Dance while you can (by Susan Lewis)

(Amazon UK link)

I've read a few of Susan Lewis's books in the past couple of years or so. I love her writing - I was particularly taken with her autobiography, 'Just One More Day', which I read in January 2009. So I'm trying a few more, and have just finished 'Dance while you can'. 

This book is the story of a forbidden, but passionate romance. Elizabeth, the junior matron at a boys' private school, is surprisingly attractive.. and becomes a little too friendly with one of the older boys. She is only four years older than he is, but relatives and colleagues disapprove strongly, and they are forced to part.

Alexander, the young man concerned, tries to forget his first love. He first tries at university, and then in London high society, with a string of other women. Elizabeth, too, tries to move on with her life. But neither can forget the other, and both wonder if, some day, they might meet again.

The writing in this novel is amazing, the pace fast, the scenarios - including some unlikely and obsessive crimes, with some shocking scenes - surprisingly believable. I found it difficult to put this book down once I had got a way into it. There are sections which alternate between Elizabeth and Alexander's viewpoints, both told in the first person, in a style almost reminiscent of Susan Howatch at times.

There was rather more bad language than I'm comfortable with in this book, but it's par for the course with women's fiction these days, and none of it was really inappropriate.

What badly let the book down, in my opinion, was two overly explicit and entirely unnecessary scenes of intimacy early in the book. They did not fit with the otherwise excellent style, and (thankfully) later bedroom scenes in the book were merely implied, or mentioned in passing.

Still, I would rate the book highly and recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind a couple of explicit passages.

Note that this book can often be found second-hand, and is also available in Kindle form on both sides of the Atlantic.

Review copyright Sue's Book Reviews, 3rd October 2011

Stolen (by Susan Lewis)

(Amazon UK link)

I first came across Susan Lewis when reading her autobiography, 'Just One More Day', which I borrowed from a friend and thoroughly enjoyed. It took a couple of years to acquire a few of her novels, but I was very put off by the first one I read, which had far too many gratuitous and explicit details, even including some violence. The story and writing were good, but the scenes I had to skip were so bad that I was rather dubious about reading any more by this author.

However, I was contacted by one of Susan Lewis's publicity team, who offered to send me her recent publication 'Stolen' for review. I'm always delighted to be sent a free copy of a book, and I started reading it on Sunday.

Despite it being a long novel - nearly six hundred pages - I finished it in just four days. It is a powerful and emotive story, which became almost impossible to put down by the time I was half way through.

The story features Lucy, who has grown up as an only child in a loving family, and now has two teenagers of her own. She has become increasingly unhappy in her marriage to the cheerful but disloyal actor Joe. As the story begins, she is about to move with their rebellious daughter Hanna to her parents' home in the countryside, to take over their antiques business. Joe - who insists that he does not want the marriage to end despite regular unfaithfulness on his behalf - will be staying behind to look for work, and their son Ben is going abroad for a gap year.

If all this were not sufficient stress points for one individual - and Lucy does not handle partings well; her family are all aware that she can become phobic when saying goodbye to anyone - she soon realises that all is not well in her new environment. Employees of the auction room resent her presence, and try to undermine her; worse, there are threats of legal action from a dissatisfied client, and the possibility of some underhand dealings in past auctions.

Moreover her parents both seem to have health problems, and her mother is particularly nervous, clearly harbouring some kind of secret. Due to the prologue of the book, set thirty years previously, readers are already aware that Lucy is not who she seems to be - but do not know if this is the only secret being kept. It's a clever device, meaning that the tension gradually increases over the majority of the book, before the inevitable revelations which build on the brief prologue and which explain many other threads that all draw together in Lucy's first few months in her new home.

The writing is excellent. There are a lot of characters, and I found some of them a little confusing at first, but soon sorted most of them out in my mind. Lucy comes across as very human and believable, and while Hanna's change of heart perhaps happens a little too neatly, and the underhand employee thread seems to be tidied away a bit too easily, most of the book hangs together extremely well.

I could feel for Lucy in her stresses and dilemmas, increasingly confused and deeply hurt, yet needing to go on for the sake of those she loves. And there is a lot of love in this book. Some wonderful friendships are forged, and I was moved by the way so many people were willing to put themselves out - in one case in an immense act of sacrifice - for the sake of those they cared about.

I was relieved to find that there was no bad language, no detailed violence, and no explicit sex. If I have a criticism, it would be that there are some over-long descriptive passages that did not add anything to the story. It's long enough, and I felt that it would have benefitted from a little editing here and there. However, it wasn't a huge thing, and I was easily able to skim them. Other readers might decry the ending which was perhaps a bit too neat and tidy, but I rather liked it myself.

