Theresa Smith's Blog, page 19
January 28, 2024
Book Review: We All Lived in Bondi Then by Georgia Blain
From the author of the multi-award-winning bestseller Between a Wolf and a Dog, a powerful collection of previously unpublished stories.
A sister is haunted by the consequences of a simple mistake. A daughter searches for certainty as her mother’s memory degrades. An encounter at a house party changes the course of a life.
In We All Lived in Bondi Then, beloved Australian author Georgia Blain returns to her resonant themes of relationships and family, illness and health, love and death. Composed in Blain’s final years, these nine stories grapple with large questions on a human scale, brimming with her trademark acuity, nuance, and warmth.
Released 30 January 2024
My Thoughts:What a joy it was to read this collection of previously unpublished stories written by the late, and certainly great, Georgia Blain. Each story was, to me, a slice of perfection. Her resonant themes of relationships and family, illness and health, love and death are very much all I seem to want to read about of late, stories that are driven by character and revolve around theme in place of tiresome plots that have been seen over and over. I’m getting more and more fussy with each passing month.
‘It’s strange how often we long for life to move forward; I just have to get through this, we think, as though the past, with all its fears and fuck-ups and anxieties, can be completely left behind, neat, contained, never spilling over the line we imagine is waiting for us. And yet the past is always there, hovering at the edge, teasing us, reappearing when we least expect it, and then sliding away again, where it waits, the warmth of its breath reminding us that it still lives.’
Each story is a complete picture, everything you need to know, with no threads left hanging, no questions left unanswered. Tiny little masterpieces. What a skilful writer Georgia Blain was. How lucky we are to have been left with something more from her.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
January 25, 2024
Book Review: China by Edward Rutherfurd
The internationally bestselling author portrays the great clash of East and West in his new epic: China.
China in the nineteenth century: a proud and ancient empire forbidden to foreigners. The West desires Chinese tea above all other things but lacks the silver to buy it. Instead, western adventurers resort to smuggling opium in exchange.
The Qing Emperor will not allow his people to sink into addiction. Viceroy Lin is sent to the epicentre of the opium trade, Canton, to stop it. The Opium Wars begin – heralding a period of bloody military defeats, reparations, and one-sided treaties which will become known as the Century of Humiliation.
From Hong Kong to Beijing to the Great Wall, from the exotic wonders of the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City, to squalid village huts, the dramatic struggle rages across the Celestial Kingdom. This is the story of the Chinese people, high and low, and the Westerners who came to exploit the riches of their ancient land and culture.
We meet a young village wife struggling with the rigid traditions of her people, Manchu empresses and warriors, powerful eunuchs, fanatical Taiping and Boxer Rebels, savvy Chinese pirates, artists, concubines, scoundrels and heroes, well-intentioned missionaries and the rapacious merchants, diplomats and soldiers of the West. Fortunes will rise and fall, loves will be gained and lost.
This is an unforgettable tale told from both sides of the divide. The clash of worldviews, of culture and heritage, is shown in a kaleidoscope of jaw-dropping set pieces. China is a feat of the imagination that will enthral, instruct and excite, and show us how things once were, and how the turmoil of the nineteenth century led to modern China’s revolution and rebirth.
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
Released February 2022
My Thoughts:‘There was nothing stiff or formal about the Chinese ritual of serving tea. The aim was to make the guest feel welcome, at home, at peace. Every move was simple and practical. The warming of the teapot and the wide, bowl-shaped cups with hot water; the gentle tipping of the dark twists of tea leaf into the teapot. The scenting up offered to each guest to sniff the tea’s aroma; the first infusion in the teapot; then the pouring of the tea, straining the leaves, into a jug, from which the cups were carefully half filled; no more, with the clear, delicately scented liquid.’
