Woman of a Certain Rage by Georgie Hall

Hardback:  436 pages                                                                                                
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Head of Zeus, July 2021
Source: LoveReading Consumer Reader Review Panel Member
First Sentences: Our dog Arty died a fortnight ago. She was sixteen, which is over ninety in dog years, the young vet told us kindly when he came to put her down.
Review Quote: 'Beautifully written and smart as a whip, this is a funny and truthful novel about love and life past the big five-0. Hall has created a character that mid life readers can not only root for but identify with too' Mike Gayle.

My Opinion:  'Woman of a Certain Age' is the debut novel of Fiona Walker's alter ego Georgie Hall. As Fiona she writes multi character comedies, to my surprise I have only read one and that was in 1994, 'French Relations', her first published novel. Maybe I should rectify this! 

Writing as Georgie she has produced a witty portrayal of the menopause, motherhood and marriage. The moral of this delightful read, set in the beautiful countryside surrounding Stratford upon Avon, is to make sure you shake your life up and don't on any account let the menopause drag you down. 

Although we may not all experience such menopausal adventures as the protagonist Eliza, many readers will certainly identify with the real life scenarios, the marital ups and downs, teenage angst, autism and the death of a much loved family pet.

Some women suffer badly during the menopause, but many others don't, so if you read this and you are pre-menopausal just don't assume Eliza is the norm! Remember this is a comic romp and should not be taken too seriously. Recommended if you want a funny, mainly authentic and fairly light hearted read.  



Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

A smart and funny novel about love, life, and a second shot at freedom for rebellious women of a certain age.

Eliza is angry. Very angry, and very, very hot.

Late for work and dodging traffic, Eliza's still reeling from the latest row with her husband Paddy. Twenty-something years ago their eyes met over the class divide in oh-so-cool Britpop London, but these days their eyes only meet to bicker over the three-seat sofa.

Paddy seems content filling his downtime with canal boats and cricket, but Eliza craves the freedom and excitement of her youth. Being fifty feels far too close to pensionable, their three teenage children are growing up fast, and even the dog has upped and died. Something is going to have to change—menopause be damned!

Woman of a Certain Rage is a smart and funny novel for all the women who won't be told it's too late to shake things up, and Eliza is a heroine many will recognise. She may sweat a lot and need a wee all the time, but she has something to prove.

Publicity Video Woman of a Certain Age

Author Profile
 

I came across this photo on a Blog Post by Fiona Walker which is worth a read

                                                               

Fiona Walker/Georgie Hall is the author of eighteen novels, from tales of flat-shares and clubbing in nineties London to today’s romping, rural romances set amid shires, spires and stiles.  In a career spanning over two decades, she’s grown up alongside her readers, never losing her wickedly well-observed take on life, lust and the British in love.

Fiona lives in Warwickshire, sharing a slice of Shakespeare Country with her partner Sam, their two daughters and a menagerie of animals.

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

Author's Official Website   Twitter : Georgie Hall   Twitter : Fiona Walker   Instagram Georgie Hall

Facebook Profile - Georgie Hall   Amazon - Georgie Hall     Goodreads Profile

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

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

                                                              

Hardback:   287 pages                                                                            

Genre: Literary Fiction

Publisher:  January 2021, Fig Tree, Part of Penguin Random House

Source: Tywyn Library

First Sentence: The morning sky lightens and snow falls on the cottage.

Review Quote: Unsettled Ground is a gorgeously written celebration of the natural world as well as a moving portrait of a family struggling against time. Through buried secrets and private longings, the Seeders emerge as multi-layered characters living at the fringes of society. This book is ultimately about redemption--about the unexpected importance of neighbours, lovers, and friends, and the ways in which we can re-envision our lives for the better, even after the unimaginable has occurred.--Lucy Tan, author.

Setting: Devizes area of Wiltshire, England.

Literary Awards: Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021

My Opinion: 

Claire Fuller is for me a new author, thanks to her book appearing on the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist, I decided to read it.  Happy that I did as ‘Unsettled Ground’ was an absolute delight to read and now has a well-deserved placing on the shortlist.

A perfect title for a very unsettling read this novel tells an extremely moving story, with middle aged twins Julius and Jeanie as the central characters. Having lived at home with their mother all their lives her sudden death hurtles them into a world mainly unknown to them. It was a cultural shock particularly for Jeanie to discover some harsh realities about the world she has been sheltered from for so many years. The author creates a very realistic world in the beautifully crafted and harrowing story that this is.  ‘Unsettled Ground’ is not an easy book to read and will surely tug at your emotions, from despair to rage and everything in between.

A highly recommended thought provoking novel whose main characters you will still be thinking about long after you finish reading.

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant? What would you do to get it back?

