sarahmatthews's reviews
79 reviews

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

medium-paced

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Read on audio

Narrators: Alma Cuervo, Julia Whelan and Robin Miles

Simon & Schuster

Pub. 2017, 385pp

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I adored Daisy Jones and the Six by this author a few years ago and have been meaning to read another of her books since, so when I was ill and needed something to get engrossed in I got it on audio. I’d seen the press around the TV version of Daisy Jones winning at the Emmy’s (which I’ve not seen yet) and that reminded me of her novels.

This was the perfect choice for me as the story follows the life of a 50s movie star, Evelyn Hugo, told in flashbacks to a journalist, Monique Grant.

I knew there was going to be a twist at the end because it’s alluded to as you go along, and I did find myself trying to figure out what it would be, but mostly I was loving the gossipy nature of the story of an actress trying to force her way into Hollywood using any underhand methods she can think of, and her beauty of course.sometimes you just need a decade spanning saga to take you away from the present and this book did that so well. Definitely a case of the right book at the right time.

i very much enjoyed all the references to fashion, popular culture, the depiction of celebrity scandals and the character of Evelyn herself. Glamourous, selfish and ruthless, she’s got that indefinable star quality.

You can tell that the author had the time of her life researching this book and I enjoyed all the fictitious news articles that popped up at intervals.

My hunch about the ending proved to be pretty much what I suspected but I didn’t mind a bit! Overall a great plot-driven read about the artificiality of fame.

This book was published a couple of years before Daisy Jones and the Six and it’s fascinating to see how her writing developed. The latter is, for me, a much more successful book but this one is a great read too.

The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard

emotional funny reflective medium-paced

The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Book 1 of 5 of the Cazalet Chronicle series

Read in Braille

Pub. 1990, 448pp

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I’ve seen this beloved series mentioned online many times over the past few years by bloggers who enjoy similar books to me, and so when the first two books came up on a hardcopy Braille book swap list I snapped them up. It wasn’t till they arrived that I realised just how long they are. I’m slower when reading Braille so was a little intimidated by 16 booklets to get through! Thankfully I needn’t have worried as I raced through it in about a month which is a similar length of time a 300 page Braille book typically takes me.

What I found so engaging was the brilliant characterisation and masterful handling of so many characters and stories. I thought I’d get lost so made a note of the main characters on my phone to refer back to but found I didn’t really need it. it’s perhaps because I read it over Christmas so had more time than usual for reading and was able to curl up with it for long stretches of time. this meant I didn’t lose track of the story by setting it down for days on end.

the story is set over the summers of 1937 and 1938 as the threat of war is building and that sense of unease, rumour and disbelief came across very powerfully. this is a story of an upper middle class family who’re in the timber trade. the head of the family, William (nicknamed The Brig) rules the family alongside his wife, Kitty (nicknamed The Duchy). But their stories are the less interesting of the many perspectives in this book. the lives of their four children; Hugh, Edward, Rachel and Rupert take centre stage. I loved getting to know them all, including their own children who’re depicted particularly well throughout. 

my favourite characters are probably Villy (who gave up her glamorous career as a ballet dancer to marry Edward), Rupert and Zoe ( who have a very interesting story that will hopefully continue to develop as strongly in the next books) and all of the children whose inner lives are written so beautifully and realistically which is rare. Their games, squabbles and inner thoughts and anxieties were excellently written and often so funny. Neville wanting to keep a jellyfish as a pet was so sweet! 

the depiction of women’s lives at this point in history is so interesting and we also get to see the stories of some of the servants’ lives too, adding another dimension. The governess, Miss Milliment, is another notably well written character; she understands the children she teaches and recognises something special in Clary which I very much enjoyed reading about. None of it felt corny or stereotypical. the writing sweeps you along and doesn’t shy away from the realities of life as a woman back in the mid 20th century. Access to contraception,  the dangers of childbirth, appalling behaviour from men, control over women’s careers and education and the covert nature of lesbian relationships are all included. The men are also very well drawn, with the shadow of the First World War affecting them in very different ways. I’m going straight on to the next book now, Marking Time, which begins in 1939 and I just know this series will be heartbreaking!     

  

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

dark tense medium-paced

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

Read on audio

Narrator: William Roberts for RNIB audiobooks

Published 1950, 281 pp

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This is my first book by this author, her debut, and it was brilliant! I read it quickly as it was so tense and I just had to know how it was all going to play out. the premise is famous as it became a Hitchcock movie very soon after publication, making it an instant classic. I knew the basic set up was that two men meet on a train and talk about people in their lives that they could do with getting rid of and one of them suggests they murder for the other as the crimes would be untraceable if done well due to there being no motive.

