Holiday Reading (2)

Summer in Malta is HOT and when on the beach I spent a lot of time under a large umbrella reading as the heat was almost too much, even for a sun worshipper such as myself.  I had packed some reading matter in my suitcase, but was not allowed to take anything through security at the airport, except the bare essentials so made my way to Books etc as soon as I was in the departure lounge.  The shops there were doing great business, nice to know that the BAA were getting something out of all this kerfuffle.  It pays to keep people on the ground and waiting for planes.  W H Smith was practically cleaned out of magazines and papers.

So I bought a book to take on the plane and the one I picked up was Gone with the Windsors by Laurie Graham.  I had tried a couple of her books before but could not get on with them, but this one caught my imagination straight away as it is set in the time of the Abdication Crisis and purports to be a diary of a great friend of Wallis Simpson.  I loved it.  Very very witty with amusing one liners and pungent comments by the diarist, Maybell, a wealthy widow who Wallis was very happy to milk for cash.   I noticed after looking for the book on Amazon that the paperback edition here in the UK has one of those ubiquitous pink 'chick litty' covers which immediately downgrades its status - in my eyes at least, but I daresay helps sales (the original US publication had a much more 'serious' book jacket).  Ignore the cover, what was inside was a delight.

I then finished The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood.  The Robber Bride of the title, Xenia, is one of the most unremittingly evil people you could hope to meet who proceeds to wreck the lives of three of her friends by stealing their husbands and lovers and creates havoc.  Then she is killed and they heave a sigh of relief.  BUT, is she dead...?  Brilliant and as ever leaves a lot of unanswered questions at the end.  Daughter No 1 snaffled it when I had finished and is now half way through.

I then read what can only be described as a 'beach read'.  This was a book called Much Ado about You by somebody called Eloisa James who I am assured is an American academic who adores Georgette Heyer.  The paperback cover is deliberately styled to look like the new re-issues of GH and is designed to catch the eye of a Georgette Heyer addict. As I have always adored Miss Heyer, I fell for it, but I have never read such an appallingly badly written book in all my life (come back Dan Brown all is forgiven...).  When I read books like this, I sometimes wonder who reads the manuscripts and who decides what it is worthy of publication.  If this had come across my desk I would have binned it.  The last third of the book was nothing more than soft porn.

The author is writing four of these tomes (heaven help us) about each of the four sisters, the heroine of this one, Tess, being the first.  Eloisa James wrote a chatty little post script saying how these books were inspired by L M Alcott's four March sisters and she views them as Little Women meets Sex in the City.  I do not think I need say any more.

It was with some relief that I turned to Harriet Martineau's Deerbrook which I had not read for some time.  I had thought, mistakenly, that it resembled Middlemarch but I was wrong.  Think Cranford and Mansfield Park instead.  I am loving it all over again and also am loving the fact that my copy is the now out of print Virago version with its lovely 'green' cover and a portrait of two Victorian sisters on the front.  It is very worn and battered now and feels good to the touch.