Fearnley, Laurence (2024) At The Grand Glacier Hotel. Penguin.
Libby and her husband Curtis are fulfilling a long held dream to stay at the once majestic Grand Glacier Hotel, on the West Coast of New Zealand. Libby is recovering from cancer. When Curtis leaves on a short quest she finds herself stranded and alone but is determined to explore her surroundings. Although still recuperating she is able test herself with the help of a young companion called James, a man with his own crisis of confidence. This could have been a maudlin story of self-pity and hardship but instead is a gentle tale of recovery, and connection, within Fearnley’s evocative setting and soundscape. Wonderful.
Rating: 5/5
Whitehouse, Harvey (2024) Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World. Hutchinson Heinemann.
In this work social anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse discloses the inherited biases that have affected human history – conformism, religiosity, and tribalism. He utilises his own ethnographic field work and analyses mass media and capitalism with psychological and big data arguments. Through an anthropological lens he presents our biases as so deep-rooted that our collective habits have become routinised thereby affecting our ability to radically rethink challenges of our current era, such as mitigating the climate crisis and de-escalating conflict. Bold, sweeping and provocative big read.
Rating: 3/5
Tindale, Darcy (2023) The Fall Between. Bantam.
After detective Rebecca Giles solves a missing child case and a jewellery theft she becomes a local hero. The following day, with a hangover, she is called to the gruesome find of a young jillaroo. Rebecca believes the three events are somehow connected. As she and her team unpick the clues she must come to an understanding of her own tragic past. Another good Aussie rural crime novel.
Rating: 3/5
Beard, Mary (2023) Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World. Profile Books.
Mary Beard, Professor Emerita of Classics at Cambridge, has received rave reviews for this book. I would have preferred it as a TV series! Emperor of Rome explores the fact and fiction behind the lives of the rulers of the ancient Roman world. History has told the stories of these autocrats in dramatic and lurid detail. Beard seeks to uncover their day-to-day lives within the context of the blood stained Roman empire as a system. It was a virtual civil war each time a new emperor emerged. Beard asks a series of questions, most intriguingly – why did the emperors start to have a generic look, why was dining at the palace all about power, how did they spend their leisure time, and how did they seek to obtain divine status? Fascinating stuff.
Rating: 4/5
Cleeves, Ann (2024) The Dark Wives. Macmillan.
In this eleventh Vera novel the body of a young man is found outside Rosebank, a residential care home for troubled teens. The victim is a casual staff member at the home. DI Vera Stanhope and her team are called in to investigate the death. At the same time Chloe, a fourteen-year-old resident of the home, has gone missing. Was Chloe the murderer? Vera suspects not. Then the body of another teen from the home is found in the wilds of Northumbria, near the Three Wives standing stones. Chloe must be found to discover the truth. Enjoyable police procedural, with heart.
Rating: 4/5
Berry, Flynn (2024) Trust Her. Viking.
In this sequel to Northern Spy we find sisters Tessa and Marian, having escaped punishment by the IRA, settled in new lives in Dublin. Marian has married and had a daughter, while Tessa has immersed herself in rearing her young son and working as a sub-editor. Both are haunted by their past. Violence is close at hand however and they are once again dragged back into the conflict. Tessa is coerced to turn her old MI5 handler into a IRA informant. In a threatening landscape, with shifting loyalties and long held secrets, Tessa must once again navigate a future for her son and herself. Suspenseful thriller with emotional depth.
Rating: 4/5
Yarros, Rebecca (2023) Fourth Wing. Piatkus.
I picked up this book wondering what all the fuss was about – a viral TikTok sensation that became a bestselling novel! Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail had been destined for the Scribe Quadrant when her powerful mother ordered her to train as a dragon rider. Although she is fragile and small, she is clever. She uses her wits to bond with dragons and the ruthless wing leader of the Riders Quadrant, as she competes for survival in the deadly world of Basgiath War College. This is a fantasy with all the elements of Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games but with adult themes; the first in a five book series. Addictive and brutal.
Rating: 4/5
Funder, Anna (2023) Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life. Hamish Hamilton.
This is a book about George Orwell’s forgotten wife. She is all but invisible in the biographies of his life and work. Eileen O’Shaughnessy, academically brilliant in her own right, gave it all up for marriage. She had a pivotal role in Orwell’s creative and domestic life. Eileen was there with Orwell in his famous Spanish Civil War sojourn, lived his deprivations and suffered with him in WWII London. So, why has she been written out of his story? Funder recreates a narrative that portrays the passivity, eccentricities and intimacies of Orwell’s marriage using newly discovered letters as her source. Eileen is resurrected as an unsung hero who has been purposely excluded from the life of one of the most renowned twentieth-century authors, whose dystopian message still resonates today. Not a satisfying read, rather a human portrait that left me feeling immeasurably sad. Patriachicalism raises its ugly head once more.
Rating: 5/5
Moriarty, Liane (2024) Here One Moment. Pan Macmillan.
On a flight from Hobart to Sydney a mysterious elderly women stands in the aisle and, with a pointed finger, predicts each passengers time and cause of death. The passengers lives have been changed, maybe forever. For some death is close, for others way in the future. Moriarty skilfully explores free will and destiny as she follows the lives of the soothsayer and the passengers. Although an unsettling premise, overall a bit bland.
Rating: 3/5
Byrne, Paula (2024) Hardy Women: Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses. William Collins.
This is not a book you want to read the same month you read Wifedom. Thomas Hardy adored women, and he was hero-worshipped by them in return. Byrne draws on Hardy’s correspondence, to research his obsessive relationship with women, by looking closely at all the women in his life from his fictional characters to his wives, lovers and female relatives. There were a lot of them. The most fascinating is Hardy’s complicated menage with his wife, Emma, and his young typist, Florence, who he later marries. Emma has not been treated kindly by Hardy’s biographers and contemporaries. We are left asking was she a muse, a harridan, insane or a woman of character – or all of the above? Absorbing big read although for me it somewhat tarnished Hardy’s literary legacy.
Rating: 4/5
7:30 Bookclub 