Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood is the second of the Ya-Yas series by Rebecca Wells. Set in two main locations, it tells of Sidalee Walker’s retreat to a remote cabin near Seattle to examine her past life and prospective marriage to Connor McGill, an examination that is facilitated and augmented by a scrap book of memorabilia her mother sends her from Louisiana, “Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood”, a book full of photos, letters, newspaper cuttings, tickets and tokens dealing with her mother’s dysfunctional childhood and adolescence, and Sidda’s own. Members of the Ya Ya sisterhood, her mother Viviane and friends Caro, Necie and Teensy, ultimately help Sidda find her way. From reading about the author’s own background, it appears that this novel is semi-autobiographical, as the authenticity from personal experience is apparent. While there are many heart-warming moments, there is also quite a bit of heartbreak, and it is quite slow-moving in places, making me wish she’d just get on with it. Siddalee and Vivi seem to be rather self-indulgent, allowing themselves the neuroses and existential crises that only rich people can afford. This novel touches very briefly and superficially on the subject of The Help. Certainly it did not grab me enough to want to read the companion volume, Little Altars Everywhere.

The Fourth Bear is the second of the Nursery Crime series by popular author Jasper Fforde. Things are not going too well for Detective Chief Inspector Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division: a prime NCD case (the escape from custody of the violent psychopath, The Gingerbreadman) has been allocated to another detective; his boss, Superintendent Briggs, doesn’t trust his judgement and has insisted on a psychiatric evaluation of his fitness to function as head of the NCD; and the press, in particular Josh Hatchett of The Toad, constantly trash him. Luckily he has the support of Detective Sergeant Mary Mary and PC Ashley (the blue Rambosian alien). And he needs it, because soon enough, he has been suspended from duty, then asked by John Hatchett to look into the disappearance of his sister Henrietta “Goldy” Hatchett, last seen by the Three Bears in the Anderson woods. And it seems his marriage to the wonderful Madeleine is in trouble. Once again, Fforde’s incredible imagination throws up a feast of ridiculous names: villages, psychiatrists, serial killers, street names for illicit substances, theme parks to name a few. With an abundance of wordplay, puns, plot devices and lame jokes that even the characters themselves comment on, Fforde somehow manages to connect unexplained explosions, porridge, missing scientists, cucumbers, anthropomorphic bears, the technical arm of a multinational corporation, a WWI theme park, a psychopathic biscuit, conspiracy theorists and nuclear fusion. Jack also manages to buy himself a new Austin Allegro Equipe with an unusually useful feature, as well as a less desirable one. And maracas: I had no idea! The definitive reference for it all is the 2004 edition of The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, without doubt an interesting read. This is probably Fforde’s best yet and will whet the reader’s appetite for The Last Great Tortoise Race.

The Mermaid Chair is the second novel by Sue Monk Kidd. Set on the South Carolina barrier island of Egret, it describes three intense months that change the life of 42-year-old Jessie Sullivan when she returns to her childhood home. Believing she is dealing with a psychiatric emergency with her mother, she finds herself confronted by doubts about her 20-year-old marriage to Hugh when she falls in love with a monk from the island’s monastery; simultaneously, her mother’s behaviour unearths the deeply buried events of her father’s death 33 years previous. The plot is well crafted, the prose is beautiful and the characters are interesting, some are really funny, but I found Jessie rather difficult to like: she struck me as rather selfish and self-indulgent, although perhaps some more detailed earlier description of her relationship with Hugh would have helped understand her actions. Kidd’s descriptions are wonderful, though, very evocative of the South Carolina coastal landscape, and she has obviously researched marine flora and fauna, especially sea birds, as well as tidal marshes, estuaries and creeks, Gullah culture, dementia, Inuit legends, mermaid fables and folklore of the saints. The twist at the end saved it for me. A memorable read.

