Here, Mary Lawson is at her best. I loved reading this novel, because it seemed effortless, and yet so many complex issues were dealt with in the relationships of the Cartwright family.
A reclusive father, unable to cope with the unraveling of his wife's mind, sits in his study and dreams of parts unknown while ignoring the running of the household. Tom, 24, returns home after a stint as an aeronautical engineer, because of the suicide of his best friend. Margot keeps all the wheels in motion, as her mum is upstairs, in the bedroom, with the latest baby. Absorbed and absolved of all duties, she has one baby after another as she cannot cope with the kids once they are not babies.
And yet, there seems to be a shadow looming...Margot starts to question her mother's sanity.
There are countless children, boys of all sizes, making a lot of noise. Margot must escape if she is to live her own life.
Margot escapes to London, settles there and yet is drawn back to Canada because of the baby brother she reared. The family is never far from her mind. But the sense that she will be trapped into duty keeps her away for a long time.
Woven in these lives are so many threads and the beautifully drawn characters keep us engaged and wondering about them once the book ends.
Loved it.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Saturday, May 25, 2019
The Stone Crusher | Jeremy Dronfield
For every person killed in the Holocaust, there is a story. This is another non-fiction account of a father and son who did not die, but were interned in all the major concentration camps, and survived.
There are similarities with other survival stories: small miracles of food and friendship, being in the right line or section in a camp, benign kapos, which helped Gustav Kleinmann and his son Friz survive the horrors of war.
They were caught ( Vienna, Austria) and shipped to Buchenwald early on in the war, and had to help build it. Thanks to this Fritz gained construction skills which kept him alive in the following years. There were many intellectuals and political prisoners here and thanks to them Fritz gained an education in his own country's history and politics.
Gustav was shipped to Auschwitz and Fritz volunteered to go with him, knowing that together they might have a chance of surviving. En route they were separated and Fritz spent some time in Mauthausen, where prisoners were killed though hard labour.
Over the whole of the six year ordeal, Gustav kept a diary of sorts in a small notebook he managed to keep with him. Fritz didn't know of it, and after the war was able to piece together more of their story through his father's notes.
Through the notebook, interviews with Fritz and other eye-witness accounts, Dronfiled has pieced together this remarkable story. The bonds between father and son kept them alive, when all was hopeless and lost.
There are similarities with other survival stories: small miracles of food and friendship, being in the right line or section in a camp, benign kapos, which helped Gustav Kleinmann and his son Friz survive the horrors of war.
They were caught ( Vienna, Austria) and shipped to Buchenwald early on in the war, and had to help build it. Thanks to this Fritz gained construction skills which kept him alive in the following years. There were many intellectuals and political prisoners here and thanks to them Fritz gained an education in his own country's history and politics.
Gustav was shipped to Auschwitz and Fritz volunteered to go with him, knowing that together they might have a chance of surviving. En route they were separated and Fritz spent some time in Mauthausen, where prisoners were killed though hard labour.
Over the whole of the six year ordeal, Gustav kept a diary of sorts in a small notebook he managed to keep with him. Fritz didn't know of it, and after the war was able to piece together more of their story through his father's notes.
Through the notebook, interviews with Fritz and other eye-witness accounts, Dronfiled has pieced together this remarkable story. The bonds between father and son kept them alive, when all was hopeless and lost.
Mr Peacock's Possessions | Lydia Syson
This is worth reading!
As more and more blogs and reviews pop up everywhere, I want to concentrate on having a blog which encourages you to read books which are worth spending time on. I've just read three great books in a row, and this is one of them.
The setting is intriguing: a small uninhabited island in the Pacific, 1879. Based on the author's great uncle King Bell, who lived on the island of Raoul. Remote, harsh, volcanic. Fertile but grim.
The Peacock family is driven to the island by the father's manic desire to own an island, to be self-sufficient, to rage against the machine... The family has to go along with him and as more and more children are born, they build rudimentary shelters, plant gardens for food, fight off rats and goats, and forge a life for themselves.
Ships pass every few years, and one of them brings eight pacific island men to work for them to establish plantations and industry, all part of the Father's imagination.
The day the men arrive, the oldest son disappears and the family starts to unravel and the island's secrets are uncovered.
This story is very powerful, explores aspects of family life, exploration and colonisation in such a way that it captures us and keeps us reading, wondering how things can possibly be resolved.
As more and more blogs and reviews pop up everywhere, I want to concentrate on having a blog which encourages you to read books which are worth spending time on. I've just read three great books in a row, and this is one of them.
The setting is intriguing: a small uninhabited island in the Pacific, 1879. Based on the author's great uncle King Bell, who lived on the island of Raoul. Remote, harsh, volcanic. Fertile but grim.
The Peacock family is driven to the island by the father's manic desire to own an island, to be self-sufficient, to rage against the machine... The family has to go along with him and as more and more children are born, they build rudimentary shelters, plant gardens for food, fight off rats and goats, and forge a life for themselves.
Ships pass every few years, and one of them brings eight pacific island men to work for them to establish plantations and industry, all part of the Father's imagination.
The day the men arrive, the oldest son disappears and the family starts to unravel and the island's secrets are uncovered.
This story is very powerful, explores aspects of family life, exploration and colonisation in such a way that it captures us and keeps us reading, wondering how things can possibly be resolved.
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