Theresa Smith's Blog, page 39
May 2, 2022
Book Review: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice.
If Davy had remembered to put on a coat.
If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.
If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt.
There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.
As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like ‘petrol bomb’ and ‘rubber bullets’. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.
Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
Released 3rd May 2022
My Thoughts:This novel. My heart. This is why I read and this is also why I love Irish fiction.
‘It wasn’t until the strike ended that she realised how outrageous the encounter had been. That someone she had known most of her life had stopped her at a paramilitarised checkpoint that had been erected in the cause of preventing her kind from participating in government. And pretended not to know her.’
Trespasses is without doubt the best novel I have read about Northern Ireland. Set in the 1970s, within the midst of the ‘troubles’, it details ordinary life within extraordinary times. Whilst the plot current running throughout the novel is that of an affair between a young Catholic woman and an older married Protestant man, there is so much more to this novel. All the bits of life in between, the things both said and unsaid. The fear, the longing, the terrible injustice of all that has happened in Northern Ireland and what it’s done to families, friends, and neighbours. Trespasses is truly like nothing else I’ve read before and is utterly heart wrenching in its unflinching honesty. I adore the way Louise Kennedy writes and will forevermore read every single thing she ever gives us.
‘It was just bad luck, the sort of thing that happened here all the time.’
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
May 1, 2022
A Month of Reading: April
It was a bit of a slow reading month for me throughout April. I only clocked seven books in total, six of which were five star reads though, so once again, quality is winning out over quantity. All seven were review books, so no progress on my 22 in 2022 and the classics shelf remains untouched. I am doing a classic buddy read with a friend though during May, so that will change and I already have a couple of new additions to my tbr that I will prioritise for the 22 in 2022 challenge. All in all, I’m looking ahead to some great reading as we go into the cooler months.
Until next month…happy reading!
April 30, 2022
The Week That Was…
Life has been a hectic blur of late. Not much reading, not much writing, but a lot of gathering with friends and family. Best of all, I got to catch up after three long years with my sister, who was originally stuck in Singapore because of Covid, only to eventually return to Australia to be stuck in Melbourne for the same reason. The reunion was wonderful.
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What Zeus has been doing:
When mum goes out and you test out the floor cushions for bed potential…
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What I’ve been watching:
Youngest son and I have begun watching this together. So far so good.
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What I’ve been reading:
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Until next week… 
April 26, 2022
Book Review: Where the Light Gets In by Zoe Coyle
Delphi Hoffman, a wild child living in London, is finally getting her life together with a new love affair and the offer of a coveted job – until she receives the phone call she hoped would never arrive.
‘It’s time.’
Her mother Vivian’s terminal illness has reached its tipping point and she summons Delphi to Australia to help her euthanise. Unable to deny her mother’s suffering, or her promise to her of a good death, Delphi reluctantly returns to her mother for the last time.
This is a story of the ties of family that enmesh in love and death, and the journey back to self in its aftermath. As Delphi is blown onto the wasteland of grief and shame, she has to discover where her mother’s life ends and she begins amidst the atomic fallout her actions have unleashed.
Incandescent and extraordinary, Where the Light Gets In heralds the arrival of a powerful new voice in Australian fiction.
Published by Ultimo Press
Released April 2022
My Thoughts:A stunning debut that mines the lines of trauma and grief that settle into your heart and shape the person you become. Not only is this a novel of euthanasia, loss, and grief, it’s also a coming-of-age journey that never failed to surprise me with each new direction it took.
‘Grief can build a cathedral inside us. A place of immense wisdom and empathy, of perspective and gratitude.’
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‘Just because someone breaks your heart doesn’t mean you can stop loving them. Just because someone doesn’t deserve your love doesn’t mean you won’t love them.’
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‘Family aren’t just the people you’re related to by blood, and the sun isn’t just up in the sky.’
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‘Michelangelo said that in every block of marble he plainly saw a statue fully formed. His only job was to chip away the rough imprisoning walls to reveal the loveliness within. Delphi knows this to be a powerful metaphor for life. Isn’t that what we humans all do? Chip away at our own sorrows, angers and shames, exposing imperfections and mortal fears in the hope that this exertion will reveal our most radiant selves?’
