The Tea Ladies of St Jude’s Hospital

Three unlikely friends. One chance to save the community. It might just be the perfect blend…

The Marjorie Marshall Memorial Cafeteria is at the heart of St Jude’s Hospital. Staffed by successive generations of dedicated volunteers, for over fifty years the beloved cafeteria has been serving up a kind word and sympathetic ear along with tea and scones.

Hilary, the stalwart Manageress, has worked her way up through the ranks; Joy, the latest recruit, is driving Hilary mad by arriving late every day; and seventeen-year-old Chloe, the daughter of two successful surgeons, is volunteering in the holidays and bemused by the older women.

But when they discover the cafeteria is under threat of closure, the unlikely trio must put aside their differences. As they realise the secrets and sorrows they have in common, the women grow closer – but can they bring the community together and save the day?

Phil: Here’s an interesting problem. I enjoyed this book – it’s an undemanding romp and fun along the way – but all the time I was puzzled. Where was it set?

St Jude’s Hospital is the obvious answer. But where is this? Which country?

It’s one where they spend money in dollars. Healthcare is a business, but the money has the Queen’s head on, and people aspire to work for the BBC.

For a long while, I wondered if this was a British book that had been partially translated to an American scene (the dollars bit). It wasn’t until the end that there was mention of thanking the Australian publisher – of course! That would also explain the house with storage space underneath it too. Not something we tend to have in the UK, and if we do, we call it a cellar.

The other issue is that the main characters are all really interesting women, but we don’t really get to work that out until halfway through the story. OK, we figure out that Chloe doesn’t really want to be a doctor pretty early, but her endless water-guzzling had me assuming some sort of eating disorder, which it wasn’t.

Hilary has suffered a divorce, and more importantly, a fall from grace, when her husband (who turns up very briefly late in the book) turns out to be bankrupt, their life of luxury being a sham. Her relationship with her sister is fascinating, and a little under-explored. She also can’t use email, which infuriated me as I think someone who lived like she did would be a lot more tech-savvy.

Finally, Joy is really the centre of the story, and we learn of her loss and how she deals with her late husband. This was possibly the least satisfactory area – she talks to him and seems to interact, but we eventually learn this is all in her head. I like my narrators to be honest with me, but this might just be my very literal take on things.

Despite reservations, there’s a fun book here. I just wish someone had put a kangaroo in the first few pages so I knew where I was.

 

The Keeper of Stories

She can’t recall what started her collection. Maybe it was in a fragment of conversation overheard as she cleaned a sink? Before long (as she dusted a sitting room or defrosted a fridge) she noticed people were telling her their stories. Perhaps they always had done, but now it is different, now the stories are reaching out to her and she gathers them to her…

When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B – a shrewd and tricksy woman in her nineties – she meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the keeper of stories, she doesn’t have a story to tell. At least, not one she can share.

Mrs B is no fool and knows there is more to Janice than meets the eye. What is she hiding? After all, doesn’t everyone have a story to tell?

A little break from the continuing saga of Kate vs Showbiz to review a book both Candice and I have enjoyed recently.

Janice is “just” a cleaner, and a remarkable individual. Well-regarded by her numerous employers, she is married to a man who can’t hold on to a job and has a few secrets of her own.

Meeting ex-spy Mrs B, the stories Janice has collected from people she works for and occasional snippets heard on the bus, start to come out. Much of this revolves around Mrs B telling her the tale of “Becky”, a courtesan who knew the Prince of Wales (as in Edward and Mrs Simpson) among others. Becky lived a hell of a life but always drove her own future. This helps to galvanise Janice to do the same.

The Keeper of Stories is an enjoyable read. If I’m honest, it starts slow, and only Candice telling me it was good kept me going, but by halfway through, the plot is moving, and I was snatching time to read another chapter – the sign of a good book.

The ending is pretty much how you’d like it to be, and I don’t mean this in a bad way. A couple of plot twists (one of which is after the story has finished) are dropped in at the end, serving to tie up loose ends and allow the reader to believe all will be well for a character that they will have grown to like.

As a character, Mrs B is interesting. When we first meet her, she is cantankerous, but it’s obvious that Janice is going to end up close to her and that without her, there would be no story. You could argue that there are a couple of handy coincidences, without which, the plot could be a lot grimmer, but this is a feel-good book, even though it takes some very serious subjects in its stride.

 

The Man I Think I Know

Ever since ‘the incident’, James DeWitt has stayed on the safe side.

He likes to know what happens next.

Danny Allen is not on the safe side. He is more past the point of no return.

The past is about to catch up with both of them in a way that which will change their lives forever, unexpectedly.

But redemption can come in the most unlikely ways.

Phil: I’ve been rubbish at reading recently. Too busy. Too tired. I just want to slump at the end of the day. I know I’ll enjoy doing something different, but I just can’t be bothered.

