THE OTHER HALF OF AUGUSTA HOPE by Joanna Glen

A really quite lovely story of two people who are misfits in the communities they come from. They could not be more different from each other in where they live or how they grow up, just that they are different from those around them.

Firstly Augusta. She lives with her parents and twin sister Julia in a house in a town in England. A very ordinary house, an ordinary family, loving parents who just do not seem to get Augusta, a devoted sister to whom she is devoted. She is a bright girl, very inquiring mind - loves to read the dictionary and memorise words for example. One day going through the letter B she falls in love with the word Burundi, and on finding out it is a country in Africa becomes intrigued with learning everything she can about the country, resolving one day to go there.

Secondly Parfait. A young lad growing up in Burundi with his own loving and lovely family in a village. We all know what happened in Burundi and its neighbour Rwanda in the mid 1990s. Terrible things happen to Parfait's family, forcing him to realise he has no future there, and taking his young brother Zion he treks through Africa, ending up with hundreds of other refugees on the beaches of Spain. Then the next battle for survival begins, competing with others from all over Africa and Middle East for jobs, food, shelter.

Chapter by chapter, told in their two diverse voices, in their two different worlds, Augusta and Parfait grow up. By chance, when in her teens,  Augusta and her family holiday at the beach near Saville where Parfait now lives. They don't meet but this spot leaves an indelible impression on Augusta, a place she yearns to return to in the years after, her perfect spot of paradise.

And eventually she does of course, where she and Parfait finally meet, although that also has its challenges. But this does not happen before a terrible tragedy decimates Augusta's family, forcing her to also flee much like Parfait had done. By the end of the story, these two separately find a place of peace, belonging and recovery. It is beautifully written, wonderful descriptions of Parfait's early life in Burundi before it was all destroyed, and of Mediterranean Spain - no wonder Augusta dreamed of returning.

A KEEPER by Graham Norton

Two women - Patricia and Elizabeth - mother and daughter. Two houses - one that Elizabeth spent her childhood in with her mother that she inherits after her mother dies, and a second house in an isolated spot in West Cork that Elizabeth, with some surprise, also finds herself in possession of on her mother's death. Two time lines - one in the present, one in the 1970s. And lots of secrets.

This is  novel of secrets, who keeps them and how they are kept. Small town life has always been an overflowing Pandora's box of secrets. Tossed around with the morally conservative and religious elements that have controlled how the Irish have lived since forever, it is not surprising that very potent forces emerge to keep the curtain twitchers ecstatically happy, amongst the unfolding of many personal tragedies.

And what great novels and story telling these domestic secrets, catastrophes and mishaps create. Graham Norton showed in his first novel Holding that he can tell a terrific story, with sensitive characterisation and so much empathy for the situations his troubled characters find themselves in.

Elizabeth lives in New York, divorced, with a teenage son. She returns to her old home town in Ireland on the death of her mother to clean the house out, tidy up, deal with her extended family. She never knew her father, and so is intrigued and puzzled when she finds a box of letters from a man she assumes is her father to her mother prior to her birth. An even more tantalising mystery unfolds when she finds she has also inherited a house in West Cork where it seems that her father came from.

Elizabeth's story alternates with that of her mother Patricia, who is in her early 30s. She has cared for her own mother for many years, and on her mother's death suddenly finds that not only does she own her own home,  she is also free for the first time ever. But oh so lonely. At age 32 Patricia is well and truly on the shelf, and at the urging of a friend finds herself signing up for a lonely hearts agency. To her surprise she begins to receive letters from Edward Foley and before she knows it, without actually knowing how she got there, she is living in the Foley home with Edward and his mother. What follows may stretch the limits of imagination a bit, with a definite flavour of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, but it all makes for a damn captivating and engrossing tale as Patricia's story unfolds, and Elizabeth finally learns the mysteries of her own origins.