This novel really doesn’t hold back in terms of both the emotion it rings out of you and the language that it uses relating to death and its aftermath. There was an impactful parallel drawn within the text relating to the ease in which an animal can be euthanised to prevent suffering as opposed to a human. This is a thought-provoking novel that will give the reader much to contemplate. As a debut, it is strikingly impressive, and I highly recommended it.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
April 19, 2022
Book Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew crosses the Atlantic, exiled from English polite society. In British Columbia, he enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and for a split second all is darkness, the notes of a violin echoing unnaturally through the air. The experience shocks him to his core.
Two centuries later Olive Llewelyn, a famous writer, is traveling all over Earth, far away from her home in the second moon colony. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in time, he uncovers a series of lives upended: the exiled son of an aristocrat driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
Sea of Tranquility is a novel that investigates the idea of parallel worlds and possibilities, that plays with the very line along which time should run. Perceptive and poignant about art, and love, and what we must do to survive, it is incredibly compelling.
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia – Picador
Released 12th April 2022
My Thoughts:I feel like I have been searching for the perfect time travel novel for the longest time. That’s not to say that the ones I’ve already read are no good, quite the opposite, however, early on within this novel I suspected that I had found it, the perfect time travel novel. And it was. One hundred percent, the absolute best that I’ve ever read – and I have read quite a lot of them.
‘You step into a party, at some long-ago point in time, and you know exactly how and when each and every person in that room is going to die.’
This story is complex, yet not complicated, wise and heart felt, deeply affecting in the way it deals with the morality of travelling back and forth through time. It is also a pandemic story, in that, we see pandemics over and over through time, quite a sobering thing whilst almost emerging from the current one. This story wisely demonstrates that to emerge from this one with any degree of complacency and relief would be incredibly foolish.
‘This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death.’
I’m not going to go into any specific detail about the story. I don’t think it’s possible for me to do so without spoilers and there’s no way I’m spoiling this one for anyone. Suffice to say, the basic laws of time travel and parallel universes is at play throughout this novel, however, the execution is mind blowingly clever, and the anomaly, once revealed, was sublime brilliance.
‘It’s one thing to know in the abstract that one moment might corrupt another moment; it’s another to experience both moments at once; it’s something else again to suspect what it might mean.’
I loved Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, his character growth was marvellous, and the manner in which we were able to read the subtle connections between Gaspery and each character was illuminating. Nothing is straightforward within this novel, and at times, the connections seemed tenuous, but be reassured, everything happens for a reason and nothing is meaningless.
‘If definitive proof emerges that we’re living in a simulation, the correct response to that news will be So what. A life lived in a simulation is still a life.’
I have taken away so much from this novel, so many things about life, as it has been, as it is now, as it may be in the future. This is a wonderful, beautiful, and inspiring novel that will remain a favourite.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
April 17, 2022
Book Review: The Rat Catcher by Kim Kelly
In the sweltering summer of 1900, young wharf labourer Patrick O’Reilly is down on his luck in the slums of Sydney and homesick for Tralee. When a deadly outbreak of plague descends on the city, O’Reilly’s daydreaming mind is miles away – in the golden hair and kindly, confident air of a girl called Rosie Hughes.
Just as he’s wondering why any girl would want a no-hoper like him, opportunity knocks with the offer of a job as a rat catcher working for the city’s Plague Department, containing the spread of disease. But the job will bring him a lot more than a pay rise and a swift education on traps and poisons.
In the Public Lending Library, on the top floor of the Queen Victoria Building, above the bustling centre of Sydney, he comes face-to-face with a legendary rat called Old Scratch who will change the way he understands himself and the world forever.
Published by Brio Books
Released 5th April 2022
My Thoughts:‘Never underestimate the ingenuity of an Irishman in love.’
Just as the above quote is the opening line of this novel, so it is that it will be the opening line of this review because that line sets the stage for everything that is to come within this marvellous little gem of a story.
Unless you are new to following my reviews, you will be familiar with my adoration for Kim Kelly’s novels. There is no other writer like her for blending social and political Australian history with grand love. And I don’t mean romance, I mean grand, sweeping, heart shuddering love. There’s an enormous difference, trust me on this.
‘Faith. Maybe that’s the most powerful word in the dictionary.