A rare train ride presented me with some time to crack open this book. 48 hours later, I’d finished it. The words slid down as easily a glass of chocolate milk. (You many sustitute your own drink of choice, but I like chocolate flavour milk.)

Mike Gayle tells the story of James DeWitt, a high-flyer brought crashing down after an incident in a nighclub. Left badly mentally scarred, he needs looking after. His parents have taken on the task, but they are stiffling him.

Danny Allen is also damaged, and has thrown away the benefits of a “good” education. He doesn’t have anything to look forward too. In desperperation, the DSS force him to become a carer, and through work, he meets James.

What follows is a story of redemption and recovery. Most reviews make the point that the book centres on a caring male freindship and that’s true. Very few female characters play much of a part. Normally, this would be seen as a bad thing, or at least odd, but here it’s perfectly natural. There’s no love between the main characters, but a mutual need.

It also exposes a sad fact – some people end up working in care homes because they have no other options. It’s badly paid hard work. Sadly, society doesn’t value a person who ends up wiping anothers backside. Yes, many people will be drawn to a “caring” profession, but others just find themselves at the bottom of the pile and really shouldn’t be there. It’s a subtle, but savage inditement of how little we care about those who need help either through age, or disability.

This is feelgood reading, but with a message. You are rooting for all the characters pretty much from the start. Mike Gayle dangles a few mysteries, such as the incidents that caused James and Danny to be where they are in life to keep the interest up, but never over-eggs this. You are reading because the writing is good, not to resolve the false jeapordy. Everything is written in the first person, which means James has natural sounding, slighly odd, disjointed speach, but it never gets in the way.

There’s a lot of pride involved, something appropriate to male characters. Both need help, but don’t want to reach out for it. When they do, mainly through the goading of the other, their lives start to imporove.

There’s a message in there.

A Book Club with a difference

Candice: As part of the the many initiatives out there to bring us all together while we are apart my work set up a book club. Being of the writing mind I joined immediately, and then gave a plug for the two Nolan Parker books.

Disappointingly neither were on the short list for the first two books we read as a group (I’m still working on that), however we picked ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ by Richard Osman. My sister had already read this and told me it was a good one so I was looking forward to it. And the result, I loved it! It nipped along lightly with twist and turns, and I loved the fact the main characters were all people in an old people’s home, proving that age doesn’t impact on your mind (just your body in a lot of cases).

Book put aside it was time for the first meet of the Book Club. The organiser had sent round some very deep discussion questions and I thought, ‘oh no, this is going to be too highbrow for me’ . But I logged in late to the meeting, due to going to another, and it was all ladies and they were nattering about something completely different!

The call turned into a ‘life, the universe and everything’ discussion. We covered the book, old age, which character we’d want to be, then other books we had read, then work, working from home, and even misogyny and the menopause! It was great because it was like being on a girls night out in the pub, with a book as the starter for the conversation but actually just a really good natter. It almost felt normal, apart from the fact they were on screen on sat around me.

I’m not sure what we are reading next but I’m more looking forward to the chat than the book.

Sally Parker’s not my mum, and I’m relieved

Sally Parker is struggling to find the hero inside herself.
All she wants to do is lie down.
Her husband Frank has lost his business, their home and their savings, in one fell swoop. Their bank cards are being declined. The children have gone feral. And now the bailiffs are at the door.
What does an ordinary woman do when the bottom falls out?
Sally Parker is about to surprise everybody.
Most of all herself.

Phil: I like Mel Giedroyc. She’s very funny on the telly.

But if this is typical of her literary output, please, please don’t let her near a keyboard.

Sally Parker (no relation) is one of those ladies who lunch. Her husband, a hedge fund manager, pays all the bills. She lives in a gilded cage with staff she doesn’t like, who do all the work. The three kids and one niece, are all nightmare spoilt brats. Her skills are being born pretty.

We know all this by reading the interminable build-up. If you want to know how the other half lives, then you’ll love it. I was bored.

Then it all starts to fall apart. Slowly. There is a financial crash. Husband Frank develops narcolepsy and keeps falling asleep. They lose the house and move through a series of improbable situations to keep a roof over their heads.

Eventually, we end up in Wales at the bedside of a dying aunt – for no reason I could entirely fathom. There, after a bit of trans-misogyny that might have provided a much stronger plotline, everyone ends up standing in a room.

This might work if there was a single character you cared about. But there isn’t. If the who lot had been killed on page two, I’d not have missed them.

It’s tempting to pull out problems, but that’s just going to turn into a rant. We could mention Sally’s good friend Janice who it is made clear, silently fancies Sally and pretty much saves the day without a hint of thanks. Or the wonky timeline where, as everyone individually rushes to Wales, sees Sally suddenly decide to take a days’ employment mucking out at a stable. Or Mikey, the business-minded child constantly being told to shut up when she tries to offer cash to help dig the family out of a whole. I could go on.

