Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Catherine Alliott.
This book was published on 4th March by Michael Joseph and I thank the publisher for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review, plus the invitation to join the tour.
I’ve read a lot of Catherine Alliott’s books, although not so recently, so I thought I knew what I was getting myself into with this one. Absolutely not so!
In this book, Lucy Palmer seems to have it all – a big house in London, a job writing cosy crime novels, a handsome husband and two grown-up children who are both successful in their own ways. However, this is all a facade and Lucy’s marriage is about to end spectacularly and suddenly – and, when is does, she has some work to do in dealing with her past. Leaving London, she goes to care for her elderly and bordering-on-alcoholic parents in the country where she starts to rebuild her life.
This is an altogether darker story than I am used to from Alliott, both in the truth about Lucy’s husband, Michael, and the events surrounding the end of the marriage. It also touches on some poignant issues, especially caring for elderly parents and ageing.
However, everything else I expected from Alliott is also there, so this slightly darker turn works well. It still has elements of humour – I really loved Lucy’s parents and their hectic social life of boozy octogenarian parties, plus the sassy teenage twins who have much more of a finger on the pulse than the adults. There’s also romantic strands to the story, although these aren’t as central as I would have expected given what I’ve read of Alliott’s writing previously. Instead, the love story is quite understated and works really well given Lucy’s situation.
I really loved the family dynamic that is at the heart of this book. Lucy is at the centre of a supportive, if slightly eccentric, family network and this is one of the real strengths of the novel. There’s the ageing parents, growing old disgracefully but still frail, Lucy’s sister (Helena) who absolutely has control of everything except her own children, plus Lucy’s children – the strong and reliable Imo and thoughtful, calm Ned. I especially liked the strong women in the novel – Helena and Imo being my favourites, although there are other surprisingly awesome women (and a few men!) along the way.
Although this was not what I wholly expected when I picked up this book, I’d recommend it. It is certainly less cosy than I was anticipating and includes some difficult issues, not least domestic abuse, but it is an immersive and engaging read. I genuinely struggled to put it down and loved the clever, understated explorations of relationships and dependencies between people.
My 10 year old daughter has had a few of these subscription boxes now and has enjoyed them, but this month’s is just so lovely that I wanted to put it on here now!
These boxes are offered by the people at Books that Matter (who do the adult feminist book subscription boxes too) for £17 plus £3 postage in the UK. They still had March boxes available when I last looked here.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead…
The March Box
This box was heavier than usual and I hadn’t seen the theme ahead of when it arrived. My daughter loves getting these boxes and they are always beautifully packed.
The March theme is a collaboration with Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls.
The contents of the box are as follows:
‘I am a Rebel Girl’ hardback journal
Two hardback books – ‘Madam C J Walker Builds a Business’ and ‘Dr Wangari Maathai Plants a Forest’
A sheet of stickers
A copy of the ‘Rebel Times’
Two large postcards
An activity booklet
The Verdict
This is a fabulous box and my daughter really likes it – even though it doesn’t contain the sweets or snacks that have been included previously!
From my perspective, I’d say this was excellent value for money – the books and journal are beautiful with colour illustrations throughout. The journal has loads of space to draw and write, plus prompts to help the creativity flow!
Even better is the message; this is a box absolutely packed with revolutionary and inspirational women, plus positive messages for girls. It also looks a lot of fun.
I’d whole-heartedly recommend this box for girls aged about 8-12. Each month has had some great books and treats – normally one book and a selection of other items.
If you want to see a previous box, here are my reviews for November and January.
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘Nick’ by Michael Farris Smith, a book that imagines the life of the character of Nick Carraway before he ends up as narrator of ‘The Great Gatsby’.
This blog tour is organised by Oldcastle Books/No Exit Press and I am thrilled to have been asked to join the tour!
From the Publisher:
This rich and imaginative novel from critically acclaimed author Michael Farris Smith breathes new life into a character that many know only from the periphery. Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby’s world, he was at the centre of a very different story – one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed first-hand, Nick embarks on a redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance – doomed from the very beginning – to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavour of debauchery and violence.
