The Road Back

 by Liz Harris

This novel is a very interesting read. It opens with an intriguing scene which has a significance which will only become clear to the reader much later in the book. I liked this approach because it drew me through the book, wanting to know what had happened in order to bring about this outcome.

The structure of the novel, which is essentially a love story, is also quite unusual. It introduces the reader to the two main characters, Patricia and Kalden, in turn and follows them from childhood as they grow up and move towards their first meeting. This technique helps the reader to fully identify with both the main characters and makes the impact of their meeting and its attendant dilemmas even stronger.

What makes ‘The Road Back’ really stand out, though, is the geographical and historical setting. A lot of research has clearly gone into writing the book, but the detail is included in a way that feels natural and not forced. The reader gets to experience with Patricia her early life in a London scarred by the blitz, and a family bruised by war, and to see the country of Ladakh (a country north of the Himalayas)  through Kalden’s eyes as he grows up there.

The strength of the love story and the richness of the detail of life in Ladakh, a country I knew nothing about before reading this book, carry the reader through this compelling tale. And, without giving too much away, the end of the story has a final unexpected twist which really delivers on the promise of the beginning.

All round, an extremely enjoyable and intelligent read.

Reviewed by Helen M Hunt

With thanks to the publishers for providing a copy of this book.

The Au Pair

by Janey Fraser



When Jilly’s husband David is demoted at work, she needs to make some money.  She’s committed to staying at home with her three boys, and when she sees one of her wealthier friends having problems with her au pair, she thinks she has found the perfect solution: she’ll set up a website, work from the kitchen table, recruit helpful girls for welcoming families, and do everything so much better than the existing agencies. Or that’s the plan.

Jilly is a neither smart, thin nor rich; her teenager is hormone-ridden and her twin boys are....twin boys.  David wants her to help family finances, but doesn’t want her work to impinge on family life.  If she tries to be efficient at work, her domestic world falls apart, and if she tries to be a good wife and mother, her business goes into free fall.  Sound familiar? All of this makes Jilly a much more appealing heroine than I had anticipated when I saw the title of this book.  Au pairs?  Middle-class angst?  Women with too much time and money?  Whilst it would be true to say that the characters in Janey Fraser’s entertaining novel are hardly on the breadline, she does a great job of drawing us in to each of their lives, showing us that there are always two sides to every story.

Paula, Jilly’s best friend, has plenty of money, a wayward husband, and an au pair from hell.  As Jilly’s agency starts to take off, Paula becomes increasingly distant - does she disapprove of Jilly’s chaotic home life, or is there something else behind her frostiness?

Matthew, one of Jilly’s first clients, is mourning his wife, and trying to cope with what happened before her death, whilst dealing with his young daughter’s own grief and manipulative behaviour.  His first au pair is a nightmare, but her departure involves Matthew in a tragic event.  Can Jilly find him a perfect replacement?

Dawn has everything, and demands everything from her au pairs; her children are badly behaved and spoilt, but Dawn spends all her time at the gym or entertaining, and can’t give them the only thing they really want - her time.  Her wealthy, successful husband seems so much more human, - long-suffering even - , as he humours Dawn’s endless demands; but is he all that he seems?

Into this mix come the au pairs - young, pretty and looking for fun.  Personality clashes are inevitable, as their hosts expect childcare and cooking, whilst the girls are here to party.  Marie-France, however, is different; her own mother came to Corrywood as an au pair, and went home pregnant - now Marie-France wants to find her father.  Her impoverished but glamorous mother won’t even tell her his name; her boyfriend thinks she’s being unfaithful.  She may be the best mother’s help on Jilly’s books, but her secret agenda ruffles the feathers of certain respectable locals - some of them not a million miles from Jilly’s own front door.

Janey Fraser has written a great story - we really do want to know what is going to happen to everyone, especially Marie-France - with characters who come to life and involve us in their struggles.  Although the tone of the book is light and breezy, it also addresses more serious issues - culture clash, infidelity, bereavement, loneliness and parenting are all examined en route to a happy, if predictable, ending.  A feel-good novel that manages to avoid many of the cliches of its genre.

