappeared by Clare Morrall
I was drawn to this book straight away. Firstly, the jacket cover is lovely. The subliminal message is read me, please read me. We are introduced to the Kendall family; mother, father and three children. All leading unremarkable, rather ordinary lives. The father, Felix, works hard to provide for his family. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It is a secure family unit. Until - completely out of the blue - he simply disappears. His family is distraught and mystified. We all know that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off the radar. Why? Full review...
Birdsong by Ellie Sandall
One by one the birds land on the branch. Each is a different species, each has different plumage, and most importantly each has a different call. The chorus of birdsong builds up and up and up until the biggest bird of all lands on the branch, with his loud shriek. Ah, but who's this about to land on the branch with him? Full review...
Venom by Joan Brady
David Marion isn't used to finding hitmen standing at his front door, though you wouldn't be able to tell that such a thing might be true, given the speed and competency with which Marion dispatches said hitman and then disappears, seemingly, off the face of the Earth.
Dr. Helen Freyl is a physicist working for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. She is also, up until his disappearance, David Marion's sometime lover and is grief-stricken to the point of distraction by his sudden absence from her life, as she believes him to be dead. Full review...
The Day The Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
I imagined this title as a 'Gone With the Wind' sort of novel, a saga-esque historical romance, with a characterful heroine and page-turning story line that necessitates reading late into the night. Well, I wasn't disappointed in this paperback edition of the hardback, already a best-seller in the U.S. Full review...
Charlotte and the Wolves by Anu Stohner and Henrike Wilson
Hot on the heels of her adventure in Brave Charlotte, the brave little sheep is back. She's as bold as ever, and the older sheep have stopped worrying about her wild ways. Added into the mix are a gang of teenage sheep who call themselves The Wolves and worry the lambs. When real wolf howls can be heard, but not by the shepherd or Jack the old sheepdog, it's down to Charlotte to save the day again. Full review...
Rumblewick and the Dinner Dragons (The Rumblewick Letters) by Hiawyn Oram and Sarah Warburton
Haggy Aggy is an unscary witch and decides she wants to make friends with dragons. Her cat, Rumblewick Spellwacker Mortimer B, is a little unsure of this, so writes to his friend Grimey for advice. Their correspondence fills this latest book in the Rumblewick Letters series, following on from My Unwilling Witch. Full review...
Candle Man: The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance by Glenn Dakin
Birthdays for Theo are not exactly how we would recognise them. One bland, forgettable present from each of the three people who live in his household. Some pink cake at the best of times. A trip to the cemetery, with the butler making sure nobody else is in sight. But this one is different - some person unknown leaves something for him. And by the time burglars break in, and force Theo to leave the confines of his bedroom and find some of the secrets of the house, it is too late - Theo is set on a nightmarish trail between two warring forces, as the truths of his destiny, his origins, and his hands, come to the fore. Full review...
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
If you've ever wanted to know what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love this short novel, first published back in 1964. We join George Falconer just at the moment he awakes from sleep and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about a typical day. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living the American Dream, oh no, he's so detached from the banal normality of the world that he's almost outside of his own body at times. Full review...
The Poison Throne (Moorehawke Trilogy) by Celine Kiernan
In The Poison Throne what had been a benevolent kingdom has become characterised by repression and torture (which the book graphically describes). The magical aspects of the kingdom, its talking cats and ghosts, have been suppressed, while Alberon, the heir to the throne, has vanished. Wynter, along with Alberon's half brother Razi and his friend Christopher are increasingly at risk as they attempt to deal with this situation. Full review...
Harvard Business School Confidential: Secrets of Success by Emily Chan
Harvard Business School has an almost unrivalled reputation for schooling some of the greatest business leaders (and George W Bush!). Former graduate, Emily Chan, who went on to work for leading management consultancy Boston Consulting Group and who is now a director in a family direct investment business in Hong Kong, promises to offer the secrets she learnt there. Does she succeed? Full review...
The More You Ignore Me by Jo Brand
Alice is growing up in a cottage in Herefordshire with her gentle, hippy father and her mother, Gina, who spends her days standing around like a chain-smoking zombie because she is kept on medication and has been for years. Gina's first psychotic episode occured after Alice's birth. Then there was the episode Alice remembers, the day her mother climbed onto the roof, naked, holding Smelly the hamster, and refused to come down. From that day, the old Gina, boisterous and unconventional as she was, fell silent under the numbing impact of constant medication. Jo Brand tells the story of how Alice coped with the loneliness and worry of growing up with an ill mother. Most importantly, as I'm sure the teenage Alice would see it, we are shown the birth and life of her obsession with Morrissey of The Smiths. In his music she finds escapism and comfort and in him she finds a figure to adore. Her friends can't understand her fixation and her mother understands fixation a little too well (the local weatherman having been the object of one of her fervent obsessions). Morrissey sings with such sensitivity and angst that surely, Alice thinks, if she could just meet him and tell him her story he could help her and she could help him... Full review...
Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad: The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship by Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit
In early 2005, a BBC journalist emails an Iraqi woman to confirm and prepare for a telephone interview about day to day life in Baghdad, and about her thoughts on the forthcoming elections there. May's detailed and frank responses prompt more curiosity and questions from Bee, and a friendship develops between the two women. They tell each other about their work, relationships and family lives. Full review...
Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne-Jones
Andrew Hope, a rather woolly professor, learns that his magical grandfather has died, leaving him his house and his field-of-care. Andrew remembers some things from when he was a little boy, such as his grandfather leaving vegetables on the roof of the shed for someone, or something, to eat each night. He also remembers that there is something special about the beautiful, old coloured glass above the kitchen door, but not exactly what that is. It seems he has forgotten a lot of what his grandfather taught him, including the mystery of the field-of-care he has inherited. But with the entrance of Aidan Cain, an orphan, into his house and his life the mysteries deepen. The two are drawn to each other, however, and slowly start to unravel the truth that surrounds them. Full review...
When Mongol leader, Khubilai Khan, achieved what his Grandfather Genghis had failed to do in conquering China, he inherited the world's largest and most sophisticated navy. However, in attempting to utilise this to expand his empire further to Java, Vietnam and mainly Japan, he lost the entire armada in a few short years. New marine archeological evidence from Japan, ironically with the site discovered in the 1990s in the construction of new defences from the weather, has raised questions on the traditional view that the defeat of the two Japanese invasion forces of 1274 and particlularly 1281 were solely due to the intervention of the weather and what Japanese culture claim was a Kamikaze (or divine wind) summoned by the Gods. Full review...
How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
'Chance … really the way things happen,' wrote Howard Beck, the Chicago School sociologist. I visit Bookbag Towers with few preconceived ideas about the next book for review. I'll allow myself to fall for a quirky title or appealing cover, despite only a smattering of interest in the subject matter. Just occasionally this way, I stumble on a golden nugget so fascinating and well-written that I realise how lucky I am to be a reviewer. I'm so pleased to have chanced upon this inviting biography of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell! Full review...
The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster by David Conway and Melanie Williamson
Little Miss Muffet is fed up of being constantly scared by a spider, so she ups sticks and heads for a different page of the book, to see if the characters of another nursery rhyme will let her join in. She tries one rhyme after another, but things never quite work to plan. Will she find a nursery rhyme that suits her to a T? Full review...
The Norwood Author - Arthur Conan Doyle and the Norwood Years (1891 - 1894) by Alistair Duncan
At the age of 32 Dr Arthur Conan Doyle moved from London to a house in South Norwood, at that time part of Surrey, in June 1891. It found him at the stage when he was torn between pursuing a career as an eye specialist and trying to make a living through his writing, after he had sold a few stories to magazines. Shortly before the move, he had been confined to bed for three weeks with influenza, and while recovering from what had briefly threatened to be a fatal illness (or so he believed), he took the decision to abandon medicine in favour of becoming a full-time author. A few Sherlock Holmes stories had been published, but the man with the deerstalker and pipe had yet to make an impact on the reading public, and his creator could not yet call himself an established writer. Nevertheless, within the next few years he and the fictional detective were to become household names. Full review...
Ice Lolly by Jean Ure
It's the funeral. Laurel - Lolly to those that love her - is concentrating very hard and trying desperately to turn into an ice lolly. Ice lollies are frozen, you see, and they don't feel so much. They can't miss people - mothers - who are gone and people who are still around can't hurt them. A frozen heart is a sad thing, but it's a safe thing. Auntie Ellen doesn't like the music at the service, she thinks it's inappropriate. It isn't even a hymn. But it was one of Laurel's mother's favourites, and Laurel think it's just perfect. Special. Full review...
