Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

                                                      

 Hardback: 437 pages                                                                            

Genre:  Literary Fiction, Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Romance.

Publisher:  2024 by Faber and Faber

Source: Tywyn Library 

First Sentences: Didn't seem fair on the young lad. That suit at the funeral. With the braces on his teeth, the supreme discomfort of the adolescent.

Review Quote: 'Intermezzo is perfect ... Is there a better novelist at work right now?' Observer

Favourite Quote: “Yes I would like he thinks to live in such a way that I could vanish into thin air at any time without affecting anyone and in fact I feel that for me this would constitute the perfect and perhaps the only acceptable life. At the same time I want desperately to be loved.”

Literary Awards: British Book Award Nominee for Fiction (2025), Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Nominee for International Book (2025), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction (2024), The Rooster -- The Morning News Tournament of Books Nominee for Longlist (2025), She Reads Best of Award Nominee for Book of the Year and Literary Fiction (2024), Barnes & Noble Book of the Year Award Nominee (2024)

Setting: Dublin, Ireland.

My Opinion: 

The third book I have read by this Irish author and each one has been a 5* literary treat.

'Intermezzo' is an emotionally moving story of two brothers whose father has recently died leaving them both grieving in different ways and causing an estrangement between them. Actually they have never been that close anyway. Peter the much older sibling is struggling as his relationship with the love of his life is a difficult one and he finds himself turning to a much younger woman for consolation. Ironic as at the same time he is overtly critical of his brother Ivan for being romantically involved with an older woman. The character building and exploration of the dynamics between the brothers and the women in their lives tie this complex novel together perfectly.

For me this was another well-crafted contemporary relationship story from Sally Rooney, highly recommended.

 

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

Previous Review:  Beautiful World Where Are You

Author Profile: 

                                                             Courtesy of Goodreads Profile

SALLY ROONEY was born in County Mayo in the west of Ireland in 1991. She now lives in Dublin. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta and The London Review of Books. Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2017, she is the author of Conversations with Friends and the editor of the Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly.

Photograph and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Amazon Author Page.   Goodreads Profile.   

The Secrets of Flowers by Sally Page

                                                

Paperback:  412 pages      

Genre:  Contemporary Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction,                                         

Publisher: Harper Collins 2024

Source: Tywyn Public Library

First Sentences: The scent of the rain summons the memory. Uninvited. Unwanted.

Review Quote: 'A gorgeous, gorgeous book.This is such an engaging read, packed with light, colour and kindness.' Hazel Prior, author of Away with the Penguins

My Opinion: 

A friend recommended Sally Page to me last year and I have now read and throughly enjoyed all three of the titles she has so far published.  

In 'The Secrets of Flowers' the protagonist Emma is finding it hard, one year on to come to terms with the death of her husband.  In an effort to move on she gives up a scientific research career to work in a garden centre and train as a florist. Emma's love of flowers and an unexpected interest in the Titanic make for an emotional read as she unravels the mysteries she discovers. The parallel storyline about the real life person, Violet Jessop who worked on the Titanic ties this heartwarming tale together perfectly.

What a captivating read this is with such believable characters involved in an interesting Titanic storyline. Highly recommend to readers that enjoy a heartwarming read and love flowers. As you read you can almost smell them. 

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: 

From the author of the phenomenal bestsellers The Keeper of Stories and The Book of Beginningscomes an utterly beautiful and uplifting novel.

One year on from the death of her husband, Emma feels no closer to moving forward with her life. Seeking distraction, she quits her job and begins working at the local garden centre.

Here, Emma begins to open up and finds herself attending boss Les’ talk on the Titanic. Intrigued, Emma sets out to research who would have arranged the flowers on-board.

Alongside her story unfolds the tale of a stewardess on the Titanic, who Emma can’t help but feel connected to…

With an array of inspiring and heart-warming characters, this is a novel of friendship, unexpected connections, and of hope.

Previous Review:  The Keeper of Stories.  The Book of Beginnings

Author Profile: 

Courtesy of Author Website

After studying history at university, Sally moved to London to work in advertising. In her spare time she studied floristry at night school and eventually opened her own flower shop. Sally came to appreciate that flower shops offer a unique window into people’s stories and she began to photograph and write about this floral life in a series of non-fiction books. Later, she continued her interest in writing when she founded her fountain pen company, Plooms.co.uk.

In her debut novel, The Keeper of Stories, Sally combines her love of history and writing with her abiding interest in the stories people have to tell. Sally now lives in Dorset. Her eldest daughter, Alex, is a doctor and her younger daughter is the author, Libby Page. Both are keen wild swimmers.

