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.

Lincoln Highway

 by Amor Towles

Boy can this author ever write!! I read his book a Gentleman in Moscow a few years ago and really enjoyed it.  This is a very big book, almost 600 pages, I was not looking forward to a big, long book. However, this book was worth it!

It is the story of a young man, who has been in a juvenile detention facility, because he accidentally killed another boy.  The young man's mother left the family years ago and his father died of cancer while he was serving his sentence.  The farmer next door and his daughter were looking after the boy's 8 year old brother until he was released.  The father was not a successful farmer so the family farm is being foreclosed.

When the young man (Emmett) returns he decides their is not point in staying around, there are too many hard feelings against him in the community.  His young brother (Billy) wants them to go to San Francisco because that was where the last postcard they got from their mother was from.

The young man is shocked to find out that two of the inmates of the prison stowed away in the warden's car and are now at his home.  He offers to drive them to the nearest train station but things go off the rails and the other inmates end up taking his car and heading to New York.  In taking the car they also took all the money Emmett's father set aside for him. So penniless, Emmett and Billy jump on an east bound train.  

Along the way they meet some people who help them and also some who want to hurt them or steal from them.  Billy is constantly reading a book about Heroes.  When he meets a black man named Ulysses who helps and protects him he is convinced that Ulysses is the modern reincarnation of the Greek Hero.  Sally, the girl from the neighbouring farm rescues the boys when their car is stolen.  Later she manages to find them in New York.  In the end she insists that she will go with them rather than go home.  She is sick and tired of cooking and cleaning for her father, especially after he bought the boy's farm at a good price as it was being foreclosed on.

The book has many twists, turns and surprises, almost one in every chapter. Eventually the boys do meet up with the two escapees, Woolly and Duchess and more adventures ensue as Duchess tries to settle some scores along the way.  In the story Woolly is not quite the brightest light in the universe.  He was jailed because of some pranks he did that went wrong.  He is now a drug addict. Duchess, who is the really evil, manipulative, one with no conscience at all was actually framed by his own father.  While he was innocent of the crime he was convicted of he has turned out to be very bad.

The goal of the criminals is to get to New York to raid Woolly's grandfather's safe at a lake cabin (his family was very wealthy).  They make it to cabin and Billy is able to figure out the combination for the safe.  Woolly commits suicide leaving a note saying he leaves the money to the two brothers and to Duchess.  Emmett is so tired of Duchess and all the trouble he has caused them that he knocks him out, then puts him and his share of the money in a boat at the property.  When Duchess comes to he finds the boat is filling with water.  It sounds like he doesn't make it as he can't swim.  Something of a just end for this very bad character.

This book had incredible stories, characters and twists to the plot.  It was a great read.

The Maid

 by Nita Prose

This is the story of a maid at a large hotel.  She appears to have some level of autism, judging from her  thought processes and behaviour.  She is very lonely as her grandmother who raised her died about a year ago.  She is struggling to make ends meet because a beau she had cleaned out all hers and her grandmother's savings.

She is a hard worker and prides herself on making rooms very clean.  She has a crush on the bartender and thinks he likes her.  She helps out a dishwasher in the kitchen by giving him the key to rooms that are empty as she has been told he is homeless.  She then cleans the rooms the next morning before they can be booked out.  This is a bit fishy, how  would she know the room wouldn't be rented out later in the day?  One day she enters one of the rooms to find the bartender, two big thugs and the dishwasher in the room.  She is puzzled but they tell her everything is okay so she heads on her way.

She befriends the trophy wife of one of the wealthy couples that frequently stay at the hotel.  The husband is rude and abusive of his wife.  The wife confides in the Maid and the maid thinks they have become friends.  One day she goes back to the couple's room to finish cleaning the bathroom and finds the husband dead on the bed.  She reports this to the office and is brought in for questioning.  Her behaviour confounds the police and she doesn't tell them everything as she wants to protect the wife.

Later the wife shows up at her apartment and asks her to retrieve a gun she had stored in the ceiling in the bathroom.  The Maid, Molly, agrees to do this and puts the gun in her vaccuum cleaner. Molly confides this information to the bartender who she thinks has a crush on her. Shortly after the police show up at her apartment and arrest her for the murder of the rich man.  They tell her they found the gun in her vaccuum cleaner and found drugs in her locker.

The doorman of the hotel, and his daughter who is a lawyer, seek to defend the maid.  Eventually she tells the police about the activities of the bartender and the dishwasher.  It turns out the bartender had been blackmailing the dishwasher into helping them move drugs.  The rich man was also involved in this drug business.

Molly still feels sorry for the trophy wife and helps her leave the building.  It turns out the trophy wife was having an affair with the bartender and planned to leave her husband, going with the bartender to a property in the caribbean. It turns out the bartender was using both women.  He is eventually arrested for the drug dealing and murder of the rich man.  Molly later learns that it was actually the rich man's ex wife who murdered him but she doesn't share this information with anyone.

It was an interesting mystery story.

Hana Khan Carries On

 This book is described as a romcom, but it is a bit more than that.

It is about a young Muslim woman in Toronto.  Her father is an invalid as a result of a traffic accident, her mother is running a not very successful Halal restaurant. Hana works there part time but her dream is to get into radio.  She has a job as an Intern at a radio station.

In addition to this Hana has created a blog about her life and experiences.  She remains anonymous on the blog.  She has one follower with who she has developed a chat relationship.  They share their challenges with each other and give advice to each other.

Hana is devastated to find out that a fancy new Halal restaurant is going to open up in the neighbourhood and will likely put her mother's restaurant out of busines.  While this is going on Hana's pregnant sister who had also been helping out at the restaurant is told to take bed rest.  An aunt arrives from India and takes over Hana's room.  A male cousin also arrives to help out at the restaurant.

Hana meets the father and son who are opening the rival restaurant, they are very rude and cutthroat.  She decides to create online accounts and go on social media to spread negative rumours about the new restaurant. 

Hana feels her radio boss doesn't want to listen to her ideas and that she is being sabotaged by another intern so she quits her intern job.

As time goes by Hana finds she is attracted to the young man from the rival restaurant.  One day Hana's cousin convinces Hana to show him around Toronto and invites the young man from the rival restaurant to come along.  At one point they are verbally assaulted by some white supremacists, in the rucus Hana falls down.  Hana's cousin has filmed the incident and puts in on social media where it becomes widely watch with both supportive and not supportive comments.  Hana is very angry at her cousin for raising this situation online.

Hana and her cousin get busy trying to organize an annual neighbourhood street festival but they find their posters and some businesses get defaced.  Hana is very demoralized by this but they decide to work on.  On the day of the event there are some white supremacist protestors but also some counter protesters.  Once some musician arrives people in the neighbourhood decide to dance and ignore the protests.

A lot of other things happen in the book including that the young man of the rival restaurant gets to meet his mother.  He had been told by his mean father that she had died when the boy was young.  Hana and the young man marry.  Hana's cousin buys her mother's restaurant and updates it.  There is some interest in a podcast Hana has created about her aunt and it looks like she may get more opportunities in the broadcast field.

While there was a romance interest there was a lot more going on in this book with the neighbourhood politics, the racism, etc.  I liked the mix of story, podcast text and text messaging in the book.  It was a light but entertaining read.