Grandly ambitious and epic in scope, China itself was the main character with all other characters seemingly just bit players along the way. This novel is impressive for its depth and span, the research must have been phenomenal. Ultimately though, it was far too long for me. The author did an excellent job at ensuring it was not confusing nor convoluted, but at almost 800 pages of tiny print long, it was like reading the novel that never ends. I think I’ve come to realise that I’m no longer the type of reader who enjoys ‘big books’. I have neither the time nor the attention span for them. If you do like big books though, particularly epic historical sagas, this one is very good. Well written, well researched, balanced between the political and the social, and most importantly, engrossing.
Read throughout January as a buddy read with Brooke from All The Books I Can Read.
January 20, 2024
Book Review: Body of Lies by Sarah Bailey
A car crash victim clings to life and is rushed to hospital but can’t be saved. Hours later, her corpse is stolen from the morgue. No one knows who the dead woman was or why her body was taken.
Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is back in her hometown of Smithson on maternity leave when the bizarre incident occurs. She is intrigued by the case but reluctant to get involved, despite the urging of her journalist friend Candy Fyfe. But in the days after the body goes missing, the town is rocked by another shocking crime and Gemma can’t resist joining the investigation.
Candy and Gemma follow the clues the dead woman left behind. As they attempt to discover the identity of the missing woman, Gemma uncovers devastating secrets about the people she thought she knew best. The closer Gemma gets to the truth, the more danger she is in. She desperately needs to confide in someone—but is there anyone she can trust?
A gripping, white-knuckle thriller from the bestselling author of The Dark Lake and The Housemate.
Released 27 February 2024
My Thoughts:Body of Lies is the surprising fourth Gemma Woodstock novel that we all thought we were never going to get. In my review of the last Gemma Woodstock novel, I lamented that the series was coming to an end as a trilogy and put in a request for Sarah to write me a fourth one. I’m so glad she did! See, sometimes all you need to do is just ask…
In all seriousness though, this is once again top shelf crime fiction, police procedural at its finest. You do want to read the previous three though to get the most out of this story. Gemma’s life appears more settle within this one, so of course, it’s necessary to derail this with a complicated case that is uniquely linked to Gemma’s past in a way that catches even her by surprise.
The case in Body of Lies is complex and quite horrifying in its intent and scope. This one kept me guessing right up until the end. While I’m sad to know that this is Gemma’s last hurrah, I’m also satisfied that we’re leaving her in a good place. This has been a terrific series, one of the best crime ones I’ve read to date.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
January 19, 2024
Book Review: The Stolen Book of Evelyn Aubrey by Serena Burdick
What if you could write a new ending for yourself?
England, 1898: When Evelyn first married the famous novelist William Aubrey, she was dazzled by his brilliance. But their newlywed bliss is brief when William is gripped by writer’s block, and he becomes jealous of Evelyn’s writing talent. When he commits the ultimate betrayal — stealing a draft of her novel and passing it off as his own — Evelyn decides to write her way out of their unhappy marriage.
California, 2006: Abigail always wondered about her father — his identity forever lost when her mother unexpectedly died. Or so Abigail thought, until she stumbled upon his photo and message that her great-great grandmother was the author, Evelyn Aubrey, leading Abigail on a journey to England in search for answers. There, she learns of Evelyn’s shocking disappearance and how London society believed she was murdered. But from what she uncovers about Evelyn, Abigail believes her brilliant great-great grandmother had another plot up her sleeve.
Rich in atmosphere and emotion, The Stolen Book of Evelyn Aubrey tells the story of literary secrets, a family curse, and the lengths women will go to take charge of their future.
Published by HQ Fiction US
Released November 2022
My Thoughts:The premise for this novel is certainly enticing and having read and enjoyed Serena Burdick’s previous novel, I was expecting to enjoy this one. Unfortunately, enjoy is the polar opposite of my experience with this story. I’ve been listening to it on audio and at first, I wondered if it was the narration that was bothering me. The narrator sounds fine when she’s speaking in her normal voice but there are American characters and her voice for those employs a fake accent that grates, particularly unfortunate given that the main character in the modern storyline is in fact American. In the end though, it’s not the narrator’s fault I didn’t enjoy this novel. That responsibility lies with the author.
