At the End of the Day by Liz Byrski

Two people meet at a stopover in Doha on the way from England to Perth, Western Australia. Mim is returning from one of her regular visits to Brighton in her homeland and Mathias is returning from visiting his close friend, Luc, in his homeland, Belgium. It is by a remarkable twist of fate that these two with so many similarities and with so much in common meet this way.

Mim and Mathias are both in their seventies and their ages are relevant to this story because Mim is suffering post-polio symptoms.  Poliomyelitis was a horrifying disease which was raging through the world in the 1950s although it had been afflicting people for many years before that; Franklin D Roosevelt was crippled by it in 1921. Mim was a five year old child in England when she was stricken by it.  A lot of children had it where I grew up on the northern beaches area of Sydney. A boy across the road from our place caught it and I remember his mother asking me to write him letters to remind him of home which she would take to the treatment centre in Collaroy where he had been sent. I’m afraid I could never think of much to tell him and I would love to read one of those childish notes now to see if they gave him an occasional smidgin of comfort. I can’t remember if we discussed them when he eventually returned. I should think he went off to reacquaint himself with the neighbourhood boys while I continued with my girl-centric existence.

The miraculous Dr Jonas Salk eventually appeared with his vaccine and I can’t imagine there were too many anti-vaxxers around  in those days because succeeding generations haven’t had to experience those horrible times. I was saddened to read in At the End of the Day that post-polio symptoms are now hitting in their later years those poor children who suffered so much back then.

Mim’s polio is important to the story because it shaped her personality and her life thereafter. She is a sweet, dear woman with friends who love her. She has built a good life for herself  in Fremantle where she owns and operates a lovely bookshop. Mathias, although being a world famous, highly successful writer, is a reserved man whose childhood was traumatised in a different way to Mim’s. They find that they are very pleased to have met each other and from that point on their lives unfold in a gentle, steady, meaningful way as only Liz Byrski can portray.

This is a book for Liz Byrski’s fans who will love it and I am sure lots of new readers will be thrilled to find her.

I have one very, very tiny criticism. I didn’t like Mim shouting at the gull on the verandah. All creatures great and small, Mim! Apart from that it is a terrific book and a 5 out of 5 from me.

Published by Pan

Mary Churchill’s War: The Wartime Diaries of Churchill’s Youngest Daughter edited by Emma Soames

 Biography is one of my favourite genres. Diaries are a wonderful form of autobiography, especially if the diarist is, in equal measure, honest, straightforward and immensely entertaining. And, of course, if she is the youngest child of Winston Churchill and recording life as it is happening through World War 2.

Mary, born into high privilege and living a happy and extremely comfortable life, was 16 at the beginning of the War. At 18 she joined the ATS as a private assigned to anti-aircraft batteries and made her way through the ranks to captain. Her love for her parents (and her adoration of her father) and her bright, sweet personality shine through the pages of her diaries. At times she becomes introspective, like all teenage girls through the ages, and at such times she writes things like “...how I hate, despise and loathe myself and alternatively how absolutely the cat’s pants I think I am and how obsessed I am with myself. O bloody girl”. So there she was, a girl from an extraordinary  background expressing very ordinary thoughts! Her time in the army was far from ordinary, though. She could be scrubbing out the barracks or manning a battery one day and then accompanying her father at a dinner with other world leaders the next!

Mary loved clothes and there are lots of descriptions of new outfits and nights out in glamorous locations with fascinating people.  I can’t imagine many of the girls she was serving with would have had access to the luxuries that were normal for her but I think it would have been hard not to care for and respect her as a fellow soldier. She writes of her relationships with her sisters, Sarah and Diana, and her brother, Randolph and of her home life with her parents, Mummie and Papa, all of which is intensely interesting.

I loved this excellent book. The diaries are introduced and edited by Emma Soames, one of Mary’s five children, who makes the observation, “...it is not long before the reader of these diaries is eavesdropping on history”.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Published by John Murray, an Hachette UK Company

The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Herron

 

This is book 2 in the Zoe Boehm series. The first, Down Cemetery Road,  featured Sarah Tucker as the main character until Zoe appeared half way through the story. Here, Zoe takes the lead from the beginning until Sarah becomes involved later in this dramatic, heart stopping, nail biting thriller.

Zoe is hired to find a man who, apparently, had been romantically involved with a woman who fell to her death from a train station platform. The woman’s former employer tells Zoe that although he had never met the man he knew his name and would like to get in touch with him in case he doesn’t know the woman has died. Zoe accepts the case and sets out to find Alan Talmadge. How she goes about it makes a fabulous, fascinating, terrific (enough superlatives, do you think?) story. Oh, I think I left out ‘hugely intelligent’.

Rather amazingly, while Zoe is in London at the beginning of her search an incident from her past rears up  and so two stories begin to be played out in a totally satisfying, Mick Herron kind of way. This storyline is like no other I have ever read. It is intricate, complicated but totally believable and very, very clever. 

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning because it was cold outside but I couldn’t have anyway because The Last Voice You Hear wouldn’t let me out of its grip. 

Who to play Zoe Boehm if ever the series is turned into a Netflix blockbuster? I’m thinking Rachael Stirling, Diana Rigg’s daughter.

5 out of 5

Published by John Murray

Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron

 

This is book 1 in the Zoe Boehm thriller series by Mick Herron. It was very exciting for me to discover this series, having devoured all of the Jackson Lamb Slough House books and been left wanting more. Down Cemetery Road was first published in 2003 so there is, hopefully, a long road ahead filled with more wonderful stories about Zoe Boehm.

Sarah Tucker is a middle class woman who stays at home, reluctantly, while her husband, Mark, goes out to work in the world of banking and high finance. Sarah wants a career of her own but hasn’t been able to find anything that suits her qualifications and abilities to this point.

Mark has asked Sarah to arrange a dinner party for prospective clients, Gerard Inchon and the Trophy Wife, and is unhappy that Sarah has invited her friend, Wigwam, and Wigwam’s weird new husband, Rufus, to join them. In the midst of this rather awkward evening a traumatic event occurs in their street which leads to a chain of  strange, wild and dangerous events for Sarah and eventually everyone closely connected to her.

It is a terrific story of which Zoe Boehm becomes a significant part mid-way through. It involves the very dark side of the Security Service with nasty, scary, spooks who are charged with clean-ups and cover-ups and who will do anything and everything necessary to complete their missions. Mick Herron’s characterisations are spot on (Joseph Silverman BA is completely memorable); and the dialogue is, as expected, perfect. I will try and pace myself through this series, as I did with the Slow Horses, and read other books in between each one. I don’t want it to be over too soon!

This thriller has an intricate, interesting plot, suspenseful twists and turns and Mick Herron’s as ever brilliant wit. 5 out 5 for sure!

Published by John Murray