Mad Mike's writing blog, book of the year 2021

Welcome again dear friends, book bloggers and avid readers alike, to my annual book of the year post. As usual, this post is not about books written or published this year, it's about books I have read this year, and with this being the year of the re-read, there might be some old favourites, too. I won't bore you with a big long list of all my reads from 2021, for that you can check out my historic posts or look at Amazon/Goodreads for my reviews; so without further ado:-

Kicking things off at number five with a punch in the face is, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. This is not a short book but it's a page turner, feeding you just enough information to keep you guessing and speeding through, and I liked the characters - although there did seem to be a rather high proportion of weirdo's to non mentally challenged people in this book - and when it gets violent it gets seriously X rated violent, so it's definitely not a book for the faint hearted. Highly recommended though, for it has depth and intrigue and to all those who like books with grit, mystery, multiple characters and with a good dose of back-story, you'll love it. (Full review shortly).

My number four is Clive Barker's sublime, Weaveworld. (07/04/2021 post) "Barker's writing throughout is a triumph, from character believability to the mystical worlds he creates, and although slightly dated in some aspects, the book is simply superb. There is horror and destruction, death and pain but there is love and hope, too and in the cold snow blanketed hills and vales at the end, when good faces evil, you get the feeling that only a truly excellent book can give . . . the feeling that you just don't want it to end," I said back in April. Its been near thirty years since I first read this book and I've fallen in love with it all over again. Pure escapism and highly recommended.

In bronze position then, is the third instalment of one of my all time favourite authors, Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. (04/02/2021 post) 'The Prisoner of Heaven is written in the same beautifully menacing but somehow witty prose that led me to attributing the first two books in this series with top honours and possesses the same, must-keep-reading-whatever-the-time-is-because-I-just-can't-put-it-down, style that will have readers up well into night, early in the morning and late for their Zoom meetings. A fantastic read then,' I told you all back in February and I suspect it always will be.

So, the runner up spot goes to the all-time classic and must read, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. (27/o6/2021 post) “Opening with one of the most famous lines in literary history, Du Maurier writes with such skill and passion throughout that even when we encounter the mundane, those elements of daily life . .  you are still enveloped in the scene . . . and it is this skill, along with her amazing ability to create tension out of nothing, like the change in the weather, a thunderstorm with no rain, Maxim de Winter confessing his crime two thirds of the way through the book but leaving Rebecca's secret, the fate of Maxim and Manderley to the end, that elevates the author and this novel to one of the best I have read,” I said at the time, and I stick by that now more than ever.

And the winner, my book of the year 2021 is the epic (albeit short), All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. (13/11/2021) "If you have no interest in history, war, death et al, I won't hold it against you, but put those prejudices aside and buy, download and read this book because no other fictional book I've read has ever taken me closer to understanding just a smidgen of what people went through when they fought during World War I," I said back in November and I felt so passionate about this book then, and still do now, that I believed it should be part of our school curriculum (if it's not already), so that every child in this country can learn what not to repeat in the future.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them, message me with your recommendations.

Stay safe everyone, get your jabs and we'll do it all again in 2022. Happy New Year to you all.

Mrs de Winter, book review. (Susan Hill)

Having just reread Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (see 27/6/21 post), loving it just as much

as I did the first time, and being thoroughly in awe of the author once again - My Cousin Rachel and Frenchman's Creek having cemented my love for her books even more - I thought I would reread this, Susan Hill's sequel, straight after.

With Susan Hill also in my top ten authors, I had high hopes, and coming off of the back of Rebecca, with all that went on at Manderley fresh in my mind, it was the right thing to do.

So, over a decade has passed since our unnamed narrator and her husband (and murderer) Max de Winter fled to Europe. The authorities do not pursue them, for the death of his first wife Rebecca was deemed an accident, but the memories of her death, the burning of Manderley, the bribery attempt by Rebecca's cousin, Jack Favell and the cold icy fear that Mrs Danvers installed in the first book, still do, so they stay away, far, far away, until . . .
They are summonsed back to England for a funeral.
Max's sister has died.

They arrive back in the nick of time, planning to stay only a shot while - only long enough to settle some affairs, put the estate in order et cetera, but Frank Crawley, Max's right-hand man from Manderley is there, and he is well and enjoying life in the highlands of Scotland, so they must visit him before they depart - take flight! - surely?

