This is a lengthy, complex, but very human book about relationships between normal, dysfunctional people. We discover how the two primary players, Paige and Nicholas, are very much influenced by their respective mothers, both of whom abandoned their families in different ways and for different reasons.
This retelling of a legend of medieval Normandy intrigued me from the start, because a major scenario centres on my home island of Jersey, at Grouville Beach, Gorey Castle and what is now known as La Hougue Bie Dolmen, places I know well. It’s an elaborate tale of loyalty and treachery, love, remorse and forgiveness. The…
This book contains a wealth of otherwise hard-to-find facts about the often poverty-stricken and mostly unnoticed country folk in the diverse provinces and regions we now know as France. Everything warrants a chapter: food, clothing and housing; birth, marriage and death; farming and poaching practices; relationships between peasants, seigneurs, unwelcome soldiers, haughty priests and the revenue-hungry…
Even better than Book 1! It’s great to find Freya tidying up the old bookshop again, struggling to overcome her terror of the sea with Mairead’s patient help, having earnest talks with her best friend Juliet and generally making sure all is well in Caernoweth. But it’s not long before things start to get very…
The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, by Vishal Mangalwadi is a bold analysis of the powerful influence the Christian Bible has had on the development of the western world. Mangalwadi is an extremely erudite and lucid scholar, who has combined academic learning with political and social…
Ellen Fenwick, commonly known as Fenny or Elena, a burnt-out, single English teacher, jumps at the chance to become a governess for eight-year-old Juliet, whose family is recuperating for some months in a villa near Florence. She has been caring for her sick mother and has never travelled before, never experienced romance.
An almost incredible but true story, told in a rather unemotional, matter-of-fact manner. Hardly old enough to know who he is and with no idea where he comes from, 5 year old Saroo finds himself trapped in a railway carriage, which ends up taking him to the sprawling, stinking, merciless city of Calcutta. What will…
Tracy is worn out from caring for her young daughter Hayley, the fruit of a drunken teenage binge. She’s also fed up with the judgemental remarks not only from her relatives but even from strangers in the street. Pious churchgoers criticise her immoral behaviour and foul language. Her boyfriend Davy is neither very bright, nor…
Barely recovered from almost drowning when she went out at night to welcome her dear father back from his fishing, a new tragedy shatters eight-year old Freya’s heart: her mother is taking her away from her beloved Cornish village to London – for ever, it seems. Her father Matthew is also broken with remorse, as he…
Gripping from beginning to end, we follow the tense developments of the Papist struggle to overpower the Huguenots in France and reclaim the English crown from Protestant sympathiser Queen Elizabeth I in the late 16th century. Lawyer Christopher Radcliff finds his life threatened when he is sent by his patron, Robert Dudley, the Earl of…
The Only Way to What? A provocative start. Followed by a challenging summary: Jesus was not focused on saving sinners from an angry God who is hellbent on making them suffer forever. Jesus was interested in the very opposite: helping us angry, hostile, combative, confused, misguided human beings learn to know, love, and follow a…
I bought this book mainly because of the subtitle: A Story of France in the Time of the Huguenots. That was the subject of interest to me, as some of my ancestors in Jersey were forced to flee France during the persecution after the Edict of Nantes was repealed in 1685. The fact that the story…