THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY by Amber Towles
CHRONICLES OF A CAIRO BOOKSELLER by Nadia Wassef
And underlying it all a deep love of books and literature, the fundamental importance of reading and learning not just for the growth of the soul, but for the education of everyone, women and girls in particular. One of the many wonderful things about the chain of shops was how they became a safe haven for women and girls to enter and be themselves in. The challenges are enormous, not just from the patriarchy, but also from the government of the day in actually getting books in. Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef banned because it contravened censorship laws? It is almost comical if it wasn't true. And people believing that a bookshop is more like a library - why should I pay for a book, why can't I just borrow it? And bringing in non-Egyption books, classic books we consider common place in any Western bookshop.
Well worth a read.
THE DARKEST EVENING by Ann Cleeves
Anyway in this latest Vera, it is a week or so before Christmas. Vera is driving home, in the dark, it's snowing. She takes a wrong turn and comes across a car off the road, the door open, and a baby in his baby seat. Not a soul around. She does realise where she is - on the edge of the landed estate to which she is actually quite closely connected through her father. But where she is not particularly welcome. Then a few hours later, the body of young woman turns up on the estate. and Vera is plunged immediately into sorting all this out.
Classic Vera with conflicts overload, relationships galore with long and deeply complicated histories, jealousies, resentments, possible motives. Joe, Vera's long suffering detective sergeant, and Hollie, her detective constable are back, both showing great promise as Vera successors.
This is only the second Vera I have read, the first Vera being the very first of the books. There was a lot in the first one about Vera herself, her personality, what made her tick, and I remember she is much more abrasive, prickly and difficult in that first one. She has softened somewhat in this latest, more like the character Brenda Blethyn has created. Unless maybe we all love Vera in whatever guise she chooses to show herself.
It's terrific, it will be a tele series one day. Look forward to it.
THEROUX THE KEYHOLE by Louis Theroux
A world famous documentary maker finds himself living his own weird life in the yo-yo first 12 months of the pandemic. Stuck at home with his long suffering, tolerant and patient wife - I think it a miracle they are still married - and their three sons - 15, 12 and 5. Both parents working, 3 boys to school, manage, feed, keep healthy mentally, physically and emotionally. Along with millions of other families around the world doing the same hard yards.
Whether Louis actually kept a diary during this time who would know, but it all reads as very real. And here sitting on the other side of the world, without school age children and not in a situation where either of us had to work from home, I could still relate to much of what this family went through. Louis was so lucky in that he made two escapes to the US, working on his latest TV series featuring Joe Exotic, some rappers and a few others living their best lives. Sorry rest of the family - stuck in your London house for days and weeks on end.
Louis seems to be very self aware, self deprecating, seemingly happy to make a fool of himself - honest in his own emotional journey through all this. He struggles as a dad-at-home, agonises over how much time his boys spend on devices, and how little time they spend on school work. His relationships with his boys is really quite lovely, especially 5 year old Ray, who fortunately doesn't' fully understand what is going on. A child's imagination is a wonderful thing and Louis immerses himself completely in his boy's magical mind. I think I would too if I was living his home life - nothing like a bit of escapism.
I got to like this very much, Louis's ramblings, his attempts to be seen to be doing the right thing, his struggles at being the perfect husband and father. Just another weird human being, like his interview subjects. Inside the jar for a change. His year comes to an end, and I particularly liked his final chapter - a lovely reflection on what the year has done to and for him. It was not in any ways easy, but that old saying about tough times being character building, contributing to resilience and self awareness ring true here.
