Like Marillier’s adult novels that I’ve read before, Wildwood Dancing is a take on fairy tales and folklore.  This one combines aspects of the twelve dancing princesses and the frog prince, as well as drawing on Romanian vampire mythology and local folklore to give it a wonderful atmosphere.  When their father becomes sick and must go away to be treated, Jena and her four sisters are left behind and Jena takes over the running of the family home.  Times are hard, but the sisters find escape in their monthly nighttime visits to the fairy kingdom in the wildwood where they are welcomed as friends to join in the revels.  Jena also finds solace in the company of Gogu, a frog with whom she is able to talk and who is her closest friend.  However, their cousin Cezar does not believe that the girls can look after themselves and imposes himself on their lives.  At the same time, he is also attempting to destroy the wildwood.  Although he claims this is for the safety of the girls and the villagers, and as revenge for the mysterious death of his older brother Costi, his motives are not all that they seem.

A fairytale adaptation is always a double edged sword because its strength is also its weakness: I already know what will happen because I already know the story.  I know that frogs kissed will turn into men, that how something is said is as important as what is said, and that you should always be careful what you wish for.  Above all, I know that things are rarely what they seem.  Anyone likely to read a book like this is probably approaching from a similar position of prior knowledge and experience, and it takes a skillfull author to manage to write a story that satisfies the fairytale conventions while escaping the trap of feeling like something that’s been read before.  Juliet Marillier is such a writer (Daughter of the Forest is one of my favourite books) but this book didn’t quite get there for me.  The story, while enjoyable enough, erred on the side of obvious, to the point of making some of the characters unreasonably dense at times in order to further the plot.  There may be a dream sequence inserted to explain this, frankly, silly behaviour, but it feels like a contrived and flimsy way of excusing the heroine’s strange refusal to act on things which the reader can see that she obviously should.

Frustrations aside, there was a lot that I really enjoyed about this novel.  I liked the Romanian setting and the way that this colours all aspects of the book, from the character names to the food to the folklore.  I also liked the way that the setting, both the time and the place of the book, made Jena’s struggles to maintain her control over the family fortunes seem very real and understandable.  All too often it is easy to dismiss fantasy heroines who are dependent on men for either their day to day existence or for rescue as weak or somehow deficient, but Jena has no choice but to cede to her cousin Cezar’s polite but forceful requests to hand over her family’s money and the running of their affairs to him.  In fact, even though it feels wrong both to Jena and the reader, it is clear that what he is doing is the right thing albeit for the wrong reasons.  I also loved the inventive descriptions of the wildwood folk and their celebrations, which were just the blend of expected fairy tale convention and authorial creativity which I have come to expect from Juliet Marillier.

On balance, this was an enjoyable but unexceptional book, though perfect for the situation in which I read it.  It was entertaining but the story was too simple and obvious for it to be truly engaging and the interesting details of time and place, while they added flavour, were not quite enough to make up for this.

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier.  Published by Tor, 2007, pp. 370.  Originally published in 2007.

The novel opens shortly before the release of central character Shadow from prison, when he is summoned to the office to hear news of his wife Laura’s death in a car crash.  On the plane home, he is accosted by a strange man calling himself Mr Wednesday who claims to be a former god embroiled in a war with the new gods.  Little does Shadow know it, but he is soon to find himself playing a key role in this conflict, embroiled in a world of gods and legends fighting for survival in the improbable setting of the American Midwest.

On the one hand, I really like the idea of American Gods.  I like the thought of all the old gods and spirits emigrating from their native lands along with their believers and eventually finding themselves having to exist in 20th century small town America.  I love the little mythic episodes which litter the novel, detailing the story of a particular deity which isn’t relevant to the plot per se, but which helps to build up the whole picture of the world that Gaiman is creating.  I thoroughly enjoyed picking out all of the elements of folklore, myth and fairytale, even if I think this may have resulted in me working a lot of things out much sooner than I was probably supposed to.  I think that the idea that bizarre tourist attractions with no real significance are the modern day places of pilgrimage is completely inspired and it never failed to make me smile.  I like the idea of the gods being in conflict; it made the story feel like a myth that had been brought thoroughly up to date.  However, therein lies one of my problems with the book.

