Book reviews written by Alana Woods

The Counsellor

by Gillian Jackson

Rated 3 stars

“Poor punctuation on the first page especially is what made the first impression. Plus what I thought was a major spoiler in the first few paragraphs but as the foreshadowed incident happened very quickly after that point I revised my thinking.

Chapter 3 contains a description of a walk in heavy crisp frost in bright sunshine which conjured memories of a similar walk I took several years ago in the south of the UK. Beautiful.

Until chapter 3 I thought the story was going to be third person single point of view but in that chapter another character takes over. From then on the POV jumps back and forth between Maggie Sayer—the counsellor—and her clients. It took several jumps for me to become accustomed to the POV changes but they had the effect of not being able to immerse myself in the story. I felt I didn’t get to know the characters intimately; however, I did like them.

Without giving anything away Maggie Sayer undertakes training and becomes a counsellor after a personal tragedy alters her life irrevocably. She, more than many, is in a position to understand the trauma confronting the people who seek her help. Although alone she is not lonely, having good work colleagues, loving parents, a close friend and an adoring dog. Set in the north of England the scenic descriptions anchor the story within its setting.

I’d hazard a guess that Jackson has some expertise in the subject matter. Her handling of the clients and their problems, and Sayer’s methodology, smacks of someone who knows what they’re talking about.

I was not enamoured of the writing style and language; I thought they lacked spark. My opinion only of course because style is entirely subjective to the reader.

However, I liked the story line and there was a satisfying ending. And, finally, a big plus was the dialogue which was natural and used well.”

Alana Woods wrote this review 6 days ago. ( reply | permalink )

Confessions of an Instinctively Mutinous Baby Boomer: and her Parable of the Tomato Plant

by Marsha Roberts

Rated 4 stars

“This is a memoir with each chapter devoted to significant times in the author’s life. It is a retrospective, a looking back, at the situations and events that have made her who she is today.

Confessions is categorised as Boomer literature but I’m not sure. My understanding of the genre is that the principle character or characters are boomer agers in the present day and the story is an exploration of how they are looking ahead and coming to terms with aging and pursuing a worthy life after retiring from their lifetime career. But Confessions, as I say, is the author reminiscing about her life and what brought her to this point. Therefore, is it Boomer literature? I’m not going to angst about it, it’s a nice read in its own right.

I always wonder when reading memoirs how the author, in revealing the intimacies of their own lives, reconciles the revealing of other people’s, often family members, intimate details. I imagine that they ask for and are given permission. I pose that question because this one does contain such revelations.

Most chapters recall a different event or episode in Robert’s life but several, from chapter 13, follow her through 15 years from the idea and creation of a play Letters from the front she and her husband eventually took on tour to US military bases throughout the world. It became known as ‘The world’s most decorated play’ and if the passion they so obviously poured into it has anything to do with it I can understand why it became such a success.

Confessions is a straightforward memoir, candid, full of warmth and caring. Roberts’ faith that God will show the way shines through. Each parable engenders an emotional response be it a lump in the throat all the way through to a smile.

Simply and sincerely told I found it an easy, at times heart-tugging but heart-warming, read.”

Alana Woods wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )

Goodbye Emily

by Michael Murphy

Rated 4 stars

“This book has as good a hook as I’ve come across.

Like many ebooks I’m reading nowadays this one isn’t overly long. Having said that, it’s exactly the right length for the story. There’s no verbiage to mar the crisp and descriptive language. And it’s told in the immediacy of first person point of view. I liked it very much.

To me it’s a road story; the storyline centering on Woodstock, the famous music festival held in 1969, and encompassing two time periods: the time of the festival and the present. They run concurrently, chapters jumping between each. The 1969 story tells of the meeting between the narrator, Walter Ellington, a forciby-retired retired professor, and his future wife, Emily, at Woodstock. The present story tells of events leading up to their return with the narrator’s two best friends. Music plays a big part as the three used to have a band in their school days.

This is a boomer genre novel; one that portrays mature characters finding their place in the world after retirement, after the family has grown and left home, after everything familiar has often been turned on its head and they’re left floundering. It’s make or break time for many and at novel opening Walter has been floundering for two years.

Also making important contributions are the lingering effects on war veterans and the onset of Alzheimer’s.

