The Memory Garden by Rachel Hore

The lives of two women, Melanie Pentrath and Pearl Treglown , born in different centuries and the interweaving of their stories as they face similar challenges.

Melanie retreats to Cornwall on a sabbatical to write a book about painters from the region. She hopes that being there will help heal a broken heart.

A garden that holds clues to the past helps Mel and her landlord Patrick learn the secrets of Merryn Hall and the story of Pearl.

This is a light romantic read and although the story is similar in many ways to the style of Kate Morton’s novels it is in my opinion not written in the same literary vein and therefore I do not think destined to become a literary classic.

Nevertheless it is well worth reading if you do not expect more than just an enjoyable read. Rachel Hore’s atmospheric descriptions of Cornwall and the garden at Merryn Hall are excellent and actually much stronger than the plot itself which might be considered rather weak if you were expecting a literary read.

However, I enjoyed this enough to say that I will definitely look out for more novels by this author.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

An amazing first novel from Andrew Davidson, his descriptive writing is incredibly realistic and the opening scenes of the novel, where the protagonist survives (if you can call it survival) a car crash are particularly gruesome.

Did I enjoy this novel, well to be perfectly honest even after reading all 500 pages I am still not really sure. I know this does not make sense but novels with an allegorical tale are rarely if ever a genre I read from choice. So why did I read it, one it was a recommendation and secondly I found it strangely fascinating!

The unnamed protagonist suffers the most horrendous burns apparently not for the first time in his existence as this story crosses the boundaries of time. The love of his ‘lives’ Marianne Engel appears at his bedside to help him survive his modern day burns ordeal.  The stories of their previous love affairs are narrated to him by Marianne and interspersed amongst the present day events and their growing relationship.

In this life the protagonist is or rather was before his accident not a very pleasant young man, a pornographer and drug addict. Now he looks like a monster as well as behaving like one, so he plans to commit suicide as soon as he is released from hospital. That is until Marianne arrives at his hospital bedside to befriend him, a strange and possibly psychotic woman, a sculptress who claims they were lovers in previous lives. Our narrator although is intrigued by her tales of their previous love affairs in lives in 14C Germany, Medieval Japan, Viking  Iceland, Italy and England.

Already an international literary sensation, The Gargoyle is being called a Dante’s Inferno for modern times, which will have you believing in the impossible. Maybe, maybe not! Read it for yourself and see what you think.

I gave this 8* at Bookcrossing not necessarily because I liked it that much but because I think it is an extremely well written novel.

Hidden Talents by Erica James

I have been reading the novels written by Erica James since her first one ‘A Breath of Fresh Air’ was published in 1996. With the exception of ‘Gardens of Delight’ which is still sitting on my bookshelf, plus ‘Love and Devotion’ which I still have not obtained a copy of, I have now read all her novels. I regard her work as a thoroughly good read where you can immerse yourself in the story, not great literature but so much better than some of the novels regarded as ‘chick lit’ or ‘romantic women’s fiction’.

I continue to enjoy her work when I want to sit back relax and read a reasonably realistic romance with once again believable characters. We appear to share a love of Italy as Italian locations often appear in her novels, this time Venice. 

The protagonists in this novel all decide to cope with changes in their lives by joining a writing group, giving them an opportunity to meet new people with a shared interest. ‘Hidden Talents’ is the name given to the writer’s group and the members were of varied ages and backgrounds, with to start with not much in common apart from a shared passion in writing.

Dulcie Ballantyne is the organiser and leader of the group a sixty three year old who has been a widow for the last twenty two years and has learnt to cope with life in an optimistic manner whatever life throws at her. However as the novel opens her married lover is in hospital as the result of a heart attack and there is nothing she can do.

The first member of the writing group that we meet is Jaz Rafferty a seventeen year old with an intensive desire to write. This is something she keeps secret from her large and exuberant family, of which she is the middle child of five, as she feels they will just laugh at her.

We are next introduced to Beth King a widow from the young age of thirty-two, eleven years ago and soon to become an ‘empty-nester’ when her son Nathan goes to university.  She knows that she needs to expand her horizons so has joined Dulcie’s writing group. Since her husband died she has found comfort in writing down her thoughts.

Next we are introduced to Jack Solomon although he does not immediately become a member of the group in the first chapter devoted to him. Jack a local estate agent is struggling to make a new life for himself after the shock of having his wife leave him for his best friend.

The final person to make a commitment to joining the group is Victor Blackmore a pompous sounding prat who was already working on a novel and looking for expert appraisal.

The novel is not so much about the group and its meetings but about the lives of members of the group and how their friendship grows as they support each other through changes going on in their lives.

Property by Valerie Martin

Shocking and disturbing, yet compulsive reading about the master slave relationship that took place in America’s Deep South in the early nineteenth century.
At the centre of the story is the narrator Manon Gaudet a New Orleans girl who is married to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. When he was courting her she thought he was mysterious and his aloofness due to his sensitivity. However she was soon to discover that she was married to a hideous monster, we never learn the Christian name of this racist bigot. The tension was heightened by the fact that they had no children of their own but her husband had a mad son, Walter whose mother was their slave girl Sarah and who lives as a member of the household. It is no wonder that Manon hates Sarah but at least she tries to escape slavery. Whereas all Manon seems to do is blame Sarah for all her problems, without trying to change things. Until this household drama extends into a bloody uprising of slave unrest causing Manon to gain her independence but only after a series of terrifying episodes.
I did not really warm to any of the main characters although I have extreme sympathy with them for the terrible way that the slaves were treated. Manon even annoyed me in a way as I felt she did not help her own misery by treating her slaves the way she did.
Slavery was diabolical and this story certainly makes that clear but it also reminds us that it was not just the slaves that were seen as ‘ Property’ but also the wives in those times!