Three Book Reviews

I always feel bad when I give up on a book, but life is too short to wade through nearly 500 pages when you realise that you have stopped taking in what's written. I'm afraid A Gentleman in Moscow did that to me. This was our book club read. We didn't choose it. We always pick three books in case the library don't have our first choices, but often these days it seems they don't have any of our three picks and we end up with a library recommendation. This was it this time. Despite the fact that it has rave reviews and several people I've spoken to love it, there are others like me who struggled. Sadly I found this book too slow and even from the blurb it was hard to say what the point of it was. Where was it going? Basically the main character is a poet who upset people by what he wrote and he is put under house arrest in the grand hotel he had rooms in. Set in 1922, the hotel seems to be a mini village with all it offers. I did enjoy bits where the main character made friends with a little girl and they went off exploring parts of the hotel he didn't know. Oh, the suite of rooms he had were also no longer available to him and he has to move his personal things to an attic room and he considers what he no longer needs.

I nearly gave up at 30 pages, but tried again and finally gave up at nearly 90 pages. Instead I moved onto Conference at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons which had been sitting on my pile. Having read the first Cold Comfort Farm book twice, I was so pleased to sink back into that odd farm of odd people and the Sukebind growing! I just love the humour of these books. This time Flora gets an invite to a conference of 'thinkers'. Why is it being held at Cold Comfort Farm? Well, it seems the male Starkadders have skipped off to Africa with Big Business (the bull) and Reuben is the only one left, and has struggled to keep things going. The farm has been bought by a charity, not unlike The National Trust, who have brought in 'authentic' items to put on show. Flora soon realises she has to do something to bring the male Starkadders back and turn things around. As usual things get out of hand with hilarious moments, but Flora gets the job done and all is well again as the male Starkadders return and begin fighting. To Flora that means everything is normal again and she can go home to her husband and five children! Wonderful.

The Librarian by Salley Vickers, is a book I asked for at Christmas. I've read many books by this author and always enjoy them. This one is set in 1959, and in her early twenties Sylvia moves to East Mole where she takes up the position of Children's Librarian. Mr. Booth who runs the whole library is resentful of Sylvia, especially when she tries to improve the library with new books and gets the local primary school involved. Still, she does make a friend in Dee, a volunteer at the library. However, East Mole, being a small place, festers with rumour, gossip and class prejudice. When Sylvia becomes involved with the married doctor things begin to unravel, especially when the doctor's daughter has an agenda of her own, making her neighbour's son the scapegoat for theft and more. As Sylvia tries to get to the truth she feels the weight of dislike from many people heavy on her.

This is a story of a certain era with things being excepted for what they were. There is nostalgia, but other things that are consider very worrying these days, that are ignored. The emphasis of the book is how reading and libraries can change people. Use them or lose them, a sentiment high up there these days. An enjoy able read.