Such a lot of reviews awaiting my attention and I seem to be finding my time so constrained at the moment with so much to do, being a grandmother is a fearful and a wonderful thing but all encompassing and tiring, so I am glad to be having a quiet few days to catch up on daily routines and sundries. My apologies that my posting is not as regular as it normally is, I know I have readers who log on daily to see what I am up to. I also have to respond toi the many lovely comments left on my Post of a few weeks ago about blogging, stats etc and I am very keen to do this. Perhaps this weekend.
Anyway, have been having a crimefest as you know, but before I embarked on this mad binge read, I read two really interesting books. First up, The Bed I made by Lucie Whitehouse. This is the second novel by this author, I reviewed her first, The House at Midnight last year, here. I enjoyed that one, with slight reservations, but had none with this title which was written with more flow and ease, at least that is how it struck me.
Kate meets Richard, a powerful, fascinating sensual man. They embark on an affair and as the weeks and months go by she wonders why he will not commit to her and then discovers that he is married and has lied to her all throughout their relationship. She flees to an old coastguard's cottage on the Isle of wight and seeks refuge in this place where she came for childhood holidays and where she feels safe and is comforted. However, when she arrives it is winter and all is bleak and quiet, unlike her summer memories and shortly after she arrives a local woman goes missing in her boat and there are rumours of suicide.
Kate gradually becomes drawn into the community and begins to tentatively forge friendships and is slowly groping her way back to normality when she starts receiving calls and emails from Richard who is determined to track her down. There is a dark and vicious side to him which she discovered too late in the relationship and to her dismay she realises that he is relentless in his pursuit and nothing will stand in his way.
The Bed I Made has a slow start and then gradually builds up the tension and, as the narrative unfolds, we learn more about Richard and begin to feel Kate's fears and terror. A real page turner and I found I was unable to put it down as events build up to a tense and exciting denouement.
Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley. My thanks for this fascinating book go to Louise at Chatto and Windus who, knowing I am an opera lover, thought I might be intrigued by the premise of this title. What happens after the death of Madame Butterfly and what happens to Lieutenant Pinkerton and their son who he takes back to America with his new wife? Pleased to find out that Pinkerton is not quite such an out and out bounder and cad as he is in the Puccini opera, not that that is saying much.
The little half Japanese child becomes Joey and, on the surface, turns into an all American boy but he never really feels at home in the US, feeling the tug of his ancestry and the memories of his mother. The Pinkertons are successful and comfortably off and Joey has all he could need, but then the recession comes and the family find themselves on the breadline. Life gets worse when Pinkerton joins a protest march to Washington and is accidentally killed when the national guard are sent out by the President to get rid of the protesters.
"Once they had been hailed as heroes. Now they saw from the newspapers that the President had given them new labels 'Hoover's calling us bums, pacifists, radicals. He's locked the White House gates. Some of the guys have moved into downtown blocks about to be demolished......Nancy read aloud the scrappy pages that arrived from Washington. Later in bed, Joey studied the scrawl, read and reread the words and began to think about his father in a new way"
Joey is a solitary boy and a solitary young man who retains an aloofness from his classmates and friends and this stands him in good stead after Pearl Harbour, when a neighbour informs on him and he finds himself herded into a camp as an a alien, despite the fact the has lived in American all his life and is a US citizen. He is bitter and angry and more so when he finds that though he is still regarded as an such, the army are happy to negotiate the release of able bodied young men from the internment camps if they will agree to fight for them in the army.
I am always wary of saying a book was a simply terrific read as it seems a vague generalisation, but Butterfly's Shadow is and I found myself totally engrossed in this story which has such depth and power. Lee Langley has taken a daring and imaginative leap by using the death of Madame Butterfly as the starting point of this story and there are surprises aplenty awaiting the reader. Did Madame Butterfly commit suicide? What happened to her and her faithful servant and companion, Suzuki left behind? As Joey gradually learns more of the events of his childhood he decides to return to Japan to see if he can feel at home there and, perhaps, to seek his mother.
But before he arrives in Nagasaki with the hope that at last he can find an answer to all his many questions, the Enola Gay takes off with its deadly cargo and life is never the same again....
Much more to this marvellous book than I can convey, do read. You won't regret it and Lee Langley now goes on my list of further reading. I am so lucky on Random to have books sent to me like this. I wouldn't have picked this up or read it if it had not been sent to me and I am perennially grateful to all those publishers who give me books to review, my reading life is so much the richer for their generosity.
I am quietly compiling my list of Books of the Year 2010 and this is going on my list which is growing very quickly indeed as I have had a bumper year so far and we are only at the end of July!
