Three Days in June is the twenty-fifth novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Anne Tyler. When it is suggested to not-quite-sixty-two-year-old assistant headmistress Gail Baines that she might retire, or seek a different career path, she walks out the door of Baltimore’s Ashton High School. It’s a June Friday morning in 2023, the day of her daughter Debbie’s wedding rehearsal dinner, and she has better things to do than be informed that she lacks people skills.

Back at her compact little house, she is aware that Debbie, her prospective mother-in-law and the bridal attendants are at a Day of Beauty to which Gail wasn’t invited: is she feeling left out? It’s not her really sort of thing, anyway. But still.

A knock on the door heralds the unexpected arrival of her ex-husband, Max, complete with cat carrier containing the elderly, homeless cat he is fostering. His expected accommodation at Debbie’s is vetoed because the groom, Kenneth is severely allergic.

It's not ideal, but he can stay in her spare room, if there’s no alternative. But Max can quickly disabuse himself of the idea that she might adopt the nameless cat: not happening.

To Gail’s surprise, though, Max isn’t quite as messy or irritating as she remembers; in fact, is he more considerate and caring than he used to be? More than she expects, certainly. And if she is initially a bit dismissive of some of his ideas for her future, she finds them turning over in her mind anyway.

Later in the day, a distraught Debbie is on her doorstep, having learned something about Kenneth that puts the whole idea of a wedding in jeopardy. Indignant on her daughter’s behalf, Gail is ready to help cancel the event, but Max’s reaction is more circumspect: shouldn’t Kenneth get the chance to explain? Debbie draws conclusions from this about her parents’ marriage, but is she right?

What will the next two days bring?

It is always such a pleasure to read a book by Anne Tyler, and this one has you smiling all the way through, unless you are laughing out loud or saying “oh, dear” or “oh, my”. Nothing terribly dramatic happens, but Tyler’s special talent is making ordinary lives shine.

Tyler’s characters are ordinary people with flaws and believable quirks; their dialogue is just as ordinary and everyday; and yet, they are endearing, each in their own way. Her descriptive prose is marvellous: “Everything Sophie said, as a rule, was about three degrees too vivacious. It seemed that she lived on some other level than ours, someplace louder and more brightly lit.”

She gives them insightful observations like: “Anger feels so much better than sadness. Cleaner, somehow, and more definite. But then when the anger fades, the sadness comes right back again the same as ever.” At times Tyler’s writing, and her treatment of topics, is reminiscent of that of Elizabeth Strout, and some aspects of Gail’s inner monologue might remind readers of Olive Kitteridge.

Unusually for Tyler, there’s a twist, and it’s an excellent one. This wonderful little volume can easily be read in one sitting, and another reviewer summarises Anne Tyler’s work perfectly when she says “No one writes the small moments of everyday lives better.” With Anne Tyler, you’re always in safe hands, and this is a little, but perfect dose of her magic.

Model Home is the fourth novel by award-winning American author, Rivers Solomon. When Ezri Washington Maxwell gets a text from their Mama’s phone that reads “Children, I miss your screams. Come play.” they know it’s from the Nightmare Mother, the Ghost Mother, the woman without a face in the attic, the reason they left the family’s north Dallas gated community, where they were the only Black family, eighteen years earlier and fled to England. They share the message with their sisters back in Texas, Eve and Emmanuelle.

Ezri already understands that “It’s stupid to run from pain instead of to it because pain always comes, and if I could just accept that, life would not be a constant fluctuation between numbness and fear.”

Calls and texts to their parents have gone unanswered, and Eve comes straight back with a demand that they return home. Soon Ezri is on a plane with their fourteen-year-old daughter, Elijah. It’s Ezri who is sent to 677 Acacia Drive in Oak Creek Estates to do a welfare check on their Mama and Pop. They’re not in the house, but they are on the property, deceased, and while it looks like a murder/suicide, Ezri knows it isn’t: the house killed them, the house that terrorised them all throughout their childhood.

“A family hurts. It does. We are born in its noose.” How they came to live there, what happened to them, and why their parents didn’t pack up their family and leave, is gradually revealed in discussions between the siblings, extracts of Ezri’s therapy sessions and the flashbacks to the siblings’ childhoods, which are distinguished by the irritating feature of lacking quote marks for speech.

Solomon includes some dark themes in the story and their protagonist makes some puzzling choices, indulging in risky behaviour, and their care of Elijah comes under critical scrutiny. Most of the narrative is carried by Ezri, with Elijah taking a minor role, and it becomes gradually apparent that Ezri’s might not be entirely reliable. There are a few twists and surprises before the resolution. A thought-provoking and challenging read.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK Cornerstone

The Case of the Love Commandos is the fourth book in the Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator series by British journalist and author, Tarquin Hall. Troubled by a robbery case that isn’t presenting a solution, Vish Puri is reluctant to head off on a planned pilgrimage with the family in Jammu. His reprieve is a call from one of his operatives, Facecream, who moonlights as Love Commando, Laxmi. She urgently needs Puri’s help.

Making his apologies to family on the Jammu train before he heads off to Lucknow, Puri’s pocket is expertly picked, his wallet missing. From his own train carriage, he calls to enlist Rumpi to track down the thief but, against his express orders, she involves Mummy-ji who undertakes the task with alacrity. But even though the wallet is recovered, Mummy-ji is suspicious of what else the culprit might be up to: is he planning to get rid of his loudly-critical, obese wife? To rob the shrine? Definitely something…

The Love Commandos exist to help couples from different caste overcome obstacles to their marriage and, this time, the prospective bride, Tulsi Mishra has been plucked from her disapproving Brahmin father’s grasp only for her Dalit groom to be missing from the safe house. Has her father made good on his threat to kill Ram Sunder? Puri is a firm believer in the virtues of arranged marriage, so the Love Commandos’ raison d’etre goes against his grain, but an innocent young man’s life is at stake, and that takes priority.

Puri rushes to Ram’s village, where all is not as expected: a drunken father in a brick home he couldn’t possibly afford, Ram’s mother missing, and evidence of violence from outsiders. When the local police arrest Vishnu Mishra for the murder of Kamlesh Sunder, despite his cast-iron alibi, Puri knows something underhand is going on. Facecream sets up as a relief teacher in the village to find out what really happened to Ram’s mother, but soon finds herself fighting village-level corruption.

Something the villagers tell Facecream lead to Puri checking out a genome research lab, where he learns of the death of one of their scientists: he’s not convinced it’s accidental. And, to his chagrin, he hears that his rival PI, Hari Kumar is also on the case. On the road back to Delhi, a car following worries Puri enough for him to cock his pistol, and back in town, he learns his office has been bugged.