As with Rebecca, the tension in this book is subtle at first: our narrator being concerned for Max's health if they return, what people might say and think; that everyone will remember the outcome of the inquest into Rebecca's death but possibly have had their heads turned in their absence, but when those fears do not materialise and they find an idyllic but somewhat neglected Manor House in the Cotswolds, all seems well with the world.
Then, Jack Favell! Rebecca's cousin and lover.
The chance encounter with Favell in London brings to the fore our narrator's fears, and the lies she tells as to why she's there, along with the demands for money that begin to arrive a few weeks later, create more tension, and her and Max's relationship becomes tense, and then . . .
Mrs Danvers, and the De Winter's relationship hardens further, the garden party that Mrs de Winter was so looking forward too ceases to hold interest - painful memories of the Manderley ball come flooding back - trust is lost and secrets are revealed and . . . and . . .

Susan Hill's writing is as always, exemplary, but I did find some elements of the story a little drawn out, not quite as punchy as they could have been and I wondered whether a shorter book might have been better, but with passages like, 'It was not the the flowers at which I started, in horror, not the printed words that chilled me, splintered the sky and fractured the song of the blackbird, darkened the sun. It was the single handwritten letter, black and strong, tall and sloping. R,' you can see why I hold the author in such high esteem.

Three and a half stars for Mrs de Winter then. A thoroughly good read.

Don't forget, search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them message me with your recommendations.

 

Rebecca, book review (Daphne du Maurier)

Opening with one of the most famous lines in the history of literature, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca will be no stranger to many of you, as it wasn't for me, but with my memory for all things past being somewhat vague, and the passage of time since I first picked up this masterpiece being rather long, I thought it only right to add it to my 'year of the reread' list.

Beginning with a short dream - the one of Manderley - before being whisked off to Monte Carlo where our unnamed narrator is the bored and rather put-upon companion to a Mrs Van Hopper (a rich but rather crude woman, who quickly falls ill), she soon finds herself lunching, riding around in a motor car, and falling in love with the recently widowed Mr de Winter.

There is a distinct difference in their ages, upbringing (read: breeding) and social standing, but a connection has been formed, and so, when Mrs Van Hopper discovers that she has to leave post-haste for New York, a decision has to be made and Mr de Winter proposes.

They honeymoon for several weeks before returning home but with the bride having no family to return home to, they head for Cornwall, to Manderley.

There are four main characters in this novel: Rebecca, Mr de Winter, our narrator and Manderley - sorry Mrs Danvers - with its imposing mile long drive, its vast grounds, mazes of passageways and unseen doors, and of course, let us not forget, The West Wing - where Rebecca used to reside before her unfortunate accident at sea. However, where the house oozes a charm and warmth but with a sense of foreboding, Mrs Danvers dispenses with the former as she robotically runs the house, and she is very much the 'other woman', sometimes spooking the new Mrs de Winter by turning up when least expected, and her presence, her constant niggling, her suggestion on what dress her new mistress might wear to the upcoming fancy dress ball, the fact that she keeps the West Wing as a homage to Rebecca - her old possessions, even down to her hair brushes, remain as they were the night she died - all adds to the sense that Rebecca has never left; that she's still there, alive in the walls, the furnishings, in the flowers that grow outside or are cut and placed in vases around the house.

There's also Frank Crawley, the estate manager, Bee and Giles, Maxim de Winter's sister and brother-in-law and Jack Favell, Rebecca's cousin and all round bad egg, but the really clever thing about this book is how the characters with no real voice - Rebecca is dead remember and a house can't talk - monopolise the narrative. Of course, Mrs Danvers plays a key roll in unsettling the new Mrs de Winter by reminding her how beautiful Rebecca was, how organised and successful her running of the house was, how much everyone loved her, flocked to her, held her in the highest esteem, which speeds you through the book in no time.

Du Maurier writes with such skill and passion throughout this book that even when we encounter the mundane, those elements of daily life like: walking the dog, eating breakfast, reading the paper, you are still enveloped in the scene, to the extent that you can almost hear the ticking of the carriage-clock, the creek of a floorboard, the rustle of a folding newspaper, and it is this skill, along with her amazing ability to create tension out of nothing, like the change in the weather, a thunderstorm with no rain, Maxim de Winter confessing his crime two thirds of the way through but leaving Rebecca's secret, the fate of Maxim and Manderley to the end, that elevates the author and this novel to one of the best I have read.

Five stars then for Rebecca and a commitment to continue working my way through the author's extensive back catalogue.

Don't forget, search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them yet, message me with your recommendations

2021 - The year of the reread. Books I've loved so much I'm having to revisit.

