Book Reviews From The Bookbag
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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Skeletons by Jane Fallon
Jen doesn’t have the happiest of families, so she’s immediately drawn to her husband Jason’s. Luckily they welcome her with open arms and she’s soon like a fourth child to Charles and Amelia. So when she discovers a secret that could tear lives apart, it’s as devastating to her as if it were her own parents. She has a choice to make: share the burden and ruin relationships in the process, or keep it to herself and shoulder it all alone. Full review...
Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the War by Michael Williams
Soon after the end of the First World War, the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with the heyday of the ‘Big Four’ companies, the LNER (London and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railways. By 1939 they were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly of land-based transport to lorries, buses and coaches. Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitable, they played a vital part in the preparation to keep the country moving, keeping industry and the war effort supplied, helping in the evacuation of Dunkirk, or as their press office put it in a pamphlet of 1943, 'tackling the biggest job in transport history'. Full review...
Sesame Seade Mysteries 1: Sleuth on Skates by Clementine Beauvais and Sarah Horne
Eleven-year-old Sesame Seade has been waiting all her life to be a super sleuth, so when a student journalist disappears and no-one seems all that bothered, she decides to solve the case herself. Can she track down the vanished girl before her parents work out what's going on? Full review...
Never Ending by Martyn Bedford
Sent to a clinic which specialises in using unconventional methods to help people get over grief, Shiv is forced to confront the death of her beloved younger brother Declan. Like everyone else in the clinic, she’s convinced that she caused the death herself. Will she finally find the peace that her parents are seeking for her, even if she doesn't think she deserves it herself? Full review...
The Bluffer's Guide to Etiquette (Bluffer's Guides) by William Hanson
If you ask people what they fear most in any social situation most will tell you that it's not knowing how to behave. They'll be fine about the basics, but it's those little niceties - how to introduce yourself, what to ask for as an aperitif, how to address someone, for instance which can suddenly reveal you as a parvenu. William Hanson gives us a quick trip through the essentials in a book which is very readable and - in places - hilariously funny. Full review...
A Little Piece of England: A tale of self-sufficiency by John Jackson
Here at Bookbag we're great fans of John Jackson. We loved his Tales for Great Grandchildren and Brahma Dreaming: Legends from Hindu Mythology so it was something of a treat to meet the author on his own ground, so to speak. Originally published as A Bucket of Nuts and a Herring Net: The Birth of a Spare-Time Farm this is actually Jackson's first book and thirty-five years later we're delighted that it's been republished in hardback complete with the original black-and-white illustrations by Val Biro. Full review...
Going Over by Beth Kephart
Ada is someone whom many of the readers of this book would aspire to be – only fifteen but working at a Kindergarten, changing her appearance at whim with fake beauty spots and punky hair-dye, spending far too many midnight hours creating politicised graffiti. She also lives in one of the most libertarian and Bohemian areas of Berlin. Or, I should say, West Berlin – for this is the early 1980s and the Wall is still standing. And unfortunately for her the love of her life is Stefan, a friend since toddler-age due to their grandmothers being best friends, and she can only see him three or four times a year as he lives in Communist East Berlin. Can her patience with what she sees as his reluctance to risk his life to escape last long enough? Full review...
The French Promise by Fiona McIntosh
A few years on from The Lavender Keeper Luc the former resistance fighter and Lisette the former British spy have survived the ravages of war and start a new life together in England with their little boy Harry. However Luc can't settle, missing the lavender farming that's in his blood. This is remedied when the freshly transplanted family move again, this time to Tasmania. Nonetheless they still have a lot to learn; the biggest lessons being that no one can outrun the past and that fate isn't always kind. Full review...
