Tag: bible

David Gee, Lillian and the Italians (The Conrad Press 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57874214-lillian-and-the-italians?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=YALtjYrfbn&rank=1

Leaving her strait-laced semi-detached life in Hastings, recently widowed Lillian travels to Venice in search of her estranged son, interior designer, Andrew.
From the railings of vaporettos, she drinks in the glamour of the Grand Canal, the Bridge of Sighs and the Piazza de San Marcos, and tries to ignore the stink. Venice haunts her, remembering the honeymoon she shared here with Andrew’s father, 30-some years ago.
She begins to encounter some of the people of importance in her son’s life, and the puzzle pieces start to fall in place. She learns more about his Jet Setting lifestyle. She learns a secret, which she can’t understand why he never shared with her. Once, she had believed they were close.
She fingers the scant postcards they’d received over the years. What had he been doing in Cortina? What took him to Rome? All left no return address.
Lillian is hosted at the sumptuous villa on the Amalfi Riviera of a handsome Sicilian prince, who has some secrets of his own to reveal. While they wait for news of Andrew, the prince escorts Lillian to Capri by yacht, to Rome by private plane.
Into the mix we add a murder mystery, involving, provocatively, ‘Corsicans’—Andrew is presumably on holiday in Corsica– and Lillian’s anxiety increases. Thence reignites an ancient feud between Corsican and Sicilian criminal clans, and we are left with assorted love children from complicated liaisons.
This is a great tale, beautifully written, featuring loads of local colour and a window into the glamorous, sometimes dysfunctional and sometimes dangerous, lifestyles of those who jet and yacht across the Mediterranean from villa to villa. The characters are interesting, and the pace is good. We hear the story of the prodigal Andrew in dribs and drabs, leaving us ever keen to read the next chapter.
My only slight niggle was that I found the couple in the love story a bit of an unlikely pairing. But, Love is not necessarily rational.

Soulla Christodoulou, The Summer Will Come (Kindle 2018)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39325268-the-summer-will-come?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_20

The story starts in 1953 with a blissful portrait of the picture-perfect mountain-side village of Kato Lefkara in southern Cyprus. The villagers are looking forward to a celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and 9 year old Elena and the other children will each be given a mug with the queen’s picture on it.
But all is not idyllic. There are scandals—the Principal’s daughter has eloped with someone from another village; her mother is beside herself. And life is hard. Mothers wake before sunrise to wash—in the same stone trough from which the donkeys drink–their children’s clothes for school, hand-me-downs from other village children. No one owns more than two sets of clothes, and the best set is saved for church. Elena spends her summers making lace, like her mother, to sell for export to Europe. The fare is simple—lentils, onions, bread, halloumi, olive oil—sometimes rabbit with onions and bay leaves and bourekia or pastelaki pastries on special occasions.
Elena dreams of England. Her father is in London, and has never sent for them. Yet an aunt living there promises to assist their immigration. Christaki’s father Loizos, also plans their family’s emmigration to England.
This ordinary picture is then punctuated, by ‘troubles’. Enter into the picture, the Cyprus Emergency. There is increased sympathy for Enosis (political union) with Greece, and some in the village, like Christaki, are joining EOKA (the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters), and even the children are involved. They organise secretive missions to thwart British rule. Others, however, are not sympathetic and, equally secretly, are actively thwarting these missions. Christaki’s father, for one, supports the communist AKEL. Atrocities by British soldiers multiply, and the population becomes polarised along ethnic lines–Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot.
The immigration to London is hard for both families, particularly for Elena’s, but there is a happy ending.
The Voice of Elena is very good; we really see a child’s view of playground politics, village goings-on, and we witness the new culture and country of England through Elena’s eyes. The deeper political issues involved in the Cyprus Emergency don’t really come across, which was disappointing for me, because I’m interested in history and politics—I would have loved to read more secret missions and thwarting of missions–but that’s OK, because we’re seeing most of the story through child’s eyes.
There are an awful lot of characters. In a sense, this is realistic, as in a village everyone is in everybody’s business, and everyone is married to somebody’s cousin or best friends with somebody’s brother. But I found it confusing. A third of the way through the book, I went back to page 1 and made a list of characters so I could keep all the relationships straight.
Most of the story is ordinary stuff—what people say, what they eat, where they go, how they celebrate Easter, etc., but for someone wanting to learn about Cypriot culture, this novel is a lovely eye-opener. If you like reading about different cultures and/or if you like family sagas, you will love this novel. If you are a Greek Cypriot you will cherish this novel like a rediscovered lost friend.