Photograph, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Amazon Author Page.    Author's Official Website.   Instagram Profile  Twitter Profile

Facebook - SallyPageAuthor.   Goodreads Profile

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

                                                  

Ebook: 193 pages

Genre: Contemporary Romantic Literary Fiction

Publisher: Random House UK, 13th February 2025

Source:  NetGalley

First Sentences: People don't tap their watches anymore, have you noticed? Standard wristwatches, I'm talking about. Remember how people used to tap them?

Review Quote: 'I devoured it in one long lazy afternoon - I laughed and cried' VICTORIA HISLOP

My Opinion:  Anne Tyler is a prolific American author whose books I have been enjoying for over twenty years, this is her twenty fifth novel. Her literary style is appealing and her characters usually feel very relatable, this latest novel is no exception.

Once again she takes an everyday situation, this time a wedding day and the days surrounding it and weaves a gripping story. The three days are full of heartbreak and joys. Many emotions surface that cause the protagonists, the parents Gail and Max and their daughter Debbie to confront the past and to face what the future holds.

Read in less than a day, at less than 200 pages this was more of a novella and for that reason I probably would not have considered this if it had not been written by Anne Tyler. A great read if you are a fan of her writing or a reader looking for something heart warming and witty.

With thanks to NetGalley, Random House and the author for the opportunity to read and review.

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: 

An instant classic about love, marriage and second chances from the beloved, bestselling sage of the human heart, Anne Tyler

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start with, she loses her job – or quits, depending who you ask. And then her ex-husband Max turns up at her door expecting to stay for their daughter’s wedding. He hasn’t even brought a suit. Instead, he brings with him memories, a calm maturity, a shared sense of humour – and a cat looking for a new home.

Over the course of the three busy days of the wedding, the past is stirred up for Gail, even as the future – in the shape of the happy couple Debbie and Kenneth – is already underway. But ‘happy’ takes many forms, and sometimes the younger generation has much to teach the older about secrets, acceptance and taking the rough with the smooth.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humour, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a feast of a novel to savour in a single sitting.

Author Profile:         

                                                   

                                                     Courtesy of Goodreads

Her interesting profile can be read in full on Wikipedia

Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist(1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognised for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail" her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."

Photographs, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Goodreads Profile Page.    Anne Tyler - Facebook Page.   Wikipedia Profile.

Amazon Author Page

The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan

 

Hardback:   406 pages      

Genre: Contemporary Literary Fiction                                            

Publisher: Corvus 2019

Source: Tywyn Public Library

First Sentence: A twenty year old girl with a bandaged hand waits on an Austrian station platform with a suitcase at her feet inside which is stuffed a rucksack but nothing else because it is only there for pretence.

Review Quote: 'Intricately plotted and beautifully written..will leave you yearning for Paris.' Katie Fforde

Main Character: Laure Carlyle, Curator and Owner of The Museum of Broken Promises.

Setting:  Paris, today and Prague 1985.

My Opinion: An author that in my opinion has over the twenty plus years I Have been reading her novels mastered the art of storytelling. Her stories draw me in and although this particular one is not always an easy read it is definitely a worthwhile one.

Laure Carlyle the protagonist of the story comes over as a remote young woman that is at times, hard to like.  Her obsession with her Museum of Broken Promises, where the exhibits are all about betrayal and loss, is all explained when the dual timeline takes us back to Prague and 1985. Czechoslovakia is under a strong communist regime and the Berlin Wall has not yet fallen and the twenty year old Laure falls in love.

A moving and beautifully written story of young love and determination in difficult circumstances. Recommended to anyone that wants to read a real story with depth.

Links to Previous Review:  Two Women in Rome

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: The stunning new novel from bestselling Elizabeth Buchan. The Museum of Broken Promises is a beautiful, evocative love-story and a heart-breaking exploration of some of the darkest moments in European history.

Paris, today. The Museum of Broken Promises is a place of wonder and sadness, hope and loss. Every object in the museum has been donated - a cake tin, a wedding veil, a baby's shoe. And each represent a moment of grief or terrible betrayal. The museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest. Laure, the owner and curator, has also hidden artefacts from her own painful youth amongst the objects on display.

Prague, 1985. Recovering from the sudden death of her father, Laure flees to Prague. But life behind the Iron Curtain is a complex thing: drab and grey yet charged with danger. Laure cannot begin to comprehend the dark, political currents that run beneath the surface of this communist city. Until, that is, she meets a young dissident musician. Her love for him will have terrible and unforeseen consequences. It is only years later, having created the museum, that Laure can make finally face up to her past and celebrate the passionate love which has directed her life.