Why is there suddenly this conflict between the gods and material things?  The commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit idolatry’ would suggest that people have been worshipping things beside the approved deities for quite some time now, so it seems a little bit odd that this has been a non-issue until the 20th century.  The Norse gods who are the focus of this book have been quite firmly out of favour for at least a thousand years, so why are they at the forefront of the conflict?  Surely if anyone is fighting off the ‘new’ gods of materialism it should be some strange trinity of Jesus, Buddah and Mohammed, not those whose worship was already considered a bit archaic when Beowulf was written down?  I enjoyed the premise, but I didn’t really believe in it, if that makes sense.

Ultimately, I had the same criticism of American Gods that I did of Stardust when I read that back in 2010: I really like the ideas that Gaiman comes up with, but I’m not 100% convinced by what he does with them.  I found myself reading American Gods and interrupting myself by thinking ‘This would be so much better if it had been written by someone else’.  I think my ideal Neil Gaiman book is possibly written by Terry Pratchett (yes, I am aware of Good Omens; no, I haven’t read it yet).  That’s not to say that I think he’s a bad writer or even that I don’t enjoy his books, it’s simply that I don’t think I quite click with him.  I know it’s unfair to judge a book by what you hoped it would be, but I wanted American Gods to be more epic, more humorous, more sinister and, well, just more than what it turned out to be.

That said, there were sections of writing that I absolutely loved.  Samantha Black Crow’s bizarre creed was one of my favourite parts of the whole novel:

I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

It’s clever, it’s witty, it’s completely insane yet somehow rings true and I wish the whole novel had been more along those lines.

This is sounding like a very negative review, but I did honestly enjoy the book, just not as much as expectations had led me to believe I would.  I’ll continue to read Neil Gaimain’s books for the wonderfully innovative ideas that he comes up with.  Who knows, maybe his writing will grow on me the more I read?

American Gods by Neil Gaiman.  Published by Headline Review, 2005, pp. 656.  Originally published in 2001.

In The Black Butterfly, Queen Elizabeth II has just come to the throne and Lucifer Box is being shoved off his as he has retirement foisted upon him.  In spite of this, he finds himself compelled to investigate when perfectly sensible public figures start dying in reckless accidents.  Who is the mysterious Kingdom Kum?  And who or what is the Black Butterfly?  But someone does not want him to find out.

As each book in this trilogy is set in a different era, Lucifer Box naturally ages as the books progress.  I love the idea of  the aging spy, and seeing how he adapts and changes with time.  However, in practice I didn’t really think it worked.  Although Lucifer complains about his reduced capacity for action, there seemed to be no material difference between his abilities in this book and the earlier ones.  The only difference is that he’s more curmudgeonly about it all.  The sharp wit that I loved so much in the first book was sadly lacklustre in The Black Butterfly.

The plot was as amusingly ridiculous as I have come to expect from a Lucifer Box story.  In particular, I thought that the link to the Boy Scouts was wonderful and really humorous.  However, the primary attraction of this series to me is the central character and I found him diminished in this novel, so consequently my enjoyment was also diminished.  At just over 200 pages long, I don’t feel the time spent reading it was time wasted as it was mildly entertaining.  However, it’s definitely my least favourite of the series and I’m quite glad it’s come to an end.

Black Butterfly by Mark Gatiss.  Published by Pocket Books, 2009, pp. 204.  Originally published in 2008.

Charlotte, the narrator, is a young woman living in nineteenth century Copenhagen, where she supports herself and Fru Schelswig, the fat, base old woman whom everyone assumes is her mother, by working as a prostitute.  When the cold winter drives her to seek further employment, she and Fru Schelswig find themselves working for the disagreeable Fru Krak, cleaning her house from top to bottom with the exception of certain forbidden rooms in the basement.  Convinced there must be something hidden there worth stealing, Charlotte cannot help investigating and discovers a mysterious machine left there by Fru Krak’s vanished husband which will change the course of her life forever as it catapults her, all unknowing, into twenty-first century London.

