Judith Kinghorn’s beautifully-written and evocative debut novel The Last Summer was one of my favourite reads of 2012. Which might help to explain why, on the eve of her second novel coming out, I’m only now getting around to trying to do it justice in a review.

The Last Summer has been marketed as a book that viewers of Downton Abbey would enjoy. I can understand why, given that it opens in the country estate of Deyning Park in 1914, the year in which the first series of Downton Abbey ends, and involves a love affair between two people from different social classes. But if, like me, you were one of the few people who didn’t enjoy the show and switched off at the beginning of its second series, please don’t let that be the reason you miss out on what is a wonderfully rewarding read in itself.

What I particularly enjoyed about The Last Summer is how much depth there is to the story. Clarissa, the heroine, is on the cusp of adulthood and about to embark upon her first real love affair: “I was almost seventeen when the spell of my childhood was broken”. But the world she inhabits is also about to undergo a profound transformation: “the vibration of change was upon us, and I sensed a shift: a realignment of my trajectory. It was the beginning of summer and, unbeknownst to any of us then, the end of a belle époque.“

So the book opens with not only Clarissa, but society as a whole, enjoying one last summer of innocence before the First World War breaks out. And it’s this parallel between Clarissa’s story and that of the society she lives in that makes the book work so well for me. Her story alone would have been interesting but by putting it in this wider context I had a much greater appreciation of her as a character, and also just how restricted her options were. I have to be honest, when I started the book, I didn’t expect to like Clarissa as much as I eventually did and it’s all down to Judith Kinghorn’s characterisation of her that I was won over. I began to see the limitations she lived within and how frustrating they might be, and also how brave she was to challenge them or to go against them in the way that she does throughout the book. What I had to keep reminding myself was that the action of the book is set less than a hundred years ago. It really made me appreciate how much has changed in society and how much more freedom I had at Clarissa’s age, despite our not sharing the same social standing, let alone someone like my niece who was almost seventeen last summer when I read the book.

It’s so much more than a story of the love affair between the two central characters; it’s a book that surprised me by turning my opinions about women of a certain class around but one which also taught me about just how seismic a shift there was in society during this period. Above all else, like all truly great reads, it’s a book that’s stayed with me. I know I’ll keep The Last Summer on my bookshelves to revisit.

The Last Summer is available from all good bookstores and online retailers and Judith’s second novel The Memory of Lost Senses is out tomorrow. You can find out more about both books and the author from her Author Website or by following Judith on Twitter. 

I brought her back one last time.

She liked the place, remembered it from her childhood, she said, or maybe when she was older, a teenager. I can’t remember. I glazed over every time she started to talk about the time before me. It can’t have been that interesting. She wasn’t. She weren’t much to look at neither.

I can see how she’d like the place. It’s boring, so empty. Nothing but trees and the lake. She knew the names of all the trees but basically there was tall ones crowded round the lake and clumpier ones going up the hill. I liked those ones the best, you could tell they didn’t want to be here. It looked like they were scrambling up the hillside to get away.

And it’s so bleeding dark when we get to her favourite spot on the shore because the trees is all so tightly-packed, way worse than the new tower blocks she used to moan about back home. You always feel there’s someone or something watching you here. Eyes everywhere. I hate it. Place gives me the creeps. I’m a city boy, I don’t mind telling you. It’s where I belong. No one gives a shit what you do there, no one watches you, not really, they’re all dead behind the eyes: tired, stressed, not really there, never present, wishing they were somewhere else, or someone else. Sounds grand, don’t it? But I know where I’d rather be any day.

It’s so quiet here, it’s freaking me out. Not a sound. Not even a bird. Dead as a dodo.

I chucked some stones in the water when we got here but there was just a hollow plop and then silence, didn’t matter how many times I did it, or how big the stone or anything. I guess that’s good in a way but it’s freaking unnerving.

I got to get out of here, make tracks without making tracks, if you get me.

I won’t be back and she won’t ever leave.

Days after seeing it, I am still thinking about Matthew Bourne’s magical interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. It wasn’t love at first sight but once the fairies made their entrance and started to bestow their gifts, I fell for it in all its gothic loveliness. From that moment on, I was transfixed and entranced, drawn into the enchanted forest and dazzled by the deft dancers in their gorgeous costumes. Here was storytelling at its very best and if I had the chance, I would happily go and see it all over again.

