Rendezvous in Russia

Lauren St John delivers again. If you enjoyed Enid Blyton’s Famous Five or the Nancy Drew mysteries you will enjoy this.  Except it probably wouldn’t displease your parents and teachers as much as Blyton did: it is more 21^st century and much better written. 

Laura Marlin – and the book is subtitled “A Laura Marlin mystery” - is a feisty teenager who loves mysteries and detective stories. She is an orphan who used to live in a children’s home.  She now lives with her uncle Calvin, a Chief Inspector of Police. 

She has two great friends - Tariq Ali, who is good with horses, and her three-legged husky, Skye.

Laura, Skye and Tariq get a lot more than they bargained for when they get involved with filming The Aristocratic Thief. They are once again swept into the world of the deadly “Straight As”. 

There is pace and tension a plenty here along with good characterisation. I read it virtually at one sitting. Do give it a go.       

            

The Secret Baby Room by DD Johnston

D.D. Johnston wrote to my colleague at the University of Salford to ask if he could come and talk to our students.  We had a Masters creative writing workshop that seemed to fit well. I was running it that evening. He had a Power Point presentation – but didn’t trust our technology so he showed it as a series of A4 flash cards. It worked. There were also lots of questions from the students. It made for an inspiring class.  

I bought the book. None of the students did. It is published by a small press so is a little expensive. 

It took me over a year to get round to reading it but when I did I could hardly put it down.  It’s unusual for me not to figure out what is happening long before the end.  This time I did not know until the very last page how everything was going to turn out. Yet the story progression and the resolution remained convincing.

Part of the appeal must be because it is set in Greater Manchester. As there is a tower block and a river involved, I saw in my mind’s eyes an area very near to the university – in fact just a few yards away from where I held the class. However, it isn’t there because there is a golf course, an old people’s home and a St Michael’s Church involved as well. 

This novel has an excellent narrative balance. The characters are totally convincing. They are ordinary folk, too, not white upper middle class. The story moves forward at a pace and we are kept guessing. We are totally gunning for protagonist Claire Wilson. 

I suppose Johnston approached us partly because the story is set in Greater Manchester. The story is based on something that happened to him.  Oh, and he used to work at a Manchester coach station – just like Dan, Claire’s husband. 

Do give it a go.       

Virginia Woolf in Manhattan by Maggie Gee

I bought this book almost two three years ago, when Maggie Gee was keynote speaker at the Society of Authors North event at the Imperial War Museum North, Salford. Yes that’s how far behind I am with my reading. 

This is an incredibly well written book and it is extremely engaging. The point of view switches constantly between the three main characters – Virginia Woolf, who has come back to life and materialized among the manuscripts of her work that are kept in a private collection in New York, Angela Lamb, a novelist and expert on Woolf and Angela’s daughter, Gerda, who runs away from school to join her mother first in New York and then in Istanbul.   

All three characters are rounded and believable. Gee admits that Woolf is fictionalized, though to some extent based on her diaries. Nevertheless, the Virginia Woolf presented here seems very much to me as she would be if she was suddenly whisked into the 21^st century. Both Angela and her daughter have to face some demanding logistical problems and these are to some extent what keep us reading. 

That and the voice which is delightful, with some difference for each character. 

What will happen after Istanbul where the three of them attend a conference about Woolf’s work? A final chapter offers a suggestion and indeed hints at an explanation about how it all came about.  In the end, though, it is left for the reader to decide.    
           

Any Other Mouth by Anneliese Mackintosh

This is a truly extraordinary book. The blurb suggests it is a novel. Soon into reading you’re convinced that it is a series of unrelated short stories and then about a third of the way through you realise that the stories are related. The protagonist is the common factor.

Anneliese Mackintosh keeps us engaged.  Each “story” or chapter is relatively short and totally unpredictable. There is no recognisable story arc. She uses no well-worn formula. There even seems to be a different voice in each piece though we eventually recognise Greta’s voice as a unifying factor. Greta changes as she moves through her grief for her father.

The stories are not given to us in chronological order. Yet there is a logic to them: they track the changes that bring Greta to where she is today.

Frequently biographers use fictional techniques to enhance their work. Here we have a writer of fiction using the habits of memoir to keep us intrigued.

This all certainly works: I personally could hardly put this book down. Mackintosh’s prose is also of the finest.      

     

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders

If you’ve read and enjoyed E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It you’ll enjoy this. It is a sequel, written much later and it is also somewhat darker. It was the winner of the Costa Book Awards 2014. Great news indeed that a children’s book has won that prize.

We meet the same children as before. Cyril, Robert, Jane and Anthea are now grown up.  The Lamb is now a young boy and a further sibling, Eddie, has appeared. The Psammead, the sand fairy, is back too, though considerably less powerful than before and bringing with him a rather dark past.

A prologue presents us with an interim visit, just two years after the first, in which he takes them forward to 1930. The children see photos of themselves as grown-ups and notice that the older boys are missing. Adults reading the story may have a frightening insight at this point. Children may not understand what this means. However, this proves to be not too much of a spoiler.

Kate Saunders retains the atmosphere of the earlier Nesbit novels. Of course we still have upper middle class southerners. Times are changing, however, under the influence of the Great War. There are changes, too, for the sand fairy.  

A very satisfying read all told.