Skip to main content

Featured

A New Home at the Wartime Hotel by Maisie Thomas #Review #Dunbar HotelBook1

  I am delighted to introduce a new WW2 saga by Maisie Thomas. A New Home at the Wartime Hotel was published by Boldwood Books on 27th March. The first in a nostalgic and heart-warming WWII saga series by bestselling author Maisie Thomas, that readers of Ellie Dean and Lesley Eames will love. Manchester, 1941 Kitty learned early on in her marriage that her husband, Bill Dunbar, isn’t reliable with money. So when they inherit the Dunbar family hotel at the start of the war, she's hopeful that their financial worries are over... until the bailiffs turn up! With Bill away fighting, it’s up to Kitty to turn things around for her family, or risk ruin. Lily worked as a chambermaid at Dunbar’s before the war. She met Daniel there, but their relationship was complicated by class differences and the disapproval of Daniel’s mother. Now Lily is pregnant –and with Daniel away at sea, she is all alone. When tragedy strikes, will Kitty and Dunbar’s come to her rescue? Beatriceis in her forti...
Post a Comment
Read more
Labels

Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale

In Notes from an Exhibition, we are presented with Rachel Kelly, a renowned artist and her complicated family. Each of the chapters begins with notes from a retrospective on her work which highlights an object or painting from her life and relevant to the chapter. We become like detectives, piecing together their story as the narrative moves back and forward through time. We see the effect that Rachel's bi-polar condition had on her personally and the people around her. I thought that this was a very clever way of structuring the story and so illuminating.

    As the narrative progresses, we learn that Rachel has a mysterious past which her husband knew nothing about. All her family have their own story which is gradually revealed. We are given their perspectives at different times and this makes for a richness and depth which draws you into the book and which keeps you reading. It feels right that it is set in Penzance, just the place that someone like Rachel would have settled.

     After the end of the book, I found the author's notes on links between the story and people in  his life very interesting. The novel weaves together several issues : the artistic process, mental illness, parenthood, sexuality, religion and all of them emerge from the interactions between the characters, threaded throughout the story. I have not read anything by Patrick Gale before but realise that that has been my loss.

In short: a haunting but uplifting look at family dynamics. 
 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts