MY GRANDMOTHER SENDS HER REGARDS AND APOLOGIES by Fredrik Backman

This was a little unusual and unexpected, but very clever, quite delightful, leaving you with just the best feeling inside by the end. Elsa, is almost eight, extraordinarily bright, some would say unbearably precocious. The story is told entirely through her eyes; the very small world that almost eight-year-old children inhabit. What is ordinary, mundane, rational, and every day to a grown up – other people, events, places -  in the imagination of a child become something else entirely. I was reminded so many times while reading this of ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime’, where adult stuff is dealt with in the child mind in a way that us adults just would or could not even begin to comprehend.

Elsa is coping with quite a lot of adult stuff in this story. Her parents have separated, with her mother now living with George and pregnant with Halfie – of unknown sex, but half Mum-half George. Her Dad lives with Lizette and her two children. She loves her Dad very much, finds her relationship with him a little strained, and is sad that she doesn’t see as much of him as she would like. Elsa lives with her mother and George in a big old house that has been divided up into apartments where assorted other people live. Including her grandmother who is the most important person in her small world.  Granny is the most marvellous elderly woman, completely mad, reckless, and unrestrained in her attitude to life and her actions.  She was once a doctor, working in war and disaster zones around the world. Naturally over the decades this has all landed her into numerous trouble spots – both physically and figuratively! Child and elderly woman adore each other. Granny is a storyteller and has created for Elsa the Land-of-Almost-Awake, with magical kingdoms, characters and adventures. In the real world where Elsa is struggling with the changes in her family, is bullied and under attack at school, to be able to escape with Granny into her magic place is the one thing she holds onto.

One day, Granny goes away again. Before she goes she gives Elsa a letter which sets Elsa on a magical adventure of her own, delivering Granny’s special messages as she has requested. In the process Elsa learns all about her Granny, as well as the place she calls home, the neighbours who live around her, and above all a lot about herself.

It is a story of great imagination, although I am a little sceptical that a child such as Elsa really does exist. I feel mean, but I did get just the tiniest bit tired of the Land-of-Almost-Awake, the magic kingdoms, the symbolism – there is a lot of it, and the reader is constantly being brought back to it just in case we forget! A lot goes on in these imaginative phases, and I did get a bit lost with who was who, and who was doing what! But it doesn’t really affect the story in the real world. Like with many things with children, symbolism and imagination can help them deal with the real world much more effectively than counselling or adults trying to explain stuff.

I think this book is written for adults, and others may also find the magic thing a bit much. Nevertheless, it is the type of story which straddles both adult readers and young readers, and I think it would be absolute magic for a grandparent wanting to read or share a story with a youngster. I know I would have loved to have had this read to me by a grandparent!

BONKERS - MY LIFE IN LAUGHS by Jennifer Saunders

A quick google search reveals 'bonkers' means mad, crazy, mentally unbalanced, drunk, bananas, wild - you get the drift. Which this book isn't. Very misleading title. Jennifer Saunders doesn't come across as 'bonkers' at all, not a jot, but someone blessed with a finely tuned sense of humour who just happened to find her equally funny soul sister Dawn French, and the rest is history. Two totally different women, who had this really quite extraordinary ability to create some of the funniest television ever. She is actually quite ordinary and normal really, which is what makes this memoir so accessible and enjoyable.

I have always wondered if Jennifer is the quieter of the two, the more introverted, and reading this memoir does confirm this. It is almost as if she fell into the comedy life, and even though she doesn't try to fight it, she does not come across as wanting to have her name in lights. It just all seems to have sort of happened. She writes of her very ordinary childhood, her mediocre school years, going to teachers' college because there was nothing else. It was her ongoing friendship with Dawn French, and the two of them simply being in the right place at the right time.

Through her days doing live comedy with Dawn, the beginning and hilarious success of French and Sanders, the creation of Absolutely Fabulous when she really was thrust into the public limelight, the days of being a movie star with Shrek, moving into script writing - she regales us with it all . Plus of course her personal life - marriage, children, and what was a surprise, her breast cancer. Her writing hardly reaches great literary heights, there aren't huge amounts of self analysis going on except perhaps for her stint in India with Goldie Hawn. Everything is kept light and easy, and if nothing else, Jennifer gives us more of an insight into the world of how TV comedy is made. Entertaining and fun. Definitely not 'bonkers'. 

