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 Godless Boys by Naomi Wood
Britain. 1986.
The country became a theocracy during the 1950s and since then outbreaks of secular terrorism have been dealt with by exile. The atheists have been sent to the Island where they can burn churches as they please. Aside from a weekly boat bringing donated supplies, the exiled must shift as best they can on a remote snippet of land in the North Sea. Full review...
Running the Show: Governors of the British Empire 1857-1912 by Stephanie Williams
For some, the glory days of the British Empire were the closing years of the Victorian era and the 19th century. Government ministers in London, and doubtless Queen Victoria herself, would glance at a map of the world and bask in reflected glory at the generous expanses of land coloured red, 'the empire where the sun never sets', to use the old cliché. Full review...
Great Food: A Taste of the Sun by Elizabeth David
There are three people to whom I owe my ability to put imaginative and tasty food on the table: Nigel Slater for taking away the mystique, Jane Grigson for teaching me that food was deeply interesting and Elizabeth David just for being who she was. Initially I found her a little daunting but once I realised that cookery books were about far more than recipes I appreciated her true worth. In the wonderful Great Food series Penguin have given us a selection of her writing and a demonstration of how she changed the way that post-war Britain thought about food. Full review...
Below Stairs: The Bestselling Memoirs of a 1920s Kitchen Maid by Margaret Powell
Below Stairs was first published in 1968, and it's no exaggeration to claim Margaret Powell as the trailblazer for the memoir genre. This book encouraged hundreds of autobiographies of common life, and spawned a whole generation of tv programmes. In its vernacular and popularist way, it was probably as influential as Mayhew's 'London Labour and the London Poor'. Before her, only famous people wrote their stories, and that without too much regard for reality. Unless they were literary writers, achievements were downplayed and emotions hidden away, in the stilted style of the British stiff upper lip. Not so Margaret Powell, who became a publishing sensation when she blasted through with a robust Voice rather than a polished narrative, in the first-ever tale of an ordinary servant writing about everyday life below stairs. Imagine being talent-spotted from an evening class and invited to write your memoir: those were the days! Full review...
Loose-Limbed by David Barrie
Captain Franck Guerin of the Brigade Criminelle was about to learn a lot more about ballet than he ever expected or wanted to know. Sophie Duval was a leading dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet – an etoile – and she was murdered in her home. A chord had been wrapped three times around her neck and then she had been strangled, but why? It seemed simple to rule out professional jealousy and she seemed to have little life outside of the ballet. The Opera Ballet is a tight-knit and dedicated world, but it's not long before it's a world of terror, because Sophie Duval is only the first person to die. Full review...
Meklyan and the Fourth Piece of the Artefact by Stephen Mark Norman
Four billion years after our Sun has become a red giant and died, taking all life with it, there are still humans in the universe. How so? By man-made panspermia. When Earth's civilisation realised it couldn't master long distance space travel in sufficient time to avoid annihilation, it sent out DNA probes filled with bacteria far out into space, to planets in the temperate zones of solar systems; planets that could potentially sustain life. And on eight planets, sustain life they did. Full review...
The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton by Elizabeth Speller
I reviewed and thoroughly enjoyed Speller's The Return Of Captain John Emmett so I was really keen to get stuck into the follow-up. The main character, officer Laurence Bartram is also an important character in the previous book, but both are stand-alone novels in their own right. The front cover is evocative and is also as pretty as a picture - literally. With its intriguing title which had me asking all sorts of questions before I'd even opened the book, it was a good start. Full review...
Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan
Mathilde is unhappy at work. More than just unhappy actually, because after expressing an opinion different to her boss he has frozen her out of the team and bullied her mentally and emotionally for months. Mathilde is a woman on the edge of breaking point, feeling increasingly brow-beaten by both the demands of city life and her awful boss. Meanwhile Thibault is an emergency on-call doctor, racing from one district to another through the nightmares of Parisian traffic, unhappy in his relationship and also struggling, mentally, to survive. Will today be the day that changes everything? Full review...
Blood and Allegiance by Annette Hart
Bryony was orphaned when she was very young and since then has lived in the Abbey at Ambleton, but once she reached her fourteenth birthday her cousin, Unwin, King of Athlandia, required that she join him at court. She lost the only friends she had known, her clothes were replaced with much grander garments and she became a part of the inner circle of the court. It wasn't long before she realised that her cousin was far from benevolent – but he was fighting an uprising and perhaps what he was doing was necessary. Then Milly, her maid, is punished for stepping slightly out of line and Bryony realises how little she knows of other people in Kynbury and even of the history of her own family. Full review...
