Have you been reading the C J Sansom books whose main character is Shardlake, the hunchback lawyer, in the court of Henry VIII? This is a fabulous crime series where Shardlake battles not only murder, but has to negotiate the politics of Henry’s court and the ambitious courtiers determined to get ahead any way possible. The fifth book, Heartstone, will be published next week. The series starts with Dissolution, and I have just finished the fifth, Heartstone, due next week. In this adventure, Shardlake is requested by Queen Catherine Parr to investigate ‘monstrous wrongs’ committed against a ward of the court . And the background is Henry’s war against the French and the sinking of the Mary Rose. It’s such a great series, painstakingly researched, brilliantly written.
This is one of my top five books for this year. Written by Hilary Thayer Hamann, the book was originally self published in the US, it’s now been picked up by a major publisher and has become available for all of us. It’s a contemporary love story set on Long Island and has been compared to Catcher in the Rye, written for this generation. Eveline is sixteen, a complex, disconnected and tragic teenager who falls deeply for an older drama teacher. Beautifully written, a passionate love story. I loved it.
If you’ve been waiting for this book to come out in paperback, the good news is it’s available now. If you dont know about Reif Larsen’s extraordinary first book, now is the time to make this treasure your own. TS Spivet is all of twelve and lives on a ranch in Montana with his cowboy dad and scientist mother. His brother died in a shooting accident whch TS feels partly responsible for. He is a mapmaker of extraordinary detail, has won a Smithsonian award, although they are not aware of his age. So TS decides to trek to Washington to accept his award. This lovely story is littered with his maps and it is a delight to follow his adventures.
I bought a new pressure cooker a couple of weeks ago. After a bit of searching, I found the cheapest was at Peters of Kensington. It arrived, and armed with two books, I started. And what fun I’ve had. Now when I get home from work, I can get dinner on the table in half an hour. Brilliant. The two books I’ve used are Juanita Phillips’ A Pressure Cooker Saved My Life and Pressure Cookers from Murdoch. If you’re time poor, do look at this option.
One of our favourite cookbooks from last year was Ottolenghi: the Cookbook, written by Yotam Ottolenghi based on his fabulous London deli/restaurants. The food is a mix of Palestinian/Israeli foods and is brilliantly suited to Sydney living. The good news is that he has just published a new book, Plenty, a book of vegetarian recipes based on strong flavours and fresh combinations. How about Green Pancakes and Lime Butter? Sounds good, looks even better.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has finally arrived instore. Not pointing the finger at a particular distributor, I’m not, but the books have been weeks late in arriving here. Now we have stock and I can finally tell you what a fabulous book this is. It’s set in Japan at the turn of the 18th century. Japan is still a closed off society with virtually no contact with the rest of the world. Japan has allowed the Dutch owned East India Company to occupy a small island, 120 metre long, in the port of Nagasaki as a trading post. The Dutch are not allowed off this island, the Japanese are not allowed onto the island except for trading purposes. And against this background we have a young, naive Dutch clerk who encounters a beautiful, scarred Japanese woman, a midwife who has been exposed to a limited amount of western medicine and who wants to learn more. This is a love forbidden by culture, tradition and law. Everything about this book is terrific - the plot, the characters and most importantly the writing. It’s a must read book.
Barbara Trapido writes brilliant stories centred around families. The only bad thing about her is that you have to wait years for a new book. Good news! Her new book, Sex and Stravinsky has just arrived. It’s the story of Caroline, a beautiful tall girl from Melbourne who travels to London in the late 1970s as a student, meets Josh and they marry. Now it’s twenty years later, their twelve year old daughter Zoe wants to learn ballet, and Caroline’s mother is living nearby. Nothing Caroline can do is ever good enough for this awful woman and Caroline takes a long time to suspect there is a way to break free. It’s a lovely story.
In 2002 Helen Dunmore published a brilliant book called The Siege, the story of the Nazi’s winter siege of Leningrad that killed 600,000 people in 1942. When the novel ended, Anna, a 22 year old woman, was continuing her fight against the cold and starvation. Dunmore’s new novel, The Betrayal, continues Anna’s story. It’s 1952, Anna has married Andrei, her doctor love from The Siege, and with her 16 year old brother Kolya, they try to build a new life. But it is Stalinist Russia. Andrei is called in to treat the seriously ill son of a senior secret police officer. His associates have refused to get involved because failure spells doom. Andrei’s position is heartbreaking. It’s storytelling on a grand scale.
Mick Jackson has only written a few books, but what he has written is pretty special. His first book, The Underground Man, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His new book, The Widow’s Tale, is really good. The story begins with a woman running out of her house, very distraught, jumping into her car and driving away. She ends up on the Norfolk coast, an area we begin to understand is important to her story. Her husband has just died, and she is fleeing from her unrelenting grief and the the wreckage of her marriage. She rents a small house in a fishing village and tries to come to terms with where her life has led. Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, it’s a great story.