Three book reviews

Just finished reading The Museum of You by Carys Bray. Absolutely loved it. I read it so fast it never even got onto my currently reading list.

Twelve year old Clover is, for the first time, being allowed to spend the summer holidays at home alone while her father works. She wants to spent it cataloging items belonging to her mother who died when Clover was six weeks old. Her mother's things are kept in the second bedroom. She does not tell her father what she is doing - she wants it to be a surprise. She also hopes to learn more about her mother.

And so she begins, squeezing in this activity in between watering the allotment, visiting her granddad, her uncle Jim and Mrs Mackerel from next door. I loved Mrs Mackerel with her well known phrases which she always got wrong and because she is a bit deaf she shouts out words now and then. During the summer Clover also makes a new friend, Dagmar from school who, like Clover, doesn't fit in.

The story is told in the voices of Clover and her dad Darren. Darren has shut away everything belonging to Clover's mother and wishes never to speak of it and just wants to make Clover happy, but he can't move on. As the story unwinds there is heart break but also humour. Without giving anything away it leaves you with positive feeling. The intertwining of family and friends backgrounds pulls this story together making it a great read. This one will stay with me for a while.

Seventy-Two Virgins by Boris Johnson was a spur of the moment pick from the library. I just wanted to see his writing. Unfortunately the topic - a terror attack at Westminster - coincided with the attack at London Bridge. This made reading the book rather uncomfortable. It was hard to switch off. Having said that the book is a comedy and everything that could go wrong did. A cross between a Johnny English film and Yes Minster. There was the stolen ambulance to be used in the attack almost clamped and taken away by an over zealous traffic warden, the MP who was dreading the publication of an article that would ruin his career and possibly his marriage, the teenage brainwashed terrorist having second thoughts and another terrorist whose bladder was likely to explode before he did. Not to mention the US sharp shooter on the roof who is having flashbacks to Baghdad where a dreadful incident occurred and then he spots the journalist who ruined him.

Written in real time with fast changing scenes it it pacy and funny. Despite the nagging guilt of reading it at that time I did enjoy it.

To the Bright Edge of the World is Eowyn Ivey's second book (loved her first, The Snow Child). The story is told through the diaries of Allen Forrester and his wife Sophie in 1885. Allen sets off with a small troupe of men to chart the way through the Wolverine River in Alaska. Sophie tries to get on with life at the army barracks and discovers photography. Beautifully written with some accompanying photos, each has their own story and heartbreak. The diaries have come into the hands of a relative, Walter Forrester, in today's time. He sends them to a museum in Alaska and there is the correspondence between the two parties and this helps to glue the story. The diary entries sit alongside newspapers snippets and some entries by two other members of the navigating party. The story is very atmospheric and clouded in myth and Indian way of life. Fascinating. A good read. Recommended.