This is the sort of book for which the term ‘romp’ was invented.  It is light-hearted, witty, filled with adventure and generally great fun to read.  If nothing hugely surprising happens, the plot is sufficiently exciting and the narration more than engaging enough in spite of that to draw the reader in and keep hold of their attention throughout.

Charlotte’s voice is one of the key features which makes the book so enjoyable.  She is self-assured and inclined towards melodrama and exaggeration, but her easy humour transforms this from a narrative style that could have been alienating and tiresome (and I know this all too well after suffering through the horrendous exaggeration of The House in Dormer Forest) into one that is self aware and not afraid to be self mocking.  My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time is rather silly and the book knows it and takes great pleasure in being so.  Charlotte’s habit of referring to the reader directly as ‘dearest‘ and complimenting them frequently is just one example of the book’s playfulness which makes it so much fun.

Although people travelling backwards in time to visit periods in history is a subject often addressed in fiction, the reverse situation depicted in this book is not, and Liz Jensen does a wonderful job of imagining the twenty-first century as seen through the eyes of someone from the past:

But the dream did not end, & could not be escaped from so easily, & indeed it then most swiftly turned nightmarish, for waiting at the black wrought-iron park entrance…stood a shiny black carriage of iron, horseless, on four wheels, that growled like a foul-tempered hippopotamus.  Professor Krak bade us enter it through a door in its side: ‘Our means of transport, ladies,’ he said, & then, in a foreign tongue which I presumed to be English, commenced a rushed conversation with the driver of the vehicle, who was – Lord! I could scarcely believe my eyes! – as black as a coal-scuttle, just like in the illustrations of man-eating cannibals I had seen in the cellar at the orphanage!  But before I could scream in terror & make my escape, the machine roared to life with a smooth lurch & we sped into the pellucid gloaming which in that place seemed to pass for night.

All this is related in a mixture of archaicisms and modern slang which seems peculiarly appropriate to a time traveller.  Simple devices such as the use of ampersand instead of ‘and’ provide continuous reminders that Charlotte is from the past.  Fru Shleswig is also given an effective, distinctive manner of speaking, using a sort of Middle English spelling which implies her ignorance and peasant-like bluntness.

The book isn’t without its faults.  For an adventurous book about time travel, it takes a surprisingly long time in exposition building up to this actually taking place and although it is interesting from the beginning because of the narrator the story could perhaps have benefited from starting a bit sooner.  The pacing of the narrative remains slightly uneven throughout the book, but this is never enough of a problem to affect the enjoyment of reading such a thoroughly entertaining book.  I’ll definitely be reading more by Liz Jensen in the future.

My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen.  Published by Bloomsbury, 2006, pp. 311.  Originally published in 2006.

The novel is narrated by nonagenarian Jacob as he sits in his care home watching the circus set up from his window, sparking memories about his own time working for a travelling circus during the depression era.  While working as the show’s vet he quickly falls in love with Rosie, the circus elephant, and Marlena, the girl who rides her.  However, Marlena is married to short-tempered, brutal August who also happens to be Jacob’s boss.  In spite of the obvious dangers, Jacob cannot forget his feelings for Marlena, and soon August’s cruel treatment of both her and Rosie proves too much for Jacob to bear.

Water for Elephants may not be the finest piece of writing that I’ve encountered this year, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a highly enjoyable book.  It’s the sort of novel which prompts the reader to devour it with gusto, racing through the pages, carried along by the rapidly moving plot.  I think it’s very telling that, even though this book has over 400 pages in the edition that I read, I polished the whole thing off in less than a day.  I was totally absorbed in Jacob’s life in the circus and the dilemmas and hardships he faces.  This book is all about the plot and that story is exciting and great fun to read.

Far from running away to the circus being an idealised dream, Gruen presents life on a depression era circus train as a gruelling, dirty, unhygienic experience.  The animals are either half-starved or living on rotten meat; the only time the lions get anything fresh is when one of the horses dies and is fed to the hungry creatures.  I’ve read quite a few reviews of Water for Elephants which object to the book because of the animal cruelty it depicts, but I thought that this approach, so different from what I was expecting in a book set in the glittering world of the circus, made the story far more interesting and realistic to me.

