A Heart Bent Out of Shape - Emylia Hall

I thought The Book of Summers was a beautifully written debut novel by a gifted new writer, and this captivating second novel by Emylia Hall confirms that talent.

Hadley Dunn is studying English at University, her life quiet and contented, when she discovers there is the opportunity to spend a year abroad in Lausanne, Switzerland. She’s still living happily at home, yet, realising this would be a year of freedom and opportunity for her, she grasps it. There she becomes firm friends with Kristina, an enigmatic Danish student. However, one snowy evening there is tragedy. Hadley turns in her anguish to Joel, her American Literature professor, with whom she feels a connection and a shared passion for Hemingway. As they join forces to unravel the mystery of what happened, their relationship looks set to develop beyond the bounds of friendship.

Emylia Hall writes beautiful prose and through her compelling narrative she captures that sense of curiosity and excitement experienced in spending a year overseas when you are young and eager, and the world feels so ripe for discovery and promises new experiences.

The beautiful, enchanting setting of Lausanne is vividly evoked; the lake, the mountains, the people were all conjured up as I read, and the place holds a charismatic presence over the tale.

I had a year abroad myself and I think the author captures this experience wonderfully. I believed in Hadley’s world utterly and felt her sheer delight and her terrible sadness. I was drawn into the characters’ lives, from handsome, damaged Joel, to wise old Hugo.

This is a poignant coming-of-age story of first love, desire, friendship, tragedy, grief and self-discovery in a stunning location.

Published by Headline - 12th September 2013

Originally reviewed for We Love This Book; thanks to them and to the publisher for the chance to read a proof copy of this novel in advance of publication. 

You can follow the author on twitter @EmyliaHall and visit her website here.

Necessary Lies - Diane Chamberlain

Necessary Lies has a period setting in Grace County, rural North Carolina, USA in 1960. Newly married Jane Forrester controversially embarks on a career as a social worker, whilst most of her contemporaries are stay-at-home wives and mothers. Ivy Hart is a fifteen-year-old girl living and working in harsh, destitute conditions on a small tobacco farm, caring for her aging grandmother and older sister who has a small child; on top of this Ivy copes with epilepsy. Ivy’s family is one of those that Jane is tasked with supporting through her social work, and Jane quickly finds herself caring deeply for them. When she discovers secrets about them and those around them, she is left with impossible decisions that will change all their lives forever.

Diane Chamberlain gets to the heart of human relationships in her writing; she paints an honest, bleak yet never hopeless portrait of the times and the people, incorporating terrible truths into her novel – Grace County may be fictional, but the enforced sterilizations, racism and distaste at a woman having a career are certainly not.

She delivers a heartbreaking storyline in short chapters alternating between the two distinctive, compelling first-person voices of Ivy and Jane, illustrating the clash between the two vastly differing worlds they inhabit; Ivy’s poverty versus Jane’s comfortable middle-class existence. Yet despite their different backgrounds, the two young women find similarities in one another and share the same hopes as they fight for what they think is right despite the strongly opposing views of others. An important and gripping story, told with honesty and sympathy.

Published by Pan Macmillan

Originally reviewed for We Love This Book online book magazine.

Thanks to them and the publisher for the chance to read and review a proof copy of this novel.  

You can find the author on twitter @D_Chamberlain and visit her website here.

Red Joan - Jennie Rooney

‘Nobody said what they did during the war. They were different times.’

Joan Stanley is an eighty-five-year-old grandmother living in south-east London. One morning she reluctantly answers the door to find the Security Services have come to question her about her past after all these years.

The dual time narrative structure of the novel is employed very effectively here, with the now elderly Joan recounting her story to the MI5 operatives, so that we move from the present to the past and back with her as we read.

We are transported back to 1937, Joan Robson is a student at Cambridge, where she meets and befriends Sonya Galich and her cousin Leo. Her friendship with them will shape her life. They are supporters of communism and Joan becomes involved with their activities though never commits herself wholly to the cause. When World War Two begins, Joan is recruited to work with scientists in a laboratory on the ‘Tube Alloys’ project – developing an atomic weapon. Over the coming years, as old friends leave and re-enter her life, and the war comes to a close with events she had hoped never to see, her character and her loyalties will be severely tested.

This spy novel which spans the period from the late 1930s to the time of the Cold War was inspired by a true story of a British spy who was unmasked after many years as having worked for the Soviets.

Red Joan boasts a gripping narrative and a compelling lead character. The intrigue builds and I found the progression of the plot towards the ending fascinating. I was engrossed and intrigued by Joan; she is at once an intelligent yet naïve character. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her life and about society then, Joan’s position as a woman working in a scientific field, pursuing studies and a career despite her mothers wishes, falling in love and learning for the first time how it felt to be truly loved in return, yet fraught at the situation she finds herself in, torn between loyalty to her country and the deep need to do what she feels is right. We see her grow convincingly as she learns from what has happened in her life. In a very fitting use of language, Joan ponders: ‘How strange the human mind is, she thinks. Unknowable and unpredictable, its thoughts whizzing like electrons inside an atom. Invisible to the human eye.’

This is an absorbing and accomplished novel and causes us to ask ‘Where does responsibility begin, and where does it end?’

Published by Chatto & Windus on 7th March 2013


I originally reviewed this novel for We Love This Book - thanks to them and to the publisher for a copy of this novel to read and review.