September Moon by John Moore

September Moon by John Moore is a book I ordered secondhand from Across the Pond for a buddy read hosted by @the_unhurried_reader of Instagram in 2019. Unfortunately, it didn't arrive till October of that year and the buddy read was by then over, having finished at the end of September. I've been eager to read it during a September ever since, but I must have been too booked up in 2020. 

September Moon tells the story of the harvest of hops in England's Hertfordshire. During the month, itinerant workers — some Welsh, many traveling Romany, one an older man who has been harvesting all his life — arrive to do the harvesting. This is not a fast-placed, tightly plotted book, but at the same time there's no waste of words and the writing is lovely enough to suit anyone who enjoys literature. Instead, what you get is a farmer with chest pains; his son who had a fling with a "gipsy" girl [I'm going to continue with the spelling and usage of the word "gipsy" for convenience and to match the book, although I know Romany is the proper term] and tries to resume their affair but finds that her personality has changed; the Gipsy King who is challenged by the other tough-guy gipsy; the farmer and would-be inventor who is not a natural to farming, frequently loses money on crops and attempted inventions, and tends to drink off his profits at the local pub; and, his half-French daughter who has returned from London and whom the villagers suspect left in the first place because she got in trouble with a boy. There's also the threat of a spreading fungus ruining the crops. 

Published in 1957, September Moon is a total comfort read. The tension is ever-present and there are plenty of questions to keep the pages turning, but in the end nothing awful happens. Literally nothing. All the fighting and drama and knives flashing by moonlight, the one farmer's illness and the other's threatened loss of his farm. Well, there's bloodshed and danger, but no tragedy and the plot twists are comfortable rather than nerve-racking. I think it'll be great going into the book in future Septembers knowing that it's that kind of read, taut enough to make the pages fly but pleasant enough to read when you're stressed out and just want to find something enjoyably tense in which nobody dies. 

Highly recommended but apparently out of print - I checked to see if there are any newer copies available and it looks like the only available options are secondhand. Abe Books has quite a few but the first one to pop up is in a shop in Melbourne, Australia, so perhaps it was never published in the U.S. At any rate, if you're ever looking for something that is enjoyable to read and not in the mood for anything horrible to happen, September Moon is perfect. If I didn't happen to still be on that book-buying ban (I am determined to make it to the end of the year without buying another single book, in spite of having broken my ban a time or two), I would see if I could find some other secondhand books by Moore. But, I won't. Maybe next year. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Museum of Forgotten Memories by Anstey Harris

And that's the most bitter thing about love: you can't understand it, measure it — not all its edges and intricacies — until it's gone and the clear print of its negative self is left behind. 

~p. 12 of The Museum of Forgotten Memories (Advance Reader Copy - the final print version may be different)

In The Museum of Forgotten Memories by Anstey Harris, Cate Morris is still grieving the loss of her husband, four years past, and now she's lost her teaching job and her home. But, she has one last option. Her husband Richard was the heir to an estate with a museum full of treasures from around the world, including stuffed animals collected by his grandfather, Col. Lyons-Morris. For reasons he never explained, Richard stopped talking to his grandfather and never returned to their ancestral home; he even dropped part of his double-barreled last name. Although he never returned before his death, their son Leo has the right to take residence in the sprawling mansion. 

So, Cate and Leo pack up their flat in Islington and travel to the home that contains Hatter's Museum of the Wide Wide World, which is now run by a steely woman named Araminta Buchan and a handful of employees and volunteers. It's on its last legs. Within 6 weeks, it's likely that the board that oversees the running of the museum will close it. They would benefit from its liquidation and it's unlikely that funds will be found to prop it up. Can the museum be saved?

Leo looks just like his father but he has Down's Syndrome and Cate has clung to her parenting role. Now that Leo has arrived at his ancestral home, he's finding a new strength and determination. Will Cate be able to let go and allow Leo to grow and thrive, even possibly start a new life with someone else? 

