📖 Paperback Publication Day ~ Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

 

Happy Paperback Publication Day

Winner Costa Novel Award 2021

Penguin Viking

Paperback 6 January 2022

What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant? What would you do to get it back?

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Their rented cottage is simultaneously their armour against the world and their sanctuary. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance.

But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. At risk of losing everything, Jeanie and her brother must fight to survive in an increasingly dangerous world as their mother's secrets unfold, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.

This is a thrilling novel of resilience and hope, of love and survival, that explores with dazzling emotional power how the truths closest to us are often hardest to see.

📖 My thoughts...

I featured Unsettled Ground on my blog when the hardback edition came out in March 2021. I was so overwhelmed by the story that I made it my Featured Book of the Month in April 2021 and it featured on my Reads of the Year list for 2021. I am delighted to see it published today in paperback with a stunning new cover.

I'm also delighted to announce that Unsettled Ground is the winner of the Costa Novel Award 2021 ~ an award so richly deserved.

This is what I thought about it...

Middle-aged twins, Jeannie and Julius Seeder, live an isolated life, scraping out a meagre existence in their rural location, which is made so much worse by the sudden death of their mother. With their main support gone, Jeannie and Julius are left floundering in world which doesn't understand their naivety, or sense their total lack of awareness. Jeannie is the weaker of the twins and yet it is her powerful narrative which relates what happens to them when their world tumbles down around them, and when old secrets, so carefully hidden, threaten to destroy everything they rely on to survive.

Unsettled Ground is a disturbing read and whilst beautifully focused on what is happening in the present, there are hints back to a time when the twins were much younger and the story of a family tragedy which had far reaching effects on all their lives. The strength of the story lies with this author's uncanny ability to make the ordinary into something extraordinary and in creating Jeannie and Julius Seeder she gives us characters who are so engulfing that even when you move away from their story, you still wonder what is going to happen next for them.

There's a deep underlying sadness to the story which is difficult to move away from, and the confining and secluded nature of Jeannie's life, in particular, makes for emotional reading and yet there is also hope in the twins' shared love of music, Jeannie's tender loving care of her garden, and in Julius's strength of character when courage is needed. My heart broke into so many pieces, that there were times when I had to stop reading in order to make a restorative cup of tea just so I could gather my thoughts.

Unsettled Ground is a strong and forceful family drama which made me feel quite angry at the injustice of what happened to Jeannie and Julius in the aftermath of their mother's death, and yet there were also times when the story was so tenderly compassionate, and so beautifully observed, that it, quite simply, took my breath away.

About the Author

Claire Fuller was born in Oxfordshire, England. She gained a degree in sculpture fromWinchester School of art, but went on to have a long career in marketing and didn't start writing until she was forty. She has written three previous novels, Our Endless Numbered Days which won the Desmond Elliot Prize, Swimming Lessons, which was shortlisted for the RSI Encore award, and Bitter Orange. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.

Twitter @ClaireFuller2 #UnsettledGround

@VikingBooksUK

Instagram @vikingbooksuk @clairefullerwriter

📖 Blog Tour ~ Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

 

It's my turn to host a stop on this blog tour today

Penguin Viking
21 October 2021

Lucy Barton #3

My thanks to the publishers for the copy of this book
and the invitation to the blog tour

Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership.

📖 My Thoughts...

Those who have followed Lucy Barton's story in My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything Is Possible will be delighted to meet up again with Lucy and share her inimitable strength as she recounts this latest chapter in her life in which we meet her as she reconnects with her first husband, William. Lucy's relationship with William is complicated, each recognises a missing link in the other and yet their lives have moved into other areas and whilst that link is sometimes fractured when the need arises, each is there for the other. In this latest novel, William is at a crossroads in his life, and as the story starts to unfold so we begin to have a better understanding of what makes this rather melancholy man act, and react, in the way he does. 

