Today’s podcast is with Isla Morley! Email and RSS subscribers: you may need to open this post in your browser to see the media player below.

Charlie and Isla Morley (Come Sunday; Above; The Last Blue) discuss growing up and travelling back to South Africa, creating a negative heroine, the 1800s medical phenomenon wherein people were literally blue, and what it’s like owning five tortoises.

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Working through grief to acceptance and forgiveness.

Publisher: Two Roads (Hachette)
Pages: 300
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-340-97651-7
First Published: 1st January 2009
Date Reviewed: 7th June 2020
Rating: 5/5

On Maunday Thursday morning, Greg is slow to get up and Cleo’s insistence on wearing unsuitable clothes is getting to her mother. Abbe has all manner of things to deal with and it’s got on top of her. So that she and Greg can get out for the evening, Abbe leaves Cleo with a friend; against perhaps better judgement, the friend chosen isn’t the one she thought of first. But it’s all good; until the couple return to pick Cleo up and find the road full of people, police, and Cleo nowhere to be seen.

Come Sunday is Morley’s superb first novel that looks at the progression of grief towards a new normal. When the revelation of the car accident reaches Abbe’s ears she begins a descent that sees her anger at the driver who couldn’t stop in time, her increased annoyance at her fellow cul-de-sac neighbours and the clique-y members of her minister husband’s church. And she begins to have an increasing number of thoughts about her childhood in South Africa.

Her book set mostly in Hawaii, Morley uses as the time frame the period of Easter – the book starts on Maunday Thursday, as noted, and ends on Ascension Day, however the narrative takes place over a year so the initial Thursday and Ascension Day are from different Easters. More than an extra aspect, the Easter period is used to line up events in the narrative, with the Thursday aligning with Abbe’s ‘betrayal’ of Cleo and the Ascension providing a resolution.

Christianity as a whole forms a fair part of the narrative; with Greg a minister and Abbe thus involved in the church (more than she’d like sometimes), the religion is often there and woven into the whole, however it should be said that this book is far from ‘inspirational’; it’s use is unlikely to turn you off if you’re not into it, however if you do appreciate faith included in books you will like it a lot.

The main themes are grief, later leading also to forgiveness. Morley looks at both carefully, closely. This is a character-driven book with Abbe’s grief front and centre. Greg’s isn’t glossed over, indeed some of Abbe’s choices stem from his own, but Abbe and her friends are more important here. There is a good element of sisterhood, largely informed by the forgiveness.

Abbe was brought up in South Africa, and her history informs a lot of her thoughts. Her grandmother had a servant who was black, so there are looks at racial issues as Abbe questions the relationship of Beauty and her family, and how her grandmother’s belief in equality fit into this. Abbe’s time in the country is brought to the fore as, together with her brother, she inherits her grandmother’s house which has since become a school for HIV-positive children.

I’ve left one of the first things you’ll notice about the story until the end – Abbe is a very negative character, aside from her grief. This is obviously difficult in a novel where a child’s death affects many, but Abbe does have her reasons for being as she is and there is redemption. The book is more about reading about her progression rather than necessarily relating to her all the time; you will relate to her on occasion and this reminds us of how normal it can be to be overwhelmed, to be a result of events, to be in the wrong place.

Come Sunday is exquisite. You’ll find many new meanings and explorations here to other books that look at the same subjects, and it’s all brought together with the use of writing elements, methods, that are very enjoyable. I highly recommend it.

If food be the music of love?

Publisher: Bantam Dell (Random House)
Pages: 404
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-440-24432-5
First Published: 29th July 2008
Date Reviewed: 6th February 2020
Rating: 3/5

Verity is a highly-regarded cook. Her food brings goodness to any dinners her employer puts on for guests. Verity has been in a relationship with her employer. But now Bertie is dead and his estate is to go to Stuart, his illegitimate brother, who is engaged to be married. Verity once spent a night with Stuart and she’s worried about what will happen when they meet. And then there is Verity’s past – she was certainly no cook.

Delicious is a romance set in the 1800s that looks at various consequences, mainly those that affect Verity, but a couple for Stuart, too. It sports Thomas’ ever-good usage of language but is lacking in what made her previous book (her first) so good.

Where the book works most is in its hero – Stuart has come from an incredible humble beginning, and at the place he is in his life when the story is told, he remains fairly humble. His choices aren’t always great but they mostly make sense.

The issue is mostly with Verity. Whilst her background, which it would spoil to discuss because you don’t find out much until the end (this is an additional problem because the resulting secondary thread essentially means you’re kept in a state of confusion the entire time) has an understandable impact on her thoughts and emotions, there is further issue in the way that Verity’s worries become a means to keep the book going. Verity hides from Stuart, very literally, and whilst it works at first it later becomes a bit of an ‘oh not again…’ situation, particularly during a couple of scenes where she goes against common sense in her situation as a servant. During the flashbacks, where we find out about the day Verity and Stuart met, her actions are more understandable and certainly less of a device.

