The Woman who went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend

The reviews wrote of this book "I laughed 'til I cried" (Daily Mail) and "Glorious, laugh-out-loud" (Daily Telegraph). It's certainly very funny.

Eva Beaver has had enough of life being a wife and mother. Her unsatisfactory husband has been having an affair for 8 years and her twin children, educational prodigies and totally removed from reality, have left home for university. She retreats to bed, from where she views her small world of the street outside and wonders what her life will be now that she's turned 50?

Eva's family seem to think either that she's having a breakdown or that she's simply attention seeking. Brian, her astronomer husband, worries about who will do the housework and cook his dinner. The press get hold of the story of the lady who watches the world from her bedroom and, building on next to nothing, portal her as having special powers to help people, Eva's life takes a turn she couldn't have expected. She's soon besieged by visitors wanting her to help them find lost children, solve their marital problems and more.

Brian's lover, Titania, moves in with him into his extended garden shed, the house fills with family and visitors, all trying to 'help' and generally creating chaos, to which Eva witnesses silently from the security of her bedroom.

Many middle aged wives and mothers will recognise themselves in this book. Few will, I suspect, see much humour in their own situations. It's poignant, touching, witty and with dollops of passion and anger. I can't say that I laughed 'til I cried; I actually felt so sorry for Eva (whilst exasperated at her reaction to her situation) that my laughter was often stifled; it felt wrong, somehow. But yes, it's funny and delicately observed. Recommended.

The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan

I loved this book. I don't often start my blogs with praise, but this book deserves up front adulation.

Williams Shakespeare left us very little information about his life. We know more about his family than we do about him, the man. In his life time he seems to have been little interested in having his work printed, leaving it up to patrons and posterity to rescue hand written plays and other work to be printed later. This novel is, therefore, very much fiction, built around the few facts that history tells us.

We read about Will's meeting with Anne Hathaway, who becomes his wife and who raises their children (2 daughters to adulthood and a son who dies in childhood) in Stratford whilst Will pursues his passion for the theatre in London. We see Jude Morgan's version of Shakespeare's  relationships with his parents and siblings and glimpse what the citizens of Stratford might have thought of his marriage to an older woman whom he later left behind for life in the capital fleshpots. Was he a faithful husband? Did he visit his family regularly? What were his relationships with the other great writers and actors of the day? How much did he plagiarise the work of others to produce his greatest work?

Jude Morgan builds a tale skilfully, making us believe in the man, Shakespeare, whilst showing us a little of life of rural Warwickshire and the teeming streets of London during the dying days of Elizabethan England.

The language in this book is superb; lilting, lyrical and shadowy with Shakespeare's literary genius. As I said, I loved it. More, please!

Once upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Margo Crane is 16 and she lives on the bank of the Stark river in Michigan. To her, this is paradise and she wants to be nowhere else. Her heroine is Annie Oakley and she wants to be just as tough and resourceful. Unfortunately she live in the 20thC, not the 19th and, at only 16 years of age and effectively orphaned, the river is a dangerous place to be alone.

Margo is, however, resourceful as well as tough. And she's promiscuous, able to take advantage of the weakness of the men she meets along the way. Her moral code is very much her own, and she refines it in her own way as she inches her way along the river, making a life as best she can while she searches for an unknown future.

There is no tidy end to this American parable, it just reaches a point where we leave Margo where we feel she has learned enough to be able to build a life from which she can survive, rather than be more at risk of being swallowed up and disappear, as she might have been earlier in the story.

This story is rather like a lengthened version, in prose, of a Johnny Cash song, a mixture of melancholy, defiance and joyfulness. Slow paced but with its share of brutality, I enjoyed reading this slice of northern backwoods Americana.

Shields of Pride by Elizabeth Chadwick

Joscelin De Gael is an illegitimate son in an age when this matters. He is the eldest but his father has 3 legitimate, younger, sons, so Joscelin must make his own way with his wits and his sword. The year is 1173 and the sons of Henry II and their followers bring war to England as they strive to take the throne.

Elizabeth Chadwick is a scholar of this period of English history and her grasp of the social structure of England at this time is admirable. In this novel, she constructs the story of the succession to a wealthy Norman household in middle England, with the backdrop of the war of succession to King Henry II. The two tales are cleverly interwoven and the period feel is well developed.    

I've read many historical novels and have a reasonable eye for detail. Elizabeth Chadwick is excellent in this regard. Perhaps, however, I've read too many historical novels because I felt as though there was nothing new here to pique my interest. If you're new to the genre, this is an excellent place to start but if, like me, you love history, you'll find nothing innovative here.

Signs of Life by Anna Raverat

Rachel is living a small life in London, but she hasn't always been this way. She reads widely, literary authors such as Sylvia Plath, Jorie Graham and Stevie Smith, which gives us clues to her state of mind. She tells us, at the beginning of her story, that she has forgotten many things but excuses this by saying that her note books don't record everything and that her story happened years ago anyway.

It's the tale of her affair with a work colleague. But their story is far from the mundane suff that happens in almost every workplace at some time or another. The affair turned her life upside down, sending both of them spiralling into chaos and obsession. Now, 10 years later, Rachel wants to be honest about the affair and its aftermath but honesty has its limits. Something terrible happened to Rachel's lover but how? Can Rachel reveal the truth? And what is it?

Anna Raverat has written with deep understanding of what can drive a mind into obsession and chaos, how a combination of factors can plunge an apparently controlled life off the rails to destruction. A lesson in modern living. Recommended.