Catching up - three reviews

Three books to catch up on today, starting with Crossed Skis by Carol Carnac. This is my eighth book for the European Reading challenge covering the country of 'Austria'. And it's my 6th. book for Carl's Venture Forth, covering the category of 'A 2020 book purchase'.

A man dies in a house fire and it doesn't take long for the police to realise that it was murder. But who was he? Was he the lodger who rented the room or someone else? In the meantime a tour group is off to Austria for two weeks skiing. It's been a difficult task organising it, with people having to back out at the last minute and strangers taking their place. But, slowly but surely, the group get to know each other on the journey across Europe. A few days in, the easy atmosphere is spoilt when some money belonging to one of the men goes missing. The leaders of the group realise that something isn't right and the main question is, is everyone in the group who they say they are? Well, we all know the answer to that of course but as to guessing what was what and who was who well I didn't manage it. To be honest, for me the joy of this book was in the gorgeous Austrian mountain setting. It's beautifully depicted, mountains, villages, farms and so on. Also interesting was the 1950s 'British people abroad' feel to it, how we behaved and what was expected of us, how we were percieved by foreigners. Interesting from a historical perspective. Carol Carnac is the same writer as E.C.R. Lorac whose real name was Edith Caroline Rivett. She wrote some really excellent crime fiction, I don't think this is one of her best but I nevertheless gave it four stars on Goodreads as it was still an excellent read.

Next, The Village by Marghanita Laski. This is my 10th. book for Bev's Mount TBR 2020. It also qualifies for Carl's Venture Forth under the category 'A Social Media Recommended Book' (Rosemary whom I met on Twitter recommended it) and for Rosemary's #ProjectPlaces.

The Trevors, Wendy and Gerald, are a very middle-class couple with two daughters, Margaret and Sheila. Sheila is academic and will likely end up with a good career but Margaret is the opposite. She has no aptitude for school work and the hope is that she can snag herself a 'suitable' husband and settle down to domestic bliss with a clutch of children. But this is the mid 1940s and the class divide is alive and kicking even though the Trevors have no money. Unfortunately, there are no young men around who are interested in a very ordinary girl who is not outgoing or vivacious. Except Roy Wilson, but Roy is solidly working class, in fact his mother cleaned for the Trevors before the war. That said, he has a good job in the printing trade with a good salary and is solid and dependable. Margaret and Roy start to see each other in secret, knowing that when it comes out, as it surely will, there will be hell to pay. And of course there is... Well this book is what I would call a 'little gem'. It's a slow-burner, the author takes her time to introduce the characters, tell you who lives in the village and how it's split, housing-wise, ie. middle classes in one area, working classes in another, the solitary upper class female in the Big House that everyone looks up to (I loved her) and so on. Their attitudes soon become very apparent and so does the snobbery. The Trevors are at loss to know what to do about Margaret, they know she's not a good catch for middle class sons around the area but refuse to consider letting her marry where her heart lies. Someone said to Margaret, 'The trouble with you is that you've got no sense of class' and neither does she. She really doesn't care that Roy and his family are an ordinary working family. It's also quite clear to her that Roy's family think more of her than her own do. Things were changing very rapidly in the late 1940s and into the 1950s. The class barriers were coming down like the Berlin Wall in the 1990s but the middle classes were resisting like hell. This is a fascinating book that charts the beginning of the change of attitude they had forced upon them. By the time I married into a middle class family in the 1970s (nothing like the Trevors I hasten to add) no one gave a damn about my working class background. My prospective mother-in-law was more interested in the fact that I read a lot, knitted, made clothes and did jigsaw puzzles, all of which she did too. I could not have been made more welcome. Anyway, if this kind of social history topic interests you then this is an excellent book to read. It's beautifully written and observed and I will certainly read more by Marghanita Laski, in fact I have Little Boy Lost on my tbr pile.

Lastly, Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield. This was a gift from my lovely friend, Pat, at Here, There and Everywhere so it's my 7th. book for Carl's Venture Forth under the category 'A gift that was given to me'. It's also my 11th. book for Bev's Mount TBR 2020 and also qualifies for Rosemary's #ProjectPlaces, 'the river' being the Thames.

It's the late 1800s and a child is rescued from the upper reaches of the river Thames and brought to The Swan Inn at Radcot. No one knows who the little girl is but there are two possibilities, she might belong to the Vaughans who had a girl, Amelia, kidnapped from her bedroom a couple of years ago, or it might be Alice, the grand-daughter of a local farmer whose son - the child's father - is of very dubious reliability. There is also a third possibility that only one person is aware of. The problem is, for one reason or another, no one can really be sure. What is known is that the child doesn't speak and is, to coin a phrase, 'away with the fairies'. It's a mystery that needs to be solved and Rita, a local nurse, and Daunt, the man who rescued the girl, set about solving it... no easy task as there are a lot of things they don't know about the lives of the people on the river. This is a book that seems to divide people: some love it, some are a bit 'meh' about it, and others can't get beyond the first few chapters. I think I come somewhere between the first two - I liked it, but I didn't love it. I wasn't sure I would even like it after a couple of chapters. It felt over-written and vague and I just couldn't work out who was who and what they were doing in the book. It all came together eventually though and I was glad I persevered. For me the best thing about the story is the setting of the inn and the villages around that area on the Thames. It's very well depicted and I liked the sort of 'fey' atmosphere of the whole book. I liked Rita too, the manner in which she had educated herself to be a medical person was admirable I thought. I loved how open-minded she was. I think, to be honest, that this is not a book to be rushed. I approached it like that, taking time with it, and I think it reaped its rewards. I almost felt too that it was one of those books that would bear reading again immediately. It's rare that I feel that way about a book but I fancy a second reading would give me a better idea of what was going on. I'm not going to do it but I will keep it to reread in a couple of years.

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