Boom! is the first book by Mark Haddon and was initially published in 1992 under the title Gridzbi Spudvetch! This edition for 10 and over readers has been updated in 2009. Jim’s life is upside down: his father is out of work and spends his days on the couch watching TV or flying model planes; his mother is the hard-working breadwinner; his sister Becky has stopped washing her armpits and has a biker boyfriend Jim calls Craterface; and Jim is worried he will be expelled from school due to his less-than-stellar academic performance. After they eavesdrop at the teachers staffroom and hear Mr Kidd and Mrs Pearce talking a strange language, Jim’s friend Charlie is convinced that they are spies, robbers or aliens. Soon he and Jim are shadowing teachers, breaking into homes and finding more than they bargained for. Haddon’s updated version of his first book will delight younger readers with secret languages, alien teachers, travel to another planet, rides on stolen motorbikes, thought-controlled food machines, sentient spiders, explosions and quite a bit of biffo. A fun read.

Between The Lines is a young adult novel co-written by Jodi Picoult and her daughter, Samantha Van Leer. Essentially, it is the story of a young Prince who is stuck in a fairy tale and desperate to stop repeating the same script every time someone reads the book, and the teenage reader who loves the book, hears and understands his plea, and vows to help him (he is pretty hot, after all!). As usual with a Picoult book, there are multiple narratives, in this case, three: the fairy tale itself and the voices of Prince Oliver and of Delilah, and each narrative is printed in a different colour and font. The fairy tale itself is filled with all the classic essentials for such a tale: a King and Queen, a clever and loyal Prince, a faithful dog, a handsome steed, an evil villain bent on revenge, a wizard, mermaids, trolls, pirates, a dragon, a kidnapped Princess, a quest, word puzzles and some bizarre implements to help the Prince save his Princess. Along the way, the dialogue between Delilah and her mother, Oliver and her best friend, Jules, includes some astute observances about being a teenager, what love is, growing up and friendship. The aspect of the life that characters lead when the reader closes the book reminded me of Jasper Fforde’s marvelous Thursday Next series. I may not be a young adult, but I certainly enjoyed this novel.

Sarah Thornhill is the sequel to the award-winning The Secret River by Australian author, Kate Grenville. The story is narrated by Sarah, the youngest daughter of emancipist William Thornhill and starts some years after the events of The Secret River. Sarah is growing up in a fine house on the Hawkesbury River, in a family keeping secrets. Her step-mother, Meg, is a proud and hard woman who will never forget her husband has a taint, has worn the broad arrow. Her father is haunted by the guilt of past acts, and it seems she has a brother that no-one acknowledges. But the eldest son of the neighbouring Langlands family, a half-breed named Jack, makes life worthwhile. Their love will surely transcend any possible challenges. The story moves from the Hawkesbury to parts west and to New Zealand. Grenville’s characters are well developed and the dialogue is authentic and appropriate for the illiterate daughter of an ex-convict. As she slowly builds the story, Grenville touches on the hardness of pioneering life and the range of attitudes to the aborigines of people of the time and she illustrates the importance of keeping stories alive. There is joy, sorrow, heartache, betrayal and understanding, all contained in beautiful prose. I was brought to tears at the end. A wonderful, moving tale.

Criminal is the 7th in Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent series. The story shifts between the early seventies and the present day. The present day is 2 weeks after the events of the 5th book in the series, Fallen (the 6th book being the eShort, Snatched), while the flashback covers several months from mid-1974 to mid-1975 when Will’s boss in the GBI, Amanda Wagner, and Faith’s mother, Evelyn, were rookie cops together at the Atlanta PD. Readers who are eager for more of Will and Sara may be disappointed to find much of the action is with Amanda and Evelyn, but Slaughter manages to make this an engrossing read, all the same. Whilst Slaughter touches on issues of race and gender in mid-70’s Atlanta, the story also reveals much of Amanda and Evelyn’s early careers, and Will’s parentage. She develops these characters, gives the reader a bit of background to Will’s mercurial relationship with Amanda, and shows that even the seemingly hard Amanda has a caring side. Slaughter is an expert at creating atmosphere and building tension and can make the reader feel uncomfortable in just a few skilful paragraphs. These two stories, told in tandem, each have a heart-thumping climax. As always the plot is excellent and includes a few twists, the dialogue realistic and Slaughter gives the reader three strong female leads trying to do a good job under difficult circumstances. Slaughter’s depth of research into 70’s Atlanta is apparent in every sentence. Her main focus in writing this book, according to the Acknowledgements, was to tell a good story, and this she has expertly achieved. I always hesitate to start reading a new Karin Slaughter book because I know that once I do, I won’t be able to put it down and, even at 400 plus pages, the reading pleasure will be over that much sooner. Once again, Slaughter does not disappoint.