Family connections are a strong theme throughout, not only with what is going on in Ireland in the two different decades, but also in Elizabeth's own family,  her teenage son having troubles of his own. Drifting down through the generations, the ties of blood prove to be stronger than one would think or even wish, but the identity and sense of belonging that comes from being in a family does win out over all other things.

HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES by Saeed Jones

My sister gave this to me for Xmas, I have no idea why she thought a memoir by a young gay black American man would be the perfect reading material for my Xmas break! I have a brother who is gay, and I fully empathise and support gay rights, but not sure that this makes me the target audience for this book.

Nevertheless it is a beautifully tender story of finding oneself and one's voice, becoming empowered, the bond between a mother and her son, and growing up in a society that still seems to struggle with accepting different and diverse sexual/gender identities.

Saeed is a poet and writer, winner of a number literary awards, and pretty high profile for a poet. It follows that his memoir is beautifully written, enormous sensitivity and visual writing. His childhood was not easy but the love of his mother and other women in her family was the glue that held the boy together, his talent for writing spotted early on.  Children in schools here are told to use their words rather than to use their fists in dealing with confrontation in the play ground, class room, the home. Here that mantra has a force of its own. He would be well entitled to rage at the society around him, find ways to feel sorry for himself, to battle with violence and vehemence. But he doesn't. He writes about it instead. He is a troubled young lad at various times in this story, but he always seems to find his way back to how it feels to be loved by his family and so survives.

Many readers will find this quite graphic and over the top in his descriptions of sexual encounters, how he finds himself as a gay man, how he talks of his body as a weapon. But if you grow up thinking that how you are is not what is expected or desired in the majority of society, then you may well turn your body and your words into weapons to fight that. I didn't find it offensive, but I can see how others would.

You can't get past the language, the style of writing, the love that oozes from the pages, the search for self discovery. This really is a stunning and memorable memoir. I have since thanked my sister for her unusual choice! I may not be the target audience, but for a story of personal development, growth and self love, this is a story for anyone to read and get something out of - a very human story. 

ARIA by Nazanine Hozur

Iran is another country in the second half of the twentieth century that has gone through massive upheaval - , the rise of religious nationalism with its Islamic fervour, overthrow of the Shah, the religious reforms of Ayatollah Al Khameni, the war with Iraq. Surely enough for one fifty year period.

This novel is set against the historical and political background of the time, in Teheran and centres on the story of an abandoned baby. It is 1953 and the baby, a girl, is found by a driver for the army who adopts her, he and his wife Zahra not having children of their own. He names her Aria which is actually a boy's name, but perfectly suited to this unusual looking child with a fiery independent personality. Naturally she gets into all sorts of trouble with her mother, a difficult extremely embittered and violent woman, very free with her temper on Aria. Her story comes out as the novel continues. Aria's life is only bearable due to her father and a young boy who lives next door, with whom she has various escapades, showing her a world denied to her in her home. Her mother is only one of three women who shape the woman that Aria becomes. She is informally adopted by a wealthy woman, Fereshteh, who offers her refuge from her mother. Aria gets an education, makes friends, goes to university, and as a result develops unique skills allowing her to move across and through the social divide of wealth and poverty of Teheran at this time.  At the same time her father manages to track down her birth mother, Mehri, and I am not giving anything in the plot away by saying this, as there is really no other explanation for this woman and her family to come into Aria's life. Mehri is still poor, still living a hand to mouth existence, and it is arranged for Aria, by this time a teenager and reluctantly it has to be said, to teach the other children to read. With no explanation given to her she finds herself traipsing across town far too regularly to spend enforced time with this family. Over time, as she grows up, the nature of her relationship with the family changes. I did find this thread of the plot a bit implausible, I couldn't really see this happening in real life.  