The main issue, though, is that state of confusion; with Verity’s background being hinted at but then seemingly taken back, so to speak, and with a minor character’s situation also being hinted at before being taken back, it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on. Being able to keep track would have aided the process of understanding character motivations. And when the confusion finally ends and you get a clear answer, you may just wonder why the idea was there in the first place because without it the story would have been a lot stronger, and with it, though it might just about work in the historical context, you almost, in fact, don’t have a story.

Delicious is an okay read, but the structure is such that you’re right at the end before you’re in a position to really ‘get’ it, and for this book, that doesn’t really work.

Left To Her Fate.

Publisher: Doubleday (Random House)
Pages: 407
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-385-60484-0
First Published: 2013
Date Reviewed: 20th March 2019
Rating: 3/5

At birth Nazneen was left to fate; she survived. As an adult she is married to Chanu, an older man, and leaves Bangladesh for London. She arrives to a burgeoning community of diaspora, the Bangladeshi population in Tower Hamlets laying roots and working to make a new life. But Nazneen is still leaving things to fate; as the world moves around her she watches; she is the wife Chanu wanted, she’s a friend to others, but she remains somewhat outside, as life continues.

Brick Lane is a novel about the life of an immigrant to London from the 1970s to the early noughties.

Ali’s lengthy book rests on the overall concept of fate, a story the younger Nazneen heard over and over again, called ‘how you were left to your fate’. As such, Nazneen does not often get involved with social events or even friendships when she could if she wanted to; the book is both a reflection of an immigrant’s experience, and the story of Nazneen’s particular life as affected by her mother.

This latter aspect means that Nazneen is a particularly passive character; away from the understandable case of isolation early on, Nazneen has ideas of things she’d like to do but never does anything about it. If this passivity is Ali’s way of writing cultural difference it could have made sense, but Nazneen is among people who are actively part of their local community, and whilst Chanu doesn’t teach her English and does expect the home kept nicely rather than encouraging her to be out and about, he involves her in his educational ideas, discussing neighbours and friends, and invites people over to socialise with them. Effectively, as much as Chanu doesn’t offer active support, it’s Ali herself who puts up the biggest barriers around Nazneen, creating isolation which in the context of the rest of the book is unnatural.

Chanu is an interesting character, at once compelling and utterly irritating. His story is of a potential success; he knows a lot – or, rather, he knows he knows a lot. He can do intellect, but moving forward from that and incorporating the opinions of others, is difficult; he does not get the jobs he wants and misjudges how others think of him. His personality and education means a lot of his dialogue is academic lecture – he’d be at his best in front of a room of students, though he might succeed in sending most of them to sleep.

With Nazneen being the character the book revolves around, there is little story and many dull pages. Due to Ali’s continual application of passivity, the moments that offer real promise are passed over almost as soon as they’ve begun. This is a problem because these moments are to do with conflict – the book’s timeline includes 9/11, the people on the estate are Muslim, and you hear enough from what Nazneen hears about to realise that if Ali had let her be a proper part of her community, like all the other characters, this book would have a lot to say. Where there is a bit included about rioting, most of what happens is missed out.

Nazneen’s life gets a bit more interesting when she meets the young man who brings her clothes to repair, but this is also short-lived and fairly unremarked-upon. That something happens between them doesn’t fit her character – perhaps it serves as a push against fate, but due to Ali’s construction of her personality, it’s effectively a contrived reversal of a contrived character. The ending of the book is what was needed, but coming so late in the day it’s difficult not to wonder whether it wasn’t simply a case of the author noticing she needed to do something with her story if she was to finish it.

The one area where the book is interesting is the letters Nazneen’s sister sends; in Hasina there is good story, and it’s sad that more wasn’t included because Hasina does not let fate run her life. (This is likely the point of the inclusion, to show difference.) It is told in a strange fashion, however, written in broken English when Hasina would have surely written to Nazneen in their mother tongue – and if it is the mother tongue Hasina is writing in, why would it be broken?

A potentially fascinating character and her family are given short shrift, the community seen only through her eyes and thus only seen vaguely, the knock-on effect of a major world event is not given the time it needed. There are plenty of books that cover the various aspects of Brick Lane to better effect.

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Searching for a lady worthy of receiving the Spice Girls’ ‘Mama’ on compact disc.

Publisher: Avon (HarperCollins)
Pages:
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-061-62683-8
First Published: 28th July 2009
Date Reviewed: 18th December 2018
Rating: 5/5

The Duke of Villiers needs to find a wife and mother for five of his six illegitimate children. Most women are either already married or want nothing to do with the whole thing, particularly as the Duke is not the average person. There are but two women left on the list: Eleanor, who he is incredibly attracted to but doesn’t strike Villiers as the motherly sort, and Lisette, who is considered mad but loves children. He’ll have to spend time with them both… but if it’s anything to do with Eleanor, she’ll have him herself.

A Duke Of Her Own is the sixth and final story of the Desperate Duchesses series and ends the set spectacularly.

This book is no longer than any of the others, but it uses its time better than the rest; the other books aren’t lacking in story, but the sheer amount of things covered and the number of characters involved make it a more ‘complete’ story and with much more going for it than simply the romance.

