Wot I’ve been reading
There’s been a hiatus due to technical problems. In case you didn’t find your way to my resurrected old blog, here are the reviews you missed:
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Gay love in the trenches of World War One
ALICE WINN: In Memoriam
At a boys’ private school in rural England teenage Sidney Ellwood is infatuated with Henry Gaunt. They both write poetry (in a postscript Alice Winn admits that she drew inspiration for her two lead characters from Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Graves) and have been dabbling in adolescent sex with other pupils. But this is 1914 and Britain is going to war with Germany. Girls are giving white feathers to young men accusing them of cowardice if they are out of uniform.
As soon as they are old enough (18) Gaunt and Ellwood join up and find themselves reunited with other old boys from their school in the trenches of Belgium and France, culminating in the Somme, where wave after wave of British soldiers fight to advance a few yards into German-occupied territory. We already know the casualty rate: thousands die; thousands more will go home scarred and mutilated physically and mentally. The “war to end all wars”; of course, it didn’t.
Alice Winn is not the first female author to write about men at war. Pat Barker wrote a Booker-prize-winning trilogy and an early Susan Hill novel has gay love flourishing in the trenches. Like her predecessors, Winn writes beautifully and does eloquent justice to the theme of gay love in wartime. In Memoriam moved me to tears several times. This is an outstanding novel, one of the best I have read since the turn of the century and, right now, a timely reminder that wars don’t only happen to other people. Our fathers and grandfathers became cannon fodder 110 years ago, and it could very easily happen again to us and our sons and brothers.
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Guilty till proven innocent
MICHAEL CONNELLY:
Resurrection Walk
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Romance, fashion and food in Venice: What could be better?
KATE ZARELLI:
Coincidentally in Venice
Watching a piazza in Venice on a webcam helps London office-worker Ashley through the Covid lockdowns and a love affair that turns sour. Made redundant in 2022 she and her best friend Juliet go to Venice and seek out the square. Juliet quickly finds a dishy Italian waiter, but romance for Ashley takes the unlikely form of an Irish accountant from her old firm, beginning a new career as an art restorer.
Ashley and Juliet both start totally different lives in Venice. The wife of Ashley’s ex-boss, now launching herself as an art patron, threatens to put a spanner in the works, but …. No spoilers from this reviewer!
Kate Zarelli also writes as Katie Hutton, rich and intense historical fiction set in the English Midlands. In her Derbyshire novels I have detected a hint of Thomas Hardy. In her contemporary novels I hear sizzling echoes of Carrie Bradshaw and Bridget Jones. Ms Zarelli brings people and places gloriously to life and light. Coincidentally in Venice has everything its magical setting deserves: romance (with titillating sex scenes) laced with a hint of danger. For food lovers there are some delicious meals, and for fashion-lovers some frocks to die for!
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