Life takes dangerous turns with increasing anger and resistance to the reigning monarchy, the Shah and his family oblivious to the hardship and poverty of much of the population. Aria is a university student by this time, open and frantic for new ideas, student protest movements, young passionate love. As well as anti monarchy groups working to overthrow the Shah, there is the rise of religious nationalism that leads to the revolution of 1979. Aria and her friends are caught up in all of this, and in a life that has already had many changes and upheavals, Aria is well equipped to come out the other side. 

I have never read a novel set in Teheran before, and this city is definitely the highlight of the book. What a city! Physically it is old, such a classically designed city, beautiful old buildings with a strong European flavour. Throw into this all the ethnic, religious and cultural groups that make up the intricate conglomeration of Iran, and you have a vibrant, diverse, challenging city. It seems every ancient religion is represented in Teheran, somehow they all make their way into this novel, along with the food, dress, customs and rituals. There are some great scenes going through the markets - sounds amazing. I wasn't so shook on the story, on the style of telling the story - there are a lot of characters who pop up in strange ways at unexpected places, so for me it didn't flow very well. But the way the author writes of the city and of the people really makes me want to go there. I wonder, as I type this, when that will be. 

THE GLOVEMAKER by Ann Weisgarber

    Now this was an unexpected surprise.  It is late 1880s, middle of winter in the bleak, empty, tough environment of Utah. In a small community of 6 or 7 families who have relocated themselves from the strict dictatorial polygamy communities of their fellow Mormons, life is very self-sufficient and self-reliant, slow, quiet and at times dangerous. Deborah is a glove maker, living with her husband Samuel who is a wheel wright. Samuel is late back from his autumn travels repairing wheels for communities and towns south of where they live. Their neighbour is Samuel’s oldest friend Nels. Polgamy has been outlawed by the non-Mormon majority population, resulting in men turning up from time to time escaping the authorities for their polygamy, drawing Nels and others into helping them escape over the surrounding mountains. Although the community is generally non-practising, it seems they are more distrustful of non-Mormons than their polygamy fellow Mormons. Things change dramatically one night when a man on the run turns up, chased by a US Marshall. There are elements of the man’s story which don’t add up, then when the Marshall himself is badly injured, Deborah and Nels have to face some tough decisions, all with bad consequences, leading them to rethink their beliefs, their connections, and what they are really doing in this small isolated community. And for Deborah, what on earth has happened to her husband Samuel, long overdue from his regular trip? Such intensity of writing, analysis of the moral and religious dilemma that Nels and Deborah face, such wonderful and haunting descriptions of the bleak, hostile mountainous and wintery setting. Gloves are mentioned frequently, symbolically as items essential to living in these parts, and as meaningful gifts. But with Deborah being a  glove maker, I still have no idea how gloves were made during these times.

THE DIOR SECRET by Natasha Lester

Typical Natasha Lester – following the successful pattern of her last few novels, this is set alternately in the times of WWII and present day, backdrop of the war, fashion, resistance and so on. Why mess with a good recipe? Kat works in costume preservation,  lives in Melbourne, separated from her husband, sharing custody of their daughter. Her grandmother Margaux now in her nineties, lives nearby. At her grandmother’s request, on a work trip to Europe,  she goes to Cornwall to check on the former’s house. She finds a wardrobe full of Dior fashion, dozens of beautiful couture garments beginning with Dior’s first collection in 1947. The second thread of the story takes us back to the years before WWII and then the war itself. It belongs to Skye, a young English woman who follows in her mother’s footsteps learning to fly, joining the Women’s Air Transport Auxiliary transporting planes between air bases in England – high risk not just physically flying, but also with the unpleasant, nasty, bullying sexist behaviour within the air force to the women pilots, and also in society at large. Most of what the author writes here is based on fact and memoirs of women pilots of this time. Skye reconnects with Nicholas, an American pilot who spent part of his childhood growing up with Skye and her sister Liberty, and she also meets Margaux, a young French woman who is Nicholas’ fiancé. Skye is recruited to become a spy in France working with the Resistance, and you already know where all this is going to lead. What happens to these women, the connection to the Dior fashion house and to Kat decades later makes for an excellent story with plenty of twists. You think you know where it is going, then it goes in a different direction.

