Anna Campbell

December 2019

 
 

Some Interesting Reads Part 3

This is the last in a short series featuring short reviews of some books I’ve really enjoyed reading in the last few months. And it’s a bit of a mixed bag – we’ve got the first in a new historical mystery series, a heart-rending memoir, a spy thriller, and a brilliant fantasy novel.

First up is one of the best books I’ve read in ages, the often shocking memoir Educated by Tara Westover. This book has been an international sensation and I’m not at all surprised.

In turns appalling, tragic, triumphant and inspiring, this story details Tara’s life with her survivalist, religious maniac of a father in the wilds of Idaho. As a child, she never saw a doctor, she never went to school, and anything from the outside world came courtesy of Satan’s power, according to her father. How Tara rises above what seems like a completely disastrous childhood to find her place in the world makes for a real page turner. Seriously, give this one a go! I bet you won’t be able to put it down. I sure couldn’t.

My next choice in this whistle-stop tour of things to read over the Holidays is the first in what promises to be an intriguing new series set in Singapore in 1910.

Singapore Sapphire by A.M. Stuart is a beautifully written historical mystery featuring Suffragette widow Harriet Gordon and brooding police inspector Robert Curran. When the first client for Harriet’s typing business ends up dead on his lounge room floor, she’s drawn into mystery and danger.

I loved the characterization in this. Neither Harriet nor Robert reveal all their secrets with one visit but there are tantalizing hints of both their complex pasts and their professional (and perhaps personal?) future. It was also one of those books that got better and better as it went on. By the end, I was absolutely on the edge of my seat wanting to know what would happen. Harriet was the best sort of historical heroine – exceptional for her time but still of her time.

One of the many things I love about a great historical mystery is that the setting ends up becoming a character in its own right and that happens in spades here. You can almost smell the ripe heat of Singapore as you read the vividly imagined descriptions of the island when it was still a far-flung colony in the British Empire.

As you’ll have noticed from my recommended book lists over the last two years or so, I’ve gone back to reading a lot of fantasy after a long hiatus. My four books of the year in 2018 were all fairy-tale retellings (Spinning Silver by Naomi Novak and The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden) and now I’m going to suggest another one to join your TBR pile.

Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer is a passionate and haunting re-telling of the fairy tale, East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Well, that’s what the website says anyway. I didn’t actually know this Norwegian legend and to me this story is redolent of Beauty and the Beast and going back even further, Cupid and Psyche. As with both those stories, Echo North features an intrepid heroine scorned by the people around her. 

Echo Alkaev meets a strange fate when she agrees to live with a monster for a year in exchange for her father’s life. In this case, the monster is a talking wolf who is the guardian of a mysterious palace at the edge of the world. In the palace, Echo discovers that all is not as it seems either in her Siberian village or in the realm of enchantment. She also learns that her loving heart has magic and power of its own.

The writing in this story is truly extraordinary – lyrical and evocative and precise. And as you’ve probably guessed, it’s very much a romance. I don’t think that counts as a spoiler – the wolf makes a wonderful flawed hero! 

My last recommendation is another first book in a series, although this time I’m delighted to tell you that further volumes are already available. In fact, I’m just about to start book 2!

Slow Horses (Slough House Book 1) by Mick Herron is a little outside my usual reading corral. I don’t read a lot of spy fiction but when a friend recommended this and I saw it was about an ill-assorted band of MI5 failures and misfits having to unite to defeat a greater danger, I was in. And I’m so glad I was!

River Cartwright mucks up his MI5 career in one of the cleverest opening scenes I’ve read in ages. Because his grandfather is an alumnus of the glory days of the Cold War (well, glory days for spies!), it’s not politic to sack him. So instead he gets sent to a mysterious location called Slough House where he’s put on the world’s most boring job, listening to bugged phone conversation.

Slough House is full of eccentrics and losers and the walking wounded, but when a genuine terrorist threat rises, all these square pegs in round holes turn out to have the perfect array of skills to meet the danger head-on. This story isn’t just suspenseful, it’s funny. River has the most wonderfully wry, British sense of humor and it was a real pleasure spending a few hours in his company. I think you’ll feel exactly the same!