You can read a review by lovely author and blogging pal, Chris Stovell, on her blog and here are more details about the production together with the remaining tour dates: New Adventures

I heard women talking and tried to focus on what they were saying.
“A most peculiar looking creature to be sure.”
“Who is she, do you think?”
“Foreign, of that there can be little doubt. It is not the fashion that a lady’s hair be cropped so close.”
“And the clothes we found her in. Why! Little more than sacking.”
“Not one ribbon!”
“But she looked kind…”
“Well, I should not care to be her at the assembly rooms tomorrow evening, for I am sure I should not tolerate it.”

I opened my eyes. I was in a short wooden bed with a lumpy mattress and a home-made patchwork quilt. Long heavy curtains at the windows made the room dim.
“Where am I?” I said.
“Do you not know? We happened upon you in the lane on the way home from Meryton. You are at Longbourn now. Yes, but perhaps you do not recognise the names. You are not from Hertfordshire, I think?”
”Meryton? Longbourn? Hertfordshire?” I said. “Okay, okay, just chill… Think… But what the heck am I doing here?”
I looked at the shadows of women in the room.
“Say, could you open the curtains and get some light in here?”
Without a word, one of them moved and pulled back the long drapes at each window.

I could see them now and laughed.

“I can’t believe they’re making another version! Surely there are enough?”
The women looked at me and then at each other.
“When did filming start? You’re Jane, right, and you, oh you’re definitely Mary. Who else would you be? What’s the book you’re holding? Something dull and preachy, no doubt.”
“It prays upon my poor nerves when people vex my girls. How do you …?”
“How do I know you? Oh very clever, Mrs Bennet, staying in character like this, but you can stop it now. I’m on to you all. Joke’s over.”
“My dear girl, you are quite delirious,” said Mrs Bennet.
“Oh, stop it. You’re all very good,” I said. “Okay, I take it back. Maybe we do need another version. Maybe yours will be the definitive one.”
“I think you had better leave her with Jane and I, Mama.”
“I will do no such thing, Lizzy, my girl,” said Mrs Bennet, starting to screech. “I am sure I am just as interested as you are in her story. I should very much like to know where she comes from and what she was doing in our lane.”
“Very well, Mama, but you had better sit quietly so as not to frighten her.”
“Lizzy,” I said, laughing. “She can’t help it. That’s the way she’s written. She’s a very good Mrs Bennet.”
“Do you know a great many Mrs Bennets?” said Jane, quietly.
“Well, there’s only one really,” I said, and watched Mrs Bennet preen.

“Where’s my book?”
“Mary,” said Lizzy. “Do you know where it is?”
“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” said Mary, quickly leaving the room.
I jumped out of bed.
“Where is she going? Where is Mary going?”
I ran to the door.
“Please come back to bed. You really are quite ill,” said Jane.
“I can’t,” I said. “I need my book back!”
“I know where she will be,” said Lizzy. “Let me take you.”
I followed her along the hallway, the sisters trailing behind us. Peeking into some of the rooms we passed, it was all just as I had imagined. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I stood in the entrance hall and smiled. What drama this would soon see, and here was Lydia, the cause of most of it, quite innocently standing beside me. I tiptoed across the hall and pushed open one of the doors. There was Mr Bennet sitting in his library, reading and chuckling to himself. I closed the door on him and re-joined the sisters.

Lizzy led me out through the garden and into the walled wilderness where she would have her encounter with Lady Catherine. There, on a stone seat against the wall, was Mary, hurriedly scanning my book.
“Give that to me!” I shouted, running over to her.
“I really do not see what is so very special about your book, you know. It seems to me a very stupid thing,” she said to her sisters.
“I wouldn’t knock it, if I were you,” I said. “You have a lot to thank Jane Austen for. She’s one of the finest writers in England,” I said.
“To be sure, I have never heard the name before,” said Mary.
“Mary reads a great deal,” said Lydia. “She would surely know of the author?”
“Look, I’m not about to argue with you,” I said, “But she was very proud of all of you. You especially, Lizzy.”
“Oh, does she know of us?” said Jane. “Then I am sure we will be kind to her if we should ever meet her.”
“Yes, dear Jane,” smiled Lizzy, “I am certain of that.”

