April in review

Another month in the year is over already, and I haven’t managed to review as much as I had hoped – again! Never mind, I have set aside this afternoon to catching up a little, so I shall be tackling those unread blog posts of everyone I follow later. 

Eight books were read during April – six real books, two kindle reads – I visited Japan twice and read two of my book group’s choices. 

I started the month reading Manifesto (2021) by Bernardine Evaristo, a brilliantly honest memoir on never giving up. In 2019 Bernardine Evaristo became the first black woman to win the Booker Prize, her journey to get there had been a long one, and this is the story of those years. 

The English Air (1940) by D E Stevenson was a delightful read for the 1940 club – a novel which surprised me in some ways (pleasantly). The inclusion of letters between DES and her publisher in this edition, certainly make for interesting reading. The English Air is a novel with a lot going on, and DES balances those different themes perfectly, giving us humour, romance, and tension in wartime Europe. 

My second read for the 1940 club was The Stone of Chastity (1940) by Margery Sharp, unfortunately I didn’t get around to writing about it. It’s a very funny, slightly ridiculous perhaps but a really fun read. When a professor hell bent on some scientific research into an ancient legend, lands in the sleepy village of Gillenham – he has no idea the trouble he is about to unleash. 

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988) by Hilary Mantel was my book group’s April read, and it had a mixed reaction from the group. I really enjoyed it.  A novel about expat life in Saudi Arabia, Frances and her husband arrive on Ghazzah Street and must adapt to a very different life. Frances then becomes convinced there is something odd about the empty flat upstairs.  

A Single Rose (2022) by Muriel Barbary translated from the French by Alison Anderson. This was a beautiful little novel – one I had been looking forward to. This is the story of a woman’s journey to get to know her deceased father. Rose is forty, and grew up in France with her mother and grandmother, she never knew her Japanese father. Having received a call from her father’s lawyer, following his death, she travels to Kyoto for the reading of his will. She is greeted by Paul, his assistant – who has an itinerary  put together by her father, which she is persuaded to undertake first. 

I had to get my DDM reading week reading started early, so that I had time to get reviewing later. I chose, I’ll Never be Young Again (1932) by Daphne du Maurier, only her second novel, and one of five that has a male narrator. I shall save my thoughts for next week. 

Love Marriage (2022) by Monica Ali is the novel my book group is reading for May – but it suited me to read it a little early. Most people seem to love this book (I know one person who hated it) and while I didn’t hate it, I certainly didn’t love it – I found it a bit fluffy, some bits unlikely (at best) and several characters are caricatures of a type. All of which irritated me. It will give us plenty to talk about though, and I predict everyone else will love it, because it is very readable and quite the page turner – which is good because I also think it’s a tad too long at something close to 500 pages. 

The Decagon House Murders (1987) by Yukito Ayatsuji translated from the Japanese by Ho-Ling Wong was an impulse buy and a very successful one. I only recently became aware of the sub-genre of novels called Honkaku – I believe they started somewhere in the 1920s and were revived by authors like this one in the 1980s. Pushkin Vertigo have published a few, some of them earlier ones from the 1940s. They are mysteries that pay homage to the golden age of western mystery fiction – they focus on ‘fair-play’ for the reader, so that theoretically the reader can work it out for themselves. There was no way I could do that here. This novel takes Agatha Christie’s And There Were None as its inspiration, it is even referred to by the characters in the novel. A group of students from the K_ university mystery club embark on a week-long trip to a notorious island, where six months earlier four people were murdered. This is the ultimate locked room style mystery – and it is ingenious. I have just ordered the second book by this author that Pushkin has re-issued.

So April was a fairly decent reading month, and I have high hopes for May. Next Monday sees the start of Daphne du Maurier reading week. I started my reading well in advance which I find I need to do as host – but I may re-read Rebecca next week, just for the sheer pleasure of it. I am currently reading my second DDM book, more of that at a later date. It will be a quieter event this year – from me at least. Look out for the welcome post next Monday – in which I will be explaining how Liz will be helping me to collect all the reviews together on her blog. If you’re talking about DDM week on Twitter then please ensure you use the hashtag #DDMreadingweek so that I don’t miss it. The rest of May I will very much suit myself and read whatever takes my fancy. I have already read the May choice for my book group, so there’s nothing that I have to read by a particular time.