The Devil Wears Prada is Lauren Weisberger’s first book, and details the experiences of Brown graduate, Andrea Sachs in her first job as personal assistant to the high-profile, fabulously successful Miranda Priestly, editor of Runway magazine. The book is said to be based on Weisberger’s time at Vogue, working for Anna Wintour. This book is pretty funny and is probably quite an accurate picture of the fashion industry, especially the ostentation and the obscene waste of money. Literature, it isn’t; it is, basically, a litany of the progressively more outrageous demands made on her staff by the editor of a top fashion magazine and a tedious catalogue of brand names. The editor is painted as a cold-hearted, demanding, unreasonable monster; her staff are portrayed as anorexic image-obsessed minions without personality. This book confirms for me why I care nothing for the superficial world of fashion.

The Great Cake Mystery is a children’s story for readers under ten by Alexander McCall Smith. It is a prequel to his popular No 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels in that it describes Precious Ramotswe’s first case, solved when she was still at school. Whilst the mystery is a simple one, Precious doesn’t jump to conclusions, and when she thinks she has solved the case, she sets out to irrefutably prove it. This delightful story includes charming two-color woodcutlike pictures by Iain McIntosh that evoke the African setting, as well as a note from the author, a reader’s guide and even a recipe for Precious’s Sponge Cake Worth Stealing. This is a McCall Smith feel-good tale that young and not-so-young readers will appreciate.

The Big Over Easy is the first in the Nursery Crime series by Jasper Fforde and, while it was not published until 2005, it was actually written in 1994, well before his highly successful Thursday Next series. It is a reworking of his first written novel which was initially titled “Who Killed Humpty Dumpty”, and is set in a similar alternative universe to the Thursday Next novels; the main characters, DI Jack Spratt, DS Mary Mary, Dr. Gladys Singh and others appear in “The Well of Lost Plots”.

With each Jasper Fforde book, I look forward to the smorgasbord of hilarious, occasionally ludicrous names that Fforde’s rich imagination throws up: journalists Joshua Hatchett, Archibald Fatquack, Hector Sleaze and Clifford Sensible; detectives Inspector Moose, Hercule Porridge and Miss Maple from St Michael Mead; Giorgio Porgia, William Winkie, Tom Thomm (the flautist’s son), Incomprehensible Greene (landscaper), Seymour Weevil, DCI Bestbeloved, Mr & Mrs Sittkomm. Winsum & Loosum Pharmaceuticals, and Spongg footcare. Fforde also treats the reader to occasional gems like: “She opened the door…..letting out a stream of cats that ran around with such rapidity and randomness of motion that they assumed a liquid state of furry purringness.” I found this book thoroughly enjoyable and I look forward to the second in this series, The Fourth Bear.

The Secret River is the first in the Thornhill family series by Kate Grenville. It tells the story of William Thornhill and his wife Sarah (Sal) from their childhood together in London, through William’s career as a Waterman, his eventual transportation to New South Wales and the life his family made for themselves in the harsh landscape of 19th century Australia. Grenville’s thorough research is apparent in the level of detail about everyday life in the new colony, detail that gives the reader a good idea of how life was for the early settlers. Grenville’s beautiful prose captures well the characters’ hard life and their fleeting glimpses of happiness, as well as the timeless landscape of the Australian continent. The settlers’ ignorance of the indigenous population’s philosophy and lifestyle becomes clear as the story progresses and the white man’s attitude to the blacks is skilfully rendered with a violent climax. In order that he and his family survive, William Thornhill finds himself not only turning a blind eye to injustices, but eventually taking part in atrocities he never dreamed he would encounter. A moving and powerful read.

