The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks

Reviewer: JW Hicks author of Rats

What we thought: If you appreciate Laurie Lee’s lyrical prose then you will treasure this book.

The Shepherd’s Life tells the real story of farmers; their traditional way of life, the fight against the industrialisation of farming, and the cheapening of food by supermarkets. It’s a tough, warts-and-all tale of the dedication, and great love, that a farmer has for his land and livestock.

Rebanks describes a year in a farmer’s life, starting in Summer; ending in Spring. In amongst the non-stop drudgery of impossible to ignore tasks such as laying hedges, hanging gates, bathing sheeps’ feet, trimming muck from their tails and cleaning roof gutters, we learn of his personal history, how he went from a boy who despised school, teachers and book learning to gaining a degree at Oxford University, and we also learn of his family who have farmed Cumbrian land for hundreds of years.

Woven through The Shepherd’s Life are strands expressing not only his frustration that small-scale farming families feel their income and place in society is slipping away, but the author’s anger at the public’s and policy makers’ failure to respect a culture based on community and shared land.

Rebanks writing is lyrical, descriptive and a joy to read. Of his time in the classroom he writes: I was thirteen or so years old, sitting surrounded by a mass of other academic non-achievers, listening to an old battle-weary teacher lecturing us on how we should aim to be more that just farm workers, joiners, brickies, electricians and hairdressers. It felt like a sermon she’d delivered many times before. It was a waste of time and she knew it. We were firmly set, like our fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers before us, on being what we were and had always been. Plenty of us were bright enough, but we had no intention of displaying it at school. It would have been dangerous.
And of his great love of the land he farms: There is no beginning, and there is no end. The sun rises, and falls, each day, and the seasons come and go. The days, months and years alternate through sunshine, rain, hail, wind, snow and frost. The leaves fall each autumn and burst forth again each spring. The earth spins through the vastness of space. The grass comes and goes with the warmth of the sun, The farms and the flocks endure, bigger than the life of a single person. We are born, live our working lives and die, passing like the oak leaves that blow across our land in the winter. We are each a tiny part of something enduring, something that feels solid, real and true. Our farming way of life has roots deeper than five thousand years into the soil of this landscape.

I enjoyed every word and every well written phrase in The Shepherd's Life, and I am confident you will too.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie. James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small.

Avoid if you don’t like: Gritty tales of the hardship of an age-old way of life worked in a modernised society ignorant and uncaring of its true worth.

Ideal accompaniments: A roaring fire, a strong wind howling outside, and dripping toast for tea.

Genre: Non-fiction

Available from Amazon

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What we thought: It is a rare thing to find a book that conjures a world completely in its opening sentences and then builds and maintains that world to the very last page. It’s even rarer for an author, having done so once, to pull off the trick again with a second, completely different world.

I was bowled over by the opening to Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White. From the moment that Sugar beckoned to me from the shadowy world of London’s Victorian slums, I would have followed her anywhere. But the last thing I would have expected was that the next journey Faber would take me on would be to a far flung planet at the limits of human exploration, at some unidentified time in our not-too-distant future.

The Book of Strange New Things is the story of Peter, former drug addict and thief turned pastor, who leaves his wife behind on Earth to travel to a planet called Oasis. The indigenous population, small, roughly humanoid and seemingly benign, have a thirst for the Bible (which they call The Book of Strange New Things) and for the ‘technique of Jesus.’

Despite the strangeness of his new world, Peter, it seems, has landed the cushiest missionary job in the history of Christianity. Back on Earth, things are not going so well for his wife, Bea. Disasters, climactic and economic, are striking closer and closer to home, and it’s clear that the social order is breaking down. Their only contact is via the Shoot, a fragile electronic link that allows them to write letters to each other over billions of miles. But Peter, absorbed in his mission, is increasingly disengaged from his wife’s distress.

The book could be seen as an exploration of the different types of love – especially agape (the love of man for God and God for man), eros (sexual love) and philia (love or affection among equals). It is also an exceptional exploration of a species in some ways more essentially alien than many science fiction authors have attempted. The truth behind the Oasans’ passion for Christianity, when finally revealed, is heartbreaking in its simplicity.

If this is, indeed, as Faber has declared, his last novel, then together with The Crimson Petal and the White, The Book of Strange New Things will stand as evidence of an extraordinary, fertile imagination and a compassionate heart. But I really hope that, sometime in the future, he might be persuaded to change his mind. Because I would love to know where he might take me next.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederick Pohl, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.

Avoid if you don’t like: Religion, Sci Fi, or mixing religion with your Sci Fi.

