Old Seems to be Other People by Lily Brett

 

I love Lily Brett more every time I read the latest book she has written. This is another collection of essays about her life in New York and how she is coping with something I would rather wasn’t happening to me, which is growing old. 

Lily makes perfect sense to me when she says she doesn’t want to be run over by a bus in Lexington Avenue because she doesn’t want the newspapers to say elderly woman hit by bus.  She says anyone from the age of 65 is given the description ‘elderly’, a fate which 64 year olds can escape. Lily says that as she is now 72 she is very careful to watch out for buses, and I understand her reasoning completely. 

Something I share with Lily Brett is the inability to read maps and, in general, to have no sense of direction. I love her for that as well. Oh, and another inability: to play sport of any kind. I spent my last year of high school in a beautiful State school which made me wish I had always gone to public schools; however, like Lily Brett I was aghast and afraid when I realised I was expected to participate in, and enjoy, gymnastics and such things as jumping over a vaulting horse. 

Lily Brett’s life in New York still fascinates me. She loves the people, the city and all it has to offer. I first discovered her writing when I read Too Many Men a long time ago and I have read all of her works since then. She is simply a magical writer and her honesty and self-awareness make reading her stories of her life, as well as her novels, a totally pleasurable experience.

If you haven’t read Lily Brett before you should start now. 5 out of 5 with a bullet.

Penguin

Random House Australia 

Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane

 

This is the story of Eve, Susie, Ed and Justin who have been close friends since their school days and are now thirty-somethings navigating their various ways through life in the 21st century. The story is narrated by Eve who is often hilariously funny and sometimes rather outrageous but always honest in her assessments of events unfolding around her.

Tragedy strikes early in the book and Eve and her friends have to learn how to cope with the new pattern into which their lives have fallen. A new character is introduced causing Eve to examine her prejudice and her preconceived ideas. There is a lot of wit and wisdom in Mhairi McFarlane’s writing and some wonderfully snappy one-liners, my favourite being, when Eve is feeling particularly defensive and wanting to hit back: “I feel like Bette Davis gene spliced with a cobra”.

In a way this book can be seen as a cautionary tale for parents. There are real-life memoirs written by people who have suffered because their parents treated them differently to the other children in their families; probably all children feel this way to a certain extent, and it is only natural that it should happen, but in some cases it can be taken to the extreme and cause often irreparable damage. 

Mhairi McFarlan has written a funny, sad, thoughtful and very easily readable book. I will look for her others now.

I don’t necessarily love all the books I read but I only review books I have loved, hence my pretty constant 5 out of 5 score.

Published by Harper Collins

What Could be Saved by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz

 

This is one of the best books I have read this year. It is an intriguing, fascinating story beautifully told by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz, of the Preston family: parents Genevieve and Robert and children, Beatrice, Laura and Philip. The story moves back and forth between 1972 in Bangkok and 2019 in New York. 

Genevieve is bored with the expat experience and terribly disappointed that the promised one year in Bangkok keeps being extended; Robert cannot tell her of the true nature of his work and her life consists of an endless round of beauty salon appointments, bridge games and parties with other expatriate Americans. The children are looked after by servants and their days are regimented into school, swimming,  ballet lessons for the girls and judo lessons for Philip.

That is the top layer of this brilliant book. The sights, sounds and smells of Bangkok leap from the pages; Genevieve finds her life suddenly filled with drama and excitement and then, suddenly, tragedy strikes the family. The story is gripping, compelling and suspenseful and I found it hard to put the book down once I became involved with the Prestons, their servants and everyone else in their lives. When the action shifts to America in 2019 the story holds its fascination but I won’t reveal any details and spoil the absolute enjoyment anyone who reads the book will surely get from it.

To read this book is to love it! 5 out of 5 at the very least.

Published by Allen & Unwin

Win by Harlan Coben

 

Win is Harlan Coben at his brilliant best. Windsor Horne Lockwood III is ‘old money’, heir apparent to the massive fortune and traditions of the Lockwood family (and best friend of Myron Bolitar, former NBA  basketball star, sports agent and some time detective who only appears in this story in Win’s thoughts).

Win is happy with his status in life and the many advantages he enjoys. He lives by his own code of righting wrongs by covertly seeking out bad guys and beating them up by means of his specialised, highly developed skills. When a recluse is found murdered in an upper West Side New York apartment and among the countless objects he has hoarded are a Vermeer painting owned by Win’s family and stolen years before, and a monogrammed suitcase which had belonged to Win, the FBI appear and Win becomes involved in trying to help solve a very old mystery which had once caused much heartache for the Lockwoods.

I would have loved the book for this gem alone: ‘I stand and coolly lean against the fireplace mantle like Sinatra against a lamppost. The word you are looking for is “debonair”.’ The writing is cool, witty and suspenseful in turns and everything a good crime story should be.

