Derby

Book Reviews/Ratings

The Doll Factory Elizabeth Macneal, 3.2 out of 5

The Birds and other stories Daphne Du Maurier, 4.3 out of 5

Hungry Grace Dent, 2.9 out of 5

East of Eden John Steinbeck, 5 out of 5

Shuggie Bain Douglas Stuart, 3.8 out of 5

American Dirt Jeanine Cummings, 3.8 out of 5

The Secret of Chimneys Agatha Christie, 3 out of 5

Olive, Again Elizabeth Strout, 4.6 out of 5

All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr, 4.6 out of 5

My Policeman Bethan Roberts, 4.5 out of 5

Silverview John leCarre, 3.6 out of 5

White Teeth Zadie Smith, 3.3 out of 5

Bookshop on the Shore Jenny Colgan, in error no scores recorded

Mort Terry Pratchett, 4 out of 5

Still Life Sarah Winman, 4.4 out of 5

The Year Of the Runaways Sunjeev Sahota, 3.4 out of 5

Small Pleasures Clare Chambers, 3.8 out of 5

Animal Farm George Orwell, 4.2 out of 5

Star of the Sea Joseph O'Connor, 4.25 out of 5

Ladder of Years Anne Tyler, 3.5 out of 5

Platform Seven Louise Doughty, 3.3 out of 5

The Lost Man Jane Harper, 3.8 out of 5

Unless Carol Shields, 2.7 out of 5

How Many Miles to Babylon Jennifer Johnston, 4.5 out of 5

Home Fire Kamila Shamsie, 3.7 out of 5

The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman, 2.4 out of 5

Cranford Elizabeth Gaskell, 3.5 out of 5

The Salt Path Raynor Winn, 3.7 out of 5

I am the Messenger Markus Zusak, 3.4 out of 5

Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Sue Townsend, 2.8 out of 5

Her Fearful Symmetry Audrey Niffenegger, 2.3 out of 5

Place of Execution Val McDermid, 2.8 out of 5

The Comfort of Others Kay Langdale, 3.8 out of 5

Old Baggage Lissa Evans, 4.1 out of 5

Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford, 2.9 out of 5

The Woman at the Window, 3.5 out of 5

The Hike, Don Shaw, 3.5 out of 5

Nora Webster, Colm Toibin, 3.5 out of 5

Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout, 4 out of 5

The Tin Man, Sarah Winman, 3.2 out of 5

The Sealwomoan's Gift, Sally Magnusson, 3.2 out 5

The Red Tent, Anne Diamant, 3.5 out of 5

The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry, 4.2 out of 5.

Good omens, Neil Gaman & Terry Pratchett, 3.0 out of 5

A manual for cleaning women, Lucia Berlin, 3.0 out of 5

The Conductor, Sarah Quigley, 4.2 out of 5

Betrayal, Helen Dunmore, 4.7 out of 5

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbon, 3.8 out of 5

The Bottle Factory Outing, Beryl Bainbridge, 2.9 out of 5

The Slaves of Solitude, Patrick Hamilton, 3.2 out of 5

Enduring Love, Ian McEwan, 2.5 out of 5

He said, she said, Erin Kelly, 3.5 out of 5

A gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles, 5 out of 5

Odd Girl Out, Laura James, 4.5 out of 5

Northern Lights, Philip Pullman, 3.5 out of 5

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, 5 out of 5

Ordinary Thunderstorms, William Boyd, 3.1 out of 5

Mr. Norris Changes Trains, Christopher Isherwood, 3.1 out of 5

The Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys, 3.4 out of 5

The Fall, Simon Mawer, 4 out of 5

The siege, Helen Dunmore, 5 out ot 5

The Sunday Philosophy Club, Andrew McCall Smith, 3.2 out of 5

Surely you are joking, Mr Feynman, Richard Feynman, 3.5 out of 5

The heart is a lonely hunter, Carson McCullers, 4.4 out of 5.

Three Cups Of Tea, Greg Mortenson, 2.6 out of 5

Never let me go, Kazuo Ishiguro, 4 out of 5.

The light between the oceans, RD Steadman, 4.2 out of 5

Things fall apart, Chinua Achebe, 4.1 out of 5

Solar, Ian McEwan, 3.5 out of 5

All the light we cannot see, Anthony Doerr, 4.7 out of 5.

The Lost Daughter, Elena Ferrante, 3.1 out of 5

By the Grand Central Station I sat down and wept, Elizabeth Smart, 3.4 out of 5

The Last Runaway, Tracey Chevalier, 4.4 out of 5.

Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow, 2.4 out of 5.

Lies of Silence, Brian Moore, 4.7 out of 5.

When Michael Dillon is ordered by the IRA to park his car in the carpark of a Belfast hotel, he is faced with a moral choice which leaves him absolutely nowhere to turn. He knows that he is planting a bomb that would kill and maim dozens of people. But he also knows that if he doesn't, his wife will be killed. The book takes us through what happens next.
We all found the book gripping, and the scenes well written. The characters were not particularly engaging, but felt believable. It gave an very good insight into how things were in Belfast during the Troubles, and how, in spite of the tension, most people just wanted to get with their lives.