On the negative side, this is yet another book which is written in the present tense for no apparent reason, something which I find incredibly off-putting unless it is very skillfully executed.  I don’t think it was in Water for Elephants.  Particularly after reading Human Croquet recently and admiring the way in which tenses were employed there, it made little sense to me that both the sections set in the nursing home in the present day and the parts set in the circus in the past were written in the present tense.  In fact, I didn’t think that the frame narrative of the older Jacob looking back on his younger days added anything to the book really.  Although the speed at which I inhaled the story prevented me from being too distracted by it, nonetheless I would have much preferred it if it had been written in the perfect tense.

In spite of my niggles about the writing style, this book is not one to read for the style but for the excellent story.  It is a good fun read and was the perfect novel for distracting my mind from wedding planning for a bit.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.  Published by Hodder, 2007, pp. 429.  Originally published in 2006.

Josie Gray is a thirty-something woman living an idyllic life in the small Lancashire village of Neatslake.  She lives in her grandmother’s old cottage with her childhood sweetheart, Ben, growing and trading for as much of their produce as possible, and supplementing their income with Josie’s weird wedding cakes, her column for the cult magazine Skint Old Northern Woman and Ben’s occasional artwork sales.  When Josie’s oldest friend Libby returns to the village and decides to launch a wedding business in the nearby manor house, Josie becomes drawn in to help.  However, Ben is spending more and more time in London and soon it transpires that he has been less than honest with Josie, leaving her disillusioned.  She vows never to believe in love again, but photographer Noah Sephton seems determined to change her mind.

There are no surprises in this book but, to be honest, I didn’t expect any.  The plot was formulaic but then it usually is in this type of book, and that was exactly why I read it when I wasn’t feeling up to much mental exertion.  It’s a book which just requires to relax and enjoy being entertained.  Because entertaining it is, for all I knew what would hapen before I opened the book.  Ashley may follow a preordained plot, but the setting in which she chooses to place it is rather lovely.  I enjoyed reading about Josie’s homely life in the country with her chickens, her bartering and her gardening.  Her kitchen activities, making jams and wines and various cakes and biscuits are particularly appealing and the recipes at the back of the book make this aspect of the novel seem particularly real and important, enabling the reader to follow suit if they so choose.  Baking is something that I love doing, given half a chance, so I was able to relate to that and it engaged my interest.

The society surrounding Josie is also rather sweet and pleasant to read about.  The secondary characters all have individual personalities, from the three eccentric Grace sisters who knit, crochet and embroider for all they’re worth to womanising soap star Rob to Josie’s loyal uncle Harry who takes great delight in outliving his friends.  Although none of them are particularly realistic, they add colour and interest to the story.

If Josie herself were any more dense she would have her own gravitational pull.  Even if this hadn’t been the sort of novel in which it is a truth universally acknowledged that the seemingly perfect boyfriend with whom the heroine begins the book will turn out to be an utter bastard by the halfway mark, I could have guessed that Ben was having an affair long before Josie does.  In fact, she never does manage to guess, despite a number of hints to that effect which are as subtle as being hit with a brick, and eventually has to be told.  Later on in the novel she proves equally dim when new romantic opportunities present themselves.  Had she not been such a likeable character for other reasons she would have been very annoying, but as it stands she is saved by her sweetness and by the charm and wit she displays in the excerpts from her magazine column which begin each chapter.

I’m not exactly sure what Ashley was trying to add by introducing a subplot of potential incest.  It doesn’t add tension because this is clearly the sort of pastel covered book in which everything works out for the best and no one gets hurt (except ex-boyfriends, who get what they deserve, naturally), it isn’t treated sensitively and seems to be a sort of throwaway plot device which is resolved so quickly and effortlessly that it seems pretty pointless.  In fact, I found it rather distasteful and an incongruously serious subject for such a fluffy novel.

Incest aside, I rather enjoyed the distraction from dental pain provided by this light, fun, quick read.  It’s a good, solid example of the genre and a pleasant way to spend a lazy afternoon when you don’t want to think too much.