Island on Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned eighteenth-century Europe dark by Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe
I'm fascinated by volcanoes, by their uncontrollability and potential to disrupt way beyond their immediate environment and for years to come, but I've always struggled to find books which were accessible to someone without specialist knowledge - or at least more behind them than my very basic qualifications. Like many people my attention was drawn to Iceland when Eyjafjallajokull erupted in the spring of 2010, not because of the plight of the Icelanders and their livestock, but because of the disruption it caused over much of Europe, I'm afraid. I began to look at other volcanoes in Iceland - particularly Katla, reputed historically to erupt in conjunction with Eyjafjallajokull. It's likely that a full-scale eruption of Katla would cause even more disruption than its little sister - and then I started to look back at other eruptions in Iceland. The one which few people seem to know about is Laki - which might have been one of the triggers of the French Revolution. Full review...
A Piggy Pickle (Pip Street) by Jo Simmons
Problems are mounting for the people of Pip Street. Every evening the power goes out, so the whole street is plunged into darkness – not good for Bobby who's still young enough to be scared of the dark. Nor is it good news for the mysteriously popular new electrical shop at the end of the road – could all the gadgets bought at Gizmo World be the cause? Well, given the cover artwork and title of this adventure, I think the answer is a roundly firm NO, but there's really no harm in finding out what the action does involve. Full review...
Cowgirl by G R Gemin
Gemma has grown up on a housing estate in South Wales where muggings and burglaries are commonplace, her dad is in prison, her mum has given up hope for the future and Gemma argues with her younger brother. She has given up on finding happiness and escapes from her daily routine by riding her bike into the nearby countryside. On one of these trips she bumps into the notorious Cowgirl and after their initial hostilities have thawed an unlikely friendship blossoms and together the girls, with the help of a dozen cows, discover that kindness, cooperation and perseverance can restore hope to a broken community. Full review...
Off to the Park! by Stephen Cheetham
It's a nice day and we're off to the park. Shoes on first - tie the laces - and then we're off down the street. We go over the road by the crossing (press the button, please) and open the gate into the park. It's a metal gate and we can feel the cold of the metal and hear the squeak as the gate opens and we're on to the gravel path. It's a long, winding path and we can hear the stones scrunch. But there's plenty to play with here, from kicking a ball around to going on the swings and climbing the steps so that we can come down the slide. There's even a tyre to swing on - and when we've played for ages there's sure to be an ice cream to enjoy. Full review...
The Boy with the Porcelain Blade by Den Patrick
Lucien has reached his 18th birthday and final testing. This is the important one for Lucien is Orfano and as such lives for the day when he passes and can be adopted by one of the four houses. He hopes for the Fonteini, the house of fighters and with it will come an understanding of all the mysteries of Landfall. However there are some mysteries that are secrets even from the Orfani and for a very good reason. Full review...
A Lovely Way to Burn (Plague Times Trilogy 1) by Louise Welsh
The summer of the great heat wave is also the summer of death. Stevie thought nothing of the three establishment pillars turned snipers; the news just didn't register. Then the illness came: plague-like symptoms sweeping across the world. When Stevie's boyfriend dies it's easy to put it down to the pandemic but Stevie has a hunch and she won't stop till she's followed it, no matter what happens or who tries to stop her. Full review...
Four Sisters:The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport
A few years ago, Helen Rappaport wrote and published Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, a painstaking, chilling account of the final days and death of the last Tsar of Russia and his family. To a certain extent this biography is a prequel to that volume, an account of the short lives of OTMA, as they referred to themselves – the Tsar’s daughters Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia. Full review...
Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
Polly is disconsolate. She thought she had it all, the perfect yuppie lifestyle in Plymouth. She is 32 and has worked tirelessly marketing and managing her artist boyfriend’s graphic design consultancy. Now, with the sudden economic downturn and the competitive nature of new technologies, the bank has foreclosed. Chris just wants to shut out the world and slink back to his mother's, leaving Polly bereft, homeless and confused as she struggles to start over again away from the rat race. Faced with the prospect of grungy student flat shares, she looks further afield for new affordable accommodation and finds a neglected tidal island in Cornwall connected by a causeway to the mainland. In the harbour, there is a dirty, derelict building for rent. The upstairs loft is over a disused bakery. Full review...