All in all, I enjoyed 'Stolen' thoroughly, and will probably be pondering some of the issues raised for some time to come.

Review copyright Sue's Book Reviews, 19th August 2011

Wildfire (by Susan Lewis)

(Amazon UK link)

Two and a half years ago, a friend lent me 'Just one more day', by Susan Lewis. It was her autobiography, written with some creative license; I found it moving, vivid, and thought it extremely well-written. Despite having never heard of the author before I put a few of her books on my wishlist, after reading reviews at Amazon, and was pleased to receive three of them for my recent birthday.

'Wildfire' is quite a long book - almost 600 pages. The story combines some romantic threads with business wheelings and dealings, and includes quite a bit of suspense.

It's the story of Rhiannon who has a great boyfriend - Oliver - a great career in TV, and wonderful friends. Perhaps there are a few strange things going on with Oliver, who keeps losing his credit cards, and she hasn't really had enough time for her best friend Lizzy lately... but as the story starts, she's working on a programme in an African bush safari and life seems good.

Then things start to go wrong. We know from the prologue that someone is investigating Rhiannon and Oliver, although we don't know why. There are more and more odd things that happen, increasing the tension - and my curiosity to find out what was going on and who could be trusted. Although there's quite a big cast of characters, they were different enough that I didn't have much difficulty remembering who was who, even though I read just a chapter or two at night over about three weeks.

As with the autobiography, the writing is very good, drawing me into the story, making places and situations come vividly alive. There are a lot of subplots which weave together cleverly, all making some kind of sense in the end. There's some unpleasantness in the storylines, but not so much as to give me bad dreams.

Unfortunately, the book was badly let down by some highly explicit scenes. There is one which is at least relevant (though unnecessary to the story) of wildlife violence. Worse than that were several 'bedroom' episodes with far too much intimate, often crude detail. I was particularly horrified by one, early in the book, that is entirely superfluous to the storyline. It made me feel slightly ill even though I skipped actually reading most of the detail once I realised what it was about. That one scene was so bad that I almost gave up reading the book. That section alone meant that I could neither recommend this to anyone, nor lend it to any of my friends.

It's a pity the author felt it necessary to put these scenes in, although there were fewer later in the book, thankfully. Without them, I would have enjoyed it very much. I hope it's just a one-off in this book and that when I read the others I was given I won't find anything similar!

I do realise that some people don't mind explicit details, so am putting in an Amazon link as usual. It's already out of print in the USA, apparently.

Review copyright Sue's Book Reviews, 12th June 2011

Just one more day (by Susan Lewis)

(Amazon UK link)

I'd never heard of Susan Lewis, and probably wouldn't have chosen this book on my own. But a friend lent it to me. I picked it up about a week ago, and found it very readable.

'Just one more day' is a biographical account of the author's childhood, when her mother was battling cancer. It's cleverly told from two perspectives - eight-year-old Susan's own, and that of her mother Eddress. The background is of a struggling family in Bristol in the 1960s; the mother is strict, and ambitious for her children, the father a delightful man who reads to them, plays with them, and likes to write poetry.

I could picture the father easily. However the mother is of an era and type I have not really come across, shouting at her children when they needed encouragement, coercing them into behaviour she thought was good for them. She even denies them simple pleasures like playing outside with friends.

Yet she does this out of ignorance, not malice. She genuinely cares for both her children - for Susan and for her younger brother Gary. Yet she seems incapable of understanding her feisty and imaginative daughter.

I also found myself rather horrified at the way the parents - particularly Eddress - tell lies to their children on a regular basis. In the early chapters, Eddress has a mastectomy, but the children are told she's working away from home. They have no idea she is in hospital. So Susan imagines something worse - that her mother has another family, and may leave them permanently. She suffers at school, too, since other children know more about her parents than she does.

The images portrayed are vivid and realistic, the writing very well done. The story is told in a way that left me wanting to know a great deal more about the author's later life.

I seem to be reading more biographies and autobiographies than I used to, and mostly enjoying them. This one certainly isn't in a traditional style. The parts written as Eddress must have been at least partly fictional, even if Susan Lewis asked her father and other relatives for details of conversations. She can't possibly have known what her mother was feeling and thinking - and yet the whole is very believable.

Definitely recommended.

Review copyright Sue's Book Reviews, 16th January 2009