This is a great range of very satisfying Christmas mysteries. Feeling like pulp crime? Try John D. MacDonald. Classic crime? Try Ellis Peters. Something modern? Try Sara Paretsky. There are also stories from lots of all time great crime writers, including John Mortimer, Agatha Christie and Colin Dexter.
I read many of these stories last Christmas when this collection came out in hardback. Now it’s out in a striking softback edition with a smart vintage style Gothic revival cover. For a book with over 700 pages, it’s very comfortable in the hands. Some stories are very short and some are longish, which means you can find something that fits your time as well as mood.
I found it put me on to several crime writers who were new to me, which made for some fun reading this year (I have been cheerfully reading Ellery Queen and Rex Stout as a result).
It’s so attractive that it would make a successful present, but ideally only for someone you can borrow it off later.
It is 1985 in a small town in Ireland, and Bill Furlong is flat out delivering coal and wood in the snow before Christmas. As he, his wife and young daughters prepare for the holidays, he finds out by accident that something is wrong at the local convent. Why are the girls he sees there distressed?
This is a perfect novella. I bought it for someone else for Christmas but now have to keep it for myself, unfortunately for them. Keegan writes the kind of sentences that make you stare at them to find out why they work so well.
Furlong “had come from nothing. Less than nothing, some might say. His mother, at the age of sixteen, had fallen pregnant while working as a domestic for Mrs Wilson, the Protestant widow who lived in the big house a few miles outside of town. When his mother’s trouble became known, and her people made clear they’d have no more to do with her, Mrs Wilson, instead of giving his mother her walking papers, told her she should stay on, and keep her work”. This makes Furlong unusual in his community, and also helps him to reflect on what is happening at the convent.
The story responds to the scandals of the Magdalene Laundries and mother and baby homes in Ireland. Furlong realises that something is not right, but what can he do? The church is part of daily life, and to challenge it is dangerous. A woman warns him: “Tis no affair of mine, you understand, but you know you’d want to watch over what you’d say about what’s there? Keep the enemy close, the bad dog with you and the good dog will not bite. You know yourself”.
Small Things Like These helped me think about how we live alongside injustice, suffering and impunity every day, and decide not to see it or to do anything about it. What might it take to end such collusion? What happens when we finally allow ourselves to see that something treated as inevitable or invisible is unbearable?
After reading Small Things Like These I had to read Belonging by Catherine Corless with Naomi Linehan, the true story of how an amateur historian helped expose the shocking story of the missing babies of the Tuam mother and baby home in the Republic of Ireland. It is an outstanding account of how diligent research and campaigning can bring human rights violations to light, and hold to account those who have acted with impunity (see this detailed review in the Irish Independent – https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/catherine-corless-memoir-is-a-story-of-the-living-as-much-as-the-dead-40859120.html). A colleague directed me to Motherbabyhome, an extraordinary work of conceptual and performance poetry by Kimberley Campanello which memorialises the 796 children who lost their lives, and is partly based on files provided by Corless to the poet (http://www.kimberlycampanello.com/motherbabyhome). Seeing some of the archive documents found by Corless, alongside the names of some of the children involved, is moving. These themes also recur throughout the excellent Quirke crime novel series by John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black). Art like this helps us process what has happened, and what is happening.
Keegan’s book is full of small kindnesses as well as troubles. The love in the family, who do not have much but are glad of what they do have, is uplifting. A free bag of coal is left on the doorstep for those who can’t afford it, but then Furlong worries that he should not have accepted gifts from those who can’t afford to give them. These are the ethics of everyday life.
Small Things Like These is not saccharine, just readable and relatable. My main feeling after this is to re-read Ariel Dorfman’s Manifesto for Another World. Make of that what you will.
A wildly tense but very thoughtful novel set during the lockdown of autumn 2020.
Kate, the single mother of teenage son Matt, is ordered to remain at home. After several days, she feels that she cannot stand it for another minute. Fell walking near her home is how she usually manages her mental health, and so she decides that a short walk has become essential. She leaves home without telling her son or anyone else, although she is seen by her next door neighbour Alice who is shielding and unable to leave her house. She plans to be quick but time passes and she does not come home. Should her son call the police or rescue services? What if she is arrested and charged, and cannot afford to pay the fine? Alice faces the same dilemma, and Alice’s adult children (who have strong views about telling her what to do but seem not very helpful in practice) urge her to tell the police that Kate has illegally left the house.