Faith, n., 1. belief, trust; 2. set of religious or spiritual convictions; 3. fidelity, loyalty.
I would learn, day after day for the rest of my life, the value of maintaining a little faith in myself. Sometimes it’s still a battle, I won’t deny it, but a fight against despair and hopelessness is always worth the effort.’
What a marvel Kim Kelly is. From a kernel of history about rat catching during the bubonic plague times in Sydney of 1900 to this magnificent novel. I am endlessly in awe of her talent and vision. Her commentary on who suffers the most during a plague rings eerily true when regarded within the context of our current pandemic.
The Rat Catcher is a luminous novel that you will devour in one sitting. It’s written so beautifully, with a cadence owing to the era combined with a wry Irish migrant insight that is both humorous and heartbreaking in equal measure. If you have never yet read a novel by Kim Kelly, please immediately rush out and do so. Her words will leave an imprint upon your heart and change the way you think about Australian history.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
April 16, 2022
The Week That Was…
Happy Easter! I hope you are all having a joyful and bookish long weekend. As I sit here writing this, half of that bunny pictured below has already been devoured.
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Joke of the week:
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What Zeus has been doing:
Apparently he’s licensed to drive now…
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What I’ve been reading:
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Until next week…
April 14, 2022
Book Review: The Way from Here by Jane Cockram
A cache of letters from beyond the grave leads a bereaved sister on a journey from Australia to an idyllic French coastal town – and back in time to a golden summer where it all went wrong. An addictive, atmospheric and evocative mystery that examines how we become who we are and whether we can truly know those we love.
Growing up, the Anderson sisters were close, even though they were different. Susie, the wild one, wanted an adventurous life while Mills followed a safer path.
When Susie dies suddenly from a fall when hanging a string of lights for her fortieth birthday party, Mills is grief-stricken, even though they had drifted apart. Then Mills receives a bundle of mysterious letters from her sister to be read in the case of her death. Each letter instructs her to visit a place special to Susie, both to spread her ashes but also to uncover some truths Susie has long kept hidden from her family. Truths that seem to date back to one golden summer in an idyllic French coastal town, where a dark and shocking event was the beginning of an unravelling thread. A thread that leads both to Mills’ present and her mother Margaret’s past.
What choices connect the past to the present? What family secrets will surface and change the future?
In this twisty, evocative mystery, Jane Cockram flips the looking glass to reveal the lines of deception and love, truth and regret that run through families.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia – HQ Fiction AU
Released March 2022
My Thoughts:I had high hopes for this one having seen some glowing reviews on social media, but unfortunately, it just didn’t quite reach the same heights for me. The premise was interesting and drew me in, but the story was incredibly slow to unfold. I was halfway through the novel before I felt that things were starting to take shape. Once the pieces of the story puzzle all began to slide together, I did start to enjoy the story more and found myself becoming invested in the characters and their secrets. But then the dots began to be connected with some really coincidental meetings, that kept repeating through the generations, and it was at this point I gave in and acknowledged that the story was just not for me. Let’s be real here, London is just not that small. My no spoiler’s policy prevents me from being less vague here, but I’m happy to chat off book with any one about it.
The biggest problem I had with this novel though was the structure. I am all for alternating chapters between people and eras, doling out the story piece by piece, but this one changed too rapidly and too frequently, and I also felt that there were too many perspectives. There were the letters, Mills in the present day that sometimes went back to when she and Susie were younger, then there was Susie in 1998, later in the book, Margaret was added in, not just in the present day but also in the sixties. The chapters were short and flicked between all these people and eras with such rapidity, I was often double checking whose view I was in, which just pulled me out of the story all too frequently and made for a disjointed reading experience.
After a streak of five star reads, I was bound to hit a pothole eventually. Many may disagree with me on this one, but I can’t say it’s one I’d recommend at all.
+ 1/2
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
April 12, 2022
Book Review: The Winter Dress by Lauren Chater
Two women separated by centuries but connected by one beautiful silk dress. A captivating novel based on a real-life shipwreck discovered off Texel Island by the bestselling author of Gulliver’s Wife, Lauren Chater.