I found a novel with characters whose inner thoughts and motivations are so well explored (horribly unlikeable people of course!) and I was happy to be swept along even though I was mentally willing one of them, Guy, to just tell the police what was going on as it seemed he had a way out several times. I found his life as a famous architect very engaging and this, along with his relationship with Anne, meant he had so much to lose. the scenes on the train are gripping and the sense of doom is present from the start.

The depiction of unhinged Bruno was so well done with his gradual breakdown and stalkerish obsession with Guy leading to all kinds of complications.

I read it on audio, narrated by William Roberts who did a fantastic job. The many short chapters that switched perspective frequently made me keep reading and the claustrophobic atmosphere was addictive. the central idea that any ordinary person has the capacity to become a murderer given a certain set of circumstances is so fascinating. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a classic psychological thriller that’ll have you on edge but that’s more of a study of human nature rather than being full of gruesome details. I’ll definitely be reading more of Patricia Highsmith’s novels in future. 

The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark

dark funny tense medium-paced

The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark

Read on audio

Narrator: Elizabeth Proud

Published 1960, 143pp

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This is a story which really starts at the end; a young woman, Dixie, is jilted at the altar and the narrative then rewinds several months to explore the run up to that day, in Spark’s quirky and unique style. We find out that many locals blame a newcomer, Dougal Douglas, for stirring up trouble and a few believe him to be the Devil himself!

Dougal’s a Scottish arts graduate who’s moved to London to be near his girl, Ginny, taking a room in lodgings (with Humphrey, the groom from the wedding) in Peckham. He’s got a ghost-writing commission for a retired actress, but also takes a job (in fact he sneakily takes two!) at the local textiles factories who’re following the current trend to employ an “arts man” to modernise the business and increase productivity. 

Dougal is a brilliant creation, someone who knows how to influence and charm others. His interviews are very entertaining as his youthful confidence and self assurance allow him to take charge:

“Dougal put Mr Druce through the process of his smile which was wide and full of white young teeth…Mr Druce couldn’t take his eyes off Dougal, as Dougal perceived. ‘I feel I’m your man” dougal said ‘something told me so when I woke first thing this morning’ …Mr Douglas leaned forward and became a television interviewer. Mr Druce stopped walking and looked at him in wonder.”

He’s told to make the job his own and proceeds to charm the factory workers into sharing personal experiences in the name of ‘human research’. he takes notes for his reports and to embellish his book for Mrs Cheeseman which is meant to be largely autobiographical, resulting in some funny conversations when she tells him off for making too much up!

Everyone around him is caught up in this chaos as he advises people to take Mondays off, allows the local gang to believe he’s working for the police and shows people the scars where he’s had his ‘Devil’s horns’ removed.

I loved the depiction of South East London, including pubs and dance halls, the old English garden and bowling green at Peckham Rye, and One Tree Hill. At one point Dougal and Merle Coverdale, the head of the typing pool, walk through Camberwell Old Cemetery and pass through the ornate tombs:

“He posed as an angel Devil, with his humped shoulder and gleaming smile and his fingers of each hand wide spread against the sky”

There are references to the Devil throughout but it’s never clear if he’s meant to be the literal Devil or not and I liked this ambiguity.

There were also some great scenes of scuffles on the Rye, indicating the simmering violence that continually threatens to erupt in this darkly funny novella. I recommend going back and reading the first chapter again when you finish, so clever! 

Babbacombe's by Susan Scarlett

adventurous hopeful medium-paced

 Babbacombe’s by Susan Scarlet

Read as ebook using a mix of Braille and TTS

Dean Street Press

Pub. 1941

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I was looking for a gentle read for the Christmas period an had recently heard about this charming book. Written by Noel Streatfeild (famous for Ballet Shoes) under a pseudonym,we follow an ordinary family struggling to get by. Beth is the oldest of 5 children and is disappointed not to be able to go on to secretarial college after school as her parents can’t afford it. Her father has always wanted her to join him at Babbacombe’s, a department store, where he’s worked for 30 years and she duly obliges.

Throwing a spanner in the works is Dulcie, a cousin who’s sent to live with them and also starts at the store. She’s been educated at boarding school, arriving with a showy attitude that contrasts with the simple life of the Carsons.