Michael Poeltl, The Blind Affect (Skylab Press 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58404863-the-blind-affect?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=XgpjrAEK9J&rank=1

Jonah, 61, his health failing, looks back on his life. Severn, in therapy, tries to remember those missing years. Both children’s mothers drink, and shirk responsibilities to do so. Fortunately, they both have best friends–Jonah has Morty and Severn has Maribel—and these friendships help them through the hardship.
Always too alone, Jonah had survived birth; his twin brother had not, and his mother is determined never to let him do anything dangerous—or even, really, anything. Finally at 13 Jonah has a friend, another loner, Morty. Jonah tries out for basketball, but the other boys make fun of his body odour, call him ‘Stinky’ and in the locker room shove him into the shower. The doctor says he has Bromhidrosis. In high school, he smokes, drinks and snorts, and he’s been getting into trouble. He’s in and out of rehab.
Jonah is challenged by his therapist to go the cinema, but once there, he witnesses a crazed shooting. He goes on probably the most awkward first date I’ve ever read about, but the girl, June, an exotic dancer, likes him, anyway, and they settle down to a happy life. Right in the midst of Jonah’s happiness, a series of tragedies send Jonah back to his addictions.
Severn is abducted by sex traffickers and locked in a basement. By 15 she’s pregnant by one of the paedophile johns, and suffers a forced abortion. The girls and boys there are given new names, but they etch their real ones into the cement block in the corner, proof that they existed. They rehearse a legend of a girl who once got out. Severn, herself, remains captive for 15 years.
At 31, Severn is expected to manage the others. One day, there’s some kind of incident happening upstairs, and her master, Dominus, wants her to kill them. She refuses, and violence ensues. And so, even her rescue is traumatic. Severn, also, triumphs over her trauma, going to school and qualifying as a social worker, though she has nightmares and still can’t—doesn’t want to– remember the missing years.
Answering his emails, Darnell plans his talk at an upcoming event about his experience growing up in an abusive home. He’s received an email from Severn, whom his charity had helped, wanting to meet him. Here, there is a fantastic twist in the story (no spoilers) as we suddenly understand Darnells’ role in all this.
In the end, the three characters’ stories come together in the most serendipitous way, and Jonah discovers that, far from living a useless life as he had thought, his actions have had a ‘blind affect’ on many people.
Reading about a person with an unusually bad body odour is a first, and I found that interesting, because I know someone like that.
I found a few mistakes in the editing, but the writing is good. I really hope no reader experiences either the abuse, or the parental neglect that so often turns a blind eye to abuse, like the characters in this book. But for anyone with this kind of experience, it might prove educative or cathartic. The tale of these folks’ woes is told with heart and, amazingly, without self-pity. Jonah is a bit of a whinge, but who could blame him? It’s certainly heartening later in the tale when the characters start finding some happiness in their lives. This book should be a lesson to anyone contemplating suicide that, not only can they survive, but their lives can make a difference to others, sometimes without their even trying. There is always purpose.

Michael Poeltl, Cleo McCarthy Time Travel and other Impossible Things (Skylab Press 2024)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/209991851-cleo-mccarthy-time-travel-and-other-impossible-things?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=fbGjwKrcCk&rank=1

On a bucket-list trip to the Far-east and South Africa, Cleo McCarthy’s plane is about to crash, and her life flashes before her eyes. Her young-onset Parkinson’s has been advancing. Then, she finds she has gone back in time. She remembers being on that plane scheduled for two months in the future. She remembers her Far-east travels.
Her time travel guide Franklin appears to explain to her the rules. At any point in the future she can jump back to this, her Initiation Day, and make different choices. Then that future will be erased. It’s a ‘closed timelike curve’. The plane crash never happens, but you still have the memories.
Her physicist friend Bobby says no, time travels in a straight line. Best friend Trish is also in the know. Then Bobby gets shot in a freak burglary. Cleo jumps again.
There’s a white noise that she can’t identify. It’s an Electronic Voice Phenomenon, Franklin says. Other entities—ghosts?—are using the EVP as a medium. They speak to her, ‘Find usss’ they say.
She wants to find a place where ‘time stands still’ and visits Rome, where she meets fellow traveller Doris. Franklin sends her an EVP machine in Paris. At Père Lachaise, she meets Stephan, who says he has met her there nine times. His time curve is stuck in sadness; he can’t get past the age of 23 without jumping, every time he tries to kill himself.
Chapters often end with a switch to Franklin’s POV, as if he’s taking notes on Cleo’s progress.
For Cleo, constant jumping back might be at least a temporary solution to her Parkinson’s. Along the way, she, Bobby and Franklin ponder the big questions—metaphysics, free will, wormholes, the meaning of past, future, the meaning of life, happiness, love, immortality and the role of human agency.
The science bit is pretty cool, as is the big solution they all come up with, though I confess I didn’t get the ‘save the universe’ part of it. I was unclear as to whether the time travellers can control if and when they jump. And how did Cleo get all that time off work?
I loved the line ‘is that a smile sliding up the right side of her face or a frown dipping to the left?’