The story just leans too much towards the dramatic. The characters are all entirely unpleasant, some of them selfish and cruel, others just a complete waste of space. Evelyn Aubrey is the worst of them, followed closely by Abigail. One is entirely self-absorbed, the other pathetic and useless. I’m not sure if the author was trying too hard for a gothic tragedy, but as far as I’m concerned, nothing worked with this novel. The only reason I kept listening was to see if it could get more absurd as it went along, which it did. There’s a fine line between flawed characters and unlikeable characters. Sadly, this one is populated entirely with unlikeable ones, and I couldn’t muster any empathy or interest in their lives.
January 13, 2024
Book Review: With Love from Wish & Co by Minnie Darke
With Love from Wish & Co is a heart-warming novel about what we are prepared to give, and give up, in the name of love.
Marnie Fairchild is the brains and talent behind Wish & Co, a boutique store that offers a bespoke gift-buying service to wealthy clients with complicated lives. Brian Charlesworth is Marnie’s most prized customer, and today she’s wrapping the perfect anniversary gift for his wife, Suzanne . . . and a birthday present for his mistress, Leona. What could possibly go wrong?
For years, Marnie’s had her heart set on moving Wish & Co to the historic shopfront once owned by her grandfather. When the chance to bid for the property unexpectedly arises, Marnie – distracted – makes an uncharacteristic mistake.
Soon Brian is in a fight to rescue his marriage, and Marnie is scrabbling to keep her dreams alive. With so much at stake, the last thing Marnie needs is to fall for Brian and Suzanne’s son.
Published by Penguin
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:Minnie Darke is an auto-buy for me, I don’t even need to read the synopsis to know that I’ll be reading her latest book. Her stories are divine and the very essence of ‘feel good’ – which is what I was craving after reading Prophet Song in a day!
In her latest, With Love from Wish & Co, we are drawn into a family drama, a business crisis, and a new love story. I love the way Minnie Darke always writes such a fresh story – a unique premise, no cliched formulaic romance tropes, realistic characters, and a discussion worthy moralistic twist.
Marnie Fairchild runs a business that specialises in gift buying, mostly for wealthy men who don’t have the time or ‘inspiration’ to buy for their wives, parents, siblings and… mistresses. When a mix-up occurs with the gifts for one of her most lucrative clients, Marnie faces an unprecedented reckoning that couldn’t be more ill-timed for her future business prospects. Added into the mix is an unexpected romance built on a white lie.
I devoured this novel inside three days in the middle of a busy working week. It was that good, I was willing to sacrifice sleep for it.
Book Review: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
The Booker Prize 2023 Winner
The explosive literary sensation: a mother faces a terrible choice as Ireland slides into totalitarianism.
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.
How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?
Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
Published by Oneworld
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:This was heavy. Winner of the Booker Prize for 2023, and entirely deserving of all the accolades, it’s brilliant, yet so claustrophobic and grim, reading it was like being locked in an elevator with no air and no hope of rescue.
Paul Lynch writes in a manner I’ve come to identify as very Irish: sparse and to the point; conveying so much with the bare minimum of words and punctuation. Prophet Song not only has no punctuation for dialogue, but there are no paragraphs either. This of course added to the urgency, the claustrophobic feeling, the sheer desperation of the story as it coursed along and progressively got grimmer and grimmer.
Prophet Song is one of those novels that frighten you with its potential. So many nations around the globe have experienced the sort of totalitarianism depicted within this novel, yet for those of us who live in ‘safe’ nations, we don’t think that we are at risk. By setting this story in the Republic of Ireland, Paul Lynch demonstrates how easily we can slide from safe to risk, from freedom to restriction, from life to death.
Prophet Song was my book club read for January. We were all in accord that it was brilliant and thought provoking, but also traumatic and heavy. Perhaps that mix is what makes a novel worthy of such accolades.