I think what Oh William! brings to the literary table in this gentle continuation is the fact that although we think we know someone really well, we can never be truly sure just what elements of guilt, grief or trauma they carry within them. Filled with subtle nuances of silent introspection, we move through the story alongside Lucy and William as they start to unravel some shocking elements of their lives which have previously been hidden from the other. 

Beautifully characterised, and with the author's trademark ability to get right into the human psyche, Oh William! is a quietly reflective piece of writing and a worthy continuation of the series.

About the Author

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author od Olive Ketteridge, as well as The Burgess Boys, Abide with Me, Amy and Isabelle, My name is Lucy Barton, Anything is Possible and Olive. again. She has also been nominated for the PEN/Faulkener Award, the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize. She lives in Maine.

Twitter @LizStrout #OhWilliam

Website

@VikingBooksUK @PenguinUKBooks

@GeorgiaKTaylor

📖 Blog Tour ~ Cecily by Annie Garthwaite

 

Delighted to be hosting a stop on this blog tour today

Viking
29 July 2021

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book
and the invitation to the blog tour

"Rebellion?"

The word is a spark. They can start a fire with it, or smother it in their fingertips.

She chooses to start a fire.

You are born high, but marry a traitor's son. You bear him twelve children, carry his cause and bury his past.

You play the game, against enemies who wish you ashes. Slowly, you rise.

You are Cecily.

But when the King who governs you proves unfit, what then?

Loyalty or treason - death may follow both. The board is set. Time to make your first move.

Told through the eyes of its greatest unknown protagonist, this astonishing debut plunges you into the blood and exhilaration of the first days of the Wars of the Roses, a war as women fight it.

📖 My Thoughts..

Cecily Neville is perhaps not the first female who springs to mind when thinking about the momentous years of the War of the Roses, and yet her long marriage to Richard, Duke of York, brought her right into the very heart of Plantagenet politics.

The early years of Cecily's marriage to Richard were filled with both danger and intrigue and the book gets off to a compelling start when the Yorks are biding their time in Rouen and witness, in 1431, the execution of Joan of Arc. This sets the scene for a story which doesn't shy away from giving a fatalistic view of the beleaguered English as they seek to keep hold of French territory which, during the Hundred Years War, had been so hard to gain, and yet, is so easily lost.

There's an almost conversational feel to Cecily's story which shines through with an authority which makes the history of the time all the more realistic. It's almost as though you were sitting alongside Cecily in the women’s solar as she plans her next move. She's definitely a tough character, impeccably flawed and very much a woman in a man’s world and yet Cecily doesn’t suffer fools and is absolutely fervent in her belief that, with staunch ambition, she can advance her family to greatness. However, she discovers, to her cost, that being so close to the Plantagenet crown brings its own brand of inherent danger. 

By any standards the fifteenth century was a perilous time to be a woman, the descriptions of childbirth and the high rate of infant mortality is enough to give you shivers and yet even though grief and sadness threatens to overwhelm her, somehow Cecily rises time after time and does what needs to be done in order to succeed. Her strategic influence impacted on generations as here is the woman, who, we must remember, was the mother of two Kings, Edward IV and Richard III, grandmother to a Queen, Elizabeth of York, and the great-grandmother of Henry VIII. It is definitely time for Cecily Neville’s powerful voice to be heard and it is this belief, and the author's passion for history, which gives this story such a compelling sense of time and place. 

Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and vibrant with life, Cecily is an impressive debut novel and I delighted to make it my Featured Book of the Month for August.

About the Author

Annie Garthwaite grew up in a working-class community in the north-east of England. She studied English at the University of Wales before embarking on a thirty-year international business career. In 2017 she returned to her first love, books, and set out to write the story of a woman she had always felt drawn to: Cecily Neville. This became her debut novel, Cecily.

@anniegarthwaite #Cecily

@VikingBooksUK

Review ~ Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey

Viking
3 May 2018
My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

What's it all about..

