Professional Reviews

Follow the link to find hundreds of reviews.

http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/

Recently I found there a review of

Canada by Richard Ford

a most unusual story told through the eyes of a boy of school age who realises along with his slightly older sister that their parents have committed an astonishing crime. What happens to the boy as he grows to manhood in a remote part of Canada where he is taken to be looked after when his parents are ...........
Eight out of ten!

Finding this review reminded me of an earlier book by Richard Ford, The Sportswriter - the setting is American sport. But the intensity of the story makes the type or location of the sport irrelevant. It's a great read. Nine out of ten. And I intend to read 'Independence Day' when I get hold of a copy.

Crusader's Tomb by A J Cronin c. 1956 New English Library

I knew the story was not about medieval Crusaders from the illustration on the front cover. I also knew that I wanted very much to read the book when it was handed to me by a friend. The name of the author stirred a memory of enjoying a book by Cronin a very long time ago.

The story starts in a rectory in Sussex in the early years of the 20th century. The main character is a vicar's son with an Oxford education who fights family expectations of him remaining in the family rectory and continuing his father's work.

The hero Stephen Desmond travels in France and Spain and lives in Paris and London after he leaves home  on the Sussex Weald. When the 1st World War begins he refuses to return to England to join the army. By now fixed on enduring a life as an unacknowledged painter, he becomes in thrall to a circus girl and seeks her company by joining the company and doing instant portraits. Eventually returning to Sussex after the war is over, he moves on to London after painful public shame.

English life has changed for the worse since the war, reliable servants are no longer easily found - so says his sister a plain spinster resigned to looking after their father for the rest of her life.

Stephen has by now toughened himself to a life of poverty, and of painting for its own sake. Luckily, in Stepney he finds a life in painting the river Thames, boats and boatmen, in all weathers. Will he find a greater fulfillment, or does he even want one?

It sounds a very downbeat story but it is highly enjoyable. Open the book and enter a vanished Europe.

The Crimson Rooms by Katherine MacMahon

First of all this is a great story. The plot keeps you guessing until the very end. It opens just after the end of the 1st World War, is set in north London, and visits Middlesex and Buckinghamshire - country areas newly being enjoyed by working people for the cost of a railway ticket. There is quite a bit of bus travel too - in London.

The writer shows what the professional life of a female lawyer/ solicitor must have been like in this narrow-minded profession at the time: dominated by the patronising male lawyers and their archaic
This may not strike you as a promising source of interest but with the other layers of life revealed by the writer it provides a dramatic background.

Strong characters conflict in this period of repressed sexual and social habits. The senseless loss of  life in the war (1914-18) of the young men of a generation and the effect on the lives of those who survived and on the lives of the women left needing to be loved is another element of the background.

Under these layers what emerges is a great detective story, and a great love story, albeit short. That makes three times I have used the word 'great' about it - so draw your own conclusions. ( 9/10)

Blog of Katherine MacMahon ( http://katharinemcmahon.blogspot.com/)

John Masters and his books

Have you heard of the film Bhowani Junction, made in 1956, starring Ava Gardner? The story was from a book by John Masters. There is a review of a biography of Masters by John Clay referred to on this blog http://www.bookride.com/search/label/biography. (Look for a piece dated June, 2007)

Masters' books were popular in the 1950s and 1960s which was when I read several of them. He wrote a series of 7 books dealing with one family through the period of the British rule in India:

Coromandel; The Deceivers; Nightrunners of Bengal; The Lotus and the Wind; Far,far the Mountain Peak; Bhowani Junction; To the Coral Strand

- a set of interesting titles. I still remember with dread the Thuggees who preyed on travellers in India, described in the second book. It is a strong warning against accepting help from seemingly sympathetic people when you are in unfamiliar areas.

In 1984-5 there was an 18-part serial based on this writer's stories on Radio 4.

For a full list of his books, and details of his life ....read 

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge, c. 2008, pub Penguin Books

Desmond Bates, a university teacher of Linguistics (Linguistics is about describing languages rather than learning them) retires early because of deafness. The story is mainly about his relationships with three people. First, with his wife who with a female friend developed an interior design business. Secondly, with his father living alone in the former family home and getting increasingly frail and cantankerous. Thirdly with an American post-graduate female student who gets in touch with him for help with her thesis on the structure of notes left by people who committed suicide.

These characters provide the main background for plausible situations in which his deafness leads him into uncertainty and inevitable comedy. Alex, the American woman provides some sexual excitement and threatens a quiet life. In his relationship with his father he is compassionate in dealing with a spiky oldie, including the funeral. On a visit to Poland during a British Council sponsored lecture tour Bates visits Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, the latter the extermination site. Compared to the horrors that took place there, the threats and difficulties of life with deafness must seem easy to endure. Perhaps that was why the author included the visit in his story.