‘NICK is so pitch-perfect, so rich in character and action, so remarkable a combination of elegance and passion, so striking in felt originality that I am almost tempted to say – book gods forgive me – that The Great Gatsby will forever feel like NICK’s splendid but somewhat paler sequel. Almost tempted to say. But I have no intention of taking back the sincere passing thought of it. Michael Farris Smith’s book is that good’
Robert Olen Butler
2021 WILL MARK 125TH ANNIVERSARY OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S BIRTH
‘Anybody who believes that the war is over when the enemy surrenders and the troops come home needs to read Michael Farris Smith’s masterful new novel NICK. Its stark, unvarnished truth will haunt you’
Richard Russo
‘Stylish, evocative, haunting and wholly original, Michael Farris Smith has paid tribute to a classic and made it his own. A remarkable achievement that should sit at the very top of everyone’s must-read list’
Chris Whitaker
My Review:
I’m a huge fan of ‘The Great Gatsby’, so I absolutely jumped at the opportunity to read this book, a kind of ‘prequel’ to the 1925 novel. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
This book focused on the story of Nick Carraway, the narrator of F Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’. In the original novel, a few things are revealed about the character – the fact he is a Midwesterner, the fact he served in World War I and the fact he finds himself in West Egg (where ‘Gatsby’ is set) aged 29. This gives Michael Farris Smith considerable scope to imagine Nick’s life up to that point and it is a challenge he seems to embrace wholeheartedly.
The story opens in Paris where Nick is on leave from fighting in the trenches of World War I. He meets a young woman and the initial part of the book is their (short) relationship before Nick is called back to combat. A period in the trenches follows – brutal, grim and shocking – before Nick goes to New Orleans and starts to search for his life back in America.
The varied settings of the novel are fascinating as Nick explores a corner of wartime Paris, the trenches and tunnels of the front line in France, the seedy quarter of New Orleans where the speakeasies and brothels are, before finally moving on to West Egg and his future. These places – a theatre attic, a bar, an apartment – are vividly evoked and make Nick’s story jump from the page.
I don’t want to give any spoilers, but it is clear that Nick is suffering from PTSD and a lot of his subsequent experiences are tinged with tragedy. This is a novel that doesn’t shy away from some big themes, from war to grief, revenge to violence, love to loss. Some of the novel, especially the scenes in the trenches and the post-war life of war veteran Judah, is hard to read but extremely powerful.
The writing is vivid and Michael Farris Smith presents a range of characters who engage the reader in their lives and hopes and dreams. Personally, I was most interested in the lives of the women of the novel – the survival instincts of both Colette and Ella in their different ways was interesting. I’d have loved to read more of Ella’s story as she was a mysterious figure in the novel in a lot of ways.
There were a couple of things I found a little jarring that took me out of the richly-imagined world of ‘Nick’ but I think these may be personal things. I found reported speech to be written oddly – totally a stylistic choice by the writer, but one I found tricky to follow sometimes. I also was thrown by a reference to possums – I won’t elaborate but it felt unusual in the context.
So, the big question. Has Michael Farris Smith successfully recreated a Nick Carraway that fits with the character written by F Scott Fitzgerald? My honest answer is that I don’t know. I suspect I would read ‘The Great Gatsby’ with a different view of Nick now, but I’d say the main ingredients are there in Smith’s portrayal. His Nick is honest, introspective and often an observer even in his own life – all features of Fitzgerald’s narrator too. The decision to narrate ‘Nick’ in the third person (as opposed to first person in ‘Gatsby’) escapes the need to recreate Nick’s exact voice, but I’d say these two Nicks could credibly be the same person.
Overall, I would say that I was caught up in Nick’s story and enjoyed the narrative decisions made by Smith to explain how Nick comes to be in West Egg at the start of ‘Gatsby’, plus his emotional baggage. It isn’t always a comfortable read, but I did find it immersive and interesting. If you love ‘The Great Gatsby’, this is definitely worth reading and may give you a different understanding of Nick. If you haven’t read ‘The Great Gatsby’, this is absolutely worth picking up on its own merits. Either way, I’d recommend it.
About the Author:
No Exit Press also publish Michael Farris Smith’s novels Desperation Road, The Fighter and most recently Blackwood. Farris Smith has been a finalist for the Gold Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France, and his essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.
Welcome to my stop on this blog tour for Julia Parry’s book, ‘The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters and Elizabeth Bowen’.
This blog tour is organised by Random Things Tours and the book was published on 25th February, 2021. Thank you to the tour organiser, publisher and author for my free copy in exchange for an honest review.