Home, Marilynne Robinson, 4.3 out of 5.

Jack, prodigal son of the Boughton family, gone twenty years - has come home to a small town in Iowa in the 1950s, looking for refuge and to try to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. His sister Glory has also returned to Gilead, fleeing her own mistakes, to care for their dying father. Brilliant, loveable, wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with his father and his father's old friend John Ames.

We all found the book engaging. Some people were deeply moved by it, and were haunted afterwards by it. The characters resonated with us and we could understood how they were and what they did. The background to the current states of the various protagonists was gradually unfolded as the book went on. Jack was an interesting character, but irritated most of us – he was seen as selfish and unlikeable. Glory, on the other hand, was good, kind and virtuous. The evolving relationship between Glory and Jack was beautifully developed. The two ministers, the father and John Ames were not viewed favourably by us. Both were bigoted by their religious views, the father more so, as it overrode his deep desire to make peace with his wayward son. The book gave an impression of how stifling the atmosphere would have been in small-town USA at this time.

The book did not have many laughs but was gripping and thought-provoking.

The Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller, 3.3 out of 5.

This book tells the story of a a brief affair and its aftermath. Francesca is an Italian woman, living in Iowa in the 1950s and married to an American farmer with two teenage children. Robert visits the area on an assignment from the National Geographic Magazine to photograph the bridges of Madison County.

It elicited very different opinions from different members of the group. One member thought it was beyond romance and transcended any character in it. Someone else thought the romance was wonderful. Another member thought it was clumsy, banal and embarrassing. Of Francesca, one said she was very believable and it was easy to understand how she got to where she was. Someone else said she was a pain. Robert was considered to a well drawn character, though someone else felt there was something missing in all the characters. It was felt by some to be moving and atmospheric, while someone else found it just annoying.

This wide divergence of opinion is reflected in other reviews.

“This story is beautiful, one of my favourites.”

“Waller's attempt at writing about inspiring passion only succeed in pointing out what good books are all about, by comparison to a very bad one”

“Hauntingly beautiful”

“From beginning to end, this book set my teeth on edge”

Brooklyn, Colm Toibin, 4.3 out of 5

The book is set in Ireland and in Brooklyn in the early 1950s, when a young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself. Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America -- to live and work in a Brooklyn neighbourhood -- she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store, and when she least expects it, finds love. But just as she begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.

All but one of us found the book engaging, finding that the author re-created the feeling of the era subtly and in a way that brought you back in time. The story kept us guessing, particularly in the later part of the book where it was not clear how Eilis would deal with the tough choice she had to make. There were a range of interesting and engaging characters, from Eilis herself to her intriguiging sister Rose and the malicious and snobby Miss Kelly who ran the upmarket shop in the Irish village, We felt that the writer had got into the mind of a maturing young woman convincingly.

Our dissenting member found the book too light, with neither the characters or the background well developed, and thought the book would sit well in a Mills and Boon jacket.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, 3 out of 5

In 1945, Barcelona slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written.

Most of us found the book quite gripping, at least at times, but it was generally felt that it was too long, too verbose, with too many characters who were very hard to keep track of. There was a disappointing lack of any real information about the civil war or its aftermath, nor of what it was like to live under Franco’s regime. W e also felt that the ending was too contrived.

Nonetheless, there were some interesting people and relationships, for instance that between Daniel and Fermio, and there were both humorous and scary (bordering on the Gothic) sections and you did want to keep going to find out jusr what had been going on.

This is a book for someone with plenty of time on their hands, not to be dipped into, and not good on an ereader.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, 4.5 out of 5

The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas, 3.8 out of 5

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, 4.3 out of 5

Waterland by Graham Swift, 3.6 out of 5

Heartbreak Hotel by Deborah Moggach, 3.8 out of 5

An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden, 3.9 out of 5

Time of Hope by CP Snow, 4 out of 5

Flight behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver, 3.6 out of 5.

The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez, 3.4 out of 5.

Disgrace by JM Coetzee, 4 out of 5.

The Hundred Year Old man... by Jonas Johansson, 2.9 out of 5.

Any Human Heart by William Boyd, 3 out of 5.

The Glass Room by Simon Mauer, 4.2 out of 5.

The Other side of You by Salley Vickers 4.5 out of 5

This is a book that weaves together strands of art, literature and psychology to frame a powerful meditation on love and the human condition. The title of the book is taken from T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land ‘Who is the third who walks always beside you?.. But who is that on the other side of you?’ In turn this is a reference to the story in St Luke of Christ’s journey to Emmaus during which his two disciples fail to recognise him and to Caravaggio’s painting of The Supper at Emmaus. The group found that this theme of ‘the other side’ was sustained throughout the novel.

