**United Kingdom: England

A place to discuss contemporary literature by English authors (as in authors from England).

England: Notes from a small island by Bill Bryson

Before moving back to the U.S., Bill Bryson decides to make a tour through Great Britain by public transport and on foot. The tour is not only a way of finally seeing parts of the country he hasn't visited yet but especially a trip down memory-lane. The book looked promising and I had high hopes but I was a bit disappointed. I appreciated the funny aspects - some were hilarious - and I did see that he actually loves the country but overall, Bryson gave me the impression that Britain is a country full of shabby hotels, ugly shopping-malls, weird people, awful public transport, uninteresting towns and villages, bad food and abominable weather. If Bryson's book was the only information I had on Britain, I'd never visit the country.
Maybe this message should have been posted on the American thread, because Bryson is American, but since the book is entirely about England, it seemed more appropriate to post it here.

England: Restless by William Boyd - 3,5 stars

A cosy spy-novel set in the 1970's where the twenty-something daughter Ruth finds out, much to her surprise, that her plain mother was a spy during World War II. Even after all these years the past still haunts the former spy. The character of the daughter and her issues is used (a bit too much) as a hatstand for the adventures of the mother-spy. It feels as if the author needs to write a second book about the daughter. A nice, enjoyable book though, with a bit of romance and a bit of thrill.

28. De kleinzoon (The upright piano player) by David Abbott - 4,5 stars


A beautiful, multi-layered story that evolves around Henry Cage, a quiet, middle-aged man. It's a story of love and loss, words unspoken, coincidence, fate, ambition, getting older, chasing dreams, reconciliation, ... written in the most beautiful, soothing prose that I find is so typical for British writers. Highly recommended if you like the books by Ian MacEwan or John Banville.

ETA. The book was published in the US in June 2011: http://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/blog/2011/02/21/interview-with-david-abbott/

England: De meester van Brugge (The Master of Bruges) by Terence Morgan - 2,5 stars

I cannot give a straightforward opinion on this book, so I'll try to focus on certain issues.
This book is about one of the most famous Flemish painters, Hans Memling who lived in Bruges in the second part of the 15th century. Despite the fact that the author uses some biographical elements that are historically correct, this book is mainly fiction. The author claims however that everything that he's told has really happened and that only characterisation and motivation are based on interpretation, but I'm not sure if that is correct: there's no evidence that Memling played a role in the War of the Roses by harbouring King Edward IV and the later kind Richard III in his house in Bruges and later taking care of Edward IV's sons in London and Yorkshire after their father's death and even making sure the younger of the two brothers gets adopted. Memling's close relationship to Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy is not upheld by official sources either but is also based on very wild speculating.
I might have enjoyed this book if the author would not have claimed historical correctness. I would have been able to accept his very wild and entertaining speculations and might even have enjoyed it. However, I have a problem if someone claims he's telling the truth but doesn't.
Other than that I thought the characters were flat and one-dimensional and he did not manage to bring to life the setting of Bruges and other places mentioned. He did not capture the brightness, the splendour and the harshness of that period of time either. And the chapters in between in which he lets Memling get philosophical about painting is irrelevant, imo.
I thought the best thing about this book was the story in itself...if only he wouldn't have claimed it as a historical reconstruction in his epilogue...

More information on Hans Memling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Memling
Despite the fact that this book is largely set in Bruges, the story is also about English history, so I'm posting about it here.

England: Het portret (The Portrait) by Iain Pears - 4,5 stars

This novel is set up as a monologue by a Scottish painter who's retreated in France and gets a visit from his friend and art-critic in order to get his portrait painted. Little by little, we get to know what the relationship between the two and the circle of friends involved, what happened earlier on and why the painter moved, It all leads up to a climax which is totally in line with the set-up but takes you by surprise anyway.
I thought this was an extraordinary, very thoughtful book with important insights into the human psychology. It must be a pretty difficult thing to portray characters the way Pears does by merely using a monologue from a character who's very much involved, but I think he did a brilliant job. Highly recommended to non-superficial readers.

England: Het goud van de waarheid (An Instance of the Fingerpost) by Iain Pears - 3 stars

Impressive yet slightly disappointing book in which the same events are told by four different characters. This technique enables the reader to eventually understand what really happened during the turbulent years in 17th century England. However, my lack of extensive knowledge of English history of that period and the fact that I could not relate to the characters enough to be enthralled by the story, made it a somewhat bleak reading-experience. I'm glad I continued to read till the end though because the final character, the historian, finally shed the more precise light on the entire story. Or maybe that's just because I have more affinity with the one who has the same profession as I do, unlike the three other characters: the priest, the mathematician and the madman :-) All in all, a very good book, but not entirely my cup of tea.

