The book club (by Mary Alice Monroe)

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I hadn’t heard of Mary Alice Monroe when I saw her novel ‘The book club’ on a church bookstall nearly two years ago. But the cover looked appealing, I liked the sound of the title, and the blurb on the back sounded exactly like my kind of book. I finally picked it up to read a few days ago.

It should have been very appealing: all the ingredients are there. There’s a brief prologue that hints at the rest of the story. Then quite a dramatic first chapter, where it’s obvious what’s going to transpire, but the tension is nicely done. We meet Eve in that first chapter, a reasonably happy and comfortably off housewife with two teenage children. She’s feeling as if something isn’t quite right in her marriage, but her husband Tom is about to go on a business trip. So she hopes to sort everything out when he returns. 

It’s no spoiler to say that Tom doesn’t return: this is what we know, from the start, is going to happen. And much of the novel is about Eve, how she grieves, what regrets she has, and how she eventually starts to find new meaning in her life.

Goodnight, beautiful (by Dorothy Koomson)

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In re-reading my novels by Dorothy Koomson, I wondered if I should skip ‘Goodnight, beautiful’. I first read it in October 2014 and didn’t remember anything about it; but glancing at my rating on LibraryThing, I’d given it fewer stars than any of the other books by this author. And a comment saying I wished I hadn’t read the blurb on the back of the book, as it had too many spoilers.

I decided to reread it anyway, and am very glad that I did. I didn’t look at the back of the book this time; I don’t know if the blurb changed in subsequent reprints of this book, but in my view it gives away far too much of the plot. I had to figure it out this time, and it did feel a bit confusing at first.

The story is told by two different women, Nova and Stephanie. Nova is married to George, and Stephanie is married to Mal. The main connection is that Nova and Mal grew up together, almost like brother and sister, and were extremely close friends. They both insist that this friendship never turned into a romantic relationship. 

Anne of Windy Willows (by Lucy Maud Montgomery)

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Although I have dipped into many of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s ‘Anne’ books fairly regularly over the past few decades, it must be close to thirty years since I read ‘Anne of Windy Willows’. My only memory of it was that it involved rather a lot of letters, and in general I’m not a fan of epistolary novels.

However, I’m reading the series in order at present, about one per month. Since I finished the third book, ‘Anne of the Island’, at the end of July I decided to read the fourth one - which is also sometimes known as ‘Anne of Windy Poplars’ - in the past few days.

This book covers Anne’s three years as head of a school, working and saving money as she waits for her fiancé Gilbert to finish his medical training. And while there are several letters to Gilbert expressing Anne’s personal opinions and impressions, there’s also plenty of direct narrative.

To kill a mockingbird (by Harper Lee)

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I had to read Harper Lee’s classic novel ‘To kill a mockingbird’ when I was a teenager - I guess about fourteen. I don’t think I enjoyed it all that much. But I’m not sure I really understood it. The issues of segregation were completely new to me, in the UK in the 1970s, and I didn’t get why there was so much dialect even amongst the supposedly educated white people. 

I’ve had a copy of this book sitting on our shelves for the past thirty or so years, and kept thinking that maybe I should reread. But I only got around to doing so this week, and the reason is that the recently discovered sequel, ‘Go set a watchman’ is next month’s local reading club choice. I’m not quite sure how a sequel can have been written before the main book which shot the author to fame, but perhaps I’ll find out more when I read it.

In the meantime, I’ve been reading ‘To kill a mockingbird’ over the past few days. I knew, vaguely the story - that a white lawyer in a town in the deep south of the United States was defending a black man, accused of a crime. But I hadn’t remembered any of the details, nor the outcome. And I found it quite a gripping storyline.

Shopaholic and sister (by Sophie Kinsella)

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I’m thoroughly enjoying rereading the ‘Shopaholic’ series by the late Sophie Kinsella. Undoubtedly ‘chick-lit’, with a heroine who has almost nothing in common with me, lifestyle-wise. And yet the author managed to create, in Becky Brandon, a thoroughly likeable young woman despite her addiction to shopping and general self-centredness. She can also be extremely generous, and she cares deeply about her family and friends.

I finished ‘Shopaholic ties the knot’ last month, in which Sophie and Luke finally get married, after a lot of indecision and confusion, and potential disasters. I love the way that no matter how deep a hole Becky manages to dig for herself, there’s always some way out. Often something related to her personality or her previous professional skills.

Shopaholic and sister’ is the next in the series. I first read it in 2007, and as far as I recall it was the first novel by Sophie Kinsella that I had read. I didn’t expect much, but thought the writing style excellent and the story well-crafted. It didn’t matter that I started part-way through the series and collected the other books somewhat at random.