Letters to Iris – Elizabeth Noble

Description:

Tess has a secret – one which is going to turn her life upside down in just nine months’ time. The only person she can confide in is her beloved grandmother. But Iris is slipping further away each day. Then chance brings a stranger into Tess’s life. Gigi’s heart goes out to Tess, knowing what it’s like to feel alone. She’s determined to show her that there’s a silver lining to every cloud. As their unlikely friendship blossoms, Tess feels inspired to open up. But something still holds her back – until she discovers Iris has a secret of her own. A suitcase of letters from another time, the missing pieces of a life she never shared. Could the letters hold the answers that Tess thought lost for ever? An uplifting, unforgettable story about keeping secrets, taking chances and finding happiness where you least expect it. 

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I enjoyed this book very much. I think the first thing that attracted me was the cover. According to the description it’s “a gloriously uplifting story about love in all its forms… “ This is definitely true!

Letters to Iris is about family relationships, friendship, secrets, old love, new love, the beginning and ending of love, rekindling of love, Loss, joy, hope.. Wonderful.

Tess is 35 and unexpectedly pregnant. When she eventually tells him, her boyfriend Sean doesn’t want her to have the baby. He has been offered a job in New York and wants Tess to go with him. They break up. Tess is very close to her 95 year old grandmother Iris who brought her up but now has dementia. She has a difficult relationship with her mother Donna.

Gigi is married to Richard and has three adult children and a baby granddaughter. She’s beginning to feel that she’s taken for granted and that she and her husband Richard are growing apart.

Iris is taken into hospital and subsequently moves into a nursing home. The dementia is getting worse and her capacity to understand is disappearing. Tess tries to tell her about the baby but knows her gran doesn’t really take in what she’s saying.

Tess and Gigi meet by chance at the nursing home when Gigi is visiting her father in law who also has dementia and despite everything become friends. Both have made huge changes in their lives – Tess broke up with Sean and moved into her mother’s house while her mother was overseas. Gigi separated from her husband Richard and moved into a flat on her own.

Gigi is a lovely character: caring and warm-hearted. She’s concerned about Tess and and as their friendship grows, Tess starts to open up a bit.

There is a bit of depth to the main characters. I felt as if I knew them. The other characters are interesting too – Gigi’s family, Tess’ friend Holly and her family and Donna. They also have their stories.

Secrets from the past are revealed when Tess is clearing out her gran’s house. Tess and her friend come across an old suitcase containing photos and letters to her grandmother. As Tess went through it she discovered things about her grandmother’s earlier life she had never known about. Tess had never met her grandfather Wilfred but Iris only talked about him and their small family – Donna and Tess – no other family. That was all quite emotional.

I thought the letters that Tess wrote each month to her unborn baby were lovely – a sort of progress report of the pregnancy and other thoughts.

The author skillfully brings all the various threads together to create a well-written, ultimately heart-warming, story.

[My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin UK – Michael Joseph for providing a digital review copy].

The Valley at the Centre of the World – Malachy Tallack

Description

‘The thing he felt ending was not just one person, or even one generation; it was older, and had, in truth, been ending for a long time . . . It was a chain of stories clinging to stories, of love clinging to love. It was an inheritance he did not know how to pass on.’

Shetland: a place of sheep and soil, of harsh weather, close ties and an age-old way of life. A place where David has lived all his life, like his father and grandfather before him, but where he abides only in the present moment. A place where Sandy, a newcomer but already a crofter, may have finally found a home. A place that Alice has fled to after the death of her husband.

But times do change – island inhabitants die, or move away, and David worries that no young families will take over the chain of stories and care that this valley has always needed, while others wonder if it was ever truly theirs to join. In the wind and sun and storms from the Atlantic, these islanders must decide: what is left of us when the day’s work is done, the children grown, and all our choices have been made?

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The Valley at the Centre of the World was on my wish list so I was delighted when the publisher approved me to download a preview copy.