Beth’s story starts with her bumping into a young man, David, and his dog at Paddington station, meeting him again at Babbacombe’s, where they get stuck in a lift. From there the romance slowly builds, though Beth is resistant as she knows her father is against girls dating outside their class.

All kinds of obstacles are put in their way, many of which show the workings of the store which I enjoyed. The scene where Beth’s duped by a shoplifter was really nicely told in particular.

i often find myself on edge when there’s a storyline about blindness in classic novels but this was generally good with regards  to how the experience of glaucoma was described, given the time it was written, e.g. when he goes to see his sister who makes a fool of herself at a school performance: 

“Edward missed the excitement: his vision did not carry as far as the stage. But already his ears were training themselves to help out his eyes, and he caught a faint whisper from the row behind. ‘What a little figure of fun!’” I found that relatable.

And it made me smile to find the novel ending on Christmas Day, very festive!

Read for #DeanStreetDecember 

The Dower House Mystery by Patricia Wentworth

mysterious medium-paced

The Dower House Mystery by Patricia Wentworth

Read as e-book using a mix of Braille and TTS

Dean Street Press

Pub. 1925

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I’ve been meaning to read Dean Street Press for ages as their books sound so enjoyable, so #DeanStreetDecember was the nudge I needed.

I loved the setup of this one; Amabel Grey takes a peculiar job to earn enough money to send her daughter on a chance of a lifetime trip abroad (to snag a rich husband!), thinking she’s a capable woman who doesn’t believe in ghosts and all will be fine. How hard could it be to be paid by the owner of a house to live there for 6 months to quash the local rumours that it’s haunted, which have made it impossible to rent out?

But of course as soon as she arrives strange and unsettling things start to happen, all of which sound ridiculous when explained out loud; someone laughing, a cat mewing, doors that were bolted at night being wide open in the morning, the feeling that someone is following you up the stairs. And all manner of other creepy little details to add to the tension:

“The house was very still, but twice the stillness was broken by that sound of light footsteps, jenny of course, moving about downstairs. She turned a page and forced her mind to follow the words. They remained words to her, separate words, no connecting thought to string them together. On other nights there had been a hundred sounds; the wind in the chimneys, the pattering of the rain, the unkempt ivy buffeting the windowpane, the faint scuttering of mice. Tonight there were none of these sounds, the house was very still. It was like the hush before a storm.”

The solution was a little absurd and I saw it coming but I didn’t mind as I was enjoying the main characters and the eerie atmosphere of the house so much, I just went with it!

A fortune teller, a past love, a mysterious missing girl and two dogs that run away in terror all make for a thoroughly entertaining read.

 

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

dark tense medium-paced

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

Read on audio, performed by the author

Influx Press

Pub.2020 

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After reading a run of classics I was looking for something different and this certainly fit the bill!

Irina’s a bartender/artist from Newcastle who graduated with an MA from The Royal College of Art and is in an awkward phase where she’s partying but also wants to be taken seriously as an artist. Her chosen style of photography lands her in tricky situations as she scouts teenage boys and men to photograph. Talented, beautiful and manipulative, she uses her power to  persuade them to bend to her demands, with her explicit photos being bought by wealthy private collectors who’re into fetish art. She attracted praise as a student including a profile in Vice and has 1000s of Instagram followers who she couldn’t care less about.

We follow Irina as she prepares for a  group show in London; she’s looking through her archive for her best images and reminisces, resulting in some memories she’d prefer not to drag back into her consciousness.

I’m surprised I had the stomach for this book but that’s down to the clever writing which makes you weirdly relate to Irina. Her life just seems chaotic, details begin to be drip fed into the narrative and by that time you’re hooked!

There’s some great writing about the pretensions of art school students and feeling shunned as a ‘northern’ artist. And plenty of messy nights at house parties, with a cocktail of drink, drugs and vomiting.

In a similar way to the protagonist in I’m A Fan the author’s created a unique voice and pushes behaviour to the extreme. Just be warned that here these extremes include self harm, mental illness, sexual abuse and violence.

I was impressed how Eliza Clark explores a certain kind of modern art which is celebrated as edgy but which makes you wonder about consent and the twisted mind of the artist; playing with this in complex and surprising ways.

       

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

dark reflective sad slow-paced

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Read in Braille

Pub. 1961, 355pp

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I thought I’d seen the Sam Mendes film of this novel years ago but from the beginning it didn’t feel familiar so I guess it could’ve been one of those Netflix DVDs back in the day that arrived, sat around for a bit, and got sent back unwatched! i’m so glad this was the case as I loved the book so much, partly because I knew nothing about it going in other than that it’s considered to be a modern American classic.