While he is not a superstitious person, his stubborn theft case, the pickpocketing and Hari Kumar’s involvement have Puri wondering if his usual boastful attitude about his successes has attracted the evil eye. He makes an offering to Shiva, and vows to do less bragging. Will he manage to solve this most challenging case?

As always, Hall provides a handy glossary, and as a bonus, some delicious-sounding recipes. The dialogue is always a delight, there are twists and turns to keep the reader guessing, and fans will look forward to the next in the series, The Case of the Reincarnated Client. Or they might like to peruse The Delhi Detective’s Handbook. Indian cosy crime at its best.

3.5?s
The World After Alice is the first novel by Lauren Aliza Green. On an icy February night, twelve years ago, sixteen-year-old Alce Weil went missing. CCTV from a nearby store showed that she stepped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River. No trace of her was ever found. After the tragedy, her parents’ marriage broke up.

Now, Alice’s younger brother, Benjamin, and her best friend, Morgan Hensley have invited family and friends to their wedding, revealing that they have been seeing each other for three years. The news gets quite a mixed reaction from their families.

Morgan’s mother Sequoia isn’t even coming, instead staying at her ashram in Goa; her father, Peter strongly feels it’s not a good idea (the Weil family aren’t over their grief), but he is a little nervous about seeing Benji’s mother, intending to reveal his true feelings for her; Benji’s dad, Nick acts like he’s happy about it, but paying his share of the wedding on top of supporting a much younger wife and their daughter is a problem now that he’s lost his job, a state of affairs about which he’s told no-one.

After divorcing Nick, Linnie went back to her maiden name of Olsen, and she’s a bit anxious about her plus-one, the college philosophy lecturer she’s been dating; Ezra Newman has told Linnie he knew Alice when he was teaching at Manhattan Tech, but hasn’t been entirely honest about that relationship; and most people there will remember what happened at the memorial service held two weeks after Alice disappeared.

And the happy couple? Benji is always upbeat, optimistic, but is he ignoring the potentially tense interactions between them all? Morgan is a bit concerned about the fact that Benji still searches online for his sister. She’s also disturbed to see Ezra Newman here. And Benji’s grandmother, Judith, with her dementia can be a bit unpredictable, often candid and sometimes unpleasant.

All bar Judith and Sequoia contribute to the narrative and their concerns, past and ongoing, are gradually revealed in musings and flashbacks. Each adds some insight that may help understand the troubled teen who stepped off the bridge, and what may have contributed to such a desperate act.

Green paints a very realistic picture of the effects on those left behind of a teen suicide: grief, guilt, blame and, maybe, eventually, recovery. Her characters have depth and her descriptive prose is evocative: “the long years when each hour was tendrilled by an ache so intense, she feared it would strangle her in her sleep” is an example. The epilogue is good, but something is still lacking in the resolution. A worthy debut.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Penguin Group/Viking

The Case Of The Deadly Butter Chicken is the third book in the Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator series by British journalist and author, Tarquin Hall. At a celebration dinner for a nephew’s cricketing success, Vish Puri is enjoying some illicit Butter Chicken on the terrace when he witnesses an exchange between the father of up-coming Pakistani fast bowler, Kamran Khan, and a man with an envelope. And he’s not the only one to observe it. A short time later, having enjoyed a plate of the same delicious dish, Faheem Khan suddenly collapses: his Butter Chicken was poisoned.

Puri is furious to be summarily excluded from the investigation by Delhi’s Police Chief, but then finds that English former Deputy Police Commissioner (recently departed from an investigative role with the International Cricket Federation) James Scott wants him to investigate on behalf of a new body, Clean Up Cricket. He’ll have to tread carefully: amongst the obvious suspects at Faheem’s table, there are some powerful individuals.

Some efficient legwork allows him to strike a few names from the list, but he is leaning towards a motive involving match-fixing: the envelope in Faheem’s pocket contained a lot of cash. In the interests of investigation, Puri has to place a bunch of losing bets on a cricket match at the home of a Syndicate bookie but, despite Facecream’s brilliant acting skills as his young girlfriend, his disguise isn’t sufficient. Were it not for an aconite-laced paan his host chewed, a sticky end had been in store for them; Mohib Alam was the second Syndicate bookie to meet this fate.

Worrying is Mummy-ji’s strange behaviour after meeting Kamran Khan and his father: is it because they are Pakistani? Before the partition, his mother grew up in Rawalpindi, so might she have known Faheem Khan? And distracting Puri from it all is the case he wishes he hadn’t agreed to take: record-length moustaches are being shaved off without the wearer’s consent. And, of course, there’s Puri’s ongoing battle with his weight…

Puri somehow manages to tie in a dog that dies in the middle of a cricket match, a lost expensive earring, and a slip of coded numbers with which his father-in-law, Brigadier Mattu might be able to help. Puri is forced to go to Pakistan to learn more, something he initially dreads, until he finds the people are friendlier than expected and the kadai gosht is as delicious as it was described. Over the course of his investigations, he is abducted, shot at, and threatened, but also gets to enjoy the luxury of the VVIP stand at Kotla Stadium.

As always, the stereotypically-Indian dialogue is a delight. When asked will she have a meal, Mummy-ji replies “Some hunger is there. I’ll be joining you shortly, na. Just I’ll take a bath. Ten minutes only is required.” In this instalment, Hall’s protagonist manages to expose an illegal betting syndicate, solve the moustache-theft mystery, and learn some surprising facts about Mummy-ji’s past. Once again, entertaining Indian cosy crime fiction. Bring on #4, The Case of the Love Commandos.

The Story Collector is the third novel by Irish author, Evie Gaughan who also writes as Evie Woods. Just before Christmas in 2010, Sarah Harper finally decides to quit her failing marriage but, at the airport, instead of flying to her sister in Boston, she impulsively gets on a plane to Shannon, in Ireland. This late in the day, when she arrives, there’s “no room at the inn” and she ends up in a cozy little cottage in Thornwood.

Still trying to ward off panic attacks after The Big Bad Thing that happened two years earlier, her somewhat ill-advised outdoor run leads to the discovery of the hundred-year-old diary of Anna Butler. Sarah finds it a fascinating read, as does Hazel Sweeney, the granddaughter of her cottage landlord.

Living with her family in a cottage in the County Clare village of Thornwood, eighteen-year-old Anna Butler stays busy with farm chores and lace-making, and wishing that George Hawley, the Lord’s sone at Thornwood Hall, would notice her. They do say “Be careful what you wish for”

When, in late 1910, Harold Griffin-Krauss, a serious Californian student of anthropology turns up needing a go-between for his research into fairy beliefs in the community, Anna is glad to help: it will be a change of scene, quite a number in the village have interesting stories to tell, and perhaps she’ll even share with him her own experience with the Good People.