Do you have a favourite book?
Is it long, short? Did you read it at a time that was poignant? Is it a book about love that you read after a breakup? A book about an apocalyptic virus that you read last year?!! Or is it a favourite from childhood that still has you turning the pages and laughing, screaming, crying, in all the same places? Well, whatever it is - and speaking to the readers and writers I know, it seems that most of us do have a favourite, or at least a top five that's forever fluid because we just can't decide in which order to place them - I've decided to reread some of my favourites (Harry Potter excluded).
I'll need a bit of filler though because there's some big old tomes here - that copy of, The Stand in the picture, is one thousand four hundred and twenty pages, so I won't be going for volume (I read forty-one books last year so I'll be lucky to make half that this) but needs must.
Clive Barker is an author from my childhood and his ability to create worlds that seem so fantastical but so real, is both startling and brilliant, so I intend to revisit his superb, Imajica - which, along with his Weaveworld and Two Books of the Art, The Great and Secret Show and Everville are amongst those that have influenced my own writing more than any.
Having supped on the delights of Frenchman's Creek and My Cousin Rachel in recent years it feels like an age since I read Rebecca and its sequel, Mrs de Winter (did you know it had a sequel?) as does my last visit to Hobbiton, to Frodo, Gandalf and Sam, in a book that needs no introduction, that I first read as a teenager and understood a lot more as an adult (but that was near on twenty years ago now) so again, the need to dip one's toes in the waters of the Brandywine river and share that epic adventure again has begun to outweigh the compulsion to read something new.
There's nothing wrong with something new of course. I have never completed Stieg Larssons's Millennium trilogy, so this will be part reread and part first read, as will reading Stephen King's Dark Tower for the first time, having reread the first six books over the last year or two, so I'm not completely mad, I have got some new (to me anyway) books lined up for the coming year.
There's the latest Rivers of London book, False Value to read, before the next one comes out, Malorie, the sequel to Bird Box - which you might know from the film of the same name - the final book in the unbelievably superb Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, The Labyrinth of the Spirits (which I'm probably looking forward to the most) and a whole host of others that I'm sure will steer me from my path, but you can rest assured I'll keep you all posted, whatever happens.
Happy reading folks and stay safe.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them yet why not message me with your recommendations.

Frenchman's Creek, book review. (Daphne du Maurier)

There's an old adage that I bet you've all used at least once in your lives: Never judge a book by its cover, and with this book - well, the edition I read anyway - that couldn't be further from the truth.

We're back in Cornwall (it is du Maurier after all) and we're at the country estate of Navron House, but hold on a minute, what's this? Our heroine, Lady Dona St. Columb has left her husband in London and demanded to be left in peace. Has told him that she requires space to think, a place to be herself, free from the confines of their life in the city, the endless dinner parties, polite smiles and acceptance of invitations from people she doesn't actually like or care for!

Oh, and it gets better.

There's a pirate on the lose, a Frenchman at that, and he's outwitting the local lords and landowners, pilfering their wares and interfering with their womenfolk, or so it is said, but on stumbling upon a ship in a creek by her land, Lady Dona is kidnapped, albeit temporarily - for the pirate is indeed a thief and a philanderer - but he's also much, much more.

He is not slovenly or cutthroat, his ship and his crew are honourable hard working thieves and furthermore, this dashing pirate (Aubery) knows more about her ladyship than he has any right too; but how?

Well, we soon find out and their love affair unfolds, and there is passion and nudity, sex and thievery - bear in mind here that this book was written in nineteen forty-one by a woman - and I love that she writes so passionately about a woman cutting her ties from her husband, freeing herself from the life that was expected or her, on entering into an adulterous affair with a pirate, and a Frenchman to boot (you should remember that the war was on and France had fallen when this book was first published).

Du Maurier's flagrant disregard for propriety is one thing but her depth of characters, her ability to have the reader rooting for the pirate and the adulterer as opposed the law abiding citizenry of Cornwall - whose possessions and women are being stolen and defiled remember - is simply brilliant, and talking of brilliance, Aubery's daring raid on Navron house and Lady Dona's dinner party, where he and his cohorts rob her guests of their jewels and their dignity, the theft of Phillip Rashleigh's merchant ship from the harbour in Fowey and the Frenchman's escape attempt at the end (no spoilers here) drip so delectably from the page you just drink them in and are, in my opinion, worth reading the book for alone.

This is only the third du Maurier book I've read and as with My Cousin Rachel, which I put off reading for fear I wouldn't like it as much as Rebecca, it has been sitting on my shelf for well over a year but as soon as I finished the first chapter I knew I'd made that same mistake, I'd left it too long. Du Maurier's writing is simply superb here, her grasp of the English language sublime and with it's period use of certain words, is a joy to read - Susan Hill I think, is her modern equivalent and is why she was given permission to scribe Rebecca's sequel, Mrs De Winter - but I don't think even she can equal du Maurier and you all know how much I love Susan Hill.