A LONG PETAL OF THE SEA by Isabel Allende
What a story teller this woman is. Beautiful stories she tells, most of them based on personal experience, almost aways against a violent historical background. There is intense pain and sadness in her stories, the tragedy of what it is to be human, finding one's way through the horror and helplessness of what is going on around. She does it again with this very personal story of Victor, a Spanish man who somehow navigates his way through the Spanish Civil War, his wife Roser who has her won war experience, making their way to the far old land of Chile - the long petal of the sea - on the Winnipeg, an old ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda to rescue 2000-odd Spanish migrants with no where in Europe to go. As with all refugees, they were not welcomed with open arms, but over the years, Victor and Roser make good lives for themselves. Things are never calm for long in South America however, freedom and repression on repeat the name of the way things evolve in some of these countries. So it is in Chile. And yes despite the fear, the violence, the repression, us human beings, we keep going, living, loving those around us. So it is with Victor and Roser and those who are dear to them. It is a wonderfully uplifting story, perfect for the uncertainty, fear, loss and despair of the last two years. The book is dedicated to Victor who died shortly before this was published in 2019.
WE WALKED THE SKY by Lisa Fielder
Life is actually quite tough for 17 year old Victoria, and the arrival of the circus in her home town in 1965, the opportunities it throws up, the magic, the chance to recreate herself is just too good to let pass. And off she goes. Oh, what a life it is. She discovers a pure talent for the high wire, finding love and a new family, who love and care for her, welcoming her into their unique and very different world.
Running parallel to Victoria's story is that of her fifteen year old grand daughter Callie, a child of the circus, and just like her grandmother a tight rope walker too. Only problem is that times have changed, and her mother has accepted a job in an animal sanctuary where retired circus animals go. All the lives of both Callie and her mother have only ever been in the circus, and some major readjustments need to take place, first with Callie accepting that her days of tightrope walking are over. And being a teenage girl, she has myriad other problems too, such as fitting in at a new school. Feeling isolated and alone, Callie begins going through some of her grandmother's bits and pieces, finding a story of another teenage girl.
This is a good story although I found it quite simplistic, which I think makes it a great read for the teen/young adult market. The circus life is fascinating, how one learns to walk a tightrope- makes it seem easier than it looks! We don't really have circuses now, and the way of life has largely gone. So there is plenty of social history in here too as well as the importance of family bonds, even when those bonds aren't necessarily blood bonds.
THE PEARL THIEF by Fiona McIntosh
It's 1963, London, 35 year old antique jewellery expert Severine Kassel is on loan from the Louvre to the British Museum to assist the latter in the provenance of its jewellery collection. She is asked to look at a most unusual and glorious Byzantine pearl necklace. The unexpected shock of seeing this item immediately propels her back to her past, threatening to destroy the carefully built up veneer and person that is Severine Kassel. Severine is really Katarina, born in Prague, of Jewish descent. Her family is cultured, reasonably wealthy and Katarina has a blessed early life. All that changes of course in 1938 when Czechoslovakia is annexed by Hitler. No need to give a history lesson here. Katarina, at 14, suffers and lives through terrible trauma and disaster. She comes through, in the process creating a brand new persona, known to only a few people. In the years since the war, however, she retains a burning hatred for the man responsible for what happened to her and her family. The appearance of the pearls unlocks the war time trauma, setting her on a path of revenge. She teams up with another Jewish survivor of the war, Daniel, who has his own agenda in the hunt for this man.
A real page turner of a book, which I make to sound like a thriller but it is not really that at all. You could easily see this as yet another novel about WWII, the Holocaust and how the Jews were treated - it is, but it is also a very good novel with these themes. The hunt for the war criminal propels the action along, but there is so much more going on with Katarina's early life before the war, leading up to the catastrophe, her war time years, the closed off and distant persona she has made of herself. The characters themselves are wonderfully drawn, all of them - their physical descriptions, how they dress in those opening up years of the early 1960s. And the places they lived - what a beautiful city Prague was, how London and Paris were in the early 1960s, how people dined, how they lived, their interactions with each other, the observations in the world. It is fascinating to see how the characters grow and change as the story unfolds, especially the changes in Katarina as her war time demons are laid to rest. If you are going on holiday - a restful holiday - then take this, especially if you are going to the English city of York and the surrounding area. Your inbuilt travel guide.
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