When Harold is introduced to the Hawley twins, he’s less impressed by them than Anna expects, even though George’s twin, Olivia seems to have taken a liking to Harold. Amongst all the stories Anna and Harold hear, there’s a tragic one about the Hawley twins and their mother, talk of changelings. And there are rumours about George’s behaviour, but he’s such a charming gentleman, surely they can’t be true?

Woods puts a few nice parallels in her dual time line story, and gives her characters wise words and insightful observations. When a couple is grieving: “you end up saying what you think they want to hear. There’s a fear in all of us, that we’ll lose the relationship. But I suppose we end up losing ourselves instead.” However, the characters are not instantly relatable, and the style of the diary is unrealistic. A sweet little novel that will appeal to lovers of fairy folklore.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Harper Collins UK/One More Chapter.

The Case Of The Man Who Died Laughing is the second book in the Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator series by British journalist and author, Tarquin Hall. Very occasionally, Inspector Jagat Prakesh Singh of the Delhi Police asks for Vish Puri’s assistance on a case, and this time, it’s an extraordinarily puzzling one.

Dr Suresh Jha, retired mathematician and founder of DIRE (the Delhi Institute for Rationalism and Education), also known as the Guru Buster, has been stabbed with a disappearing knife by the goddess Kali whilst partaking of his morning exercise with the Rajpath Laughing Club. A French tourist has even captured it all on his phone.

Jha had recently insulted Maharaj Swami on national TV, and been told to await a miracle by the Swami. He’d also received a threatening letter the day before. Thus many believe it’s the Swami who has conjured this. Of course, Puri is convinced it’s all a trick of some sort and, having previously helped Jha to debunk the acts of various charlatans, will do his utmost to find a logical explanation.

Meanwhile, Vish’s Mummy-ji has joined her daughter-in-law, Rumpi’s kitty club and is incensed when the ladies are robbed at gunpoint during her first meeting. She’s determined to find the thieves, and is dragging a very reluctant Rumpi into the investigation, while staying under Puri’s radar: he would surely object. The police aren’t interested in the fingerprints and samples of the gunman’s DNA she cleverly obtained during the incident, but a few little things indicate to her that it’s an inside job.

Discovering just how it was done involves Puri visiting several of India’s greatest magicians, but to learn the truth he needs to infiltrate Maharaj Swami’s ashram, where Facecream, posing as his rebellious daughter, may find answers.

This instalment has quite a few twists, and before Puri identifies the culprit, he suffers a blow to the head, has to intervene when his brother-in-law heads for a bad investment, and has to grudgingly admit to being fooled by a clever bluff. Does he ever find out just what Mummy-ji and Rumpi got up to?

Hall’s protagonist does like to eat: “The idea that Vish Puri could resist getting involved in such a tantalising murder was preposterous. There was as much chance of him going without his lunch”. The mention of all the dishes he consumes is bound to stimulate the reader’s own appetite. At the end of the book there’s a handy glossary of Indian terms, and the dialogue is authentic and entertaining. The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken is eagerly awaited.

The Case Of The Missing Servant is the first book in the Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator series by British journalist and author, Tarquin Hall. The usual fare of Most Private Investigators Ltd. in Delhi is marriage: vetting prospective spouses. Vish Puri and his talented employees are good at what they do, and he takes pride in his inevitable successes.

The request from a Jaipur lawyer who believes himself under threat of prosecution is a surprise, but Ajay Kasliwal is an acquaintance of a friend, so Vish accepts the case. The Jaipur police want Kasliwal to produce Mary, the maid who disappeared in August, four months earlier, or face a charge of rape and murder. Kasliwal maintains his innocence: yes, he might not be completely faithful to his wife of twenty-nine years, but no, never with the staff.

Kasliwal is known for trying to clean up corruption in his city, and is convinced those he targets are trying to ruin his reputation. The badly beaten body of a young woman was found at the time Mary disappeared, but Vish finds it telling that police are only now pursuing her employer. The Inspector in charge of the case, though, believes he has found the killer and determined to make an example of Kasliwal.

Vish conducts interviews with the household but also arranged surveillance and infiltration to find out what really happened. Distracting him from the Jaipur case, Brigadier Bagga Kapoor who has taken against his granddaughter’s fiancé, unfairly, Vish believes: the young man may not have served India in war, but he is hardworking, teetotal, doesn’t use drugs or visit prostitutes. Does the Brigadier have a case?

Also, someone has emptied a six-shooter in Vish’s direction one morning while he attends to his roof-top garden. The police aren’t really interested, beyond saying the Puri houseboy is their main suspect, but Vish has examined the shooter’s likely position, and he has people on the case. He’s not at all happy that Mummy has decided to investigate. It’s true that she had occasionally assisted his late policeman father, but he really wishes she would keep out of this: he has it in hand.

Hall gives the reader plots with plenty of intrigue and a generous helping of humour; and a clever and likeable protagonist in this portly, persistent, Punjabi PI, with his quirkily-nicknamed team: Tubelight, Flush, Facecream and Handbrake.

Hall really has the measure of his setting: “Outside Jaipur’s District and Sessions Court, rows of male typists sat at small wooden desks bashing away at manual typewriters. The tapping of tiny hammers on paper punctuated by the pings of carriage bells was constant – the very sound of the great, self-perpetuating industry of Indian red tape” and the dialogue is authentic and entertaining. More of this cast is most welcome and, luckily there are at least another five novels in the series to be enjoyed.

“Sticking together, no matter what, is perhaps the family’s great blessing, but it’s also its greatest curse.”

Blood Ties is the second book in the Kingdom series by best-selling Norwegian musician, songwriter, economist and author, Jo Nesbo. It is translated from Norwegian by Robert Ferguson. Carl Opgard may be the acknowledged King of Os, but it’s his brother, Roy who goes to the geologist commissioned to report on the viability of the Todde tunnel to offer a bribe of twelve million kroner.

The tunnel would bypass the highway going through Os, adversely affecting all of their interests, including the Os Spa hotel, about to add an extra wing, and the rollercoaster Roy plans to build. The tunnel can’t go ahead, and Roy knows how to persuade, which buttons to press. Murder isn’t out of the question: between them, he and Carl have already killed seven.

Before the news of the tunnel’s demise goes public, Roy needs to buy the land for his amusement park at the right price, and then, once it is known that the highway will be upgraded, press the bank for the loan he needs to build the rollercoaster. Meanwhile, Carl needs to keep the French hotel group interested in their investment.