If it sounds like a tough read be assured that it’s not. As I say, the writing is crisp. The dialogue carries the story as nothing else can—I’m a fan of good dialogue—and the story is heart warming. I had a few lumps in the throat while reading.

A good read.”

Alana Woods wrote this review Saturday, March 9, 2013. ( reply | permalink )

Saving Francesca

by Melina Marchetta

Rated 5 stars

“Like Looking for Alibrandi, Marchetta’s first book, an award-winner that went on to become a highly successful film starring Pia Miranda, Greta Scacchi and Anthony LaPaglia, SAVING FRANCESCA is the story of a teenage girl caught at a time of family and personal crisis.

Looking For Alibrandi won the Children's Book Council of Australia award in 1993. SAVING FRANCESCA won it in 2004.

Francesca (Francis, Frankie) Spinelli is 16, lives in the Sydney suburbs, has an enviable family relationship—although often figuratively nose-to-nose in argument with Mia, her mother—and is in the throes of adjusting to changing from an all-girls school to a previously all-boys school when her mother has a nervous breakdown. It sends Francesca, her father and younger brother into a nose dive of trying to cope. Without Mia to anchor them they’re adrift and it frightens the life out of them.

Short though this novel is, it’s jam-packed with insight, drama, humour and descriptive wonder. My synopsis may make it sound like a difficult read but it isn’t. I was almost in tears a couple of times by the poignancy of moments only to be yanked into laughter by visual gems. Let me give you an example of each.

Tears (mine) threatened when Frankie finally tells papa she and her brother Luca have never liked eggs (he’s been cooking them every morning since Mia fell ill). On a precipice himself, papa hurls them away and Luca grabs hold, hugging him and desperately promising that they’ll eat the eggs. A few minutes later up comes the image of another time with papa walking naked from the bathroom to the bedroom and Frankie saying ‘I can’t say it’s an attractive picture, but it hasn’t traumatised me.’ The story is full of such moments.

Told in first person present tense the story is well rounded—Frankie’s friends at school are a delight to read—the characters are beautifully drawn, and the writing is superb.”

Alana Woods wrote this review Saturday, February 23, 2013. ( reply | permalink )

The Gordonston Ladies Dog Walking Club

by Duncan Whitehead

Rated 3 stars

“All seems perfect in the Savannah suburb of Gordonston. The mature ladies meet each day in the local park to sip a cocktail and gossip while their dogs get their exercise. Their neighbours include a new widower, an attractive young couple who appear very much in love, an English house-husband and an elderly black man they don’t know but frown upon because he doesn’t clean up after his pooch.

Where to start with this novella? I have to say it took me a while to get into it, but get into it I eventually did.

It’s very much a telling of the story and I’m not a fan of that style. The best way I can think of to describe it is that it reminded me of how fairy tales are told, a linear unfolding of happenings. The narration does not include a lot of dialogue. The characters also are sketched in, not finely described.

It’s an ensemble piece. The many characters have equal billing and the author changes the point of view between them frequently and without warning. There are no, for instance, extra line spaces to herald a new perspective. You may stick with one character for several pages or a paragraph. However, once you realise you’re subject to frequent POV changes it ceases to be a problem.

Like a fairy tale all seems perfect at the beginning. These many characters are friends or good neighbours who show compassion when tragedy strikes.

However, after a while I began to notice a feeling of impeding doom settling on me, a feeling that something awful is about to happen. It does, but it’s not what I expected. The author very cleverly builds suspense while seemingly nothing of any moment is happening. From there the world of all these characters begins to disintegrate and we see through the sugar coating into their mean and ugly selves. No-one remains pure and although not everyone receives their comeuppance in the confines of the book it’s on the cards they will at some point down the track. Perhaps the author has a sequel in mind.

At the end it remained for me a modern fairy tale with wicked characters wanting to harm others without much reason. ”

Alana Woods wrote this review Sunday, February 17, 2013. ( reply | permalink )

The Blue Hour

by Stephen R. Hulse

Rated 4 stars

“THE BLUE HOUR. The French call this time ‘l’heure bleue’, the time between dusk and sunrise when the sun is still below the horizon, and the world is awash with a hazy blue shadowed hue that suspends us somewhere between the accepted divisions of darkness and light.’

THE BLUE HOUR. What a wonderfully evocative title.