From the Publisher:
‘A fascinating and moving portrait of love, loyalty and infidelity.’
Sarah Waters
A sudden death in the family delivers Julia a box of love letters. Dusty with age, they reveal an illicit affair between the celebrated twentieth-century Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen and Humphry House – Julia’s grandfather.
So begins an intriguing quest to discover and understand this affair, one with profound repercussions for Julia’s family, not least for her grandmother, Madeline. This is a book about how stories are told in real life, in fiction and in families.
Inspired by Bowen’s own obsession with place and memory, Julia travels to all the locations in the letters – from Kolkata to Cambridge and from Ireland to Texas. The reader is taken from the rarefied air of Oxford in the 1930s, to the Anglo-Irish Big House, to the last days of Empire in India and on into the Second World War.
The fascinating unpublished correspondence, a wealth of family photographs, and a celebrated supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf add further richness to this unique work.
The Shadowy Third opens up a lost world, one with complex and often surprising attitudes to love and sex, work and home, duty and ambition, and to writing itself. Weaving present-day story telling with historical narrative, this is a beautifully written debut of literary and familial investigation from an original and captivating new voice.
Praise for ‘The Shadowy Third’:
‘The Shadowy Third reveals the secret life of the author of ‘The Death of the Heart’, a title that applies to the man and women whose sepia- covered correspondence led to this riveting memoir.’
MARLENE WAGMAN GELLER (Women of Means: Fascinating Biographies of Royals, Heiresses, Eccentrics and Other Poor Little Rich Girls)
‘.. a captivating mélange of memoir, biography, social history and literary evaluation.’
ELEANOR FITZSIMONS (Wilde’s Women and The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit)
‘Even if you have never read Elizabeth Bowen’s novels and have never heard of Humphry House, his granddaughter’s quest will hold your attention as it held mine.’
ANN THWAITE, award-wining author of AA Milne: His Life (Whitbread Biography of the Year)
My Review:
OK, confession time. As an English Literature graduate, I should probably be more au fait with the works of Elizabeth Bowen. Given that I focused on women’s writing, she really should have come up more on the course. And I really should have read her work since I left university, some time in the Dark Ages.
However, my lack of knowledge of Bowen and her works didn’t dent my enjoyment of this book at all. This is a book packed with interesting people, places and events – personal, literary and on the world stage. It is an impressive and engaging piece of non-fiction writing and I genuinely could not put it down.
Essentially, the story is one of a love triangle between Elizabeth Bowen, Humphry House and Madeline Church (later House). However, this is a reductive description – the affair only lasts a few years in the 1930s – as it also encompasses the wider lives and relationships of these three key figures, as well as a meditation on writing and storytelling.
The book begins with the author, Julia Parry, being given the collected correspondence between Elizabeth Bowen and Parry’s own grandfather, Humphry House. These letters come to Parry via her uncle, but it becomes apparent that Humphry’s wife, Madeline (Parry’s grandmother) has ‘curated’ the letters – burning some, including her own letters from the period, and annotating others. This is fascinating in itself as this woman – the ‘wronged’ party in the affair between Bowen and House – ultimately gets some control of the story told while paradoxically removing her own ‘voice’ from the account.
Parry picks up the story as being essentially one of place – important to Bowen and also filling in key information in the story of this 1930s love triangle featuring the author’s grandparents and Elizabeth Bowen. Each chapter focuses on a different location that plays an important part in the story, from the marital homes of the Houses, Bowen’s ancestral home in Ireland, Bowen’s London home and India, where Humphry House worked for a period.
These places have changed in the interim, but it is fascinating to read about Parry visiting them and reflecting on their significance to her ancestors and the story she is telling. The pictures included in the text are a huge bonus for the reader too – we can visualise these places and people too. This book is part travelogue and it is an engaging way of structuring the story. I loved the look at the last days of the Empire in India, the elitism of 1930s Oxford, the lives of the Irish country estate and the Bloomsbury set.
Obviously, the main draw for this book is the figure of Bowen herself, as well as cameo appearances by Virginia Woolf and Isaiah Berlin. This is a book that has literary importance and will be of especial interest given the recent re-issuing of Bowen’s books in 2019 to mark 120 years since her birth. We do gain an insight into the woman herself through her own words, plus see previously unpublished photographs of her from Parry’s family’s collection.
