Can’t stop reading…

This month Madhuri reviews books by Catherine Alliott, Terry & Natalia O’Sullivan, Edward St. Aubyn, Dawn O’Porter, Catherine Cookson, Irvin D. Yalom, Cathy Glass, Wendy Holden

Behind Closed Doors
by Catherine Alliott

A superb novel. The cover looks a bit ‘cheap thriller’, but it’s anything but. Sophisticated, grownup, and no silly twists at the end. Just plain good writing.

An upper-class London housewife/writer suffers through a long abusive marriage to protect her children (the husband threatens to push them out high windows if she leaves him.) The scenes of verbal abuse cut right in and made my flesh contract and crawl… But then one night a burglar breaks in, and everything changes.

The rest of the book is taken up with the main character’s going to care for her fond, glam, and drinky parents; two looming romances – and dealing with what she herself did – and didn’t do – the night her husband died. There is suspense but not acute suspense; it creeps up on you. The characters are believable and even, most of them, likeable. (The nasty ones are satisfyingly nasty.) And I liked the dialogue – all drawly and sparkling. (One character speaking of another: “I heard she had a bit of a nervy breaky when the awful Torquil left her.”)

I’ll be looking for more books by this author.

Soul Searchers
21st Century Guide of the Spirit World
by Terry & Natalia O’Sullivan

Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night. Astral travel, shamans, witch doctors, voodoo, birth, the bardo, poltergeists, the soul after death, exorcisms, ancestors and how they can help or otherwise affect us. How can we help the souls of the earthbound dead? Soul rescue, seances… traditions from many cultures in all these things.

I liked this book, written by two soul rescuers, who are hired by people to de-haunt houses and de-possess living people. It was convincing and calm and human and humane. It did not make me want to return to regular psychic work or to become a Soul Rescuer. Too exhausting and dangerous! But for a general education in all these things, it’s readable and loving.

Do you know why people started to wear black when somebody dies? To make them inconspicuous to the ghost and any other wandering spirits!

There were lots of good stories in here. And the multicultural aspect feels pleasingly inclusive and round. And educational.

Mother’s Milk
by Edward St. Aubyn

This book is so brilliantly well written that its subject matter – the family troubles of rich people – can be forgiven. (Indeed, when I used to work in Switzerland the main problem people brought to me had to do with inheritances.) In this book an elderly heiress has willed the family villa in the south of France to an Irish new-age shaman, much to the disgust of her son. The son’s family are supposed to be able to take over the villa each August, but it doesn’t work out that way.

More themes: motherhood, alcoholism, adultery. There are two small boys in the family and whole chapters are narrated from their viewpoints. This is the true fun of this book; these precocious, original little characters bring sparkling life into things. (I get very tired of reading about alcohol consumption. Even this really good writer can’t freshen the subject up much. The main character, the dad of the boys, has an astonishing intellect, but he goes on bludgeoning it with drink.)

The book won two prizes and was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. There are three other books in the series.

Cat Lady
A Woman Always Lands on Her Feet
by Dawn O’Porter

An extraordinary, eccentric, funny, modern, and deep-touching book! I’d never heard of this author, but now intend to order more of hers. The cover looks like a fluffy chick-lit thing, but it’s way more than that.

A young married woman with a difficult childhood behind her adores her rescue cat, Pigeon; they rescued each other. Her husband doesn’t like Pigeon and nor does his pesky ex-wife, who’s often around. Our heroine, Mia, sneaks off to attend a pet bereavement group, even though her cat is still alive. She’s an executive in a jewellery company, but things there are soon falling apart. In fact, many things fall apart at once, in colourful and messy ways.

This is a book for cat-lovers, for people who are interested in therapy, for people who love bold, sassy, shocking writing. The sex scenes are funny and graphic, with plenty of real-life horrors on offer: here’s a para right after Mia has sex with her husband: “In the bathroom I put Pigeon down and pee so I don’t get a UTI. I’ve learned that mistake many times. I wonder if men would roll over and fall asleep so quickly after sex if they were also threatened with pissing needles as a punishment for their pleasure? Women have so much detail to consider when trying to keep life simple.”

The difficult childhood comes up towards the end, when Mia has to face a lot of things at once: with some unlikely help from the very casual mother of a millennial she ends up in bed with (very weirdly). And so on! It’s really good. Set in London.