Black Swan Green is the 4th novel by David Mitchell. It describes a year in the life of Jason Taylor, an intense, thoughtful but stammering thirteen-year-old budding poet living in darkest Worcestershire. Set in 1982, this is a very realistic rendition of the anxieties and challenges faced by teenagers in the early eighties. Each chapter details the events of one or more days in the months of that year. Through the beautiful prose of his narration, we join Jason in boyish adventures and coming-of-age rituals (first cigarette, initiation rites, first kiss), and we learn of his ambitions (poetry, forestry) and his anxieties (stammering, the Falklands war, his parents’ relationship, girls). In that time of life when image is all important and peer pressure is strong, Jason tries to navigate a path that does not betray his values and ambitions but doesn’t damage his credibility of make him look “too gay”. Jason’s relationship with his family and his true friends is heartwarming and the poet hidden inside the young man is apparent in his thoughts and descriptions. Ultimately, he finds the courage he needs to face his demons. His naiveté, observations and occasional ignorance make for many laugh-out-loud moments, but the scariest thing about this novel was that I knew all the songs and artists mentioned from first appearance. This coming-of-age novel is at least as good as Jasper Jones. A dazzling read.

The Bluest Eye is the first novel by American author Toni Morrison. It is set in 1941 in the small town of Lorain, Ohio, and tells the story of an 11-year-old Negro girl, Pecola Breedlove, who becomes pregnant to her father Cholly. Pecola’s family and environment is such that she is certain she is ugly; so convinced of this is she, that she wishes for blue eyes, believing this is the only thing that will relieve her ugliness. Narrated in part by a 9-year-old neighbourhood girl, Claudia, the perspective of young girls in this situation is novel. Some chapters detail the history of Cholly and Mrs Breedlove, giving some clues as to how this crippled and crippling family evolved. This reissue of Morrison’s first novel includes a new Forward by the author wherein she explains what she was trying to achieve. Some of the prose is quite stunning: “Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved.” The prose may be beautiful, but as a Dutch-born Caucasian living in Australia with a limited experience of the Negro, I found it difficult to relate to this book.

“Smut: two unseemly stories” is, as the title suggests, an omnibus of two short stories by English author and actor, Alan Bennett. The first story is The Greening of Mrs Donaldson. Mrs Donaldson, recently widowed, finds herself a little short on cash and decides to take a student couple as lodgers. When they find themselves unable to pay the rent, they come to a novel arrangement with their landlady. Mrs Donaldson’s other source of income is working as a Simulated Patient in medical student training; she becomes so talented at this that the consequences are almost grave. Bennett provides the reader with plenty of laugh out loud moments; the dialogue is oftimes dryly witty and occasionally hilarious. Full of understated British humour.
The second story is The Shielding of Mrs Forbes. When Graham Forbes decides to marry Betty Greene, Muriel Forbes’s objections are manifold: name, age, looks, religion and something else she hasn’t mentioned. Edwards Forbes has no such objections, wondering only if his fastidious son has “done it” with Betty yet. As more of their private lives is revealed (and I found that somewhat reminiscent of Maupin’s Tales of the City), we learn that everyone is intent on shielding Mrs Forbes to safeguard her innocence. According to Alan Bennett, there is a lot more promiscuity in staid British households than you or I were ever aware. Very entertaining.
These two stories are at least as funny as his earlier work, The Uncommon Reader, if in a completely different vein. I really enjoyed them.

The Lake of Dreams is the long awaited second novel by the bestselling author of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Kim Edwards. It is 2006, and almost 10 years since Martin Jarrett was drowned in the Finger Lakes town of The Lake of Dreams. His daughter, Lucy, a hydrologist, is living in Japan with her engineer boyfriend, Yoshi, when she gets emails from family telling her of her mother, Evie’s wrist injury. Since her father’s death, she has been constantly on the move between countries, jobs and people, running from the responsibility she feels for the events of that night. When she travels back to The Lake of Dreams, she comes across relics from the past in the house of her childhood, clues to an unknown ancestor. As she searches further, she finds herself drawn to this distant relative, feeling a commonality with her. But what she eventually uncovers has the potential for explosive consequences for everyone in her family. In this beautifully told tale, Edwards touches of a myriad of subjects: glass art and stained glass in particular; genealogy and family history; the suffrage movement; the conservation of land and water, lakes and marshes; comets; women in the bible; dreams; locks, keys and lockcraft; emigrating. The story is absorbing, exciting in places and emotional: love, deception and betrayal, courage, sacrifice, fear, ambition, pride, envy, desire and regret all feature. I loved the tiny cameo that Edwards inserted: describing the cover of her first novel as being read by one of the characters. There were some wonderful passages and sentiments: “…..that evil is a force in the world, a force that seeks, and it finds its way into our lives through anger and loss, through sadness and betrayal, like mold on bread, like rot on an apple, it takes hold.” The message of acting out of love and not out of anger is powerfully conveyed through the narrative. A marvelous read.