I wanted to stay and talk to them. I really did. There was so much I wanted to ask them and tell them. But I knew that I couldn’t.
Besides, I had to get home.
“I think I need to read for a while now,” I said, looking at each of the Bennet sisters in turn.
“Then we shall leave you in peace,” said Lizzy, motioning to her sisters.
“I shall call for you when tea is ready,” said Kitty.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Thanks. I think I’ll go home now.”
“Goodbye,” said Kitty and Lydia while Mary grimaced.
“Safe journey home,” said Jane.
“Well, goodbye,” said Lizzy.
“Thank you,” I said and watched them go back through the gate into the garden. “Right, now where had I got to?” I said to myself. “Not very far, if they haven’t been to the assembly room dance yet.”

I opened the book and, for the first time ever, read to escape back into the real world.

I fill letters home with tales of a happier me: a young woman sitting in the shade on her balcony, trying to read a children’s book in Greek, and nodding “Kalimera” at the neighbour opposite, who is hanging out her washing and admiring our tomato plants. There’s no place for the flatmate tending to his marijuana plants strategically placed between them.

That same young woman spends mornings wafting around the old town of Plaka, walking in the footsteps of the ancient Greeks, sometimes wandering over the Agora and all the way up the steep hill to the Parthenon. She would swear she hears the whispers of great men down through the ages. In reality, the men are not remotely great but oily of hair and soiled of shirt and they sidle up to me as I slowly slalom my way through them and their invitations to ‘take a coffee’.

I write about how near the throbbing, pulsing heart of Athens that serene young woman lives but neglect to mention she lives in a street where every other house is a blanket-door brothel and that it leads down to Omonia Square, papered with porn and grudging home to the Albanians sleeping rough there.

I explain how slowly she’s learning Greek and often makes embarrassing mistakes, like struggling home from last week’s street market with 5 kilos of oranges when she only wanted FIVE oranges. At least, she will be free of scurvy!

I don’t tell them about the School Director who touches me up at every opportunity, or the ‘important business connections’ of his, whom he’s tried to persuade me to teach in their homes. I don’t tell them that people ask me what I’m doing here and why my father and my brother back home won’t support me instead. And I wouldn’t dream of telling them about the men who cluck at me as I wander about Athens alone or the ones who masturbate in our street in the middle of the day.

I have no desire to conjure these images in the lines of reassurance I’m sending home.

Instead, I say how, despite the streets deep in drifts of rubbish and the weekly strikes, I admire the Greeks for their vocal demonstrations and marches on Parliament. I love how the language sounds: how there is drama in a simple shopping trip; how it’s loud and argumentative and full of life; how a traffic accident stops buses, not because the road ahead is blocked or they’ve been involved but to allow everyone on board to weigh in on whose fault it was, and why. I tell them how Athens is a city of villages and that many people coming from one part of Greece all move to the same area. Neighbours back home are neighbours here once again.

I don’t mention that during my first four months here EVERYONE in my street shunned me. And that it was the baker’s fault.

He used to leave the counter every day I went in the bakery, and let one of his staff serve me. I was at a loss to understand why I upset him so much.

Until yesterday, that is.

Yesterday I lucked out and happened to go there while his wife was serving and when I was confident enough to ask for what I wanted in Greek. She had leant across the counter and brushed my cheek with her floury hand, and told me that it was sweet to hear someone with my fair hair and blue eyes speaking her language. And then she asked me where I was from and what I was doing here, so I told her I was teaching English in one of Athens many frontisteria, or private language schools. She had clapped her hands and told me her son was studying in London and did I know it. Of course, I said, I’ve been there many times. And then she’d called her husband and, in a gabble of Greek and gesticulation, she explained it all to him.

He’d laughed.

Then he’d come round to my side of the counter, squeezed my cheeks, welcomed me to his bakery, and started filling my bag with baked goods. And I wanted to say, “Stop! It’s too much” but all I could make out from him was “συγνώμη” which means Sorry and “Πολωνός” which means Polish and another word which I didn’t understand. I asked him to write it down and at first he didn’t want to, but his wife obviously told him that he had to because she frowned until he ponderously wrote it down on a paper bag and gave it to me. His wife told me that he was very sorry and it was all a big mistake and that he was very happy to meet me – “our English teacher”. I eventually extracted myself from the bakery laden down with enough cakes and bread for a teddy bears’ picnic.

As soon as I got back to the apartment, I’d looked in my dictionary and just stared and stared at the word I found there.