Reviewed by Rosemary Kaye

Thanks to the publishers for the review copy of this book.

Ninepins

By Rosy Thornton

I love Rosy Thornton’s work so I’ve been looking forward to reviewing this one ever since it arrived. I’m very pleased to say that I wasn’t disappointed.

‘Ninepins’ tells the story of Laura, her 12-year-old daughter Beth, care-leaver Willow and Willow’s social worker, Vince. The other star of the story is Ninepins itself – the house where Laura and Beth live – and its setting in the Cambridgeshire fens.

I’m not going to say much about the plot, because it’s difficult to do so without being tempted to give too much away, but the story begins with Vince persuading Laura to take Willow in as a lodger. This is a decision that will turn out to have huge consequences for all four of them.

Setting this story in the fens was an inspired decision. As well as the depths of emotion explored between the different characters in the novel, there is a stunning interplay of atmospheric themes that could only have arisen from that location.

If you’ve ever been to the Cambridgeshire fens, you will recognise them from these expert depictions, and if you haven’t you’ll feel as though you have. The setting accentuates the themes of loneliness, vulnerability and isolation and allows the elements to become active participants in the story. Water, whether it is in the depths of the lode on which Ninepins is situated or in the form of ice holding the whole area in its grip during winter, is a constant factor and presents a contrast to fire, the other element that plays a significant part in the story.

‘Ninepins’ has a slightly different feel from Rosy Thornton’s previous works and I think it is the air of tension and menace hovering over this story which makes it feel like a bit of a departure. All round, a fabulous read which kept me reading late at night long after I should have been asleep.

Reviewed by Helen M Hunt

Thanks to the author for providing a review copy of this book.

Nightingale Girls

 

by Donna Douglas

As a child, I was an enormous fan of ‘nurse books’: Sue Barton was my greatest heroine, and I could see myself in years to come, drifting through the wards, nobly administering sympathy to grateful patients (male, of course.)

Perhaps fortunately, this was not to be, and I hadn’t read a medical novel for at least twenty years until I started Donna Douglas’s ‘The Nightingale Girls’, the story of probationer nurses in the East End of the 1930s. 

The first character we meet in this absorbing story is Dora Doyle, a girl from the Bethnal Green slums who wants more out of life than a job in the Gold’s Garments sweatshop.  Dora wants to get away from home, and for more than one reason. 

Against her expectations, she is taken on as a trainee by new Matron, Kathleen Fox, who is doing her best to shake up the old guard at the Nightingale Teaching Hospital.  Dora is joined by Helen Tremayne, whose fearsome mother (a former nurse and a trustee of the hospital) rules her life, Millie Benedict, a girl from the landed aristocracy who has also decided to do something with her life - but still likes to party -, and Lucy Lane, who has been given everything by her indulgent father and wants everyone to know about it.

We follow the girls and their friends, together with the doctors, porters, and the patients as they live their lives, both at the hospital and outside it. Dora struggles with her lack of funds to buy books, and with a darker threat to her family at home; Millie’s training is threatened by her own joie de vivre, but later by much more serious events; Helen dares to challenge her mother’s authority -but will she have the strength to follow her heart?

‘The Nightingale Girls’ could have served up a set of stereotypes, but in Dora, Millie, Helen and their friends and co-workers Donna Douglas has managed to create excellent characters, all of whom come alive on the page.  I felt that I really knew the girls, and could picture how they would look and speak, and I was so keen to find out what happened to each of them that I read the book in just a few days. 

Life in an East End slum is conveyed very well - I could imagine the overcrowding, the neighbours always leaning out of their windows to see what Dora is up to, the claustrophobia - and the conviviality - of three generations living under one tiny roof.  Douglas is far from sentimental about lives lived on the breadline - poverty, drink and abuse all feature - but through Lucy she also shows us that these problems are not necessarily confined to the poor.  Even Millie, who has the happiest family life, is up against the expectations of her class, in which girls are expected to do very little until they marry, preferably at a young age and to a suitable husband.

The end of the book does not bring closure for every character, and I look forward to the next instalment in the lives of these interesting women.