England: De zin van het duister (The Meaning of Night) by Michael Cox - 4,5 stars

This story is set in 19th century Victorian Engeland. When the young Edward Glyver discovers that he's the one and only heir of a rich and aristocratic family, he's set on claiming his rights, confronting his arch-rival Phoebus Daunt who not only wants to take his inheritance but also his great love and eventually his life.
The story is told as the personal confession by Edward Glyver which was found and edited by a professor in 2005. This one-sided, very personal point-of-view ensures involvement by the reader. Through Edward's emotionally coloured glasses, the story unfolds with great pace and expectancy. All other characters and events are portrayed from his mildly humouress, sometimes compassionate, empathic but also ruthless, even cruel perspective which ensures authenticity.
This is a wonderful Victorian novel, in the best tradition of Wilkie Collins. I'm looking forward to reading the sequel which I hope takes care of the few bits and pieces that were left unanswered in this book.

England: Pretmakers in een berglandschap (Headlong) by Michael Frayn - 3,5 stars


An entertaining read about a young husband who is convinced he's found an unknown painting by Brueghel in his neighbour's house. He goes at lenghts to obtain the painting without arousing his neighbour's suspicion and goes digging into the history of the painting and the painter, which is basically the history of the 16th century of the Low Countries. The tone is light, humorous (the fooler fooled) and quite cozy. Recommended, although at times a bit too long-winded to my taste.

I am currently reading & enjoying Wolf Hall, about England's Henry VIII, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, & Thomas Cromwell, but I have read so very much on this subject matter over many years so a lot of it seems redundant to me. I am hoping that Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies will be more original and hold my interest a bit more. I think that if I had not already read so much on this topic, I would be finding WH amazingly good.

Coventry, Helen Humphreys, 2008


Cover comments - I like this--especially the swallows. This is a cover that actually fits the story (a surprisingly uncommon thing).

Comments:; The greatest part of this novel is set over the night of November 14, 1940, as German bombers destroy the city of Coventry, England. The story follows three people: Harriet is a WWI widow and finds herself filling in for a neighbour's fire brigade duty. She meets a young fellow fire fighter named Jeremy who reminds her of her dead husband. Jeremy's mother, Maeve, is desperately trying to find him.

My favourite thing about Coventry is how the author wove the details of this apocalyptic bombing attack into the story line. This is an understated little book that beautifully covers themes of love, loss, and friendship.

Rating: Many of my LT friends who have fabulous taste in books have read and raved about this novel. And I can't find fault with it. However, I did not love it--I think it simply comes down to my lack of interest in WWII.

Why I Read This Now: Okay, now that I've said I don't like WWII novels, I'm going to contradict myself here--I recently read Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which I loved except I thought the WWII section was too long. But I did find the bits about the London Blitz interesting, and I remembered that I've been meaning to read another book that cover the Blitz--so Coventry came out of Mnt TBR.

Recommended for: : readers who like sparse, thoughtful books, and anyone interested in life during wartime.

Just finished The secret diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend.

It was a fun read and I think I know now where part of the inspiration from Bridget Jones' Diary came from. I thought there were a lot of similarities between the two.

I also learned that having students act as prefects is school is not only something out of Harry Potter, but seems to happen in regular schools in Great Britain too. Who would have guessed! ;)

I've recently read A child of the Jago by Arthur Morrison (as part as my personal perpetual challenge to read each year a book which has just come in the public domain in the EU).

This is a social novel, depicting a (fictional but inspired by a real one) slum, the afore-mentioned Jago, and aiming to show how the people who live in it are influenced by their surroundings, and how poverty and crime perpetuate themselves.

I was surprised by the language, which seemed dated to me. I read Dickens in the past and do not remember struggling as much to understand things such as "wherein", "wherefor", etc. I read a Shakespeare play earlier this year and the book was reminiscent to me of Shakespeare's language.

However after some time I really got the hold of the way the sentences were structured and I have to say that all this "wherein, whereat" stuff actually corresponds quite well to how a French sentence is structured. I would like to use these words but I think this would seem really weird to use them today. :)

Lord John and the Private Matter is such a disappointment for me considering I’ve dearly loved all of Gabaldon’s books in the Outlander series. There has been a 2 year lull between the last Outlander and the final book in the series; hopefully 2018 will be the year for that final book! In the interim I thought I would try her novel about Lord John Gray, who was a minor character in the Outlander series. He should stay a minor character because not enough information is given us in this book to make him anything else. About 75% of this book is built around the queer culture of London in the early 1800’s and it’s not interesting enough to sustain the plot! There was an entire cast (too many) of characters that were often times confusing. No more Lord John Gray for me! Audiobook (400 pages) 2 stars

Death by Water, also called Appleby at Allington, by Michael Innes was the first in the Appleby series. Appleby is a retired police detective but is always needed by friends and friends of friends when they are in a scrape. This was a short novel of 155 pages and to be honest, I must have missed something because the grand reveal didn't make sense to me! I won't be reading any of the other books in the series.

