Tuesday 30 October 2012

Beautiful Prose - a book that will probably make you Cry!






Artichoke Hearts

Sita Brahmachari has written a beautiful, poignant story about a month in the life of a shy girl called Mira.  It is written a lot like a diary - following Mira as she tries to steer a safe path through the trials of being part of a hectic family, being tormented by peers at school and preparing to lose her Nana (with whom she has a very special bond) to terminal cancer.  Mira learns about keeping secrets, observing the world like a writer, and she starts to fall in love - getting stronger and braver all the while.

Mira's grandmother is a very complex and wise woman, with a lot  to teach us all;  she faces death with great dignity and I definitely - as Sita warned in her Foreword "disappeared" into this book and came out "a slightly different person".  The characters in this book are vividly drawn and the reader is likely to find him/herself completely drawn into Mira's chaotic family life as they watch Mira grow in confidence and begin to spread her wings as a teenager.

This book is a winner of the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize - but it is a valid read for grown ups - particularly helpful if you are coping with a loved one who has a terminal illness.  Sita has so clearly written this book from personal experience and I found her outlook on the experience both grounded and spiritual - and that's not any easy combination to achieve.

TV Recommendations -  I have 2 quite light, humorous ones for you:

Me & Mrs Jones [BBC1] - which is a lot like the Slummy Mummy column, or the book I told you about in my previous blog.  A single mother - primary school age kids and an older son from a different relationship, an ex-husband who still treats the house like his home (he has an odd, controlling Swedish girlfriend) and there is a single date she meets at the school date who is keen to get to know her better.  If this wasn't enough to juggle with- her son has brought home a friend and the sparks are flying between Mrs Jones and him too (the gorgeous grey-eyed Nathan from Misfits!!! woo hoo!)

Second is Switch [ITV2]  which is about 4 girls in their early 20s, living in a flat in Camden and doing witchcraft in a modern world.   Using withcraft to take short-cuts and fix relationship troubles gets them into all sorts of scrapes.  If you've got half an hour to spare, either of these is worth a watch!





Tuesday 23 October 2012

Snuggle up with a book & a cuppa!

Laugh out Loud Reading Matter!

I am making no apologies for the 'chick lit' genre of the book I have just finished reading "Confessions of a Demented Housewife - the Celebrity Year" - it is great to just drop into a book like this, it is the literary equivalent to putting on your comfy trackie bottoms, cosy socks or slippers and curling up in an armchair with your favourite cuppa in your hand.  This book will make you laugh, it will probably give you glimpses of yourself lurching through your own 'juggling' life none to serenely and - the way it is told - it will make you want to shout out to warn the heroine (Susie) that something bad "is behind her" as if you were watching a pantomime!!

Susie doesn't entirely enjoy being a housewife and mother, she is always looking for something more exciting round the corner - in the first book "The Secret Diary of a Demented Housewife" she got a little more excitement than she bargained for when she began to exchange pleasantries with Lone Father at toddler group and is soon tempted to by his smouldering texts and his flirtatious ways.  In this, the sequel, Susie - being the kind of person who is always measuring herself up against her 'peers' and finding herself slightly lacking - is determined to get pally with the new celebrity mum at her children's school.  As the reader, you hear all the alarm bells ringing  which Susie does not,  the glamorous new mum using her as unpaid babysitter, her husband changing careers as part of a mid-life crisis, yet you watch as she deals with it all in her own enimitable style - plenty of times events seem to take a turn you could not have visualised, but Susie bobs to the top again, like a cork on choppy seas.
The First book - True in So Many Ways!

If you like Sophie Kinsella's 'Shopaholic' series and laugh out loud when reading 'Bridget Jones' Diary' I think this novel will be right up your street, and if you have  a child who thinks it would be more fun if he/she was a dog (as I did with my second) you will feel instantly bonded with Susie!