Reviewed by Rosemary Kaye

Victoria Connelly

You can find a guest post from author Victoria Connelly on my main blog, Fiction Is Stranger Than Fact today. Victoria is talking about 'It's Magic' her trilogy of magical romantic comedies including 'Flights Of Angels'.

The Last Summer

 

by Judith Kinghorn

This moving story opens in June 1914 - the beginning of the long hot Edwardian summer preceding the First World War.  Clarissa lives a life of luxury at Deyning, her family seat in Sussex: the youngest child and only daughter of wealthy parents, she spends her time playing tennis and croquet, painting, and wandering about the beautiful grounds, waiting to marry a suitable husband.  Her older brothers, up at Cambridge or Aldershot, appear occasionally at Deyning with their affluent, carefree friends; Clarissa longs to be part of their grown-up world, and is about to be sent to a Paris finishing school, when her father, hearing rumours of worrying events in Europe, decides to postpone her trip.

Tom Cuthbert is the son of the Deyning housekeeper, but is - somewhat mysteriously - a student at Oxford.  Down for the long vacation, he is immediately attracted to Clarissa and she to him, but both know that any relationship between them is impossible; Clarissa’s beautiful but remote mother is especially determined that her daughter must not become involved with someone who is ‘not one of us.‘  Clarissa and Tom meet fleetingly during the summer, but their worlds are torn apart by Britain’s declaration of war on Germany.  Tom, together with Clarissa’s brothers, enlist, and within weeks most of the young male population of the country has disappeared to France and Belgium.  Clarissa spends the rest of the war in London; her family suffers tragic losses, as do all the families she knows.  

In 1917, a wonderful and devastating event changes Clarissa’s life forever; the secret that this forces her to keep almost destroys her.   After the war, nothing is the same, and although some survive, they are irrevocably damaged; whilst some lose family fortunes, others, liberated from old social strictures, find huge success in a new world.  Will Clarissa break free from the role society has given her?  Will she ever find true happiness?  And what is the secret that her own mother is so anxious to keep?

Judith Kinghorn has written a novel that manages to tell a touching personal love story whilst also breathing life into a turbulent period of British history.  This is the story not only of two people kept apart by prejudice and snobbery, but also of the way in which the 1914-1918 war - now almost ancient history to our children - affected every man and woman, whatever their social background.  The reader is there on the terrace at Deyning, listening to the young men’s enthusiastic response to Lord Kitchener’s rallying calls, but she is also there at the London stations, when those same young men, blinded by mustard gas, hold on to one another as they stagger back to a very different world. 

As I closed this book, I felt both satisfied and exhausted - I had been on a journey with Clarissa, and she and her family and friends had become real to me: this, I think, is the mark of a good story well told.

 

Reviewed by Rosemary Kaye

Every Time We Say Goodbye

By Colette Caddle

At the heart of Colette Caddle’s ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’ is an enchanting and compelling love story. But as well as being a romance, the novel is also a story about the importance and endurance of friendship.

Running through the story is the triangle of friendship between Marianne and two friends she has known since childhood, Helen and Jo. The roots of their closeness lie in events from that time, and still endure now despite the different demands their adult lives have made on them.

When Marianne’s husband Dominic dies, she is thrown into turmoil. It seems that Dominic’s life has been full of things she knew nothing about. Her search for the truth, and the desire to protect her children and Dominic’s mother from finding out the worst about him, test her to the limit.

This novel is full of life and reality and packed with great characters. I particularly loved Marianne’s mother-in-law, Dot and Helen’s husband Johnny. And the way that they all rally round to help Marianne in her time of need is heart-warming. Romance also enters the story, and re-enters Marianne’s life in the form of Rob, a lover from her past. But Rob has complications in his own life, and they also threaten Marianne’s happiness.

With the warmth of friendship and the heat of romance, there’s plenty to keep you turning the pages. But add to that the intrigue and mystery surrounding Dominic’s life in the last few months before his death, and you have a compelling mixture which will prevent you from putting the book down at all.

A well-paced, beautifully written and very memorable read.

Reviewed by Helen M Hunt