Home Truths by Charity Norman

 

Here is another stunning book by Charity Norman! Livia and Scott and their two children, Heidi and Noah, are confronted by the sudden death of Nicky, the beloved brother of Scott and uncle of Heidi and Noah. Nicky was a sweet, gentle man who, although capable of looking after himself and his little dog, also suffered from diabetes. On the morning of Heidi’s thirteenth birthday Nicky was in his garden when he realised his sugar levels had dropped; in his anxiety he couldn’t get back into his house so he tried to call Scott for help but Scott had lost his phone and didn’t get Nicky’s frantic messages until he came back from bike riding with Heidi for her birthday. 

The story that follows is pure Charity Norman. Everyday lives can so easily be torn apart, and there is always someone around ready and able to do the shattering. Livia believes her life is pretty much perfect but when grief is accompanied by feelings of guilt it creates vulnerability and, unfortunately, if someone wants to take advantage of that vulnerability, now is the time to strike.

The internet is a modern marvel and those of us who were around before its introduction can attest to its great advantages; however, as everybody knows, bullies, chancers and charlatans lurk in the shadows of social media, ready to pounce. 

Home Truths is told as seen through the eyes of Livia, Scott and Heidi. It is a dramatic, suspenseful page-turner in true Charity Norman style and I love that it features the beautiful town of Whitby, home of one of my ancestors, which I’ve had the joy of visiting. I can’t recommend this brilliant book highly enough.

Published by Allen & Unwin

The Secrets We Keep by Amy Lillard

 

Nate Fisher is on extended leave from his job as a deputy sheriff in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nate has been cleared of any charges relating to the shooting death of a young offender, which has left him traumatised. He hears from his brother that their father has died in the Amish community in Cedar Creek, Mississippi, which Nate had left ten years earlier. Although Nate has been banned from returning to the community he travels to Cedar Creek to visit his father’s grave.

Nate had been in love with an Amish woman, Rachel, who had refused to go with him when he left, aiming to earn enough money, originally trying to make it as a professional baseball player, in the hope of paying for treatment for his terminally ill sister. When he arrives back in Cedar Creek ten years later Rachel approaches him and asks him to help her prove that her brother’s death was a murder, and not suicide as has been recorded. Rachel is now married with two daughters, although her husband has disappeared.

I used memories from the Harrison Ford movie, Witness, which I’d watched again recently, to picture Amish people and their kind of country; but although Nate was a police detective like the character, John Book, the similarities to this story ended there. It was a good, solid mystery with emphasis on the main characters’ private lives, just as I like it. The Amish people, including Nate’s mother, are rigid in their condemnation of Nate for having left the community, in contrast to which Nate has gained, as an outsider, tolerance and compassion; he still cares for Rachel and agrees to look into her brother’s death.

I do hope Amy Lillard is thinking of writing another book explaining the disappearance of Rachel’s husband. I would love to read it!

Published by Crooked Lane Books

A Few Shades Greener by Kate Beattie

If your computer starts throwing out the wrong messages, responding erratically, alerting you that some little thing has gotten out of whack, it doesn’t know it’s doing anything wrong and you need to call in an expert to fix it. Lucky computer: it’s got you to take control and hopefully get it running smoothly again. Unfortunately, when some little thing in your brain, your own personal computer, gets out of whack you’re not on the outside looking in and it’s up to those closest to you to observe the changes and try to get through to you.

Sarah is a young woman secure in the love of her husband, family and friends. Her job on a local city council has never been particularly interesting but she is now finding it difficult to remember parts of it and to keep up with changes. She has always had two ambitions, writing and conservation, and she is hoping to fulfil those ambitions some day.

A Few Shades Greener is the story of how Sarah becomes caught in a world not of her own choosing. She doesn’t know how lucky she is that she has people around her who care enough to want to help her when she starts behaving uncharacteristically. It’s also an honest look at how the most understanding, sympathetic person’s ego is put to the test. Sarah’s passion for greening the environment is a true calling and makes for a most interesting and entertaining book by Kate Beattie, another terrific Australian writer.

I was with Sarah all the way, looking for that light at the end of the tunnel, even when she wasn’t aware that’s what we were doing.

New Year’s Eve by Sarah Todman

I read The Catcher in the Rye ‘yesterday (not literally) when I was young’ after one of my earlier stuff ups had left me feeling lost and wallowing in self-pity, and I became obsessed with Holden Caulfield too, just like Sarah Todman’s Eve. This was in the days when J D Salinger’s writing style came as a revelation and although he never published another novel he wrote some brilliant short stories about Seymour Glass and the assorted Glass family members.