Jen's 15-year-old daughter goes missing for four agonizing days. When Lana is found, unharmed, in the middle of the desolate countryside, everyone thinks the worst is over. But Lana refuses to tell anyone what happened, and the police draw a blank. The once-happy, loving family return to London, where things start to fall apart. Lana begins acting strangely- refusing to go to school, and sleeping with the light on.

What did I think about it..

Every parent's worst nightmare is that their child goes missing but for Hugh and Jen Maddox this reality is all too true. As the story opens their fifteen-year old daughter, Lana, has just been found, relatively unharmed, but with nothing to say about where she has been over the frantic four days of her disappearance.

What then follows is a rather bleak story of a fractured family who struggle to come to terms with, not just, Lana's refusal to recall anything about her disappearance, but also, about her subsequent disruptive behaviour once she gets home. The way that this troublesome conduct affects the family is crucial to the way the story progresses and, whilst, it’s not always very easy to like Lana very much, there is no doubt that her unstable personality is what gives the book its drive and energy and certainly keeps the momentum of the story strong and meaningful. Lana’s volatile relationship with both parents, and particularly with her mother, is tested to the limits of everyone’s endurance, and it is to Hugh and Jen’s credit that they do their best to support this wild child who seems to push them away at every opportunity.

Whistle in the Dark is a perceptive dissection of a troubled family who seem to be constantly at odds with each other. The mystery of what happened to Lana during the four missing days is eventually revealed however what’s is more interesting is how the author gets us to that point and her fine dissection of family life is perhaps where the story sits most strongly.

The author writes this introspective novel very well and in Whistle in the Dark she so cleverly exposes the absolute anguish of mental health issues which can so easily fragment and eventually destroy family life. 

About the author

Emma Healey, a former bookseller, grew up in London where she went to art college and completed her first degree in bookbinding. She then worked for two libraries, two bookshops, two art galleries and two universities, and was busily pursuing a career in the art world before writing overtook everything. She moved to Norwich in 2010 to study for the MA in Creative Writing at UEA and never moved back again. Elizabeth is Missing, her first novel, was a Sunday Times Bestseller, won the Costa First Novel Award 2014 and was shortlisted for the National Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year.

Website

Twitter @ECHealey #whistleinthedark

Facebook

Blog Tour ~ Close To Home by Cara Hunter

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's stop on the 

Close to Home Blog Tour

Penguin Viking
January 11 2018
My thanks to the publishers for my review copy of this book and the invitation to be part of the blog tour

When eight year old Daisy Mason  disappears from a family barbecue no-one notices that she is gone, and even her parents don't remember the last time they saw her. How such a popular child can disappear without trace is the puzzle that DI Adam Fawley and his team of investigative officers have to make sense of, and with very few clues to work with the groundwork proves frustratingly difficult.

Close to Home introduces us to a new crime series and to the lead protagonist, DI Adam Fawley, who is an interesting character, supremely flawed like so many of these clever detectives, and we do get to know the reason why he is so troubled, however, what is paramount is his drive and ambition to get the job done. That he is constantly thwarted by this complex case makes for fascinating reading, and the numerous twists and turns in the plot, not only had the investigative team guessing, but also kept me on the edge of my seat. So many times I thought that I had the case cracked only to have it veer off in an entirely new direction which I didn't see coming.

Complex and convoluted, this intricately plotted psychological drama examines the background to the case and looks at the events leading up to Daisy's disappearance, whilst at the same time keeping the investigation alive in the imagination. There is so much I want to say about this story but to do so would give away too many clues and, believe me, this is one of those roller-coaster crime thrillers which needs to be read, in its entirety, without any spoilers from me. 

The author certainly knows how to manipulate a complicated plot and the mystery at the heart of the novel makes for fascinating reading.  Daisy's family are such an integral part of the novel, and their faults and foibles are laid bare, so that, whilst they are largely an unlikable bunch, particularly Daisy's mother, Sharon, you can't help be drawn into the way they operate. I had an especial fondness for, Leo, Daisy's older sibling, who is fighting his own brand of demons.