Kate’s thinking will resonate with many: “She forgets everything these days, stands to reason that when you deprive people of external stimulus their brains slow down, almost a survival strategy, who could bear to be running on all cylinders and locked in like this, you’d go mad, poison yourself with your own fumes”. While walking, she falls in an isolated spot, and cannot get home. Dark falls.
The Fell is a very quick read but covers so many important human things. What are our duties to each other in extreme situations? How much can we prioritise our needs over those of others?
In addition to the voices of Kate, Matt and Alice, we hear from Rob the mountain rescue guide who is sent to find her. Rob faces his own challenges: forced to leave his daughter to attend the rescue, she is unhappy and disappointed and is sure to let him know it. Between these four perspectives, Moss delivers sensitive and relatable thoughts about how lockdowns and individual stay-at-home orders have played out in real life. These lives touch and overlap and human connections happen.
I did not think I would ever want to read a pandemic novel during a pandemic: there is quite enough of all that going on in my real life without it spilling over into my leisure reading. But The Fell is the best type of fiction. It is compelling on its own terms, as I was desperate to find out what happened, but also useful in unpicking what the crisis means about us, as individuals, as communities, and as a society. This is exactly what Moss is brilliant at, especially in Summerwater and Ghost Wall (see https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2019/09/08/ghost-wall-by-sarah-moss/). The Fell is helping me to process what’s going on, and work out what I think about it.
As a child, Ruby stops speaking. Her loving family don’t understand, but keep loving her anyway. Her sister is tough and caring, her mother is sometimes ill and sometimes not, and the suburban neighbours are in and out, as are the Aunties and Biji (Ruby’s grandmother).
This sensitive short novel is a very quick read but you’ll want to linger over the language. For fans of her poetry collections Small Hands and Dear Big Gods, Arshi’s fresh and illuminating prose will be no surprise. The chapter titles make you feel like you’re reading a collection of prose poems (I particularly liked De-Catastrophisation (for beginners)) and the story flows easily and well. It’s not a hard book to read but it’s a hard book to put down. I read it in a single sitting.
The racism that Ruby and her family face runs throughout the book. Despite dealing with traumatic things, Arshi’s sharp turns of phrase are often funny: “But I don’t believe my father is an elephant; he is most like a canary. His main role in our family is to detect early signs of disturbance and then to flap his wings and warble a little. Of course, usually no one takes notice, or if they notice it’s too late, but that isn’t, strictly speaking, the canary’s fault”.
The cover art is exquisite and echoes the importance of the garden to Ruby’s mother. I could stare at it all day.
This is a delightful, mildly spooky picture book from the author of Lost and Found.
There are supposed to be ghosts in our host’s large old house, but she has never seen them – can you? With the help of tracing paper inserts and atmospheric photos, we can not only find the ghosts but also see the hijinks that they get up to.
It is a brilliant idea, and a timeless book. It goes for funny rather than scary, and the ghosts are quite endearing. You find yourself thinking that living in a haunted house might be quite jolly.
Filthy Animals is the new collection of short stories from Booker Prize shortlisted writer Brandon Taylor, fans of his characteristically vivid prose and razor-sharp observations will not be disappointed by this stunning collection.
Taylor has a gift for portraying social discomfort in excruciating detail and this is perhaps best on display in the first story in the collection ‘Potluck’. Lionel, a character recovering from a suicide attempt becomes caught up in the world of Charles and Sophie, both dancers involved in an open relationship. Their encounters are ambiguous but powerful, affectionate but also distant and strange. In stories such as ‘Mass’ there is often an emphasis on the characters physicality, many of them are training to be professional dancers and there is an acute, Degas-like focus on their muscular bodies as a site for potential greatness and also a possible site of disaster. There is a kind of slipperiness throughout the book, many of the interactions between characters turn rapidly from friendly to hostile and back again. But love is always present, after so much anxiety and fraught relationships, the tenderness of ‘Anne of Cleves’ caught me off guard, it’s a beautifully realised story about a relationship blossoming between two women.
The stunning, cinematic quality of Taylor’s prose never fails, each story has a complete world within it, even when the characters fail to communicate verbally, the atmosphere is palpable. I recommend this book especially for fans of Lucia Berlin.
