Review ~ Call Nurse Millie by Jean Fullerton

Published 23 May 2013
The Orion Publishing Group

It’s 1945, and the Second World War is over, but for 25 year old Millie Sullivan, her life as a qualified nurse and midwife in the East End of London is as busy as ever. Together with her nurse colleagues at Munroe House Nurse’s Home, Millie witnesses her share of tragedy and yet her determined spirit sees her though the harsh reality of living through some tough circumstances. The indomitable spirit of the people who inhabit the overcrowded streets and the bomb damaged buildings of the East End, come gloriously alive in this wonderful historical saga.

This is the first of Jean Fullerton’s books I have read, but I am impressed with the way she controls the narrative and allows the characters to develop, so that by the end of the book you really care about what happens to them. Millie in particular is a feisty heroine who encapsulates the spirit of the time in her no nonsense approach and down to earth way of dealing with whatever life throws at her. By using her undoubted skill as qualified nurse, the author has used her medical knowledge to good effect, and has written a story which pulls you in from the very beginning.  The individual stories really tug at your heart strings, and yet beyond the heartbreak and tragedy, there is always hope for a better future.

 Overall, this is a really lovely story, which will appeal to anyone who enjoys post-war social history. I really enjoyed it, and have no hesitation in recommending it to my blog readers.

My thanks to Jean Fullerton and The Orion Publishing Group for my copy of this book.

Author Spotlight ~ Tina Seskis

I am delighted to introduce

Tina Seskis

photo by kind permission of the author

Author 

of

One Step Too Far

Published Kirk Parolles; 1 edition (15 April 2013)

Tina, it's a real pleasure to welcome you to Jaffareadstoo, we are delighted that you have visited us to talk about your novel ~ One Step Too Far

Where did you get the inspiration for One Step Too Far?

It came to me out of the blue, when I was on holiday in Venice.  I literally got the idea for the twist and thought, that would make a great book.  When I got home I started writing it down on my laptop.

What was the writing process like, and how long did it take you to write the first draft ?

It was very organic - I had a few vague ideas of what would happen, for example I knew Emily would run away and of course I knew why, but the rest seemed to write itself.  It was a very strange time for me, as my mother was becoming unwell, so I'd send her chapters to try to keep her going, and as I was working during the day I mostly wrote at night, either in front of the telly or propped up in bed.

Did you base any of your characters on people you know?

Hmm, there are certainly aspects of people I knew, especially in the more peripheral characters, and Emily's husband is sort of my husband, and the philandering father is a mix of quite a few people I've worked with, and some of Caroline's less attractive traits are exaggerations of my own past bad behaviour.  But no, there is no-one that is entirely based on someone I know.

Do you have a special place to do your writing?

No.  These days I do all my "work" at my Mac, which is on a shelf in our dining room, but I do my writing using an ipad and wireless keyboard and I take that wherever I fancy, usually following the sun (when we get it) around the house.  When I'm in full flow I write wherever I am, whether it's in the garden, on the bus, waiting for doctor's appointments, that kind of thing.

Which writers have inspired you?

My great love as a teenager was Agatha Christie, for her plot twists, and then I got into massive page-turners like Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper.  But my favourite books are some of the classics - anything beautifully written mainly.  I hugely admire Shakespeare, some of Keats, Thomas Hardy and Salman Rushdie.

And finally for fun:

If you could pick a musical soundtrack to accompany a film version of One Step Too far, what would you choose and why?

Well there is a song by Dido of the same name, but I must confess I've never listened to it.  One of my most memorable musical moments was taking the train from Liverpool to London, looking out the window at the backs of houses and snippets of other people's lives listening to U2's The Unforgettable Fire.  So I think it would be that.

What books are on your bedside table?

The Hunger Games, my notebook and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

http://tinaseskis.com/

Amazon

My review of One Step Too Far

Tina, thank you so much for giving such insightful answers to our questions and for taking

 the time  to chat about One Step Too Far 

Jaffa and I wish you continued success in your writing career

***

Review ~ The Shadow Year by Hannah Richell

Orion
20 June 2013

 Published June 2013

During the long, hot summer of 1980, five university graduates discover an abandoned cottage on the edge of a beautiful lake in the English Peak District. With an eye for adventure, the five friends decide to live in this idyllic setting for a year, eking out their self sufficiency with gifts from the land. The overall dynamic of their friendship works well, but the unexpected arrival of a sixth person begins to disturb this delicate balance, and soon the loyalty and dependability of the group is called into question.