THE BOOK OF LONGINGS by Sue Monk Kidd

I loved this, quite different from her other two books in its subject matter but just as riveting and spell bounding as The Invention of Wings and The Secret Life of Bees. Like these other two, this novel has a strong female lead in Ana, a young woman living 2000 years ago in what is now Syria and Israel. In a nutshell she meets and falls in love with Jesus, marrying him, being with him at the time of his trial and crucifixion. Sounds like a reworking of the New Testament from a different point of view? Absolutely not. According to the extensive author note at the end there has always been discussion as to whether Jesus did marry – apparently it is a requirement in the Jewish faith that all men marry, and there doesn’t seem to be anything anywhere saying he did or didn’t marry, so the author has taken this as cue – what would have happened if Jesus had a wife? This is that story. Ana’s has a privileged life, she can read and write as her father is the chief scribe to King Herod. Her intelligence, curiosity, refusal to be married off to an older man leads her into all sorts of trouble, but with her equally feisty and true to self aunt with her, she manages to escape this crippling life, marrying Jesus and moving to Nazareth. We all know what happens of course, so although the story of Jesus is central to the way this novel unfolds, it is told from Ana’a point of view and is 100% her life story. I loved it not just because a strong young woman is finding her voice, but also because this is almost like a geography and history lesson of the times. Descriptions of how people lived, their homes, clothing, food, social hierarchies, religions – fascinating and brilliantly described. I now want to go to Alexandria in Egypt – it sounds, even now, like the most incredible ancient and amazing place to visit.

THE AUTHENTICITY PROJECT by Clare Pooley

This is truly a story for the times we currently living in, not just what we doing at the moment being physically isolated from our communities, friends and families, but also relevant for the way we live in recent times has resulted in people becoming physically disconnected from each other – the rise of social media, neighbourhood meeting places, more people living alone, relationship and work stresses and imbalances. The words The Authenticity Project have been hand written in beautiful script across the front cover of a green notebook by an aging artist, former society man about town, probably eccentric, living alone, grieving for his former life. He seems to feel the need to open about his life, writes some thoughts, then leaves the book on a table in a nearby café owned and run by Monica. Monica is a former lawyer, single, 35 years old, looking for meaning in her life. She finds the notebook and so begins its journey through the hands and writing of four other people – male, female, young, not so young, looking for meaningful relationships and friendships, finding ways to make their lives matter. There is of course considerable serendipity in this type of story, but the characters are all so relateable, so charming and so awful, the plot lines a tad ridiculous and unlikely. So don’t read this if you looking for the serious thoughts of a self-help book! But for a gentle fun read, with a deep message of how important actually being with people is then read this. We have spent much of the last 4 weeks on our own in isolation for the better good, for what matters,  and I know how much better I feel going for a walk and stopping for a chat with neighbours or others that I may meet on my circuit. Humans are social beasts, we are not supposed to be on our own, and this book will make you see this. A real gem.

THE HOLDOUT by Graham Moore

Here is a whodunnit thriller with all sorts of twists and turns, I actually got a bit confused by the time the ending came around and now some weeks after finishing I can't remember what the outcome was! Anyway ten years ago Maya was on a jury for the trial of a young black man accused of killing a white school girl, who body is never found. She is adamant that he is innocent and over the course of the deliberations manages to persuade all her fellow jurors to a not guilty verdict. The trial was a total sensation in its day, went on for months, the jury having to be contained in a hotel for almost the entire time with massive fallouts for each of the jury members in their personal and professional lives. Now ten years later, one of the jury members has announced he has new evidence that he is going to present at a special reunion TV show. The jurors are all put in the same hotel and rooms they were in 10 years ago, all going well until the juror with the evidence is found dead, and it is revealed that Maya, now a successful defence attorney, was the last person to see him. A great whodunnit - not only with Maya trying to find  out who murdered who fellow juror, and may also be after her, but also who murdered the young girl all those years ago. Honestly, I had no idea where this was going.

