Book Review: Turn Right At The Rainbow

by Jackie Law

Image

This is a story for anyone who has ever moved house, is contemplating doing so, or who simply enjoys browsing Rightmove to see what is currently on the market. Although told as a story, the story is true. It is a memoir recounted by the author about the time she and her husband decided to move out of London and the home they had made their own over more than three decades. Habits had changed and they now wished to live closer to the area where they spent much of their time.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that moving house in England is a stressful experience. The chains formed by sellers and buyers are unstable, reliant as they are on the whims of those within them, and therefore easily broken. Every required step of such a move – surveys, solicitors, taxes, moving fees – are a drain on capital. And that is before the snags of a house are uncovered and costs to put right guessed at.

Roz and Dave Morris made the decision to go house hunting in the winter after Covid.

“When the lockdowns end, many people emerge with life-changing epiphanies. This is ours. Our two-part life is absurd. For the time it takes, the money, the carbon footprint and the freedom that we have learned is fragile.”

They put their house on the market. They find buyers who, amazingly, have sold their property and are willing to rent until the Morris’s find a place they are happy to move into. And yet this is where the real problems begin.

The story is one of houses and their importance in our lives. They are not just places of shelter but also custodians of personal tastes and memories. Occupants stamp their mark on a place: the colour painted on the walls; the statement fixtures and fittings; the strangely designed extensions that must have made sense to whoever originally commissioned them. Roz does not expect perfection and has money put aside for remedial work as every house will have issues. The biggest issues, however, turn out to be the sellers who tend to view their homes through a rose tinted lens despite the fact they wish to leave them.

Houses are bought and sold through intermediaries known as estate agents. They work on commission so are eager for sales to happen. This can mean they are not always open about sharing information. Offers are made only to be rejected for being too low, or because another buyer has been preferred. A short time later this buyer mysteriously vanishes and Roz is told that for just a small increase her offer would be accepted. Then the buyer changes his mind and the acceptance is withdrawn. They may come back a few weeks later and none of this is satisfactorily explained by the agent.

The book focuses on around half a dozen houses that Roz seriously considered. The reasons why each were not in the end purchased is covered with wry wit and an increasing knowledge of the games that can be played by agents in order to push through a sale. In amongst these details are memories of other houses Roz has lived in and their importance in the history she has built around her life. When a house becomes a home it wraps itself around the family who live their and the friends invited in. The older the house the more its walls, and the land it is built on, hold the shadows and history of residents who have passed through.

As time passes agents start blaming Roz and Dave for not trying hard enough, for not moving into houses that still need to be checked over to ensure they are not seriously unsound. The story offers a warning to those who may feel rushed and pressurised, ending up with a white elephant. Yet it is told with humour as well as candour. The associated anecdotes are entertaining.

The writing flows and remains always engaging, helped by the chosen structure of mostly short chapters. Readers will become invested in whether the couple can find their next home before their buyers lose patience and pull their offer. Despite the mentions of friends who managed to sell and buy within the months covered, the book may prove enough to put off any but the most determined from ever trying to move house again!

An enjoyable read with its light hearted approach to what is such a stressful experience. The denouement offers food for thought on where the grass may actually be greener and what gives a home its worth.

Turn Right At The Rainbow is published by Spark Furnace and may be purchased from Waterstones and other good bookshops.

Book Review: The Coast Road

by Jackie Law

Image

When the Irish Free State was established in 1922, the newly independent country embraced a strict, Catholic ‘moral code’ outlawing divorce and the use of contraceptives. Demands for change started to be heard from the 1970s despite Irish society remaining cowed by the conservatism of the church – with the complicity of the state. In 1979 contraception was made available to married couples on prescription. It took until 1985 for these to be made available without prescription and to anyone over the age of seventeen. The constitutional prohibition on divorce was not removed until 1996. In 2019 abortion was legalised with strict limitations.

The Coast Road, Alan Murrin’s debut, is mostly set in 1994, in the small Irish town of Ardglas in County Donegal. It features a number of middle aged couples – well-to-do but still unhappy with their lot. The community is close knit but not always kindly, gossip – often embellished – spreading like wildfire and judgements harsh. The focus is mostly on the women and the price they pay when marriage cannot be legally dissolved and there are children to consider.