When I went back the next day, the baker welcomed me in and called his wife out to say hello. And I was happy about that. But when the bakery emptied of other customers, I took out the question I’d written down the day before with the help of my housemate and showed it to them.

And the baker reddened but I told him it was okay, if he had. So he said that yes, despite my sweatshirts, jeans and purple army boots, he had thought me a prostitute, not an English teacher, because of my Polish colouring. It was pretty much all Poles and other Eastern Europeans who worked the brothels in our street.

And we’d all laughed when I said I didn’t give that kind of private lesson.

But I still think I’ll leave this out of my wafting heroine’s latest adventures when I next write home.

When the first mist ribbon had snaked its way out of the forest and wrapped itself around their Saab on the road from Gothenburg, he understood how you could feel at home in a place for the first time in his life.

Like being on one of those paths that only last for a limited time in fairy tales, before disappearing for another hundred years, here he was escaping the chaos and disappointment of his old life, hoping it would vanish into the mists like the road behind him.

He wouldn’t be scattering any breadcrumbs to find his way back.

“Oh,” said Gunilla, in that tight-lipped nasal way of hers. “The first thing we’ll have to do is paint it. And we drove past such fresh whites and happy yellows on the way here.”

He said nothing. Back in February when he’d come house-hunting, he’d known as soon as he had turned up the hill towards the grey-green house that it was the one for him.

Besides, the colour would never change while he was the one wielding the paintbrush. She could sigh and complain about the colour as much as she liked. In fact, he might even put on a new coat of that very same shade this coming Spring. He could always claim that the neighbour had given him the wrong colour code when he had gone round to ask for theirs.

He had known that she would notice some of the missing furniture but he didn’t think that she would pick up on all of it that first time she stepped into her new home.

“And the oak display cabinets we had in the dining room…”

“Oh yes, I can’t imagine where they’ll have got to…”

“And the nest of coffee tables…”

“The men probably put them into the wrong room…”

“And the thin bookcases that were against the wall in my little sitting room in the old house…”

“I hope they made the trip okay… they were very thin…”

“And the old spinning wheel… my mother’s…”

“They’ll not have known where to put it and stored it in the basement…”

And so it went on with Gunilla describing the missing items and him trailing in her wake, like a concerned policeman trying to keep up with a distressed burglary victim.

Strictly speaking, everything was in a basement: an auctioneer’s basement, where the missing items that made Gunilla’s house a home were waiting to be toured and touted around the towns near where they used to live. He wondered whether any of her friends would recognise something and tell Gunilla. He doubted it. They would probably jump at the chance to buy up the things they had so long coveted.

“I hate it here,” said Gunilla, shivering at the emptiness inside and the mist outside that was creeping over the bushes and through the garden, right up to the windows.

He said nothing and simply handed her a plate of flat breads and cold meats.

Gunilla’s cry brought him running from the bathroom the next morning.

“Don’t make such a noise, you’ll scare them away. Look!”

And she pointed towards the edge of their land, where it sloped down into next door’s, at the three deer who were warily looking towards the new owners of Strandgatan 17.

“So graceful!’ said Gunilla. “I may get to like it here, after all.”

He found out later on that day that the deer came down from the woods behind the house and through his garden every morning and evening.

Although he had to admit that the man knew his schnaps and was generous with it, his neighbour, Sture, had been almost too friendly for his liking.

As he stomped off into the woods that night, Sture’s openness and easy manner were still irritating him.

Five days later, he came out of the bathroom and saw Gunilla standing close up to the door that led out onto the deck, her nose pressed against it, breath misting the glass and her right hand pawing at it, like a cat wanting out.

“I miss the deer,” she said. “They were so full of life…”

He came and stood behind her, put his hands on her shoulders and manoeuvred her to the nearest chair.

“You sit there,” he said. “And when you look up again, you’ll have deer in your garden.”

She smiled, faintly.

When he came into the house from the garden later that day, he was pleased with himself and couldn’t understand why Gunilla was crying. The plastic deer stood exactly where he wanted them, were easy to mow around, and looked even more realistic from this distance.

But Gunilla did not, could not feel the same way and she cried all evening, and when they went to bed that night, she sniffed for so long that he got up and took himself off to the sofa.

Ten days later, he and Sture were working opposite each other. Sture waved, put down his tools and wandered across the road.