Full Dark, No Stars is an omnibus of four dark tales of retribution by Stephen King.
In “1922”, dedicated Nebraska farmer, Wilf James, murders his wife, Arlette, when she threatens to sell her portion of the family farm to buy a dress shop in Omaha. He involves his 14-year-old son, and, though they get away with murder, Arlette never really seems to leave and life goes downhill from that moment on. 4/5
In “Big Driver”, mystery novelist Tessa Jean takes a shortcut home from a book-club engagement with almost fatal consequences. Although frightened of her attacker, Tess refuses to let things lie: the New Tess uses the Old Tess’s skills as a crime-writer to exact revenge. This tale has a very strong female lead character: I really enjoyed her inner monologue and I found it “edge of the seat” reading. 5/5
In “Fair Extension”, cancer-ridden Dave Streeter makes a deal with a man selling all sorts of extensions, George Elvid (that’s right, rearrange the letters) for a life extension. His cancer disappears, but a price has to be paid: it turns out that Elvid wants more than mere money. A reflection on the “fairness” of life. 4/5
In “A Good Marriage” , Darcy Anderson accidentally stumbles on something that has her questioning just how well she really knows her husband of twenty years. Her neat, clean, organised husband, the father of her children, appears to have a dark secret, a terrifying pastime she has never suspected, something that will irrevocably change her life and that of her children if it becomes known. Another strong female character. 5/5
Plot, characters and their interaction are all things in which King is the expert. His characters are ordinary people in extraordinary situations and King explores how they act and react. His natural dialogue has the voices speaking in the reader’s head. Black humour ensures plenty of laughs. Horror is another thing that King excels at, and the horrors in these tales include rats, rape, murder, decaying corpses, disease, torture and madness. Scary too, is how people will justify their actions. In each story, the characters feel a change come over them, as if a stranger inside them has taken over. For Wilf it is the Conniving Man; for Tess, the New Tess; for Dave it is someone inside him who has held a grudge since grammar school; and for Darcy it is the Dark Wife within, for Bob, the ghost of his childhood friend, BD. King skilfully builds the tension so that the stories are real page-turners. These four stories prove, once again, that King is the master of the long dark tale.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is the 2nd novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. The main story is narrated by nine-year-old Oskar Schell whose father, Thomas, died on 9/11. Some years after his Thomas’s death, Oskar finds a key in his father’s closet. His determination to find the lock that the key opens is fuelled by his desire to find out exactly how his father died. One small clue with the key leads him to touch the lives of many people and the idea is the six degrees of separation is brought to mind. Oskar is clever, funny, aware, quirky, somewhat precocious, earnest, thoughtful and very resourceful. As he tries to beat his grief-related insomnia, Oskar invents amazing things in his mind, like a birdseed shirt so birds will save the wearer falling from a great height (like the WTC). Interspersed with Oskar’s narration are replies from famous people to letters Oskar writes them, photographs Oskar takes with the camera that belonged to the grandfather who left 40 years before he was born, and pictures he downloads from the internet. Adding to the intrigue are the thoughts that Oskar’s paternal grandmother sets down in letters to him about her life and unsent letters from the long absent grandfather to his now-dead son. This novel examines how people react to tragedy in their lives, what they do to cope, and what they do to protect those they love from facts they believe will harm them. The ultimate message seems to be to live life as if each moment is your last, and tell the people you love that that you love them. This novel made me laugh out loud and it made me cry. I loved the characters and the private codes they used. A moving and brilliant read.

