The Night of the Flood by Zoë Somerville

This book is set in 1952 on a farm near the coast in Norfolk England. Verity Frost and her brother Peter live on the farm with their widowed father.  We start off with Verity meeting her friend Arthur on the anniversary of her mother's death.

 It is revealed Arthur was a child evacuee during the war, Verity's mother bringing him home to live with their family.  He grew up with them for several years but as an adult, he is no longer part of the family.  He is clearly in love with Verity but there are obstacles about religion and Verity's own hopes for her future.

She would like to attend Oxford and make a career and new life for herself.  Her father would like her to marry a local farmer and save their farm. Her brother Peter, expelled from a school for reasons of an improper relationship, wants to make something of the farm by modernizing the equipment and methods but the father won't hear of it.

The mother is rumored to have drowned by suicide and not accident so that comes up now and then.  And then there is the American pilot named Jack who befriends Peter.  Arthur suspects him of being a spy.  Those are the main characters and while the writing is at times stilted, you get a good picture of what is happening in Norfolk between these characters.

This is based on a true event about the flood that devasted Norfolk in 1953 with great license on the characters interactions.  This would appeal to someone who likes historical fiction but it isn't a fast read, slow going at times. 3 stars

Sharing with Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday.

New books on my horizon

 I am so glad I set a goal and joined the Twenty Books of Summer hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. It has made a huge difference in selecting my books.  I am doing fairly well on knocking out some titles which have been on my radar quite some time.

There are new titles coming out from authors I have previously enjoyed so they are added to my list.  Hoping to get to those sooner than later.

Trust Her by Flynn Berry.  I previously enjoyed Northern Spy,  A Double Life and Under the Harrow so this one will make my summer reading list.

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud is Messud's latest and I'm hoping to get a copy and fit it in before August ends.  My introduction to her work was The Woman Upstairs.

I am almost finished with Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane and like the writing style so much that I purchased The Walking People.

As the daily heat index is usually above 100 degrees, I am getting more reading time in.  This is just a short update.  Hope things are well in your part of the world.

Sharing with Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

June books and flowers

 Reading and plants

The caladiums were a surprise in two ways.  Last year they were stunning but died off when we had temps below 40 F/3C.  Honestly, I thought they were gone and Doug was going to plant bushes when they were - suddenly they emerged. Also did not know they blossomed with pods.  There other photo is a Strawberry Candy Day Lily. That one was expected.

June reading was quite varied in location and genres. This month I did not have a single DNF and completed five books.  Yea!

Here's Loki, my reading buddy 🐕

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Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor 

Forgotten on Sunday by Valerie Perrin

The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey 👇

I enjoyed The Flight of Gemma Hardy much more than this one by Livesey

June book travel took me to New Jersey, Manhattan, England, Wales, Scotland and France.

 That's it for the June round up.   Looking forward to more good reading in July. I'd love to know what books you favored this month.  Hope life is good for you all :-)

Sharing with:

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday. and Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

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Forgotten on Sunday by Valérie Perrin

Let's start with this - I would like to say that if you plan on reading one of Perrin's novels, my opinion is to start with Fresh Water for Flowers or Three.  I liked those books much better but that's my personal opinion. Links for those books take you to my Goodreads page.

For a great review check out the NPR link HERE.

What I didn't know, and it came as a complete surprise to me, is this is her first published novel.  It came out in 2015!   Last year I particpated in August's event Women in Translation and read Fresh Water for Flowers.  That was my introduction to Perrin. When I saw Forgotten on Sunday was to be published in June I assumed this was a brand new novel. So I preordered it.  * It was newly translated by Hildegarde Serle.

There are two main stories here which go back and forth between present day and WW II. The setting is mostly Milly France.

Here's the run down without spoilers.

 Justine Neige is the narrator; she works at a care home as an assistant, taking care of the old people.  She and her cousin Jules live with their grandparents as their parents died in an automoble accident when they were only 4 years old. (revealtions about that later)  Jules is about to leave for Paris and attend university.  Twenty-one year old Justine prefers to work at the old folks home and listen to the stories the residents share with her instead of seeking other employment, escaping the small town of Milly.