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Their rented cottage is simultaneously their armour against the world and their sanctuary. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance.

But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. At risk of losing everything, Jeanie and her brother must fight to survive in an increasingly dangerous world as their mother's secrets unfold, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.

This is a thrilling novel of resilience and hope, of love and survival, that explores with dazzling emotional power how the truths closest to us are often hardest to see.

Author Profile:

 Claire Fuller trained as a sculptor before working in marketing for many years. In 2013 she completed an MA in Creative Writing, and wrote her first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days. It was published in the UK by Penguin, in the US by Tin House, in Canada by House of Anansi and bought for translation in 15 other countries. Our Endless Numbered Days won the 2015 Desmond Elliott prize.

Claire's second novel, Swimming Lessons was published in 2017. It was shortlisted for the Encore Prize, selected as a Book of the Month book in the US.

Claire's critically acclaimed third novel, Bitter Orange, was published in 2018, and was long listed for the International Dublin Literary Award.

Her fourth novel, Unsettled Ground, has been shortlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction. 

Photograph and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Goodreads Author Profile   Claire Fuller - Official Website    Amazon Profile

Twitter Profile

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

                                                                   

Hardback:  352 pages                                                                            

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance

Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

Source: Tywyn Library

First Sentence: The article that started it all was not even on the front page, but was just a filler on page 5, between an advertisement for the Patricia Brixie Dancing School and a report on the AGM of the Crofton North Liberals. 

Review Quote: This novel brings a sensibility not unlike those of Barbara Pym and Philip Larkin to a story (inspired by a real-life episode in the 1950s) of a woman who claims to have had a child by virgin birth... In a milieu of reticence and chin-up stoicism, startling revelations surface and emotions hopefully stir. -- Peter Kemp ― THE TIMES, Best Novels of 2020

Favourite Quote: “imagine if dignity was all we had to look forward to in old age!”

Setting: London suburbs

Literary Awards: Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021

My Opinion: 

When I discovered that Clare Chambers, first novel was published in the nineties I was surprised as she is an author I have not come across before. 

'Small Pleasures' is her first since 2011 and was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction this year hence the reason it caught my attention.

So glad it did as this is a five star read. Although I was only a little girl in the fifties the period setting felt familiar. The main character Jean Swinney reminded me of a maiden Aunt, in a similar situation, certainly disappointed in love and still living at home looking after an elderly mother. There the similarities ended though.

The plot is an emotional one and from the intriguing prologue to the poignant ending the author draws the reader in with her wonderful characters and descriptions. The 'Virgin Birth' is a key component to the story which highlights the lonely life that Jean leads.

Overall a compassionate tale which has been beautifully written and I will certainly look out for further titles from this author. Highly recommended and it well deserved the placement it received on the Women's Prize For Fiction Longlist 2021.   

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

1957, south-east suburbs of London.

Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and — on the brink of forty — living a limited existence with her truculent mother: a small life from which there is no likelihood of escape.

When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys: Gretchen is now a friend, and her quirky and charming daughter Margaret a sort of surrogate child. And Jean doesn't mean to fall in love with Gretchen's husband, Howard, but Howard surprises her with his dry wit, his intelligence and his kindness — and when she does fall, she falls hard.

But he is married, and to her friend — who is also the subject of the story she is researching for the newspaper, a story that increasingly seems to be causing dark ripples across all their lives. And yet Jean cannot bring herself to discard the chance of finally having a taste of happiness...

But there will be a price to pay, and it will be unbearable.

Author Profile:

 

Clare Chambers was born in1966 in Croydon south east London the daughter of English teachers. At 16 she met her future husband a teacher fourteen years her senior. She studied English at Oxford and spent the year after graduating in New Zealand, with her by then husband where she wrote her first novel, Uncertain Terms, published when she was 25. She has since written eight further novels, including Learning to Swim (Century 1998) which won the Romantic Novelists’ Association best novel award in 1999 and was adapted as a Radio 4 play, and In a Good Light (Century 2004) which was longlisted for the Whitbread best novel prize.

Clare began her career as a secretary at the publisher André Deutsch, they not only published her first novel, but made her type her own contract. In due course she went on to become a fiction and non-fiction editor there herself, until leaving to raise a family and concentrate on her own writing. Some of the experiences of working for an eccentric, independent publisher in the pre-digital era found their way into her novel The Editor’s Wife (Century, 2007). When her three children were teenagers, inspired by their reading habits, she produced two YA novels, Bright Girls (HarperCollins 2009) and Burning Secrets (HarperCollins 2011).

Her most recent novel is Small Pleasures (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020).

She took up a post as Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent in September 2020.

She lives with her husband in south east London and generally has her nose in a book.

Photograph and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Amazon Author Page   Goodreads Author Profile 

 Clare Chambers on Twitter