Wedding Tiers by Trisha Ashley.  Published by Avon, 2009,pp. 414.  First edition.

Title:

Author: Julie and John Hope.  Illustrated by Sue Hellard

Published: Bantam, 2000, pp. 32.  First edition

Genre: Humour poetry

Blurb: This is a collection of limericks featuring cats and their antics, beautifully illustrated by Sue Hellard. You can learn your cat’s views on life—from why they lust hungrily after your pet canary to the art of turning your home into complete shambles.  (Goodreads.com)

When, where and why: This was another stocking present some years ago.  I’ve dipped into it before but never read it properly, so it counts as book 36/50 for my Books Off the Shelf Challenge.

What I thought: Christmas Crackers for Cats is an entertaining collection of limericks, with one longer poem in the style of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales.  It is once again filled with the lovely comic illustrations of Sue Hellard which help to augment the humour, and is an amusing swift read.  Despite the title, the contents are not festive at all, so it could be read and enjoyed at any time of year.  I think that this was my favourite limerick:

A raunchy old tomcat called Bertie

Had a mind that was ever so dirty

Now his goolies have gone

He’s just one peeping Tom

So all he can do is get flirty.

This is of course accompanied by a picture of a lascivious looking cat enthusiastically assaulting a cushion.  I wish I could share some of these illustrations, but sadly I lack both camera and scanner (I’ll have to see what I can do about this in the new year).

However, unlike Christmas Carols for Cats, this book suffers a bit from being read cover to cover as the limericks, while entertaining, start to sound a little repetitive after the fifth one.  I would still recommend this book, but it’s definitely one to dip into rather than read straight through in one sitting.

Where this book goes: I’m putting this one back on the shelf next to Christmas Carols for Cats for whenever I feel like reading an amusing limerick.

Tea talk: I read this book while enjoying the same large pot of English Afternoon Tea.

Author: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Published: Slightly Foxed, 2005, pp. 31.  First edition

Genre: Short story

Blurb: Speaking via its ghost-writer, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, the Arabic manuscript of Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi tells its own true, if admittedly incredible, story. Set in medieval Cairo and Aleppo, seventeenth-century Oxford and 1960s London, it is a tale of cannibalism, a curse, and of an authorial voice from beyond the grave. Ghost Writer not only redefines the meaning of a talking book; it may even make us listen to our libraries.

When, where and why: Slightly Foxed is a book shop on Gloucester Road that I used to walk past every time I went to visit the Old English Thorn when he lived in halls at university but somehow never went in, probably because I found any shop in South Kensington which wasn’t Tesco slightly intimidating, worrying that I would be summarily shooed out of them for being not nearly moneyed enough.  I came across the place again by chance when browsing book websites and noticed that they publish a quarterly magazine and a range of gorgeous looking books.  Never one to let such a discovery go uninvestigated, I ordered this book from their website as it looked to be a good starting point.

What I thought: The idea of reading a book from the point of view of a manuscript will either strike you as unutterably dull or absolutely fascinating.  Given that I’ve had the opportunity to study, poke and prod old manuscripts I was of the latter group even before I read this little gem of a book, but Tim Mackintosh-Smith carries it off so well than I’m sure Ghost Writer could convert even people of the former opinion.  This book is quirky, engaging, amusing and dry and illustrates exactly how a short story should be written, in my opinion.

I think this book holds a special appeal for me because I spent some time a few years ago poring over medieval manuscripts, deciphering the crabbed handwriting, peering at the parchment and examining the coloured inks.  Consequently, I love the idea that a manuscript could be just as critical of itself as of the people who read it, cataloging the flaws and foibles of both with equal insight, and, even though Ghost Writer has a mere 31 pages, there were numerous paragraphs that made me chuckle with recognition or at the new perspective they provide:

I’m not the final copy; that was made for the Caliph, al-Nasir, in Abd al-Latif’s native Baghdad.  I’ve got some marginal afterthoughts, and the odd blob where the nib of the reed snagged on a backward loop; even a wrong verb ending, forced messily into agreement.  But the ink flowed freely through the long fasting afternoons — it was Ramadan, the best month for writers: no cigarette-breaks or coffee-stops — on and on for 140 pages, thirteen lines a page.  Not perhaps a pretty hand; but a handsome one, and so instantly legible that you’d never think it was written 800 years ago, and certainly not by a medic.  (p. 5)