Now, back to Sarah Todman. I’m a big fan of her poetry/prose and as I expected her novel is full of true-to-life characters. Eve is pretty much her own worst enemy, being highly self-critical. She is also obviously loveable, funny and sweet. She had grown up in outback Queensland but when she was sent to boarding school in Brisbane she came up up against the ever-present-in-such-places ‘mean girls’ and was made to feel different. Back home in the bush after Brisbane, however, she now saw her home town through new eyes and from then on christened it as ‘Nowhereville’.

The story of New Year’s Eve follows Eve from Brisbane back to Nowhereville and introduces the people in her life. She makes mistakes for which she punishes herself; has a wonderful friendship in Brisbane with Phil; a strained relationship with her mother, adores her father; still harbours a secret crush on Andy. Sounds like a standard stock story line, but all of these characters are blindingly real: back home in the family hotel are terrific Australian country characters, and the small town is filled with nosy, but mostly well-intentioned busybodies with whom Eve is reacquainted when she  returns to face a family crisis. In Brisbane Phil, her husband, Anton, and their little boys give Eve a safe, secure base; Betty, a nice little white cat comes to visit. Eve also reacquaints with Andy from her teenage years. As well as mutual attraction they both have sadness in their lives, and their story is sensitive and beautifully romantic.

This was another unputdownabler, to mangle a well known descriptor. I am on a roll with my reading, and loving it! Write another one please, Sarah!

Published by Hawkeye

Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell

 

People don’t know what reserves of strength they have until they are called upon to draw on them. At least, this was Ciara’s experience when she knew she had to get away from her coercive, narcissistic husband. She showed enormous bravery and determination to find accommodation for herself, her two small girls and her unborn baby through Dublin’s overcrowded welfare system.

This is a powerful book which moved me so deeply I found it hard to put down. There were so many times when it would have seemed easier for Ciara to go back to her former home but she knew she had to weigh up the hardship of making a new life for her children against the potential emotional damage they would suffer growing up with their father.

How to tell if overpowering love is going to turn into total control? Friends can sometimes see signs from the beginning of a relationship but if they try to raise them they risk losing their friend, or even their family member. I’m speaking as an outsider.

I hope this book reaches the people who need to read it.  Ciara’s strength would be inspirational. In fact, anyone who loves stories of triumph over adversity would, I’m sure, find it as gripping as I did.

You won my heart, Roisin O’Donnell. I’ll have it back now, thank you!

Published by Scribner

One Dark Night by Hannah Richell

 

It is Halloween. Teenage pupils from a nearby private school are partying in a wood with the name of Sally in the Wood. They have gathered around a ouija board and are endeavouring to scare themselves witless, hoping for a message from the above named Sally who, legend has it, was a young bride murdered by her husband on their wedding night when he discovered she had been unfaithful to him. Sally is said to drift through the wood in her white wedding gown, appearing at the top of an old, crumbling tower, known locally as the folly.

The following morning a girl guide troop stumble upon the dead body of a girl in a white dress at the foot of the tower. A rather delicious murder mystery story follows. Rachel is a counsellor at the school and she and her daughter, Ellie, live in a cottage in the grounds of the school which Ellie attends as a scholarship pupil. Ben, the detective assigned to be in charge of the investigation, is Rachel’s ex husband. Ben has a new partner but he and Rachel keep in close contact as they co-parent Ellie. Various suspects begin to become apparent but the red herrings are handled very smoothly and I didn’t guess who the culprit was, which is exactly how I like my mystery stories.

7

I prefer books to be written in the past tense but this is just a little niggle in an otherwise most enjoyable novel, and I’m going to look out for Hannah Richell’s other books now.

Published by Simon & Schuster

Performance Anxiety by Jonathan Lerner

 

Jonathan Lerner’s memoir, Performance Anxiety, has the subtitle: The Headlong Adolescence of a Mid-Century Kid. I remember all those many years ago reading Catcher in the Rye, the groundbreaking fictional account of the life of an American mid-century kid, Holden Caulfield, and being captured by JD Salinger’s writing style. I had never read anything like this before, and I even had an American boyfriend at the time. It felt like I had discovered a new, exotic species!

Jonathan Lerner was an adolescent American kid at that same time and he writes with clear-eyed honesty about what life was like for him. He had experienced life in a foreign country, Taipei, when his father was posted there with the American embassy, which singled him out from other kids; but he was always able to find common ground with new groups when they returned to America, even while inwardly questioning his sexuality and, quite honestly, not knowing the answers. He had to learn over the years what effect the death of his mother when he was sixteen was having on him. His father was quite distant with him, but so were a lot of fathers in those post-war days; the world was still recovering and people were getting used to lives of comfort and opportunity again.

There is much contained in this short book. Jonathan recalls his activism in the anti-segregation movement, as well as lots of encounters and friendships which makes page turning of this heartfelt memoir very easy to do. I would be quite happy for him to expand his memories and fill in some of the spaces he has left one day.

Recommended for readers who appreciate well-written biography.

Published by Resource Publications