ALASKA by James Michener

What a tome, what a saga, what a history - all 1071 pages of it. A massive achievement to write, and a massive achievement to read. Whew. But so, so worth it. We visited Alaska the most popular way - by cruise ship - and then spent a few more days in Anchorage after the cruise finished. We were captivated by the place, and barely scratched the surface in the very short time that we were there. The natural beauty of the place is astounding, as are the challenges this environment poses to mere mortals who have attempted to carve out a life there.  I so wanted to find out more about Alaska, the people, the history and the environment, and James Michener seemed a very easy way to do it.

This novel follows much the same pattern as Michener's other massive historical sagas using a particular geographical area to tell his stories. With Alaska, he goes back to the very beginning  - the bones of the  spectacular geography laid down millions of years ago, pre historic animal populations, early human migration and settlement - the Athapascans, Eskimos, Tlingits and Aleuts, the arrival of the Russians from across the Bering Sea and the havoc they wrecked on the indigenous peoples and the sea otter populations, the Americans and British also wanting their slice of the pie. Then the discovery of gold,   with mass migrations from all over the world, the development of the salmon industry, the importance of aviation, oil exploration. It's a marvellous account, and has inspired me to one day go back to Alaska and explore further. It seems it is always treated as the poor cousin by the rest of the US, but there have been no scruples at all in exploiting it for its natural resources at the expense of its people. Just a tad long though - a couple of hundred pages shorter would have had no impact on the story or the lives of the people in the story.  

AN IMAGANITIVE EXPERIENCE by Mary Wesley

Ever since reading 'The Chamomile Lawn', probably Mary Wesley's most well known book, I have actively sought out her other books. She had quite a life, and when she came to begin her career as a novelist in her seventies, there sure was a lot of life to draw upon for her story telling and her characters. Her stories centre primarily on a female, usually young, who has not had an easy road through life - orphaned, abused, depressed, pregnant. You get the picture. They are all feisty, trying to look after themselves, fight their way through the life circumstance they find themselves in. Her characters are richly and  gorgeously drawn, not all of them are nice people, but the nice ones are the types of characters who gradually wriggle themselves under your skin. The baddies generally stay that way!

So this novel, first published in 1994, is just as intriguing, off beat, and finally comforting as her other novels. It centres on Julia Piper, a young woman who first draws attention to herself when she pulls the automatic brake on a train so she can dash out and rescue a sheep she has seen lying on its back in a passing field. Two people on the train take a special interest in this young woman whose face seems full of tragedy and has brought the train to a standstill - Sylvester Weekes, a publisher going through a nasty marriage break up; and Maurice Benson, ex-private detective now bird watcher, and general busy body. One has honourable intentions, and the other doesn't. From such a bizarre incident, the paths of these three inevitably cross, and the story behind Julia's sheep rescue gradually unfolds.

Betrayal features in so many of Mary Wesley's books, and it is a dominant theme here.  But also of hope, overcoming the adversity of broken lives, healing, and finding new life within yourself and with others. It is typical Mary Wesley, and why I love her books so much. 

THE LAKE HOUSE by Kate Morton

The present meets the past in a most unlikely coincidence of events in this recent novel by the latest most successful Australian author you may not have heard of. Like me. Looking at her profile, that her books have sold more than 10 million world wide, and that she has been on the New York Times bestseller lists four times, it seems fairly obvious I have missed something. So I was very much looking forward to getting myself lost in this novel, set like so many of her previous novels, somewhere in Cornwall. Cornwall would appear to be not the only common factor - in her past novels, there is a mystery of some sort surrounding people who live/have lived in said Cornwall, often something/someone abandoned, a family link from the present to the past, and a modern day character, usually female, going through some sort of crisis who ends up reconciling or solving whatever the mystery may be. A winning formula, and fully embraced in this latest novel.

Ms Morton is a master at weaving her plot, the many strands, threads and tenuous links that keep the reader involved and constantly wondering what the next reveal will be. The opening pages, in August 1933, have a female traipsing through mud and rain in the early dawn, digging a hole with a spade, burying a box in it, and covering the evidence. Well, if that doesn't set a scene for a mystery, then I don't know what will!

The many faceted plot essentially focuses on two people. Alice Edevane, now very elderly and living in London is a prolific and successful writer of whodunnits. Alice has never got over the disappearance of her 11 month old brother Theo at a midsummer's eve party in June 1933. The party was at her family's historical country house in Cornwall. She suspects who was involved in the disappearance but with no body or evidence of foul play ever turning up, this is actually the biggest mystery of her life. Seventy years after the disappearance, Sadie Sparrow, a young woman detective, is going through a particularly difficult time in her work. On leave visiting her grandfather in Cornwall, she stumbles upon the old house, now derelict and deserted. Her detective brain immediately senses that something happened here, and she takes it upon herself to solve the long standing mystery of the disappearing child.

