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Other Great Stuff

The Chorus

A gem of a film, nominated for two Oscars. Set in 1949, it is the story of a music teacher forced to take a job as classroom assistant in a boarding school for difficult boys. To deal with rampant disobedience he decides to engage the kids through music; he also has to contend with a sadistic headmaster and a staff of true oddballs. Gérard Jugnot is a wonderfully offbeat hero and Christophe Barratier’s direction evokes post-war France to perfection. This is worth getting on DVD for the unmissable extras – the fascinating “making of feature” is as long as the film and probably the best I have ever seen. Great for anyone learning French!

The Hindi Bindi Club
Monica Pradhan

This is a glorious book. It’s a witty, funny, engaging and romantic but also deftly addresses some quite weighty issues of immigration, assimilation and multi-culturalism as well as personal pain and loss.

Its effortless prose and perfectly judged dialogue sweeps you in to the lives of six women: three mothers, the Hindi Bindi Club, who left India in the 50s and 60s to begin new lives with their husbands in the States and their daughters all born in the USA. They tell their stories in alternating chapters, the daughters facing problems in the present and the mothers dealing with their cultural heritage as wives and mothers in America.

Kiran is a doctor and estranged from her family since her “unsuitable” marriage to a musician, she is now divorced and feels her biological clock ticking so she returns home for the holidays to discuss an unexpected way of finding a husband. Meenal, her mother, has had to confront a life changing experience since they last were together. Preity was always the goody two shoes and is now a wife and mother but has never forgotten the first love of her life she had to leave behind in Goa and her mother Saroj’s conspicuous displays of wealth conceal her memories of the horrors of Partition and an extraordinary secret. Rani is a successful artist who has just had her first show but has lost her inspiration and her successful, academic mother Uma carries with her the hurt of being told never to return to India after her marriage to a Westerner. Kiran’s search for a husband begins a journey which takes them places they never thought they would go.

These six people and their stories are the building blocks of a wonderful personal story which will take you across India and through its history and its diversity of languages, cultures and religions – and recipes!

Hearts and Minds
Rosy Thornton

No apologies for recommending another Rosy Thornton book this month. I was just summoning up the emotional energy that was going to be required to read the latest Booker Prize winner, when this book dropped through the letter box and rescued me from that fate by immediately engaging me in the world of St Radegund’s College, Cambridge, who has just broken with 150 years of tradition by appointing former BBC executive James Rycarte as its new Head of House.

As he settles into the chintz, frills and furbelows of the former much loved Mistress’s house, he finds that all is not well at St R’s: the library is falling down, the students are running a rent strike and he has forgotten to get his bike pass! When he is offered a large donation by an old friend whose daughter is competing for a place at the college he thinks he has come up with the perfect solution for getting new funding to the college. With the support of Dr Martha Pearce, the Senior Tutor, who he is coming to value and rely on more and more as the days go by, he thinks he can win over the Fellows to his point of view. He could not be more wrong as his proposal brings into the open some very tough opposition and the question on everyone’s lips is how long he will survive as the new “Master”. As Martha Pearce puts her own problems on hold to support him and the college that has become the centre of her life, James finds she is becoming someone he cannot do without.

Gently poking fun at the idiosyncrasies of Oxbridge colleges, it is a crisp, witty and clever tale of strong women and unlikely solutions.

The Needle in the Blood
Sarah Bower

I haven’t read any historical fiction for a while, nothing has really appealed, but the headline on the beautiful cover of The Needle in the Blood offered a tale of sex, lies and embroidery so I thought I would give it a go. The book grips from the first chapter; you are thrown into the middle of the Battle of Hastings, with Odo, brother to William the Conqueror, rallying the Norman troops, fearing his brother has died on the battlefield. We soon learn that the battle is won and the history of England changes forever. In the aftermath of the battle the rumour is that Harold has been killed by an arrow in the eye; it’s the first lie, the reality is that his body has been hacked to pieces and mutilated but the arrow in the eye story will be recorded for posterity in the Bayeux tapestry.

Amongst the Saxon women who come to claim his body is Gytha, handmaid to the mistress of the fallen king and a talented embroiderer. She returns to Winchester with the women, only to witness the pillaging of her mistress’s home and to submit to rape to save a Saxon soldier about to be put to death. When the unconventional Bishop Odo decides to commission a wall hanging to commemorate the battle, Gytha is among the women recruited to work on the embroidery. Forced to work as a prostitute to survive, she reluctantly agrees to work for the Norman court; she sees an opportunity for revenge and when she meets Odo again she is armed with a sharp knife and a thirst for vengeance. But in this book nothing is as it seems and as she falls in love with him and so the lies and intrigue begin, with as many lies stitched into the tapestry as are told among the wonderfully full and vibrant cast of characters that people this book.

This is a must read for anyone looking for a strong and intense story, beautifully told by someone with the skill to bring this extraordinary period in our history so colourfully to life – and is a must read for anyone visiting Bayeux to see the embroidery.

Hide
Lisa Gardner

This is without doubt the best thriller I have read this year.

