The Mayfair Bookshop

 by Eliza Knight

This is the fictional story of the life of one of the infamous Mitford Sisters of England, Nancy Mitford.  After turning down two suitors, one of whom she seems to have really loved but with whom she had an on again off again engagement, Nancy marries a third man and enters a very unhappy marriage.  Her husband spends all their money on excesses and mistresses.  She is unhappy but doesn't believe he will give her a divorce.  At the same time two of her sisters and her mother fall under the influence of Hitler.  One of the sisters apparently becomes Hitlers mistress.  This sister later shoots herself in the head.  She ends up a vegetable rather than dead.  One of her other sisters leaves her husband and children for an avowed communist

Nancy and her husband end up working for the war effort in different roles.  Nancy is engaged by the British government to "spy" on French soldiers in England to ferret out any that might be pro-vichy and against De Gaulle.  At times she works helping refugees from Spain and Franco's war, who have fled to France.  She and her husband help to get them to other countries.

She had quite a life.  Eventually she ended up getting a job running a bookstore in London.

There is a second story in the book, a young American woman, who is a book seller, seeking out special titles for private collections is a fan of Mitford and comes seeking to identify who a person Mitford calls Iris really is.  The girl's mother had a Mitford book with a written dedication to Iris in it but apparently she never picked it up from the books store.  The girl is able with the help of others to identify the woman and get the book to her.  She is ultimately offered a job in England where she had a budding romance.

This was an interesting story.  Lots of historical information.  Much better than I expected it to be.

Mindful of Murder

 by Susan Juby

This book is by a BC Author who wrote Alice I think, Miss Smithers and more.

The book is about a young woman, formally a Buddhist Monk who left the Monastery to help a friend run a spiritual retreat on an island on the BC Coast.  After she had been there for a while her friend/Mentor paid for her to attend an expensive course for Professional Butlers.  The young woman has just graduated when she learns that her Mentor has died.  Apparently she took her own life as part of a planned death.  The young woman has to return to the retreat to carry out some of the wishes of her Mentor.  Two of her classmates from the Butler school come to help her out.

The young woman is suspicious about the apparent suicide.  She feels her Mentor would have told the members of her death group and her death doula about her plans.  She did not do this.

As part of carrying out the wishes of her Mentor the woman has to invite the woman's nieces and nephews to the retreat where they will partipate in a flower arranging class, a dance/movement class and a meditation class.  After a couple weeks the young woman is supposed to decide which of the four young people should take over the task of running the retreat.  Three of the four candidates are spoiled rich kids who seem to have fallen on hard times, the fourth is a relative unknown to all of them, a bit of a hippy chick.

There is lots of grumbling by the participants and squabbling.  Strange things start happening, one of the people insists someone threw stones at them, another person had their flower arrangement destroyed.  A young man, associated with one of the girls is found murdered and then a huge storm causes damage to the building and one of the Butlers is drugged.

Eventually they find out that one of the girls killed the aunt and her "boyfriend".  The two boys, brothers, cooked up a plot to create a journal in the Aunt's forged signature indicating she wanted them to have everything.

The butler decides to entrust the retreat to the hippy chick, the only one she thinks she can trust.

It was an interesting, sometimes comical read.

Second Place

 By Rachel Cusk

This writer is acclaimed for a trilogy she wrote a few years back.  I wasn't enamoured with those books but thought I would try this one.  I wasn't impressed with this either, nor was a reviewer at The Guardian.

The story is written as the narrator M, recounts to someone named Jeffers (we never find out who this is) her misadventures in inviting an artist to stay at a guest house on her and her husband's property.

The book starts out by saying the woman met the devil on a train.  Then she goes on to talk about how she feels invisible, un-noticed.  One day in a funk she went out walking in London and stumbled upon an art exhibit.  She became enamoured with the artist, feeling he would save her somehow.

Years later she is married, has a grown daughter.  She and her husband have a guest house on their property that they make available to artists.  She writes to the artist she was enamoured with and invites him to come to stay.  He says he will but then doesn't show saying he got a better offer, a tropical island.  She is devastated at this news.

Eventually the artist does show up with an attractive young woman in tow.  The woman is upset by this.  She tries to get the artists attention but he ignores her or is rude to her.  He wants to paint others but not her.  When he paints her husband he paints him as a tiny figure on a big canvas.  How disparaging!  Eventually the artist paints a garish garden of Eden scene on the wall of the guest house featuring a very unflattering image of the woman.  She is devastated by her dreams of him saving her having failed and his cruelty to her.

He eventually leaves and dies poverty stricken and alone in Paris.  His last paintings re-establish his fame in the art community.

This was a very depressing, boring book.  I don't understand why the woman had so little self esteem.  She seemed to have a loving supportive husband who put up with her weird personality.  Apparently the book was sparked by a book by another author.

Quote in the book, Sophocles said "how dreadful knowledge of the truth is, when the truth can't help you."

I don't think I will bother with any more Rachel Cusk books.

Looking for the Durrells

 by Melanie Hewitt

I have really enjoyed the books in the Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell and the PBS series based on the books.  I picked this up because I need something light to read these days.

This book is about a young woman whose father has just died and who broke up with her fiance around the same time as her father died.  She and her father used to enjoy reading the Durrell books and talked about visitng Corfu sometime.  The young lady decides to go to Corfu for a month to nurse her grief and also to remember her Dad.

While she originally intended just to be an anonymous tourist she soon makes several friends in the local town.  As part of her trip plans she wants to visit the various locations where the Durrells lived while they were on Corfu and also the house where the series was filmed.  The locals help her to get to those places.

While she is in Corfu she keeps getting messages from her ex-fiance.  She ignores them, having realized he was not the guy she wants to spend the rest of her life with.  She is attracted to a local young man, a lawyer who left a successful practice in England to return home to fish with his father and do boat tours for tourists.  It looks like romance might be blossoming but then her ex shows up.  She dismisses him.

There is another "love" story in the book.  The owner of a local restaurant, a widow with a young son, is in love with a local scholar who was the best friend of her husband and godfather to her son.  She finally tells him how she feels about him.

At the end of the book it looks like she and the young Greek know they love each other but there is no clear indication of what she plans to do.

So, the book is about following your dreams and your heart, why waste time being alone and lonely.  A nice story with lots of local colour.