The Other Son (Nick Alexander) plus others

I have slight problem with ebooks. Although to be frank the problem is not really the actual e-books, the problem is with me.

I love a bargain.  I get a daily email from BookHippo and Bookbub suggesting books I might like, many of them less than £1.99 or free.

The problem is I 'buy' them but I am usually in the middle of reading something for review, or busy with other things.  I do try and read my new purchases but some get forgotten about especially when you don't actually see a pile of books to be read!



The Not So Secret Emails of Coco Pinchard

One of those was The Not so Secret Emails of Coco Pinchard by Robert Bryndza.  Apparently (and this was a shock to me) I bought it in August 2012!    I also have books 2 and 3 in the series of Coco Pinchard books but haven't read these yet:   Coco Pinchard's Big Fat Tipsy Wedding and Coco Pinchard, the Consequences of Love and  Sex.

It was when I was reviewing a copy of Robert's brilliant debut crime thriller The Girl in the Ice that I read he had previously written romantic comedies.  I recognised the Coco Pinchard title but wasn't sure if I had read it. Apparently I hadn't read it.

I managed to clear my NetGalley shelf and decided to start reading some of the books in my Kindle library.

This was first on my list.  It is bonkers, it's farcical but it is well written and very funny.  I liked all the characters, especially her awful mother-in-law.


Coco should have been enjoying a wonderful life.  Her first novel has been published, her son Rosencrantz has grown up and her husband .... well  he is just starting his mid-life crisis. He gives her an iphone for Christmas - not what she wanted.

When she catches her husband in bed with a younger colleague she dumps him.

Poor Coco, she seems to go from crisis to crisis in a run of bad luck.  Luckily she is able to email her (eccentric) friends using her new iphone and her story is told mostly in the form of emails to them.

At the age of forty something she finds herself single and manages to get herself a love interest but even that is not without its trials. As she starts to pick up the pieces with the help of her friends it looks as if things will work out but even the long road that elusive success is filled with hilarious incidents and you begin to wonder if things will ever go right.  A very entertaining book.



The Other Son

This one hadn't been lurking in my Kindle library for quite so long.  I bought The Other Son by Nick Alexander in early January this year.

It tells the story of Alice and her relationships with the three men in her life - her husband Ken and her grown up sons Tim and Matt.

I felt as if I knew Alice.  She has been married to Ken for a long time and has two grown up sons but she doesn't seem to enjoy a particularly happy or fulfilling life.  Ken is one of these men who have to control everything, not just the finances but also who his wife socialises with.  He is a bully.  One of her sons is successful, married with two sons of his own.  He and his wife place great importance on material wealth.  The other son has always been different.  He has spent time travelling and is now living abroad.  Alice hasn't seen him for a while.

I felt the book touched on several emotions:  anger, frustrations, sadness, happiness, worry, sympathy.

Initially I thought I had much of the story worked out as it seemed quite predictable, but in a good way.  However there are a couple of nice twists.  There is quite a neat ending but it is also open enough to allow the possibility of a further book.

It didn't take me long to read this book (not that it's particularly short).  Once I had started it I got quite engrossed.  This meant I spent most of the day reading instead of cleaning the house.

All the Light We Cannot See

This is another book I bought a few months ago when it was on special offer.  I liked the description and I thought it might be worth reading - it is a prize winner after all - winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2015.

It took a few attempts for me to get started (it was quite a busy time for me).  I would read a couple of chapters then put it aside to read other things.  Two months after buying it, I finally sat down for the third time and started to read it 'properly'.  I'm so glad I came back to it.


All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a wonderful book.  It's the story of Werner, a young German orphan destined to become a miner but whose talent for electronics gives him the opportunity to escape that destiny, and Marie-Laure, a young, blind French girl who lives with her father.

