SAVING MISSY by Beth Morrey

This could easily be seen as a female version of A Man Called Ove - an older woman, living alone, far away from her children/grandchildren,  mourning the life she shared with her beloved husband. It has the charm, the quirkiness, the kindness of neighbours and random people in the community that helped Ove rediscover a reason for living.

Millicent Carmichael, Missy,  is the central figure in this story. It is just after Christmas, her son and grandson have just left for the long flight back to Sydney. She has a difficult relationship with her daughter, the reasons becoming apparent as the story progresses. She is desolate, sad, alone and lonely. At aged 79, she really wonders what her future is going to hold. She decides to take a walk in the park, having heard that the fish in the ponds are being moved from one pond to another. Such an odd thing to be happening, she can't resist going along to see what this is all about. By chance, following a mild fainting attack, she is taken in hand by two younger women, quite different from anyone she has met for quite some time. Their kindness is overwhelming and before long it would seem Missy has become a bit of a project for Sylvie and Angela.

Then a dog enters the mix, a friend of Angela's having to find somewhere for her dog to live while she attempts to rebuild her life after leaving a violent relationship. After a prickly start, Missy being very anti having anything to do with any dog, Bob slowly works his little dog magic. Missy has a companion, a life saver really. Missy finds herself joining a dog walking group, being sociable in the local park, she finds and makes friends, joins a community, makes connections. Her relationship with her daughter improves, and in-between chapters Missy tells her life story.

This is a deeply moving story, achingly sad at times, joyful and exuberant at others. I loved the characters, all of them, including Bob the dog - all so real. The character of Missy is a delight. She would come across to anyone meeting her for the first time as prickly, grumpy, difficult, reclusive. Yet behind that bitter and well wrapped up exterior is a loving, kind, terribly sad and lonely person. We can all think of people in our neighbourhood, our local community whom life has thrashed around a bit, for whom the happiness jar is nearly empty. This is a very timely story, with our increasingly ageing population, more people living alone. Their friends gradually die or move away, their children no longer nearby. We should all take note. 

WHAT THE WIND KNOWS by Amy Harmon

I did love this, so much. Historical fiction combined with a beautiful and unexpected love story. Reviewers have compared it to the Diana Gabaldon 'Outlander' series - a sort of time travel story with a love story thrown in for good measure, but not as steamy. Not read any of the 'Outlander' books so couldn't possibly comment. But this is something special.

Anne is in her late 20s/early 30s, a successful author living in New York city. Her beloved grandfather, who brought her up following the death of her parents when she was a child, is dying. He leaves her a box containing letters, diaries, photos and a dying wish for his ashes to be scattered in the lake close to where he was born in Ireland.

Anne feels a deep and emotional connection to the people and the land of her grandfather's birthplace as soon as she arrives in Ireland. She is captivated by the history, already looking for ways to weave it into her next novel. Things take a turn for the unknown however when she goes to scatter the ashes on the lake. A mysterious fog whips up and before she knows it, she is back in the Ireland of 1921 during its struggle for independence. These are dangerous times indeed. Anne is cared for by a local doctor, Dr Thomas Smith, whose name she recognises from her grandfather. There is also a small boy and a grandmother. What completely throws Anne is that she is being mistaken for the child's mother, presumed dead for the past few years.

It's complicated! But what a story the author tells with this concoction.  Naturally Anne knows what is going to happen with the Irish problem, and finds herself drawn into the inner circle led by the charismatic Michael Collins. The love story gradually unfolds, and Anne constantly struggles with how much she knows and what she needs to hide of herself to protect herself from those who wish her dead. Interspersed with all this is the magic and mystery of Ireland, its people, myths, stories, fairy folk. There is also plenty on the history of Ireland under British rule, the famines, the migration stories, that fatalism so part of the Irish character. The story telling is magical, the time travel thing is not at all weird culminating in a really good novel,  neither historical romance or historical fiction. 

SIXTY SUMMERS by Amanda Hampson

It is a rite of passage if you are from NZ or Australia that at some stage in your twenties (generally) you undertake your 'OE' - short for overseas experience. In the not too distant past this involved 2 years minimum based in the UK, usually London, working a badly paid job, co-habitating in squalid dumps with numerous other compatriots, living frugally, all with the aim of saving money to do the next bit of travel. Nowadays this still happens, not necessarily in London, but it still involves leaving home at a young age, alone, no organised job or income stream, but with that marvellous optimism of youth, and the world famous 'she'll be right' attitude.

So what do you think when you look back on it some forty years later as the three women in this novel do? Was this the best time of your life ever?  Do you look back fondly on your youthful self, the escapades you got up to, the lucky escapes you had. Would you do it again if you could?

Rosa, Fran and Maggie first met some forty years ago in London, each on her OE, immediately becoming the best of friends - travelling together, flatting together, picking up the pieces for each other - the best times of their lives.  Now they are approaching 60, their lives are quite different from those free-wheeling carefree days, much like what it has done for all  of us. Things have not panned out in the ways they dreamed of and planned those years ago. Still very close they all realise they need to escape for a bit from their families and work, rediscover some meaning in their lives, and so decide to meet in London where Fran still lives not very happily, and re-enact the journey through Europe that they made all those years ago.

Naturally things don't go to plan on their road trip, it is hard for each of them to escape their home lives with things at home unfolding differently because they aren't there to keep the reins under control. But as on all road trips, the challenges and 40 years of differences between the three friends are all overcome. They each find some magic to enable them to return to and rearrange their lives more satisfactorily. Every one is a winner.

This is engaging, fun to read. We can all identify with each of these women - our youthful dreams overtaken by the realities of life; is 60 to old to start again; the freedom of a road trip. It's a good story, very enjoyable, and these women are very real, which of course makes us like them even more.

CALL THE MIDWIFE by Jennifer Worth

This was the most marvellous surprise. Such a surprise and so good that I have put it in my top ten reads for 2019. As brilliant as the TV series is,  the book is so much better full of  background detail and vivid writing about life in the London East End of the 1950s. We see the poverty and deprivation on TV, the conditions midwives had to work under, but of course it is all pretend and  made to look authentic as none of the people involved were actually there. Whereas the author Jennifer Worth was. Life in post war Britain was grim,  and in areas like the East End it was really grim.

Nothing like being on the ground doing the work, and remembering enough to write so meticulously, in such an engaging way, and with plenty of background material to give a us a full picture of life as a midwife at this time. Midwifery training in hospital would have borne no resemblance to the hands on, diverse and challenging home births that these  young women were faced with and expected, often, to deal with on their own. A huge learning curve for them, and for the reader.

For example she writes a whole chapter on Rickets - a growth problem caused by a lack of vitamin D. That is all I knew about rickets, and had no idea how common it was at the time. Jenny tells the story of a woman who has lost pregnancies due to the deformities to her body as a result of rickets. Finally she manages to carry a baby to term and to give birth. What a celebration. These were times when contraception was almost non-existent. Women spent all their reproductive years pregnant or giving birth, in households with little or no money, lots of children, dreadful living conditions. Somehow these impoverished and neglected Victorian-aged neighbourhoods thrive and grow. Everyone looks after each other: it really is the village raising the child and people helping each other.

Jenny writes another chapter on a homeless woman who somehow manages to turn up at many of the births Jenny attends. She spends some time digging around for the woman's back story, and we learn the sad life of this poor woman  who lost so much during the great depression of the 1930s, her story probably not much different from that of  many other people.

At the same time we also read about the other midwives that Jenny lives with at Nonnatus House and the nuns too. Wonderful women so fantastically brought to life in the TV series. Jenny herself also grows up from the young graduated midwife never having set foot in the East End or any area like it to a competent, highly respected and loved practitioner along with her fellow midwives, including the total misfit Chummy so perfectly played by Miranda Hart.

I have new respect for the profession of the mid wife, especially in the time being written about,  when it wasn't so politicised like it is now, and both doctors and midwives worked together for the health of both mother and baby.

This is a wonderful book to read if you have enjoyed the series, and gives so much to our understanding and appreciation of what these women did, the neighbourhoods they lived and worked in, and above all the people they worked for.

THE NOWHERE CHILD by Christian White

Lots and lots of great reviews of this on line, and no wonder. Gripping from the first sentence - " 'Mind if I join you?'  the stranger asked." 30 year old Kim lives in Melbourne, and is on a break between photography classes when a stranger from America sits her down and tells her on the fourth page, that she is not who she thinks she is, that she in fact went missing some 28 years earlier from her family home in Kentucky, USA.

Naturally it can't possibly be true, but to her distress, it is quickly apparent that there could be more to this than Kim realises. After considerable agonising, she makes the long journey to Manson, Kentucky to find out for herself who she really is, what did happen in 1990, and how on earth did she end up in Australia?

So good, so gripping, so many possibilities. The story telling and plot unfolding is first rate, the character reveals are unexpected and chilling. I loved every page of this, and have since read this author's second novel The Wife and the Widow, also very good, but I think this is better. 

THE RECOVERY OF ROSE GOLD by Stephanie Wrobel

Creepy, chilling and mesmerising. A mother-daughter tale totally unlike any mother-daughter relationship you have ever been part of. Patty Watts is being released from a 5 year prison sentence for the poisoning of her daughter Rose Gold. Rose Gold is now in her early '20s, a mother herself,  and is meeting her mother at the end of her sentence. She appears to be reconciled with her mother, but is she really.

Rose Gold is a very damaged young woman, due to the appalling and horrifying parenting dished out to her by her mother -  a clear case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy - this poor child in and out of hospital, on feeding tubes, underweight, malnourished. deprived of schooling. It is equally clear that Patty is also very damaged, and five years later does not see that she did anything wrong, that she  was wrongly imprisoned, but does see her release as the opportunity to start her life again. When she sees that Rose Gold now has her own child she is determined to build good relationships and find her place in society again.

What unfolds however, is very far from this lofty aim. Both women are wary of each other, neither sure of the other's love or motives. With a baby in the middle of it all, the reader fears what is going to unfold, and who is going to come worse off. I loved the voices of both Rose Gold and Patty - who is and/or was the guilty one? Their souls are bared for us to see, both are convincing and believable. What about their neighbours and others in the local community - are they who appear to be? Or are Rose Gold and Patty both delusional?  This will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat till the very end. 

THE ARSONIST by Chloe Hooper

At this point in time, with parts of Australia burning to pieces, I cannot think of a better book to read to give one an insight into the nature of these types of devastating and ruthless fires, the loss of life and property, the horrific dangers firefighters go through in trying to manage these fires, what happens to the land during such fires, and then for investigators to find that there are people out there who deliberately set these fires, sit back to watch the devastation and horror unfold.

This is that book. The author is an Australian narrative non-fiction writer, and man, can she write. She was in Victoria on her partner's bush block during the time of the Black Saturday February 2009 fires, aware that at any time the wind could change direction and come their way. Luckily for them, it didn't happen, but 173 people died during those few days, millions of domestic and wild animals died, and thousand of hectares of trees and property destroyed.

Arson investigators quickly established that in one area where 11 people died, the fires were deliberately lit. What follows is the story of how the arsonist was tracked down, arrested, brought to trial, found guilty and sentenced. A quick on-line search will show that arsonists in general have a variety of mental health issues, and this was the case with Brendan Sokuluk, the arsonist in this case. Hooper's reach is much more than simply focussing on trying to understand the mind of such a man - it seems no one is really able to come to grips with what type of person he really was. She touches on the causes of a number of the other fires in the region - failures by those in charge of maintaining the power grid to do so and the fall out from this negligence, as well as arson. She also closely examines the communities affected by the fires - small towns and communities whose existence is dependent on the coal mines and power stations in the area  that are being sold off, run down, closed down. I also learnt about fire itself and how it behaves in an eucalyptus plantation, how this tree is built to burn, how the Aborigine people knew how to control such fire and used it for their advantage, how it became a weapon between Europeans and Aborigine, and between feuding Europeans. And how we really are totally useless at controlling it at all.

An exceptional read, with something to learn about on every single page, reading more like a thriller than a non-fiction narrative. Compulsory reading right now.