The narrator of Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies is adrift in a sea of language. She works as a translator in the courts of The Hague, and her work, allowing others’ voices to flow through her own is mirrored in her personal relationships. She often acts as a cipher for the other characters, as she herself is uncertain of where she belongs, their voices are channelled through their interactions with her. At times the novel behaves like a series of monologues, many of them on the theme of violence.
A fellow translator relays an encounter she has translating for a man accused of being high up in a genocidal regime, a man is mysteriously attacked in the same neighbourhood where the protagonists’ friend lives. The sense of the narrative being troubled by violence intensifies when the narrator takes a job translating the testimony of a former dictator. Their interactions are tense and ambiguous, bureaucratic and yet laden with meaning.
Sometimes I felt as if I was observing the world of the novel through the protagonists’ eyes as she viewed the events, at once passive and watchful. Kitamura controls the pacing of the novel masterfully, and every interaction is flawlessly rendered, not one phrase is wasted. I would highly recommend Intimacies for fans of Rachel Cusk and Brandon Taylor.
Edinburgh’s seaside Portobello district in 2019, and Essie Pound is part of a specialist cleaning team clearing a flat after an elderly woman’s body is found two years after her death. Part of Essie’s job is to look out for objects in the flat that might explain more about who the person was and why she died. But Essie gets pulled into a deeper mystery, one that takes her back into Portobello’s pasts as well as her own. Investigating more formally is young police officer Emily Noble. Their work is bound to coincide.
Essie says: “Just like Isabella Dawson, my whole life is hidden. From me. And from everyone else too. But not because I’ve buried it in someone else’s rubbish. More because I don’t have anything or anyone to remind me of what it might have been.”
Mary Paulson-Ellis is a new crime and mystery author for me, but I will definitely be seeking out her other standalone novels (which feature some characters from this book). I’m a fan of Elly Griffiths and Ann Cleeves, for their readable characters and good plots, and Paulson-Ellis definitely delivers on these.
Emily Noble’s Disgrace made me remember the excellent biography The Trauma Cleaner, in which author Sarah Krasnostein covers not only Sandra Pankhurst’s life in trauma cleaning but also her transition (https://wellcomebookprize.org/book/trauma-cleaner).
There are strong women characters, and reflections on women’s lives. Some of the themes in the book make for hard reading – for example, suggested child death, and fat phobia. But the story is compelling, the writing is strong, and I read this cover to cover in a day.
Lions need a lot of sleep, as everyone knows… but for Arlo it’s too hot, too cold, too prickly, too noisy. Like everyone who struggles with their sleep, Arlo wonders if he will ever sleep again.
Catherine Rayner’s beautiful picture book sets the tone for a peaceful bedtime for small children. Arlo’s friend Owl swoops down to offer advice on how to relax and get ready for a restful night. Rayner’s exquisite pictures with their soothing but still vibrant colour palette give life to a simple and effective bedtime story. The lions and owl are not cartoon or comic book, but are natural.
As a veteran struggler with sleep, I found this book comforting and helpful (and I am clearly about 40 years over the target audience age). It’s helpful without being prescriptive or preachy. I would also be delighted to have any or all of these stunning pictures on my wall.
The only potential problem I foresee is tired parents and carers dozing off before any children who are being read to! It’s a treat for the end of the day.
Our Summer Reading Promotion is now on in store, get 4 books for the price of 3 (with the cheapest book free). We have titles available across Children’s, Fiction and Non-Fiction, see our full list of titles for purchase in the 4 for 3 promotion below:
Fiction Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Troy by Stephen Fry
Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain
I Am An Island by Tamsin Calidas
V For Victory by Lisa Evans
The Great Fortune by Olivia Manning
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
Us Three by Ruth Jones
Actress by Anne Enright
V2 by Robert Harris
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Summer by Ali Smith
Non-Fiction The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Phillippa Perry
Agent Sonia by Ben Macintyre
Difficult Women by Helen Lewis
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty
The Moth and the Mountain by Ed Caesar
Sicily ’43 by James Holland
Childrens The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charles Mackesy
The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke
Worst Holiday Ever by Charlie Higson
Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure by Jeff Kinney
“…I loved the past of archives, but there was no era of the past I had any inclination to visit with my actual human body, being rather fond of it having at least minimal rights and protections”. Cassie, the narrator of the title novella in The Office of Historical Corrections, is an officer at the new US Institute for Public History. She goes out and about correcting historical inaccuracy in the Washington area, a new civil service style job. But what happens when there is a total subversion or avoidance of truth, and some bodies are clearly in the firing line?