THE RATLINE: LOVE, LIES AND JUSTICE ON THE TRAIL OF A NAZI WAR FUGITIVE by Philippe Sands

This is non-fiction, and documents the investigation the author makes into the life and times of a Nazi, Otto Wachter, who was wanted for war crimes but managed to evade the allies after the war, dying in suspicious circumstances in a hospital in Rome in 1949. Wachter set up the  Krakow ghetto and in charge of what happened there, and then was the Governor of Galicia, an area in Ukraine also heavily populated with Jews. The author had Jewish relatives in this area who died while Wachter was in charge. Sands’ research is meticulous and vast, not only books, news articles of the day, but also pages and pages of letters between Otto and his wife Charlotte, and diaries that Charlotte had kept over the course of her life. He also spends hours and hours with Otto and Charlotte’s son Horst, and the son of a close family friend, also a  war criminal who was executed after the Nuremburg trials. The attitudes of the two men to what their respective fathers did during the war is revealing and disturbing. The legacy the families of former Nazis have to carry around is enormous, and continues to affect later generations. The Ratline refers to the process that Nazis took to escape post war Germany and Europe, beginning at the Vatican – this book shows how totally implicit the Catholic church was in its support of the Nazis and the philosoply of the Third Reich – after all it was the Jews that crucified Jesus – ending usually in Argentina which also fully supported the Nazi regime. This would appear to be what Otto was trying to do that led him to Rome. In his research Sands uncovers much more than a man on the run, and in true spy thriller fashion, there are a number of unexpected surprises – all true!  It is an easy book to read, totally engrossing, but it is very heavy on the finer detail of the research, some editing would certainly have helped.

FINDING CLARA by Anika Scott

It's great to see novels coming out about the experiences of the average German person during the terrible days of WWII and after. If you take out the borders between all these countries of Europe, then aside from the leadership the peoples weren't really any different from each other, all just trying to survive, feeding themselves and their families. And being about people just like us, such stories make us ask ourselves what we would have done in such 'survival of the fittest' times.

In this novel there are three people, all badly damaged and traumatised by the war years. Clara Falkenburg is the young woman of the title. The book opens in 1946, Clara living under a false name and identity, from those now in charge of Germany - the English, the Americans, and the Russians. She is a wanted woman, having been a poster girl for the German propaganda machine, and supposedly implicit in her father's war crimes. During the war she ran her father's ironworks factory that made munitions for the German army,  employing slave labour to do so, effectively making her guilty too. She is desperate to get back to the town, Essen, where she lived, where the factory was, where her oldest friend and family live. Clara is fearless, scared, dangerous and a risk taker. On Clara's return to Essen, with an English captain on her tail determined to arrest her, she finds everything changed, her town as she knew it gone, along with the people in it who were so dear to her.

Then there is Jakob, recently returned to Essen from the Russian front, where he has lost a leg and everything else. He is desperate to find and look after his own family, and as a black marketeer used to living by his wits, he has plenty of skills and charm to get what he wants.

Lastly there is Willy, a teenage boy, who has spent most of the war holed up in a cave guarding a huge Wehrmacht stash of food and essential supplies. Deeply traumatised by his experiences he has disintegrated into a feral like state, unable to trust anyone or want to rejoin the real world.

With so many people all out for themselves, exhausted, desperate, hungry, cold, trying to survive each day, you would think there would be little room for reaching out, for kindness, for recovery, to find meaning or goodness in daily life. The core of the story is Clara's moral dilemma - her need to resolve within herself whether she was guilty of war crimes or was she not? How much of her idea of caring for the Ukrainian slaves employed in the factory was really about caring? How corrupted had she become by the propaganda whirling around her during her months of running the factory and being held up as the perfect German fräulein? That there is also a bloke as nice and rascally as Jakob and a badly damaged boy in the mix only highlights the moral flaws of all us.

