Reading and musing in the longer evening light

Madhuri reviews books by Tim Peake, Michael Connelly, Nigel Cawthorne, Douglas Kennedy, Doris Lessing, Helen Forrester, Beth O’Leary, Melanie McGrah and Beth Macy

Ask an Astronaut
by Tim Peake

This looks like it would be for ten-year-old boys, but it says it’s for every age, and indeed I found it interesting as a thing to peruse over suppers. In Space astronauts answer questions from school kids and teachers, and here are the answers, very clearly laid out. And illustrated too. Drawings and photos.

One diagram I found surprising showed what kind of training you’d need: electrical training, underwater training, plumbing, Russian language, first aid, physical fitness, caving, I. T., and survival.

The author spent 6 months in the International Space Station, launching from and returning to Kazakhstan. The section on space walking was particularly scalp-prickling and intriguing. At the end he riffs on the future of space travel, and there’s a bit too much billionaire-involvement there for my taste, but what do I know. Maybe they’ll all shoot on up there and leave the rest of us in peace. It’s good how international the space station is. The diet didn’t sound fun – things that could keep for 180 days. And there are the usual bathroom questions beloved of children. Answered manfully and honestly!

Fair Warning
by Michael Connelly

It’s great to pick up a Connelly and find that it has no Harry Bosch in it. He’s so depressed, and lives in such a nasty cop-world! This book was really readable on a few counts: new hero, a journalist, without all that foster-homes-and-Vietnam baggage ol’ Harry has. Jack, the new guy, works for a consumer-watchdog online paper with the same name as the book’s title. And: according to the Afterword, it really exists, and the author is on the board of directors!

Next, the story has got real science in it – again according to the Afterword. It seems the FDA doesn’t regulate DNA companies, where people submit samples to find out about their ancestry. So companies sell the samples on, supposedly anonymous, to pharmaceutical companies and anybody else who wants them. What if some ace hacker figures out how to get the names and addresses attached to the samples? How about if the ace hacker is a woman-hater, and so is his business partner? You get the picture.

I don’t really like detective books where there is a brilliant but evil criminal masterminding multiple murders. And there is one of these in here. But I forgave the author because otherwise the book was really interesting. Connelly isn’t a poet like Ross McDonald, another Southern California writer of detective fiction. But he’s so capable and simple and sure of himself, you can just go along for a ride on the LA freeways, if that is what you don’t mind doing. Sometimes I like this, if only to congratulate myself I’m not there.

Virginia Giuffre
The Extraordinary Story of the Masseuse who Broke the Perverted Sex Ring of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
by Nigel Cawthorne

I got this down in two big sad bug-eyed gulps – it’s only 127 pages. The first night I had a nightmare that I was in Epstein’s mansion and wanted to escape but wanted to take some of my belongings with me, and was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get past him – he was very watchful. But I managed… and woke full of alarm.

Of course I’ve been pondering the events of my own teen time, the older men who got hold of me and how it all played out; how I would still like to explain to them exactly why it was obnoxious and meaningless for me, the stuff that they did in beds and cemeteries and ferries and taxis; did full of ’60s idealism about free love. Did with Yang insensitivity and application, while I remained chilled and nervous and ashamed and unmelted.

But this book describes something on another scale entirely. Industrial-strength, epically maniacal, internationally reaching. One cold, cynical, smirking, canny glutton (he required three little teenagers per day to ‘massage’ him and then do whatever else he commanded) orchestrating a symphony of greed, dominance, and perversion, which echoed, and still echoes, around the world. It’s not a new story, this – it wasn’t in the ’60s, and it isn’t now. Sheikhs and Mormons and Rajahs do it: gather as many young females as possible! Use them as you please! Aren’t you the big dude! Sea lions have harems, for gosh sakes… but sea lions and Rajahs both don’t eschew grown-up females. Epstein discarded girls when they reached 18 – the age of consent in Florida, where he spent much time.

The book was published in 2025 so it’s quite up-to-date. We follow the sad story of Virginia, slapdashedly parented, then rejected by her mother, homeless at 13, picked up by some fat rich bastard, who passed her on to another… She wanted to be independent, to have a career, and was thwarted constantly by men who only wanted to use her body. The whole sorry history of her time in Epstein’s orbit (Maxwell brought her in, with trickery) – yuck! Being flown around in a private jet is a very mixed thrill if you are a young sex slave. The best moment in the story is when a young Aussie fellow she meets in Thailand marries her and whisks her off to Oz.