Through the letters, we see a complex woman who was – in many ways – out of step with her time. She is often contradictory, blunt and critical, but could also be a thoughtful, intelligent and incisive correspondent. Her judgements on Madeline are often harsh and her gift of a tea set seems a comment on Madeline’s role within the domestic sphere compared to Bowen’s own in the literary world – she could, it seems, be spiteful. However, balanced with this is a woman in an unconsummated marriage to an older man so maybe her extra-marital affairs are more understandable in this context. I’ll be honest – I found Bowen the hardest of the three figures to get a grasp of as I was reading because my feelings towards her fluctuated all the time.
For me, the most interesting figure was actually Madeline, Parry’s grandmother. I felt that the narrative was at its most interesting when we saw this woman – dismissed as dim by her husband, sneered at for her domesticity and unappealing children by Bowen – step into the limelight. As a modern reader, I found it difficult to understand her acceptance of the affair between her husband and Bowen, but also was riveted by the strength of the woman who followed Humphry to India, raised children without him, flew in a tiny plane in Calcutta in the 1930s and ultimately successfully picked up Humphry House’s literary project after his death.
And that brings me to Humphry. I am incredibly aware of this man as being the author’s grandfather so I am reluctant to be too critical. He was clearly – let us say – a ‘product of his time’, someone who very much lived the realities of the sexual double standard. He did warn Madeline before they married that he would not be faithful and seems the weakest of the three – the true ‘shadowy third’ (in my opinion) caught between two redoubtable, interesting and successful women. His appeal to these women is slightly difficult to understand as his own words reveal him to have an inflated sense of his own intelligence when his spotted career history and failure to pass the War Office’s IQ test tell otherwise.
I could wax lyrical about this book for much longer, but I think it is one that readers should discover for themselves. It absolutely should not be approached as an academic text or a definitive view of Bowen – it is something altogether more nuanced and interesting. It allows us to see fascinating glimpses of Bowen, different places and times, plus the sexual mores and lives of women from a period that is not our own. It also allows us to meditate (with the author) on place, the fabric of our lives, notions of legacy and narrative – and I adored it.
About the Author:
Julia Parry was brought up in West Africa and educated at St Andrews and Oxford. She teaches English literature and has worked as a writer and photographer for a variety of publications and charities. She lives in London and Madrid. This is her first book.
Happy publication day to this brilliant crime fiction book! This is the eighth book in the series featuring DI Gina Harte.
I have read a lot of this series now and they do just seem to keep getting better! The earlier ones in the series focused a lot on Detective Gina Harte’s own personal story but – now this storyline has played out to a greater extent – I love the new focus on the ingenious plotting, creepy scenarios and casts of suspicious characters!
This book opens with the death of a student, Amber, whose body is found in Cleevesford Park – she went out on a date and never returned to her worried housemate. Harte and her team begin their investigations and begin uncovering some weird characters and lots of secrets surrounding the dead woman. The leads begin to mount up and Harte and her team struggle to prioritise their work – but a second disappearance has them scrambling to find connections before there is another murder.
I’m already bought into this series and like the character of DI Gina Harte – she is a likeable character and I also like the fact that she is a strong older women (she has a grown-up daughter) who is in control. Her relationship with her team is positive and (mostly) problem-free, which is great as the focus is on the investigation rather than the police team. The team themselves are often not particularly distinctive, so it was brilliant that one of them got a more important role in the plot this time around.
The plotting itself is cleverly done – there’s always lots happening and plenty of red herrings to fall for. In fact, this series seems to be getting more tense – the sections narrated by Meredith were really quite creepy and kept me on the edge of my seat! I read this book really quickly as I couldn’t wait to find out the next twist.
I’d wholeheartedly recommend this for readers who love police procedurals, especially if a female lead is a draw for you (as it is for me). I’d suggest you start at the beginning of the series really, to fully appreciate the strength of DI Harte, but this would be fine as a stand alone.
It has been another weird month of remote teaching and a fair amount of reading – 10 books in total. I’ve read some brilliant books this month and have some fabulous blog tours coming up, so watch this space!
Here’s what I’ve been reading this month…
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February Wrap-Up
I started this month with a big, glamorous thriller – ‘Ruthless Women’ by Melanie Blake. Taking place on the set of a soap opera off the coast of Jersey, this is packed with ambitious women, affairs, jealousy, gossip and backstabbing. I raced through it and it is definitely a lot of fun. You can read my review here.