Now I am going to re-read some of my Myron Bolitars. I’ve got the Harlan Coben bug good and proper.

5 out of 5 absolutely!

Published by Century

Penguin  Random House UK

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

 

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly is a novel based on true events and the real life story of one of the three main characters, Caroline Ferriday. In 1939 Caroline Ferriday was an American heiress and former Broadway actress working as a liaison to the French Consulate in NewYork.  The two fictional characters are Kasia, a Polish teenager, sent to the nazi concentration camp, Ravensbruuck, with her mother, her sister and her friend; and Herta, a young German doctor working  at Ravensbruuck. 

Ravensbruuck was a females-only prison which was, to put it mildly, a living hell. That horrifying experiments were carried out on women by other women is unthinkable. The German doctor, Herta, is unhappy that her profession is dominated by males and suffers bouts of depression and anxiety because of the unfairness of her situation; yet, she has no compassion for the women she tortures, the sick women and babies she kills and the prisoners she watches being shot for having committed whatever her nazi bosses deem to be offences, such as being heard to speak any language other than German. The three lives eventually converge and the story goes through to 1959. There are some very interesting photographs in the book, one of the beautiful Caroline Ferriday and others of  some of the survivors of the vile, disgusting, evil nazi camp, Ravensbruuck. 

Obviously, this was not an easy read but stories like this one must continue to be told. Caroline’s goodness, kindness and generosity shine through the story as a counterfoil to the darkness of Hitler’s mad plans for world domination. It was Martha Hall Kelly’s first novel and she did an absolutely magnificent job.

Penguin Books

Published by Random House Australia

The Unwilling, by John Hart (review by Tony Park)

 

Wow.

Just bloody wow.

You know what it's like when  you want to read a book, but you've read everything your favourite authors have written, and there's nothing new from them on the horizon?

I was in that terrible place when one of my readers, Bruce, in the US, messaged me on Facebook and suggested - in fact, practically ordered - that I try 'The Unwilling' by John Hart. I'd never heard of him and I'm rarely sold on other people's recommendations. Bruce, however, added another line to his message: "if you don't like it, I'll cover your costs".

Big call, I thought, and then, wow.

When I say I was hooked from the start, I am talking walking-down-the-footpath-still-reading-bumping-into-pedestrians-and-lamppost addiction.

Jason French is a recently-released convict and Vietnam veteran, returning to his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1972. Jason's twin brother, Robert, was killed in the war and his younger brother, Gibby, has just finished high school and has his draft notice.

Jason's carrying terrible (horrific, actually) secrets from both the war and jail and though he wants to shield Gibby from both, a world of hurt comes hurtling towards the French brothers.  Jason falls foul of the law again (to make matters worse their dad is a detective), and Gibby and his misfit school friend have to turn amateur-sleuths.

This book has it all. There's family drama and a charmingly-penned fledgling romance between Gibby and the smartest, prettiest, poorest girl in school.

There's a baddy, who makes Hannibal Lector look like the Dalai Lama, and a henchman who pushed me to the limit of what I could take as a reader, vis-a-vis violence and scariness.  I don't like horror books and while I do like writing and reading a good shoot-em-up I have a low tolerance for gratuitous gore.  It's the skill of John Hart that he could take me there, to the edge of my limits, and keep me turning the pages (and bumping into people).

Most of all there is beautiful writing.

Former-lawyer Hart is that rarest of cats in the world of authors - someone who can create narrative, dialogue and description to make a literary snob swoon, and yet still produce a cracking good yarn.

Thank you, Bruce, who recommended John Hart to me. Your money is safe, buddy.

Six out of five.

Published by St Martin's Press and Pan Macmillan

Reviewed by Tony Park

The Family Gift by Cathy Kelly

 

The Family Gift is an Aga-saga, Irish style. By ‘Aga-saga’ I mean a novel about a family living comfortably in picturesque surroundings but facing and trying to deal with problems which are of various degrees of seriousness.

Freya is a popular television chef with a loving husband, Dan, and three children, the oldest of whom is 14 year old Lexi, Dan’s daughter from his first marriage but adopted by Freya at age two and loved by her as much as the two younger children, 

The very real and recognisable problems confronting Freya and Dan and their parents, grandparents and siblings include post traumatic stress following a mugging; trying to separate social media life from real life; an adopted child’s need to connect with her birth mother; plans for a happy retirement thrown into disarray by the sudden disablement of a partner, and the heartache of two people longing for children but having to deal with the prospect of  infertility. That sounds like a lot but all the pieces fit together well to make a most satisfying read.

Cathy Kelly always creates thoroughly likeable characters and she writes with warmth, humour and wisdom. It is always a pleasure to read one of her books and The Family Gift was no exception.

Published by Orion.