Michael Poeltl, Killing Karma (Skylab Press 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61073856-killing-karma?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=t9UNAkAi0T&rank=1

Last year, Peter was a witness to and participant in the nightmarish pull-out of US forces from Kandahar in 2021. Now, managing a bookshop in Detroit, he struggles with PTSD, avoiding anything that might provide a trigger. Counselling helps, but not enough. At night, he’s right back there on the tarmac at Kandahar.
One day a woman named Clare orders a book about past lives. She invites him to try regression hypnosis, recommending therapist Theresa.
Peter begins his hypnosis therapy with Theresa. Twice, he’s experienced dissociative fugue, he tells her, a sense of time loss. Theresa immediately senses his pain. ‘Am I going through this for a reason?’ he asks, wringing his hands. Probably misplaced guilt, she thinks.
In trance, he’s an African American boy in Georgia named Martin, about to be hung. He recognises the officer putting a nose around his head. Theresa says Peter is being led to understand those responsible for the trauma causing his PTSD.
Clare walks back in to the shop, and she asks Peter out.
A bitter divorce has led Detective William Harlow to self-harming. He attends a death, an apparent suicide. The preliminary autopsy shows Harlow’s case is a murder.
Peter’s date with Clare is a success, and they return to the subject of past lives.
Theresa goes out for a meal with Nyra, to the same place that Peter and Clare had gone to. They are there on their second date, and Theresa is happy to see romance budding between two of her clients.
A robbery occurs at the book store which Clare and Peter must witness, the shared trauma of which causes problems in their relationship.
Harlow attends another crime scene; a small-time criminal is murdered in the street, his head severed. The body carries a card with a similar message to that accompanying the body in the previous case. Harlow suspects Peter.
Theresa considers her potentially unprofessional feelings about Peter.
Harlow attends a missing person case. A note was left, with the same message. Karma has a Champion. They deserved it. Signed: The Karma Killer. The missing person is Clare. Now, Harlow suspects Peter even more.
After a blow to the head, Clare is abducted. Theresa comforts Peter. Peter tells Harlow he’s been seeing a regression therapist, Theresa Clement; Harlow recognises the surname.
As the perpetrator reveals their hand and Harlow solves the case, we learn that everyone’s fate is a payback for some past life’s crime.
This is two stories—the first, a romance, the progress of which is affected by the couple’s past lives, and the second, a detective story about a serial killer who is motivated by events in past lives. The interconnection between these two elements makes for an excellent plot.
I really love the Concept of crimes being motivated by karma left over from past lives. However, I considered the karmic avenger a basic plot flaw, without a fuller understanding of the killer’s past lives. A karmic vigilante would have worked if they had a stream of different clients they enacted revenge for.

Danielle Gomes, Eve-0 (ANJO One Eleven Press 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57819046-eve-0?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=hxQ20ob0Vj&rank=1