And as it led me to expect, and didn’t disappoint, it was the introduction to a story told in what could be described as noir style with a decidedly Raymond Chandler/Phillip Marlowe feel to it.

It wouldn’t take much for a review of this book to contain spoilers but I’ll try to sidestep them while also giving something of a synopsis.

According to the blurb at the back of the book this is the first in what will become a series of Churchill and Wade mysteries. Churchill and Wade are the principal characters, Churchill with a law enforcement background, Wade from the private investigation field. The location setting is never identified but you work it out after a bit. Churchill and Wade meet in the opening pages and join forces to tackle an especially sleazy form of crime.

‘I didn’t need to be sober to know I was in deep, deep trouble!’ Got me! Right there with the Chandler style opening. But could Hulse keep me?

The story is told in the first person from Churchill’s point of view. It adds immeasurably to the immediacy and impact of the storytelling.

There’s a terrific plot line and the characters are drawn well especially, as you would expect, Churchill and Wade, but I also liked very much Madalene Helaine, The French Assistant Director of EUROPOL. She’s exactly what every red-blooded woman in her fifties hopes she approximates at that age.

So, did Hulse keep me to the end? It dipped in the middle. The overall narration is very witty but it felt forced, became ‘clever’ in the middle, but thankfully picked up again. So, yes, he kept me.”

Alana Woods wrote this review Sunday, February 10, 2013. ( reply | permalink )

The Heart's Discovery: Book One in The Hope Valley Saga (Volume 1)

by Amy McGuire

Rated 4 stars

“Anjaline Rodriguez, born and raised in Quito Ecuador, is ripped at the age of 14 from all she holds dear by her anthropologist stepfather who takes her and her mother to live in Hope Valley, a remote settlement in British Columbia, Canada. She is an exotic flower from a sun-drenched country dropped into an alien land of cold and snow, and a small village of strangers including—as you would expect in a YA romance novel—several very attractive young males. Angeline experiences all the tortuous angst that every young teen alive has ever felt when she gives her heart to one of them.

McGuire has a way of description that I like very much. Sparse but evocative. Few words paint the picture. Quito comes to life and you feel the bone-chilling cold of Hope Valley.

She develops her principal characters nicely. There’s rather a lot about the physical attractions of the two mains but I guess that’s what teenagers tend to focus on, so it follows that any story involving them is also going to focus on that aspect.

The ‘does he/she like/not like me’ begins early and continues for a major part of the book, but then that’s part of the conflict so resolving it too soon would have been awkward.

McGuire has a nice writing style, it flows easily and for the most part without padding. I was less impressed with the amount of angst. Do teenagers really agonise quite SO much. Still, it’s a few—quite a few—years since I’ve been one, so I’ve probably forgotten.

McGuire steers strictly away from anything controversial in the relationship area, keeping the book a safe but I imagine heart-stopping read for her intended audience of young adults, girls particularly. The closest she gets to the subject of sex (a word that is not used) is ‘His hormones were raging’ followed by a kiss.

Chapters 1 to 10 are told totally from Anjaline’s point of view, after that multiple points of view take over but stay principally with Anjaline and her love interest.

The book has everything: love, torment, happiness, tragedy and hope. ”

Alana Woods wrote this review Saturday, February 2, 2013. ( reply | permalink )

The Serial Dater's Shopping List

by Morgen Bailey

Rated 4 stars

“The book’s sub-title is 31 men in 31 days—what could possibly go wrong? and then we dive straight into an often very funny, often very insightful look at exactly what can go wrong, or right, about online dating.

While it would definitely appeal to Bridget Jones' fans THE SERIAL DATER'S SHOPPING LIST actually tells a better story, one where the main protagonist, Isobel MacFarlane, or Izzy Mac to her friends, is not a journalist desperate to find a man, although she is a journalist. She writes the technology column on a Northamptonshire UK newspaper. The story opens with Izzy just having been given an assignment of a different kind—to join an online dating service and, pretending to be a secretary, date a man a day for a month and write an article about each date. With loose-lipped colleague and friend Donna party to the intrigue keeping her identity secret sometimes takes effort.

The story is written in first person present tense and Bailey handles it well, keeping the pace moving and keeping it entertaining.