Boo Hoo!!  No more Revenge on TV - as I watched the season finale of it last  night!! Wow!  It certainly went out with a bang!!  Some loose ends tied, some left hanging and a few new twists of plot to worry about until the next season begins.   I wont spoil the plot for devotees of the series who haven't seen the last one yet, but I will confess to having a big old crush on Nolan now - I never could see the appeal of Daniel but now Nolan has replaced Jack on my list of people about whom I want Emily to 'wake up and realise how much he loves her' - especially as his people interaction skills have improved 100% during the season!!  Can hardly wait till it is back on screen again.

Monday 8 October 2012

The Debutante - I urge you to read it!!!

If you love the 'flapper' era and glamour and mystery and you know that love & attraction has a dark side - I highly recommend you get a copy of this book.  I was on the underground and |I saw a woman reading this book - what caught my attention was that she was almost at the end of it and I was thinking what a delicious moment that is - the culmination of a story that has kept you rapt whilst it unfolds - and I found myself reading the blurb on the back and I was so intrigued that I wanted to read it. Then when I went to the library a week later, there it was on the shelf ... almost calling to me to borrow it!                  





The Debutante [Book]In many ways the story is like a russian doll - one segment hidden within another, within another - but in other ways the action in  present echoes behaviour of the past - let me try to explain.  At first there are 3 central characters - Cate Albion, a young artist just returned from NewYork with a bit of a mystery surrounding her, is she home to "lick her wounds" or is she running away from something or someone?  Her aunt - Rachael has a thriving antiques business which she runs with Jack, a younger colleague, now that she is a widow.  Jack seems to be a self-elected loner, but when he is instructed by Rachael to drive down to Devon to catalogue the contents of a genteel palladian mansion with Cate - they find that they have a crackling attraction to one another, which they each find unsettling for different reasons.

Endsleigh house - this once grand home from a long dead era - is almost a central character in its own right!  It held secrets in the past and is still holding them now as Cate gains entry to  a locked and long-forgotten room and finds a box of mementos secreted behind a row of untouched children's books.  The mystery deepens with the information that the deceased owner of the house was one of the famous Blythe sisters - who were glamorous and notorious for their wild parties and lavish well-connected lifestyles between the wars - and Cate sets out to discover more about the younger Blythe sister who went missing and her final fate was never discovered .

The story of the Blythe sisters is told in a series of letters from the youngest sister - who known as Baby- to her older sister.  The language is pitch perfect and it provides a fingernail sketch of coming out into society as debutante - Baby blazes a trail which is sometimes "too much" for even her to handle.

The stories of the other 3 characters is told in a series of flashbacks and discoveries, there is a theme of infidelity and people coming to terms with the 'dark side' of their nature. The plot gives delicious glimpses of the past - the clothes, the decadence, the political machinations - which show it was not all dances and tea parties!  The Victoria and Albert museum, the National Portrait Gallery and Tiffany & Co are all utilised to assist Cate in unravelling the strands of the mystery of the shoe box she has found, and the author Kathleen Tessaro explains that she too was given a shoe box full of items to assist her in compiling her intriguing plot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9D9AiZCUSc
             
As I read this book I was strongly reminded of Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella - a more frothy, lightweight book for sure, but one with a similar socialite, 20's debutante as the central character, guiding the heroine with her insights and moral code from another era, and a hidden secret of its own which is pivotal to the plot.  http://www.sophiekinsella.co.uk/books/stand-alone-novels/twenties-girl/


I'm now inspired to read something that is written by someone from this era - I read Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford when I was still at school but next on the list is another by Nancy - ThePursuit of Love.

On an entirely different note - I promised you a review of the Peter James doorstep of a book when I finished it!!  Dead Tomorrow was a fast paced novel and a very complex web, tightly woven, but as usual it uncovered the seedy underbelly of crime, set in and around Brighton.  The subject matter was sometimes hard to read - a teenager near death with liver malfunction, others with no food and only handouts and drugs to survive on, debt collection and prostitutuion, but Detective Inspector Grace does not rest until he has meted out justice for the underdog.