Book Reviews From The Bookbag
Hello from The Bookbag, a book review site, featuring books from all the many walks of literary life - fiction, biography, crime, cookery and anything else that takes our fancy. At Bookbag Towers the bookbag sits at the side of the desk. It's the bag we take to the library and the bookshop. Sometimes it holds the latest releases, but at other times there'll be old favourites, books for the children, books for the home. They're sometimes our own books or books from the local library. They're often books sent to us by publishers and we promise to tell you exactly what we think about them. You might not want to read through a full review, so we'll give you a quick review which summarises what we felt about the book and tells you whether or not we think you should buy or borrow it. There are also lots of author interviews, and all sorts of top tens - all of which you can find on our features page. If you're stuck for something to read, check out the recommendations page.
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The First Book of Calamity Leek by Paula Lichtarowicz
I know I'm going to face a dilemma in reviewing this book, because, really, the best way to approach it is to come at it knowing nothing at all. And it's very hard to write about it without giving some important things away! Let's start with the basics, in that this is a story told by Calamity Leek, a child living together with her 'sisters', taken care of by 'aunty' and occasionally visited by 'mother'. Calamity is in charge of a book called the Appendix, in which everything the girls could possibly need to know about their lives is written. They live closeted in their own small farmyard area, protected from the outside world by 'the wall', their enemies being the 'injuns' and 'demonmales'. I know, that's a lot of words in quotes. Let me explain... Full review...
The Adoption by Anne Berry
It is a sad fact that only a few decades ago, the forced removal of an infant from its unmarried mother was widely considered the best option for all concerned. It is hard to imagine the terrible trauma suffered by these women when the authorities intervened and took away that tiny bundle, destined for a new life with new parents. Full review...
Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp by Helga Weiss
This seems to be quite a rare book, and I doubt if there will be too many further examples in the years to come. I don't mean to say that Holocaust testimonies are thin on the ground, for I've reviewed several on this site recently. I mean the fact that this is newly published and by an author who is still alive. There is something a little heart-warming to know that this lady was living and able to be interviewed by her translator in 2011, and presumably able to answer his editorial notes and queries. Of course, that fact does highlight the selling point of this book – the author was a very young girl when WWII started. Full review...
On Writing by A L Kennedy
How do you even begin to write a review of a book which expresses trenchant, no-holds-barred opinions on reviewers and the process of being reviewed? But the task is there, so there's nothing for it but to roll up your sleeves, gather your courage and mutter the word with which A L Kennedy regularly signs off from her blog: Onwards. Full review...
Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by Cathryn J Prince
There is no pun intended when I describe the ship Wilhelm Gustloff as stern. It just seems from looking at her hard and rigid lines that if you were to design a ship that the Nazi party would use as an ideological tool, to take their favoured workers on pleasure cruises around the Mediterranean, you would naturally end up with something that looked like her. However fate had it that within years she became a hospital ship, and it wasn't much longer after that that she was stationed in the northern Polish port now known as Gdynia, ready to help in a major evacuation of thousands of desperate, starving and fevered people fleeing the advancing Soviet army. All they wanted to do was to avoid the perilous snowy overland route to get a few miles along the coast, but they weren't to know that within hours of sailing the Wilhelm Gustloff would be torpedoed, and many thousands would perish in the near-frozen Baltic waters. Full review...
Will Gallows and the Rock Demon's Blood by Derek Keilty
The Great West Rock has never been the most peaceful place in which to live. There is a healthy attempt at multiculturalism, with humans, elves, dwarves and good trolls getting along OK, but for the bad trolls nobody likes. Unfortunately they're making themselves more and more known. Will Gallows is a little upset that he's not being allowed to learn any magic, but the unease and tetchiness throughout the land will hit his small family when someone makes off with a herd of their new calves. Even worse, who – or what – is behind a lot that is going on has a game-changing connection to his family's immediate past… Full review...
Finding Cherokee Brown by Siobhan Curham
Claire Weeks is timid, lonely, and characterised by a pronounced limp. On the other hand, Cherokee Brown is confident, cool, and unafraid to stand up for herself. On her fifteenth birthday, Claire discovers that her birth name was actually Cherokee Brown, and that her birth father, who had supposedly abandoned her for America, has been living just a tube journey away from her for over a decade. Meeting her father, Claire discovers a whole new side to her life that she couldn't have imagined. Spurred on by this rush of self-discovery Claire decides to embrace Cherokee and all that she stands for. Full review...
