Category: Review (Page 72 of 133)

3 out of 5 stars

This is an eye-opening personal history of a girl who grew up in a convent on Sicily after her mother realised that she couldn’t afford to bring her and sister, Angela up after their father passed on so they were passed to the orphanage, Istituto San Carlo. Sicily at the time was just beginning a slow recovery after the war and life there was tough, people scratched a living and there was a high rate of mortality too.

In this place, she learnt the secrets of the sweets that were prepared for the numerous religious festivals. They would rise before dawn to begin the day’s work and spend hours each day beating a rolling the sugar and almond mix to make the exquisite pastries. These would be sold to the general public through a small grille in the wall of San Carlo.

The skills that she learnt whilst there were to stand her in good stead when she emerged at the age of 22. She set up her own shop selling these pastries as well as cakes, biscotti and lots of other sweet delights. The reputation of the pasticceria grew and people flocked to buy the wares. Mary Taylor Simeti was one of those customers and as they became friends she realised that Maria Grammatico had a unique story to tell

She has a hard but simple life and this is an insight into a Sicily that was long gone. As a plus, half of the book is a wonderful collection of recipes too which made me very hungry reading them. I am off to Sicily soon and whilst we might not make it here, I am hoping to try some of the wonderful things found in a pasticceria.

4 out of 5 stars

I can still vividly remember the time we in the West first heard about a nuclear accident behind the Iron Curtain. Reports were appearing about a massive rise in radiation with denials from European states and a collective finger pointing to an accidental release somewhere in the USSR. At the height of the cold war, very little was confirmed on denied by the Soviets, but pressure built on the Kremlin and they began to reveal details of just what had happened in the Ukraine. It wasn’t an accidental release of a small amount of radiation that flowed across northern Europe, rather it was the aftermath of a reactor exploding at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

And it could have been so much worse.

What exactly happened on that fateful night of 26 April 1986 when at 1.23am the reactor exploded has never been fully known. The Soviets didn’t even release any details for a few days until pressure from around the world with the overwhelming evidence meant that they couldn’t do anything else but reveal the problem. Even then details were still sketchy and cold hard facts were very rare, not helped by the endemic secrecy and paranoia of the USSR. Slowly though, the facts surfaced and it was realised just how close we were to a European wide environmental catastrophe.

What actually happened all those years ago though? Thankfully Serhii Plokhy has been trawling the recently opened archives in search of the truth, finding out who was blamed and who actually was a fault for the disaster. He covers the flaws in the design or the reactor and the powerplay between the Kremlin and KGB as some scientists tried to tell the truth to the world. We hear the stories of those who gave their lives to stop it getting any worse and about the families who had almost no notice before they were told to leave the rapidly created exclusion zone.

At times it reads like a thriller, in particular, the event of that night and the schemes that they were using to contain the radiation and stop further explosions. Other time the narrative slows as you follow the convoluted and inept officials who seem more concerned with ensuring their arses were covered. He takes a wider look at the history of the region too, linking the events here to the eventual collapse of the  Soviet state and the splintering into separate Eastern block countries and how the Ukrainians have been behind the eco movement in the former block. Occasionally I got a little bogged down with all the people involved but apart from that this is an excellent modern history of a nuclear disaster.

3.5 out of 5 stars

I have been following Jen Campbell on various social media channels for years. On those channels, she has been a massive advocate for poetry, regular showing the slim volumes that she gets from publishers and buys herself. She has also presented videos on  where to start amongst many others

Even though she has been published before, this is her first full collection. It is full of poems that have personal elements and things that matter to her that she seeks to wrestle into a linguistic framework of a poem. All of them are full of whimsy and the poems swirl with light and dark elements depending on the subject.

I always wondered why a lass would stand on a hillside

With her arms spread wide like she’s reaching for the world

I have read her three bookshop based books which were are all brilliant, and thought I would give this a go as the library had a copy and I am trying to read more poetry. Overall I liked this, the mix of styles and formats worked well and I liked the use of poems written in the Geordie dialect. I didn’t get everyone though and had some that I liked much more than others.

Three favourite Poems:

Movement

Swimmin

Birdlasses

5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Thirty-eight years ago a guy called Pete Carter organised a protest march. Called the People’s March for Jobs, there were around 300 people who walked from Liverpool to London to protest about the Tory government policies pushed through by Thatcher and that had devastated the industrial heartlands of the north. Carter was a communist and fantastic orator and he could inspire the people that joined him on the march. Mike was 17 at the time and had left school and Pete, his father has asked him if he wanted to join them. He didn’t because of the history between them, rather he chose his own direction in life.

It was after Pete had died and they were sorting through his effects, he found a mug that commemorated the march in a box with letters and other things. Realising it was approaching 35 years since it had taken place he booked time off work and decided to walk the same route. Partly it was to see if he could understand his dad and partly to take the pulse of the country just before the 2016 referendum. He would see if he could find some of those that walked the march the first time too. He booked his one-way train ticket to Liverpool.