This is the best collection of short stories I’ve read in ages. Every one is sharp and entertaining. Claire is called out by a college colleague for wearing a Confederate flag bikini, but doubles down, and doubles down again – why? Cecelia’s mother is determined to get recognition for her father’s wrongful imprisonment in Alcatraz, but a visit to the former prison with estranged family happens instead. The end of Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain is one of my favourite endings to a short story.
Roxane Gay calls Danielle Evans “the finest short story writer working today”, and I think she’s on to something. Race, gender and grief feature over and over. I think this collection will be read for years and years.
Andrew Green was ‘the father of Greater New York’, a founder of Central Park and the Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History among other things. But he didn’t come from money, and he was shot and killed aged 83. So how did he get to this point? Who killed him and why? And what was his great mistake?
The Great Mistake is a humane and very readable novel of one remarkable life. You might wonder how you’d relate to Andrew Green, but his wish to live life and his decisions on what to do without in order to achieve his goals are very resonant. “… after…the pyrotechnic accompaniments others put on to celebrate his achievements, he still went to bed with some version of the same concerns he had always had. Who he was. Who he should be. Things he could have said or done”.
His intense and long relationship with a politician, Samuel, influences much, as does the death of his mother (a hard-working woman who always longed for time outside in green space, and didn’t get it). He is repelled by his work as a young man on a post-slavery plantation in Trinidad, both while doing it and after, and this also affects his ambitions. The role of reading and books in helping to form a life recurs throughout, as do questions over who has access to books and who does not.
Historic New York sprang up around me as I read. “He watched labourers returning home with dinner kettles. Ragpickers bothering apple ladies. Horses set to collapse under the products of commerce they had carried, back and forth, all day long. New York didn’t set out to charm you. It was like God that way”.
As well as learning about Andrew, we follow police Inspector McClusky who is investigating his murder, and we are introduced to yet another side of life in New York. The Great Mistake is a satisfying read in many ways, as a life story, as a crime story, as an exploration of what’s important, and as a song for New York. So enjoyable.
Assembly by Natasha Brown is more than deserving of the glowing reviews it has already received. It’s a slight volume, the plot unfolds over a series of fleeting but intense vignettes and each is crafted to perfection, not a single word is wasted. At times it feels reminiscent of prose poetry or maybe a sparse drama. The narrator is quiet and controlled but burns with quiet anger, acutely aware of the injustices that plague her. She is a black British woman who has found significant success in the corporate world but seemingly at significant psychological and physical cost to herself. She is often a vessel for other characters racist hang-ups, one colleague vents to her about his hatred of diversity initiatives, another calls her office phone to tell her her hair is ‘wild’ and her skin is ‘exotic’. She has a jovial posh boyfriend, who like her attended Oxford and the action unfolds as she anticipates attending his parents lavish anniversary party.
Recently a reviewer compared Assembly to Mrs. Dalloway, but I thought of Brandon Taylor whose novel Real Life has similarly exquisite prose and a protagonist who is out of place in their surroundings and also of The Great Gatsby, although while Natasha Brown’s protagonist is, like Nick Carraway, among the rich and powerful, she is not impressed. When I got to the last page I was sorry to finish Assembly I thoroughly recommend it.
Lost in the Clouds is a sensitive and useful picture book for young children about bereavement and grief.
Billy knows that his mum has died, and he likes to think of her as a cloud in the sky. Sometimes Billy’s days with his dad are good, when they can have fun and still feel close to Mummy. But sometimes the sky is dark and stormy and Mummy feels too distant, and Daddy feels distant too. On a day just like this, Billy builds a tower to the sky to try to be closer to Mummy.
Warm and evocative illustrations show how grief can feel, and also demonstrate that joy and fun can still happen even amid great loss.
Although the story is from Billy’s perspective, his dad’s difficulties and kindnesses are manifest too. “Daddy wasn’t quite the same on these days. He would be quieter and his eyes would always be looking far away, as if he was trying to find Mummy in the distance somewhere”.
There are handy notes and further resources in the back of the book on helping children deal with grief. For older children and adults, I always recommend Michael Rosen’s classic The Sad Book (https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/25/michael-rosens-sad-book-quentin-blake). There is a very sympathetic cat who pops up throughout Lost in the Clouds, and is especially fine on the back cover, putting a paw out to test the weather for Billy and his dad.
The Riverside Way 