Two re-reads first. Toast by Nigel Slater I read again after watching the TV version. I found that the ending of the book had been changed quite a lot for dramatic effect. Far from just running away after his father died, Nigel stayed at home before going to catering college. On this reading I noticed that he twice mentions Malcolm Saville as a favourite childhood author. Reading My Father’s Fortune sent me back to Michael Frayn’s Spies, which I found just as gripping on a second reading. The first time I read it, I didn’t clock the similarities to The Go-Between. Blind.
A lovely Christmas present from kind
In spite of these quibbles and my teasing in a previous post, this is a very beguiling book, just the thing for people wanting a quiet read about the countryside, housekeeping, gardening and nice people. In places I was reminded of one of my favourite films, Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House, which stars Cary Grant. Taber mentions the book herself. Book? I didn't know there was one.
At the market, a while ago, I picked up some romantic novels which I bought for their nice period dustwrappers. Looking for something light to read I remembered Zoë in the Cazalet Chronicles borrowing books by Ruby M Ayres from the library for her mother. I wondered what they were like and so read Love Without Wings. This is from the dustwrapper:
Ruby M Ayres
the secret of her success
‘I write about ordinary people; I don’t go in for lords and ladies. And people rather like reading about themselves.’
Nearly 8,500,000 copies of her books have been sold.
Can that many readers be wrong? I found the book much better than I expected and just as good as one by D E Stevenson, whose reputation is now so much higher than Ayres’. The story is set in an English village soon after the war (published 1953) where forty year old spinster Dorcas is best friends with an older man she’s always assumed to be a bachelor. An old friend dies, begging Dorcas to look after her daughter Bobbie, who has been brought up in France. Beautiful, frivolous and selfish, Bobbie disrupts the quiet household yet everybody likes her. Two love affairs and a few misunderstandings but the ending is never really in doubt.
Staying with books I own but hadn’t read, I got quickly through Fatal Remedies, another Brunetti book by Donna Leon. In this one, clever Paola, who you’d think would have more sense, behaves like an idiot and causes a great deal of trouble for the good inspector. The charm of these books is in the walks through Venice; looking in the shop windows, popping into a bar, buying brioches at half past five in the morning. So civilised.