Close to Home kept me in its grip from its poignant prologue, through to its dramatic and unexpected conclusion and is, without doubt, an exciting debut from a talented new author.

Do visit the other blog tour stops.

About the Author

Cara Hunter is a writer who lives in Oxford, in a street not unlike those featured in her series of crime books. Close to Home is her debut featuring DI Adam Fawley, and her second, In the Dark, is coming soon.

Twitter @CaraHunterBooks #CloseToHome

Amazon UK

Blog Tour ~ Legacy of Spies by John le Carré

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be part of the blog tour for Legacy of Spies

For the first time in over 30 years, John le Carré returns to the Cold War 

in this thrilling masterpiece

Penguin
Viking Books
September 2017

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

What's it all about..

Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, has retired to his family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London are to be scrutinised by a generation with no memory of the Cold War. Somebody must be made to pay for innocent blood once spilt in the name of the greater good. 

Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own story, John le Carré has given us a novel of superb and enduring quality.

My Thoughts...

Legacy of Spies work well as a standalone story, however, those readers who have read a couple of its Smiley predecessors, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy will probably gain more from reading what is, in effect, a 'tieing up of loose ends' sort of story.

That John le Carré is the undisputed king of the espionage novel is without doubt and I enjoyed reading of the intricacies of the British Secret Service, which he brings to life so vividly, and of the ethical uncertainties and petty squabbles which linger in the shadows.The author's succinct turn of phrase, and the way his characters are allowed to quietly infiltrate the novel without any fuss, or of never quite knowing who is truthful or trustworthy, is all part of the espionage game, and the author does this ambiguity extremely well.

Although the story covers events from the past, there is also a very modern feel to the story, especially in the details of the 21st century spy headquarters and the way in which that operates, which is a far cry from the dim and distant days when George Smiley and his gang ruled the roost.

My feeling is that if you have read the series you will be happy with this book but it's perhaps not the place to start if you haven't read any of the stories before. The back story references need to be appreciated in order to understand just how clever is this conclusion.

About the Author

John le Carré was born in 1931. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. His recent novels include A Most Wanted Man, Our Kind of Traitor and A Delicate Truth. His only work of non-fiction, The Pigeon Tunnel, was a number one bestseller in 2016.

Website

Twitter@lecarre_news #ALegacyofSpies

Amazon UK

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Blog Tour ~ Blood Sisters by Jane Corry

Jaffareadstoo is thrilled to be hosting today's stop on the Blood Sisters Blog Tour

PenguinViking
June 2017

What's it all about ...

One Good. One Bad. One Dead.

Alison and Kitty are bound by a secret.

Kitty lives in a care home. She can’t speak properly, and she has no memory of the accident that put her here. At least that’s the story she’s sticking to.

Art teacher Alison looks fine on the surface. But the surface is a lie. When a job in a prison comes up she decides to take it – this is her chance to finally make things right.

But someone is watching Kitty and Alison.

Someone who wants revenge.

And only another life will do …

What did I think about it...

Having been a huge fan of this author's previous novel, My Husband's Wife, I was intrigued, and delighted, when a copy of Blood Sisters arrived for me to read and review. I have to say that I wasn't disappointed with this tale about Alison and Kitty, two half-sisters, for whom life is very different, but who are linked together by the devastating secret they share.

There's a real edge to this story which looks at a family tragedy from the perspectives of both sisters. Firstly that of Alison who is struggling to get by, working as an artist, teaching her unique skill to groups of adults but with no real job satisfaction. When the opportunity to work as the artist in residence at a local open prison comes along, Alison makes the decision to do something different, knowing full well that her life could be altered, for good or ill, by this choice.

