I’m enjoying seeing all the Christmas book-piles. Still not 100% myself, unfortunately, and today was the first day I managed to be up and dressed, but I've been reading fairly solidly and it’s dawned on me that I’ll probably hit 100 by the year’s end. So a bit of a review-dump to follow, apologies:
94: The Real Mrs Miniver - Ysenda Maxtone-Graham
Biog (by her grand-daughter, who never met her) of Joyce Anstruther, aka Jan Struther, creator of the saintly Mrs Miniver, fictional wartime wife and mother eventually immortalised on screen by Greer Garson. Joyce was a child of the upper middle-class who married into a comfortably-off clan (Scottish estate, Chelsea flat, nanny for the children, boarding school for the boys) but had a gift for writing, was quirky, sparky and unconventional, fell for a Jewish Austrian refugee during the war and agonised over the guilt of divorcing her husband (but did in the end). She then suffered badly with depression and died far too young, in her mid-50s. Intermittently interesting but I struggled a bit with this.
95: Much Dithering - Dorothy Lambert
Frothy 30s romp set in the titular village. Beautiful but repressed young widow Jocelyn Renshawe is perturbed by her attraction to a stranger, Gervase Blythe, especially since everyone expects her to marry staid Colonel Tidmarsh; meanwhile her vampish mother Ermyntrude and local incomers the Murchison-Bellabys provide comic relief. Period hilarity that, sadly, isn’t as funny as it sets out to be.
96: The Gift of a Radio: My Childhood and Other Train Wrecks - Justin Webb
I like Justin Webb, presenter of the 'Today' programme, and I was looking forward to this memoir. Unfortunately it was a slog - perhaps because I wasn’t feeling well? - but he had an utterly grim childhood and then was sent away to a school that sounded nothing short of a hellhole. I made it to the end feeling as though I’d been beaten up, so God knows what it was like for him actually living through it.
97: Back Trouble - Clare Chambers
The latest of the batch of Chambers novels I bagged when they were 99p a while ago - all her earlier works brought out again after Small Pleasures was a hit. The formula's starting to be a wee bit samey: narrator (male in this case) finds some reason to look back over his/her humorously dysfunctional childhood. The twist here is that under-achiever Phillip has done his back in and has nothing else to do but write the story of growing up with his warring parents, interspersed with his recent relationship with New Zealander Kate, who had to leave him to go back home when her visa expired. Agreeable enough and gently bittersweet, but I’ve now read three Chambers novels and I can sort of see what’s coming.
Onwards to a round 100, possibly….