The sinister aspects of the tale go on vibrating: the rich/famous/powerful men with much to lose and the law enforcers who either try to enforce or ignore that law. The detectives, witnesses, etc. who meet untimely ends. (One detective fled to Russia with CDs and DVDs gleaned from Epstein’s mansion – Epstein filmed everything for use as blackmail – as life insurance.) Big story, old story, new story: new because now there is the internet, and things cannot be hidden as easily as before.

The book could do with another proofreading – but it’s a riveting tale, plainly told, accessible and terse. I get the feeling the author favours a view that the various untimely deaths, including Epstein’s, were planned by the powerful.

Read my review of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumously published memoir, Nobody’s Girl

The Dead Heart
by Douglas Kennedy

A surprising novel about an overweight beery hack journalist who, on a whim, sells up his Boston life and flies to Darwin, Australia. He buys a VW van and starts driving. Picks up a tough young big blonde hitchhiker… and his real nightmare begins. An interesting switch on stories of bad men abducting females. You get the feeling too that the author went to Oz once and didn’t like it much. Engaging and fun and hair-raising all at once. I enjoyed the descriptions of the far Outback, a place that gave the narrator the nihilistic shivers.

On Cats
by Doris Lessing

Superb book! First thing I’ve read by this famous writer – long ago I picked up a novel but found it too dense and adult – I was only 19 then. This spare-yet-lush little book tells of various cats in her life, starting with her childhood in the African bush. Lots about cat behaviours and a little about people, these last always tangential. Beautifully observed and expressed. Not sentimental, just cool and dispassionate and yet in the end very loving. I really enjoyed it.

Yes Mama
by Helen Forrester

I much enjoyed this historical fiction by a reliably excellent writer. Set in the last decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the twentieth, it tells the story of a girl in a wealthy household whose mother had an affair with her childhood sweetheart, and the tyrannical man of the house punished everybody for the child’s birth, for the rest of his life. There’s a strong theme of social justice running through the story: the wet-nurse engaged for the infant ends up thoroughly part of the family, despite prejudice. We are whisked from slum to mansion to Canadian wilderness and back again. Very well told, in a simple yet rich way.

The writer came from a genteel family fallen on very hard times in Liverpool, and she also later lived in both India and Canada. Memoir or fiction, I’ll read anything she writes.

The Flat Share
by Beth O’Leary

Excellent romantic comedy about two people who share a London flat but do not meet because one is on night shift. Until…

Likeable characters, frothy in a good way, but with deeper aspects. Funny and original – i really enjoyed it.

Silvertown
An East End Family Memoir
by Melanie McGrah

This is a well-written family memoir, taking place in the first half of the last century. A poor family in east London goes through their struggles. But what is really shocking is how the author’s grandmother, on her 17th birthday, after a 12-hour day in the sweatshop where she worked, and a birthday candy bar, with no warning of any kind, was taken to a grimy storefront in a back street and strapped into a chair and had all her teeth pulled out, without anaesthetic, by a butcher. It took 3 hours.

She was horribly traumatised by the experience.

It was normal then to do this; even rich women would often have their teeth all out on their 21st birthday (with ether). The reason: so when they married, their husband would not have to pay any dental bills for them. It made them more marriageable.

I am guessing that when the NHS came along, this barbarian practice died out. Free dental care!

Of course, men didn’t have to get theirs all yanked out at once. Just one by one as they went rotten and died from smoking, sugar, and lack of hygiene.

Dopesick
Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America
by Beth Macy

Wow. Heavy! The Morphine Molecule, Big Pharma greed and heartlessness, economic shutdown in small southern towns, slipshod or greedy doctors, teenage recklessness and ignorance, and sludgy conservative social systems… all coming together in a perfect storm of ghastliness and incalculable suffering.

They call it oxycoffin… and one prescriptionsworth is enough to hook you and derail your whole life.

I remain so grateful for a random-chance viewing of a black-and-white documentary on a friend’s TV when I was 9 (my family had no TV). It showed someone in withdrawal from heroin, and it scared the living shit out of me! Later in my teens when I was offered some I had no trouble at all just refusing with no hesitation.

Featured image credit to Pexels, Cottonbro