Frenchman's Creek is only a short book but it lacked nothing for it. Four and a half stars.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books. If I haven't read them yet why not message me with your recommendations.

Susan Hill. (Author focus).

Something new for the blog today: a focus on one of my favourite authors, Susan Hill.

It was after reading, Air & Angels and it subsequently becoming my book of the year 2017, (blog post 01/01/18), that I started thinking about what else this author had written; what other books in her extensive back catalogue I had read, and so, I thought maybe I'd start a new series of posts that focus on the author, not just individual books.

Since the delicate and poetic prose of, Air & Angels, I have read the very atmospheric, The Mist in the Mirror, which makes the hairs on your neck tingle and sends shivers down your spine, (even on a warm autumnal afternoon), and I've just finished, I'm the King of the Castle, a tale of childhood drama, set in the quiet gentile English countryside, where still, the author is able to get your heart racing with just a walk in the woods!

I'm the King of the Castle, did feel a bit dated, it was written in 1970 after all, whereas, Strange Meeting, which is set in France during WWI, gives a poignant reminder to the physical and mental suffering of soldiers at the time, and should be added to anyone's, TBR (to be read) list.

One of Susan Hill's boldest ventures was to write the follow up to one of literature's most famous books, Rebecca, with the sequel, Mrs de Winter, which is also rather good, but without doubt, her most famous book is the amazingly brilliant, Woman in Black, and if I had to recommend just one of the few books of hers that I have read, it would be this one.

Written in the early 80's, that's 1980's by the way, The Woman in Black, is a spooky, creepy, violent, scary, Gothic ghost story of epic proportions, which is not to say it is long, for it is not, but it is a book that stays with you, and since I first read it (thank brother) many years ago, I can't help but see its influence in almost every other ghost story I read.

Set in Victorian England, in a weather drenched Eel Marsh house, you feel the draft through the sashes, the creak of the house as it settles of an eve, and the cold finger of death reaching from the pages when she appears.

Just writing this makes me want to freak myself out again and reread it; brrrrrrh!

So, to conclude, buy a Susan Hill book, the Woman in Black if you like a good scare, but if not, Air & Angels for its poetic prose, Strange Meeting for its thought provoking subject, The Mist in the Mirror, if you like a chiller, but with so many others yet to read, I'm sure that whatever Susan Hill book you choose, you’ll go back for more.

Enjoy.

My Cousin Rachel, book review. (Daphne du Maurier)

I purchased this book from the charity shop (nothing out of the ordinary there then) about five years ago, and there it languished, on the 'to-read' shelf in the wardrobe: constantly overlooked, constantly put aside for something else, something more modern, more exciting, faster paced, more edgy.

That's sixty months, sixty! Or to put it another way, one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six days I wasted, before reading My Cousin Rachel.

What an idiot, what a fool.

If only someone had told me. If only someone had written a review or a blog post, explaining how stupid I was being, telling me how I should have read this the day I bought it - hell, telling me I should have gone and bought it sooner, read it years earlier; well, now there is.

I implore you all, fellow book bloggers, bibliophiles, bookaholics, all those lovely people around the world that might read this post, all those that might have done as I have, and left this book to gather dust, read it now.

Du Maurier's incredible writing comes to the fore here, such believable characters, such eloquent prose, such beauty in her portrayal of Cornwall, (where the book is mainly set), and such suspense.
When Ambrose goes to Florence for the winter, to enjoy the warmer climes of Italy, his cousin and ward, Philip, thinks nothing of it, but when he marries and his letters become increasingly erratic, Philip starts to worry, so much so that he heads over to Italy himself.
On his arrival, he finds that Ambrose, who had looked after him since he was a small child, has died, and his wife, the mysterious cousin Rachel, has vanished.
Shortly after Philip's return to England, Rachel appears, but his anger, the betrayal he felt, evaporates. He is under her spell, captivated by her, but all is not plain sailing. One minute, there's delightful frivolity between Rachel and Philip, the next, it turns on a sixpence and one is shrouded in doubt.

Is Rachel all she is supposing to be? A grieving widow? Penniless? Did her first husband really die in a duel? Who is the mysterious Signor Rainaldi, friend or foe? And what of the hidden letters from Ambrose, talking of deceit, poison?

Du Maurier weaves such a web of doubt and intrigue here, that you just can't help but continue to read. You stay up late, you get up early, you skip lunch, avoid going out, and you put aside the chores, until you've reached the fabulous climax.

With the film released on June 9th (in England at least), I implore you to read this before seeing the screen adaptation, you will not be disappointed.

Five great big giant gold stars for this book then, and the best book I've read so far this year.