The Other Side of You references Salley Vickers’ training as a psychotherapist in that the book focuses upon a psychiatrist David McBride, who has as his patient Elizabeth Criuckshank. Over a period of several hours Elizabeth tells her story. Elizabeth had a love affair with a man with whom she lost touch, subsequently met and lost again. Elizabeth’s experiences of loss, regret and hopelessness led to her suicide attempt. It is Elizabeth’s story that is central to the book and one which moves between London and Rome. However as David encourages Elizabeth to talk so it is apparent that for 40 years David has had the burden of having seen his brother die in a traffic accident and carries the guilt of the survivor. As Elizabeth’s story unfolded so other characters peopled the book- Elizabeth’s lover (Thomas an art historian), David’s patients, Gus Galen (David’s mentor). Neil (Elizabeth’s husband), Olivia (wife of Thomas).

The book most certainly provided a catalyst for discussion - the endurance of great art, the personality of some painters, the industrial revolution, living with choices and the consequence of one’s actions. The Wednesday group reflected on the romanticizing of love in terms of the individual fulfillment versus ‘duty’ and the difference between lust, love and companionship. The causes of and ramifications of suicide were touched upon, one proposition being that some would view that taking of one’s life was better than a living torment, (This was put forward for discussion rather than as a belief).

The group started to rate the characters, the more lively divergence of opinion centered on Thomas’ role and his view and his dominance / love of Elizabeth.
Two group members observed that they felt the first few chapters of the book were slow to capture their interest, but were caught as the story developed.
The group agreed that this thought provoking book was beautifully written; one member felt that The Other side of You was one of the best books she’d ever read. We rated the book as scoring

Jalna by Mazo de la Roche, 4.3 out of 5.

This is one of a series of 16 novels about the Whiteoak family who live in the large manor house called Jalna, which is located near Ontario. The novels cover a time-span from 1854 to 1954, and this particular one describes events in the household in the late 1920s. The novels were not produced in chronological order and this one, the first to be written, was published in 1927.

Adeline Whiteoak is 99. She is widowed and all her living children and grandchildren live with her at Jalna, apart from her daughter Augusta who lives in England and has a title, much to her mother’s annoyance. Her eldest grandson, Renny owns Jalna, and its adjoining farm which he manages and runs, and which supports the rest of the family.

Grandmother Whiteoak rules the family, and tries to keep them under control using a “moderate fortune” which she inherited from a great-aunt – she regularly changes her will, and doesn’t let them know who is the latest beneficiary. The story is primarily concerned with the love lives and marriages of Piers and Eden, how the family treat the new brides, and the brides respond to the family at Jalna but the other characters are also clearly drawn.

Everyone found both the story and the characters engaging and many of us felt we would go on to read more books from the series. The novel ends on a note of suspense which would not be out of place in a modern soap opera.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, 4.5 out of 5

Claudia Hamilton, born in 1910 and now aged 76, is dying in hospital. She reminisces in her head about her life, her family, relationships and loves, her experiences as a war correspondent and a popular historian. The story moves backwards and forwards in time; it is sometimes narrated in the first person, and other times in the third.

One of the main themes of the book was how history can never be objective and is composed of a kaleidoscope of memories (which is how this novel is structured).

There is a vivid account of the desert war in WWII, primarily concerned with its effect on the participants.

We all agreed that Claudia was very egoistical, indifferent to the feelings of other people, and not likeable as a person, but most people found her very interesting and would like to meet her. Many of her relationships – with her mother, her brother Gordon, her lover Jasper, and her daughter Lisa could be labelled as dysfunctional. She showed little affection or attachment to her daughter, who was handed over to grandparents ot bring up. Claudia apologised to Lisa in her dying days for being a cold and distant mother.

There were some humorous passages in the book, though these mainly involved Claudia’s willingness to over-ride other people’s feelings.

Most people found to book interesting and gripping – one of us described it as “a beautifully written story”.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan, 4 out of 5

In the early ‘70s, a young woman called Serena is recruited into MI5. Women are not expected to rise up in the ranks at the time, and she is initially given mundane tasks to do. She is then given the bigger task of recruiting Tom, a young up-and-coming author, into a programme which is financing authors of a right wing bent to counter Communist propaganda. We follow her progress, as well her interactions with colleagues, friends and family, and Tom, her author. The plot is very complicated with, perhaps not surprisingly, an unexpected twist at the end of the story. A major theme of the book was deception.

There was some disagreement among the group as to whether the structure of the story or the characters were the more important. Nonetheless, most of us found Serena engaging, though she appeared to be rather naive. One person commented that her sexuality was more like that of a man, perhaps indicating the author’s inability to depict female sexuality realistically.

There were stories by Tom within the story,– these were quite bizarre, and may have come from McEwan’s own past writings. Most of us found these quite entertaining in themselves. This tendency among the more “literary” authors to use their writing to discourse about the nature of writing is not uncommon, and might be seen as a bit pretentious. Tom remarks to Serena that you cannot have a story without tricks and this is indeed self-referential as far as this novel is concerned.

There were humorous patches, though none of us could summon these from memory. The book evoked the spirit of the ‘70s well, with strikes, power cuts, the IRA, Edward Heath and so. The accounts of the minutae of Serena’s day-to-day life added veracity to the story.

Everyone agreed that the book was a “page-turner” though some were not sure why this was.