I liked the descriptive narrative, such things as ' ... Tea shoots up both nostrils, which isn't pleasant but clears the blockage nicely'. That and many more had me wondering if Bailey is writing much from life and if she actually took on this assignment in the interests of making it come across as real, because it has the ring of authenticity. I was smiling often and even breaking into a grin with some of the dates, and I don’t do that often.

The story is interspersed with a well-rounded drawing in of the lives of work colleagues, friends and family—a necessary diversion away from the 31 dates which, as an unbroken litany, could otherwise have become boring even though well told.

This is quality chicklit. The story and characters kept my interest, the writing is polished. My one criticism is the use of whilst, not once but often. I'm Australian and such spellings haven’t been common here for years. We go for the simpler while, among, program etc. If I'm being unfair I apologise but after the first couple it annoyed me.

That aside this was a very entertaining read.

And in spite of not really looking, does Izzy actually meet a man she'd like to take home?”

Alana Woods wrote this review Saturday, January 26, 2013. ( reply | permalink )

A Hook in the Sky

by Claude Nougat

Rated 4 stars

“This is another quality, albeit short, read from Nougat. Well-thought out plotline, character depth, polished prose. What more could you ask for.

This book tackles the elemental story of aging. In common with YA fiction it looks into one of life’s transitions, this one the transition from work to retirement, from a life of busyness—if not usefulness—to one of what to do with oneself when one no longer has a primary purpose.

Nougat is in fact the initiator and driving force behind the next big thing in genres: baby boomer literature, be it fiction or non-fiction. A HOOK IN THE SKY is her first contribution. If the online airplay Nougat is receiving is any guide it’s generating massive interest.

The story follows a childless couple from the day of husband Robert’s—French—retirement from the UN. His wife Kay—American—is 20 years younger and a contemporary art gallery owner. They have nothing in common, a fact that comes very much to the fore once Robert’s no longer working. He rekindles his interest in painting. Locations shift from the US to Italy to France as Robert and Kay separate then come together again with a big art project, all the while Robert exploring what else life has to offer, namely other women.

What’s wrong with the book? Well, I prefer longer novels but that’s not a criticism. The plot and characters don’t suffer, they’re well developed.

My one criticism is that the story is told from Robert’s point of view except for several brief instances where it swaps to Kay’s. I didn’t like this. If you’re going to swap points of view, give the characters equal time. As it is it looks like the author has inadvertently veered or hasn’t figured out how to convey what Kay is thinking or feeling any other way. However, it’s a small criticism.

I enjoyed the read. I can see it having general appeal—not just to the BB age group—because it draws in so much.

I imagine Nougat used her own experience to build the character of Robert. She worked at the UN herself and is a painter. I loved the details about art and painting. In one particular scene Robert is choosing what paint colours to buy. I’m not going to tell you the wonderful descriptions Nougat gives them, you’re going to have to read the book yourself for that delight.

As for the cover design, its meaning becomes very clear towards the end of the novel.”

Alana Woods wrote this review Saturday, January 19, 2013. ( reply | permalink )

Blowback: How Do You Fight Something You Cannot See? The Second of the Jonathan Savage Trilogy

by Paul V. Walters

Rated 4 stars

“This is the second book in the Jonathon Savage trilogy, the first being FINAL DIAGNOSIS which I have already reviewed.

Because it's called The Jonathan Savage trilogy I expected BLOWBACK to also feature Jonathan Savage but it doesn't. The link is Miranda Phillips, the criminal in the first book who lived to get away. FINAL DIAGNOSIS was played out for the most past in New York and Bali. The setting for BLOWBACK is England with brief excursions to other places including Africa.

The story revolves around a very nasty virus being let loose in public places around London, the first in a late night tube train, and the assumption that it is a terrorist attack. Until that is confirmed Chief Inspector Jim Moore of Scotland Yard is asked to lead the investigation into the multiple murders. As the second and then a third attack occurs the pressure on Moore to solve the case becomes increasingly intense. I won't reveal what Phillips involvement is except to say she is one nasty piece of work. Moore has to contend with his own demons while trying to track down the real ones holding the UK to ransom.

All in all a good read well told. There is no in-depth characterisation, Walters concentrates on the plot. Characters are drawn to the extent needed to advance the story.

It's a read that will keep you absorbed without taxing your brain. In other words, a good book to relax back with, glass in hand, to while away an afternoon or evening.
”

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Alana Woods

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