January 8, 2024
Book Review: Bird Life by Anna Smaill
The second novel by Booker Prize longlisted author Anna Smaill. A lyrical and ambitious exploration of madness and what it is like to experience the world differently.
In Ueno Park, Tokyo, as workers and tourists gather for lunch, the pollen blows, a fountain erupts, pigeons scatter, and two women meet, changing the course of one another’s lives.
Dinah has come to Japan from New Zealand to teach English and grieve the death of her brother, Michael, a troubled genius who was able to channel his problems into music as a classical pianist — until he wasn’t. In the seemingly empty, eerie apartment block where Dinah has been housed, she sees Michael everywhere, even as she feels his absence sharply.
Yasuko is polished, precise, and keenly observant — of her students and colleagues at the language school, and of the natural world. When she was thirteen, animals began to speak to her, to tell her things she did not always want to hear. She has suppressed these powers for many years, but sometimes she allows them to resurface, to the dismay of her adult son, Jun. One day, she returns home, and Jun has gone. Even her special gifts cannot bring him back.
As these two women deal with their individual trauma, they form an unlikely friendship in which each will help the other to see a different possible world, as Smaill teases out the tension between our internal and external lives and asks what we lose by having to choose between them.
Published by Scribe Publications
Released 9 January 2024
My Thoughts:This is the first novel I’ve read by New Zealand author, Anna Smaill, whose previous novel, The Chimes, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Smaill writes with a casual intensity that is easy to find yourself immersed in. Her sense of place within her chosen setting is strong, she made me feel as though I was experiencing Japanese culture by osmosis through her characters. I’ve read a few other novels set in Japan, but they haven’t necessarily given me a vivid sense of what the place is like. Smaill herself resided in Tokyo for two years, and I felt that shine through as she navigated her characters through their daily lives.
This story is rather complex, digging into themes of mental illness, grief, and loneliness. I found it absorbing and deeply moving. I would have liked greater resolution from the ending, it seemed to be headed in that direction but then it simply finished. I was left feeling a little bereft at the fate of both of the main characters. This aside, it’s such an impressive story, the manner in which Smaill demonstrates the fine line between perception and reality and how subjective this can be.
It is my intention this year to read more from New Zealand authors. Bird Life was a great start to my reading year and an excellent first book to mark down for that challenge.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
January 5, 2024
Book Review: This Year’s for Me and You by Emily Bell
Twelve resolutions. Once chance to fall in love.
Hannah and Celeste have been best friends since they were eighteen, when they made a pact to spend every New Year’s Eve together. From Dublin to London, the two are inseparable: that is, until tragedy strikes.
When Celeste discovers a list of Hannah’s New Year’s Resolutions, she is determined to complete them. Little does she know that doing so will reunite her with someone from her past . . .
Through Hannah’s last wishes Celeste begins to fall in love with life again, one adventure at a time.
But could the biggest adventure of all be falling in love again?
Published by Penguin
Released November 2022
My Thoughts:This was such an utter delight! It’s always so nice to discover a new author, even better when they have a few releases that you can dig into. Think Paige Toon and Josie Silver, two of my favourites when it comes to contemporary romance/feel good fiction, and you’ll have an impression on Emily Bell’s work, but with a touch of Ireland thrown in.
After losing her decades long best friend, Celeste discovers the last list of New Year’s Resolutions in her friend’s most recent notebook. There are twelve, so she decides to do one each month for the new year, as a way of paying homage to her friend as well as working through her grief. The resolutions are basically a list of twelve new things to try, some of which Celeste does on her own, others she does with her friends, renewing her bond with these other people who have always been a part of her friend group, but sat more on the periphery of her friendship with Hannah.
Billed as a romance, the novel is more about resetting your life and building solid connections with friends. Celeste turns thirty-seven throughout the year of her resolutions, she’s got an established career, owns property, and has her ducks in a row, so to speak. But she’s stuck, been doing the same thing for years, and through Hannah’s resolutions, she discovers a whole host of things about herself that she had either forgotten or didn’t even know about. Towards the end of the novel, there is a romantic turn, but I really enjoyed how the romance was not the primary focus of the story. It was more complimentary, the dollop of cream beside an already delicious cake.