from an uncorrected proof
Albert of Adelaide is the first novel by Howard L. Anderson. Albert is a platypus who, sick of his imprisonment there, has escaped from the zoo at Adelaide, and has taken the train to Tennant Creek in search of the “old Australia”, a land of liberty, promise and peace that the other animals in the zoo kept whispering about. Albert is hoping to find a world like that of his childhood in the muddy banks of the river Murray, or at least, something that’s better than Adelaide: what he finds is a very long way from those expectations. Albert seems innocent and a bit naïve, but he turns out to be not entirely helpless, especially when someone makes him angry. Whilst he chances upon some generous friends, Albert also encounters ignorance and prejudice (he’s not a marsupial!), and soon finds he is a platypus with a price on his head, wanted for arson and cheating at two-up. Anderson gives the reader a rich cast of characters: an insane possum, a wallaby with megalomaniacal tendencies, a pair of alcoholic bandicoots, an ex-champion wrestling Tasmanian Devil, a singing pyromaniac wombat, marsupials playing two-up, one kangaroo working as a bartender and another as (fittingly) a bouncer, a surprising snake, several dingoes with deceptive qualities and a gun-happy foreigner in red long-johns with a black eye mask. And it seems they are all armed: pistols, rifles, an Enfield carbine, knives, rockets, a cannon, shotguns, muskets, and swords all feature. Anderson’s very original plot includes fires, highway robbery, bribery, betrayal, ambush and more than one battle. He gives his characters some wise words that will have the reader thinking about loyalty, mateship, justifying one’s actions and just how far one would go for a friend. I loved Albert’s thoughts on being lost. I was interested to see how Anderson, a resident of New Mexico, USA, would acquit himself with a story filled with Australian native animals: I was very impressed with the result. I laughed a lot, I cried, and I heaved a sigh of satisfaction at the end of the book (although I would love to read more of Albert’s adventures). A captivating tale.

Blue Latitudes is the 4th book by Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist and writer, Tony Horwitz. It has been described as part-travelogue, part-history and in it, Horwitz follows, to some extent, the three Pacific voyages of British explorer, navigator and cartographer, James Cook. Horwitz compares points of interest from Cook’s journals with their current day state and comments on contrasts and similarities. Observations from Cook’s diary of the peoples and lands he discovered, which might have made for dry reading, are made more interesting when related to Horwitz’s own present-day experiences in those places. Horwitz admits that it is difficult for him to faithfully follow Cook’s travels when he is not doing so in a wooden ship sailing to inaccessible, inhospitable and antisocial places like Antarctica, which he expediently omits. Horwitz starts his experience with a short stint on HMS Bark Endeavour, to give him a taste of a sailor’s life in the 18th century. He then travels on, by more modern means, to Tahiti and Bora Bora, New Zealand, Australia, Niue and Tonga, Yorkshire and London, Alaska and, finally, to the scene of Cook’s death at Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaii. His companion is cynical, drinking, swearing, Aussie (ex-Yorkshire) Roger, whose wry reflections add plenty of humour. Horwitz comments on the changes wrought to peoples first discovered by Cook, because of that discovery, and the impossibility of Cook’s missions: terra australis and the North West Passage. If the eyes begin to glaze over in the Tonga chapter, the mention of Cook’s descendants soon remedies this. Amid the dearth of authentic Cook relics in Yorkshire, Horwitz finds a clue to Cook’s character in an unlikely place. It was interesting to learn of the derivation from Polynesian of certain words and expressions now in common usage in the English language, among them tattoo and taboo. Bougainvillea and kangaroo also had surprising origins. An interesting and informative read.

The Sense of an Ending is the 11th novel by Julian Barnes. In his sixties, retired, Tony Webster sees his life as pretty ordinary: career, marriage, amicable divorce, one child, two grandchildren. So the letter from a lawyer, informing him of an unexpected bequest of money and some documents, is surprising and intriguing. A blast from the past, it has him thinking back to high school friends, Adrian Finn in particular, and his first girlfriend at college, Veronica Ford. As Tony examines his memories of 40 years ago, present day events have him wondering just how true his memories are, and how justified his actions really were. Quotes from his sixth form History class come to mind: “Is history the lies of the victors? Or the self-delusions of the defeated?” Tony decides it’s the memories of the survivors, who are neither victorious nor defeated. Barnes has given the reader a clever plot and realistic characters. I found the suicide philosophy (life is an unsolicited gift you can refuse to accept) thought-provoking and the twist at the end left me gasping. I found it very reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s writing. This is a short but very powerful read.