The WW II time period features the story of Hélène and Lucian and I liked that timeline/story very much.  In present day Justine takes care of the almost 100 year old Hélène and loves hearing her stories, especially the ones about Lucian as a young man and how their life progressed.

There is quite a bit going on and in the last 20% of the book, things coming together in both time periods.

Just another hot Friday....

Loki resting with his stick. His X is quite prominent today.

Comment field update! First off, some comments you've left me have gone to Spam and so now I check spam/junk folder everytime I log on.  Apologies. That's now handled . ✅

Also I found a way to leave comments on WP blogs, much to my delight :-)  I just use my old AOL email address as it's not ever been associated with WP. Problem solved. ✔

Books

Manod Llan lives with her father and young sister on a remote Welsh island. She is a curious young woman and wants more than her sheltered existence provides.  What she wants she does not know, she just knows there has to be more to life.  The dwindling population make a living fishing, living a very simple life until a whale washes up ashore.

 When English ethnographers (I had to look that up) arrive on the island to study the culture and the basic lives of the population, Manod's world is opened up and she is excited.  There is much Welsh language in the narrative but the translation is there as you read.  Manod is hired to make translations from Welsh to English to the reseachers.

Unfortunately the English researchers are scoundrals, in my opinion, and the book took a turn I did not expect.  I suppose if you are looking for imagery the dead whale would represent the dying community on the island. This is a short book and many of the "chapters" are half a page.

Forgotten on Sunday 

I've just started the latest Valérie Perrin book, the third I will have read, also translated by Hildegarde Serle.  That's my book wrap up for the week.  Hope you are reading some good books and having fun :-)

Sharing with:

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday. and Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

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Dear Edward and Major Pettigrew

What's new here is...not much.  Our quest to find a good pizza to bring home for takeaway night is proving fruitless. There is one more place to try and then...guess I will make it here at home. My 68th birthday was good and uneventful - as I like it. The pizza wasn't great but the movie Chef was fabulous.  Great foodie movie.

North Florida heat has me settled in most afternoons so I am getting reading done.   I have read two of the books on my summer reading list.  Off to a good start :-)

I loved Napolitano's book Hello Beautiful and she does not disappoint with this novel. Wonderful writing. It was hard for me to put this down and I liked how she let us get into Edward's thought process while he responded to people about how he was doing.

How does one express their feelings and thoughts to someone who has zero point of reference? While everyone wanted to help Edward there are some things in life that you just can't "fix".

This book was inspired and loosely based on a Afriqiyah Airlines flight which crashed and had one survivor -a nine year old boy. I wonder what that boy is doing now? The fictional boy Edward was the only survivor of a crash taking the lives of 191 people. This is a study of how he tries to handle grief, survivor's guilt and a completely upturned life.

I know it sounds like it would be depressing but it's not. You get some back story on other passengers and crew interspersed in this book. It was interesting.

What a delightful book. Reading this I found Major Pettigrew to be one of my all time favorite characters and I would love to be his friend.  The setting is a small English village where widower Ernest Pettigrew develops a charming friendship with Mrs. Ali, owner of the Pakistani run grocery store.

Prejudices and gossip run deep with some of the characters ( I didn't care for them as much) but the overall interactions are marvelous. There is quite a bit of humor and an edgy situation near the end which shows a clash of cultures. It has a good ending and if a sequel was written I would most certainly read it.

So that's two for two and I haven't had a DNF from my list so far.  Would love to know what you are reading and any challenge plans you may have.

Sharing with:

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday. and Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

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My ten books of summer

Recently I was visiting Susan's blog The Cue Card and read about a book event hosted at 746 Books called The Twenty Books of Summer. Now that I have noticed this event, I am seeing it on other friends' blogs. How did I not realize this before (head in clouds) ⛅

You can link up at 746 Books  HERE.  Check it out if you are interested. I don't think I can accomplish twenty books but I will give it a whirl on ten books to start.