His walk would take him from there to Warrington, onto Manchester and then to Macclesfield. Other towns he walks through include Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham, Coventry and then through the northern Home Counties. He stops to talk to as many people as he can, explaining the reasons why he is following the same route as the original marchers 35 years ago. He tells those who will listen to him, why he is doing it and asks how people are going to be voting in the up and coming referendum. He notes that the price of a pint seems to rise a penny each mile he gets nearer to London. It is also a walk back through his past too, as he revisits his tempestuous relationship that he and his sister had with his father. Some of the people he meets up with on his walk knew his father and were with him on the original march. They had a very different view of the man than he did.

The answers to his questions are quite eye-opening, not only in the way that people were intending on voting but also as a damming indictment of decades of Tory policy that left people in the former industrial heartlands without jobs or a future. Almost all of the reasons that his father originally organised the march in 1981 were still valid today. The only thing missing now is hope, as these people have been the casualties of the neo-liberal policies. All of this injustice makes Carter seethe with fury and that comes across as he pours his frustrations and passion into the writing of this book. He is open and honest about the problems that he had with his father throughout out his life and tries to understand what drove his father to be the person he was and goes some way to reconciliation with the memories that he had of him. All of these things combined are what make this such a good book and an essential read on the political health of our country.

4 out of 5 stars

I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. – Groucho Marx.

Becoming a member of a club has benefits, exclusive access to people and ideas, acknowledgement of a certain point in your life. With that though comes an inside knowledge too. This is also replicated with professions too, that if you become a cabbie, or a barista or undertaker that you learn the tricks of the trade and most importantly the language too.

In this exploration of the language of tribes, Dent has spent hours interviewing people from a complete variety of professions, from the armed forces and police, butchers, bankers, cabin crew and even some of the most secretive the masons and the spooks. But there are others too, so we will learn how the meaning of the words that skateboarders use, how to sound like you know what you are talking about when you’re at a rave, or if you prefer your dancing to be a little more leisurely the terms that you will need to use when Morris Dancing.

In this book, Dent uncovers all sorts of words and phrases that you wouldn’t normally hear in day to day life and if you did hear them, you wouldn’t get the meaning. There are some great insults in here too, so if you want to know what a camper, funt or a who an organ donor is, then you need to read this book.

4 out of 5 stars

When you think of wild landscapes the images of great African Plains, or rainforest canopies spring to mind. These are often seen on the fantastic television programmes that the BBC and others produce for us. But the wild landscape is all around us if you know where and when to look. Even in the centre of London, which has lots of trees and parkland, there is wildlife all around. However, the parish of Poplar is not necessarily the first one that springs to mind when you do think of wilderness, it is one of the most deprived in the capital, has rundown areas and also hosts some of the vast sums of money travelling constantly around the world in the financial system.

The area was named after the Black Poplar tree, that used to be common here, but now has vanished. Thankfully there are lots of other trees and wildlife around if you know where to look or have a good guide. Bob Gilbert is that guide. His wife is a vicar in the East End parish and in this book he walks the streets seeking out the native trees and the immigrant plants that came over here when the area was part of London docks and even recent arrivals that are an aspect of that society. Each of these plants has a story behind why it is there, and he teases these out as you go through the book teaching us about the social context and the local history.

I loved the chapters on tracing the Black Ditch, a subterranean river that is under the parish. He is assisted by the artist Amy Sharrocks and they try and locate it by dowsing. There is a chapter where he follows the progress of the plane tree he can see from his home, documenting the changes through the seasons. It proves that natural history writing can be equally rich when it is centred on where you live as it is about the great spectacles of our planet. He takes part in the beating the bounds of the parish too and explains the gossamer-thin threads that link this back to the pagan ceremonies. I have only been to the area once, but my great grandmother was born in Poplar and lived in Stebondale Street, but this lyrical account makes me want to go and see it for myself.

4 out of 5 stars

Ever since Wainwright popularised the Coast to Coast in his book it has become one of the countries favourite walks with thousands of people taking a couple of weeks to walk it every year. There have even been some mad souls who have run it, completing it in under two days! Hugh Thomson though is doing things differently and undertaking the route with a mule called Jethro. Mules are not that common these days, but they were regularly used as pack animals until the middle ages and then stopped being used for one reason or another.

Having got a mule with him, he is not going to be able to use the footpaths recommended in the guide book, however, he is going to be following the old drovers roads that are slowing fading from the landscape from lack of use. This not about the journey either, rather this is his way of meeting the people that live along the route and taking the time to contemplate life a little and think. Jethro is a conversation starter as well as being a silent companion, and he has it the easiest too. Rather than being saddled with loads that his medieval forebears would have been expected to carry, he is very lightly loaded. He is also accompanied by the Irish writer, Jasper Winn, who you’d normally fine in a boat. It does make a slight mockery of the title of the book, but Winn adds far more depth to the walk as they set the world to rights across the spine of England.