The Mad Sculptor by Harold Schechter
The modern proliferation of TV channels has not filled our screens with copious amounts of quality television that we can't find time to watch, but instead has given us countless channels we cannot be bothered to see. Some of these channels are packed to the gills with True Crime Documentaries that go into lurid detail about murders, kidnappings and other unsavoury business. ‘The Mad Sculptor’ by Harold Schechter is a True Crime novel, but is it a well-researched slice of nonfiction, or another avenue to glorify crime for those fans of TV Crime? Full review...
Water Music by Margie Orford
Cassie is out riding on a bridle path hardly used in the height of summer, totally deserted in winter. Her horse takes a tumble, and she goes with it, and stumbles into a tiny, plastic-wrapped child, maybe three-years old, and painfully thin, foot-soles like marble and skin blue with cold. Full review...
Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Every family has its stories, the anecdotes passed down the generations that help to explain who we think we are. Roberta is sure that she knows all there is to know about her family until she comes across a letter written to her grandmother in 1941. The contents cast doubt on all her assumptions about the past. Full review...
Burqas, Baseball, and Apple Pie: Being Muslim in America by Ranya Tabari Idliby
I can’t imagine it’s that easy to be a Muslim in most areas of the USA. Even if you don’t ‘look like’ a Muslim, even if you don’t drop to your knees in the direction of Mecca 5 times a day, even if you give your kids arguably Jewish names. And being openly Muslim cannot have got any easier in the wake of 9/11. This book examines one Muslim-American family’s life and the constant challenges they face from friends, neighbours and teachers. Full review...
A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick
One day towards the end of World War Two, Charles Jackson is dragged to a museum of antiquities just outside a newly liberated Paris by his commanding officer during their downtime. While the other looks at the unusual ancient artefacts, Jackson finds something much more horrific – a man in a wartime bunker in the grounds, squatting over a female figure, blood on his lips that could only have come from her neckline. Years later, Jackson returns to Paris for reasons to do with his medical career, and finds the same man in the company of someone who, were he only aware of the fact, is to become the first and possibly only love of his life. But that's not the only time the paths of Jackson and the mysterious male are destined to cross – the prologue was set in the late 1960s… Full review...
Curses and Smoke by Vicky Alvear Shecter
Medical slave Tag is desperate to win his freedom by fighting in the arena instead of just treating the gladiators he longs to beat. Lucia, his owner's daughter and his childhood friend, wants to be with him instead of the rich man she doesn't love but is betrothed to. When Quintus, an arrogant younger son of a nobleman, joins the gladiatorial school to train - and to infuriate his father - we see the beginning of a love triangle which could have devastating consequences. But the year is 79 AD, the place is Pompeii, and there's something even worse on its way... Full review...
The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon: The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Although the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency belongs to Mma Ramotswe, I often feel that Grace Makutsi really shares equally in these stories and, in this particular episode, she has reached a truly lovely high point in her life. We saw her arrive to work for Mma Ramotswe, initially standing upon the laurels of her unheard-of 97% in her secretarial exams, and throughout the series she has developed, both as a character and as a person. She grew her role from secretary to associate detective (with great determination at times!), she bought new shoes and sometimes conversed with them, and then we rejoiced with her when she married Phuti and began to build a home with him. This time around Mma Makutsi is pregnant, but the question on everyone's mind is will she ever speak to Mma Ramotswe about the baby before it arrives? Full review...
Mr Monkey and the Birthday Party (Early Reader) by Linda Chapman and Sam Hearn
What is a young girl to do? Anya wants to go with the rest of her primary school class to a swimming party, but she's worried of being laughed at for staying at toddlers' depth, for she is not a confident swimmer. As luck would have it, she has been picked to take home the class 'pet', the cuddly toy called Mr Monkey, for the week, and just as luck would have it, he's actually a secretly magical being. But could even he get Anya out of her jam and make a Cinderella moment come true? Full review...
Chocolate Porridge (Early Reader) by Margaret Mahy and Terry Milne
Young Timothy has been drummed out of his mother's kitchen by her and his sisters, so he cannot join in with their baking. Instead he goes to the garden and devises chocolate porridge – a lot of mud, plus some other ingredients. But only when he's happy with his craft does he begin to realise that not even calling mud chocolate porridge makes it edible. Oh what is a boy to do? Full review...
Scavenger 1: Zoid by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
Somewhere out in the further reaches of the galaxy is a spherical construction, speeding the last few surviving Earth humans on their way to a different, new home, a giant biosphere acting as the one remaining Ark for what's left of humankind. And its purpose is even more important as, somewhen, somewhere and somehow, during its flight, the robot inhabitants – the cleaners, butlers, farmers and mechanics – rebelled. Since then they have evolved themselves, and ignored all their original programming, and are intent on wiping out humans instead. We, of course, are fighting back, but when the tiny community of little more than a hundred that serves as the whole world for the young worker known as York gets wiped out, he gets the clearest picture yet of how difficult that battle will be… Full review...
Poppet by Mo Hayder
DI Jack Caffrey has been around for a while now, I just haven't previously stumbled into his deep dark world. This is the sixth in the series of books featuring the plain clothed Detective Inspector of Bristol's Major Crime Investigation Team, but you don't need to have read any of the others to enjoy - if enjoy is the right word - this (not quite the) latest offering. Full review...
The Beggar and the Hare by Tuomas Kyro
Our hero, Vatanescu, is a fish out of water. He's a father without his family, a man without a home, a possibility without a chance. He's being transported across Europe by a criminal people-smuggler, who is also packing Vatanescu's sister off to the cosmetic surgeon then the prostitute trade. Our hero is destined to sit in discomfort, sleet and in hateful gazes of others as a beggar on the streets of Helsinki. But at the same time impossibilities are amassing – one of which splits Vatanescu from his minder/mentor, and leaves him on the run with a fistful of useless currency. A further impossibility gifts him a friendly, warm companion – a rabbit being chased by local youths jumps into the sanctuary of his arms, and becomes a welcome source of focus. From then on many more jumps will be made from one impossibility to another, as the life of this illegal immigrant begins to resonate across his adopted homeland… Full review...
The Holy Fox: The Life of Lord Halifax by Andrew Roberts
Of all the British nearly-Prime Ministers Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, must be unique. He was the one who came closest to assuming the mantle only to find the job denied him, and had he done so, on him Britain’s destiny would have depended. For he was the man whom several confidently expected, and many wanted, to take over after the resignation of Neville Chamberlain during the dark days of May 1940. Full review...
The Rental Heart and other Fairytales by Kirsty Logan
To start with, are these stories strictly fairytales? On the evidence of this collection, it is at times a distinction that seems open to debate, a category that lies waiting for definition. But at the same time, such is the genre-switching (and at times gender-switching), that it is a subtitle that serves better than most. The title story examines a life's romantic history via a twist on the idea that we give our heart away to every lover – what do we have when they are gone and a new one takes their place? Elsewhere, a landed lady takes advantage of her servant, and another cultured madam hires a clockwork companion to shrug off the suitors, with obvious, narratively logical results. A medical worker and her pregnant partner share a caravan together, all the while knowing a different circumstance might be closer than first thought. We have the beginnings of love lives, the end of hatred, and the end of the world in these pages. Full review...
Little Egypt by Lesley Glaister
Twins Isis and Osiris are now in their 90s, living together in Little Egypt, the English manor house where they were born and brought up. Their names are a clue to their parents' near fetish for everything Egyptian. In fact this near fetish leads their parents to Egypt itself, in search of a big discovery back in the 1920s, demonstrating more enthusiasm than savvy. Having left the twins in the care of the housekeeper, they never return. Isis and Osiris are now bound to the house, tied not by love or memories but dark secrets that won't let go. Full review...
Barbapapas New House by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor
At the end of the last Barbapapa book, our pink protagonist and his lovely wife were blessed with the addition of seven new shape-shifting Barbababies. A house that was already cramped for a couple was literally bursting at the seams as the family of nine squeezed and squashed themselves into every available crevice. Something had to give; the walls collapsed and out spilled the unfortunate family. Full review...
