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Archive for February, 2021

‘Hag-Seed’ by Margaret Atwood

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , , on February 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

This book is one of the Hogarth Shakespeare series – a set of modern retellings of some of Shakespeare’s plays, by various acclaimed authors. Hag-Seed is a modern re-telling of The Tempest, and in the capable hands of Margaret Atwood, it is a triumph.

Felix Phillips is artistic director at the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, but is usurped by his traitorous assistant Tony, just as Felix is planning a staging of The Tempest. After hiding away and licking his wounds, Felix takes up a job teaching Shakespeare in a prison, and staging plays with the prisoners as the cast, but all the time he is plotting his revenge upon Tony and others who treated him unfairly.

It’s not necessary to know The Tempest to enjoy this book – you can definitely read it as a novel in its own right – but it is interesting to see how the two stories run parallel to each other. I actually think that if you were studying The Tempest, this book might help you understand it (because The Tempest is one of the most beautiful but also one of the most difficult to understand of Shakespeare’s plays in my very humble opinion).

As always with Atwood, the writing flows beautifully and there is dark humour sprinkled throughout. I loved reading about the prisoners and who taking part in the play came to mean so much to them. It’s a quick and fairly undemanding read, and I throughout enjoyed it.

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‘A Year at Castle Court’ by Holly Hepburn

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , on February 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

This is an audiobook narrated by Karen Cass, and is actually a collection of four books gathered into one.

The story starts with best friends Cat Garcia and Sadie Smart moving into their new business premises, Smart Cookies, in Castle Court, Chester. Castle Court is a three storey food court, where frankly I would be all the time if it were real and I lived nearby!

Sadie is recovering from a messy marriage break up and is moving on with her life, with daughter Lisa in tow. Cat meanwhile, was a top chef in a Michelin starred restaurant in Paris, but for personal reasons has moved back to England to start Smart Cookies with Sadie.

They soon become part of the community at Castle Court, making friends – and a few enemies – amongst the other business owners, and maybe a hint of romance too. As you would expect. they have ups and downs, sometimes man related, other times not, but through it all their friendship remains solid as they navigate some choppy waters.

As far as chick-lit goes, this is an enjoyable book, although it definitely left me craving a plate of biscuits every time I listened to it, as there is quite a lot about the cookie making. I do sometimes find it annoying that smart, intelligent and independent women still have to have lives revolving around men, and that sometimes these women do stupid things which are clearly written in to move the plot forward. (No, chick-lit is not my favourite genre, but it’s easy listening while I’m out running, which is why I will choose it sometimes.)

Having said that, it’s got some lovely characters, and Castle Court itself sounds like a dream. Some parts were predictable – like who would end up with who for example, which was clear from the first few pages – but it was nicely written and one of the few books to feature a small child who was actually very lovable and not irritating.

Excellent narration by Karen Cass too.

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‘Good Omens’ by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , on February 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »

The angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley have been living among humans since the beginning of time, and they quite like it. And despite being theoretical enemies, they quite like each other too. So neither of them really wants the world to end, but yet it must – next Saturday in fact, starting in a little village named Tadfield. Aziraphale and Crowley need to try and stop it, and fast! All this was predicted centuries earlier by Agnes Nutter, a witch who wrote a book of her predictions, and which one of her many descendants lives her life by. That descendant, Anathema Device, decides that she needs to try and stop the oncoming apocalypse.

Meanwhile, due to a clerical mixup, the young anti-Christ has gone missing, which only makes stopping the apocalypse more difficult. Chuck in a Witchfinder General and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse – now riding motorcycles, and with Pollution replacing Pestilence who has becoming large obsolete, and the stage is set for a huge showdown.

Unfortunately this book was a big disappointment to me. Let me say that I am probably not the target audience – I don’t generally like fantasy novels, apart from Stephen King, who is a very different type of writer to either Gaiman or Pratchett. I’ve never ready anything else by either of these two authors, and was largely tempted to buy this book due to the TV adaptation starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen (which I haven’t watched, but was intending to). But I still had high hopes, due to the amount of love for this book, online and offline. Even the man who served me when I bought the book, told me it was his favourite book of all time.

It started off quite well, and there is no doubt that one or both of these authors has a great sense of comedy – I laughed out loud a few times near the beginning and everything seemed to bode well. However, I think it got a bit too convoluted with too many characters, and too much going on, plus it kept jumping around a lot. This is also not the kind of comedy I enjoy – it’s like Monty Python on paper (even Monty Python’s The Life of Brian left me cold), and largely just daft.

So overall, definitely not for me. But if you are thinking of reading it, don’t be put off. This is a widely loved book by two very acclaimed authors, so you might absolutely love it.

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‘Come A Little Closer’ by Rachel Abbott

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , , on February 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »

This was an audiobook narrated by Lisa Coleman, and is the seventh book in the DCI Tom Douglas series. I have previously listened to another book which is later in the series than this one, and while there are personal aspects of Tom’s life included in the storyline, it is easy enough to follow as a standalone novel, or if you do the same as me and read/listen out of order.

Tom and his team are called in to investigate when a young woman is found dead at a frozen lonely scene. Who is she, and how did she get there? Did she commit suicide or was she murdered? None of these questions are easily answerable.

Meanwhile, a young woman named Callie is trapped in a miserable relationship with an abusive and parasitic boyfriend. When she decides to travel to Myanmar to honour a promise to her grandfather, she befriends an older couple who take her under her wing, and help her realise that she needs to end things with Ian. But when she tries to do so, things take a sinister turn.

And in a lonely kitchen, two women sit and eat their meals in almost complete silence, trapped as they are in a prison of their own making. What are their stories and how did they arrive at this low point?

Slowly all the threads of the stories come together…

I’ll start with the good parts of this audiobook, including the narration. Lisa Coleman did an excellent job, and managed to distinctly voice all of the characters.

I also really like the character of Tom and all of his colleagues. They are believable and likeable – and deserve a better storyline than the one they had here.

Unfortunately the twists and turns in this book were so well signposted that the characters – Callie mainly as large parts of the book are told from her point of view – just end up coming across as unutterably stupid and naive. Without giving anything away, I wanted to shake her for putting up with her awful boyfriend, and then for her subsequent actions, which I won’t reveal here. Many of the characters apart from the officers – and maybe this is because the police characters have had several books through which to develop their characters – were like cardboard cut outs, and never easy to invest in. And there was a huge dollop of coincidence, which never rang true. I did listen to the end, but found myself underwhelmed by the conclusion, which left some strands of storyline hanging.

Despite all of the above, I would consider listening to more in the series, because the investigators were great, and according to other reviewers who have read the whole series, this is a particularly weak book compared to others. So maybe at some point I will pay another visit to Tom Douglas and co.

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