“Hej, neighbour, how are you liking the place now?” said Sture.

“It’s almost home,” he said, quietly. “Just a bit more work to do.”

“Jaja, a man’s work is never done when he has a wife and yours watches you like a white-tailed eagle.” Sture motioned towards Gunilla’s silhouette in the window.

“She doesn’t say much,” he said. “I’m my own man.”

Sture clapped him on the back. “Good man, good man! We must get together. Bring her over one evening, and she can meet Mia while we two share some schnaps.”

He nodded and said, “Gunilla’s very shy but I’ll ask her.” And then he picked up his tools and gloves and walked back to the house.

Once inside, he patted the plastic mannequin sitting in the chair near the window and bent to kiss her cold cheek.

“I’m home, my love, my very own Gunilla.”

I’m thrilled to be part of the blog tour for Kerry Hudson’s debut novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. Kerry was one of my early follows on Twitter and, having enjoyed her updates on writing, life and the cake essential to both of those, it’s especially lovely to help her celebrate her first novel coming out. Here’s what Tony Hogan is all about:

When Janie Ryan is born, she’s just the latest in a long line of Ryan women, Aberdeen fishwives to the marrow, always ready to fight. Her violet-eyed Grandma had predicted she’d be sly, while blowing Benson and Hedges smoke rings over her Ma’s swollen belly. In the hospital, her family approached her suspiciously, so close she could smell whether they’d had booze or food for breakfast. It was mostly booze.

Tony Hogan tells the story of a Scottish childhood of filthy council flats and B&Bs, screeching women, feckless men, fags and booze and drugs, the dole queue and bread and marge sandwiches. It is also the story of an irresistible, irrepressible heroine, a dysfunctional family you can’t help but adore, the absurdities of the eighties and the fierce bonds that tie people together no matter what. Told in an arrestingly original — and cry-out-loud funny — voice, it launches itself headlong into the middle of one of life’s great fights, between the pull of the past and the freedom of the future. And Janie Ryan, born and bred for combat, is ready to win.

Sounds ace, doesn’t it? I can’t wait to read my copy of Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. You can get yours from any good bookstore or online retailer, like this one right here: Amazon UK.

Competition time! 

There’s a terrific prize draw open to anyone who hosts or comments on a Tony Hogan post. There is no purchase necessary. There is no limit to how many times a name can be entered i.e. if you comment on three blogs you have three entries but it’s only possible to win one prize per person. The winning names will be drawn at random on Wednesday 1st August and announced on Kerry’s Tumblr blog and on Twitter.

1st prize – A three chapter or synopsis critique plus afternoon tea at Beas of Bloomsbury, London (at a mutually beneficial date and time) with Juliet Pickering from the AP Watt Literary Agency to discuss your critique. Plus a personalised copy of Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before he Stole My Ma.

2nd prize – A literary hamper containing a personalised copy of Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma as well as three of my most recommended writing theory books and Hotel d Chocolate chocolates to enjoy while reading them.

3rd prize – A personalised copy of Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma.

And, as if that wasn’t all exciting enough, Kerry has some top tips for those all important meetings with agents and publishers, so I’ll hand over the blog to her…

When I was just starting out writing and dreaming of a book deal I spent far more time than I should have reading blogs about what it was like when you did actually get a deal. The publishing world felt like a secret society and when I did get the opportunity to meet my agent I still had no real idea what to expect and my pre-meeting anxiety sky-rocketed. There was no need of course, my agent Juliet is very nice and brilliant to boot but I wanted to help others who may find themselves in the same boat. So, here is my definitive list which has the catchy title: Stuff I Wish I’d Known Before Meeting With My Agent and Publisher.

Meeting with an agent

An agent won’t ask to meet with you unless they are seriously interested in your book. Of course you’ll be tied up with nerves (I was so nervous I left half my brownie which is unheard of) but take confidence in the fact you’ve done something right if you’re getting face-time with an agent.

It’s ok to ask questions. Asking questions won’t irritate an agent or jeapordise your chance of signing with them. It will show that you’re professional, switched on and that you take yourself seriously as a writer.