The Loner by Quintin Jardine
Jardine starts with some background on Xavier Aislado. Even at school in Edinburgh, his bulk and rather serious manner ensures that he sails through his academic courses. This is against the odds of a chaotic life at home. His Spanish father's a bit of a cold fish, his Scottish mother is as meek as a church mouse so Xavier (or Xavi) is really guided and nurtured by his rather ferocious grandmother, Paloma. Even I was afraid of her. She takes no prisoners, wears the trousers in the Aislado household (in both Spain and Scotland) and speaks her mind every time. Although there are certain areas which are out of bounds. But I also loved her too. Jardine has created a terrific character in Paloma, in particular. Full review...
The Secret Kingdom by Jenny Nimmo
Protected by a moon cloak, a ring, and three mysteriously powerful leopards, Timoken the magician and his camel Gabar seek a new home after the boy is forced to flee the secret kingdom. But will they ever find peace with the vicious viradees on their trail? This prequel to the Charlie Bone series contains new and old characters, including a couple of brief cameos from Charlie himself, but is well worth reading as a stand-alone or introduction to the series if you've never heard of it. Full review...
The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
Sometime after Mia's husband of thirty years, Boris, suggests a marriage 'pause', Mia goes mad and finds herself in a psychiatric hospital. Although this Brief Psychotic Disorder does not last long, she remains fragile and retreats to the town in Minnesota where she was brought up and where her elderly mother still lives. While Boris cavorts with the Pause, she struggles through the summer, learning to live without him. She builds relationships with her mother's friends, with her neighbours and with a group of teenage girls who form her creative writing class. Written in the first person, the book catalogues her progress using these friendships, her past, her reading and her shrink, Dr S. Full review...
The Devil's Garden by Edward Docx
Set on a research station in an unnamed Amazonian country (although by the indigenous tribes mentioned, this is probably Peru), this first person narrative story is told by Dr Forle, who has come to the area to study ants - specifically the strange phenomenon of a type of ant that appear to destroy their own environment. It's sort of ants on the deck in the jungle, if you like. However the scientific study is interrupted by the arrival of an army colonel and a judge, who at least on the surface of things is there to organize the registration of the local tribes. However when the doctor witnesses a clear act of violence by the soldiers accompanying the colonel, he becomes more engaged with the local goings on. Full review...
The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock
Catherine Rozier is fifteen years old and she has a secret.
Secrets are a big thing on Guernsey, the small Channel Isle that is only three miles across at one point with a population a little over 65,000 i.e. somewhat more than Hereford, considerably less than Lincoln, or about half that of Norwich or Preston. Unlike any of those towns, Guernsey is an island. It is self-contained. It isn't just that everyone knows everyone else; they're almost certainly, quite closely, related. Full review...
Touch by Alexi Zentner
Stephen, an Anglican priest is writing a story of three generations, a haunting tale of his childhood set in Sawgamet, an isolated clearing in the snowy forest expanse of North West Canada. It is the evening before his mother's funeral. One loss brings up earlier losses; relating this deeply poignant tale he relates the disastrous event of his father's attempts to rescue his sister, Marie, when on a skating expedition she falls through a dark hole in the thin ice at the turbulent confluence of two rivers. His terrified sister looks towards her father who plunges into the water and both perish in a catastrophe. Consequently, Stephen is to struggle with for many years to in some way to come to terms with this severe trauma. His grandfather, Jeannot, a resilient settler is a stalwart figure who keeps returning protectively into Stephen's life in order to resurrect his own lost love, Martine from the hereafter. This love between Jeannot and Stephen's grandmother, Martine, and also that between Jeannot's brother and future wife blossom through magical events involving the metamorphosis of gold, trees and mountains which move, and malevolent 'qualuplillumits' ogres from a richly various panoply of magical realism. Full review...
Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa
When I read The Housekeeper and the Professor by Ogawa I fell completely in love with the book. It was gentle, and beautifully written. Hotel Iris is very, very different and really ought to have a warning label on the cover for those who simply recognise the author's name and pick it up hoping for more! This is the story of a seventeen year old girl who is seduced by an old man in a sadistic, distressing manner. Full review...
When Will I Sleep Through the Night? An A - Z of Babyhood by Eleanor Birne
When it comes to parenting, I have discovered that a lot of people lie. They lie about sleep, about tantrums, about feeding and nappies and the effects of a screaming newborn on your marriage. There are books galore, and Mummy blogs, and tweeters all happily proclaiming how marvellous it all is, first of all being pregnant, then giving birth, and then raising the baby. It's all glowing skin and sunshine smiles and meeting friends for coffee. I quickly stopped reading anything baby-related when I was pregnant because I was sick as a dog for 5 months, I had an awful labour and that first year with my little girl was almost impossibly difficult and totally consumed with the horror of a non-sleeping baby. Now, four and a half years on from giving birth and (mostly) sleeping all night long I felt able to open up this latest baby book, mainly because the title roused such familiar feelings in me. Full review...
The War That Never Was by Duff Hart-Davis
In the 1960's, an Egyptian general with delusions of grandeur is trying to conquer the Arab world, starting with Yemen. The new Imam, having previously disobeyed the general's orders to assassinate his own father, has fled to the hills. The British are wary of getting officially involved so turn to more subtle channels. Jim Johnson, an underwriter at Lloyd's who claims to have been arrested for attempted murder at the tender age of 8 when he attacked an Italian maid abusing a cat, is the man asked to run a secret operation. His response? 'I've nothing particular to do in the next few days. I might have a go.' Putting together a team of mercenaries, he sends them to Yemen to fight what will become, as the subtitle of the book states, Britain's most secret battle. Full review...
The Western Mysteries: The Case of the Deadly Desperados by Caroline Lawrence
It is always a little worrying when an author finishes a popular and well-loved series to start something new. Will the new characters be as interesting as the old, familiar ones? Will the books just be a pale retelling of the plots in a new context? But fans of Ms Lawrence's Roman Mysteries need not worry. What we have here is a rip-roaring tale of the Wild West, with tons of credible local colour, a bunch of villains every bit as wicked as those to be found in Ancient Rome, and a likeable lead character. Full review...
Smut: Two Unseemly Stories by Alan Bennett
Mrs Donaldson, a widow in her fifties, spends an inordinate time in hospital, but she's not dying any quicker than the rest of us - in fact, something's keeping her young. Could it be the carnal goings-on of the couple of student lodgers she's using as an income, or is it that she's a patient simulator for young medical wannabes to give lots of attention to? Or is it that she's the lead character in an Alan Bennett story? Full review...
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
The novel is written in the first person by a young boy called Jaffy. He describes the poverty of his life at home which includes the delightful line 'We lived in the crow's nest of Mrs Reagan's house.' He also describes his struggling mother and his absent father. But I got the sense that here was a bright and resilient boy. Full review...
Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwirght
Ok, the biggest let down of this book was the missing chapter at the end, which will be made available after the film is released – bad move. I understand that it's meant to keep people interested in it, and not spoil the film, but honestly, it's just frustrating, Now, my book will be forever incomplete – not good. Full review...
Clients From Hell by ClientsFromHell.net
Everyone who's worked as a freelancer has a story of a client from hell - that person who asked for something that was impossible, wanted it done yesterday for a fraction of the usual price, or is just plain angry about the work produced. The website ClientsFromHell.net has collated a number of such stories over the years, and has now published them as a book. Full review...
Raven Mysteries: Magic and Mayhem by Marcus Sedgwick
Life is never completely dull at Castle Otherhand. Edgar the resident raven may get bored a little, and end up pecking and plucking at things he shouldn't, but that at least keeps the humans there on their toes. And even Edgar must admit to being rushed off his talons when he has to save the day yet again, this time from death by cabbage, and things that go quack in the night. Full review...
The Sarkozy Phenomenon by Nick Hewlett
The old saying is that 'cometh the hour, cometh the man' and whether or not it's the electorate's ability to pick the man or whether he was only seen as the right man in retrospect is a moot point. There are, though, some surprising people at the head of European countries at the moment – with Silvio Berlusconi and Nicholas Sarkozy at the head of my personal list. My last attempt to find out more about Sarkozy proved to be too light-weight for my tastes, but this time I've gone to the opposite end of the scale with a book from Nick Hewlett, Professor of French Studies at the University of Warwick and published by Imprint Academic. I mention those points because there is no attempt to present this as populist writing: it's scholarly from beginning to end. Full review...
The Gallow's Curse by Karen Maitland
This is the eagerly anticipated, and long awaited third novel by the immensely talented author Karen Maitland. It seems as if her ever expanding and permanently loyal fan base will not be disappointed in any way by her latest offering. It's rare (if ever), that I would be moved to give a 5 star rating to any novel - but this one richly deserves the highest of accolades. Full review...
Girl in a Spin by Clodagh Murphy
Jenny Hannigan might look like the original good-time party girl but all she really wants out of life is a settled home and family – mainly because that's what she's never had. So when she begins a relationship with Richard Allam she dares to hope that the dreams might be coming true. Richard is young, good-looking and leader of Her Majesty's opposition. He has high hopes of becoming Prime Minister after the next election. Jenny isn't exactly the ideal mate for someone who expects to be the next Prime Minister and as Richard has only recently separated from his wife Jenny is going to take some selling to the country. Enter publicist Dev Tennant whose job is to make the country fall in love with Jenny. Full review...