Ideal accompaniments: A loaf of fresh bread and a tall glass of water

Genre: Literary Fiction, Sci-Fi

Available from Amazon

Silent Scream by Angela Marsons

Reviewer : Gillian Hamer, author of The Charter, Closure, Complicit & Crimson Shore (www.gillianhamer.com)


What we thought: There’s always a thrill when you read a new author for the first time, especially, for me, a new crime writer. I’d seen a lot of buzz online about Angela Marsons and so I had high hopes for Silent Scream – and I wasn’t disappointed.

A gripping opening to a fast-paced story, believable characters, clever plotline – and the prerequisite twists and turns that leave the reader unbalanced – added to a really enjoyable read.

This is the first book in a new detective series, which introduces us to the main character Detective Kim Stone. Kim has issues, as most good fictional detectives have, plus a troubled history which makes the hardness of her character seem very real. Although we touched on her past, we learn little about her present, so I look forward to seeing the character develop in subsequent books.

An abandoned children’s home set the scene for some grisly finds, and as I come from the edges of the ‘Black Country’ I was secretly delighted to find a book based in the area. The narrative was well told, and kept me gripped and guessing right to the end. The author fed in enough ‘red herrings’ that it could have been any of a number of suspects – that said I was satisfied with the ending and thought all of the loose ends were handled superbly.

The writing was of excellent quality, and I would highly recommend this to crime fans and really look forward to reading Evil Games (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller series book 2) which will be published later this year.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid.

Avoid if you don’t like: Black Country accents and cold case thrillers.

Ideal accompaniments: Fish, chips and mushy peas washed down with a pint of Mild.

Genre: Crime Fiction.

Available from Amazon

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

Reviewer: Catriona Troth

What we thought: Back in summer 2013, Terry Pratchett came to Beaconsfield Library. He and Rob Wikins, his close friend and assistant, had just sent off the first draft of Raising Steam to their editor. Rob read a passage from near the beginning, when the Discworld gets its first glimpse of a steam train.

“The bystanders, most of whom were by now byrunners, and in certain instances bystampeders, fled and complained, except of course for every little boy of any age who followed it with eyes open wide, vowing there and then that he would be the captain of the terrible noxious engine, oh yes, indeed!”

It’s clear on every page of this book that Terry and Rob are still at heart small boys goggling at a locomotive. The love of steam is woven into every passage.

Raising Steam sees the return of Moist von Lipwig, former conman and thief, whose gift of getting along with people of all species have led him to run, in turn, Ankh-Morpork’s Post Office, Clacks, Bank, Mint – and now the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygenic Railway. Under the (largely) benign direction of Vetenari, he finds himself in partnership with engineering genius, Dick Simnel, and serial entrepreneur Sir Harry King, the King of the Golden River (formerly Piss Harry).

What begins as an idea to build a line from Ankh-Morpork to Sto Lat, to enable fresh produce to be brought to the city before it spoils, becomes a race against time to build a line all the way to Uberwald when the Low King of the Dwarfs is overthrown by extremists.

But like all Discworld books, this is so much more than a story about the building of a railway. With his sights as firmly as ever on our world, in this, his last adult Discworld novel, Pratchett tackles terrorism and religious fundamentalism. It’s perhaps not his most subtle dig ever, but when the grags – the deep dwarfs that want to bring down the modern world - destroy one of clacks towers on which Ankh-Morpork’s communications depend, Vetanari’s response is “This isn’t war. This is a crime.”

One theme that has run through all the Discworld novels is the redemption of species once regarded with fear and suspicion. Trolls, werewolves, vampires - they've all been given a chance to show that they, too, are just as human as the rest of us. And now it is the turn of the goblins, first introduced in Unseen Academicals and enlarged upon in Snuff, to complete their road to hero status. For it turns out the goblins are very good mechanics indeed, as well as determined fighters.

In fact the only species I can think of who have never been redeemed by Pratchett are the Elves, who in Lords and Ladies turned out to be very unpleasant indeed. Perhaps in the Discworld’s very last outing, Shepherd’s Crown, (the fourth and last Tiffany Aching book, to be published in September) they too may get their chance.

I can’t wait.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: Any of Terry Pratchett's books, especially the Moist von Lipwig stories (Going Postal, Making Money); The Titfield Thunderbolt (film)

Avoid if you don’t like: Satire based on a fantasy world.

Ideal accompaniments: A cup of tea and a bacon sandwich, cooked on the stoker's shovel.

Genre: Humour, Satire

Available from Amazon

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel

Reviewer: JW Hicks, author of Rats

What we thought: That this is a futuristic novel that engenders hope in the survival of human spirit.

Station Eleven, written by Emily St John Mandel, was nominated for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

This dystopian novel is set in the days of the World’s total collapse, brought about by the fast-spreading and unstoppable Georgia Flu, which kills 99.99 percent of the population.

