THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS by M.L. Steadman

A baby is washed up on a remote island, inhabited only by the war damaged lighthouse keeper Tom and his wife Isabel. Two miscarriages and a still born baby have deeply damaged Isabel, and the appearance of a tiny baby is a gift from God. The dead man in the boat is buried by the increasingly uneasy Tom, who also makes the fatal mistake of not entering the arrivals in the log book, or letting the authorities half a day's boat ride know what has happened. The pleas and joy of his wife override what his head is telling him he should do. Naturally it all comes undone when the little family makes one of its infrequent journeys to the mainland, and the real mother appears.

Reading this book reminded me of the biblical story of King Solomon, renowned for his wisdom and fairness. Two women come to him, both claiming to be the mother of a child. Solomon's decision is to cut the baby in two, his theory being that the real mother, or the one most deserving of the child would be the one to renounce her claim and thus save the child's life.

There is a certain point in this novel where that particular decision is made by one woman, and I was holding my breath as to what the outcome would be. As there were still quite a few pages to go I knew it was not going to go according to King Solomon's decree. The writing is so good, the character development so beautifully done, that the reader feels sympathy and compassion for all the people in this story, despite the mistakes many of them make.  We don't know the reasons for the beaching of the boat on the island until well over half way through the novel, and the over arching sadness of this one event really does colour in its many shades of grey the actions and behaviours of those left behind. In the middle of it all is a little girl, only four, who is told she has two mummies, but only wants one. This will tug at your heart as you too wrestle with what is the right thing to do, what would you do in a similar circumstance. It is desperately sad, which puts me off wanting to watch the film, but when friends say it is very true to the book, then maybe I will sit down with a pack of tissues. No wine - will only make it worse. 

EIGHT LIVES by Susan Hurley

Now this was a page turner, I really could not put this down, and on waking in the middle of the night, just had to keep reading. I had no idea where it was going, what the outcome was going to be, and it was all a great big surprise.

We begin with a woman and child washing up in Hong Kong, refugees fleeing Vietnam in the mid 1970s. Mother and son find a new life in Melbourne, David a brilliant student, who becomes a brilliant medical researcher. The Golden Boy of his med school generation, he creates a drug that will treat and cure auto immune illnesses, but without medical trials on humans it does not have a show of getting approval. Or of making its investors rich and famous. Imagine discovering a cure for multiple sclerosis, rheumatism, lupus and many other sicknesses.  So the long tortuous process of finding funding, 8 guinea pigs, a facility to do the testing begins. And then David dies - was it by his own hand or was he murdered?

This meticulously plotted, twisting and turning story is told from the view points of a number of different characters  - his half sister, his best friend, his girlfriend, a PR/fixer mastermind, and his research assistant. Each of these characters has their own distinctive voice, their own self-interests,  motivations which could all in some way contribute to the mysterious death of David. As well as being a medical mystery, this novel is also a study human behaviour, the deep set secrets we hold within ourselves, and really how little we do know those we are closest to. 

THESE TWO HANDS by Renee

Way back in the early 1980s, when in our early 20s, my brother had his first job at Playmarket NZ which managed/nurtured/supported/assessed playwrights and their works in NZ. I remember him talking one day about a new playwright, an elderly lesbian lady with only one name - Renee. It helps to remember when you are not yet 25, everyone over 30 is old, so Renee who would have been early 50s, older even than our parents, was pretty old. What an intrigue!

Naturally I was intrigued when she published her memoir a couple of years ago, and bought it. Intriguing it certainly is, written in 87 patchwork quilt pieces, 1 for every year lived so far:  an allegory of course for the enormous variety, layers and events of a life of what is now 90 years.

What a delicious treat this has been to read. It broadly follows a chronological line, beginning with her birth in Napier in 1929. Her father disappears when she is 4, she later finds out he killed himself a long way from home. She had to leave school at 12, being the oldest child, wondering at the time if she would ever get to learn everything she wanted. Such a great spirit this woman has, her zest for life and living shining through - beginning to write when her children were young, involving herself in local repertory theatre, getting her degree, becoming a teacher then a playwright, discovering herself. Her 'patches' are not all memoirs: interspersed with examples from her plays, her poetry and her musings on life. I really liked this, more than I thought I would. The woman is a treasure and at 90 is still out there giving life her all. 

CROSSINGS by Alex Landragin

There are two types of readers in the world: those who like their stories told page by page, so that you always know where you are up to, or those who like the idea of taking a risk and reading a book in a quite different way -  you get to the end of a chapter, and told to go either forwards or backwards to read the next piece of the story. Of course you never then know where exactly you are up to! Once you start, it is probably difficult to go back to reading the book in the conventional way - so quite a risk.... Like most on-line reviewers of this,  I chose to read the jumping around version, and once I got used to it, enjoyed it very much. What a story too!

In the present day,  a Parisian bookbinder is given a manuscript containing three stories, each quite different and unusual. The first is a letter written by the poet Charles Baudelaire to a young girl; the second is a romance set in Paris in 1940 as the Germans are stamping at the gates of Paris, and the third is really quite strange - the story of a woman from a Pacific Island community in pre-European times. Together these three quite separate stories tell the tale of two lost souls through 150 years and 7 lifetimes.

It really is quite strange, but also compelling, rich, descriptive and lovely to read. It could be a gimmick this moving backwards and forwards following the tale, but it never really feels like that mainly due to the uniqueness of the story, the characters, and the magic - you need to suspend disbelief somewhat. It is made more intriguing with real historical figures  featuring as characters - Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Coco Chanel, Jeanne Duval, and they don't have minor roles either.  Give this a go, your patience will be rewarded.

THE BODY LIES by Jo Baker

Here is yet another novel about a woman making her way in the world on her own terms as much as she can, but still falling victim to a nutter who wants to claim her for his own. Oh, and then murder her. Nice. Why, oh why are women still portrayed and written about as victims, through no fault at all of their own, subject to the most ghastly fates. Over it really.

Nevertheless, this is very well written, the tension and unease slowly brewing. There are no red herrings, or twists in the tale; the reader finds out fairly early on who the trouble is going to be. What makes this novel stand out is how the woman, whose name we never know, uses her wits and her intuition to try and  beat him at his own game. You might not necessarily approve of her methods, but she is giving it a go, and doing all she can to not be a victim.

Our chief character lives in London with her teacher husband, and 3 year old son. The book opens with her being sexually assaulted while pregnant. There is definitely some post trauma here, and despite her best efforts it continues to haunt her. In an attempt to move on, she is successful in applying for a professor ship in creative writing at a university a few hours from London, which she accepts, much to the puzzlement and annoyance of her husband. But this is something she needs to do. Her creative writing students are an odd bunch, including Nick, who is a quite damaged young man, producing some very uneasy and alarming writing. Nick is also a clever and manipulative young man, and it doesn't take long before our professor has fallen into his web.

This is a psychological thriller, a game of minds and keeping one step ahead of your enemy. There is sexual assault in the book, quite graphic in one place, but not gratuitous. I liked this, but didn't love it, mainly due to the subject matter, which in some ways is more of the same. Although deftly done.