You can see then that the title is not only about the Allies' hunt for Clara, but also about Clara coming to terms with her own war years. This is such a great story, with great characters. I loved them all, so well developed. The town of Essen and how hideous life would have been in post war Germany is also graphically described, not only the physical nature of the place, but the sense of hopelessness, loss and tragedy emanating from the people. Terrible times, and so important that we continue to have great reading coming out of this time in our history.

A MADNESS OF SUNSHINE by Nalini Singh

Now it is school holidays and if we weren't in covid 19 bubbles many people and families would be in holiday homes around the country, swelling the populations of small towns, coastal, lake side and river communities. Sounds idyllic. Golden Cove is one such town, fictional of course, situated on the rugged, in places quite isolated and insular West Coast of New Zealand. They breed the people tough in these pockets of NZ, it's a man's world - hard men, where the women have to be tough too, able to hold their own in these places. There are dark secrets here too, with mysterious disappearances of young women some eight years previous. But there are plenty of good people too, as in all communities who look out for each other, and it is in times of crisis that a community really comes together.

Into this town returns Anahera Spenser-Ashby who some years before escaped the small town, making her way to London, and marrying what would be deemed well. Turns out he is not such a good husband and she decides to come to back to Golden Cove, licking her wounds, to live in the small house close to the sea that was where she lived her mother before her mother's death, possibly suspicious as Anahera's father was a violent man. And still lives in the area.

She is warmly welcomed by childhood friends and others. There is also a new cop in the place, recently sent from Christchurch, demoted to a small town for misdeeds that are slowly revealed. An immediate frission of sexual tension is apparent. There is also a beautiful young woman, Miriama, who works in the local cafe, saving money for her own escape from the small town to university and beyond. All the males in the place clearly adore her and it is all a little creepy how blatant their lust/adoration/glorying of this gorgeous creature is. Naturally she disappears, and a large chunk of the book is devoted to searching for her. At the same time the characters, possible motivations and interpersonal relationships of the locals are revealed.

In a nutshell then this is a whodunnit, where almost everyone is a suspect, and other women in the town, such as Anahera, begin to feel threatened and anxious about the men in their lives. The undercurrent tone of fear, intrigue, and imminent danger is very real, making this book a great page turner. The setting is also perfect for the tone of this story - the wild West Coast can be a darkly beautiful and threatening place, dense native bush, stormy beaches and windy sand dunes, small bleak towns, winding roads - a character all on its own.

But despite a great story there are also niggles - yet again we have a novel where young women are the victims, brutally murdered. All over our TVs, movie screens, the daily news this is what we are confronted with - violence against women. And usually done by men they know. Same same here, and not different. I don't know if this is the author's point, to highlight again this situation, but if it is she offers no solutions to this never going away soon problem. Do we really need to read another novel with young women being murdered as its premise? Despite this, the author's talent as a writer is out there plain to see and read, making for a really engrossing and thrilling novel. In the end the baddy really was quite a surprise. 

HOW THE DEAD SPEAK by Val McDermid

Never read a Val McDermid before, and with so many great reviews of her books, here I am giving it a go! She wrote Wire in the Blood, which was made into a successful TV series. So why not start with her latest in the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series. It is definitely a risk to start with the latest in an established series - this is her 11th in the series, the first one being published in 1995 - so long ago and still  going strong by all accounts.  Sure it would help to start from the beginning, but I was told I would not need to, so I didn't. And the advice was quite correct, with sufficient background given so that I had a reasonable idea of what had been going on previously.  I guess most readers have followed the series for more than just the latest and would get frustrated with rereading what they know.