I have to confess.  I have an interest here.  I love visiting Shetland.  My grandmother was born and brought up in Dunrossness and although the family moved to mainland Scotland in the 1920s when she was in her teens, I still have relatives who live in Shetland.

I found the book an enjoyable and easy read about the inhabitants of  one remote valley in Shetland over the course of almost a year – the ones who were rooted there, the ones who arrived and left, the ones who arrived and stayed a while.  While it is not a fast, exciting read I liked the style and enjoyed reading about the various characters and their interactions.  For me there was a sort of familiarity with the people and place.  There is just the right amount of back story for each of the characters too.

It’s just a fact that there are some who can’t wait to leave Shetland and others who can’t imagine wanting to settle anywhere else.  My grandmother was one of those who went ‘hame’ to Shetland for her holidays most years until she was well into her 80s.

Some of the dialogue is written in Shetland dialect but there is a helpful glossary at the beginning of the book.  I loved the lines written in dialect.  It brought these characters to  life.  I could picture the scenes and the Shetland humour comes through too.  I didn’t find it difficult to understand but perhaps I had the advantage of growing up listening to my great grandfather, my grandmother and her eight sisters.  Don’t let the dialect parts put you off.  I think it makes the characters seem more real.

[My thanks to NetGalley and Canongate Books for providing me with a digital review copy].

The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne

Forced to flee the scandal brewing in her hometown, Catherine Goggin finds herself pregnant and alone, in search of a new life at just sixteen. She knows she has no choice but to believe that the nun she entrusts her child to will find him a better life.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery, or so his parents are constantly reminding him. Adopted as a baby, he’s never quite felt at home with the family that treats him more as a curious pet than a son. But it is all he has ever known.

And so begins one man’s desperate search to find his place in the world. Unspooling and unseeing, Cyril is a misguided, heart-breaking, heartbroken fool. Buffeted by the harsh winds of circumstance towards the one thing that might save him from himself, but when opportunity knocks, will he have the courage, finally, take it?

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I’m not sure where to start with my review of The Heart’s Invisible Furies to do this wonderful book justice. I loved it, right from the start, even before Cyril Avery officially appears (although he is the narrator in the story). It was a delight to read. There is a wonderful kind of rhythm to the writing. John Boyne’s characters are so vivid and real. I could see them. I could hear them speak. I felt as if I knew them.

It’s 1945, West Cork, Ireland. The book opens with a young girl, 16 year old Catherine Goggin, being denounced by the priest in front of the congregation at Sunday mass and cast out by Father Monroe and her family. Her crime? Being pregnant, unmarried and refusing to name the father. She’s told to go and never return and so leaves for Dublin where she manages to get a place to stay and a job and later gives birth to a baby boy.

Cyril is adopted by a rather eccentric couple who had no children of their own. They are not bad people but Cyril grows up, often being left to fend for himself and there isn’t much affection shown to him. Charles Avery would always make it clear that Cyril was adopted and not a real Avery.

He realises he is not like other boys. He has no interest in girls and even at the age of 7 he becomes secretly obsessed by his friend Julian who had no idea of Cyril’s infatuation.

I felt lots of different emotions – anger at the hypocrisy and small mindedness of the church and state, and sad at Cyril’s plight – he had quite an unconventional upbringing and he seemed lonely and in need of a friend. He just wanted to live his life but of course at the time it was a criminal offence to be homosexual. It’s horrific the way homosexuals were treated. But the story is also very funny and witty and a joy to read.

The book is divided into three parts and an epilogue: I Shame, II Exile and III Peace. It spans 70 years, moving from Dublin to Amsterdam where Cyril meets his future partner then later to New York where he has to face a terrible and unexpected tragedy. However during these 70 years Cyril and Catherine’s paths cross several times without either of them realising. It also took 70 years for Cyril to realise he is finally happy.

This has to be one of my favourite reads of the past year. It’s also a book I would be happy to read again and there aren’t too many of those.