The book opens with a short prologue in which Izzy Keaveney is being questioned by a detective following a fire in a cottage just visible from her house. This is repeated towards the end of the book when all is made clear.

The story proper begins five months earlier. Izzy is attending mass at the local church, heavily hungover after a business dinner the previous night that she was compelled to attend with her husband, James, who is a TD. She is angry with James because he has vetoed her plans to purchase a shop she had hoped to run, to give her more to do outside of looking after her home and family. The couple have regular fallings out and can go for weeks without speaking during which times Izzy will move into their spare room. Their teenage daughter, Orla, is at boarding school during the week but their eleven year old son, Niall, must live within the heavy atmosphere generated by warring parents.

At the mass that morning the congregation is scandalised and mesmerised when a passage of the bible is read out by Colette Cowley who has returned to Ardglas after leaving her husband, Shaun, and their children some months earlier to move in with a man in Dublin. Shaun has refused to let her back into their home or allow her access to the children. Colette, a published poet, believes that if she bides her time and continues to seek Shaun’s forgiveness he will relent.

The other key couple in this drama are Dolores and Donal Mullen. Donal is a bully and a serial philanderer but Dolores cannot see any option but to try to hold their unhappy marriage together, especially as she is pregnant with their fourth child. The cat is set amongst the pigeons when Colette persuades them to let her rent their holiday cottage, located on the coast and just up the hill from the Mullen’s home.

To bring in some income, Colette starts a ‘Writing Workshop’ at the town’s community centre. Izzy decides to go along. The previous winter she had attended art classes and before that a knitting circle – neither interests continued. Izzy is fascinated by Colette, not just her reputation but her personality. She had not, however, foreseen that Colette would try to befriend her in order to gain access to her youngest child who had been a friend of Niall’s.

With the scene set and characters introduced plot progression proceeds apace.

As events unfold the author builds depth to each of the key players. The portraits of each marriage being painted offer a vivid depiction of life in Ireland at the time. It is easy to sympathise but also to blame the unhappy participants for the directions their lives have taken. In Colette we have the woman who left and a portrayal of what that offered, especially as her husband seemed mostly decent. In Dolores we have the woman who stays but is treated so badly it is only the comparison with Colette that explains why her options are so limited. Izzy is angry and often depressed but her situation also represents the loneliness inherent in being a housewife with an often absent and perennially busy husband, in a community where talking to anyone about personal issues risks being gossiped about by everyone.

The writing flows beautifully, never rushed and never dragging. The story being told is immersive and, in many ways, appalling. It is a saga of families but with the grip of a thriller, offering a denouement that is satisfying despite the underlying tragedy. A carefully crafted balance is achieved between actions and consequences, between what may be desperately wanted and the reality if that is granted.

There is also much to consider around many of the sometimes contentious subjects touched upon.

Such is its hold, this is a book that could be read in a sitting, if one had time.

The Coast Road is published by Bloomsbury.

Book Review: A World Gone Mad

by Jackie Law

Image

“I’ve been working my way through some general history here in Forusund and it makes for dreadfully depressing reading – war and war and war and suffering for humanity. And they never learn but just carry on drenching the planet in blood, sweat and tears.”

A World Gone Mad, by Astrid Lindgren (translated by Sarah Death), is a publication of the war diaries written by the author between 1939 and 1945. It is a fascinating account, not least because of a perspective that is set down in real time and not entirely Eurocentric. Lindgren lived in Sweden which remained neutral throughout the conflict. Surrounded by countries that were being invaded by both German and Russian forces, she offers an outsider’s thoughts on the role Britain played as well as her very real and ongoing fear of Russia that had roots from well before the war.

The book opens with a Foreword written by Lindgren’s daughter, Karin, who was five years old when the hostilities began. She writes of her mother:

“Now I know that she was probably unique, a 32 year-old housewife with secretarial training but no experience of thinking in political terms, who was determined to document what was happening”

Although not yet a published author, her most famous fictional creation, Pippi Longstocking, was born from the tensions of the war years – bedtime stories to entertain Karin.

The Foreword is followed by a Translator’s Note which explains how the diaries – seventeen leather bound notebooks – remained in the family home until 2013. The originals contained many press cuttings – the main source of information at the time they were written – which in this edition are referred to but not included. This does not detract from the reader’s ability to understand each entry.