But Roy is a little distracted. Before the Highways Department constructs the crash barrier at the dangerous turn on Geitesvingen leading to their home, for which the Opgards have agitated, KRIPOS going to retrieve the three vehicles that went over the edge and 100m down into the Huken ravine, cars that didn’t actually get there by accident, and it’s hard not to worry what the police lab might find, even after all these years. Os Sheriff, Kurt Olsen is determined to pin a few murders on the brothers, including that of his father, then Sheriff Sigmund Olsen.

Another distraction is the return of Natalie Moe, the teenager whom he saved from domestic abuse, now an enchanting young woman employed by Carl to look after the Spa’s marketing. And perhaps to help promote the rollercoaster? Meanwhile, Carl has a few things on his mind as well: should he make things official with his married lover, the mother of his child? Progress on the palace he’s building himself is slow; and Os Spa’s incomings aren’t covering its debts.

Carl Opgard may be the one who went to America on a scholarship and spent fifteen years there, but Roy, without formal education, is far from stupid. He has street smarts, is quick-thinking, clever and creative, all talents he will need as things ramp up in their small town. Roy has multiple reasons to hate his brother but, up till now, the fact that they are brothers has always ranked over any other relationship. Has Carl pushed that too far, this time?

While this is a sequel to The Kingdom, it can easily be read stand-alone without confusion, although there are major spoilers for the first book. The blurb says that “the body count in Os is about to get higher” but is actually only increases by two, with a third in Oslo that is not by the Opgard brothers’ direct hand. A certain bathroom scene is blackly funny, while there’s also a particular dark humour in the climactic barn scene. This Scandi crime fiction is hard to put down.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK Vintage Harvill Secker

Tell Me Everything is the fifth book in the Amgash series by best-selling, Pulitzer Prize winning American author, Elizabeth Strout. Lucy Barton and her ex-husband Willian Gerhardt have been in Crosby, Maine for two years now, having quit New York City at the start of the pandemic. They have a house, Lucy does some volunteer work and writes in her little studio in town, and William works on developing potato varieties resistant to climate change.

Lucy has a close friendship with Bob Burgess, himself returned to Maine from New York City some fifteen years earlier. Bob also does some volunteer work, caring for solitary elders, and a bit of legal work from his office in Shirley Falls, but each looks forward to their regular walks by the river where they talk, Bob smokes an illicit cigarette, and they understand each other very well. All manner of topics are covered: envy, knowing one’s partner, grief, the meaning of life. And about some things: “’Don’t think about it.’ And she smiled at him to indicate their joke about how they both thought of things too much.”

Now ninety, Olive Kitteridge is a resident of the Maple Tree Apartments where she makes sure to daily visit her best friend, Isabelle Goodrow, over the bridge in higher care. She’s heard about the author newly come to Crosby, make a point of reading her books, and decides she may have a story that would interest Lucy Barton. She’s initially unimpressed by this mousy-looking little woman, is a little sharp, but that changes as they spend time together.

Lucy and Olive begin exchanging stories of what they call unrecorded lives. Sometimes they are interesting, sometimes they seem to lack a point, but Lucy says “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.” There are stories of family members, townspeople, and acquaintances whose lives contain thwarted love, cruelty, devotion, heartbreak, abuse, harassment, alcoholism, infidelity, sadness, and loneliness, but also beauty.

Somewhat in the background of life in Crosby, a woman who notoriously terrified the children when she was on school canteen duty, Gloria Beach goes missing while her youngest son Matthew is out getting groceries. A thorough search yields nothing, and investigations uncover a car hired with a stolen licence and credit card, the owner of which has a very strong alibi. The case goes cold.

When a body is found, months later, suspicion hangs over Matthew Beach. His sister, Diana begs Bob to take the case. When the woman’s will is located, it gives Matthew a motive, and it doesn’t help his case that Bob hears several women remark that they couldn’t blame him if he had killed her. Matthew is an enigmatic figure, a talented artist lacking social skills, but Bob is determined to help the man, even if he’s not telling the whole truth.

As always, Strout gives the reader a wonderful cast of characters with palpable emotions. Big-hearted Bob Burgess, unaware of his worth, excels at absorbing the suffering of others. In the course of the year, he loses a member of his extended family, almost loses another, tries to broker peace between a father and son, gives over and above care to a needy client, and, almost unwittingly, saves a good friendship from irreparable damage that acting on a crush would have wrought.

Lucy is now a grandmother but worries that she has become inconsequential to her daughters, while ageing Olive has lost little of her acerbic wit. Their chats are full of wisdom and insightful observations. Some people depend on a linchpin “I wonder how many people out there are able to be strong—or strong enough— because of the person they’re married to.”

Strout nails it on grief: “He was silently catapulted into an entirely new country, one he had never known existed, and it was a country of quietness and solitariness in a way that he could not—quite seriously—believe. A terrible silence seemed to surround him, he could not feel himself fully present in the world… And he understood then that this was a private club, and a quiet one, and no stranger passing him on the street would know that he was a member, just as he would not know if they were a member. He wanted to stop people he saw, older people especially who were walking alone, he wanted to say— Did your spouse die?”

Her writing, its quality, style and subject matter, is reminiscent of Sebastian Barry with shades of Anne Tyler. Strout writes about ordinary people leading what they believe are ordinary lives (although there are definitely some quirky ones doing strange things amongst them, like the vet giving a demented dog acupuncture) and she does it with exquisite yet succinct prose. Another moving, powerful read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Penguin UK Viking.

4.5 stars
We Solve Murders is the first book in the We Solve Murders series by British TV presenter, producer, director, and novelist, Richard Osman. By the time the third client of Maximum Impact Solutions has been murdered and left on display, Amy Wheeler and her boss, Jeff Nolan are concerned: Jeff because it’s losing him his remaining clients; Amy because she was in the vicinity when each murder occurred. There’s the distinct possibility someone is trying to frame her.

Amy is currently on duty guarding renowned fiction author, Rosie D’Antonio, whose last novel made her a target for a Russian chemicals oligarch. They’re on a yacht off the coast of South Carolina, with an ex-Navy SEAL who is doubling as chef, as their back-up. Relaxing, but it’s hard not to get bored. Amy misses the adrenaline, but she makes sure not to miss her daily calls to her recently-widowed father-in-law, Steve, back in the village of Axley, near the New Forest. She worries about him, he worries about her, they try to reassure each other everything’s OK.