And then there's Kitty, who is a full time patient in a care home. Kitty has learning and behavioural difficulties brought about as the result of a catastrophic event which altered her life forever. Kitty is feisty, sometimes funny, and always irreverent in her thought processes and yet she is absolutely trapped in a world where she has enormous difficulty in expressing herself, that is, until she meets Johnny who is also a resident of the home and who encourages some very different emotions.

Blood Sisters is a tight and tense psychological suspense story which has its fair share of twists and turns, many of which I didn't seem coming. It very cleverly combines the lives of two very different women, deftly intertwining their past and their present, all caught up in a story which is rich in the telling and which comes alive with hints of menace, sadness and long buried secrets.

There is no doubt that this author has really captured this corner of the psychological suspense / domestic noir genre. Her writing is always exciting, cleverly explained with no superfluous ambiguity. The short and sharp chapters which gradually unravel the story of Alison and Kitty are done with fine attention to detail, so that the reader is soon immersed in a tale which is riddled with guilt, alive with secrets and filled to the brim with hurt, pain and overwhelming sadness.

Best Read with...Cups of scalding hot tea and some comforting biscuits...

About the Author

Photo credit
Justine Stoddart

Jane Corry is a former magazine journalist who spent three years working as the writer-in-residence of a high security prison for men. She had never been inside a jail before and this often hair-raising experience helped inspire her Sunday Times bestseller My Husband’s Wife. Jane is a regular life story judge for the Koestler Awards given to prisoners for art and writing. Until recently, Jane was a tutor in creative writing at Oxford University. She now runs writing workshops in her local area of Devon and speaks at literary festivals all over the world. She has three grown up children and writes the ‘Diary of a First-Time Grandmother’ column for the Daily Telegraph

Follow on Twitter @JaneCorry Author #BloodSisters

My thanks to the author and also to Annie at Penguin Viking for their kind invitation to be part of this blog tour.

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Blog Tour ~ Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting today's stop on the 

Do Not Become Alarmed Blog Tour

Penguin Viking
June 2017

What's it all about..

When Liv and Nora decide to take their husbands and children on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. The ship's comforts and possibilities seem infinite. But when they all go ashore in beautiful Central America, a series of minor mishaps lead the families further from the ship's safety. 

One minute the children are there, and the next they're gone.

What follows is a heart-racing story told from the perspectives of the adults and the children, as the distraught parents - now turning on one another and blaming themselves - try to recover their children and their shattered lives.

What did I think about it...

A Central American cruise should have been the holiday of a lifetime for Liv, Nora and their respective husbands and children, and at first everything is going well. The children flourish on board the ship and join in with all the many activities and the adults finally start to relax away from the pressures of life. That is until a fateful decision is made to go ashore and whilst the husbands go to play golf, Liv, Nora and the children are taken on a separate excursion which goes disastrously wrong. What then follows is a frightening portrayal of what can happen by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The story is told from the perspectives of the parents, alternating with that of the children, which works as it allows an insight into the two strands of the story, which is all so necessary to maintain momentum. The author captures the parent's utter fear as they realise that something has happened to their children which is beyond their control and their abject misery and gut wrenching sadness is palpable.  The children’s resolve is tested to the limit as they are taken into a situation which is terrifying, and yet, even though their ingenuity is commendable, there were times, particularly in the later chapters, when I had to suspend belief, as I didn’t quite feel that some of their situations rang true.

Whilst I enjoyed reading the story, I do feel that some parts of the novel worked better than others. There are some elements which could have been left out entirely, whilst other, more important issues could have been expanded upon to add a little more depth and clarity. However, there is no doubt that this is one of those frightening scenarios that you hope will never, ever, happen to anyone's children on what should be an idyllic holiday.

Do Not Become Alarmed is published on 6^th July 2017 

About the Author

Follow on Twitter @mailemeloy #DoNotBecomeAlarmed

My thanks to the author and also to Josie at Penguin for my review copy of this book and also for the invitation to be part of this blog tour.

Follow the tour until the 31st July 2017

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