As you can see, the manuscript narrating the story has a very distinctive voice and is highly opinionated.  I enjoyed its somewhat disdainful reference to printed works as ‘clones’ (p. 15) and the way that its statement that it will last ‘until the end of time or the Bodleian Library’ (p. 9) implies that the library will endure the longest.  Mackintosh-Smith also plays cleverly with words in this story, turning perfectly commonplace terms that are used without thought into startling and funny ideas by unpacking their meanings:

If I tell you that for us manuscripts the pleasures associated with the physical act of reporduction are not unakin to those felt by you humans in your own version of this activity, and if I remind you that close to 500 years had passed since my last enjoyment of them, you will have some idea of the thrill I experienced.  (pp. 17-18)

All in all, I found this to be an enjoyable, highly original story.  Not only is the content excellent, the book itself is a lovely object, easy to hold and pleasant to read.  I’m definitely going to be buying future editions of The Christmas Fox if this offering is any indication of the quality on offer.

Tea talk: The manuscript says of the work of one of his owners that, ‘This, his magnum opus, was promptly panned by the critics.  The good doctor boiled his tea-kettle with the greatest part of the impression’ (p. 21).  While I would never dream of burning books, even for the sake of tea, I did feel the need for some tea to accompany this little book, and used it as an opportunity to finish off my Assam.  It took me till the end of the packet to work out how best to brew it (show the tea leaves to the water very briefly and then take them away before they get too friendly) but now I’ve got it just right I’ll have to get some more as it’s just delicious and mellow.

Title:

Author: Harry Bingham

Published: Harper, 2006, pp. 442.  Originally published 2006

Blurb: Misha is an aristocratic young officer in the army when the Russian revolution sweeps away all his certainties.  Tonya is a nurse from an impoverished family in St Petersburg.  They should have been bitter enemies; and yet they fall passionately in love.  It cannot last and, as the political situation grows ever worse, Misha is forced to flee the country.

Thirty years later, Misha has survived the war and seeks to rebuild his life in the destroyed city of Berlin.  Then, one snowy winter’s day, he glimpses a woman who resembles Tonya.  Can this be his lost love?  Drawn into a dangerous double game of espionage and betrayal, the two lovers struggle to find each other, as the divide deepens between East and West…

When, where and why: I have no idea when or why I bought this, but I’ve definitely had it for long enough to it to become book 31/50 for my (rather optimistic, given the date) Books Off the Shelf Challenge.  I decided to read it as one of the categories in the challenge in which I’m taking part on Goodreads was to read two books by different authors which shared a common word in the title.  After the success of The French Lieutenant’s Woman I decided that ‘lieutenant’ was my word and so this book came out of hibernation.

What I thought: Initially I found this book quite disappointing.  After reading Anna Karenina earlier this year I was looking forward to a return to Russia in this book, but Harry Bingham doesn’t do the landscape justice and the vocabulary and description never quite got there: it didn’t feellike Russia.  The story also starts off with a string of unbelieveable events, which doesn’t help matters: Misha, a former aristocrat, instantly trusts and takes into his confidence Tonya, a member of the working class, whose cousin is an important figure locally in the revolution and has just been round to seize more of his family’s belongings.  Sounds completely realistic to me.  Naturally, Misha and Tonya fall in love, but this is portrayed without any preamble or sense of development, so I wasn’t invested in their relationship in any way because it came out of the blue.

Fortunately, this section of the story is quite short and the narrative picks up a great deal once it relocates from revolutionary Russia to post-war Berlin.  I’ve read a lot of historical fiction books surrounding the Second World War but I think this is the first one which deals with the aftermath of the conflict rather than the fighting itself, so it was very interesting from that perspective.  This second part of the novel follows the separate lives of Misha and Tonya as they try to cope in the ruins of a city governed by four different armies (although only three, the British, the Americans and the Russians, are of any relevance to the book), never giving up hope of finding one another again.