After twenty-five years with the Met, Steve has taken to retirement a lot better than he expected to, not missing the excitement, working locally as a PI, enjoying pub quiz evenings, chatting to the regulars, and watching TV with his cat, Trouble, on his lap, although he can’t turn off his habit of noting down anything, even the smallest detail, out of the ordinary. His Dictaphone also serves to share his day with now-sadly-absent Debbie.

The murder of that Instagram influencer on the yacht, the one shot, then tied to a rope and thrown in for the sharks, leaving behind a million dollars in cash, that has piqued his interest a little, mostly because it’s near where Amy is looking after that author, but not his affair, so, well, “You don’t have to play with every ball of string that rolls your way.” As long as Amy is safe…

But then it turns out she isn’t. she and Rosie are on the run from a murderer; there’s a lot of blood in Jeff’s car, so he might be dead; and Amy needs someone she can trust to help out. Steve very reluctantly agrees to fly over, as long as he’ll be back for pub quiz on Wednesday.

It turns out that Steve hasn’t lot his touch and manages to learn something useful. Rosie’s private plane comes in handy for flights to St Lucia and Cork, and she’s got some hidden talents for thwarting assassins. But still, learning the identity of the mastermind, the money smuggler behind it all, is proving a challenge, although the astute reader will have the culprit in their sights from first appearance.

While some plot points are a little sloppily executed, and the scene with the cable ties requires the reader to don their disbelief suspenders, the bulk of the novel is such fun that these are almost forgiven. The dialogue is delightful, often laugh-out-loud funny, and readers will recognise many of the characters as people who populate their own village or town. More of this cast is definitely welcome. Very entertaining!

All The Light We Cannot See is the Pulitzer prize-winning second novel by Anthony Doerr. The audio version is narrated by Julie Teal. In 1934, six-year-old Marie-Laure LeBlanc is going blind, and her widowed father, Daniel, principal locksmith at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, spends his spare time crafting intricate models of their part of the city so that she will be able to find her way when her sight is gone. She spends her days interrogating the scientists, technicians and warders at the museum about their expert subjects, or reading and rereading the Braille novels her father gives her on her birthdays.

Also at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, hidden behind many locked doors, is the Sea of Flames, a pear-cut diamond that, according to legend, is cursed, preventing the person who has it from dying, while bringing bad luck and even peril to those around them. When the war begins, the director of the museum understands just how coveted it might be, and takes action. He’s not wrong: it’s on Adolf Hitler’s wishlist.

In a home for the orphans of coal miners in Zollverein, Germany, seven-year-old Werner Pfennig and his younger sister Jutta are under the care of French House directress, Frau Elena. Werner is small, with a shock of white hair, resourceful, a talented scavenger, and ever curious, always, always reading, and when they find a discarded radio, he is able to make it work, even improve its function. Educational programs from who-knows-where have Jutta’s fervent attention while the other children love the music.

But while Werner is absorbed in his textbook, Jutta hears news from foreign countries, and is dismayed and disturbed by what she hears her country is doing (bombing Paris!)

All the boys in the home are destined for the mine where his father died; it’s Werner’s reputation for radio repair, and his aptitude for mathematics that puts him on a different course. At General Heissmeyer’s famous school, he joins other German boys of the right appearance, some smart, some the offspring of influential people. It’s not a kind place but Werner’s genius puts him under Dr Hauptmann’s protection.

With the threat of occupation by German forces, the Museum director sends Daniel LeBlanc away: he and Marie-Laure end up in the Saint Malo home of his uncle, Maire-Laure’s seventy-six per cent crazy Great Uncle Etienne.

How the boy, the blind girl, and the diamond end up in Saint Malo on August 8th, 1944 as the Americans bomb the city and a Nazi gemmologist searches for the elusive stone, is the story Doerr tells, over two time-lines, via multiple narratives (even the city gets a turn or two), and letters between family members.

With gorgeous descriptive prose, Doerr easily evokes his setting and era even as he describes the subtleties of the German propaganda machine, the instances, both large and small, of indoctrination, the mindset that led to collaboration with the enemy, the cruelty of those in power and the atrocities they commit or condone; but also the tiny acts of resistance that will have the reader cheering on the Malouins.

Like Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, it tells the story of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances, and Doerr gives the reader characters who repay emotional investment. Marie-Laure’s descriptions come from her unique perspective: “Madame seems like a great moving wall of rosebushes, thorny and fragrant and crackling with bees.” It's war, so there are no unrealistic happy endings, but there are lots of moving moments and one or two very satisfying ones. A deserving prize-winner.

“Everything can be beautiful with the right eyes and ears. Every genre of music. Every sorrow and every pleasure. Every inhale and exhale. Every guitar solo. Every voice. Every plant beside the tarmac.”

The Life Impossible is the eleventh novel by award-winning British author, Matt Haig. It’s a heartfelt email from a former student that prompts retired high school mathematics teacher, Grace Winters to document her recent life-changing experience in Ibiza. She begins by describing the sad, lonely life of a virtually penniless widow whose guilt over the death of her son cemented the belief that she was a bad person. Poor behaviour followed.

She’s shocked to learn she has inherited a villa on the island of Ibiza from Christina van der Berg, a teacher to whom she long ago showed some small amount of kindness. With no reason to stay in Lincoln, she packs a bag and flies over, if only to check the place out and, maybe, to find out more about how Christina died, for which there has, so far only been a vague explanation: lost at sea.

But the uncharming villa located on a busy road is dusty, stale, a bit humid. At least there is a Fiat Panda for transport. A letter left by Christina suggests places to visit, including an exhortation to go scuba diving with Alberto Rivas at Atlantis Scuba. And to go dancing! At seventy-two, Grace considers doing either of these would be folly. The letter also hints that Christina knew she was going to die.

An examination of her villa reveals: the expected reading matter except for, unusually, a book on clairvoyancy; a wall of photos of Christina with her ex-husband and daughter, as well as celebrities in nightclubs where she sang; an olive jar full of seawater that seems to refill itself; and a strange yellow flower outside the door.

But as she talks to people on the island who knew Christina, who all seem to be expecting her, a picture emerges of a woman estranged from her adult daughter (a well-known DJ), a woman who had a popular stall at the hippy market telling fortunes, an activist who vocally campaigns against developments that threaten to damage the island’s sensitive environment. But Grace begins to feel like she’s been set up, recruited, especially when she meets the man who might know what happened to Christina.

Ultimately, she does end up diving, down to the oldest living organism on Earth, the Posidonia seagrass, dancing at a disco, attending a protest rally, and gambling for high stakes at the casino. She does quite a lot of unusual eavesdropping and ends up in an extraordinary showdown with a developer. She offers her former student a fantastical story that begins “I have never believed in magic, and I still don’t. But sometimes what looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet” and says he can believe or reject as he wishes.