Meanwhile, in present day London, Lila inherits a cottage in a remote part of the Peak District; she has no clue to her benefactor, and as she accepts the offer of sanctuary, the peace and tranquillity of her surroundings give her a way of coping with a devastating personal tragedy. Gradually, as the secrets of the cottage are exposed, Lila is forced to recognise that her own personal loss exposes a lifetime of secrets, which once revealed can never be ignored.

The Shadow Year is an absorbing story of multi-generational deceit which works well on all levels. The author writes with great confidence, her storytelling skill is impeccable, and as she deftly manoeuvres between past and present there is no lull in the narrative, nor does the shadow of the past attempt to outshine the future. However, as the hidden secrets of the cottage are revealed, there is no doubt that the repercussions of what went on before will leave a lasting legacy for the next generation. 

5*****

I was really excited to be asked to review this book on behalf of Lovereading Review Panel. 

More early reading reviews of this book can be found on the Lovereading website.

The Shadow Year will be available to purchase from Lovereading.co.uk and bookshops from 20 June 2013

More information about the author Hannah Richell 

Blog Tour 2013 ~ Three Kings, One Throne by Michael Wills

I am delighted to be part of the Blog Tour to celebrate the publication of Three Kings ,One Throne by Michael Wills.

 Michael has been kind enough to share his thoughts with us....

Perhaps I should give you a bit of background about me and my writing.

I have been fascinated by history ever since I can remember. As a boy I used to go to jumble sales to see if there were collectable historical items. Much to my mother’s displeasure I built up a museum of items including a real Brown Bess, a WW1 bayonet, a block of wood from the wreck of the Royal George and numerous real or imagined flint arrow heads. But the need to earn a living got in the way and I became an EFL teacher. First I worked in Scandinavia for thirteen years, teaching and writing course books, and then as the Principal of a language school in Salisbury. However, my interest in history did not desert me and I took every opportunity to visit places of historical interest and to read extensively about the past. 

When I retired and saw what I fancied was an extensive stretch of untrammelled spare time ahead of me, I started to research and then write my first novel, Finn’s Fate. The book was inspired by my time in Scandinavia and tells the story of three brothers who abandon a life of drudgery as iron workers for the chance to go a Viking. My second novel, Three Kings – One Throne, relates the tale of two grandsons of one of the brothers. The boys grow up hundreds of miles apart and have very different lives, but as men, they eventually meet. 

And what happens then, is the climax of the story. 

Thank you for hosting me on your blog and for giving me the opportunity to tell your readers about my new novel, Three Kings – One Throne. 

www.michaelwills.eu
@MWillsofSarum
SilverWood Book Shop
Amazon
Facebook
Goodreads



Review

Three Kings – One Throne by Michael Wills.

The turbulent history which surrounds the invasion of England in the eleventh century was a complicated affair.The crown of England was a prize to be cherished above all prizes and there were good men, and bad, who were prepared to fight to the death to gain control of so rich a treasure. In 1066, on the death of Edward the Confessor, Harold Godwinson claimed the English crown, but standing by were two other claimants, a Norwegian and a Norman, who were both fully determined to stake their claim. Violence, greed and carnage were never off the agenda as opposing forces clashed and fought their way to victory.

What’s interesting about Three Kings-One Throne is that the story is narrated by two protagonists who are caught on opposing sides; Torkil, an Anglo Saxon thayne is on the side of Godwinson, whilst Ivar, a Danish orphan is part of the Norwegian opposing forces. Both men live with rough justice and violence, and are no stranger to their own brand of complicated deception.

There were occasionally times when the book seemed to flag a little, the task of explaining this particular snapshot of history is momentous, but overall Michael Wills has done an admirable job in bringing together all the intricate historical details and has woven a credible tale of adventure and political skulduggery.

There are helpful footnotes scattered throughout the text which help to put time and place into context, and the epilogue is especially valuable as it references the history of 1065/1066 in lesser detail. If you to want to learn more about this crucial period in English and European history, there is an extensive bibliography with some useful references for further reading.