Mandel tells the tale through an interconnected web of characters, amongst them, Arthur Leander, an actor past his prime playing King Lear, who dies of a heart attack as the flu erupts; Jeevan who gives Leander CPR in attempt to save his life; Kirsten a child actor in the same production, who acts in post-apocalypse Shakespearian performances and Miranda who creates the hand-drawn comic called Station Eleven which miraculously survives, becoming both a totem of the old world and a distorted mirror of the new.

These characters and a host of others weave a magical, totally absorbing story of individual triumph against seemingly unsurmountable odds – characters that are skeins of colour in the grey tapestry of post-apocalyptic life in the years that follow Armageddon.

The story looks at both the pre-flu time and Year Twenty, when the flu has abated and the survivors have settled into isolated communities – and the Travelling Symphony of musicians and actors who go from settlement to settlement performing Shakespeare plays.

Gradually the character-skeins grow in colour, illustrating their interconnectivity and underpinning this wonderful, soul-satisfying story – a story that connects the two time frames, the then and the now.

The skein which represents Arthur Leander, links characters and events in subtle, hidden ways, helping usher the story to a satisfying conclusion, a conclusion that offers the reader the prospect of a brighter and more hopeful future.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: John Wyndham’s oeuvre. John Christopher’s Death of Grass. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Avoid if you don’t like: Futuristic revelations.

Ideal accompaniments: Comfort food and a warm cat.

Genre: Dystopian. Sci-Fi.

Available on Amazon

The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician by Tendai Huchu

Reviewer: JJ Marsh

What we thought:

The stories of three Zimbabwean men in Edinburgh is intriguing and unusual. The Magistrate used to dispense justice back home. Here, he cleans the toilet. The Mathematician makes money and indulges himself in the belief he won’t be here for long. The Maestro collects shopping trollies in Tesco’s car park and reads. The three men’s lives intersect and cross, meeting the challenges of a different culture with varying measures of success.

This book is rounded, measured and smart, and anything but a miserable tale of immigrant isolation. Intelligence and thought shine off the page via these layered and introspective characters. Farai’s casual sexism and judgemental views are offset by his willingness to engage with the old man in the café. The Magistrate’s adaptation to his changed circumstances is beautifully encapsulated in his memories of the maid. The Maestro’s gradual retreat from the world in search of meaning in books is slow, heart-breaking and completely plausible.

Whilst the main characters are more than enough to grip your attention, the supporting cast add still more light, shade and laughter. Alfonso, the rodent Del Boy alcoholic, is infuriating and hilarious at once. Tatyana, the Maestro’s Polish friend who would be more, is alternately invasive and vulnerable. One of the most powerful personalities in the book is Edinburgh itself. Huchu uses the city to the full: its people, its architecture, its humour.

The bittersweet ending left me sorry to leave these people and this place, but curious to read more by this talented, sly and unpredictable writer. Tendai Huchu is one to watch.

You’ll enjoy this if you liked: The Bridge by Iain Banks, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín.

Avoid if you dislike: Change, perspectives on politics and change, thinking.

Ideal accompaniments: A full Scottish breakfast, rock shandy and Baobab Gateway.

Genre: Literary fiction

Available on Amazon

The Bones by Michael Prince

Reviewer: JW Hicks author of Rats

What we thought: Ben is sixteen, it’s Summer in Caernarfon and he is friendless. Transplanted from Manchester to a Welsh speaking area when his parents buy a rundown pub, he is totally adrift, finding it difficult to make friends in a school where the language is determinedly Welsh.

Working with his father to renovate the Ceffyl Du pub, Ben discovers the bones of a child hidden in a blocked chimney. Given the task of disposing of them, he is landed firmly on the horns of a dilemma. Should he go against his own conscience and obey his father or do what he feels is right – report the find to the proper authorities?
His worry over what to do with the bones leads to great unease, and this is when the story strays into unearthly realms.

As well as being tormented by his decision, Ben has to acclimatise to his new school and a completely different way of life. While dealing with tearaways Skids, Dilys and Sospan, and in order to get to know Haf, the attractive girl in his English Literature class, Ben must get to know his own mind and work out the person he wants to be.

Prince’s smoothly unfolding story, written in teen-friendly prose, steers the reader through this ofttimes spectrally chill tale with consummate ease.

The Bones is a guide book for children making their way from teens to adulthood; an inspiring read for parents and teenagers alike.

You’ll enjoy this if you like: The novels of Brian Keaney.

Avoid if you don’t like: Stories with psychic undertones.

Ideal accompaniments: A couple of Kit-Kats and a flagon of fizzy pop.

Genre: YA

Available from Amazon