Author Profile: 

Courtesy of Goodreads

Elizabeth spent her childhood moving home every three years – including living for brief periods in Egypt and Nigeria before moving to Guildford, York and Edinburgh.

After graduating from the University of Kent at Canterbury with a double honours degree in English and History, she began her career as a blurb writer at Penguin Books. This was a job which required the hide of a rhinoceros, a nimble mind and the – occasional – box of tissues. People tend to shout at blurb writers but they are resourceful creatures which she and the team proved by continuing to produce a stream of copy for back jackets through thick and thin. Looking back, it was a golden era. Not many people are paid to spend their time reading through the treasury which is Penguin Books and there was no better education. Later, after having married and producing two children, she moved on to become a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time which was something she had always planned to do since childhood – when she was frequently caught reading under the bedclothes with a torch after being put to bed which gave both books and reading a deliciously subversive tinge.

It was not an easy decision to take the gamble but she has never regretted it. As a writer, she has travelled all over the world and one of the many pleasures of the book tour has been to meet readers of all ages and to share with them a mutual passion for books and reading. She is in touch on line with many of them.

Elizabeth Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for The Times, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and, currently, for the Daily Mail. She has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliott literary prizes, and twice been a judge for the Whitbread (now Costa) awards. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival, a co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival and a past Chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.   Reproduced from Author's Official Website

Photograph, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Elizabeth Buchan - Author Website   Twitter Profile   Facebook - Elizabeth Buchan 

Amazon Author Page   Goodreads Author Profile

Songbirds by Christy Lefteri

 

Hardback: 363 pages

Genre: Contemporary Literary Fiction

Publisher: Manilla Press

Source:  Tywyn Public Library

First Sentences: One day, Nisha vanished and turned to gold. She turned to gold in the eyes of the creature that stood before me.

Favourite Quote: “You see, we have to eat, and we have to survive, and yet we must protect our dignity and our identity. There are things we do to achieve those things. But we can respect the land and the animals that are on it. Always be kind to the land, the people, and the animals that are on it. Remember that. It’s the most important rule in the world.”

Review Quote: Exquisite writing and moving story...a powerful tale ― The Independent

My Opinion: ‘Songbirds’ is a sympathetically written novel with a hard hitting narrative. The central themes of the migrant women that travel to Cyprus hopeful of a better life and the plight of the songbirds are comparable. It seems that neither can escape the brutality of their lives.

The author got her ideas for the novel from a long term friendship with a domestic worker in Cyprus. She was also influenced by a tragedy in the country when five such domestic workers and two of their children disappeared, yet despite being reported as missing, the authorities never investigated.

The disappearance of Nisha and the subsequent search for her by her employer Petra and her lover Yiannis is very poignant. Written in such a solicitous way I feel somehow guilty saying I enjoyed the story, but I did! Recommended to those readers that like some emotional depth with their reading, as this novel certainly delivers that.

My review of:  The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri | Goodreads

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: 

From the bestselling author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo, a powerful story about love, loss, hope and courage, set in the lush forests of Cyprus.

Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe, and killing them with his bare hands to be sold illegally as a local delicacy. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha, who works as a nanny to Angela and lives in the apartment below his. Angela is Nisha's surrogate daughter - she has left her own child behind in Sri Lanka when she came to Cyprus to find work. Angela's mother Petra is jealous of Angela and Nisha's bond, but feels powerless to love her own child in the way she thinks she should. When Nisha disappears, Yiannis is heartbroken and convinced he has driven her away. Petra is forced to become a mother again to Angela, who seems to hold the secret of what has become of Nisha.

Author Profile: 

                                                            Courtesy of Amazon

                            Christy Lefteri was born in London in 1980 to Greek Cypriot parents who moved to London in 1974 during the Turkish invasion. She completed a degree in English and a Masters in creative writing at Brunel University. She taught English to foreign students and then became a secondary school teacher before leaving to pursue a PhD and to write. She is also studying to become a psychotherapist. She released her first novel, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible, in 2010, and her second, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, in 2019. The latter became a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the 2020 Aspen Words Literary Prize.                         

Photographs and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Amazon Author Page    Goodreads Author Page    Twitter Profile

A Narrow Door by Joanne Harris

 

The third novel in the Malbry trilogy, A Narrow Door is a sequel to Gentleman and Players (2005) and Different Class (2016). This entire series has been an enthralling read, as Joanne Harris writes haunting psychological thrillers.