Next up was the latest in the crime series featuring DI Gina Harte – ‘The Broken Ones’ by Carla Kovach. I have read and loved so many of these books and this one is brilliant! Tense, action-packed and downright scary in places! Although it is Book 8 of the series, it would also work as a standalone, I think. This book is published tomorrow and my review will be on the blog then.
Then I finally finished the absolutely brilliant ‘Maiden Voyages’ by Sian Evans. It took a while because blog tour books kept getting in the way, but I absolutely loved this non-fiction book about women whose lives were somehow linked to the transatlantic shipping crossings between (approximately) World War I to the start of the jet age at the end of the 1950s. There was glitz and glamour, but also amazing accounts of bravery and some fascinating life stories. My review is here but this is my BOOK OF THE MONTH!
Heading back onto my usual turf, I then read serial killer thriller ‘Dog Rose Dirt’ by Jen Williams. This will be heading your way in July so a review will follow nearer that time, but it is definitely one to keep an eye out for!
At this point in the month, I then panicked that I had a lot of blog tours at the end of February and start of March that I hadn’t read the books for yet!
My first blog tour read was ‘Old Bones’ by Helen Kitson, a gorgeously-written story about three older women living in a small village who in many ways feel that life has passed them by. When human remains are found in a nearby quarry, well-hidden secrets begin to surface. I found this one really compelling – you can read my review here.
The next blog tour book was ‘Seven Days’ by Michelle Kidd, an absolute page-turner of a police procedural. I raced through this one, the second in the series to feature DI Jack MacIntosh (I read the first, ‘The Phoenix Project’, for a blog tour last year). My review is here.
Then I read ‘The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters and Elizabeth Bowen’ by Julia Parry. This is a brilliant non-fiction book about Bowen’s affair with Humphry House (the author’s grandfather) and the third point in the love triangle, Madeline House (the author’s grandmother). The book is packed with insights into all three figures, plus thoughts on writing, legacy and storytelling. I didn’t know much about Bowen before this, but found it really interesting. My blog tour stop is next week so look out for this one.
My final blog tour book was ‘Nick’ by Michael Farris Smith, a prequel to F Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ which explains how Nick Carraway came to be in West Egg for the events of the classic novel. This was a compelling and vivid novel which took the reader through World War I Paris, the trenches and post-war New Orleans. My review will follow next week.
To end the month, I also finished two books that I’ve been reading with various blogger groups on Twitter. The Tsundoku Squad and I read ‘Paris by Starlight’ by Robert Dinsdale and I also read ‘Cemetery Boys’ by Aiden Thomas with The Write Reads book club that isn’t a book club!
Both of these were enjoyable in their own way – I liked the magical setting of Dinsdale’s book and the fascinating Latinx community and culture in Thomas’ novel. I probably wouldn’t have picked either of these books up independently, but am glad to have read them, even if I found the Paris book quite slow sometimes.
A busy month for reading and quite an eclectic set of books!
March TBR
As usual, I have a lot of books that I’d love to read this month. I never predict accurately, but here goes…
In March, I have blog tours for the following:
‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Catherine Alliott – I usually love Alliott’s books and am looking forward to this story of a woman sorting her life out after the end of her difficult marriage.
‘The Three Locks’ by Bonnie MacBird – I love a Sherlock Holmes story and this one looks fabulous!
‘The Shadow in the Glass’ by JJA Harwood – anything labelled as a Gothic fairytale has me on board, especially one with a Victorian setting!
‘Last Place You Look’ by Louisa Scarr – this is the first book in a new crime series to feature DS Robin Butler and DC Freya West. I love a police procedural so cannot wait to dive in to this one.
My ‘book club’ books for this month are ‘The Islanders’ by SV Leonard (Tsundoku Squad choice and looks to be a cracking crime novel) and ‘Bloodlust and Bonnets’ by Emily McGovern (The Write Reads choice – I haven’t read a graphic novel in years so am looking forward to this!)
There are also many, many NetGalley books waiting for me – so we shall have to see what I actually manage to read!
With thanks, as always, to blog tour hosts, publishers and NetGalley for granting me access to advance copies of books in exchange for honest reviews.