The first is dated 1 September 1939 when the German army invaded Poland leading to declarations of war from Allied governments. For a while there are daily entries that bring to the fore the initial reactions of ordinary citizens: despondency from those who still remember the First World War that was supposed to end all future wars; and stockpiling of what can still be found on already denuded shelves in shops. As a housewife this is a recurring concern for Lindgren. Sweden may have remained neutral but with transport links disrupted there was still rationing and certain other privations. Unlike in other countries, however, the family did not go hungry. Lindgren is well aware of the extreme suffering elsewhere and often writes about how grateful she is that Sweden remained neutral despite criticisms and pressures from other governments.

Family details add to the diaries’ interest. Lindgren’s daughter is often ill, including with anxiety, although when sufficiently distracted seems a happy young girl who does well at school. Her teenage brother is more of a problem. He and his mother do not always get on and he regularly fails exams. Nevertheless, he is loved and Lindgren chronicles her concerns for him.

Most entries throughout the six or so years covered mention significant battles in the war being reported, sometimes erroneously – although this published misinformation is pointed out when later uncovered. Between these, birthdays and other family events are celebrated with lists of food eaten and presents exchanged. From early on the author hopes for the war to end soon, understanding how badly those directly affected elsewhere are suffering because powerful men are looking to expand territories over which to rule.

Towards the end of the conflict, when refugees were arriving in Sweden in large numbers, there are brief mentions of how they are perceived and their apparent negativity towards the locals. So much of human nature never seems to change.

This is an original account of the war, one that is equal parts despair that it should be happening at all and a considered response to lives changed because of it. Although information available to her contains much propaganda, Lindgren does not fall prey to reporting it with undue bias. She concerns herself with the suffering of individuals who are given little choice, and with the wellbeing of her own family whose lives are affected even if not as badly as those in other countries.

I started reading this book before Trump and Netanyahu launched their worrying offensive against Iran. I can only hope that Britain does not get pulled into this escalating conflict although our leaders rarely seem to show the gumption Sweden managed last century, and always find the money for environmentally damaging military conflict. If nothing else, Lindgren’s diaries document the futility of any war, just as history has always done.

A World Gone Mad is published by Pushkin Press.

Monthly Roundup – February 2026

by Jackie Law

Image

The weather in February has probably been the month’s most notable feature with localised flooding on the roads and muddy trails making runs more challenging. The rare days when I could manage with fewer layers offered a welcome reminder that spring will arrive, as it always does, and these endless grey days will pass.

We started the month in Dorchester where we enjoyed a couple of nights away and took part in The Great Field parkrun. I posted about this holiday in my usual way, through the lens of my teddy bear: Edward Explores Dorchester.

Husband is not currently running as he continues to try to recover from injury. We still managed to attend a parkrun each Saturday with him volunteering as tail or park walker. All being well, he will finish February by earning his 50 volunteer milestone t-shirt. Elder son earned his 50 events completed t-shirt in late January and daughter followed suit last week. I’m pleased they have become enthused and take part with us when they are able – I suspect the post run breakfast we provide at a ‘Spoons or Lounge Cafe may be an added draw.

My little family got together around Valentine’s Day to devour the traditional banoffee pie I make for husband. Pancake Day was quieter and delayed until the Thursday due to resident younger son’s availability – we still enjoyed ourselves.

I posted reviews for 7 books in February. In amongst those read for Bookmunch and others plucked from my TBR pile were some new releases kindly sent by Salt Publishing. To read my thoughts on each of this month’s books, click the title below.

Fiction

Image  Image
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt, published by Sceptre
Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael, published by Salt

Image  Image
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, published by Granta
The Fox of Kensal Green by Richard Tyrrell, published by Salt

Image  Image
Daisy Miller by Henry James, published by Penguin
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, published by Pan

Image
Paper Towns by John Green, published by Bloomsbury

Sourcing the books

I may not have received many books in the post this month but those that arrived delighted me.

Image

As ever I wish to thank all who send me their books to review – the arrival of book post remains a cheering event in my day.

My thanks also to those who share my words across their social media platforms – whichever ones you are now using – your support is always appreciated. I am no longer on Twitter but you may find me on Instagram and Threads.

And to everyone reading this, I wish you and yours good health as we look forward to the arrival of better weather. May you still find time to relax with some good books, ones that take your mind of whatever else is going on in our increasingly polarized, wider world.