Mums Like Us by Laura Kemp
Stella Smith is fed up with the expectation that mums should be superwomen. She feels that there are certain women, who appear to have achieved perfection in terms of motherhood, that make all other mums feel inept and inferior. She feels that realism is best and that to strive to be 'good enough' is what most mums should aspire to. That is why she sets up the 'Mums Like Us' group that meets weekly in her messy kitchen and rejoices in slovenliness, messy clothes and overeating. Full review...
Like This, For Ever by S J Bolton
Back in January, Lacey Flint very nearly threw herself off a tower. Now it's February and she is on extended leave and talking to a counsellor. Whether she is trying to convince the psyche-doctor that she is fit for work or that she isn't, isn't entirely clear. Maybe it's not clear to Flint either. Full review...
Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd
While Peter Ackroyd has published some extremely long books over the last few years, he has also been responsible for some commendably concise volumes as well. This life of the Victorian novelist is one of the latter, the latest in his series of 'Brief Lives', which have also included Chaucer, the painter Turner and Edgar Allan Poe. Full review...
Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender
In this collection we're shown the reaction of ten men with terminal illness prognoses, a large man purchasing a very unusual pet and the case of a hard-done-by boyfriend. There are also delights like the shop that sells words crafted into what they read, a boy with keys instead of fingers and the beautifully touching tale of the pumpkin-headed mother who gives birth to an iron-headed baby. No, this isn't your average collection of predictable short stories; these are Aimee Bender short stories. Full review...
The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone by Will Storr
Killian Lone grows up in a home lacking in love and security. For these he relies on his elderly aunt Dorothy, an accomplished cook. Indeed his visits to Dorothy revolve around food as he absorbs all she can teach him, slowly inheriting her passion and skill along with her knowledge. This attachment to food then becomes his career choice, leading to the unfortunate discovery of a family secret that has remained hidden for a very long time. Why 'unfortunate'? There's a reason for its concealment… a very, very good reason. Full review...
Prince Charmless by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross
Prince Charmless was probably born complaining and every day there is something new to complain about. Amongst his complaints are that he wants to be a panda rather than a prince; he wants to live in a big, gold palace instead of a silly, silver, little one; and he wants to get up in the middle of the night rather than in the morning. If he can find something to complain about, he will, and Prince Charmless does not worry about upsetting people when he does complain. Unsurprisingly, the palace staff has had enough and all decide to leave. Full review...
Perception by Kim Harrington
After solving a murder over the summer, Clarity 'Clare' Fern finds herself the centre of attention at school. Mostly it's annoying, but harmless - popular girls wanting her to use her unique gift for show and entertainment - but someone is sending her increasingly creepy messages, and Clare keeps getting the feeling she's being followed. Full review...
The First Crusade: The Call from the East by Peter Frankopan
At the now famous Council of Clermont in November 1095, Pope Urban II responded to calls of distress from the eastern Byzantine Empire by issuing the dramatic call to arms that sparked the First Crusade. But there are at least two sides to every story, especially in history. Western histories of the Crusades have concentrated on that Council and the journeys of Crusaders across Europe: Peter Frankopan's 'The Call from the East' instead draws attention to Emperor Alexios I Komnenus and the plight of his Byzantine Empire. Full review...
Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue
A good historian will take a single important fact and make good use of it to expound his general thesis. De Bellaigue demonstrates this masterfully when he states, 'Between 1876 and 1915 a quarter of the world changed ownership, with a half a dozen European states taking the lion’s share.' Persia, however, during this time was judged to be too poor to be worth occupying. It had, for instance, only a few miles of railway track. Secondly, Russia and Britain both had schemes for control but their mutual animosity gave the Persians room for manoeuvre. The latter were skilled at playing each off against the other and obtaining concessions. However, the conflict sharpened over the control of a critical resource, oil. This was controlled upon the outbreak of the First World War by the major share held in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later to become BP, held by the British. It was Muhammad Mossadegh, one of the first liberals of the Middle East was determined that this resource beneath his native land had to belong to his own people. Full review...
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
In London, in July 1976 it hadn't rained for months. Gardens - if you could call them that any longer - were thick with aphids and what water there was, which was to be consumed or used for washing, came from a standpipe. Robert Riordan told his wife, Gretta, that he was going round the corner to buy a newspaper. This was what he did every morning, but this time he didn't come back. The police weren't interested as the closer they looked the more it was obvious that there was an intention to disappear. Gretta turned to her three adult children for help. But how much help would they - could they - be? Full review...