This beautifully written story tells of how they, and those around them, are affected by World War 2.  We are told the story from both sides.  Both children have completely different lives and interests and yet there are unexpected connections and coincidences in the story.  They each have their own story but you get a sense of their stories converging.  Will they survive?  Will they meet?  What happens to the people around them and the people left behind?

The book begins in 1944 in St Malo, where we meet the main characters, who are unknown to each other, just as the bombs are about to fall on the town and destroy most of it.


Much of the book spans the war years, and tells the story of how Werner and Marie-Laure each came to be in St Malo but we are also taken to 1934 when Marie-Laure and Werner are aged 6 and 7 respectively.

There are a few flashbacks in the book but these are made quite clear at the beginning of the different sections and it is not difficult to follow the story as it moves backwards and forwards through the war years.

Both children grow up in the course of the book.  Werner has to leave his sister Jutta behind; Marie-Laure and her father have to flee Paris and go to stay with a reclusive uncle in St Malo.  Marie-Laure has to learn to be independent despite her blindness.

The writing is beautifully descriptive in parts but never over the top.

It's a wonderful book and I'm so glad I stuck with it.  Once I got into the story I found it hard to put down.

*****

Well that's three books from the virtual To Be Read pile that have been read.   I bought my first Kindle in 2011 and I have been buying e-books since then.  Glancing through the list of books I have in my library there must be hundreds of unread ones there.  Some will be good, some will be less good and there may even be a few that I will find unreadable (I won't blog about those ones).  The actual Kindle is long gone (worn out maybe?) and I now simply use the Kindle app.

Maybe it is just as well the To Be Read pile is somewhere in the Cloud and out of sight!

A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding - Jackie Copleton

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

Amaterasu Takahashi has spent her life grieving for her daughter Yuko and grandson Hideo, who were victims of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

Now a widow living in America, she believes that one man was responsible for her loss; a local doctor who caused an irreparable rift between mother and daughter.

When a man claiming to be Hideo arrives on her doorstep, she is forced to revisit the past; the hurt and humiliation of her early life, the intoxication of a first romance and the realisation that if she had loved her daughter in a different way, she might still be alive today.

UK Cover

  

US Cover

A confession.  I have only just read this book.  It was published last year but is now on the longlist for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016  so this review is for those who haven't yet read it!

I found A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding an incredibly moving book. Beautifully written, restrained and sensitive - and a wonderful first novel.

Amaterasu is an elderly Japanese widow who had moved to America with her husband Kenzo following the horrific bombing of Nagasaki and the loss of her daughter Yuko and grandson Hideo.

However one winter morning a badly disfigured middle-aged Japanese man appears on her doorstep, declaring he brought her good news and claiming to be her grandson Hideo, who she had last seen as a 7 year old schoolboy on the day of the bombing.

She can't accept this news as she has mourned the death of her grandson for nearly forty years and cannot accept now that he is alive. The man gives her a business card and a letter and asks her to read the letter so they can talk later.

We learn a little bit about Amaterasu, how she had lived with terrible guilt for all these years, feeling that she was responsible for her daughter's death because she had insisted that her daughter meet her at Urakami Cathedral, a place her daughter otherwise would not have been.  There are hints of a serious rift between mother and daughter.

She and her husband had left Japan and gone to America for a fresh start, and Amaterasu hoped she could leave the past behind. She didn't speak much of her life before coming to America, resisted learning English, using her lack of English to avoid difficult conversations.

When she opened the letter it was from the wife of Dr Jomei Sato, the man she blamed for her daughter's death, and the letter revealed that Sato and his wife had adopted and raised Hideo.

We are then treated to an account of the events of the morning before the bomb was dropped and Amaterasu's and Kenzo's search for their daughter and grandson in the aftermath. When she goes to her daughter's house two nights after the bomb she notes how quickly a family home can become empty and silent, like a mausoleum. 

Amaterasu discovers Yuko's hidden diaries and takes them home and finds a new hiding place. No one should read her daughter's diaries, neither her nor Kenzo, and certainly not Yuko's husband Shige when he returns from war.