It’s not crucial reading, as Three King's ,One Throne works well as a standalone story, but it does sort of make sense to read Finn’s Fate by Michael Wills first, as this sets the scene for the continuing story.

My thanks to Michael Wills and Silverwood  Books for my review copy of this book and for the invitation to take part in Three Kings-One Throne 2013 Blog Tour.

It’s been great fun.

April 2nd 2013 by SilverWood Books

March 29th 2012 by Book Guild Limited

Review ~ The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett

Friday Recommended Read

Penguin Group Viking

30 May 2013

The Bookman’s Tale opens in 1995, and introduces us to antiquarian book expert Peter Byerly, who has recently relocated from America to the English countryside after the untimely death of his wife, Amanda.  In an antiquarian book shop in Hay-on-Wye, Peter stumbles across a rare book about forgeries; he is bewildered when a watercolour portrait hidden in the book seems to resemble his dead wife. What then follows is the story of how Peter’s search to discover more about the mysterious Victorian watercolour leads him into the bewildering world of William Shakespeare’s lost works.

The mystery at the heart of the story is cunningly manipulated and the twists and turns in the plot are cleverly contrived. However, the real attraction is that this is a book for book lovers, as the description of the conservation and love of books as desirable objects of beauty really comes shining through, and makes you realise the aesthetic value of rare literary masterpieces. The narrative switches effortlessly between three time frames; 1995 and Peter’s search for the truth, 1985 and his courtship and early marriage to his beloved Amanda, and even further back to the Elizabethan world of William Shakespeare.

Beautifully written from start to finish, this is one of those stories that deserves to do really well. I really enjoyed it.

More about Charlie Lovett

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Viking for my digital copy of this book to review.

Review ~ Toby's Room by Pat Barker

Penguin (7 Feb 2013)

The story opens in 1912, and in the idyllic setting of the English countryside Elinor and Toby Brooke share a dark secret.Their intense brother and sister relationship is made all the more poignant five years later when Toby is declared missing believed killed in WW1.

Using her contacts at the Slade School of Art, Elinor is determined to find out the truth behind Toby's disappearance. Her search will take her from the battlefields of northern France, to the pioneering work of the surgeons who strive to repair shattered faces in the aftermath of devastating injuries.

Whilst Toby's Room can be read an a standalone story , my view is that it is beneficial to read Life Class first, as the characters do overlap, and the dénouement makes more sense if you have proper knowledge of the characters.

Pat Barker obviously knows and loves this period and writes with such conviction, that the characters live on in your imagination, even after the last page is turned.

2007

Author Spotlight ~ Bee Ridgway

Photo by kind permission of the author

Bee Ridgway

Author of

The River of No Return

Published by Michael Joseph
23 May 2013

1812: On a lonely battlefield in Spain, twenty-two year old Lord Nicholas Falcott is about to die . . . run through by a French Dragoon. But, the next moment, he inexplicably jumps forward in time, nearly two hundred years - very much alive. Taken under the wing of a mysterious organisation, The Guild, he receives everything he could ever need under the following conditions: 

He can’t go back. He can’t go home. He must tell no one.

Resigned to his fate, Nicholas rebuilds his life in the twenty-first century, until ten years later, when an exquisite wax sealed envelope brings a summons from The Guild. It seems for a select few the rules can be broken and Nicholas is forced to return to and confront his nineteenth century past . . .

Back in 1815, Julia Percy’s world has fallen apart. Her enigmatic grandfather, the Earl of Darchester, has died and left her with a closely guarded secret, one she is only now discovering - the manipulation of time.

Hiding dark secrets and facing danger from unknown enemies, Julia and Nicholas are drawn to each other, as together they start to realise how little Julia knew about her beloved grandfather and to understand his ominous last words . . .

‘Pretend.’

Bee was born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, in a parsonage made from three stuck-together old cottages. She then attended Oberlin College, worked for a year in features at Elle Magazine, and went on to Cornell for a doctoral degree in English literature. After several years spent chasing research materials and true love around the UK, she settled down to teach American literature at Bryn Mawr College. Bee lives with her partner in Philadelphia. The River of No Return is her first novel.

Bee - welcome to Jaffareadstoo and thank you for taking the time to answer some of our questions.

Where did you get the inspiration for The River of No Return? 

