Tombland by C J Samson

Shardlake is back in all his stubborn determination, getting himself into all sorts of trouble during the Norfolk uprisings of 1549. Our doughty lawyer is this time working on behalf of the 15-year-old Lady Elizabeth, whose distant relative, Norfolk landowner John Boleyn is accused of the brutal murder of his wife. Shardlake must investigate his guilt, but the curious fact is that Edith Boleyn disappeared nine years ago, and has been declared dead. 

In the course of his investigations, Shardlake makes himself unpopular with the local Assizes, butts heads with the Norfolk gentry, then falls foul of Robert Kett, leader of the uprisings and finds himself, his friend Barack and assistant Nicholas trapped in the rebel camp.  This is an important moment in history, when ordinary people had had enough of the rich landowners, and half the country rose up, in the midst of a brutal war against Scotland. C J Samson tells it well, and creates a convincing camp atmosphere. 

Shardlake is a changed man since his heyday of working for Thomas Cromwell, although still the architect of his own doom most of the time.  Perhaps that’s why we like him. That and his struggles against the prejudice heaped on him because of his painful ‘hunchback’ condition. It’s a good long story, with interesting plotting and lots of historical detail. But if you’ve never read any Shardlake, then start at the beginning with Dissolution.

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Ever feel the need to get away from it all? I’ve lived in a big city for years, but after reading this, I had such a hankering for big open spaces. Set in the 1970’s, this is a story of wild country, Alaska style. And it’s not just the scenery that’s dramatic. Kristin Hannah manages to compress a number of the issues of the day into the pressure-cooker of family life in the brutal environment of this untamed state, where to make one mistake is dangerous, to make two is fatal. 

Domestic violence, the powerlessness of women, Vietnam, unplanned pregnancy, all weave in and out of the story, a coming of age tale about Lenora Allbright, the only child of troubled parents Cora and Ernt. The characters themselves have a pretty tough time of it, but the description of place is so complete, from snowy mountainsides, to crossing frozen lakes, fishing for salmon, to fending off bears and wolves. There is no electricity, no running water, no tv or phones – just the ham-radio to communicate with, the vast starry sky and northern lights. 

You may not envy Leni her outhouse bathroom, but there is something appealing about the pioneer spirit of all that majestic scenery coupled with a simple way of life: survival, putting away enough food for winter. For a thirteen-year-old, Leni spends a great deal of her time salting, shelling, skinning, alongside everybody else in their tiny remote cluster of homesteads. Meanwhile trouble is brewing in the form of her dad’s post-Vietnam trauma, which builds throughout the book, and there is a touch of the Romeo and Juliet about her friendship with Matthew, from the rival Walker clan. A grim winter is definitely coming.

Once upon a river by Diane Setterfield

In the Swan public house, at Radcot on the banks of the Thames, storytelling is a much-prized gift during the long winter. When one night, a stranger bursts in, with a small drowned girl in his arms, a tragic tale begins. But when the girl subsequently wakes and returns to the living, this is a story like no other: a miracle. What’s more the girl is mute and cannot explain her origins, which leaves an empty space to fill with other people’s truths. 

The mystery child is claimed by a local couple to be their daughter who was kidnapped several years ago, but she could also be the child of a fallen woman who drowned herself two days before; whose grandfather is desperately seeking her. A tug of war begins, fuelled by the endlessly evolving stories from the Swan.

This is a charming story, the writing is rich, at times almost poetic, the personalities in the Swan reminded me of a Robert Hardy tale. The characteristics, beauty and treachery of the Thames when it was primarily a working river, are carefully explored. The stranger turns out to be a photographer recording the Thames environments, and we get an intriguing look into early photography. The local midwife, Rita, is a strong portrait of a woman working under difficult circumstances and wary of relinquishing any of her hard-fought independence. As the person who pronounced the child dead at first, her reputation is at stake, but she still seeks a rational explanation, while the stories told at the Swan get ever more fanciful. Is the child somebody’s lost daughter or a fairy sprite? After all she did appear on the longest night, the winter solstice…

The Cactus by Sarah Haywood

Light but intriguing story. Susan Green is trying to do what is necessary after the death of her mother, while her brother Edward, who has always been feckless, is trying to thwart her. Susan is a strangely cool person emotionally, and we quickly get the feeling she doesn’t see life the way most of us do (echoes of Eleanor Oliphant here). She lives alone, has little social life, and cannot understand why her fastidiousness gets on other people’s nerves. It also becomes clear as the novel progresses that the family balance is not what Susan has always assumed it to be. She’s a strong woman, never relying on others to do what she can herself, and she sets off to tackle the problems thrown up by her bereavement in her own indomitable way. But, despite her best efforts to bat them away, friendship and acceptance may be waiting in the wings. Not sure why it’s called The Cactus, except that she owns some, and is rather a prickly person...

The conviction of Cora Burns by Carolyn Kirby

Birmingham 1885. Cora is a young woman with a troubled past, born in gaol, abandoned by her mother and raised in the workhouse, the cards are firmly stacked against her. As Cora struggles to make a future for herself, she is troubled by destructive memories and desperately searches for her childhood friend Alice, to help unravel her past. Approached by scientist Thomas Jerwood and offered work as Between-maid, she grudgingly accepts. But what seems like an opportunity may have a sinister outcome.

I enjoyed the gothic tang of this book. Cora is a dynamic character, angry, violent and destructive, forcing her way through life like a Victorian coal-barge, and most times her own worst enemy. We wince for her, are rooting for her, fearful for her and at times shocked and troubled by the viciousness of her character. The author holds nothing back. This was a time when scientists were beginning to explore the idea of nature versus nurture – could you tell a criminal mind by the size and shape of the skull, or did environment have something to do with our future selves. We range back and forth through time, to keep the pace going and arrive eventually at some uncomfortable revelations. Is there a future at all for Cora?

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

This is Sarah Perry’s next book after The Essex Serpent, and she’s evidently trying to continue with the chilling, mystical theme. This time the myth surrounds Melmoth the Witness, who has been doomed to walk the earth bearing witness to humanity’s failings, because she bore false witness at the Resurrection. 

The writing has the curious impact of feeling like a Victorian gothic novel, while at the same time being set in the present day, which is clever. The protagonist Helen is living a frugal sort of half-life in Prague, where she denies herself any enjoyment, sleeps on a bare mattress, and has no friends bar one – a couple Karel Prazan and his English partner Thea, whose rich mutual love sustains her. 

But something dark is coming. Karel becomes consumed by a story told him by a fellow library user of a woman who appears at times of great stress, especially to those of us who are overwhelmed by guilt, who have born false witness. He both loves this apparition and is terrified by her, and she brings human disintegration and destruction in her wake. The novel ranges between times and places, sketching out different ways in which individuals have given false witness. There is a sense of impending doom, and we understand that Helen herself is suffering from some terrible guilt. I'm not usually a reader of ghost stories, but I did enjoy the book. there's a rather hefty-handed narrator, which is perhaps a nod to the gothic genre, and some of the description of Melmoth when she aoears does get a bit repetitive (often heralded by the appearance of ravens) but Sarah Perry provides enough sleight of hand that we are never quite sure; has the phantom appeared or is she the result of debilitating guilt, coupled with our need for atonement and the workings of powerful folklore.

The Rumour by Lesley Kara

I do wonder if the thirst for psychological thrillers is ever going to end. Every new version claims to have a killer twist that will send us reeling… but then, like chocolate, when you are in the mood, it’s just so tempting. And this one’s no different.

Joanna Critchley is at the school gates when she hears a rumour that notorious Sally McGowan who murdered a five-year-old playmate when she was only 10, is living in their seaside town of Frinstead. The rumour grows and spreads (carelessly fuelled by Joanna) and a local woman is targeted for abuse. Joanna thinks nothing of it, until the tweets begin and she realises she’s made a dangerous miscalculation.

What follows is a gradual unravelling of Joanna’s life, as she strives to shield her small son Alfie, but there are dark secrets revealed and whoever is behind the trouble is not going to stop. Can’t say more, but it is smartly written and explores the notion of identity and how hard it would be to leave behind. Lesley Kara deftly handles the problems of mothering an anxious child, long distance relationships, and small-town gossip. So, if you’re in the mood…

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Eighteen-year-old Juliet is recruited by an MI5 operative to be his girl typist and dogsbody. They are involved in an undercover wartime operation to root out fifth columnists, or Hitler sympathisers, who are called things like Trude and Betty. They do this by setting up office in the next door flat to their mole’s fifth column headquarters, a Dolphin Square apartment where ‘Godfrey’ lures these unremarkable women to condemn themselves, thinking that they are informing a Gestapo agent and helping the Third Reich (in between tea and biscuit breaks).

It is Juliet’s task to transcribe hours of recorded conversation, along with young Cyril whose job it is to maintain the equipment. Juliet is an orphan and has no one to turn to for advice, she is very naïve and yearns for her boss Perry to declare his love for her. She also hankers after more exciting work, which eventually comes her way. But this is probably a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’, especially in wartime.

Based on true stories and transcriptions from the national archives, the setting and atmosphere are exactly right, which is what Kate Atkinson is good at, with some fine writing, but the plot meanders around a great deal. I got rather confused with agents, double agents, double-double agents, it became a bit tortuous. But no matter, we get the general idea that this was complicated and dangerous work because you never knew who to trust, least of all MI5. 

We are partly in the head of an older Juliet, now working at the BBC, looking back at her young self with a mixture of affection and exasperation, and a dread that some awful truth is going to catch up with her.  The ‘service’ it seems will never let you go.
If you enjoyed Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, then this has a similar feel of women coping with the difficulties of wartime. This older Juliet appears to feel, what is the point of it all, war? And it's hard to disagree...

The colour of Bee Larkham’s murder by Sarah J Harris

A very original and individual book about a twelve-year-old boy who is extraordinary in several ways. Firstly, because he believes he has committed a murder. Secondly, he has synesthesia, which is a when two senses get tied together, so that whenever he hears sound, he sees colour. We are led right into Jasper’s psychedelic world of bursting oranges, reds and greens, soothing blues and disturbing muddy browns. He loves to watch the parakeets which have set up home in his neighbour Bee Larkham’s tree, because their birdsong makes gorgeous shimmering colours. 

But his favourite colour is cobalt blue, the sound of his mother’s voice, who died when he was small and was the only person to truly understand his colours, because she shared the same trait. Jasper is also unable to recognise faces, and has learnt to know people by their clothes, or the colour of their voice. But this is tricky, especially when Bee Larkham begins to ask him to deliver secret messages to friends of hers. Bee is a troubled young woman, inconsistent and destructive and something is driving her.

There is a plot here, and it is gripping enough, and revolves around some dark behaviour and the consequences of that in a small community, resulting in danger for all concerned. But the true story is about an autistic boy trying desperately to understand the world around him, his painful isolation, and the sheer beauty of his own inner world and the joyous colours it contains. Jasper can be funny, frustrated, full of rage or just plain baffled, and the story unfolds entirely from his point of view. When life overwhelms him, he paints out his thoughts and frustrations on canvas, and his bedroom is littered with tubes of brightly coloured acrylic paint. Somehow the idea of Jasper attempting all his life to paint the exact blue of his mother’s voice, to calm and comfort him, is truly moving.

You Let Me In by Lucy Clarke

Interesting idea this. When you Airbnb your house, can you really trust who has been wandering around your most intimate space? 

Best-selling author Elle Fielding decides to Airbnb her gorgeous clifftop house in Cornwall, to get a bit of cash because she’s spent so much money having the building work done. But the reality is she has no idea who has been in her house – which is so obvious it’s startling in a way. 

When she returns odd stuff starts to happen, things are missing or out of place, and someone has been through her most private things. What’s more, Elle begins to worry that her sharing on social media has made her vulnerable. Is it an obsessed fan, or someone from her past life? Or perhaps she is imagining it all, under the burden of trying to finish her second book to deadline, and coping with her broken relationship.

Lucy Clarke writes well and I believed in her characters, Elle and her slightly bossy sister Fiona, and the life she has made for herself in Cornwall. Her increasing anxiety also seems natural and I found myself wondering why on earth anybody would invite complete strangers into their home to stay while they weren’t there. She creates a strong sense of place, on the Cornish coast, which made me want to take a beach walk, or stand on a windy clifftop. 

Altogether, this book is atmospheric and worth a read.

The Rules of Seeing by Joe Heap

Unusual subject matter for this fiction. After regaining her sight through a ground-breaking operation, Nova finds her new sense bewildering and exhausting. Learning to see is not as simple as you might imagine – Nova sees like a baby, cannot judge distance, cannot distinguish one object from another but sees everything as a flat plain. Several times she wishes she had not undergone the operation, and dons her dark glasses again to go back to being blind. 

This part of the narrative was interesting and challenging, as I had never imagined regaining your sight could be a two-way street, and sometimes unwelcome; Joe Heap describes it all very well. 

As the story develops, Nova begins a relationship with a friend Kate she meets in the hospital, wife of an abusive policeman who can’t seem to pluck up the courage to leave her husband. They end up in a love affair, which has so many ups and downs I felt that the narrative had stagnated somewhat, and had become repetitive. 

Ploughed on through but found the ending unconvincing. Nevertheless, I expect this book might win awards. Anyone read this and completely disagree?

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

The stuff of every parent’s nightmare, successful couple Anne and Marco face the trauma of their baby being taken from their home. What’s worse, they feel themselves to blame, since they were next door at a dinner party when it happened, albeit with baby monitor and return trips every half hour. As time wears on they begin to blame each other, and wonder who is actually telling the truth. There are secrets and lies, and detective Rasbach is determined to uncover them. 

The trouble for me really is that the narrative has a very curious style. The joy of a psychological thriller is usually that you are firmly in one character’s head, and wrong-footed at all turns, never sure who to believe… if you do enter another character’s head, it is usually another chapter. But this present-tense narrative hops from head to head, so that in the space of a few paragraphs, we whizz from Anne to Marco to Detective Rasbach, which dissipates the tension and means for me it was very hard to truly feel for any of the main characters. We know nothing about detective Rasbach at all, which is unusual in current crime fiction, where the detective is often as much a main character as anyone. 

Still, I pressed on and did get more drawn in, mostly wanting to know whether the baby survives, and after all the book is a bestseller… 

Has anyone else read this and absolutely loved it?

The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor

Restoration London, shortly after the great fire of 1666. An impressive rebuilding effort is underway by the inhabitants, which leads to disputes in the Fire Court, a hastily convened legal entity, set up to iron out squabbles between tenants and landlords over who has the right to build and who bears the cost. There is money to be made, and unscrupulous deals are under way. James Marwood, now a man on the rise, is drawn in when his confused father relates a garbled tale of murder, before himself dying in strange circumstances. 

A sequel to The Ashes of London, we are once again in the gently smoking city, now a charred ruins and Andrew Taylor is good at conjuring up the sense of destruction, loss and warring bureaucracy which hampers the people. The setting is atmospheric and characters convincing. Marwood meets the enigmatic Catherine Lovett again, who is hiding from her enemies as Jane Hakesby, a maid to the master of a drawing office. A woman who clearly fascinates and alarms him (one who carries a knife under her skirts) they unwillingly join forces to resolve the skulduggery that surrounds them, Marwood as a government agent, and Lovett to protect her future and secret identity. 

As events play out, Marwood sinks deeper into trouble, and by the end of the narrative, is not at all the man he was. We wait to see whether he will rise again in a third ‘fire’ book.

Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig

Matt Haig, don’t you just love him. I’ve enjoyed Matt’s past fiction, particularly ‘The Humans’, and I also read his book about depression called ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’ which was an honest look at his own mental health as a young man. This time he is musing on various elements of our mental state, from workplace stress and the toxic nature of being continually assessed; to the insistent nature of social media and how unhealthy it is for our equanimity. 

It feels as if Matt is getting a few things off his chest, and there is stuff he really needs to tell us, and it’s all good advice. I admire his ability to share, his honesty in the face of the pressure to present a perfect front, and his small nuggets of insight. He’s right about the bombardment of information, and the negative feelings of being overloaded that produces, and the addictive qualities of online activity, however worthwhile a tool it can be for reaching out. Also, about needing to switch off at times, to take a break from the things that make us anxious, and nurture ourselves, saying no to stimulants like alcohol and coffee. 

At times this feels like notes on a nervous Matt Haig, but that’s ok because after all, we can only talk about our own experience, and draw wisdom from that. A thoughtful and helpful book for anyone who has wondered what it’s all about and if they are heading in the right direction.

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

A collaboration between author Sarah Pekkanen and her editor Greer Hendricks. At first it seems to be another psychological thriller, this time about a woman Vanessa who discovers her husband Richard is having an affair and she doesn’t know who to trust. We are in her head and the head of the newly-in-love young woman Nellie. Set in New York, we contrast the lives of these two women, the ritzy well-heeled wife married to a successful hedge fund manager (now ex-wife and suffering) and the up and coming, flat sharing, waitressing pre-school teacher who is about to become the second Mrs Hedge-fund. Something is amiss, they both have anxiety-causing secrets to hide and a feeling of being watched, but is it paranoia of is there something genuine to fear? There is an excellent twist in the tale, which isn’t predictable and I enjoyed the delving into character that we are allowed. Something essentially surprising about the way it ends also. I want to know more about how it was written – did the authors both take different chapters, or different women? And how did they stop it becoming writing by committee. Expect more from this duo.