She never did read them but almost forty years later, the appearance of the man claiming to be her grandson prompts her to bring out the diaries and start reading them.

The story is then told with the help of the diaries, photograph albums and a parcel containing letters written to Yuko from Dr Sato, but all unsent.

Everything is linked beautifully together in the story. Secrets, betrayals, guilt, love, perhaps even jealousy. The present and the past are stitched together seamlessly.

There are also revelations about Amaterasu's early life which partly explain her actions later.

Each chapter started with a Japanese word relating to culture followed by its definition. I found these introductions interesting and relevant to the chapters. It was also helpful as it explained some cultural expectations that are quite alien to western culture.

It's a great first novel and I'm so pleased it has made the longlist of the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.  I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Amazon.co.uk:     A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
Author website:    www.jackiecopleton.com

The Silk Merchant's Daughter

1952, French Indochina. Since her mother's death, eighteen-year-old half-French, half-Vietnamese Nicole has been living in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, Sylvie. When Sylvie is handed control of the family silk business, Nicole is given an abandoned silk shop in the Vietnamese quarter of Hanoi. But the area is teeming with militant rebels who want to end French rule, by any means possible. For the first time, Nicole is awakened to the corruption of colonial rule - and her own family's involvement shocks her to the core... Tran, a notorious Vietnamese insurgent, seems to offer the perfect escape from her troubles, while Mark, a charming American trader, is the man she's always dreamed of. But who can she trust in this world where no one is what they seem? The Silk Merchant's Daughter is a captivating tale of dark secrets, sisterly rivalry and love against the odds, enchantingly set in colonial era Vietnam.

The Silk Merchant's Daughter is Dinah Jefferies third novel and once again she has written another good story, this time set in 1950s French Indochina (now Vietnam), a time and place of which I knew very little.  It's an interesting and entertaining story.

I like Dinah's writing style. You get a real sense of time and place and there is a good balance between description and dialogue.  Her first novel, The Separation, was set in 1950s Malaya and her second, The Tea Planter's Wife was set in 1920s Ceylon.

Again, this latest novel is full secrets, betrayal, loss, rivalry and romance all set against a background of conflict and danger. The Vietminh rebels want to be free of French rule and there is much unrest.

Nicole is half French, half Vietnamese and has grown up in the French quarter of Hanoi in the house of her French father. Her older sister Sylvie looks more European like their father while Nicole looks more like her late Vietnamese mother.  Nicole feels as if she lives in the shadow of her  older sister and indeed sometimes feels she is treated like a second class citizen.  You get the sense that she doesn't really fit in anywhere.

Her father passes control of the family silk business to Sylvie and Nicole is given an abandoned silk shop in the Vietnamese quarter of Hanoi.  Although disappointed she wants the shop to be a success in the hope that her father will be proud of her.

She moves into the apartment above the shop and starts dressing in a more 'vietnamese' style to fit in with the neighbourhood.

It's at this time her eyes are opened to the corruption of colonial rule and the racism suffered by the locals at the hands of some colonials and she witnesses some terrible incidents and feels betrayed by even her own family.

The love interest comes from two men who are complete opposites - Mark, an American trader and Tran, a notorious Vietnamese rebel who could offer her an escape from her troubles in Hanoi.

I'm going to say here that while I really enjoyed this book, it took me a little longer to 'connect' with the main characters.  Nicole seemed to be very needy and sometimes I just wanted to give her a shake.  She did have to cope with a lot of difficult situations and decisions.   I felt she was often unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and sometimes made the wrong choice.

Nicole did a lot of growing up between the first page of the book and the last!

For me the setting of the book in Vietnam at that time was something different.  I hadn't read any other book set there and some of the events in the story did make me think of how awful it must have been to live in such a time of change and turmoil.

I'm really glad I stuck with The Silk Merchant's Daughter and look forward to Dinah Jefferies next book.