She also offers a bunch of wise words and insightful observations that anyone can apply to their life, telling the young man “When things are wrong, we need to reach rock bottom in order for change to happen. We sometimes need to feel trapped in order to find the way out” and that the ultimate lesson is “leave a door open in your mind to possibility. We are never at the finish line of understanding. There is always something about life and the universe that we are still to discover.”

Alberto observes “Reality is merely an illusion. A very persistent one. Sometimes the illusion is the reality we don’t understand yet” while Grace notes “sometimes we can’t accept the truth that is right in front of our eyes. And that sometimes the mad people of one era become the sages of the next.” Matt Haig never fails to fascinate, to make his reader think, and to evoke strong emotions. Just wonderful!
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Canongate.

“…a man doesn’t come home from the park. The boy he was with, his youngest son, runs home by himself, scraped up, blood under his nails, traumatized.”

Happiness Falls is the second novel by Korean-American author, Angie Kim. When Mia Parkson’s father goes missing, a combination of factors sees her ignoring signs that should have set alarm bells ringing, and results in a delay of at least four hours before a search for him starts.

Complicating everything is the fact that the one person who might know what happened to him, her fourteen-year-old brother, Eugene, has been diagnosed both with autism and Angelman syndrome: his motor dysfunction means he doesn’t speak. Further complicating matters is the fact that this all takes place in June 2020, with its attendant COVID tests, quarantines and hospitalisations.

As the search gets underway, a persistent police detective questions the family: Mia, her twin brother, John, and their mother, Dr Hannah Park, for any out of character detail that might offer a clue. They explore numerous possibilities trying to work out where Adam Parson might have gone and why: the idea of his leaving Eugene to fend for himself is rejected out of hand.

But a voicemail on Adam’s cell phone, and out-of-state use of his ATM card, has them wondering just how well they knew him. And cell phone footage from bystanders has the police looking at Eugene, making the family determined to protect him from the stress of an interrogation they feel he hasn’t the ability to withstand.

Over the next hours, a series of urgent, awful emergencies keep getting interrupted and displaced by more urgent, more awful emergencies, and as John and Hannah try to keep the family functioning, and to prevent Eugene from the distress of detention, Mia searches her father’s computer, making some disturbing discoveries…

The research data on happiness that Mia finds in Adam’s computer has her wondering if their family were mere guinea pigs for his study of the subject. And eventually, the family comes to understand that perhaps they don’t know Eugene as well as they have always believed.

Kim explores a number of fascinating topics in this riveting mystery: the concept of happiness and the many theories around it; attitudes to oral fluency, verbal skills and their relation to intelligence; and the danger of assumptions and misconceptions. She deftly illustrates the trap that probably few will avoid: “Just because you can’t speak doesn’t mean you can’t think or understand.” An informative, moving and utterly enthralling read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Faber & Faber.

Olive, Again is the second book in the Olive Kitteridge series by award-winning, best-selling American author, Elizabeth Strout and it follows on almost directly from the first book. Strout again takes us into the lives of the people of Crosby, Maine, over a period of xx years, ordinary lives occasionally punctuated by extraordinary events that bring great joy or sorrow or excitement.

Having connected with Olive Kitteridge, recently-widowed Jack Kennison is disappointed when all contact suddenly ceases. Luckily, that’s not through any sort of offence but a series of miscommunications and an electronic hiccough. But while he’s on his own, he does make an effort to reconnect with the daughter from whom he’s estranged, and he reaches out to his late wife’s college crush, to be given an unpleasant surprise.

When he does reconnect with Olive, he also has a disturbing encounter with traffic cops to relate, while she shares her disdain over a baby shower she attends that culminates in delivering a baby. Olive visits a friend in a nursing home, observes that the home of a troubled local family takes the life of the husband when it is destroyed by fire, and finally invites her son, his wife and their children to visit.

She meets, for the first time, her (mostly) delightful two-year-old grandson, Henry, named for her late husband, but has to endure the presence of the boy’s step-siblings. She revels in reconnecting with her son but, what she witnesses from his wife when she reveals her plan to marry has her considering her own occasional public behaviour towards her husband.

Others whose lives intersect, sometimes only fleetingly, with Olive’s include young Kayley Callaghan, a late-in-life child who grieves the loss of her dad, feels ignored by her mom, visits a former neighbour in a nursing home, and works after school cleaning homes for Crosby’s matrons. She secretly shares something with one of their husbands that would attract disapproval.

When she comes to deal with the aftermath of her father’s death in the housefire, Suzanne Larkin seeks the support of his lawyer, Bernie Green, and they find common ground and give each other strength. Tom Coomb is surprised to find that his wife, Cindy, suffering from her chemo, actually wants visits from Olive Kitteridge.

Denny Pelletier worries about how quiet his grown children are until he encounters one of their classmate in a very bad way, and hears about the tragic fate of one of his own school mates; Civil war re-enactment enthusiast, Fergus MacPherson is told by his daughter that she’s the subject of a documentary, but the topic is very upsetting.

Olive has a pedicure, goes for a drive to Shirley Falls with Jack and is supportive when he has an uncomfortable encounter with a former lover. At the point when she has been widowed for a second time, for four months, she unexpectedly breakfasts with a Crosby student who became US Poet Laureate, which impresses only some she tells. She feels a distinct loneliness, a sadness emanates from this woman. Only later does she learn that she’s the subject of a poem. She observes “When you get old, you become invisible… it’s just that you don’t count anymore, and there’s something freeing about that.”

Strout gives the reader an update on the Burgess family when Jim and Helen visit Crosby: Jim misses Maine, Helen hates it. To his dismay, Bobby’s wife Margaret fails to conceal her dislike for Helen, too much alcohol is consumed and bones are accidentally broken. One of the protagonists from Amy and Isabelle also appears.

Olive has serious medical issues that warrant several visits from her son, and a kind of reconciliation, and eventually accepts that living alone in Jack’s house is no longer feasible. She ends up where she always dreaded going, and finds the other residents irritating until she connects with a newcomer. By the time she is eighty-three, there are continence and mobility issues, but she and the one friend she has at Maple Tree Apartments look out for each other. Memories, though, Olive has many, and begins to document them…

Olive continues to be a bit of an enigma: many in Crosby think her an old bag and wonder that anyone else would marry her; she is still direct to the point of rudeness, never suffers fools, manages to unwittingly estrange those she cares about to the extent of her own heartbreak (kids are just a needle in your heart, she later observes), yet has an ability to perceive when others are struggling, knowing when to step up, and what is required. Perceptive, funny and sad in equal measure.