Toys by James Patterson and Neil McMahon
The novel has a very glamorous opening. We're at President Jacklin's inauguration party and the easy flow of narration gets me seamlessly and effortlessly into the story. There are plenty of comments and observations pertaining to the super-duper hi-tech times of the story, so as early as page 10 Hays and his beautiful wife Lizbeth, who are invitees, are attended to by a well-trained and well-programmed iJeeves butler. I loved that phrase. It made me smile. The Bakers are an impressive and influential couple. As part of the 'elite' society they expect a flawless, ordered life for themselves and their family. And Patterson then informs us that mere human beings have been relegated to menial work and most of them live pitiful lives and serves them right, apparently. They're despised but their labour is necessary to oil the wheels of the important daily lives of the elites. But the elites have extremely ambitious plans. Can they pull them off? Full review...
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
The bulk of The Pregnant Widow is set in the summer of 1970 in a beautiful Italian castle where the almost 21 year old Keith Nearing, an English Literature student, has come to spend the summer with his on/off girlfriend Lily and her more physically attractive best friend Scheherazade. Amongst the other attendees are a gay couple, a short Italian suitor to the ample chested Scheherezade who is waiting for the arrival of her boyfriend and, critically for the story the ample bottomed Gloria and eventually her rich boyfriend. If this all sounds like one of those enviously indulgent, middle class, sex filled summer of love stories, then partly it is, but this being Martin Amis, there's a lot more depth and sadness attached to the story. It's an investigation into the changing roles of females and particularly their attitudes to sex, and for Keith in particular, the long term implications of this idyllic vacation are not going to be happy and Amis provides a 'what happened next' to bring each of his characters up to present day. Full review...
Mercy Thompson: River Marked by Patricia Briggs
Mercy, the female car mechanic who is half-Native American and half-Caucasian, and can turn into a coyote, has bitten the bullet and married Adam, the Alpha werewolf of the region. But not long into their honeymoon at an idyllic riverside camping ground they have to themselves, she finds something is about to break their peace. Their presence there was, shall we say, requested, for a killer is lurking in the river waters, and only they can see to it. Full review...
Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh
Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in the high canon of Scots creativity. Full review...
Rescue by Anita Shreve
When we meet Peter Webster he's a rookie paramedic who takes an emergency call to help a drunk driver who's been badly injured in a car crash. It was touch and go as to whether or not Sheila Arsenault made it, but she did and afterwards Webster can't get her out of his thoughts. Every instinct tells him that he shouldn't get involved with her – that it'll mean trouble – but perhaps it was the long, shining, dark hair that tipped the balance and Webster is involved in an intense love affair. He's also involved in Sheila's life – for better or for worse. Full review...
The Emerald Atlas: The Books of Beginning by John Stephens
Whisked away from their parents in the dead of night ten years ago, Kate, Michael and Emma have seen more than their fair share of orphanages. Nobody wants to adopt three children together - least of all when the youngest has a strong penchant for using her fists whenever she can - and so when we meet them, they're on their way to yet another. But the orphanage at Cambridge Falls is unlike any other. They're the only children in residence, the housekeeper seems to think they are members of the French royal family, and the town is in the middle of a barren wasteland and is bereft of children. Full review...
A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley
Eleven year old Flavia is the youngest daughter of the de Luce family and she doesn't get on all that well with her elder sisters, Feely (Ophelia) and Daffy (Daphne). It could be rather lonely for her as her father is an eccentric stamp collector and her mother died in the Himalayas some ten years before, but she has her faithful bicycle, Gladys, for company and when she's not doing some sleuthing she's tinkering in her laboratory, where she has enough chemicals and poisons to give the modern-day Health and Safety person a heart attack. Full review...
Dark Mirror by M J Putney
Born around a hundred years after the nobility decided that magic was a tool which should be used only by commoners, when Tory Mansfield discovers she can float in the air she knows she must keep it to herself. Until a terrible accident leaves her powers as the only thing that can save one of her family, and she's forced to reveal herself and face disgrace and humiliation. For an outed mage in London's high society there's only one thing that can be done – a spell in Lackland Abbey, the school which can cure youngsters of magic. Not everyone at Lackland wants to be cured, though… and Tory needs to decide whether her powers are a curse or a gift. Full review...
The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse by Aesop and Ayano Imai
Aesop's fable of the town mouse and the country mouse is well known. When visiting the country mouse, town mouse declares that he has much nicer food available in his house. So country mouse goes to visit him. The food is very fancy and delicious, but the risks in getting it are much greater, and so the country mouse decides to go back to his quiet, humble home again. Full review...
The Stranger by Sarah Singleton
After the the events of The Island, Otto, Jen and Charlie have gone their separate gap year ways. Otto is in Mumbai but isn't having nearly such a good time as he'd anticipated. Jen has moved on from the retreat and is travelling with Kumar, but is getting itchy feet. She's not sure she wants to take things with Kumar any further. But Charlie is ecstatic in her dream job at the tiger sanctuary. It's challenging - poaching and corruption are big problems standing in the way of the sanctuary's funding - but she loves it. Full review...