If you're looking for something extra to read (as well as Baby, Baby and The Labyrinth Year, which we hope you’ve bought and read!) some reviews of others you may enjoy, from Mari Howard…
Mari’s Book Club
Girl with a White Dog
Catnip Books
Paperback: £7.99Girl with a White Dog quietly and confidently delivers its message in plain sight, yet never over-dramatically. Author Anne Booth’s choice to refuse the heights of drama in this tale, preferring to use a first person narrative by a year nine (age 13 to 14) student makes for a sensitive account of how it feels… Read More
Mrs Morris Changes Lanes
Hawkesbury Press, 2021
Paperback: £4.99Ebook: £1.99 (Kindle)
Another novella by Debbie Young is always welcome light reading! After The Natter of Knitters, (a romp themed around Yarn-bombing in Wendlebury Barrow, the Cotswold village location for her Sophie Sayers cozy mystery series), her Mrs Morris Changes Lanes moves away from this familiar location and group of characters, and extends the kind of social… Read More
The Fall of a Sparrow
Matador, 2021
Hardback: £13.00Paperback: No paperback at present
Ebook: £4.99
A subtle story, weaving in themes of inclusivity, and the validity of not dismissing the value of other people’s cultures… ‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’ (William Shakespeare, Hamlet) “ Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? … Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside… Read More
Two Village Based Novels: Murder Lost & Found, and The Diary of Isabella M. Smugge
, both published 2021
Paperback: £8.99, £8.56
Ebook: £2.99, £5.99
After Sarah Moss’s three linked, feminist, rather serious novels, (Night Waking, Bodies of Light, and Signs for Lost Children), read in autumn and winter, I have turned to a couple of lighter books. Each author is someone I know: Debbie Young, who introduced me to the Alliance of Independent Authors, and later invited me to… Read More
Behind the Crime
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd, 2019
Paperback: £7.99I’ve recently read a short book, Behind the Crime by Colin Ferguson, who has worked in the Probation Service and after retirement as a Family Mediator. The author’s intention is to set before his readers what lies behind their criminal behaviour which led to prison sentences, and the part probation can and may play in… Read More
The Art Fiasco
Lion Hudson, 2020
Paperback: £9.99Ebook: £9.99
“Poppy didn’t like being on the receiving end of a journalist’s questions…” No, she certainly wouldn’t! Our protagonist in The Art Fiasco is a journalist herself… a lady journalist, and the year is 1924. The Art Fiasco is the fifth in the Poppy Denby series of mysteries, and having read all four preceding books I… Read More
Red Cabbage Blue
Instant Apostle, 2019
Paperback: £8.99Ebook: £5.99 (Kindle)
Red Cabbage Blue is a gently told story of enormous tragedy, family secrets, and intergenerational conflict. I don’t do spoilers if I can avoid them, but the book follows a therapy journey: a young girl, Adele, an art student, who turns up in a counsellor’s office presenting unusual symptoms… That is enough to sketch out… Read More
Conversations with Friends
Faber & Faber , 2018
Paperback: £6.00 (Amazon)Ebook: £4.68 (Kindle)
When I finished reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, I thought that is the saddest novel ever. When I re-read it some years later, I felt the same. Now Sally Rooney has updated my list: Conversations with Friends is up there with Tess, the saddest tale – though not ‘told by an idiot, full of… Read More
Stranger at St Brides
Hawkesbury Press, 2020
Paperback: £8.99Ebook: £2.99
Stranger at St Brides (a school story for grown-ups) is the second in a series by my writing friend, Debbie Young, and here she is really into her stride. Whatever we think of Public (boarding) schools, packed with the local and the overseas offspring of doting parents who can do without their teenage daughters for… Read More
Normal People
Faber & Faber, 2019
Hardback: (Amazon) £8.93Paperback: (Amazon) £4.50
Ebook: (Kindle) £4.28
I watched the television adaptation of Normal People before I read the book. If this mistake was shared by a large audience then many, like me, could’ve initially understood the main point of this story as mainly significant looks and glances, and episodes of “having sex”. Most indoor scenes were filmed in half darkness, the… Read More