Byron Easy by Jude Cook
Byron Easy is a 30-year-old poet and product of a failed marriage who, in turn, has a failed marriage of his own. He works in a shop whilst waiting to be discovered as a poet. How did his depression-tinted life reach this point? Once there was hope, love and many good times and, as he sits on a train travelling to his mother's for Christmas with a bag full of money, he reflects and ponders while trying to escape something more tangible and dangerous than the past. Full review...
The Polka Dot Girl by Darragh McManus
Police Detective Eugenie Auf der Maur is called in to investigate the murder of Madeleine Greenhill the daughter of the wealthy socialite Misericordiae. The more she looks into it, the less it seems an open and shut case. In fact it opens a Pandora's Box that shakes Hera City to its core, not to mention its ability to agitate Eugenie's core a little too. The fact is that somebody wants her dead. Full review...
The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris
When did the Norman conquest of England start and end? This generous panoramic history takes a wide sweep of almost the whole of the eleventh century in England, although as the title indicates, the focal point is that pivotal date of 1066. Morris begins his narrative at around the year 1000, a time when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were under threat from the Viking invasions from Alfred and Ethelred the Unready. Having long been vulnerable to raids from Scandinavia, England then had to contend with the same from France. The power struggles that followed the illness and death of the childless Edward the Confessor (who had nominated William of Normandy as his preferred successor in 1051), the apparent seizure of the English throne by Harold Godwinson who then had himself crowned with remarkable haste, the invasion led by Harold’s brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada of Norway and the death of both the latter at Stamford Bridge, are dealt with in painstaking detail. Full review...
The Grim Company by Luke Scull
The gods are dead. The Magelords murdered them and hurled their bodies from heaven and are also slowly dominating the world below. Dorminia is already in their iron grasp, policed by the feared Crimson Watch and the terrorising Augmentors. It's not even safe to think as Mind Hawks monitor and punish with pain and suffering. However there is a resistance, albeit fragmented and comparatively impotent but the situation is worsening so they must make a stand or lose everything (and everyone) they love. Is the evil magic stronger than the heroes' own resources? They're dying to find out. Full review...
Drowning Instinct by Ilsa J Bick
Jenna is 16 years old, and fresh out of a psychiatric hospital when her parents enrol her at a new high school in the wilds of Wisconsin. Being the new kid at school adds to an already iffy situation (parents who ignore her angst in favour of their own; a brother who enlisted to get away from them) and she’s not really looking forward to term starting. But then she meets someone, someone special who is kind to her, pays attention to her, looks out for her. Someone she can trust. Mr Anderson is a Chemistry teacher and athletics coach, but he’s more than that to Jenna. Against the rules, and against the odds, he becomes her ally, and so much more. Full review...
The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Mara knows that the things that have been haunting her for the past year are not necessarily all in her head. The problem is persuading everyone else of that. When Mara's parents don't believe that she saw Jude - Jude who died in the building collapse that started all of Mara's problems - alive and well, Mara realises that anything she says is just going to convince them she's more crazy. She tries to pretend that she knows she has problems and she's trying to get better, but that's made difficult when Jude keeps trying to scare her - leaving dead cats in the garden, messages written in blood. Full review...
Geek Girl by Holly Smale
Harriet Manners is clever, works hard, and retains lots of information. She knows more facts than just about anyone else at her school. She just doesn't know why barely anyone seems to like her... Full review...
The White Shadow by Andrea Eames
As a general principle I am a little tired of books that start at the end. I want to argue for a return to good old fashioned narrative where stories start at the beginning, go on until the end, and then stop. Full review...
The Death of Lyndon Wilder and the Consequences Thereof by E A Dineley
Anna Arbuthnot moves to Ridley Hall as governess for Lord and Lady Charles Wilder's granddaughter, Lottie. Lottie's mother died years before and her father Lyndon has just been killed in the Napoleonic Wars. Lady Charles has all but beatified Lyndon as no one could ever be as wonderful, caring or heroic. In fact she only tolerates Lottie because of her family likeness but things are about to change. Lyndon's younger brother, Thomas, returns from the war accompanied by the secrets that stalk him and intentions that will shake Ridley Hall. Full review...
