Books for February

 

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

 in Cape Town, South Africa

 

I was wondering if I should continue these book reviews, but today I got a fresh comment on the January books - so, yes, I have book readers with me!

 

Gate to spring flowers in 2010

Sarah BLAKE

Grange House

~

1896 summer on the Maine coast. Adjusting to an older form of English.

~

I made a pledge to draw the world round me, and hold my papa close, in tiny blackened scuff marks upon this page [as I do when I write a blog post]

~

Reader, reach in your hand to lift the old iron latch and give a little push against the gate.

 

Apple bowl and ginger jar remember my grandmother
and mother

Shilpi Somaya GOWDA

The golden son

~

Two children from an Indian village. He goes to Dallas as a doctor. She becomes one of the wives attacked with fire when her dowry disappoints. As she learns pottery, she keeps her rejects - and they in turn play a vital role in the story.

~

[When she escapes]... she came upon a simple house: whitewashed with a wooden door, it reminded her of her own. Outside, marigolds grew on both sides of the door. The plants were robust, full of new buds. Their dead leaves had been pared away, and the soil below was moist. Someone inside that modest house took great care with those flowers, Leena knew. A woman, perhaps, who would take pity on her.

~

[Later she earns a living as a potter] Clay has a memory. Once it's scarred, the heat helps it remember. It's always the weakest point, where there's been a fracture.

 

Elizabeth Tower with Big Ben 2016

Wendy HOLDEN

The governess

~

Marion Crawford was poached to be governess to Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. She took them to Woolworths and on the Underground. Abruptly discarded by the Royal Family ... Crawfie had a brief moment in a video as the Queen looked back on her long life.

~

[They had no 'play' clothes, so she asked her mama in Scotland to make skirts and jerseys for them. Nanny did NOT approve!] silver-framed photographs. One was of two smiling little girls, dressed identically in red tartan kilts and jerseys.

 

Railway line and wheatfields
Porterville 2011 

Katherine WEBB

The legacy

~

Grandmother has left the house to 2 sisters. But only if they agree to live there together. From Oklahoma to Wiltshire, two very different societies.

~

1902. The journey from New York to Woodward in Oklahoma Territory was a long one. As they left behind the familiar towns of New York State, settlements became fewer and further between. They passed through woods so thick and dark that they seemed to belong to another age, closing the train in for mile after endless mile. They passed through fields of wheat and corn no less vast, no less astonishing.

 

Witbank coal fired power station 2019 

Linda GRANT

The dark circle

~

Britain in the 1950s. TB treatment before antibiotics - when children were confined to bed rest ... for 5 years in a closed ward.

~

To her the outdoors was composed of trees, flowers and salad.

~

pollution from all the coal fires of a city turns the  figures of shadowy men and women ... into faint outlines ...  resembling sluggish carp at night moving below the surface of a lake.

 

Olifants River is happy in 2008
We will not be crossing on the road

Jonathan Coe

Middle England

~

2010 'our strange new times'. Manufacturing outsourced to cheaper labour. He lives in an old mill.

~

The wheel of the mill had been out of use for many decades now and the river, undiverted, unharnessed, flowed past steadily, without agitation or fuss, in a perpetual rippling stream of good humour.

~

... the river began to rise, the water splashing and pushing angrily through the mill's man-made channel like a queue of bad-tempered commuters trying to squeeze through the ticket barrier of a crowded station.

~

[in Marseille] light - that was what they were missing in England, that was the factor that made everything here seem so vivid, so sensual, so full of energy, so ineluctably alive.

~

[Birmingham and Glasgow then] Imagine living with this light all the time. You'd actually be able to see the world, instead of just making it out through a grey fog occasionally. [When London granma came to visit between the wars, she went home early, as she couldn't cope with our sun]

 

Gentle shell colours to sand
Rocher Pan in 2011

Colby MARSHALL

Colour blind - a Dr Jenna Ramey novel

~

Forensic psychiatrist with synaesthesia. She sees a particular colour for each person. I have often wondered what it would be like to see a colour for Wednesday, or seven. (I read a second book, but preferred this one)

 

Sea colours from 2013 for my blog

I used a Rocher Pan visit in 2013 to inspire the colours I use for this blog. Porterville memories.

 

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