But don’t forget about the less-business orientated side of the agent-writer relationship. I once heard the best adage about trying to decide whether to sign with an agent; the advice was, don’t imagine what your agent will be like when it’s all going swimmingly, imagine what they’ll be like when it’s all going badly. Your agent will likely deliver some disappointing and (hopefully) some of the best news of your life. Your agent will be by your side during some of your most important decisions, potentially for decades. Choose carefully, trust your instincts and in my experience it definitely helps if you really genuinely enjoy your agent’s company and can have a good laugh over a slice of cake with them.

Eat the brownie, nobody will judge you.

Meeting with a publisher

If you’re going in to meet a publisher then lots of people ‘in-house’ will have already read and liked your novel. Like agents, publishers are busy people and if they are inviting you in to meet them their intentions are serious. So, relax if you can (I couldn’t, I refused biscuits – are you seeing a theme emerging here?).

The meeting may consist of the one editor who is championing your book but it could also have several editors as well a marketing, sales and PR rep in attendance. Each will be looking at how you and your book would fit into their area. There’s nothing you can do to influence their decision but be open, honest and demonstrate the passion you’ll undoubtedly feel for your book.

Make sure you know what you’re going to write about next and can explain that succinctly. Like most writers I’m not great at explaining what my books are about but getting that two or three sentence pitch right in this meeting could be the difference between being offered a multi-book contract or not.

You might get free books. If they’re offered, it’s not rude to take them, it would be rude not to.

Eat the biscuits. The people of publishing love baked goods. They’ll admire you for tucking in.

Of course all of this advice is no good without my final golden rule:

Write. Write the book you have always wanted to and that you’ll be proud of. Ignore the voices saying that nothing new is getting published. I’m proof that dreams can, and do, come true.

Top advice. Thanks Kerry! I don’t need to be told twice to eat cake. Thanks for stopping by on your tour and all the best with Tony Hogan.  

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Growing up in a succession of council estates, B&Bs and caravan parks provided her with a keen eye for idiosyncratic behaviour, material for life, and a love of travel. Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma is her first novel. Kerry now lives, writes and works in London.

The Tony Hogan Tour has already stopped off at the blogs of top tweeps and ace writers Valerie O’Riordan and Nik Perring, so go check out the posts there. The tour continues tomorrow over at Sara Crowley’s blog, before moving on to Lindsay Healy’s place. 

Time CapsuleFor writers’ group this month we had ‘time capsule’ as our prompt and this got me looking around my office and thinking about what I would choose to put into one. In the end, I decided that I’d want to put in the one thing you can’t always hold onto – MEMORIES – but that can come back to you through a smell or an object that nudges you into remembering. Here’s the poem that came out of that:

You gave me this
When I was a child
Do you remember?

It was old even then,
Inside, it smelt of wedding cake and,
rusting at the edges,
its hinges whispered complaint.

I remember you rising from your chair
Slowly turning and easing
Your way over to the dresser
Where, opening a door, you bent low,
Lower than I imagined possible,
For a time you were frozen there
Only your fingers active, scrabbling around,
Hunting this treasure.

When you turned to face me,
there it was in all its green gold glory
clamped in your arthritic claw.
The girl’s hair flashed in the morning sun
And her new husband looked too young
For the man’s uniform he wore.

Over the years I filled it
With beetles and ladybirds who died,
Trumpton figures and Russian dolls,
I simply outgrew,
Painted pencils and guitar strings,
I neither flourished nor plucked,
Until ticket stubs and bookmarks collected,
From places that left their mark,
With faded postcards and scratchily written letters,
Some of them from you.

Now my time capsule looks empty
And sounds hollow
But placing it in your hands and seeing your smile,
I know it is more full than ever,
full of the lingering scent of cake,
and the memories, laughter and happiness.
All those things you seem to forget
until the next time I visit.

(c) Kathryn Eastman. July 2012.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Penny Bangle is the last in a trilogy of books following the lives and loves of various members of the Denham family. It’s a series I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading and a family who I’m sorry to have to leave behind, no matter how fitting an end The Penny Bangle is to the series.

In The Penny Bangle, it’s the turn of Alex and Rose Denham’s twin sons, Robert and Stephen, to take centre stage. It’s 1942 and both men are home, recovering from injuries they suffered at Dunkirk. Into their lives comes nineteen-year-old Cassie Taylor, newly arrived from Birmingham after her granny sent her away to the country where she thought she’d be safer, and very reluctantly about to be the new land girl tasked with helping out on their parents’ farm.