In the past decade, 3 million have died from flu, and another five million from viruses. Civilisation has between 3 and 5 years before everyone is wiped out.
Gabrielle is called away from her U Penn hospital by her fiancé Trent, a geneticist, to be the surgeon on a critical mission into the Amazon jungle. Trent’s employers, AmCorps, have identified an ‘evolution gene’—Eve-0—in hopes of programming the human body to be resistant to disease. Since 1987 Eve-0 has been ‘dormant’, corresponding to a hyper-evolution of viruses and bacteria. The mission is to seek some individuals, without contact from the outside world, untouched by vaccinations and antibiotics, whose Eve-0 gene is not dormant.
On the boat are also are military man Chris, the captain Paulo, and Kukua, the chief, and three members of the Sapanahua tribe, who will escort them. But someone is leaking info to opposition organisations. First, they fight off gunmen, the it’s sharks in the water, and Gabby soon gets used to the adrenaline rushes. They face a coming storm, and decide to anchor the boat in a lagoon. In the fury of the storm, a tribe member Jim is injured with a punctured lung, and Gabby has to operate against the listing and crashing of the boat. The boat is too damaged, and they have to take off in small Zodiac boats, and they lower Jim into the water to die.
Back at HQ, word is that it’s Interfaith for Peace who are tracking the Amazon team, and their billionaire backer. They identify Paulo, their pilot, as the mole, and there’s a mole at home, where martial law is in force. Through forest-fire-scorched forest, they guide their boats, chased by these unknown trackers. Plus, there’s danger from the shores, the indigenous Matsés tribe, whom they want to contact for their DNA, but they also want to avoid antagonising. As they hike into the jungle, they’re bombarded by insects. Gabby begins to understand that the ‘terrorists’ following them are instead environmentalists.
From then, it’s a series of non-stop adrenaline rushes. Finally, a local tribe takes them in and they take ayahuasca. In her trance, Gabby’s mother tells her, ‘When Eve bit the apple it wasn’t knowledge she sought, but control.’ The tribe have fully active Eve-0 DNA. As the roundup of the specimens begins, things heat up, and it’s hard to know who’s on whose side, and HQ tries to take control, without knowing the situation on the ground. That everyone is talking untranslated Portuguese only adds to the confusion. There’s a climax a bit like the end of Hamlet, but the good guys triumph.
The pandemic-driven post-apocalyptic theme is perhaps not new, but the proposal of a genetically engineered solution is innovative, and the plot is great. The whole jungle experience sounds absolutely hellish. It seems like every disaster you can imagine happening in the jungle happened to these guys. I was picturing the blockbuster film the whole time I was reading it.
The main character Gabby is fairly interesting; I was so glad she didn’t end up with Trent. The science is really cool, and sounds quite plausible. I would have liked even more of it. And Trent’s high-tech surveillance equipment sounds interesting, too—I would have liked a bit more description there, as well. It’s well written, and well edited, although I must note that inanimate things like ‘life’, ‘strategy’ and ‘damage’ cannot be quantified by the word ‘amount’.

Sunil Sethy, Flitting in the Shadows (Notion Press 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58135069-flitting-in-the-shadows?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=sxdJQv3DLj&rank=1

Husna’s mother and grandmother are killed in a car crash caused by two men lost in their desire. Husna was already prejudiced by her mother against gays, and this solidifies her antagonism. In her mum’s things she finds a manuscript addressed to her. Her boyfriend Adam helps her through it.
Part I deals with the manuscript’s revelations about Arvind’s family.
Arvind is accused by his friend Clive’s wife of a liaison with him, of which they are innocent, but he decides to own up to some things with his own wife Sushmita. This is the gist of the manuscript.
Manmohan and his pregnant wife Tillotama are fleeing from a massacre of Hindus and Sikhs in the Punjab.
Their young son Arvind is sexually molested by his uncle Shiv. He wets the bed, and is berated by his parents. But the relationship continues, to Arvind’s pleasure and his shame. Uncle Trilok has started molesting Arvind as well. He is rougher, threatening to tell Manmohan if Arvind doesn’t comply.
Part II deals with Sushmita’s family history.
Her wealthy mother Anjali marries the handsome Rakesh in a whirlwind romance, then when he leaves his father-in-law’s firm to take a lower paid job, she abandons him and their daughter and moved to New York.
Arvind and Sushmita marry despite their parents’ objections. Sushmita suffers two miscarriages, and they adopt a girl—we guessed it—Husna. Arvind feels neglected and has a string of liaisons.
Part III returns to the present day with Husna and Adam.
Husna, for some reason, concludes that Sushmita is a pseudonym for her mother Kalpana. This would make Arvind her father. No wonder her mother poisoned her against gays.
Husna and Adam travel to India, then to Australia in search of her father. They find out his real name is Sudhir Nanda, and he’s migrated to Australia and lives with Brian Murphy, whom Husna surmises is ‘Clive’ from the manuscript. Husna and Adam travel to Sydney, but the baggage of the past rears an ugly head, and the reunion is not as happy as it should have been. But there is a happy ending.
The writing style is good. There are a few spelling mistakes; in a few places names of characters are spelled differently, which is confusing, since we’re already handling so many characters. There are an awful lot of people to keep track of. The synopsis described it as a ‘family saga’ (which I love) so I was forewarned and kept a running list of characters and their relationships. The myriad characters are all rich and multi-faceted, and their lives complex. Their sagas also span several decades of an interesting period in India’s history, and by the end, we have learned so much about India.
Almost the whole novel consists of this manuscript Husna discovers, interspersed with brief chapters with Husna and Adam saying stuff to each other about it and Husna saying, ‘What does all this have to do with ME?’ While this may be a logical plot structure, it leaves the reader behind a bit. We are left wondering not only ‘what does this have to do with Husna?’ but ‘Wait, who was Husna, now? I was so engrossed in the Arvind and Sushmita saga, I forgot.’
The book reflects feelings common for people who have been adopted, unsure of their identity when they don’t know where they’ve come from. Of course, one is pained to read of the abuse of Arvind’s childhood. His later psychological sufferings may also be familiar to those with what is often mistakenly called ‘ambivalent sexuality’. So many people whose sexuality is more complex than just straight or just gay suffer from identity confusion, too. Marital infidelities of any sexuality still often cause too much pain to surmount. Modern-day people can read of these sufferings with sympathy, in hopes that one day, these confusions will no longer cause such suffering.