Book Review: Paper Towns

by Jackie Law

Image

Paper Towns is John Green’s third novel for young adults. Set in Orlando, Florida – where the author was raised – it is narrated by Quenton Jacobsen, referred to as Q by his friends, and covers his final weeks of High School. Q is a rule follower and good student. He is looking forward to taking up his place at an esteemed college and gets on well with his parents. This is in stark contrast to his fellow classmate and next door neighbour, Margo Roth Spiegelman, who Q has adored since they were little children but who now mostly ignores him.

Q’s best friends are Ben and Radar, both of whom he regularly games with. They are not amongst the cool kids, and can still be the butt of some minor bullying, but are mostly left alone by the popular as well as cruel students. Prom is approaching and both Ben and Radar plan on attending, hopefully with pretty girlfriends – or honeybunnies as Ben calls them. Q, by choice, will not be joining them.

A prologue introduces Q and Margo when they were nine years old and found a dead body. The story proper then starts on what Q describes as ‘The longest day of my life’. After a normal day at school – which functions as a useful scene setter – Margo appears at his bedroom window and just about forces Q to join her on an overnight adventure. The antics they get up to – mostly imaginative acts of revenge – fill the first part of the book.

In the second part, Q is looking forward to the next school day as he figures Margo will now pay him some attention. This does not happen because she has disappeared. Her parents are more annoyed than worried as she has a history of acting out in this way. At eighteen years old she is now an adult and they seem content to reconfigure their family without her disruptive influence.

Q does not feel the same. He is worried and also believes she may have left clues to enable him to find her. Enlisting the help of Ben and Radar the trio set out to solve the puzzle of where Margo may be.

These are American high school students in a fictional scenario and the author builds the unfolding tale with a degree of licence. They have access to cars and apparently trusting parents. They are free to follow the possible leads they uncover and rarely seem to encounter situations that put them in danger. The final part of the book is a road trip undertaken in a way that must have been deeply hurtful to their parents. These adults are very much secondary characters, there to add colour, and as plot devices, but with otherwise limited input.

Although I found the main plot quite bland in many ways, with action scenes that never quite rang true, the story offers a great deal more than attempts at humour and intrigue. Q is as self-centred as any teenager but comes to realise through his search for Margo that people are more than the image he has conjured for them.

“The fundamental mistake I had always made – and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make – was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.”

Q starts to see his friends as more than just ‘his’. Radar especially calls him out on the way Q expects them to drop everything when he calls and never asks about other aspects of their lives that matter to them. While this may be a valuable lesson, it is one many adults have yet to learn.

This is, very much, a book targeted at teenagers but one that trusts them to consider more than just the adventure being related. It may not have the emotional impact of the author’s most famous work, The Fault in Our Stars, but it is still worth reading.

Paper Towns is published by Bloomsbury.

Book Review: The Nightingale

by Jackie Law

Image

The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah, is mostly set in occupied France during the Second World War. It tells the stories of two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, whose upbringing was shadowed by their father’s experiences during the First World War. Now beautiful young women (aren’t they always beautiful?), but with very different personalities, they face up to the hardships that must be endured and which will change them forever.

How facile that introduction sounds. The book was a gift from my sister and not one I would have chosen for myself. So many fictional accounts of both last century’s European World Wars have been written it can now be hard to find one that truly gets across the horrors (have we become inured?) without losing some depth in the characters portrayed. And yet here the author succeeds – if that is the right word for the depiction of such drawn out and terrible cruelty and suffering meted out by fellow humans.

Her hook is that the protagonists are women, and that female ‘heroes’ are rarely focused on when the history books are written. What she manages to avoid, however, is writing from a stridently feminist slant, choosing instead one that explores her key characters’ personal traits.

The story opens in the USA in 1995, approaching 50 years since the war ended. An elderly widow is preparing to sell her family home and move into a retirement complex at the behest of her son. She will be limited in the possessions she can keep but is determined to retain a trunk containing memories from when she lived in France. This is not a part of her life she has ever talked of to her child.

“If I had told him the truth long ago, or had danced and drunk and sung more, maybe he would have seen me instead of a dependable, ordinary mother. He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.”

The timeline then moves back to 1939 and we meet Vianne who is living in the tranquil Loire Valley. Married to her teenage sweetheart, Antoine Mauriac, they have a beloved daughter, eight year old Sophie, and the heartache of four previous babies who did not survive. War is on the horizon and Antoine receives word he is to be mobilized. Remembering how war changed her father, Vianne is deeply worried.

A year later we meet Vianne’s sister, Isabelle Rosignol, as she gets herself expelled from yet another finishing school. Sent to Paris, where she hopes to live with her father, he will not countenance such an arrangement. Instead, he sends her to Vianne. The unexpectedly difficult journey – surrounded by refugees from the city she must walk most of the way and suffers attacks – provides Isabelle with her first taste of the true horrors of war. These grim details are vividly rendered.

The sisters have a troubled history during the war years, made more difficult when a German soldier, Captain Beck, is billeted at their home. Isabelle dreams of being a hero, of doing something significant to help those of her compatriots who are as appalled as her that France was so quick to surrender. She makes her contempt for the Germans, including Captain Beck, and her irritation at her sister’s acceptance of the situation obvious, putting them all in danger.

The increasing deprivations the French people endured, and the depravity of so many of the German soldiers and then the French police – who would kill on a whim – are depicted clearly and in detail. Yet it is the ways in which Vianne and Isabelle cope that comes to the fore. Isabelle gets her wish and joins the resistance. In doing so she risks not just her own life but also those of her family. Vianne struggles to see her sister as anything other than the selfish and impulsive young girl she still feels guilty for abandoning when overcome by grief. Isabelle harbours much anger from this time, a part of what drives her forward in the difficulties and dangers she undertakes.

As the war years pass the German soldiers grow ever more angry and sadistic, knowing now about the French resistance and the increasingly successful Allied offensives. All of this makes life for Vianne even harder, and increases the risks Isabelle continues to face. These later chapters were hard to read – not just the killings and disappearances but the torture and treatment of innocents. We have long known such atrocities happened but having them laid bare in this way brings into focus the realities of war for everyone.

The denouement is not so grim – a decision by the author that somehow took something away from what may linger from the long build-up (and that lingering matters given wars are still waged). Not everyone dies, and there is a final – unexpected if explained – heartbreak that Vianne must deal with. We also finally learn which of the sisters the elderly woman in the USA is.

Still though, the final pages almost moved me to tears so the author has that skill. And it was a worthwhile read – a little different to other war stories but one that made brutally clear why we should learn and never go down that road again.

Always a shame that too many powerful men do not seem to have grasped such a clearly presented and repeated lesson.

The Nightingale is published by Pan Books.

Book Review: Daisy Miller

by Jackie Law

Image

Daisy Miller, by Henry James, is one of a large stack of classic literature that I inherited from my late father. It is a novella telling the tale of the titular American young lady who, on a tour of Europe accompanied by her negligent mother and precocious younger brother, makes a name for herself as a flirt who will not abide by the rules dictated by wealthy society abroad. Narrated by a young man referred to as Winterbourne, an American living in Geneva but spending time with an elderly aunt in first Vevey and then Rome, the book offers a picture of the tourists who travel but rarely integrate. Some may admire the art and architecture but they live amongst their own, feeling superior in manners and decorum.

Winterbourne first meets Daisy in the garden of the hotel his aunt is staying in. He finds the young woman exceedingly pretty and is intrigued by her gaiety and openness. His aunt, who is aware of Daisy’s growing reputation, refuses to be introduced to her lest it be thought they are acquaintances. Nevertheless, Winterbourne agrees to accompany Daisy on a trip to a local tourist attraction, despite it becoming clear that they will be travelling without a chaperone.

Winterbourne must then return to Geneva, much to Daisy’s chagrin, but he meets her again when he stays with his aunt in Rome a few months later. Here he observes the young lady in her element, being entertained by a handsome Italian and much discussed by the ladies who had at first accepted her into their social circles.

“I was sure we should be going round all the time with one of those dreadful old men that explain about the pictures and things. But we only had about a week of that, and now I’m enjoying myself. I know ever so many people, and they are all so charming. The society’s extremely select.”

Winterbourne tries to warn Daisy that such select society will not long abide her immodest behaviour but she gives him short shrift.

“I have never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do.”

The author portrays well the clash between American manners and those of the travelling Europeans. Daisy’s imprudent desire to have fun and enjoy the attentions of young men will only be tolerated for so long, however pretty and well dressed she may be. Eventually Winterbourne comes to realise that her lack of respect for the expected etiquette also shows a lack of intellect and depth of character.

“Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned towards her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all.”

Although an easy enough short read, the tale being told lacks sufficient depth and subtlety, especially the ending. Winterbourne’s character offers some food for thought – how he contemplates a young woman who would be unlikely to challenge him through feelings such as jealousy – but his interest appears depressingly superficial.

I did not consider Daisy a ‘delightful heroine’. She comes across as shallow rather than innocent. It is understandable that a fortune hunter may prey on her, but that wealthy men are drawn to her says more about them and their preferences when it comes to potential wife material.

Daisy Miller is published by Penguin.

Book Review: The Fox of Kensal Green

by Jackie Law

Image

The Fox of Kensal Green, by Richard Tyrrell, tells the story of a community in London and its treatment of a man whose behaviour does not conform to what many would regard as normal. Some who live in the area have done so since childhood. There are also incomers. Some own their houses and others rent. The area is socially and racially mixed but generally peaceful.

The central character, Wilf Kelly, lives in the house he was raised in by his late mother. As a child he was regarded as different and could have suffered much bullying had he not been befriended by a classmate, Felicia. He was still called names and taunted – as continues to happen now he is an aging adult – but having Felicia to turn to, as well as his loving mother, helped him cope as he grew.

Felicia also still lives in the house she was raised in, across the road from Wilf. She has children and grandchildren now but, since his mother died, has tried to look out for her old friend. This is not an easy task. Wilf has his habits and routines that he rarely varies. He is a hoarder, especially of items found on the streets or in skips. He survives on a minimum of benefits although, unwilling to deal with post, has been cut off from gas and electricity. He applies no maintenance to his house or garden.

Felicia tells him he should get a pet so he sets out to tame an urban fox, not the course of action she intended. He mentions it to no one. Although he sometimes talks to neighbours he finds conversation difficult. He goes where necessary to survive, including a church that, weekly, provides hot food for those in need. Sometimes a neighbour may give him money. He has been known to return this favour proving he has some degree of empathy even when his understanding differs.

The first part of the story is about Wilf – the way he lives and why. This section ends when he is accused of a terrible crime. In the second part, Felicia galvanises the community to come together to protect him – nobody who knows him believes he is guilty. The third and final section details the fallout from this neighbourly uprising and gives the author an opportunity to explore how having Wilf living amongst them affected all who interacted with him.

To be clear, I loved this book. The short, pithy chapters moved the story along apace. The witty depictions never sugar-coated characters, many of whom had drug and criminal habits. They were not necessarily ‘nice’ to Wilf but in their own ways accepted him as a part of the neighbourhood. In his own way, he belonged.

There is an abundance of heart and humour within these pages but mostly the tale is about how difference is treated when a person struggles to navigate social expectations. Wilf tries to fit in but has many fears that he deals with through habits, considered strange, that help him get through each day. The depictions of his neighbours demonstrate what society will accept as crutches but also how someone such as Wilf can give back in ways rarely so well articulated.

An engaging and original read that I highly recommend.

The Fox of Kensal Green is published by Salt.

Book Review: May We Feed the King

by Jackie Law

Image

This review was written for and first published by Bookmunch.

May We Feed the King tells the story of a reluctant king from long ago. It is bookended by a second story set in contemporary times featuring a troubled curator who takes on a commission at the historic palace where the king once lived. All characters featured are referred to by their roles rather than names and this works well.

The first part of the book is narrated by the curator. It opens with an explanation of the commission they have been offered and accepted, along with details of the work they will undertake.

“When you see a replica feast scene in the great hall of an old building, I am the person who placed the pomegranates beside the pie, and for a very good reason.”

The palace has an extensive collection of detailed archives offering insights into the lives of the kings and queens who lived there over the 750 or so years of its existence. The curator works with the palace archivist until they find the king around whose life they will create the room displays requested. It is this king who features in the middle section of the book.

The story of the king is a sad tale. He comes to power following the deaths of his elder two brothers. It is not a role he wishes for. He turns out to be a passive and pacifist king during a time when countries expected their leaders to go into battle and bring glory to the nation, quashing rebellions and executing dissenters. The king’s advisors are at their wits ends over how to deal with him. Had he been willing to allow them to rule in his name all may have been well but he insists on stymieing their efforts, wishing the country to live in peace. All are unhappy as a result.