I enjoyed the fact that, after such a swift romance in the initial stage of the novel, Harry Bingham doesn’t give Misha and Tonya an easy ride after this.  There are continuous near-misses as the two are almost reunited again only to be foiled by circumstance, and this allowed me to develop the interest in seeing their relationship succeed which was absent from the portion set in Russia.  I also liked Bingham’s decision to give both Misha and Tonya lives outside of their love for one another: I find novels where the characters fall in love instantly, are separated after a few months and then spend the rest of their lives waiting for one another deeply unrealistic, so I was happy that the book didn’t go down this route.  Instead, Misha and Tonya both marry and have families and, although these are naturally conveniently out of the way by the time the two lovers try to find one another again, I appreciated this nod to realism.

Sadly, I thought that this novel went full-circle: it had a bad beginning, a good middle and reverted to a bad ending.  I found the way that Bingham provided a brief historical outline of the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of separation between East and West Germany in the complete absence of any plot to be lazy.  It would have been netter if the lapsed time had been implied by a dated chapter heading, as in other places in the novel, or fleshed out so that these events seemed relevant to the characters.  Left as it was I thought it was a bit sloppy really.  It’s a shame this book was so let down by its introduction and conclusion.

Where this book goes: This one is staying put for now, but it’s a marked man now.  I have a collection of books tagged that I wouldn’t mind losing if I need to get rid of some prior to moving house, and The Lieutenant’s Lover is headed there.

Tea talk: In this book, Tonya’s cousin remarks to her: “The greatest empires of the world have always been tea-drinking.  The Chinese.  The Mughals.  The British, of course.  Now it’s our turn.  The rise of the Russian tea-drinking empire”.  What else could I drink in honour of the Russian tea-drinking empire but Russian Caravan?

Title:

Author: Patricia Warren

Published: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006, pp. 248.  Originally published 2003.

Genre: Memoir

Blurb: Since she founded the Farmers’ and Country Bureau from her farmhouse in the Peak District more than twenty years ago, Patricia has been helping love to blossom the length and breadth of rural England.  She has hundreds of marriages to her dredit and numerous babies including one set of quads.

A born matchmaker whose warmth, patience and humour have literally changed the lives of thousands of people, here she brings us the real life stories of love and romance she has helped to create.  Tales from the Country Matchmaker is pure delight and a heartening reminder that there really can be a happy ever after.

When, where and why: I picked this book up from a local charity shop to add to my collection of wedding reading.

What I thought: Tales from the Country Matchmaker was a sweet book, full of stories of pleasant people, isolated by character or circumstance, being brought together for a happier future.  Patricia Warren, the eponymous matchmaker, was obviously a lovely woman who had a wealth of interesting anecdotes to relate, but unfortunately I didn’t think that the book was very well organised, so it quickly began to feel repetitive and muddled, although undoubtedly earnest, gentle and heartwarming.

One of Patricia’s clients remarked:

The trouble is, we’re all fed a diet of knights in shining armour whereas what I had in reality was this decent, good-looking, nice man who I was terribly comfortable with, but wasn’t fireworks and parties every night and travelling round the world.  Maybe the knight in shining armour was around the next corner.  But the guy who produces the fireworks is not the guy you want to spend your life with.  The comfortable alternative sometimes puts people off because lots of us want to live on the edge.  What I’ve learnt now is that companionship, trust and laughter are so important, and it can seem fuddy duddy — but it’s not, it’s real.  And we do have our firework moments. (p. 118)

This statement encapsulates the tone of the book for me.  It was steady, warm, quiet and sweet, at times touching and at others amusing, but sadly without any fireworks to provide a change of pace and mood.  I liked this book and thought that it had potential, but I wish that it had been written by someone else who could perhaps have brought the stories to life a bit more and made them seem more individual and exciting.

Where this book goes: This is definitely a BookMooch book.  It was an enjoyable quick read but it’s not one I’ll ever read again.

Tea talk: What else could I possibly drink while reading about such traditional country lives than a good, honest pot of strong English Breakfast Tea?