Frank and April Wheeler are a young New York couple who’ve moved out to the suburbs and are struggling to reconcile their cosy middle class family life with the idea they once had of what adult life should be - adventurous, carefree and always pushing the boundaries. Frank hates his conventional office life and April’s lonely and frustrated in her domestic daily routine of keeping the house and looking after their two children. This tension is explored to great effect.

For a book with a slow pace I found it perfectly plotted with great characters. None of them are wholly good or bad and none of them are particularly likeable which appealed to me. For example, at the beginning I thought Mrs Givings was going to be a comedically annoying character when she irritates Frank who’s feeling rather worse for wear after the big night of the play. He’s forced to open the front door to her, a woman “whose eyes expressed a religious belief in the importance of keeping busy. Even when she stood still there was kinetic energy in the set of her shoulders and the hang of her loose, angrily buttoned-up clothes”. I was relieved to see her story evolve so interestingly through the novel.

There’s a creeping sense of dread as you read which makes it captivating but there’s humour in there too, and it’s a beautifully written novel I’ll be thinking about for a long time. I now want to read more of Richard Yates’ writing and have heard great things about The Easter Parade.

At Freddie's by Penelope Fitzgerald

lighthearted reflective medium-paced

At Freddie’s by Penelope Fitzgerald

Read as e-book using a mix of Braille and TTS

Pub. 1982, 160pp

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Penelope Fitzgerald wrote the introduction to my first #NovNov23 (Novellas in November) read, A Month in the Country by J L Carr, so I figured I’d lean into the connection and read At Freddie’s, her 1982 book.

This is the story of a chaotic stage school in central London and the many children who pass through it in search of a life on the stage.

Run by Freddie, a well known and loved personality in the theatre world, it’s a ramshackle place which is always under threat of closure but always manages to pull through, mainly by the charity of those in the business who adore her. This ongoing struggle is a big theme in the book along with the relationship between two teachers, Hannah and Pierce, neither of whom knew what they were taking on when they said yes to their jobs. They can’t help spending a lot of time together, resulting in a difficult relationship and at one point Hannah decides they must talk it over:

“Lyons teashops might almost have been particularly designed for the resolution of such awkward situations…In a Lyons, as Hannah had reflected, the limits of communication had to be reached by seven o’clock, while at the same tine it was necessary to share a table or at all events to sit very close to other customers, so that although everyone restricted their elbows, their bodies and their newspapers and by a long established convention showed no signs of understanding what they overheard, they provided all the same a certain check on human intimacy.”

And I particularly like this description of the legendary Freddie ‘here she occupied an entire corner, commanding her territory, a hugely moulting royal raven sprinkled with gems”

If you love the theatre or were a theatre kid this will be a great read but equally, like me, if you know very little but enjoy beautiful writing and great characters this won’t disappoint!

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

BookReview A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr

Read in Braille

Penguin

Pub. 1980, 104pp

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This is a novella I’ve been meaning to read for years and it’s delightful.

Tom Birkin’s a Londoner who’s returned from war with shellshock and he takes a commission to restore a medieval church wall painting in a Yorkshire village. The warm summer days are glorious as he gets to work, with high hopes for the project:

“I willed it to be something good, really splendid, truly astonishing… something to wring a mention from The Times and a detailed account (with pictures) in the Illustrated London News.”

To his relief he’s quickly welcomed into the community:

“In the first few minutes of my first morning, I felt that this alien northern countryside - friendly, that I’d turned a corner and that this summer of 1920, was to smoulder on until the first leaves fell, was to be a propitious season of living”

For a book of just over 100 pages it’s full of fully realised characters; from his neighbour Moon (a fellow veteran who’s also on a contract from the vicarage) to the stationmaster’s daughter Kathy and the vicar’s wife Alice - they all visit him often, interested in him and his work. The vicar’s a miserly character and there’re some very uncomfortable conversations between him and Birkin.

And the description of landscape is evocative throughout:

“For me that will always be the summer day of summer days – a cloudless sky, ditches and roadside deep in grass, poppies, cuckoo pint, trees heavy with leaf, orchards bulging over hedge briars.”

This is a beautifully written story of someone looking back fondly on a restorative period in their youth, with the gradual unveiling of the painting mirroring his own feelings of rediscovering himself. The conversational tone, a hint of romance and poignant moments of reflection on religion and war make it easy to relate to this character from another time.

Thanks to the Novellas in November reading event for nudging me to read it!