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘Seven Days’ by Michelle Kidd, the second book in the series featuring Detective Inspector Jack MacIntosh.
I was lucky enough to be included on the blog tour last year for the first book in this series so I jumped at the chance to read the sequel!
This tour is organised by Damp Pebbles Blog Tours – thanks to them and Michelle Kidd for my free copy of the novel for review. As always, opinions are my own.
Book Blurb:
One killer. One city. One week.
July 2012 and a serial killer is terrorising the streets of London. With the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympic Games in just seven days time, Detective Inspector Jack MacIntosh and his team at the Metropolitan Police have one week to find him. With the killer’s motives unknown, and a mysterious clue being left at each scene, the case takes on a menacing and personal twist. Distracted by his own demons, will DI Jack MacIntosh solve the case before it is too late?
The clock is ticking. Tick. Tock.
My Review:
The first book in this series was a twisty, jet-setting thriller with a huge cast of characters, secrets galore and lots of tension.
With the second book, Michelle Kidd has produced an absolutely brilliant police procedural. Lots of the same cast, but a totally different feel to the first book – and I loved it.
The book opens with the discovery of the body of a woman in a London park. DI Jack MacIntosh, still struggling with the PTSD from his distant past, is called in to investigate and finds a mysterious clue…which makes a lot more sense with the death of a second woman and the deliberate placement of another clue. It seems that someone is taunting the police – but with only seven days to go before the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games turns the world’s eyes to London, there is a race against time to catch the killer.
Returning in this book is Isabel (a main focus on the first novel), Mac and some other familiar faces. I was particularly pleased to see Isabel again as the first novel really immerses the reader in her story and she is an interesting character. She has moved on from her past experiences and set up a cafe in London – but, as expected, she can’t seem to stay out of trouble for long!
One of the main strengths of this book is the clever plotting – I honestly thought I’d solved this mystery several times over, only to be confounded at every turn. At least I wasn’t alone – DI Jack MacIntosh and the Metropolitan Police seemed to be having the same problem!
I found the timeline easier to keep track of in this novel as it didn’t jump around as much as the first. I liked that each scene in the book had a clear time and place so it was easy to follow – it felt a lot more cohesive than the last book which was great but made my head spin with the time and location jumps!
Although this is the second in the series, I think it probably could be read as a standalone. There are some elements that carry across the books and it obviously would be better to have the back-story, but I think the plot absolutely carries this book in its own right. There are also a lot of flashbacks which help to explain the history behind Jack, Mac and Isabel.
A lot happens in this book and the pacing is generally good – I never felt like I was bored or waiting for something to happen. My only gripe would be that there did feel like there were some additional scenes that weren’t central to the plot, especially at the end – although I would guess that these may well feed into the sequel.
I’d recommend this to anyone who is looking for an engaging and immersive police procedural. There are properly scary, thriller elements too – but the real strength is in the clever plot, likeable (and familiar) characters and the wow-factor twists.
About the Author:
Michelle Kidd is a self-published author known for the Detective Inspector Jack MacIntosh series of novels.
Michelle qualified as a lawyer in the early 1990s and spent the best part of ten years practising civil and criminal litigation.
But the dream to write books was never far from her mind and in 2008 she began writing the manuscript that would become the first DI Jack MacIntosh novel – The Phoenix Project. The book took eighteen months to write, but spent the next eight years gathering dust underneath the bed.
In 2018 Michelle self-published The Phoenix Project and had not looked back since. There are currently three DI Jack MacIntosh novels, with a fourth in progress.
Michelle works full time for the NHS and lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. She enjoys reading, wine and cats – not necessarily in that order J
WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted at Taking on a World of Words. Anyone can take part and it is a great way of sharing what you have just finished reading, what you are currently reading and what is next on the TBR.
Links are provided for books mentioned – thanks for supporting my blog with any purchases (at no extra cost to you!)
What have you recently finished reading?
It has been half term for a lot of this past week and so I’ve managed to read more than usual. It’s not like there are places to go or people to see!
I have read ‘Seven Days’ by Michelle Kidd for a forthcoming blog tour (my review will be up on Saturday). The first book in this series, ‘The Phoenix Project’ was a pacey, jet-setting thriller whereas this one is more a clever and very tense police procedural – and I loved that shift for DI Jack MacIntosh!