It had parallels to Spanish Steps, where Tim Moore walks across Spain with a donkey. Not as funny as that book, but I thought that this was a really enjoyable meander across the bridleways of north England very loosely following the coast to coast path.  I liked that fact that he wasn’t trying to add deeper meaning to this walk, rather doing it because he could and because he wanted too. The conversations with the people that he meets, from other authors to old school friends he hasn’t seen for half a lifetime, add depth to the book and he little sojourns to see particular things of interest highlight how much history is layered on this landscape. Both authors were frustrated that Jethro’s social media page had more likes then either of theirs which did make me chuckle.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Parenting is never easy. There is no right way to do it, but there are plenty of wrong ways and for those that are interested there are a plethora of books out there that claim to provide all the advice that you will ever need in raising your genetic heritage. This, however, comes with the by-line, this is a parenting book for people who don’t buy parenting books, which is quite a bold claim. Psychotherapist Philippa Perry is well placed to make this claim with two decades of experience of case studies and her own experience of being a parent. She concentrates on the bigger picture of being a parent rather than the minutia, concentrating on the relationship and how important that is to their well being.

We have successfully managed to get our firstborn all the way through to adulthood as she was 18 earlier this year. Not totally sure how we managed that, but we did. We were never perfect and reading this has highlighted some errors, but I wish this was around all those years ago when she was first born. If you are starting to hear yourself saying the things that your parent did then it is probably high time that you read this. It is full of sensible advice, but I wished it had more on teenagers, as it is mostly toddler focused. It does have sensible suggestions though and she re-iterates all the way through that these are suggestions and you sometimes need to go with your gut instinct.

4 out of 5 stars

A man staggers down a passageway in the small town and finds a lady slumped on the ground and covered in blood. He sees the knife on the ground, picks it up and then panics and drops it down a nearby drain and rushes away from the scene. She is found and taken to hospital, where the surgeons say that the knife missed her eye by 2mm and declare her lucky to be alive.

Most of the residents of the town are shocked by this unprovoked attack. But the victim, Josephine Jenks, a former soft porn star seems unperturbed by the attention. Roddy Mace, a journalist for the local newspaper is covering the crime, however, given her background, the Sun newspaper really want a scoop on this and they dispatch the pretty unpleasant hack, Jeremy Fitz, to the town to secure the interviews and exclusive coverage.

A day or so later there is a second attack, the wife of an alcoholic is slashed and also ends up in hospital. Her idle husband starts to put together a mob to find the attacker themselves as the police aren’t making any progress. Two further people are slashed, a guy who staggers into a restaurant bleeding profusely and a husband finds his wife dead in a farm building. This is now a murder enquiry. Just as the hysteria reaches its peak, a copper who has been put on rest from the force re-appears back in the town and starts developing his own theories about the crimes as he follows his own leads with the help of Mace.

It has the standard tropes of a copper returning after he sees the pretty hopeless local police station is floundering. But there are much darker shards in the plot, it is full of menace as the attacks seem unprovoked and unrelated, the rapid rise of the mob and their intentions is pretty scary too. This is the forth of Myers books that I have read now, and whilst I preferred The Gallows Pole and Beastings, it is still one of the best crime books that I have read in a long while.  It is the classic Myers lyrical writing too, it is as much about the place and the landscape as it is about the untangling of the crime, but fast-paced and really really good.

4.5 out of 5 stars

It was Lynne Roper’s health that became the driving force behind her getting into the water. In 2011 after having had a double mastectomy she joined The Outdoor Swimming Society and really never looked back. Even though she was a late starter to the delights of wild swimming, she never really looked back and was soon an essential member of the society. She inspired many others to join and to learn just how to understand the complexities of river flows and currents off the coast of Devon. This journal is a record of the swims that she had with friends from the group and her dog, Honey. She was an all year swimmer, taking to the water in tors, ponds, rivers and reservoirs and even the odd quarry. Equally happy in bitterly cold waters in the winter as she was luxuriating in the silky smooth waters in rivers in the summer.

I grin through the constant rumble and hiss of crashing waves and foam, imbued with stormy energy.

Sadly this wonderful diary of a lady who wanted to spend as much time as possible in rivers and the sea was to be cut short by a brain tumour and she passed away in 2016. Roper was a paramedic and she never really thought of her self as a writer, but this book proves otherwise. She has a beautiful way of writing, razor-sharp perception coupled with wry humour. You feel the shock of the cold water too as she slips into the water and see the light as it reflects and flickers off the surface. We are only reading this book as her friend Tanya Shadrick collected her writings and took them to publishers. No one was interested, so she set up the Selkie Press and published it herself. I am so glad she did, as this is a beautiful book to read.