Tony Hill is a clinical psychologist, who has worked extensively for the police as a criminal profiler. He is currently in prison for something momentous that happened in the previous novel. He has worked closely with DCI Carol Jordan for a long time - are they lovers? I suspect so but not having read any others, can't say for sure. She has been booted out of the force for reasons related to the previous novel - I really do need to read this! She is very much at a loose end, having the lost the job that gave her a reason for living, and her close relationship with Tony. She finds herself involved in an organisation that looks at miscarriages of justice, and continues to have contact with Tony from afar.

Meantime work on a construction site, which happens to be a former convent, is stopped when what appears to be a graveyard of the bodies of young women is discovered. Around the same time another set of graves are also discovered on the same property but these bodies are of young men. A man is in prison for the murders of these young men, but it becomes clear he is not the murderer, and when another young man goes missing, Carol finds her investigative skills are working overtime.

I love a good thriller, especially of the psychological variety, and this filled the brief nicely. Great characters in Carol and Tony, very imperfect and real in how they behave, think, react to the different and unsettling turns their lives have taken.  This is also a good story, surprising twists, well paced, and a solid outcome. Time to read more! 

A MURDER AT MALABAR HILL by Sujata Massy

I have to admit I have a bias to books written by and/or about India, having lived there for a bit. Everything about India is complicated, contrary, disturbing, often impossible for Western eyes to understand or make sense of, but always intriguing and surprising with so much to discover and learn. And here is another to tempt me! This novel is the first in a series featuring a young woman lawyer in Mumbai during the 1920s. Perveen Mistry is the only female lawyer in Bombay at this time - seen as a novelty, a threat, a misfit, subject to prejudice, rudeness, spite. None of this is going to get her down, and working in her father's very established practice gives her considerable kudos and protection. Even though she is forbidden from working in court, she is a valuable asset to the firm for her investigative skills, her ability to talk with and listen to clients.

This becomes particularly handy when the firm is engaged to investigate a suspicious will on the behalf of three widows living in full purdah in a large house on Malabar Hill. The dead man, husband to all three women, was a valued client of the firm, and when Perveen notices something unusual in the will, she begins digging. Being female of course gives her considerable advantage, because she is the only person that is able to interview, meet with and so gain the confidence of the three widows. It becomes clear quite quickly that something very underhand has taken place, and we are soon in the middle of a whodunnit, with Perveen finding herself in some danger.

On starting this novel, I thought I was going to be reading something light, bit frivolous  - zealous and earnest young woman taking on the baddies - very Nancy Drew. . But  I misjudged - never judge a book by its cover, no matter how enticing and attractive. A sinister element creeps in to Perveen's life in the first few pages, we learn that she has graduated from Oxford University - a highly unusual status for any woman in the 1920s, let alone a young woman from India. Her closest friend from her Oxford days happens to the be the daughter of a very high ranking British official living in Bombay, her friendship with Perveen leading to considerable social issues with her friend's parents.

From the beginning I was wondering how does a young Parsi girl from a deeply religious and conservative sect of Indian society go to Oxford University by herself, get a degree, come back and work in her chosen field in the 1920s? As I said earlier this is a country full of surprises. The appearance of that troublesome character in the first few pages takes Perveen back some years earlier when a marriage is being arranged for her. This does not go well, in fact it goes very badly. The author has tapped into the underbelly of much of conservative religious India, highlighting the often appalling treatment that young women, seen simply as possessions of their families to be sold off, suffer from in the marriages made on their behalf. Even though Perveen's parents are educated, cultured and sophisticated in Western ways, they too fall victim to the ancient rituals and ways of doing things their religion and unique culture demands. The three widows Perveen is helping are also victims of the society they are born into.

So we have here a good story, well told, but also with considerable social commentary on the state of women in India. This may be set in the 1920s, and things have improved enormously for women in India in the decades since, but we must never lose sight of how women in many many societies and cultures continue to be suppressed and controlled by the men who supposedly love them.

I see now that there is a second Perveen Mistry novel - can't wait to read that - no more Nancy Drew for me!