Life in a medieval village by Frances Gies This book tells of life in the medieval village of Elton, in the Midlands of central England. The authors draw extensively from court records and the Doomsday Book. There is a plethora of trivia contained within, such as how much a certain noble paid for a meal at a certain inn on a certain date and time. I felt I was being fed facts for facts sake. I did learn some new vocabulary such as hamsoken and frankpledge. A lot of the book concerned itself with agriculture and labor and not enough time was spent on the Church and plague and its ramifications, imho. This book is standard reading for college freshmen in Western Civ classes. 272 pages

I recently finished Homecomings by C.P. Snow. This is the seventh book in C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers series that takes a reader through several layers of middle- and upper-class English society from the 1920s through the 1950s. All of the novels feature a man named Lewis Eliot, who over the series fights his way from a lower middle-class upbringing into the halls of administrative power, first in industry and then, during World War 2, in British Civil Service. Eliot has a job that is stressful with responsibility, but he is still attending to more powerful men. From his spot near but not at the top, Eliot is able to make sharply drawn observations about the nature of the bureaucracy--and the qualities of the people--both above and below him on the organization chart. At the same time, Eliot's private life, as his wife, Sheila's depression worsens. The book is filled with small but powerful observations about the nature of love and responsibility, and the handicaps inherent in a life pointed too much inward. This is not just a flaw of Sheila's as Eliot describes things for us, but also of Eliot himself. There is a varied and entertaining cast of characters attendant, as well, and Snow is adept at describing their personalities and actions, for good or ill. Several figures from the early books are brought back into the scene here.

I find Snow's writing style understated and enjoyable, and his observations and characterizations, his talent for detail, to be satisfying in the reading. The plotting of these novels is often slow, but I'm OK with that. I know that this is the sort of book that many of my LT friends are more or less avoiding these days: a book by a white, straight, male featuring a white, straight male protagonist living in a white world of power and relative privilege. I complete sympathize with all this, and tend to lean in this direction myself. Yet for me, the books of this series, which are about in the end about human nature, the joys, pitfalls and dangers of all sorts of relationships, be they private or public, provide rewarding reading experiences nevertheless. There are four more books in the series, and I expect to be attending to them gradually over the next couple of years.

In Distant Fields by Charlotte Bingham was a historical romance that took place prior to WWI and ended about 1919. The first half of the book was basically the wealthy and their parties, etc. The second half of the book picked up when, surprisingly, they all "grew up" and participated in the Great War by turning their estate into a medical recuperation facility. Nice subplots of ambulance drivers in WWI as well at the Battle of the Somme and the sinking of the Lusitania. IMHO it was too long and contained too many characters.

Charlotte Bingham has written over 30 historical romance novels as well as written for such TV programs such as Upstairs/Downstairs and Robin's Nest. She is well over 80 years old and still cranking them out! She is a prolific writer and her books are often best sellers, but she has won only one award that I can find, Romance Novelist of the Year in 1966.

I have finished Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, which I have wanted to read almost since it was published - in 2012 I traveled to London for the first time and saw it all over the bookshops everywhere I went.



"Rivers of London" by Ben Aaronovitch
Series: Peter Grant (1)
First published in 2011
Rating: 3 1/2 stars - ***°

If I remember correctly and did not forget any book, this was my first foray into urban fantasy. I adored the beginning when Peter Grant, just starting his career in the London police, suddenly meets a ghost who wishes to make a witness statement regarding a recent murder. Ghosts, vampires and magic, a police department taking care of otherworldly crimes, and London locations and folklore on every page - what's not to love? That is what I thought, and it is all great, but to me, it was a bit too crazy, and the plot and pacing suffered from it. Towards the end, it was a labour to reach the finish line, which is why I won't continue with the series. I still think that this is a fantastic book and I appreciate the author's ideas and work, but it is not really for me.

I decided to share this here because it was written by an English author and is firmly set in England, although in the future.



"The High House" by Jessie Greengrass
First published in 2021
Rating: 4 stars - ****

This novel was my first venture into CliFi. The story is set in the future - it is not specified when exactly - and the world suffers the consequences of climate change. Caro and Pauly, the children of a climate scientist, arrive at the high house where everything is prepared for them to survive. There is a barn full of supplies, there are chicken and plant beds, the house features a mill and it is located by the sea, but on high ground. It is tended to by Sally and her grandfather, who was the village caretaker and possesses many skills that are forgotten by most, but are crucial now.
Soon, these four are cut off from the rest of the world and have to come to terms with each other, but also with themselves and their memories. It is a microcosmos of emotions, of memories, hopes and desperations, all driven by the need to survive and by the relationships between these characters.
Despite some heavy topics, it is a slow and quiet novel that lives from the descriptions of the natural world that surrounds the high house. The story felt rather depressing to me, but it also has some beautiful moments, and the characters seemed real and raw.
However, the criticism I have is that it all seems rather improbable to me, which is why I have to take one star off my rating. I don't mean climate change itself, but the way the people deal with it in this novel - on a large scale, but also on a small scale. The high house does not seem like the best place to survive, nor does the way it is equipped make much sense. But I do think that to be realistic in a practical sense is not the foremost goal of this novel, but rather to show how different characters might react under these circumstances.