It was great to catch up once again with a character I felt I knew, Roy Straitley, his boys, colleagues and St Oswald’s School. Times have moved on at St Oswald’s and the traditional narrow door has opened a smidgeon and admitted not only a female head of school but also girls as pupils.

The head teacher and female protagonist Rebecca Buckfast, nee Price is the future of the school and Roy Straitley who has been a main male character in all three books, is the traditional past. Both Roy and Rebecca have dark memories buried in their pasts that torture them. The story unfolds as they reveal their stories to each other and the reader is drawn deep into the complex events of the past.

Written by an author who is skilful at keeping us guessing right up to the very last page, I recommend highly to her many fans and those that enjoy psychological thrillers.

Should We Stay or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver

 

Paperback:  266 pages                                                                            

Genre: Literary Fiction

Publisher:  June 2021, Borough Press, imprint of Harper Collins

Source: With thanks to  LoveReading UK for providing a copy in return for an unbiased review.

First Sentence: "Was I supposed to cry?"

Review Quote: ‘Shriver said that her favourite novels are those that pack both an intellectual and emotional punch. With Should We Stay or Should We Go, she’s added triumphantly to their number’ The Times

Setting: Lambeth area of London, England.

My Opinion: ‘With Should We Stay or Should We Go’, a title that has me humming The Clash song ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’, Lionel Shriver has produced a thought provoking and intelligently written novel about a dilemma of the current times.  The topic of ageing and how Kay and Cyril Wilkinson, both medical professionals decide how they will cope is the basis of the novel.

Having decided in 1991 whilst in their fifties, the couple planned to enter a suicide pact together when they reached eighty.  Exactly how this pans out for them makes for a sometimes disturbing read, but also with humour along the way.

Social criticism at its best, with Covid19, Brexit, Migration, Suicide Pacts and Human Longevity all covered in the twelve different scenarios that the author presents to us.

In conclusion this novel is at times a horrendous insight into the pitfalls of old age, if you are no longer fit and healthy with all your faculties.  Light and dark a read that will both entertain and provoke, highly recommended.

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

When her father dies, Kay Wilkinson can’t cry. Over ten years, Alzheimer’s had steadily eroded this erudite man into a paranoid lunatic. Surely one’s own father passing should never come as such a relief.

Both medical professionals, Kay and her husband Cyril have seen too many elderly patients in similar states of decay. Although healthy and vital in their early fifties, the couple fears what may lie ahead. Determined to die with dignity, Cyril makes a modest proposal. To spare themselves and their loved ones such a humiliating and protracted decline, they should agree to commit suicide together once they’ve both turned eighty. When their deal is sealed, the spouses are blithely looking forward to another three decades together.

But then they turn eighty.

By turns hilarious and touching, playful and grave, Should We Stay or Should We Go portrays twelve parallel universes, each exploring a possible future for Kay and Cyril. Were they to cut life artificially short, what would they miss out on? Something terrific? Or something terrible? Might they end up in a home? A fabulous luxury retirement village, or a Cuckoo’s Nest sort of home? Might being demented end up being rather fun? What future for humanity awaits—the end of civilization, or a Valhalla of peace and prosperity? What if cryogenics were really to work? What if scientists finally cure aging?

Both timely and timeless, Lionel Shriver addresses serious themes—the compromises of longevity, the challenge of living a long life and still going out in style—with an uncannily light touch. Weaving in a host of contemporary issues, from Brexit and mass migration to the coronavirus, Shriver has pulled off a rollicking page-turner in which we never have to mourn perished characters, because they’ll be alive and kicking in the very next chapter.

Author Profile:

  

Lionel Shriver (born Margaret Ann Shriver; May 18, 1957) is an American author and journalist who lives in the United Kingdom. Her novels include the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange Prize and has now sold over a million copies worldwide. Other books include Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family, and So Much for That. Lionel’s novels have been translated into twenty-five different languages and. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.