Deborah Cook, Parted Waters (CMC 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56864140-parted-waters?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=A5hbzi9EZi&rank=2

The characters’ lives are a bit banal at first. Ben is a megalomaniac from the start, and his girlfriend Melissa is such a tool, rescripting her entire life just to get Ben’s attention. Peter, the local police chief has a perfect family and goes out weekends on his boat. His wife Julia, when not soccer-momming, gardens, and their perfect teenage kids concern themselves with proms, boyfriends and exams.
The inciting incident for Ben was when his beloved childhood horse got caught in a barbed wire fence and had to be shot, prompting him to dream of a world without government controls.
Against the wishes of Julia and the Land Grant, Ben buys the old McPherson Farm, several hundred acres near the small New Hampshire town of Grantville. Now they’re felling trees and constructing buildings, all without planning permission. Scores of families have moved in, and their children aren’t going to school. Peter’s daughter Katherine has a surprising encounter with Ben, and his son Josh is befriended by the settler Rafael.
The suspense builds marvellously. First, the settlers start construction, then they join the library committee, then they attend a council meeting “just to watch”. Little by little, they take over the town. And they have guns. Ben runs for mayor, and wins without even campaigning, and soon there’s a settler winning every position in town.
Despite her misgivings, Katherine goes out with Ben. Josh has an accident, and the doctors find opiates in his system. Rafael feels guilty for supplying him and befriends a little girl, Ella, promising to teach her things since she doesn’t go to school.
The settlers’ disregard for regulations and their wanton cutting down of trees have tragic environmental and social consequences. High-minded principles give way to personal vendettas, with dire consequences for everyone.
The idea of out of towners taking over a town seems patterned after the experience in Oregon of Bhagwan (Osho). But truth may be stranger than fiction, there. The true story of Rajneeshpuram offered, as well as libertarian separatism, the additional dramas of a strange cult religion, biological terrorism, and corruption and criminality of the leaders.
In this story, in places I found the plot and phrasing to be ordinary. Staircases are always ‘rickety’, belongings are always ‘meagre’ and sportcars are always ‘flashy’. However, it’s very well written, and the characters are very good. An excellent novel, but don’t expect a happy ending.

Una Suseli O’Conner, The Absent Prince (The Conrad Press 2020)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56228956-the-absent-prince?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=pZ69PKRYNU&rank=1