Starting the list was fun and here are twelve titles I am considering.  I added an extra two in case in have a few DNF books. Seems I have one DNF a month on average.  Life is too short to plow through a book you aren't loving.

** For what it's worth, I don't use audible and read the books rather than listening.  That works for some people and I have tried but...sometimes the audible reader has an inflection or emphasis on certain passages which are different than my own when reading.    Does that makes sense?  

Think of The Martian movie, if you've watched it. The character Mark Whatney says  "Are you kidding me?" with exasperation verses "Are you kidding me?"  as a point of interest. 

  Anyway............ my list is below 👇

1. The Night of the Flood by Zoe Somerville 
2. Ask gain, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
3. A Time Remembered by Olga Gruhzit-Hoyt
4. September by Rosamunde Pilcher 
5. Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano
6. An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain
7. Forgotten on Sunday by Valerie Perrin
8. Long Island by Colm Toibin
9. The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes
10. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
11. North Woods by Daniel Mason
12. Before The Fall by Noah Hawley

I own the first four in hardcover and a few others in Kindle. The Valerie Perrin book is a birthday gift to myself, a Kindle preorder and will be auto delivered on publication date.  

Linking with Deb at Reader Buzz for Sunday Salon and Cathy at 746 Books

The May Roundup - lots of reading and a few tornadoes

Weather woes

👇 This cool VTOMAN Generator came in very handy when the Tallahassee area had severe storms and tornadoes two weeks ago.  Much thanks to Les at Coastal Horizons for posting about these generators.  We promptly bought two, a large one and small one. Hurricane season is around the corner for us so it's that time of year to prep.  Little did we know we'd be using those generators within a week from purchase. We were able to have a lamp on, make coffee and charge our phones/tablets.

Reading so far this month

The DNF this month was Barbara Kingsolver's Unsheltered. Two strikes on an author and I don't generally seek out more of their work.

📚📚   Books read  📚📚

The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

The Will by Rebecca Reid

May book travel took me to Boston, Panama, Barbados, Norfolk, London and Cork Ireland.

That's it for the May round up.   Looking forward to good reading in June and may link up with The Twenty Books of Summer hosted at 746 Books. 

Thanks to Susan at The Cue Card for the inspiration to join in.  It has been fun starting my list so we will see how dedicated I can be.

 Hope life is good for you all :-)

Sharing with:

Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

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The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

Twenty something Rachel Murray is finishing up college in Cork Ireland, working at a bookstore, trying to make ends meet due to the financial crisis in Ireland.  She meets James Devlin working at the store and after a rocky start they become best friends and end up living together.

This story is written by Rachel in retrospect when she is married, pregnant and settled in London nearly a decade later.  Her life is vastly different from 20 year old Rachel.  As she looks back, you'll read the almost complicated story of how something so simple can spiral out of control.

This could be labeled as a coming-of-age story but it's more than that.  No, Rachel and Devlin do not fall in love. They love each other and always have the others back, are protective, but zero love interest as Rachel is heterosexual and James is gay.

Major characters in this book are Rachel's English professor Fred Byrne and Byrne's wife Deenie, his editor. Another is one of my favorites, James Carey, who is from Derry and drives Rachel crazy.  Every one of the relationships slowly coils and weaves into subplots where, quite deftly, it all comes together in the end.

The title - The Rachel Incident - isn't mentioned until the 98% mark on my Kindle.  Usually a title is woven in earlier in a book.  When I started this I thought it would be about college aged people drinking, getting high, nothing complicated but it develops quickly and I very much enjoyed it.

Some triggers (for some people) might be abortion issues and anti gay sentiment.  I hope the author writes more.