It has one of the best opening chapters you are likely to read, drawing you straight into the complex and compelling mystery of a woman forced to live “off the grid” for most of her life. When she is caught up in the evil world of a serial killer she must confront her fears to save her life and her sanity. 

I will reveal nothing more of the story – it would spoil it but I recommend it as the cleverest mystery I have read in a long time because the characters are brilliantly drawn, because the dialogue crackles, because the tension will take your breath away and because once started you will not be able to put it down.

Amazon have a great deal at the moment, bundling it with “Alone” which introduces the many of the characters and the back-story of “Hide”. Read “Alone” first and you will enjoy “Hide” even more.

Echo Park
Michael Connelly

Another great Harry Bosch story. Michael Connelly is such a superb storyteller that you can read it a as stand alone novel or enjoy it as the next in the series.

Bosch is now in the Open-Unsolved Unit where he still keeps the file on the Marie Gesto case on his desk 13 years after her murder. It was never solved and is the one case Harry wants to crack above all others. Out of the blue he gets a call from the DA; a suspect has agreed to plead to the killing to avoid the death penalty on the new murder charge he now faces.

As he works the case he starts to realise the he and his partner may well have missed vital evidence which would have lead them to the murderer at the time and that the new suspect may in fact be innocent of this crime but guilty of many more he has not admitted to. Bosch starts to doubt the motives of the DA who is running for office and when the suspect escapes leaving two dead cops he is forced to contact an FBI profiler from the FBI to track him down and get to the bottom of what is really going on.

More than Love Letters
Rosie Thornton

A impulse buy, this was a very lucky find and I can’t wait to read more from Rosie Thornton.

In the introduction this new author says that in the first draft of the novel she made the rookie error of forgetting to include a plot – well, in the final version she’s certainly cracked it. The plot is incredibly strong and will appeal to anyone with a love of the English language, political satire, wit, wisdom and irony.

At its heart this is a romance. When Richard Slater MP receives a letter from Margaret Hayton complaining about VAT on tampons, he sends back a standard letter. When he receives further letters about the children’s playground facilities, greenhouse gas emissions and dog poo, he decides that she is barking mad old biddy. But when eventually he meets her, he finds a beautiful twenty-something with big eyes over whom he could lose his heart and his political career.

But is a great deal more, gently and good-heartedly addressing issues of honesty and deceit, love and loss, old age, divorce, drug rehab, asylum seekers, sex and political intrigue – to name but a few! The novel is told through a glorious mix of letters, emails, minutes of meetings, Hansard reports and newspaper articles as the loves, lives and idiosyncrasies of a wonderful cast of characters are revealed. Margaret has joined a women’s group in support of asylum seekers and the minutes of their meetings are a joy as are the emails between her and her best friend in Manchester who is working her way alphabetically through the men of Moss Side, her landlady’s letters to her husband are heartrending and Richard Slater’s emails to his friend the MP for West Bromwich are a comic masterpiece.

The Colour of Law
Mark Gimenez

A rattling good read. Stuck on my own in a hotel for a night, I read this from cover to cover and enjoyed every page.

The author opens with a quote from Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird and in a speech to the Bar Association, A Scott Fenney tells his fellow lawyers that when he was a boy, his mother read the book to him every night saying “ Scotty – be like Atticus. Be a lawyer. Do good.” As a result, Scotty Fenney, a lawyer who has it all: wife, family, and Ferrari, is asked to take a pro bono case in Federal court.

From the moment he begins to take the case seriously, his life starts to unravel as powerful men try to stop him doing his job defending a black, heroin addicted prostitute. The Ferrari is the first to go followed by his job and his house. Left with nothing, he fights the case and to get his life back.

Tightly plotted, this a true page turner, never losing pace or energy. There is just enough “law” to make it a good legal thriller but not to bog the story down in technicalities. I’ll be reading his next book “The Abduction” as soon as I can get my hands on it.

The Musical Paintbox
Fiona Whelpton

From Chipmunka Publishing, this is a both a rewarding and difficult read as it deals with complex and disturbing mental health issues. One in four of us will at some time have to deal with mental issues either personally or because it affects someone in our family or close circle. Ms Whelpton’s harrowing story of the intertwining of the lives of Claire, an obsessive but gifted pianist , David artist, addict and abuser and Rosie, his schizophrenic daughter manages to be both shocking and lyrical at the same time. I recommend you read this; it is not an easy or comfortable read but opens the eyes wide to the lives and challenges of so many people.

Chipmunka Publishing is the world's first Mental Health Publisher. It is a unique social enterprise focused on publishing both factual and creative literature. Its books aim to change the way the world thinks about mental health and to explain that everything in life is a mental health issue and, therefore, eliminate the humiliation that people with "mental illness" feel.

It has also set up a charitable arm, The Chipmunka Foundation, to revolutionize the mental health movement worldwide and to reduce the humiliation of all sufferers of all nations. Please visit their websites: www.chipmunkapublishing.com and www.chipmunkafoundation.com and give what support you can.