Summer Reading 2024

Here are some of my favourites…

The Dance Teacher in Paris by Suzanne Fortin *** +

I very much enjoyed this dual-timeline story set in contemporary and early 1940s Paris at the start of the German occupation.

In the contemporary timeline, Fleur is visiting Paris from the UK, accompanying her grandmother on what has become an annual pilgrimage for Lydia, through which she wants to remember those who lost their lives in the city. This year, she has decided the time has come to tell her granddaughter the full story, but even she is shocked when at her old school where she used to dance the ballet, she finds an old ballet shoe belonging to someone she believed long gone. As they try to solve the mystery, they meet antiques dealer Didier, to whom Fleur is immediately attracted. But can he be as trustworthy as he appears, and is Fleur ready to move on from the loss she suffered when her beloved mother died and find the courage to love again?

Interwoven, is Lydia and Adele’s story narrated by Adele, the dance teacher of Paris. It was Adele who tried to save the Jewish children at her school. Her love story and her determination to do what she can to resist the occupation and save people’s lives lies at the heart of this book and was the driving force of the story for me. This is a compelling, sad and poignant narrative, well-told. Highly recommended.

 

The Hike by Lucy Clarke ***

Four old school friends re-unite to go on a hiking holiday in Norway. This could be (and is) a chance to re-assess their life journeys and make big decisions about the way forward. As one might expect, they all have problems. Liz, organised and practical, is on a trial separation from Patrick, husband and love of her life. Helena, still grieving for the loss of her mother and determinedly single, might or might not be pregnant. Maggie hasn’t fulfilled her own hopes and dreams – she has a wonderful daughter but also a problematic ex-husband and she is no longer as creative as she would like. And Joni is a burnt-out coke-addicted rock star who has lost her way. Hmm…

In fact they all lose their way on the Norwegian slopes before their problems are finally resolved.

 

The Golden Hour by Jacqui Bloese ****+

Set in Victorian Brighton, I was immediately drawn in to the world of the three main female characters in this novel. Ellen works and lives with her twin brother; they run a photography business which includes the salacious ‘golden hour,’ a time at the end of the afternoon when they photograph girls in more risqué poses than the usual society photographs, which can be sold for a profit in London or France. Ellen does have qualms – but the way she sees it, they are enabling girls to make a much-needed income without them having to resort to prostitution.

The second woman, Lily, is one of these women. She works in the laundry and is at constant risk of assault from her uncle. She needs money in order to get away from home, but when she does get away from home, she finds herself with even more problems than before.

The third woman is Clem, a well-to-do American, who is married to a man who is rather too fond of pornography and other women for Clem’s liking. And anyway, Clem has other interests to pursue… ones which her husband will definitely disapprove of.

A friendship builds between Ellen and Clem and when Lily comes to work in Clem’s house as a maid and Ellen becomes Clem’s paid companion, tensions mount until eventually their secret is out.

Beautifully written, sensuous in detail, I loved ‘The Golden Hour’ which kept me hooked and entertained from start to finish.

 

None of This is True by Lisa Jewell ***+

Lisa Jewell is one of my favourite authors and as usual, this novel sizzles with tension from the off. Very dark tension…

Josie Fair goes to a restaurant on her 45h birthday with her husband Walter, and there she meets podcaster Alix Summers, also out on a birthday celebration of her own. It turns out that they were born on the same day in the same hospital; they are ‘birthday twins’.

Josie, trapped in what she sees as a boring and unsatisfied life with her husband and her daughter Erin who has special needs, is fascinated by Alix, but it is a fascination that quickly turns into an obsession. She begins to want Alix’s life.

Alix is attractive and appears to be happily married with two healthy children. Having listened to some of her podcasts, Josie approaches Alix and asks her – would she be interested in interviewing Josie as an example of a woman who has had a difficult life and who is now determined to change it?

Alix is unsure at first, but as she begins talking to Josie, she starts uncovering a shocking darkness in the other woman’s life. She feels that she must continue – even as the power shifts between them and Josie starts encroaching on Alix’s personal life and that of her family.

Gradually, the truth is revealed – but whose truth is it? And is there another truth deeply hidden that may stay hidden forever? Chilling and compelling.

 

The Love of my Life by Rosie Walsh ****+    and my book of the season 😊

I was expecting a feel-good romance when I started this book, but actually it is so much more.

Emma, a marine biologist, loves her husband Leo, an obituary writer, very much. They have a young daughter Ruby; the family are blissfully happy, apart from the times when Emma has one of her ‘turns’ when she needs to take off and be alone by the sea somewhere, searching for rare marine creatures.

But their life is thrown into chaos and shock when Leo discovers that almost everything Emma has ever told him about herself, is a lie.

He cannot believe it at first, but he digs deeper, determined to find out the truth, and more importantly, why Emma lied to him. Where does she really go to when she needs to escape? And what can be so awful that made it impossible for her to tell him who she really is and what she has done?

When the very darkest moments of Emma’s past life finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was. But first, she must tell him about the love of her other life… Hugely enjoyable, thought-provoking, emotional and absorbing. Highly recommended.

 

Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus ***+

I’m late to the party on this one, and was really looking forward to seeing what the fuss is about. Easy to see – the book’s premis of a beautiful and clever female scientist trying to teach women how they can use chemistry to change their lives in the 1950s and 60s is both original and compelling. It’s a revenge comedy and the premis sets the scene for some sharp satirical humour with feminism at the root; a string of one-liners had me laughing out loud at times.

All the characters are caricatures and the book is heavy on authorial comment with constant switches of viewpoint, including that of the dog, six-thirty. But it works. The book begins with Elizabeth (the scientist) dropping bitter, pithy, life-lesson notes in the lunch box of her four-year old daughter Mad – herself a precocious genius who has to pretend to everyone at school that she is nothing of the kind. Elizabeth is depressed because she has lost Mad’s father, Calvin Evans, the love of her life, in a freak accident and she has been forced to leave her job as a research chemist and instead host a cooking programme entitled ‘Supper at Six’ which she has attempted to make more like a chemistry lesson intended to change women’s lives.

Enter a host of other similarly caricatured characters and a mystery concerning the parentage of Calvin. Will the TV show survive? Will Elizabeth ever recover? Who was Calvin anyway? This is the narrative tension that drives the book forward. We do want to know, but I feel that with this book it is the – sometimes heavy-handed – feminist humour that has made it such a successful debut. Highly recommended (as long as you’re not either religious or a female scientist).