Jo Baaker, a textiles historian and Dutch ex-pat is drawn back to the island where she was born to investigate the provenance of a 17th century silk dress. Retrieved by local divers from a sunken shipwreck, the dress offers tantalising clues about the way people lived and died during Holland’s famous Golden Age.
Jo’s research leads her to Anna Tesseltje, a poor Amsterdam laundress turned ladies’ companion who served the enigmatic artist Catharina van Shurman. The two women were said to share a powerful bond, so why did Anna abandon Catharina at the height of her misfortune?
Jo is convinced the truth lies hidden between the folds of this extraordinary dress. But as she delves deeper into Anna’s history, troubling details about her own past begin to emerge.
On the small Dutch island of Texel where fortunes are lost and secrets lie buried for centuries, Jo will finally discover the truth about herself and the woman who wore the Winter Dress.
Published by Simon & Schuster Australia
Released 30th March 2022
My Thoughts:A story of grief, loss, and love, The Winter Dress connects two women across centuries, through a single gown and all that it represents to both the original owner and the one who is researching it within the modern day. Told with a dual timeline narrative, the story unfolds in pieces, all of them connected back to the dress that forms the basis of the story and offers such a fascinating insight into history. Just as she did with her previous two novels, Lauren’s research is so finely tuned, so beautifully detailed, she places you firmly into a whole other place and time. I was fascinated by how much history can be gleaned from an article of clothing; it’s certainly an area of research I would be keen to know more about.
I enjoyed this novel immensely, so much so, I would have honestly loved for there to have been more of it. Both women, Jo in the modern day, and Anna in the 17th century, had stories I became heavily invested in. There were times when I felt like I was only skimming the surface of their stories, particularly the relationships they were forming. Lauren’s writing is magnificent, thought provoking and insightful, literary in style and tone, and always engaging. I am slightly greedy for her words, which is why I wished for more. The story as it is though is brilliant, fast paced and compelling. Fans of historical fiction will relish every page.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
#TheWinterDress
April 5, 2022
Book Review: Dinner at the Schnabels by Toni Jordan
You can marry into them, but can you ever really be one of them?
A novel about marriage, love and family.
Things haven’t gone well for Simon Larsen lately. He adores his wife, Tansy, and his children, but since his business failed and he lost the family home, he can’t seem to get off the couch.
His larger-than-life in-laws, the Schnabels – Tansy’s mother, sister and brother – won’t get off his case. To keep everyone happy, Simon needs to do one little job: he has a week to landscape a friend’s backyard for an important Schnabel family event.
But as the week progresses, Simon is derailed by the arrival of an unexpected house guest. Then he discovers Tansy is harbouring a secret. As his world spins out of control, who can Simon really count on when the chips are down?
Life with the Schnabels is messy, chaotic and joyful, and Dinner with the Schnabels is as heart-warming as it is outrageously funny.
Published by Hachette Australia
Released 30th March 2022
My Thoughts:What an absolute delight this novel was to read. For a start, laugh out loud funny, which is honestly all too rare, so many authors try too hard with comedy, and it can often seem over blown. Here though, the wit and humour was just so intelligent, cutting, and on point. The dialogue was particularly entertaining, likewise all of Simon’s introspection, along with his analysis and internal impressions on what was going on around him and the people he was interacting with at any given time. This is the sort of novel that is both uniquely Australian yet universally appealing.
Simon has been having a bad run. Since the pandemic, he has lost his business, his house, his self-esteem, and his self-worth. Across the course of a week, we move in with Simon and his wife Tansy, their two children and his wife’s half-sister, squeezed into a two-bedroom flat, and we get to know all the ins and outs of this family, the good, the bad, and the even worse. Simon has one week to landscape a backyard in preparation for a memorial service. What could go wrong? So much. So, so much.
Along the way, in amongst the laughs and whiplash moments with the in-laws, we gain insight into the way in which two years of repeated pandemic lockdowns have taken their toll on Australian families, particularly those who owned their own businesses. For all the humour, Simon’s experiences are all too real and his situation may be relatable to many.
This is one novel that would make a brilliant TV series in the right hands with the right actors. If you’re looking for sharply intelligent humour, on point feels, and that magic of not wanting to put the book down until the very end, Dinner with the Schnabels needs to be your next read.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