I also read ‘The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters and Elizabeth Bowen’ for a blog tour next week. I absolutely adored this story – part travelogue, part biography, part collection of letters – focused on a love triangle that began in 1930s Oxford between the writer Elizabeth Bowen, literary scholar Humphry House and his wife, Madeline. The fact it is written by the granddaughter of the Houses – and the direction she chooses to take the story in – is fascinating.
Finally, I also read ‘Old Bones’ by Helen Kitson for another blog tour – my review kicked off the tour yesterday and can be found here. This is a brilliantly-told story of three older women in a small village, their shared pasts and the secrets they carry with them. Beautifully-drawn characters make this a highly recommended and immersive read.
What are you reading now?
Too many books!
I’m now nearing the end of my two buddy reads for February.
I’m reading ‘Paris by Starlight’ by Robert Dinsdale with my Tsundoku Squad lovelies. I’m in two minds about this book – it is beautifully imagined and has an interesting storyline about displaced people and their culture arriving in Paris, but it is also quite slow. There is a lot of description of the gorgeous city by night and lots to enjoy, but I’m not sure it is wholly for me.
I’m also still reading ‘Cemetery Boys’ by Aiden Thomas, a Latinx tale centred around a trans boy in Los Angeles who wants to join his family in being able to release the dead into the afterlife. I’m looking forward to the Day of the Dead scene that I’m keenly anticipating and hoping that the various story strands come together. It has been an interesting read, although one I’ve struggled with a bit because of the plot structure which I think could be tighter.
I’m also reading ‘Nick’ by Michael Farris Smith and loving it so far. It is the story of the narrator of ‘The Great Gatsby’, Nick Carraway – a kind of literary prequel. So far, Nick has been caught up in a love affair in wartime Paris and then faced the trenches of World War I. I’m not sure whether he yet chimes with my own feelings about Nick from the original novel, but I am very much enjoying a clever and interestingly-written narrative. My blog tour post for this novel will be up in the first week of March.
I’m also reading the new Katie Fforde book, ‘A Wedding in the Country’. So far, it is set in London in 1963 but I’m sure a wedding and country will hove into view soon! I love Fforde’s books – they are truly escapist and charming and this one is no exception.
What do you think you will read next?
I will be reading ‘Behind Closed Doors’by Catherine Alliott for a blog tour in early-March. I usually love Alliott’s books so am looking forward to this one!
I also want to finally get round to reading some of the Poirot novels by Agatha Christie that I am supposed to have read for a readalong – I have totally failed to pick them up so far!
Many thanks to NetGalley, blog tour hosts, publishers and authors for the books in exchange for an honest review.
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘Old Bones’ by Helen Kitson. This book was published by Louise Walters Books in paperback and e-book in January 2021.
This blog tour was organised by Damp Pebbles.
Book Blurb:
Diana and her sister Antonia are house-sharing spinsters who have never got over their respective first loves. Diana owns a gift shop, but rarely works there. Antonia is unemployed, having lost her teaching job at an all girls’ school following a shocking outburst in the classroom after enduring years of torment. Diana is a regular at the local library, Antonia enjoys her “nice” magazines, and they treat themselves to coffee and cake once a week in the village café.
Naomi lives alone, haunted by the failure of her two marriages. She works in the library, doesn’t get on with her younger colleagues, and rarely cooks herself a proper meal. Secretly she longs for a Boden frock.
When a body is discovered in the local quarry, all three women’s lives are turned upside down. And when Diana’s old flame Gill turns up unexpectedly, tensions finally spill over and threaten to destroy the outwardly peaceful lives all three women have carefully constructed around themselves.
Helen takes us back to the fictional Shropshire village of Morevale in this, her brilliant second novel which exposes the fragilities and strengths of three remarkably unremarkable elderly women.
My Review
This is a bit outside of my usual genres (crime, crime, more crime…and some historical crime!) but I was intrigued by the blurb. I’ve heard so many fabulous things about Louise Walters Books that I was keen to give it a try – many thanks to the author, publisher and Damp Pebbles for inviting me onto the tour and for my copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.
The novel alternates between the stories of the three main characters – Diana, Antonia and Naomi. All three are older women living in Morevale and share a long history, although aren’t particularly close as friends and confidantes. Diana and Antonia are sisters and share a house (slightly acrimoniously), while Naomi lives alone following two disastrous marriages. When some bones are discovered in a nearby quarry, secrets from the past of all three women start to bubble to the surface.
