The particular sadness of lemon cake (by Aimee Bender)

(Amazon UK link)

I sometimes browse a local church bookstall, and tend to pick up books that look interesting, or quirky - I don’t mind paying fifty cents for something I might return a few months later. But occasionally I discover a real gem, perhaps an author I had not previously come across. 

I thought, when I started ‘The particular sadness of lemon cake’ by Aimee Bender, that this was going to be one of those serendipitous discoveries. The cover is appealing, the blurb intriguing, the reviews positive. It was evident from the back of the book that it was going to be a tad surreal, but that didn’t worry me.

The book is narrated by a girl called Rose who is nearly nine in the opening chapter. She’s an appealing character, one whom I liked throughout the book. The writing is good, too, with some beautiful phrasing, and descriptions that are not over-long, but quite vivid. Rose has an older brother, the clever, geeky Joseph, and they live with their parents in a residential area in the United States. 

Savannah purchase (by Jane Aiken Hodge)

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As far as I can remember, ‘Savannah purchase’ was the first book I ever read by Jane Aiken Hodge. It was given to me for Christmas when I was about sixteen and a half, and I read it soon afterwards and loved it. I reread it ten years later, but the last time I read it was in 2006. For some reason I had not picked it up again until a few days ago.

The novel is set in the United States 1819, four years after the battle of Waterloo led to the cousins Josephine and Juliet being separated. Their mothers were identical twins, and although they had very different fathers, the two look so alike that they can often be mistaken for twins too. 

We meet Juliet first, living on her own and almost destitute after the death of her father. She lives in a very run-down house by the Savannah River in Georgia. She’s read that Josephine is in the country and has sent her a note, so she’s greatly relieved when her cousin arrives by boat, accompanied by black servants. She brings food, and promises to help… but she wants Juliet to help her too. 

A future Chalet School girl (by Elinor M Brent-Dyer)

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There are some of the Chalet School series by Elinor M Brent-Dyer which I have read multiple times over the decades. There are others which I have apparently read only three or four times at most, as I find that I have forgotten most of the story and even some of the people. One of the latter category is ‘A future Chalet School girl’. I last read it in 2016, but couldn’t remember anything about it when I reread it in the past couple of days.

It’s one of a handful of books in this series which doesn’t feature school life at all. Not everyone appreciates them, but I always liked Joey Maynard, mother of 11 and a ‘foundation stone’ of the Chalet School.  In this book, she and her family go for a long summer holiday in the Tiernsee, where the original Chalet School was located. And they have an extra visitor - fifteen-year-old Mélanie. 

We meet Mélanie in the first chapter, in tears as she argues with her aunt. Mélanie’s parents, we learn, are travelling abroad so she’s being brought up by her aunt and uncle. She’s very fond of them, but he has been offered a promotion which means locating to Switzerland, and they’re not willing to leave their niece behind. She is horrified at the thought of leaving the school she loves, and all her friends, and tries to persuade her aunt to let her board. 

Between friends (by Kathleen Rowntree)

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I’m enjoying re-reading my collection of Kathleen Rowntree novels. She only wrote nine, but they cover quite a variety of settings and people. They’re primarily character based, but with a different focus in each one.

‘Between friends’, which I last read in 2004, is firmly set in a small village in the UK. It was written in 1992 as a contemporary modern novel. And it features a highly unusual situation, one which I had vaguely recalled even more than twenty years after reading.

Tessa is the main character, although there are many viewpoints given in the course of the novel.  The opening sentence tells us - very cleverly - that something life-changing has happened in her kitchen, although there are no obvious signs. Sunlight continues to stream in, and Tessa continues pouring coffee for her good friend Maddy. I assume they’re both around forty. 

Maddy has made a comment about something which she could only have known about if she had spent some time with Tessa’s husband Nick. And Tessa knows, in a moment of intuition, that they are having an affair. Nick is a serial philanderer, and she has decided to forgive him each time one of his brief interludes ends. She loves him, and he’s a good provider, a good father, and mostly they get along very well.

The Essex serpent (by Sarah Perry)

(Amazon UK link)

As is so often the case when starting a book for our local reading group, I had not heard of either the author or the title. Sarah Perry is a British writer who has had four books published so far. ‘The Essex serpent’ was her second novel, published in 2006.

It opens with rather a depressing prologue, following a young unnamed man going for a walk next to a river on New Year’s Eve. It doesn’t spell out what happens, but it’s clearly not something positive. We don’t learn more about this incident until later in the book.

The novel takes place over the course of the following year, and is set in Victorian England, towards the end of the 19th century. The main character is a woman called Cora whose husband has just died. She is somewhat sad, but also feels free at last; it’s evident that he was seriously abusive, though, thankfully, there are no gratuitous details. Cora is rather a strange character, possibly because she was married at a young age, and never really had the opportunity of developing her own style and personality.