Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"

As soon as Georgia Myers turns eighteen, she is going to find her biological parents. And she has lots of questions for them too; like where else might she have lived if she had not been given up and does she have any brothers and sisters? Mostly, however, Georgia just wants to ask why?. Why was she given up for adoption? Why her? Full review...

Dreadful Fates by Tracey Turner

Children's Non-Fiction

Imagine the delight you get, as a book reviewer, when you chance upon a title that stands out, by filling a nice handy gap in the market you'd never even noticed, and doing it so well you want to alert as many people as possible. This is such a time, Dreadful Fates is such a book, and as for the gap… This book hits upon the darker corners of all those copious 'highlights of history for the kids' books, touches upon The Darwin Awards compilations of stupid people dying in stupid ways, and merges with those collections of famous last words and epitaphs some of us like flicking through now and again – and does it all for the under-thirteen audience. Full review...

The Finishing Touches by Hester Browne

As the daughter of its owner, and a highly experience management consultant to boot, Betsy is the obvious choice to call for help in turning around a finishing school failing to make the grade in 21st century London. Except... Betsy never attended the school as a student, and she's not so much 'management consultant' as she is 'shop assistant' – a distinction many a proud parent could be forgiven for missing. With the Tallimore Academy facing financial ruin, however, Betsy isn't so much their best hope as she is their only hope. Full review...

The Not-So Secret Diary of a City Girl by Allie Spencer

Banking analyst, Laura McGregor has her secret diary accidentally uploaded to the Internet. The diary contains her thoughts about her lacklustre relationship with a trader, her attraction towards a “dirt-digging journalist” and massive discrepancies in the accounts of her new manager. Full review...

Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor

An unknown voice introduces the reader to actress Molly. She doesn't know it but she will be dead fairly soon. It's almost as if she's talking to herself throughout the introduction pages. The language is Irish vernacular so there's lots of good old Irish put-downs, classic descriptions and call-a-spade-a-shovel language. This richness and unmistakable lilt gives the reader a sense of place. Albeit, old Molly is almost living by her wits (which are varied and considerable) in the poorer areas of London. Her conversations with the local people, whether it's the inn-keeper or the local bobby on the beat are absolutely wonderful. She is one fine actress. I could not keep the smile from my face when reading these conversational gems. For example, Molly is trying to have a polite conversation with the inn-keeper Mr Ballantine when they are rudely interrupted 'Men barrel in and out with their swearing and gruffness ... Why can they never sit easy, must they always emit noises, and must the noises be deafening vowels?' Brilliant. The sheer beauty in all of this is that Molly, in her own private thoughts, in her own head, is giving off the most foul language of the lot of them. These conversations are also bitter-sweet. O'Connor's descriptions - especially of people are superlative. He doesn't try too hard (which is a gift in itself) but gets his message over to the reader. Full review...

Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles

First published in 1943, this is the story of Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield who are two strained and constrained women who want to break free, although it is not entirely clear what it is they want to break free from. Society? The conventions of heterosexuality? The boredom of their female lives? Anyway, Christina is a wealthy spinster who takes a companion, Miss Gamelon, into her home where they settle into a routine of being catty to each other. Soon Christina's male friend, Arnold, moves in with them too, and later when they all move to a falling-down house on an island they are joined there by Arnold's father who has walked out on his wife. Christina leaves the house, trying to improve herself in some manner perhaps, but becoming a sort of prostitute, falling into relationships as a 'kept woman'. Mrs Copperfield, meanwhile, takes a trip to Panama with her husband. The couple drift apart as Frieda finds herself attracted to the seedy underworld of prostitution, drinking in bars and brothels, falling for a prostitute named Pacifica and leaving her husband to move in with her. Full review...

The Funfair of Fear! - A Measle Stubbs Adventure by Ian Ogilvy and Chris Mould

There is one thing Measle could really be called afraid of. Not the usual teenage things, like having a bath, no. He's lived through being inches high and stuck in a nightmarish train-set diorama with an evil cockroach and worse for company, and as a result, he's going to be afraid of a wrathmonk – a warlock turned bad – such as the one who put him there. So you'll pity him when it becomes obvious a gathering of wrathmonks are forming, to get their revenge on Measle's newly-found family. But what are wrathmonks in turn afraid of, I hear you ask? That's right – a garden gnome. Full review...

Firespell: The Dark Elite by Chloe Neill

Lily Parker is sent to boarding school in Chicago when her parents get the opportunity to do some prestigious research work in Germany. She was expecting bitchy classmates, and she gets them – but she wasn’t prepared for her suitemate, Scout, who stays out late at night and reappears covered in bruises, a school full of secret hiding places, a principal who knows her parents and seems to have an entirely wrong idea about their work – or a mysterious group of supernatural teens called the Dark Elite. Full review...

The Werewolf and the Ibis (Something Wickedly Weird) by Chris Mould

The 'Something Wickedly Weird' series is a splendid mix of Gothic horror and cartoon-style fun. The scrawny young hero, young Stanley Buggles, who lives in a 'darkened industrial town', as the first page tells us, is plunged into an adventure from the moment he arrives (all alone, as tradition dictates) at Crampton Rock. He has inherited his great-uncle's mansion, a vast old pile on an island linked to the mainland by a long winding footbridge. The right atmosphere of isolation and claustrophobic unease is created immediately, especially when we learn that letters are only collected from the island once a fortnight. Whatever is on this island, Stanley will have to deal with it alone. Full review...

A Perfect Proposal by Katie Fforde

I have read most of Katie Fforde's books and each and every one has proved to be enjoyable and entertaining. A Perfect Proposal comes up to the same high standard and, having just finished reading it, it has left me wanting more! Her style is very relaxed and easy going and she always creates believable characters that you can't help caring about. Full review...

The Last Patriarch by Najat El-Hachmi

Najat El-Hachmi's debut novel, The Last Patriarch is a difficult book - both in terms of content and style. It's a story of physical and sexual abuse in a patriarchal Moroccan family, an immigrant story, when first the father and then the family move to Catalonia, and ultimately a story of the narrator, the patriarch's daughter, breaking free of her past as she takes on different cultural values. Narrated entirely from the perspective of the patriarch, Mimoun Driouch's unnamed daughter, the story is also concerned with cultural and imagined histories, and the importance of origin stories. Full review...

The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna

The Birth of Love has four interwoven storylines about characters in different times, past, present and future. The common theme is birth. Full review...

The Cardturner by Louis Sachar

How are we supposed to be partners? He can’t see the cards and I don’t know the rules!

17-year-old Alton Richards is shoehorned into becoming the driver and cardturner for his blind, octogenarian, bridge-playing, but above all rich, uncle by his grasping parents - who are up to their eyeballs in debt and have a weather eye on potential legacies. Alton sighs but goes along with it. He's used to being told to call Lester Trapp his favourite uncle and he's used to his unrepentently mercenary parents. Full review...

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

The reader is in no doubt that a war is raging. 'And bombs were falling on Coventry, London and Kent. Sleek metal pellets shaped like the blunt tipped ends of pencils ...' The Americans however, are carrying on with their daily lives regardless. They are completely unfazed and uninvolved. Apart from one or two, namely radio reporter Frankie. She reports from London as it happens and she is gradually becoming more and more concerned that her fellow Americans will be called upon. But she seems to be a lone voice blowing in the wind. Also, as you may expect, there are plenty of raised eyebrows as to why a woman is doing a man's job. She should be at the kitchen sink or having babies, shouldn't she? Full review...

The Train Set of Terror: A Measle Stubbs Adventure by Ian Ogilvy and Chris Mould

You will feel sympathy for Measle from the very start of this book. Not only is he an orphan, and stuck friendless in a horridly dingy house on the wrong side of the train tracks, but he shares his life with its main torment - his guardian, Basil Tramplebone. Basil makes no effort to improve Measle or his lot - he does not educate him, keeps Measle and his inheritance a great distance apart, and feeds him slop. Measle would even like to have a bath now and again - but not in the putrid brown and green gunk coming from the taps. The only thing that redeems Basil at all is that he owns the world's best train set, one Measle would love to get to know a lot better. Unfortunately for Measle, he's about to get that wish granted... Full review...

April and Oliver by Tess Callahan

After spending their childhoods together, April and Oliver haven't seen each other for many years. It is only after the death of April's little brother that they find their lives overlapping again. April is reckless, damaged, and struggling from one day to the next whereas Oliver is mature and sensible. He is now a law student, engaged to the sweet, gentle Bernadette who is the antithesis of April. Seeing April's life in tatters, Oliver tries to rescue her from herself, yet the more entangled he becomes the more his own seemingly perfect life starts to fall apart. Full review...

The Suffocating Sea: A DI Horton Marine Mystery Crime Novel by Pauline Rowson

Crime

Anyone who loves murder mystery novels will know there is a big difference between a policeman and a copper, and Pauline Rowson’s character DI Andy Horton in The Suffocating Sea is every bit a copper. Tough on the outside, soft on the inside Horton is just the chap to start nosing around a suspicious fire on board a boat – at least that’s where it starts, because DI Horton is about to discover he is more involved in the mystery than just as an investigating officer. Full review...

The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi

Essentially this is a love story between two people - Babo from Madras and Sian from small-town Wales. You could argue that two more disparate cultures would be hard to imagine. Factor in that the novel opens in the heady, free love days of the 1960s and a very entertaining story starts to unfold. Full review...

Star Crossed: Taurus Eyes by Bonnie Hearn Hill

Logan McRae is excited by the prospect of attending a writers' camp hosted by author Henry Jaffa, who starts off by asking them all to write a project idea and then shuffles them around. Instead of her longed-for astrology feature, Logan ends up having to write about folk singer Sean Baylor, whose ghost may be haunting the locality. The only person who doesn't have to switch is the cute boy at the camp, Jeremy, who Jaffa allows to keep his original topic – of Sean Baylor. So, Logan and Jeremy end up fighting over research material while also clearly wanting to get to know each other better – does the ghost exist? Will they get it together? Who will write the best article and get it published? The answers to all these questions and more lie inside the second book in the Star Crossed series (along with some temporary tattoos!) Full review...

The Waiting Room by F G Cottam

On the outskirts of ex rock star Martin Stride's country estate lies the disused Shale Point Station. Abandoned in the 1960s the railway line has been dug up and removed and all that remains is the crumbling platform and eerie waiting room. Martin is quick to employ Britain's top ghost hunter Julian Creed to investigate the strange and threatening occurrences of the waiting room that he and his children have witnessed – the sound and smell of a steam train, male voices singing a famous World War One song, and most frightening of all, the leering face of a soldier at the waiting room window. Full review...

Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language by Robert McCrum

History

We British tend to forget just how insignificant we are.

Tiny geographically. Tiny in population. Tiny, whatever we tell ourselves, on the world stage.

Yet our language is spoken in various forms worldwide by approximately four billion people; about a third of the world's population. How did that happen? This is what Robert McCrum attempts to explain. Full review...

Apple Pie ABC by Alison Murray

Take one traditional rhyme (A was an apple pie, B bit it...), mix it up a bit with new words, add a pinch of sweet girl and a dash of naughty dog, and you've got a recipe for... well, a unbelievably cliched first line in a review from me, but also a super book. Full review...

Super Dooper Jezebel by Tony Ross

Jezebel is a good girl - so good, in fact, that everyone calls her Super Dooper Jezebel. She's neat and tidy, does her chores, is perfectly behaved, and is an inspiration to all. The Prime Minister sent her a special medal for being so good, and Jezebel gets her own TV show to show others how to behave. She won't even run, because it's against the rules. Sometimes, just sometimes, rules are meant to be broken... Full review...

The Sunflower Sword by Mark Sperring and Miriam Latimer

There's a little knight (who looks remarkably like a boy with a colander on his head) who wants to battle with dragons a sword, but his mum says he can't. He's desperate to whoosh and swoosh with a shining blade, so she gives him a sunflower instead, and off he goes to the top of a hill to do battle with not one but three imaginary dragons. There's a roar of fire and billowing smoke, and he finds himself face to face with a real dragon... Full review...

Sir Laughalot by Tony Mitton and Sarah Warburton

Sir Laughalot is a brave knight. He's got all the gear and is desperate to smite a wicked foe, so off he sets on his travels. He meets a fearsome dragon and a whopping great big giant, but each time they end up laughing with one another. Will things change when he tries to rescue the fair damsel from the evil sorceress? Full review...

Guilt About the Past by Bernhard Schlink

Politics and Society

Consider, if you will, guilt. You might have it tainting you, as 'beyond the perpetrators, every person who stands in solidarity with them and maintains solidarity after the fact becomes entangled'. The link might not strictly be a legal one, but concern 'norms of religion and morals, etiquette and custom as well as day-to-day communications and interactions'. Hence a collective guilt like no other - that witnessed in Germany. 'The assumption that membership to a people engenders solidarity is something Germans of my generation do not easily like to accept', we read. However difficult it might have been back then in its day, Germany had to physically renounce anything to do with Nazism, to actively 'opt-out' of connections to avoid the solidarity seen connecting the whole nation like a toxic spider web. And since then it's linked in all the children, in a bequeathal of guilt. Full review...

What the Day Owes the Night by Yasmina Khadra

Nine year old Algerian Muslim Younes is devastated when his father's farm is destroyed and his family have to move to the slum of Jenane Jato. However, while the rest of his family struggle, this turns out to be something of a blessing in disguise for Younes, who is rescued by his wealthy uncle, a pharmacist. Renamed Jonas, he moves to live with his uncle and aunt in the vibrant European district of Rio Salado. There, he meets new friends Jean-Christophe, Simon, and Fabrice. But what seems to be an unbreakable friendship is tested to its limits by the return to the area of the beautiful Emilie, and the boys' problems increase as Algeria fights for its independence from France. The book is narrated by Jonas at a much older age, looking back at his life, although the epilogue brings us to the present day as he visits a grave. Full review...

Murder in the Latin Quarter (Aimee Leduc) by Cara Black

Crime

Aimée Leduc is back and this time she might just have found the sister she's always longed for. When a Haitian woman arrived in the offices of Leduc detective in central Paris and announced that she was Aimée's father's illegitimate daughter Aimée allowed enthusiasm to overrule logic as she'd been lonely since her mother's disappearance and her father's death. René, her partner in Leduc Detective, is wary but he can't dissuade Aimée. It's not long before she's involved in the murky world of Haitian politics and murder in Paris' bohemian Latin Quarter. Full review...

A Darker Shade of Blue by John Harvey

Short Stories

There are eighteen short stories covering the East Midlands, those parts of London you'd generally really rather avoid and rural East Anglia. You'll see broken families, revenge killings, prostitution and drugs. There's corruption – not unusual when you have an overstretched police force and underpaid men and women staffing it. And then there are the people who, in spite of everything, fight for justice. Full review...

The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop by Gladys Mitchell

Crime

A body is found in a butcher's shop one morning in Wandles Parva. It has been expertly chopped up and hung just like a piece of pork, but because it is missing a head, identification is impossible. There are soon suggestions that it must be Rupert Sethleigh, a land-owner who had supposedly gone to the US. His cousin, Jim Redsey is the obvious suspect. The two men didn't like each other - in fact, nobody actually liked Rupert Sethleigh. The local vicar's daughter, Felicity, and Aubrey, related to Jim and Rupert, decide to play detective. Before long, they are joined by Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, an elderly woman who fancies herself a detective. Can they sort out the red herrings and find the killer? Full review...

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

You will have to go a long way to find a more magical and quirky novella than ‘Light Boxes’. Set in a far off land, as all good fairy stories should be, the balloon-loving residents suffer a ban on all forms of flight. But the culprit is not some unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, but rather February. And this February - who takes both the form of a person and a season - has lasted for more than three hundred days. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he has also started making children disappear. One man, Thaddeus Lowe, is determined to do something about it. Full review...

Wobble Bear Gets Busy by Ian Whybrow and Caroline Jayne Church

Wobble is a very busy little bear who has just learned to walk and now, of course, wants to walk everywhere. We see him here walking in to wake up his parents, treading on the cat, dancing and falling over, walking on a wall, splashing in a puddle until, of course, by the end of the day he has worn himself out and is too tired to walk up the stairs to bed! Full review...

Wobble Bear Says Yellow by Ian Whybrow and Caroline Jayne Church

Wobble Bear is a delightful little bear who is just starting to learn about colours. He insists through the book on calling everything 'yellow', whether it is or not, much to his mummy's frustration and my daughter's delight! Full review...

Eat Me!: The Stupendous, Self-raising World of Cupcakes and Bakes According to Cookie Girl by Xanthe Milton

Cookery

What a stunning book this is. The inside, that is. I was almost stunned in a less positive way by the brightness of the front cover. I don't like pink at the best of times, and this book is very, very pink. Full review...

A Change of Fortune by Sandra Wilson

Leonie Conyngham seemed to have everything going for her. She was beautiful and set to be the belle of the forthcoming season, but a family disaster stripped her of her position as the most important pupil in her school and placed her there as the lowliest teacher, there to do the bidding of those above her. Her possessions stolen and in debt she had little choice in the matter. Her physical attractions have not left her though, but now the young rakes of London are not looking at her as a possible wife, but to see who can be the first to deprive her of her virtue. Full review...

Love, Peace and Chocolate (Pocket Money Puffins) by Cathy Cassidy

Jess and Kady have been best friends since they were three years old and now they're in year eight at Parkway Community School. They're on the edge of puberty but things have been a bit slow on the boyfriend front – not that either of them is looking to rush things, particularly as there isn't a single Y8 boy who can make their eyes light up. They've a good, solid friendship which means a lot to both of them and they both think that nothing can come between the girls. Unfortunately they hadn't taken the arrival of Jack Somers into account. Full review...

Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido

Josh and Caroline and their daughter Zoe live on an old red bus in Oxford, even though both have quite well paid jobs as an academic and headteacher. Caroline has spent her adult life deferring her plans for the future in order to support her widowed mother who lives in a house nearby. Josh’s job in the drama department of Bristol University does offer him some opportunities to escape abroad though, this time to a conference in his native South Africa. Full review...

Fifteen Minute Bob by Catherine Forde

For years, conscientious student Rory and his hard-working mother have struggled to cope with his father, an eyeliner wearing struggling singer-songwriter unable to hold down a job, and obsessed with a star called Bob Blade. While Rory finds his father's unreliability a nightmare to live with, his two friends Smiler and Barry think he's cool and spend more time hanging out with him than with Rory. As the trio of Smiler, Barry, and Rory's dad team up to make a music video that goes viral on the internet, Rory gets unwittingly involved and, in the words of the blurb from the back, 'everything flips'. Full review...

25 Chapters of My Life: The Memoirs of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna by Olga Alexandrovna, Paul Kulikovsky, Sue Woolmans and Karen Roth-Nicholls

Autobiography

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was born in 1882, youngest child of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and thus sister of the ill-fated Tsar Nicholas II. Her first marriage to Prince Peter Oldenburg, who was probably gay, ended in an amicable divorce, and in 1916 she married Colonel Nicholas Kulikovsky. They escaped from Russia after the revolution, and settled in Denmark for nearly thirty years until, feeling threatened by Stalin’s regime, they moved to Canada. She outlived him by two years, dying in 1960. Full review...

Salt Blue by Gillian Morgan

I always judge a book by its cover. The eyes in the pretty face on the cover of Salt Blue are arresting, but difficult to assign to a period, though it’s clearly women’s or teen fiction. I imagine that the cover might attract fiction readers of mainstream women’s magazines such as Women’s Weekly or Woman’s Own, so it’s spot on for the story inside. Full review...

In The Rooms by Tom Shone

The book jacket for this novel is of New York by night, a cityscape par excellence. It also boasts Toby Young's comment as laugh-out-loud funny. I have a lot of time for Toby Young. I find him witty and entertaining. But I usually approach claims such as this with a healthy dose of 'we'll-wait-and-see' scepticism. However, he was right. And I am truly impressed with Shone's ability to make me laugh out loud and at the very beginning of the novel too. A very good sign of delights to come, I thought. Full review...

The Maharajah's Monkey: A Kit Salter Adventure by Natasha Narayan