This was a really lovely read, and I am looking forward to reading more from Emily Bell. Highly recommended.
January 2, 2024
Book Review: Mary or, The Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout
Translated by Laura Watkinson
About the Book:1816. Mary, eighteen years old, is staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with her lover Percy Shelley. She is tormented by his infidelities; haunted by the loss of her baby daughter.
Then one evening with friends, as storms rage outside and laudanum stirs their imaginations, Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story, and something fierce and wild awakens in Mary.
Memories surface of the long, strange summer she once spent with a family in Scotland, where she found herself falling in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter. She learned tales of mythical beasts, witches and spirits. And she encountered real monsters – both in the rocky wilds, and far, far closer to home…
Illuminating the past like a flash of lightning, this brilliant reimagining of the birth of Frankenstein takes us into a feverish world of waking dreams-where grief mingles with desire, and the veil between beauty and horror grows thin.
Released November 2023
My Thoughts:What a magnificent novel this was. It tells the story of Mary Shelley and how she came to write Frankenstein. It’s a fictional biography that leans on historical documents, letters and diaries mostly, but it reads like a gothic classic in itself.
“It is such a shame that you never knew your mother,” she said. “I’ve read her work. She was so wise. So brave.”
I knew she was. People told me that, and I hated it. She was my mother. I should have been able to have my own opinion about her. I should have known her best. But even before my birth, thousands of people knew how she thought, who she was, what she was like. And before I could come to know even a fraction of her, she no longer existed. I was her daughter, but I did not know who she was.
The novel moves back and forth between a summer spent in Scotland when Mary was sixteen and then two years later, in Geneva, where Mary and Percy are enjoying the hospitality of Lord Byron, after fleeing the London creditors. Wild weather restricts all the guests, so Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story for entertainment.
It had been there for a long time, the idea. It has existed for many centuries, ever since the earth awoke, and still it roams the world. It has seen her. It has chosen her. But the time is not ripe or she does not dare to take a look. Because if she looks, she will have to see everything. Not only the beautiful truth, wrapped in a story, trembling with wonder, ancient yet newly born, but also the cruelty, the defiance, that which screams and shrieks at her to open her eyes. And all of it is true.
Percy Shelley is a believer in ‘free love’, but Mary, who is grieving the loss of their infant daughter while nursing her newborn son, does not. Percy’s infidelities cause her nothing but pain and a feeling of deep abandonment. She is shattered by grief, the loss of her daughter mingling with the long-felt grief of being motherless and in disgrace from her father for having chosen to live, unmarried, with Percy whilst he was still married to another woman. She is filled with terror at the possibility of losing another child, so keeps her baby boy close. As she begins to write her ghost story, memories of the summer from two years previous surface, in ripples and flashes, a summer of first love and subsequent betrayal, of ghost stories and a suppressed fear, memories that exist but cannot fully be harvested.
At first, it is single words. Then they become sentences. Ideas hook on to memories, weaving a story that could even be true. And suddenly she sees how what she is writing was there all that time, how, stamping its feet with impatience and denial, it cracks out of its cocoon, ugly, colourless and vague because it thought it was unfit to be seen. How it tries out its voice, flayed and urgent, how it screams. She writes and it shakes back its colours. It is horrible. And here it is.
The structure of this novel was brilliant. The scenes at Geneva read almost like a fever dream, an immersion into the way in which they were all drinking heavily, laudanum mixed with wine, the consequential heightening of everyone’s faculties, and the raging storms all converging into a highly charged atmosphere. From this, Frankenstein emerged. A story of abandonment, grief and rage, that fully assimilated with Mary’s own anguished sense of self at the time. Combined with her interest in science, particularly reanimation of the dead, theories of which were circulating at the time, Frankenstein was a story like no other, certainly nothing at all like what was expected from the pen of an eighteen-year-old woman.