The Harrogate Secret
by Catherine Cookson

The colloquial rhythm and cadence in these novels by this well-known writer is musically soothing, even as the (very believable) action is tense and often surprising. I find myself bathing in the richness of the word-flow, almost as if it’s medicinal. Yet I’m also agog at the story.

A little boy in 1843 works as a ‘runner’ between the busy seaports of North and South Shields, near Newcastle: he carries messages regarding raids by the Customs; and sometimes contraband. One night at the mansion of a very disagreeable (and opium-addicted) landowner he witnesses something extremely shocking. It will affect the rest of his life and test his (considerable) mettle to the limit. Meanwhile, the very sympathetic characters of a local female mover-and-shaker mentor of his, and his mother and other family, create a web of support and interest.

I was particularly moved by the descriptions of madness showing itself in one character. We don’t know he’s mad… and then we watch as it becomes clearer and clearer. Very well done.

Love’s Executioner
and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
by Irvin D. Yalom

I’ve included the back cover of this book because I like the author’s photograph – it illuminates the beauty, subtlety, and fascination of the text.

This is a collection of ten case histories – disguised, of course – of difficult clients in Yalom’s psychotherapy practise. What’s beautiful is the honesty and intelligence and objectivity with which he examines his own reactions to the patients; his sometimes-bumbling offerings to them; and the way that therapy is full of the unexpected, and cannot be tied down with particular processes overmuch.

I really enjoyed this book, and the way it asks honesty of the reader too. We enjoy the doctor’s successes – often completely unexpected – and the turns of fate that intrude, and inform what happens next. The book is from 1989; I did register strongly that everything could have been so immensely helped along by just bringing in some active meditations, which were by then thoroughly available!

Some Dynamic and Kundalini could have brought in extra dimensions, plus peace and joy and wordlessness, to add to the festivities. The author seems to be quite anti-magic, but maybe not anti-mystical; it’s hard to tell – he implies he’s done Vipassana. He wants to kill illusions – thus the title. (He says the worst time for psychotherapy is when a client has just fallen in love.) I kept feeling that a bit more music and movement and swooning could only help.

Too Scared to Tell
Abused and alone, Oskar has no one. A true story.
by Cathy Glass

One of those moving fostering memoirs; and a particularly gripping one. A six-year-old boy is taken into care because he shows up at school late, dirty, hungry, and now, also bruised. We’ve all read stories of horrible fostering situations; but the stories of excellent and healing ones are so encouraging that I can not only believe them, but even envy some of the protocols. For example, in the author’s house each child has his/her own room, and nobody else can go in unless invited. I tried for a few minutes to imagine what that would have been like when I was little: if I’d not had to share a bedroom with two, and then three, other kids. It was startlingly precise, the impression: I might feel I was welcome here! That there was room for me! That I had value! That I wasn’t encroaching on everyone by existing! I could only envy that kind of space as the familiar beleagueredness then re-settled about my unconscious.

The little boy has been living in a house with 17 adult Eastern Europeans, including his mother, who works three jobs and is almost never home. Various adults are supposed to care for the child, but instead he is neglected, and worse. We go step-by-step through his time with the author, and the disclosures and healing that eventually happen. This is a very likeable child! His extended family back in his home country are brought in, and we see all of this, Skype by Skype.

An excellent example of this sort of book.

Marrying Up
A Right Royal Romantic Comedy
by Wendy Holden

This book is thoroughly silly, but in a good way. The cover also doesn’t do justice to either the humour, or the very modern ribaldry, of the interior.

A veterinary student and an archaeology student (she studies ancient loos) fall in love, but can’t be together because he is the reluctant Prince of a tiny kingdom just between France and Italy, and must marry royalty. There is also a “castle-creeper” in the mix, an Alison who’s reinvented herself as Alexa; a young Lady Flossie, who is brutally frank and utterly careless in every way, a slimy gay schemer, a Russian oligarch, a tough-as-old-boots aristo mum, a grumpy, pudgy King, a Queen with a secret, and more, including a dog or two.

The ending was not predictable, and was also very satisfying. I really enjoyed this silly book – even as it strained credulity, it didn’t do it too much! – and I really liked the author’s pic in the back. She was laughing, which authors don’t often do in photos. And her own history was such (she’d worked at Tatler) that I felt she knew whereof she spoke.

These reviews were first posted on Facebook by the author
Photo by Rhamely on Unsplash