The character development in the book in general is good, with Villiers and Eleanor, and Lisette, though to a lesser extent simply because she’s in-between main and secondary on the character list, understandably well-drawn. (Admittedly, Villiers has had a good few books’ worth of development but until the introduction to this book – included in the previous – he had been mostly relegated to ‘chess player’ status only. That said, he was also more intelligent in the previous books.) The chemistry is thus very good, too, with James creating a very believable romance. Villiers does sometimes get a bit too caught up in wondering whether he should instead marry the woman who he thinks would make the better mother (Lisette) but it doesn’t become overbearing.

This – the fact it doesn’t become overbearing – is due in part to James’ deft plotting. As the novel continues, Lisette’s supposed ‘madness’ is slowly shown to the reader for what it truly is, which means that Villiers’ umming and ahhing becomes more a question of ‘when is he going to see what others can see?’ rather than simple angst. The other reason it’s not overbearing is because it just doesn’t happen too much – once he starts to like Eleanor chunks of the book go by without question.

(And when James explains Lisette openly, it’s the satisfying conclusion to that subplot that you were hoping for.)

The addition of Villiers’ children in the book is fantastic. This isn’t to say that the previous books, which rarely featured children, didn’t work – it’s that the children themselves have inherited Villiers’ better traits, at least in terms of bookish interest. They are most often devious and clever, matching and generally trumping Villiers’ personality in terms of reader interest, and they help speed up his realisations of what is best for him, bringing in extra comedy and a different, lovely, feel to the book. The children are cunning thieves, strong youngsters in the face of the horrid adversity they’ve lived with, and James dedicates time to their settling into what is a completely different world for them. (All were abandoned by both parents and Villiers had previously left any upkeep to a person who effectively pocketed the money.)

There are of course moments that aren’t quite in keeping with the history – mostly due to James’ desire to bring in a bit of present-day thinking into her stories – and also a few silly moments, but these are both fleeting.

A Duke Of Her Own begins well, ends on a triumph, and manages to seem as though it’s from a completely different series whilst still adhering to the general atmosphere and mood of its companions. It is a superb finale to the set, and a fabulous book in itself.

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Working with stereotypes.

Publisher: Avon (HarperCollins)
Pages: 370
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-061-62682-1
First Published: 26th May 2009
Date Reviewed: 15th October 2018
Rating: 3/5

The Beaumont line needs an heir and Jemma wants her husband to be by her side. Knowing she’s not getting any younger and seeing her friends happily paired up, Jemma looks at getting close to Elijah through a few rounds of flirtation; she knows he won’t be wooed in the regular fashion and might take better to being flirted with by someone else. Meanwhile, Elijah has discovered it’s high time he made an effort to be with his wife; nine years of a long-distance marriage to the woman he loves, and a hapless cousin for an heir, mean he’s looking to change things.

This Duchess Of Mine is the fifth and penultimate book in James’ Desperate Duchesses series, and focuses on the ‘leading’ couple of the group of friends.

This book isn’t as strong as the others. The romance isn’t particularly well-written or plotted and there are a lot of conveniences and devices used. Nor is the editing as good, in fact it seems the book is suffering from the ‘author knows best’ or ‘editor won’t touch famous author’s work’ idea that goes along with further works – whereas James’ prose and use of language in general has previously been very good, This Duchess Of Mine is full of contemporary American English that doesn’t match its 1700s England setting.

The romance takes its time; when it finally does get there, it’s rather too cute and perfect. There’s a major lack of chemistry between the pair, meaning that the flirtation and subsequent sex scenes don’t really work – you would expect to feel the love between the characters but that’s difficult.

However – and I realise I’m going back and forth between positive and negative points here – the devices James’ uses are interesting in their historical context. There’s not a ton of focus on them of course, but the information about what appear to be the Roman Baths in Bath, and the inclusion of Dr Withering, a real person who worked on cures for heart conditions using foxgloves, are good. (The Roman Baths are, during the course of the book, provided with funding to restore/develop them further, which fits enough with the time period in which they were truly developed – the 1800s – to say it’s a plausible plot point.)

In terms of the book in general, the best parts are the chess games and the secondary plot of Villiers’ plight at finding a wife, the necessary set-up to his own book which follows.

Perhaps it’s the lack of previous characters – Jemma and Elijah have played a role in everyone else’s lives but here only Villiers walks onto the stage. And perhaps that was something the author wanted in particular – few friends this time, after all the time Jemma has spent with others – but it doesn’t feel the same, especially when so much that occurs in this book has already occurred. (Jemma and Elijah’s story has been in place for a while and by the point of this book really ought to have been quick.) Perhaps, too, it’s the sheer lack of comedy compared to the other books. There are many reasons it doesn’t work.

Read it if you’ve read the others and want to complete the series, but you could easily skip this book in favour of moving straight to #6. Or at least skip the epilogue, which moves several decades forward in time and is at odds with the here-and-now mode of the rest of the saga.

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