A dark creak that I could not place at first but recognise now: this is where it begins. It begins with one dark scratch.
I loved this novel, not just for the context it provides with regards to Frankenstein, but as a novel within itself, about a writer, whom in the pits of despair, creates something so magnificently horrifying, genre inspiring, and timeless. That it is still in circulation more than two hundred years later and continues to inspire film, theatre, music, and literature, is a testimony to the creative genius of its author, Mary Shelley. This novel, Mary, by Dutch author Anne Eekhout, brilliantly pays homage to the story, Frankenstein, and the woman who created it.
December 29, 2023
The Month That Was… (and the reading year in review and my book of the year)
The end of another month and the close of another year. We’re having a summertime heat wave this week. I am on a two week break from work, which is lovely and has been highly anticipated! I headed to the beach this week with Zeus, and it must have been the warmer water perhaps, but I got him to wade into the ocean up to his tummy! He loves the beach but not the water, so this was a major milestone. There was no wave jumping or paddling about like M’s dog though. His face in the first photo below conveys a lot about what he thinks of water at the beach. He’s a funny old dog.
What I’ve been watching:
In the lead up to Christmas, we were actually watching Christmas movies each night, a tradition in our household. M and I squeezed in one short TV series, The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe, based on a true story of fraud in the UK. It’s a slow burn, but I didn’t mind it. It was really rather incredible, the fraud these two pulled off. The husband was revolting, he really had no moral compass at all. The wife I had more sympathy for, although I still think she was a fool, but I was glad to see her get her life back on track in the end. This last week in December we’ve been watching movies in the evening, fully in holiday mode. I highly recommend What We Did on Our Holiday. It’s no longer a new movie, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth the watch. It has everything you could ever want in a movie, honestly, one of the best I’ve seen in years.
What I’ve been listening to:
All fiction this month for my audio books. I enjoyed The Coast and A Million Things, but The Sorrow Stone was the pits. Nothing to do with the narration, I’d have not enjoyed it in any format. A Million Things is definitely audio of the month for me.
What I’ve been reading:
My last read for December was a Christmas novel, Christmas Shopaholic, which was quite delightfully comforting and amusing in the same way a Christmas movie is. It was a lovely book to see the year out on. The Mystery Guest was a great follow-up to The Maid, but The Wiregrass was not as much of an engaging follow-up to Canticle Creek as I’d hoped. Mary, Or The Birth of Frankenstein was utterly brilliant. Definitely my book of the month.
A snapshot of my year in reading:
Total books read: 90
Audio books: 10
E-books: 32
Print books: 48
My reading goal for the year was 100 books, so getting 90 read is satisfying, as I didn’t really think I’d actually get to 100. Introducing audio books into the mix in the latter months of the year was a bit of a game changer for me. I read that bit more each week now and the type of books I’ve listened to are sometimes different to what I would have read, including memoirs and non-fiction titles. I am more and more gravitating towards my Kobo. It’s just so convenient for taking to work for lunch time reading and also for reading in bed at night. Almost all of my book purchases this year were e-books, a huge transition for me as I do love a physical book and have them on shelves all over my house.
Goodreads tells me that my average rating for 2023 is 4.2 stars. That signals overall a very good reading year. I am getting more and more fussy the older I get though, so I tend to mostly ‘pick right’ when it comes to what I’m reading. As such, picking a list of top reads or even a favourite for the year is particularly challenging, as I have rated many books at five stars throughout the year. In trying to settle on just one ‘book of the year’, I’ve decided that for 2023 it’s a tie between Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith and The Broken Places by Russell Franklin. Looking back over the reviews for these two, I can assuredly say that they made an impact on me, and each made it hard to move onto another book straight after. So, that’s a wrap for 2023!
Until next year, good reading, happy New Year, and thanks for another year of book chat!
Book of the Year 2023 – a tie between these two gems:
