Review – Mollie PANTER-DOWNES – “Good Evening, Mrs Craven”

Publ: 1999 Persephone Books
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 1 906462 01 7
Genre: World War II
Pages: c200p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** *****


What led you to pick up this book?
The cover and the blurb. It promised a set of short stories with ‘wit, perception and incisiveness’. It delivered.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Mollie Panter-Downes was much better known in the USA than in her native Britain because most of her work was published in the New Yorker. These are just a few of her many short stories relating the life of folk in wartime Britain throughout World War II. Tales of sewing parties, obsession with food, separation and hosting evacuees they bring the war to life in a way in which even diaries rarely manage to do.

What did you think of the characters?
With a few words Mollie Panter-Downes manages to draw instantly recognisable characters who spring to life off the page. All of them are British to a T.

What did you think about the style?
Sharp, witty, down-to-earth and so realistic that one could well have been reading memoirs. Katherine Mansfield eat your heart out!

What did you like most about the book?
Each story was just the right length to keep the interest at a high and without any dazzling punch lines the author managed to round each one off perfectly.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
The cover painting – “The Queue at the Fish Shop” by Evelyn Dunbar 1944 - was just perfect for this book and the inside of the cover – fabric design ‘Coupons’ - equally appropriate.

Would I recommend it?
Yes, unreservedly. For anyone who has lived through wartime Britain or heard their parents’ stories of it this book is a must.

Totally irrelevant side note:
This is one of those few cases where the cover blurb’s description of the author as “One of our very best twentieth century writers” turned out to be accurate. Mollie Panter-Downes deserves to be far better known.

Quotations:

Before the war had cut her life so sharply in two, she had cherished her possessions jealously.
(I just loved the way in which the author described those times which define one’s life as cutting them in two. Don’t we all think of things as happening before or after some major event in our lives?)

The one clock in the flat went on sucking time, like an endless string of macaroni, into its bright, vacant face. Every clock in London seemed to crash out the quarters outside their drawn curtains.


MOLLIE PANTER-DOWNES was born in 1906 and died in 1997. For fifty years her name was associated with "The New Yorker", for which she wrote a regular "Letter from London", book reviews and over thirty short stories.

She was brought up by her mother in Sussex after her father, a Major in the Royal Irish Regiment, was killed at Mons in August 1914. She published her first novel, The Shoreless Sea, when she was seventeen - it was a bestseller. She wrote three more popular novels as well as articles and short stories and in 1929 married Clare Robinson, travelled round the world, and moved to the sixteenth-century house near Chiddingfold in Surrey where she and her family lived for over sixty years. Each day Mollie took a basket with her lunch to a writing hut in the woods where, between 1938 and 1984, she wrote 852 pieces for The New Yorker: Letters from London, book reviews, Reporter at Large and short stories, as well as non-fiction books such as Ooty Preserved (1967). In 1947 she published One Fine Day, one of the century's most enduring novels. Her peacetime short stories have been reprinted as Minnie's Room.

Review – Sophie HANNAH – “The Fantastic Book of Everybody’s Scerets”

Publ: 2008 Sort of Books
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 0 95489 954 7
Genre: Suspense, Short stories
Pages: 272p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** **


What led you to pick up this book?
It was on the ‘New Books’ shelf and I loved the title. I also like to keep the occasional book of short stories on the go for when I just want a brief read.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Ten separate short stories including the prize-winning ‘The Octopus Nest’ which is, without doubt, the best of the ten. Twelve Noon is another excellent story. The subjects vary considerably but all have a dark, obsessive side and remind me of Jeffrey Archer’s ‘Twist in the tale’ but with greater suspense and a decidedly macabre approach. Some of the stories were first class, others fairly average.

What did you think of the characters?
Some were difficult to believe in but that didn’t really matter with this style of story. The key is in the writing and the twist in the tale.

What did you think about the style?
All were enthralling, even those in which the plot was not top class, and there was no one style. The nature of the story dictated the style.

What did you like most about the book?
The variety – the reader has not a clue as to what type of story will come next.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
Nothing in particular.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Nothing special but the title alone makes you pick it up.

Would I recommend it?
Only to someone who enjoys short stories as a style in themselves.


SOPHIE HANNAH, born in 1971, lives in West Yorkshire with her husband and two children. She is a best-selling and award-winning poet. Her latest collection, First of the Last Chances, was chosen for the Poetry Book Society`s ‘Next Generation’ promotion in June 2004. She regularly performs her poetry to live audiences nationwide and abroad, and recently won first prize in the Daphne Du Maurier Festival Short Story Competition for her psychological suspense story ‘The Octopus Nest’. ‘Little Face’ is her first psychological crime novel.

Review – Sinéad MORIARTY – “Whose Life is it Anyway?”

Publ: 2008
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 1 844 88149 9
Genre: Romantic comedy
Pages: 358p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** ***


What led you to pick up this book?
The blurb.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Girl and boy fall in love. (That’s chapter one.) Niamh O'Flaherty and Pierre Alcee then have to convince their families that their prospective partner is the right one for them. (That’s the rest.) It includes a lot of flashbacks into Niamh’s background as a Londoner born into an Irish Catholic family. Pierre’s background, dealt with comparatively sketchily, is definitely as un-Irish as it could possibly be.
Insofar as plot goes it is almost totally lacking and there were times when I anticipated a bit more of a twist to come – it never did.

What did you think of the characters?
Wonderful. Such extreme examples of their type and yet very believable.

What did you think about the style?
Again, wonderful. Hilariously funny. I don’t think a page goes by without its element of humour. At the beginning of each section is a brief ‘column’ written by the heroine for the Irish Daily News.

What did you like most about the book?
The hilariously amusing style.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
I felt the plot could have done with another twist or two to dramatise the relationship. This was definitely cosy romance with never any concern for the happy outcome.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Too femoinine. The book is good enough to appeal to both sexes and all ages. It is not just be the Mills and Boon romance that the cover seems to suggest.

Would I recommend it?
Yes.


SINEAD MORIARTY is a journalist in her early 30s who has worked in trade magazines in London. A native Dubliner, she has recently moved back to Ireland, where she is writing her second novel.

Review - Priscilla Masters – “Buried in Clay”

Publ: 2008
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 0 7490 7913 0
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 328p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** *


What led you to pick up this book?
The cover and the blurb.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
In 1787 a man hastily put the finishing touches to his beloved jug as he was about to be hunted down. Almost two centuries later, the same jug reappears. Its new owner, Susanna Paris, an antiques dealer, is fascinated by the pictures on the jug and wants to know their meaning, especially as she is confronted by a man by the name of Richard Oliver - a name on the jug. The jug portrays pictures of his ancestral home; Hall o' th' Wood. Gradually the sinister revelations about the inhabitants of Hall o' th' Wood's history emerge. The plot has plenty of twists and turns which gradually make it unbelievable but which are nevertheless well done.

What did you think of the characters?
Well delineated but I’m not sure that I ever really got into them. There was always something lacking. I regret I cannot define it better.

What did you think about the style?
I never felt involved in the story in the way that a good book should involve one.

What did you like most about the book?
The various twists in the plot.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
It drives me up the wall when people get their dates wrong. The heroine is twenty seven in 1967. She was eight when her parents died (i.e. about 1948 /9). She goes to live with her aunt in Mallorca. The aunt has the house altered immediately to accommodate her two nieces. Then later the author has the aunt arriving on Mallorca in the late 1950s. Such a trivial mistake but I find mistakes like that really annoying. Either leave dates out or get them right. Even if they get past the author surely a proof-reader should pick them up?

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Very attractive but another thing that annoyed me. The battered, if attractive, pot on the cover is nothing like the pot in the story.

Would I recommend it?
No.


PRISCILLA MASTERS was born in 1952 and lives in Shropshire. She works part-time as a practice nurse. Her writing career started in 1987 when she published Mr. Bateman's Garden, a children's book. After that she created Inspector Joanna Piercy and has now also written a number of Medical Mysteries.

Review – Clare MORRALL – “The Language of Others”

Publ: 2008 Sceptre
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978 0 340 89667 9
Genre: General Fiction; Psychology;
Pages: 376p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** ****


What led you to pick up this book?
I’m not sure. A combination of the blurb – about relationships – and the cover. And yet neither would normally have sold the book to me. I’m glad they did though.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
The world is a puzzling and frightening place for Jessica. As a child she only finds contentment in playing the piano and wandering alone in the empty spaces of her family’s decrepit stately home. The book tells the absorbing story of a woman who spends much of her life feeling that she is out of step with the real world, until she discovers why. Related with humour and compassion, it offers a fresh, illuminating insight into what it means to be 'normal'. The ending amazed me and actually affects how one views the whole book – but I can’t say more without giving too much away.

What did you think of the characters?
Well-delineated and the key is really not in how people relate to each other but in how they fail to relate to each other. A masterly study in human inter-action and in something that, frustratingly, I cannot tell you about without spoiling it.

What did you think about the style?
Very readable. Not testing in any way as it flows easily despite hopping from one time frame to another throughout the book.

What did you like most about the book?
The way in which one could identify with certain characteristics of the various people and also see one’s family and friends in them.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
No.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
It must have been effective (see my note above) though looking at it objectively it seems pretty ordinary.

Would I recommend it?
Very much so and there is a group of people for whom it should be essential reading. The only way to find out is to try it yourself.

Quotations:
Mary’s view of the world is through rose-coloured spectacles, because that’s how the world behaves with her. It’s more rosy in her presence.


CLARE MORRALL is a British author, born in Devon in 1952, who lives in Birmingham with her two daughters. A music teacher, she shot to fame when her first novel, ‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003. Published by the tiny, Birmingham based publisher, Tindal Street Press, after enduring years of rejections by publishers and agents for previous novels, Clare’s story was a publishing fairytale come true. ‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ has sold over 100,000 copies since first publication in February 2003 and foreign rights have been sold in nine countries including Germany, US and Italy.