Richard's best friend, Simon, dated Cate before she saw Richard and felt an immediate spark. He has been a kind presence as Leo's godfather and was a rock during the rough years of Richard's decline but spends most of his time out of the country. When Cate falls for a new man, will it last or will she be drawn back to her dear friend? 

Recommended - OK, first . . . you have to know half the reason I accepted this book for review was because of that stunning cover. How could you not want to know what's within its pages? In the preface, the author talks about the real museum in Kent that inspired the story and the kindness of the Major who preserved the animal specimens the museum was known for. I just added a new place to my bucket list. If it's at all like the fictional museum version, it must be worth the visit. 

As to the story, I had some minor issues with it that aren't worth mentioning and a problem with Cate's romance. The man she fell for moved on Cate faster than lightning. I was completely creeped out by the speed of his advances, to be honest, and never trusted him. Whether or not I was correct and he turned out to be trustworthy, I won't say. But, there are many surprises in The Museum of Forgotten Memories. It has a lot of plot twists that I never could have anticipated and only a couple that I managed to figure out with few enough hints that they were probably lucky guesses rather than a case of too much foreshadowing. 

I will say that I found it challenging to like Cate, at first. She was quick to make assumptions, a little haughty, and so heavily weighed down by her experiences that her inner monologue was a bit dark, sad, and judgmental. But, she was willing to confront her issues and apologized when she was wrong. So, she grew on me. And, while I haven't encountered many Down's Syndrome characters, it felt to me like Leo's character had the ring of truth. I had a friend in high school with a brother who had Down's and he always glowed when he spoke of his brother and how everyone loved him. Leo is like that; he has a temper yet he's also a charmer and everyone adores him. 

Obviously, there's a lot to this book. It has a surprising complexity and a gentle wisdom. And, I do love a book set in a sprawling English mansion. 

My thanks to Gallery Books for the review copy!

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

The raspberries, Mrs. Marshall said, would he net the raspberries? That, too, was pushed through the keyhole, and back came the little shrill whistle. Oh yes, he would net them. If he netted himself, the birds would see no difference. He would bud, he would blossom, his toes would take root in England, his fingers would splay down comfortably into the soil. 

~p. 46

But first, thought Laura, she would start some of the evening's cooking before eating. She began to move pans back and forth off the stove. She used the colander, the grater, wooden spoons of various sizes, and a small army of basins. Her cheeks became flushed. Would the sauce bind? And lo, it bound, while her heart did likewise. But with a hiss, something else boiled over disastrously, so that the cat, who knew Laura, got up and withdrew in prudent haste. A sad brown smell invaded the cluttered kitchen. Mopping up the ruins, Laura thought of Mrs. Abbey, their former and best cook, Mrs. Abbey, who had been killed by a flying bomb while taking a cup of tea with her niece Flo in Putney. 

~p. 66

Now that her father was home, her mother always seemed to be standing by the stove, stirring things, and frowning at the book in her hand. Victoria's bedtime, which had been an elastic affair, returned to a legal appointed hour. 

~p. 156

I must be in a Mollie Panter-Downes mood, lately, because I went looking for One Fine Day after reading her Postwar stories, Millie's Room, and now I'd really, really like to start on her WWII dispatches (but I think I'll wait so I don't totally run out of Panter-Downes books).

One Fine Day is about a small family, the Marshalls, and it's set a year after the end of WWII on a single day. You're mostly in Laura's head, but occasionally you'll also spend a little time in the minds of her husband Stephen and daughter Victoria.

Before the war, the Marshalls had a bustling household with servants, a nanny, and at least one gardener. Their house is large for a family of three and they're clearly very well off but now that the war is over, the young gardener has been killed, and many of the servants have found alternative employment, the majority of the cleaning, cooking, and some of the gardening is left to Laura to handle.

The reader follows Laura as she does a little gardening and cooking, goes to pick up her food rations, visits the home of a young man to see if he'd be willing to help out her elderly gardener, bikes to a young Roma man's home to which she knows her dog will have run after escaping the house, stops on the way to visit with the family who own the largest home in the village, and visits a scenic point.