As Stephen and especially Robert are to find, Cassie is an exceptionally endearing character. From the opening scene, where she drops her underwear on a station platform, I couldn’t help but root for the pretty, sparrow-like city girl who (literally!) mucks in and makes a go of being a farmhand. She’s plucky, friendly, hard-working and sweet-natured.

Robert and Stephen may be twins but their characters are as different as their attitudes towards Cassie when they first meet and get to know her. They’re both interesting men, affected in their own way by the war and events in their family and they both vied for my attention at different points in the book.

Apart from the wonderfully-realised characters, one of the things I loved about the book, and indeed all the books in this trilogy, is how much I’ve come to learn about what people’s lives and careers were really like in the periods they cover. The Penny Bangle may have romance at its heart but there is so much more to it than that. The novel gives a fascinating insight into living through the Second World War for those in a city like Birmingham, or as someone working as a land girl on a farm in Dorset or joining the forces, training and working as a driver and then being posted overseas as part of the war effort. It’s a book rich in period detail without it ever getting in the way of the characters and their stories, and ultimately it was those compelling characters and their stories who kept making me reach for the book until I closed it – and the series – with a satisfied sigh.

The Penny Bangle is published by ChocLit and is available from all good bookshops and online retailers. It is available from Amazon UK and Amazon.com in both paperbook and ebook formats. You can find out more about Margaret from her Author Website or follow Margaret on Twitter.

]]> http://nutpress.co.uk/2012/06/the-penny-bangle-by-margaret-james/feed/ 4 http://nutpress.co.uk/2012/06/run-rabbit-run-by-kate-johnson/ http://nutpress.co.uk/2012/06/run-rabbit-run-by-kate-johnson/#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2012 07:00:42 +0000 kath http://nutpress.co.uk/?p=17282

I must admit to having a bit of an aversion to pink. With the notable exception of the singer, P!NK, I try and avoid the colour, especially when it liberally covers a book. But I was only too happy to overcome this irrational dislike if it meant I could read another Kate Johnson novel. 

I read and thoroughly enjoyed Kate’s fantasy novel The Untied Kingdom last year and was looking forward to reading one of Kate’s Sophie Green mysteries. Run Rabbit Run is the first of these to be published by ChocLit, an independent publisher of fiction with an element of romance. (The previous four books in the Sophie Green series were published as ebooks in the USA.)

You don’t need to have read any of the previous Sophie Green books to be able to enjoy this one. It works perfectly well as a stand-alone.

(Having said that, I’d now like to read her previous adventures and am hoping that Kate continues the series in future.)

Sophie Green is an ex-spy. Or, at least, she’s trying to be! But when an MI5 officer is shot with her gun and her fingerprints are all over his office, it doesn’t look good for her, so she does what anyone would do under the circumstances… she goes on the run. Not content just to lie low, she tries to prove her innocence and find out who’s trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit. Sophie’s boyfriend, the gorgeous Luke, who works for MI6, gets pulled into investigating the case and trying to keep his erratic girlfriend alive. Which, while completely understandable and laudable, might not be his best career move to date and complicates matters further.

I quickly warmed to Sophie Green. She’s by no means a smooth operator, having effectively stumbled into working for the British Secret Service. In fact, she stumbles rather a lot, and it’s mostly into trouble! But while Sophie may be blonde, curvy and comes across as a bit ditzy, she’s certainly no fool and it’s refreshing to see a heroine who’s more than capable of using her brain as well as all her other more than ample resources to stay alive while on the run, as well as working towards solving her own case. She does get help with this but for someone who often looks completely out of her depth, Sophie Green surprised me in all the right ways by coming out on top and proving just how capable she really was.

If you imagine a smarter and more competent female version of Johnny English (Jane English?) but keep the dry humour of the original and add in a dose of Spooks/MI5 to the mix, you’ll get a sense of just how much of a taut, fun and fast-paced read Run Rabbit Run is. It’s a really enjoyable pageturner of a thriller and I was in turn amused, anxious about Sophie’s wellbeing, and intrigued by the who-framed-her element of the story. It was a hugely entertaining read and I loved it – and Sophie. More please, Kate Johnson!

Run Rabbit Run is published by ChocLit and is available from all good bookshops and online retailers. It is available from Amazon UK and Amazon.com in both paperbook and ebook formats. You can find out more about Kate from her Author Website or follow Kate on Twitter.