               

Photograph and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Amazon Profile Page    Lionel Shriver - LoveReading   Wikipedia - Lionel Shriver

Goodreads Profile

Nutshell by Ian McEwan

                                       

Hardback:199 pages.                                                                                                  
Genre: Contemporary Literary Fiction.
Publisher: Jonathan Cape.
Source: Lent to me by a Book Club friend.
First Sentence: So here I am upside down in a woman.
Favourite Quote:“It's already clear to me how much of life is forgotten even as it happens. Most of it. The unregarded present spooling away from us, the soft tumble of unremarkable thoughts, the long-neglected miracle of existence.”
Review Quote: "An astonishing act of literary ventriloquism unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master… Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a shocking tale of murder and treachery from one of the world’s master storytellers." (Daily Telegraph)
Main Characters: Baby Cairncross, Trudy, Claude, John.
Setting: London, UK.
Literary Awards: Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction (2016)

My Opinion:
This was a first for me. A story told from the viewpoint of the foetus in the womb of one of the protagonists, very clever.
The narrator is the unborn baby of Trudy, very close to the delivery date so able to hear but not see. From the restricted viewpoint the foetus speculates on everything he hears that is going on in the world that he is getting to know via his mother. Even a love and knowledge of good wines thanks to her, heavy drinking! He is very concerned about the world he is about to be born into and the fact that his mother and uncle appear to be involved in a murder plot.

Another great read from Ian McEwan which his many fans are bound to enjoy and appreciate the skill he has of making social criticism in his writing.

My previous review on this blog for Sweet Tooth

My previous reviews for  Amsterdam,   Atonement, On Chesil Beach,  Saturday and The Cement Garden were written for Bookcrossing  before this Book Review blog was in existence. 


Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master.

To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things.


Video Trailer for 'Nutshell' Courtesy of YouTube  

                                                       Ian McEwan discusses Nutshell


Author Profile:

                                  
                                                                photo credit: Annalena McAfee
                                                                      

Ian McEwan was born on 21 June 1948 in Aldershot, England. He studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970. He received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.

Ian McEwan’s works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). Atonement was also made into an Oscar-winning film.

In 2006, Ian McEwan won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Saturday and his novel On Chesil Beach was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards where McEwan was also named Reader's Digest Author of the Year. Solar won The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction in 2010 and Sweet Tooth won the Paddy Power Political Fiction Book of the Year award in 2012. Ian McEwan was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2014 he was awarded the Bodleian Medal. On Chesil Beach and The Children Act have recently been made into feature films.

His most recent novel Machines Like Me  will be published in April 2019




Photographs, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Amazon Author Page   YouTube    Goodreads Profile Page     Ian McEwan Website  

Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart by Helen Harris

Paperback:  341 pages                                                                                                
Genre: Contemporary Literary Fiction
Publisher: Halban Publishers 2014
Source: Tywyn Library
First Sentences: After many years, Sylvia Garland returned to England. She had never intended to stay away so long.
Review Quote: "Harris turns out to be a virtuoso when it comes to understanding family. I can't think of anyone better at describing just how irritating everyone can be. She even-handedly lets us see how her characters get on one another's nerves. The result is sympathetic, funny and truthful."
Kate Kellaway in The Observer
Main Characters: Sylvia, Jeremy and Smita Garland
Setting: London
My Opinion: A character driven story that realistically portrays the relationship between Sylvia, her son and daughter in law as everything they do or say to each other is misconstrued! Sylvia even irritated me at times, let alone her family. Recently widowed she has returned to England to live after many years away. Unable to settle and feeling adrift, when her daughter in law becomes pregnant, she becomes totally and dangerously fixated on her grandchild, seeing the child as the new lease of life that she needs. In many ways a very sad story but despite the I felt somewhat abrupt ending it is a happy one.



Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

How far would a grandmother go to stay close to her grandson?
When Sylvia Garland returns to England, after the death of her husband and half a lifetime lived abroad, the last thing she expects is to find love again. But when her daughter-in-law Smita announces she is pregnant, despite her own poor track record as a mother, she finds herself caught up in the excitement.
Before Sylvia knows it, she is 65 years old and head over heels in love - with her grandson.
Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart is a touching, witty look at family ties across the generations and the plight of grandparents when their children's relationships break down.


'This passionate, yet perfectly-controlled novel...is beneath the surface a smouldering furnace...It is a book with depth and resonance and pace.' Jane Gardam



Video Trailer for 'Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart ' Courtesy of YouTube

Author Profile

Since 1978, Helen Harris has published many short stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies.

Magazines include:- London Magazine, Encounter, Punch, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Journal and Company.

She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, from 2008 till present.

Novels
Playing Fields in Winter (Century 1986. ISBN: 0-7126-9408-0) Winner of the Author’s Club First Novel Award, shortlisted for the Betty Trask prize
Angel Cake (Century 1987. ISBN 0-7126-1588-1) Serialized on BBC Radio Four in 1994
The Steppes of Paris (Hodder & Stoughton 1990. ISBN 0-340-51337-3)
The Weather Indoors (Arena 2002) published in Dutch as De Schrijfclub
Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart (Halban Publishers 2014. ISBN 9781905559701)

Photographs, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

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