Both Laura and Stephen consider the fact that their house is too large and their chores overwhelming. Should they sell and move to a smaller place? They think about the fact that upkeep of their home dominates their time and energy. Maybe they should take more time to enjoy life and occasionally take a holiday or go for a nice visit to the point to picnic and enjoy the view. They think about their lives and how they've changed: what life was like before and during the war, and how different everything has become in a few long years.

Recommended - A very understated, very English story of a day in the life of a family that survived the war. I had a little trouble getting through the book because I was having a tired week and kept falling asleep, but at the same time I kept marking passages and I was very aware of Panter-Downes' unique turn of phrase. She was really quite a brilliant wordsmith. If you want to know what life was like in England during or after WWII, Mollie Panter-Downes places you within everyday life like nobody else I've encountered.

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

What Red Was by Rosie Price

Trigger Warning: Rape

Time flatlined; she knew then what red was. She was on Zara's bed, she saw the ribbon in [his] collar. But this red was not a colour, a warning sign or provocation, the bull's rag; no, red was the filter through which she apprehended everything; it collapsed the time between her present and that moment that refused to remain in her past, so that her whole being, from the dilation of her pupils to the rhythm of her breath and the ice in her chest, recalibrated to respond to the sign of the world through it. And she saw then that if she had been so wrong about what a colour could be, then there was little about the world that she had understood correctly. 

~fr. p. 111 of Advance Reader Copy, What Red Was -- some changes may have been made to the final print version, which was released in August of 2019

What Red Was by Rosie Price is a story of a friendship, trauma, and family dynamics as well as the aftermath of the trauma. Kate and Max become lifelong friends. But, when Kate becomes the victim of a violent crime while visiting Max's family, the trauma invades every corner of her life and becomes a part of who she is. Will she ever feel whole again?

I loved the way What Red Was began. Kate is a person with an average background and a mother she wants to escape while Max is very wrapped up in family and he comes from a fabulously wealthy background but is very casual about it. They meet when Max is locked out of his room in what I presume is a co-ed dorm, Max knocking on the door to ask for help in nothing but a towel.

Kate has just moved to university and she's lonely; Max is vivacious and cheerful. She loans him some of her clothing to run across campus for a duplicate key and when he returns with her clothing, they talk. The friendship is comfortable but never romantic. Eventually, Kate finds out that Max has casually left out the information that his mother is a very famous filmmaker, but when Kate meets the family she finds they're relaxed and nonjudgmental; it's clear where he got his personality. If Max likes Kate, she's part of the family, too. Max's family does have a complication involving his grandmother, which is kind of a secondary storyline but important.

I'm not quite sure where I got What Red Was, but I think a publicist contacted me (as opposed to it being a book that I "won" via Shelf Awareness). It fell to the back burner when I was forced to take time off — and I was already behind, so I missed reading and reviewing by the August, 2019 release — but I'm glad I was able to finally get to it. My thanks to Hogarth and whoever sent the copy my way.

Recommended - While I didn't feel like What Red Was was wrapped up in a very satisfying way, I found the story so compelling that it was almost impossible to put down. I think the author did a particularly great job of showing how deep trauma runs, how difficult it can be to get help or even speak about what's happened, how the way people react (both to experiencing trauma and being told about it by someone who has experienced it and needs help) is not consistent in any way, and how family dynamics can be confusing, wonderful, or awful.

My biggest problem with the book (besides the ending) was the way Max became heavily involved in drugs and alcohol, mostly because he started hanging out with the wrong guy. But, at the same time it appeared that he was ignoring how Kate was falling apart, I had to wonder (and I think this was implied, if not overtly stated) whether Max was, in fact, so close to Kate that he picked up on her trauma and turned away because he couldn't face the obvious fact that someone he deeply cared for was in trouble. I have seen this happen so while I hated that part of the storyline, I also thought it rang true in its own way.



 ©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.