The real strength of this book is the characterisation of the three women. Although we only hear Diana’s voice in the first person narration (the sections on Antonia and Naomi are told in the third person), the women have very distinct and engaging personalities.
Locked together as they are by their shared past, the women really do come off the page as three women who – in some ways – feel that life has passed them by a little. All three seem prematurely settling into old-age (the sisters are in their early 60s – an age I don’t really associate with their world of afternoon teas, doilies, church fetes and chats with the vicar). However, the discovery in the quarry (among other things) does shake them up and they are forced to face the secrets and resentments they have hidden for so long.
I loved that these three ordinary-looking women had such interesting elements in their past and I found myself wanting to read more and more. I also loved the realism of these characters – they are occasionally infuriating, petty, spiteful, silly and sly – but none of that put me off them and I was absolutely caught up in their stories.
Of the three, I really found myself warming to Naomi – she is tough and spiky, but does have the biggest ‘journey’ of the book (ugh, that feels like such a cliche to write, but it really doesn’t feel like this in Kitson’s sensitive, realistic and finely-observed writing).
The themes of the novel are the stuff of everyday lives – ageing, the regret that comes from things not done in life, missed opportunities and paths not taken. The novel is thought-provoking and compelling without being depressing – yes, the women have regrets, but they are also finding their place in the new, older landscapes of their lives and letting go of the past in some ways.
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys meditative and thoughtful fiction that is beautifully written and observed. You will find yourself caught up in the lives of these three extraordinary women – after all, is anyone truly ‘normal’! – and strangely bereft when you leave Morevale at the end.
About the Author
Helen lives in Worcester with her husband, two teenaged children and two rescue cats. Her first poetry collection was nominated for the Forward Best First Collection Prize. She has published three other poetry collections and her short fiction has appeared in magazines including Ambit, Feminist Review and Stand. She holds a BA (Hons) in Humanities.
Helen’s debut novel The Last Words of Madeleine Anderson was published in March 2019. Her second “Morevale” novel, Old Bones, will be published on 16 January 2021.
Happy publication day to this funny and uplifting book which I was fortunate enough to read towards the end of last year during lockdown.
I’d heard lots about this book on Twitter and felt that a cheery read was needed, so thought I would give it a try. I’m so glad I did – it was just what I needed to lift me out of the November gloom!
The main character, Ally, starts this book at her lowest ebb. She has quit her job and been dumped by her girlfriend, Emily, leaving her effectively homeless as she has to leave Emily’s houseboat. Taking the cat, who becomes a topic of dispute between the two ex-partners, she heads back to Sheffield and her father’s house. Initially wallowing in her own grief, she starts to see light at the end of the tunnel after rekindling an old friendship, using her passion for baking to find a new job and – most unlikely of all – taking up running after she (rather ill-advisedly) signs up for a half marathon.
I thought that Kay did a gorgeous job of exploring Ally’s thought processes as she worked her way through the end of her relationship. It felt real, with all its ups and downs, irrational thoughts and acts of pettiness – the emails between Emily and Ally about the cat were particularly telling. I also loved Ally’s feeling about running – as someone who has tried and failed to run, I really could imagine the scenes as she slogged round various circuits with no joy and considerable pain!
Indeed, the characterisation is the real strength in this novel = Ally’s friend Jeremy (who is nursing his own heartbreak) is funny and sweet and just the kind of person you’d want on your team if you were in Ally’s situation. Ally’s dad is similarly wonderful – a supportive, straight-talking (when needed) and realistic parent who has his own ways of getting Ally back on the road to recovery – I loved the disco for Syria scenes as these were so keenly observed by someone who clearly has experienced (in recent memory and with vivid clarity) the joys of a school dance!
The plot followed a fairly predictable course, but that absolutely was not a problem as I was reading this exactly to avoid any stressful or horrible situations. Instead, I was treated to a comfortable and engaging read as I followed Ally’s journey back to happiness. It’s a novel that has moments of sadness, but also bucketloads of humour and really relatable moments.
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys uplifting stories which are strong on character – those in a similar vein to Beth O’Leary’s ‘The Flatshare’ and ‘The Switch’. I enjoyed this a lot and it made a cheerless lockdown day a lot brighter.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
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