4.5?s
The Life and Death of Rose Doucette is a novel by American author, Harry Hunsicker. Former Dallas cop, now PI, Dylan Fisher is curious when the ex-wife he hasn’t seen for three years, Homicide Detective Sergeant Rose Doucette wants his input on a case that has been deemed suicide by her colleagues. She’s convinced that Josh Gannon, fresh out of prison, has been murdered.

But Dylan is shocked when someone from the grey Chevy Tahoe following her shoots her dead. Grief mix with frustration when a corrupt Dallas cop who bears Dylan a grudge, Detective Lutz tries to pin her murder on him. Luckily, he has a very competent lawyer on tap, and Mia Kapoor has him out on bail quick smart. But the judge’s warning that he refrain from investigating will be impossible for Dylan to obey.

Those investigations attract the attention of some nasty characters, ex-military types who are clearly in the employ of whoever wants to suppress the information that Rose had. These men demonstrate that they have no qualms about killing, and the body-count of those who might know something steadily rises.

An added complication is Rose’s second husband who is determined to see Dylan punished for killing his wife. When the danger threatens those he cares most about, Mia and her baby son Caleb, it crystallises Dylan’s resolve to uncover what is behind the killings. When her ex and her widower eventually join forces, they begin to understand how little they knew about Rose’s past, and the sort of power and influence they’re up against.

Hunsicker gives the reader believeable characters and a twisty plot with a hefty body count and an exciting climax. This is a gripping crime thriller and more of this cast would be welcome.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Oceanview Publishing.

“She thought nothing could be told and be accurate. Feeble words dropped earnestly and haphazardly over the large stretched-out fabric of life with all its knots and bumps”

The Burgess Boys is the fifth novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Elizabeth Strout. Susan Burgess Olson stayed in her Maine hometown of Shirley Falls even when Steve Olson left her to return to Sweden. Her brothers, high-profile attorney Jim Burgess, and her twin, appellate lawyer Bob Burgess, ended up in New York. But now, she has a crisis with her nineteen-year-old son, Zachary, and they need to return.

Shirley Falls has become a destination for Somali refugees, and Zachary Olson does a stupid thing, as a joke, that understandably causes huge upset within that community and sees him facing court for his actions. His Uncle Bob drops everything to travel to Shirley Falls to support his twin and her son, even though he and Susan don’t get on, while Jim and his wife Helen don’t alter their planned vacation on St Kitts.

Jim does organise the best local lawyer he can find for Zach, later speaks at a rally for goodwill which, in hindsight, does more damage than good to Zach’s case, and is there to support his nephew at the court hearing. But the judge’s orders then are not an end to it, and Jim and Helen’s lives are repeatedly interrupted with new dramas concerning Zach.

Bob is always there to lend support, even though his contribution is belittled by Jim and not exactly appreciated by Susan. It’s on one of these occasions, when Jim has imbibed more than usual, that he reveals to his brother the truth about something that has plagued Bob since he was a boy: a shocking truth that turns his world upside-down.

Strout uses multiple narrators to tell the story, and from their different perspectives, the reader also learns about each character. Jim seems to be basically a good guy but hates Maine, hates Shirley Falls and treats his younger brother badly, heaping on the insults and criticism at every encounter. His wife Helen is entirely focussed on her own family and has nothing but disdain for the Burgess family members, except of course Jim.

Bob has a big heart and is kind to everyone, despite being the subject of his brother’s scorn from a very young age. Bob’s ex, Pam still considers the Burgesses her family, still loves them despite being married to Ted and bearing his sons. Police Chief Gerry O’Hare tries his best for the citizens of Shirley Falls, but has to maintain a balance between the various factions who support or revile the immigrants.

As a child, Susan suffered under her mother’s cruelty and was determined to better as a mother, but is at a complete loss with her quiet, friendless son. Abdikarim Ahmed has witnessed so much horror in his life, including the violent loss of his son, yet can see that Zachary is just a frightened boy, but the wheels of justice turn relentless.

Strout has a talent for describing ordinary people living ordinary lives occasionally punctuated by extraordinary events that bring great joy or sorrow or excitement. Over the course of about a year, she gives the reader significant episodes in the lives of the people from this small Maine town, and the reader can’t help feeling for them and hoping for positive outcomes.

Strout treats the reader to some gorgeous descriptive prose: “…the incident was an irritant rubbing already against the fine fabric or her family, and she felt right now the small pricks of anxiety that precede insomnia” and “…she learned – freshly, scorchingly – of the privacy of sorrow. It was as though she had been escorted through a door into some large and private club that she had not even known existed. Women who miscarried. And the women in the club mostly passed each other silently” and “No exchange rate for the confidence of youth” are examples.

Also: “The silence – where there had been for so long the sound of Pam’s voice, her chatter, her laughter, her sharp opinions, her sudden bursting forth of tears – the absence of all that, the silence of no showers running, nu bureau doors opening and shutting, even the silence of Bob’s own voice, for he did not speak when he came home, did not recount to anyone his day – the silence almost killed him” and “…he went about his life unencumbered by the crust of doubt he’d been so used to that he had not known it covered him until it was gone.” Moving and uplifting.

The Lewis Man is the second book in the Lewis Trilogy by award-winning British journalist and author, Peter May. Ten months on from losing his young son to a hit-and-run, Fin Macleod has quit his police job, divorced his wife of fourteen years, and is back on the Isle of Lewis, renovating the derelict white house on his late parents’ croft. Will he stay? Uncertain.

He’s tentatively connecting with Fionnlagh, the teenaged son he didn’t know he had (although he feels the same is unlikely with his first love, Marsaili, the young man’s widowed mother), when DS George Gunn brings puzzling news. A young man’s body, the victim of a brutal attack, has been uncovered in the local peat bog.

This corpse, though, was not buried hundreds of years ago, but perhaps less than sixty, and DNA indicates a sibling relationship to Tormod Macdonald, father of Marsaili. The match makes the old man the prime and only suspect, but Tormod always claimed to be an only child, and now has rapidly deteriorating dementia, which will make identifying the body a challenge.

While Gunn and Marsaili feel that anything Tormod tells them can’t be relied upon, Fin believes that the old man’s scattered recollections and fragments of memory are probably accurate, and that he would have no reason to lie. He regards what seem to be irrational ravings as potential clues and, with a somewhat reluctant Gunn, follows up on them to make a startling discovery.

Before the truth is revealed, there are trips to Eriskay and Edinburgh, to a tiny seaside village with an unusual church, and chats with a genealogist, an archivist, a former orphanage inmate, and a well-known Edinburgh crime figure. The friction between Catholic and Protestant, the “homers” taken from orphanages and often forced into slave labour, the traditional knitting patterns of Eriskay, and a St Christopher medal, all play significant parts.