I’ve always been fascinated by time travel, and I loved the children’s time travel books I read. THE DARK IS RISING series is incredible, and still haunts my imagination. A WRINKLE IN TIME, of course, and TOM’S MIDNIGHT GARDEN, to name just a few. When I was in graduate school I became addicted to Georgette Heyer, and across the years that I lived in the UK I used to haunt the charity shops (this was before the new rule where they’ll only sell newish books, confound them). I collected fabulous PAN paperbacks of all of her regencies. So time travel and Regency capers go together for me in terms of the kinds of literature I enjoy when I want to just drift away with a great book! But for this particular novel, the idea really just came to me like a bolt from the blue. I was in Vermont, in the house where I imagine Nick waking up from the bad dream in the first chapter of the novel. I was looking out the window on a moonlit winter night, down the hill and across the driveway to a beaver pond that was glowing in the moonlight. And suddenly there the idea for the book was. Or rather, there Nick was. It really was as if he walked in to my house, shook my hand, and said, “Hello, I am a time-traveling aristocrat and I’m in a pickle. I need you to help me figure it out, so if you don’t mind terribly much, let’s get to work!”


Where did your research for the book take you? 

Everywhere. I’m an academic and my field is 19th century literature, so I already had a background in the material I was engaging. But fiction making is a very different beast than scholarship. I found myself looking at endless images of the places I was describing, of the clothing, the hairstyles. I also read through piles of primary documents pertaining to the political kerfuffle that catches up my main character. But the most fun research I did was in working out how to weave in the dozens of fragments of writing from other authors that I worked into my own prose. I wanted the writing itself to have a sense of time travel in it – so I buried citations throughout the book. I don’t want the reader to notice them, but I’d like my reader to have a somewhat uncanny sense of the depth and strangeness of time as she reads. I hoped that weaving these other voices from the past throughout the book might achieve that.


Time slip novels must be tricky to write - how did you control the narrative, or did the narrative ever control you? 

I wrote the novel in three major stages. In the first stage, the time travel was fairly simple. The idea of traveling on streams of emotion was there, but it wasn’t fully developed. Then, once I was working with an agent (the immortal and fabulous Alexandra Machinist), I went in and really turned up the volume on the problem of the Guild, the brotherhood that controls time travel. I had to do quite a bit of development on the idea of how time travel works. Then, when the novel sold and I had editors (one for the US and one for the UK), I cracked the into several pieces and rebuilt it from the inside out. At that point the problem of the future entered the story, and the novel gained the ominous character named Mr. Mibbs. It was then that I had to really map out the idea and make sure that it worked all the way through. In other words, the idea got more and more complicated with every revision. By the end I felt that I had really invented a new fictional world. It was very satisfying. 

What makes you want to write historical fiction? 

My teaching and my research keeps me in the 18th and 19th centuries. For all that I live in the present and lead a very contemporary life (I would never want to live in the past that I study), I feel drawn to the past not in a nostalgic way, but as a sort of looking glass. My novel is historical fiction, but it is also time travel fiction. It is set then . . . and now. My main character, Nick, must negotiate the huge differences between his 21st century self and his 19th century self. The past is a means for him to come to know himself, to make choices about what kind of man he wants to be. And the past should work that way for all of us, I think, even though we can’t actually go there, like Nick can.



And Finally a fun Question – at which event in history would you like to be a fly on the wall and why? 

That’s an incredibly difficult question! There are so many. Obviously if someone said “I can bring you back and show you the Trojan Horse, or Joan of Arc riding into battle, or I can show you the funeral procession for Princess Charlotte,” I would jump at the chance! But I think that rather than events I would want to see places and experience cultures that have been destroyed, or have simply changed beyond recognition. I would like to visit Mexico before the Spanish conquest. The Spanish who first saw it described Tenochtitlan as greater than Rome, greater than any European city they knew or could imagine. In general I would like to see the Americas before the arrival of Europeans.

Listen to Bee talking about The River of No Return

Bee - thank you so much for visiting Jaffareadstoo.

We wish you continued success with your writing career.

http://www.beeridgway.com/  https://www.facebook.com/Bee.Ridgway.Author?ref=ts&fref=ts

https://twitter.com/BeeRidgway / @BeeRidgway

I reviewed an ARC of The River of No Return in February 2013

My review is here