Beautifully written family portrait

The author recounts her family history, having pieced the story together from family documents discovered after her parents’ deaths.
Her grandfather Harry married the nurse, Grace, who cared for him when his leg was shot during the war. Harry was a lonely man, shunned by his family for marrying a Protestant, shunned by his native Ireland for serving in the British armed forces.
Her maternal grandfather, Ernst, a policeman, had trouble meeting his wife Rosa’s expectations, and was accused of stealing some money, committing suicide in shame. This was never discussed by her Swiss mother Lea, and she, herself, often threatened suicide.
Peter taught at Groton, a prestigious American boys’ prep school, and a great proportion of the book is devoted to singing its praises. Described by students and colleagues as ‘an inspirational leader’, Peter suffered from some inner unhappiness, jumping from therapist to guru, leaving the family for long periods to chase wacky treatments.
They married when Lea is 38, but, because of her tuberculosis, she was unable to get a visa, so Peter moved to England. Peter and Lea founded and ran a successful English language school in Folkestone.
We begin the book thinking we’re going to read all about Peter’s and Lea’s extended families, and we end up reading mostly about philosophies of education. The author refers to a manifesto written by her father entitled ‘The Absent Prince’ on his prescriptions for ‘the ideal teacher’, one who includes love and psychology in the mix. We realise toward the end of the book that this has been an overall theme. But this, if it is ‘mission creep’, gives additional meaning to the lives of these characters, especially Peter. Everyone in the family tree is treated with understanding and compassion. But the person we get to know most is Peter O’Connell, and what an interesting, complex, inspiring and yet probably difficult man!
The structure is complex, not necessarily directly chronological, which I liked very much. Instead, it’s organised more thematically, making for more interesting and more meaningful reading. For example, after a passage about her grandfather’s religious beliefs, she moves into the story of her great-grandparents, beginning from their religious beliefs. She also brings in other people in history whose stories are related to her themes. During the part where she discusses her grandfather’s suicide, she tells the tale of other people in the story who also killed themselves. After discussing her father’s good relationship with his students, she discusses her own bad relationship with a childhood teacher.
This thematic structure is very satisfying to read, as you get to grips with a broader subject matter instead of jumping from person to person or date to date. It also results in a richer understanding of the characters than if we had simply read ‘in 1938 they did that, in 1939 they did that’.
Links are found between one theme and the next, artfully weaving them into a narrative that flows seamlessly.
This novel is beautifully written and well edited, and it also includes illustrations, family photographs.
(reprinted with permission from) https://kentbylines.co.uk/family-history-the-absent-prince-in-search-of-missing-men/

Jane Sheridan, The Orchid House (The Conrad Press 2020)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55107146-the-orchid-house?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ueNvDVmnvD&rank=1

Developments in the lives of three friends, Ginny, Bella and Leila, challenge them and their friendships.
Their boys are all away in boarding school, Ginny and David are on holiday in Devon. Ginny hopes the weekend will rekindle the spark in their marriage — perhaps the vastness of the landscape surrounding Brent Tor will make their own problems seem small in comparison.
The orchids Ginny so lovingly cultivates in her conservatory, dubbed the Orchid House, become a metaphor for the one-sided devotion she has lavished on her marriage, the lights tucked in among the flowers represent her hope of something new. David knows he’s been deficient and he feels guilty about it, this guilt translating into churlishness rather than affection.
Bella in Sandwich is trying to escape her tyrannical husband, Steve. A new friendship with Ginny is a ray of sunshine in her life of fear and bruises. She keeps a secret diary. With Ginny away in Devon, she goes alone to join the group canvassing for the election.
David comes across a young girl, Grace, trapped by boulders in the freezing river, and is unable to rescue her until the helicopters arrive, the incident seeming to mirror his own inability to rescue his marriage. He comes home traumatised. Ginny sees that they are worlds apart. She is ready for a change, to go back to college to study landscape gardening. A new woman at David’s work is flirting with him.
Bella comes home from canvassing ‘late’ and Steve roughs her up, again. After the rescue of the young girl, Ginny now has to rescue Bella. Steve is made redundant due to ‘misconduct’, and Bella realises she needs to get away. Ginny’s friend Leila is a legal advocate and helps Bella. Leila has a new boyfriend, Matt, and he’s not Hindu.
Ginny hosts a dinner party including Bella and Steve, Leila and Matt and a couple from David’s work. Unsurprisingly, it is a difficult evening, and eventually, everything kicks off in the Orchid House.
This is a tale of female empowerment, and most of the men in this story are right bastards—well, Matt is an angel—but I kind of wish they had been treated more sympathetically. Sure, men have affairs; sure, men beat their wives. Yes, we women can survive, and that’s great, but is it really all to do with them being bastards? Or is there some underlying sociological reason we could understand and thus do something about? We begin to understand David when we experience his anguish over not being able to save Grace. However, we never have an inkling of empathy for Steve.
It’s well written, with passable editing, and the plot is well structured. There is a happy ending to look forward to; the women look to the future and maybe the promise of new men in their lives.
(reprinted with permission from Kent Bylines)