May employs twin narratives to tell the story: Fin’s details present day events while Tormod recalls incidents from his youth, six decades earlier. As always, May’s gorgeous descriptive prose evokes the rugged beauty of his setting: “All along the ragged coastline, the sea sucked and frothed and growled, tireless legions of riderless white horses crashing up against the stubborn stone of unyielding black cliffs.” is one example.

Another: “The sky was black and blue, brooding, contused, rolling in off the ocean low and unbroken. The first spits of rain were smeared across his windscreen by the intermittent passage of its wipers. The pewter of the ocean itself was punctuated by the whites of breaking waves ten or fifteen feet high, and the solitary blue flashing light of the police car next to the ambulance was swallowed into insignificance by the vastness of the landscape.” The third instalment of this excellent Scottish crime trilogy, The Chessmen, is eagerly anticipated.

Olive Kitteridge is the first book in the Olive Kitteridge series by award-winning, best-selling American author, Elizabeth Strout. The small coastal Maine town of Crosby is where Olive Kitteridge and her husband Henry have lived most of their lives. Olive taught math at the Junior High School for thirty-two years; Henry was a pharmacist in the next town over until he retired.

Olive is a bit of an enigma: many in Crosby wonder how Henry puts up with her; she can be direct to the point of rudeness, never suffers fools, is petty and vindictive when it suits her, manages to unwittingly estrange those she cares about to the extent of her own heartbreak, yet can be uncannily perceptive to what others in distress need. When, in her early seventies, her son finally has the wherewithal to be candid, telling her she is bad tempered, her moods capricious, she is mystified and hurt.

Strout has a talent for describing ordinary people living ordinary lives occasionally punctuated by extraordinary events that bring great joy or sorrow or excitement. She gives the reader significant episodes in the lives of the people of Crosby, told from multiple perspectives, and while Olive narrates only some, she features in each one, sometimes as a bystander, sometimes in a more important role.

Related in separate chapters are instances of infidelity, accidental killing and the ensuing grief, a suicide thwarted, ageing, anorexia, an armed hold-up during which are uttered cruel words that can never be unsaid, superficial friends, a couple become reclusive through the actions of their son, early widowhood, confessions of adultery, the aftermath of a last-minute wedding cancellation, a progression from petty theft to arson, and late-in-life relationships. “But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss Cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union – what pieces life took out of you.”

Strout treats the reader to some gorgeous descriptive prose: “At the very moment Kevin became aware of liking the sound of her voice, he felt adrenaline pour through him, the familiar, awful intensity, the indefatigable system that wanted to endure. He squinted hard toward the ocean. Great gray clouds were blowing in, and yet the sun, as though in contest, streamed yellow rays beneath them so that parts of the water sparkled with frenzied gaiety.”

When, at a certain point, Olive feels “something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat; the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water – seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it”, Kevin’s perception is different: “Hope was a cancer inside him. He didn’t want it; he did not want it. He could not bear these tender green shoots of hope springing up within him any longer.” A deserving prize-winner.

“It wasn’t until she took a playwriting course that she realized the only thing mightier than giving a stellar performance was being the person who crafted the words an actor spoke.”

By Any Other Name is the twenty-ninth novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Jodi Picoult. At Bard College, Melina Green’s professor encourages her to enter into a collegiate playwriting competition something that will make her feel vulnerable. But the savaging meted out by the young NYT theatre critic judging the entrants ruins her prospects and dampens her creative enthusiasm.

Ten years on, she’s had only minor successes when her dad mentions an ancestor on her mother’s side who lived in Elizabethan times and was the first published female poet in England. Melina is intrigued and goes to her favourite place, the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives room, to research this fascinating woman.

The more she reads, the more certain she becomes that Emilia Bassano was not only the first published female poet in England. She might very well have been a playwright, too. The playwright, actually. The most famous one in history. It’s the inspiration and impetus she needs to write a new play, which she titles By Any Other Name.

Emilia Bassano was born into a family of court musicians who had emigrated from Italy. After her father dies, her mother goes into service elsewhere, and her patroness’s new husband is heading to Holland, Emilia is traded to a peer by her cousin Jeronimo for his family’s job security. She has lessons with a courtesan and, at age thirteen, Emilia becomes mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Carey.

But she had been educated whilst with her patroness, and had the opportunity to travel. In the Lord Chamberlain’s study, she gets to see the “foul” copies of plays before they are approved and, attending a performance, she marvels that: “A playwright had taken a fresh, blank sheet of paper and from it, had made three thousand strangers feel.” She begins to write.

But women aren’t permitted to write plays, so eventually she acquiesces to her friend Christopher Marlowe’s suggestion to sell her work to a male playwright. He tells her “It does not matter if they know you. It only matters that they heard what you had to say.”

Soon enough, “She believed words written by a woman about women might allow audiences to see them more fully, to realize that they had thoughts and dreams and worth. The fact that she had to borrow a man’s name to do that was a small price to pay.”

Melina faces almost the same hurdle: even in the twenty-first Century, the work of a female playwright is much less likely to be chosen, especially by white male producers. So her best friend and roommate, Andre Washington, black, gay, also unpublished, submits her work under the gender-ambiguous Mel Green. When it is lauded by the same critic who savaged her earlier work, and fast-tracked for performance, it presents them with a dilemma: be honest about the authorship, or be produced?

Picoult gives the reader a fabulous collision of reality and imagination, interweaving fact with fiction, all of it rich in historical detail, and featuring a marvellously diverse cast of real people and fictional characters. The depth of her research is apparent on every page and her descriptive prose is very evocative.

She tells her story through three narrators and a dual timeline, adding excerpts from the rehearsal script of Melina’s play. Her characters are multi-dimensional and easily attract the reader’s care and concern for their fate. There are parallels and echoes between the two stories, and quite a few twists to make it even more interesting.

She gives her characters wise words and insightful observations: “Love was a religion all its own, one that could damn you or save you or turn you into a zealot” and “When the only stories told are by straight white men, it becomes the norm. People assume that the only stories that will turn a profit are stories about that particular experience— when in fact there are whole untapped audiences who would love to see their lives replicated on a stage” are examples.

The premise that Emilia Bassano, a brilliant woman who had been silenced by societal restrictions, might have written some of Shakespeare’s plays, is convincingly presented, as is the assertion that little has changed in the world of theatre for female playwrights (and those of other marginalised groups). Picoult’s work is always topical and thought-provoking, and this one is sure to polarise readers.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Allen & Unwin.