The plot development, with its red herrings, taking the reader up the garden path and back down again is superbly done - it really and truly is a mystery, and many many pages are read as each twist and turn is fully explored, then either discarded or put into the memory bank for later use. And so you keep turning the pages, to find out what happened to this family way back in June 1933. Alice was sixteen, a young girl of enormous intellect and imagination passionately in love with Ben the  gardener,  her elder sister Deborah is about to be engaged, younger sister the free spirited Clemmie, and of course baby Theo. Their parents are Eleanor and Anthony who are doing their utmost to deal with the fallout of Anthony's WWI experiences in France - clearly post traumatic stress, but of course undiagnosed and not fully understood at that time. And there are other characters too who were part of the household who may or may not be equally implicated in the baby's disappearance. Like the novels that Alice writes, her life has also been a big whodunnit.

As well as the post war trauma theme, the loss of a child is a recurring theme. Not only with the disappearance of young Theo, but also still birth, adoption, child abandonment, what a mother will do to protect her child, and what happens to a mother in the protection of her child. These themes are sensitively and honestly handled, and all lend credence to the story line.

However for me, there were elements of disappointment. Firstly the cover, as beautiful and enticing as it is, has nothing to do with the story. And I am always a little suspicious of covers with the author's name in bigger and bolder font than the book's title. Secondly it is way too long - 591 pages: not just from a physical point of view of lying in bed and holding this thing up/open, but also from a content point of view. It could easily be a 150 plus pages shorter and nothing would be lost in the story telling or mystery solving by doing so. The major problem for me, however is how neatly and tidily everything is resolved at the end. For a narrative with so many twists and turns, possibilities and unexpecteds, the ending was a big anti climax, albeit unexpected in itself. And so I shut this book with a frustrating big bang and thought well, after 591 pages of tension and expectation, this was just too happily ever after for words.

But if you are looking for a great holiday read by the pool/beach/lake,  this will do very nicely. Take a lectern or book stand though so you don't get strained wrists from holding it up and open.

THE NIGHTINGALE By Kristen Hannah

Extraordinarily excellent book, must be one of the best I have read all year. So many novels have been written in recent years set against the background of WWII and the ordinary people who suffered, survived, and  retained their humanity against all odds and the brutality of the Nazi regime. Ordinary people who did extraordinary things. And here we have another truly amazing novel that will completely grip you, wring you out emotionally. Two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle Rossignol (French for nightingale), have lived quite separate lives due to the death of their mother when they were children. Vianne has married her childhood sweetheart who has left to fight, and with her young daughter they live in a town in Nazi controlled France. Her war involves basically staying alive, having to fight off starvation, losing neighbours and friends to deportations, while also having to billet Nazi officers. Her sister Isabelle has quite a different war, finding her calling working in the Resistance, and risking her life every hour of her waking hours. It is marvellous stuff, I can't recommend this book highly enough - suspense, betrayal, love, tragedy, the whole package. Well paced, great plot development, imperfect and real characters with great humanity who never give up hope. I do have one criticism - the author mentions in her introduction that the catalyst for her novel was reading about a young woman who created an escape route across the Pyrenees for allied airmen. I really think she should have said who this woman was - I wonder if it was Nancy Wake - the White Mouse who was on Hitler's wanted list. If her story is based on real people, then I think the author is honour bound and almost obligated to name them so a to ensure that their memory is revered and remembered. It wouldn't have taken much for her to name, thank and revere these people who did so much, and more often than not died for their actions.

THE STORY OF A NEW NAME by Elena Ferrante

My word, this woman can write. I was fairly luke warm about part one in the four part Neapolitan Novels - My Brilliant Friend, but this one, the second novel in the series, has converted me to the brilliance of her writing and her story telling. Picking up where My Brilliant Friend finished - Lila's wedding - we are immediately thrust into the rest of the reception.  The two childhood friends are now 16, and this novel covers much of the next ten years in their lives. As much a story about friendship and growing up as a story of the savagery of the society they  live in, it really is gripping reading. Both girls are struggling to break out of the poor, downtrodden, violent community they have been born into, finding different ways and means, not always successful. The book is huge, and really over the ten years there is not a great deal of plot. But what is so stunning is the author's, and it also has to be said her translator's, skill and uncanny ability to dig deep into the souls of her characters. Books three and four also look like whoppers, and no doubt will be just as grim, but riveting reading as this one.