Sharing with  Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday

Messud's The Woman Upstairs and Henriquez' The Great Divide

 The Great Divide

This story set in 1907 explores how the Panama Canal  was built.  There are too many story lines, in my opinion, attempting to show how it affected a diverse group of people.  An intriguing premise but not enough in depth character development for me to get invested in the individual stories. 

There were the fishermen and locals, many of whom were against the Americans and big companies coming in and changing their way of life.  There were two different standards for pay and work for blacks and whites; the American workers and local workers called Gold and Silver for payment and living conditions.

The most interesting story to me was about Ada, the girl who traveled from Barbados to find work.  She had a sick sister who needed an operation so Ada was hellbent to send money back home.  Then it would jump to another story about a doctor from Tennessee who was there for research, a bully of a foreman who took advantage of the local workers, a village of people who were about to be displaced by flooding of their homes for a dam to be built.

It was hard to empathize with any one person or situation as you couldn't get to know them well before we went off to another storyline.  3 stars.

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

I have bookmarked so many passages in this book on my Kindle; where would I start to explain the raw emotions and thoughts of Nora Eldridge. She's an elementary school teacher with regrets, as all of us have I'm sure, about choices not made. The road not traveled. Dutiful daughter, dependable Nora, the quiet lady upstairs. Not the great artist with a passionate love life as she'd imagined.

Nora's mother Bella was Italian, an artist, creative and intelligent.  She desperately wanted Nora to go do more, follow her dreams and not be "trapped" in a marriage and dependent on anyone. 

"I always understood that the great dilemma of my mother's life had been to glimpse freedom too late, at too high a price."

In the beginning Nora is talking to us and she is angry.  A barely controlled anger where she spits out her thoughts, regrets, grievances with a fuck you to the world. Not a spoiler, but this dovetails neatly into the end as we learn about her life, assumptions made by her and others and a great betrayal.

Nora falls in love with a family.  Arriving late into her third grade class is Reza Shahid, an adorable little boy Nora comes to love.  She is also enamoured with Reza's mother Sirena and his Lebanese father, a scholar named Skandar.  She is slowly enveloped in their lives, sharing friendship and family time with them - all together and sometimes alone with only Sirena in a shared art studio or Skandar as he walks her home evenings she stays for dinner. They talk as they walk… well actually Skandar does most of the talking about history, philosophy and life. 

Nora and Sirena talk and share their thoughts and goals for their art. Close relationships between all of the Shahid family and Nora. What could go wrong. 

This is a literary fiction I enjoyed very much and will seek out more of Claire Messud's work. 5 stars.........keep me reading :-)

April Roundup

Note: I can not comment on WP blogs at this time. Even though I visit and try to comment, it won't work. There is a long winded reason for that and I need to wait for my old WP blog to delete.  Apparently it takes a month, long story.  Just a PSA here so you'll know.  Sorry to Vicki, Erin, Shelleyrae 😞 and anyone else I didn't mention with WP.

Reading, planting and eating....

Loaded the back of Rav up with Asiatic lillies, portulacas, Arizona Sun Blankets and a lone tomato plant.  I am always hopeful of growing tomatoes.  The deer are always hopeful I will try.

One of my go-to favorite meals is a black bean enchilada topped with loads of lettuce, tomato, sour cream and green onions.  Easy vegetarian meal.  Maduros were a nice side...kinda Tex-Mex-Cuban fusion :-0

April reading was quite varied in location and genres. I  had a DNF with Tana French's latest book The Hunter.  Surprising as I am a big fan of hers but I think it was the Dublin Murder Squad books which had me hooked. The Cal Hooper series isn't doing it for me.

Nope 🖓

📚📚   Books read  📚📚

The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring

I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story by Rick Bragg

The Empty House by Rosamunde Pilcher

Absolution by Alice McDermott - buddy read with JoAnn

April book travel took me to Maine, West Virginia, Iraq, Vietnam, Cornwall and Scotland.

 That's it for the April round up.   Looking forward to good reading this month.  Hope life is good for you all :-)

Sharing with:

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday. and Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

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