The life of a king is made clear, how little freedom is available. Before becoming king, he and his wife had been well settled – she with her lover and he content with this. Now the queen is expected to produce an heir. The royal couple have little privacy. Their actions are watched and discussed, servants questioned by the king’s advisors about every aspect of their behaviour.

The court is also a hotbed of gossip with salacious details, mostly invented, spreading like wildfire. It is a lesson in what to believe from historic records.

This is also explored in the final section of the book when focus returns to the curator who has now completed their commission. The palace staff are not entirely happy with how they went about the work but the curator does not seem to care. As they point out, the wider benefits hoped for have been achieved, and within the agreed timescales.

Such brief details around the stories being told are but a fragment of what this book offers the reader. The structure – short chapters and paragraphs, each providing succinct nuggets of information – keeps the plots moving at pace and retains engagement. There is much of interest in how the curator operates, and in how a king was expected to exist. Neither of these key characters is willing to bend to what is expected of them when principles are at stake and there is a personal cost to such attitudes.

The author is a poet and this shows in the flow of the writing and the skilled yet understated wordplay. Insights require no signposting. Digressions serve to demonstrate how a glorious leader from the past may have been anything but.

Enough backstory is provided to enable sense to be made of where the curator and the king start in their stories. No more is needed. There are many descriptions of food prepared by the royal court, and some details of the clothes a king and queen might wear, but unnecessary detail such as what people looked like is avoided. I appreciated that while they were treated very much as objects by those charged with handling them, the author does not objectify.

Any Cop?: This is not a political book but rather one that seeks to personify characters living in very different ages and circumstances. It is a study in the vagaries of human nature, and one I very much enjoyed reading.

 

Jackie Law

Book Review: Elizabeth and Ruth

by Jackie Law

Image

“There were people watching behind the boarded windows, gangs who lived in the tunnels. If Tommy stumbled or the carriage toppled they would come swarming out like rats from a drain.”

Elizabeth and Ruth was inspired by a brief correspondence between authors Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens. Set mostly in 1849 Manchester, soon after the former published her debut novel, Mary Barton, it tells the story of a teenage Irish girl who goes by the name of Pasley and has fallen into disrepute. Elizabeth is married to a minister and carries out much charitable work, as do many ladies of her acquaintance. When asked to visit the young girl, who has ended up in prison but is soon to be released, she agrees without realising where this will lead.

Elizabeth has four daughters, the eldest of whom is similar in age to Pasley. It is perhaps this that draws her to the girl and her plight. Over the course of several visits she attempts to tease out Pasley’s history but the girl, knowing how it will be perceived by a respectable lady, is reluctant to talk. The reader is given details in chapters narrated by Pasley and containing many shocking and horrific events. Elizabeth, meanwhile, is trying to find someone willing to take the girl once released, that she may not be dragged back into the nightmare life she ended up in. An ex-convict, however, is regarded as too tainted, whatever the reasons for their fall may be.

There are evocative descriptions of Manchester at the time – its industrial pollution and extremes of poverty. At times the story can be hard to read given the relentless suffering and lack of hope so many existed under. The prose is fierce and furious, the social conditions sickening and rendered clearly. Those ladies who may wish to help still hold in contempt the immoral, including young women who have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous men.

Elizabeth is supported in all her endeavours by her husband, who believes a lady author can reach an audience beyond Dickens and thereby act as a catalyst to necessary social change. What is interesting here is that he effectively owns her, having control of her inheritance and earnings. Theirs appears to be a good marriage, and they care for their children. Elizabeth must still write at the edges of all her other responsibilities, and in shared spaces, while he takes a room to himself as his study.

Pasley, meanwhile, comes to hope that Elizabeth will help her personally, not realising the limits of charitable pity. The author is careful to lay out the reasoning, and to demonstrate how even good people will ultimately protect themselves first. As she states through the husband’s clear sighted commentary, the poor will always be there and numbers only seem to increase. Individuals can make small gestures but what is needed is a wider appetite for major social upheaval.

A reminder of what life was like for all during the industrial revolution. No closure is attempted here, when death was a constant and those who move on may never again be heard from again. The denouement, whilst a tad frustrating, seems fitting given the times depicted.

Elizabeth and Ruth is published by Salt.