In theory, the idea that Frank started out tarmacing as a boy, and ended up by dint of his hard work, a successful fund manager, ought to be interesting – but it just happened. You would have thought that as Sally was party to this from the start, she would be involved and feel part of it. Nope.

The trans story (Warning: Spoiler) that is largely ignored is that Frank’s dad, who he idolised, changed sex but his parents stayed together. That might have provided a thrust for his actions, but we find out about all this in the last chapter.

While not the worst celebrity novel out there (Hello Celia Imrie), it’s a book that would have benefitted from being written by a nobody and then beaten into shape with the help of an editor. Someone who would have picked up the pace in the first half (“one fell swoop” takes half the book), ditched the unnecessary narcolepsy storyline, and the pointless stuff about the doctor which doesn’t do anything for the plot. The deeper issues might have been turned up – the trans stuff and also the aunt they all rush to visit by the end. All the stuff about Frank’s business partner having repeated breakdowns seemed both odd and tasteless too.

Maybe, part of the problem is that I don’t live in this world. I don’t even come into contact with it. If I and my friends lived the ladies who lunch life, then I’d identify with more than just the surname of the lead characters.

Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd

Phil: Some stories require the reader to suspend their disbelief to enjoy them. Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd by Jonas Jonasson asks you to put your disbelief in a bag, take it down to the bottom of the garden and bury it.

Full of mad ideas and improbable coincidences, the story doesn’t make sense if you insist on being Mr Literal when reading. You will find the idea of a Swedish Nazi art dealer abandoning his illegitimate son in the desert to be eaten by lions a touch improbable.

You’ll also be stuck when the son doesn’t get eaten by lions, instead, being brought up by a Maasai medicine man. And when the son runs back to Sweden, his adoptive dad decides to track him down. All of this while we have a couple of fake (or not) paintings and an advertising executive helping people take revenge on others.

It is mad. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In style, the book has a lot in common with the work of Tom Sharpe. Perhaps less dodgy sex (although the dealer does become known as “goat-sex man” for various reasons not involving sex with goats) and violence, but still that craziness where the rules of the real world don’t really apply. Or at least, not in the way we expect them too.

There is a lot of plot in these pages too. Most books would be happy with about half as much, but in this respect, it’s like a very filling meal which is so tasty that you can’t help eating a little more than you really should.

If you like absurd stories, then try it.

All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle

Candice: I’ve read a few Mike Gayle books over the years. I’m not sure how I originally came across him, but he hails from our local area (Birmingham) so I always like to give a Brummie some support.

Phil sent this one over a few weeks again in one of his reading parcels (the only way we have been keeping each other sane during lockdown) and I’d waited to start it as I wasn’t sure about the title, it sounded too sad.

The story follows Hubert Bird, a Jamaican who came to the UK in the 1950s looking for work. Cutting between present and past it tells the story of Hubert landing in the country and finding that the streets weren’t paved with gold, and the locals weren’t friendly to a man with black skin.

He is rescued by Joyce, a fellow worker at the department store he ends up at. She is white, and they forge on through the years facing up to the prejudice. But, it also tells the story of the present, where Hubert is now on his own, Joyce dead and the children grown up and left home. He has lost touch with the friends who emigrated at the same time as him and now spending his days pottering, and having the odd phone call with his daughter who now lives in Australia.

In walks Ashleigh, local newbie looking to make some friends, and an unlikely friendship is created between this bubbly twenty something year old single mum and the eighty year old Hubert. It brings him out of the place he has been hiding and makes him realise he is actually very lonely.

Together they create a ‘Campaign for loneliness’ in the local area which gets picked up by the national press, Hubert the reluctant star.

As with all stories this would be too cut and dried if all was as it seemed, I won’t give the twist away but it’s a good one.

With everything happening at the moment I thought this story added a different view on what has been happening to people during the pandemic, even though it wasn’t specifically about it. We’ve all got lonely, sitting at home on our zoom calls, telling stories to everyone about how great things are. We all need to go and say hi to a neighbour, reconnect with an old friend, chat to the person at the local food shop, as we are missing out on what makes us human: being sociable and interacting with others. This week, of course, some have been partaking in a pint as soon as they can but to me its not about the pub, its about the people. And I have missed the people a lot in the last year.

This is a lovely story that doesn’t challenge but is a light read where you want to know what happens to Hubert and his friends. I came to the end with a smile on my face.

Don’t be lonely, people.

Don’t fall down the research rabbit-hole

Phil: Have you ever found yourself on Wikipedia reading up on something and unable to resist clicking on a related link? At the time you tell yourself it’s relevant to the topic, but then there is another link, and another. And another.

You start reading about tractor production in post-war America and half a day later you’re learning about the proclivities of minor German aristocracy in 1830.

It’s addictive, something to do with dopamine in your brain, and the urge to procrastinate while kidding yourself that any education is good. I mean, who doesn’t need to know about flat-roofed pubs for example?

I’ve just finished the enjoyable Funny You Should Ask book by the QI Elves. It’s full of unrelated facts such as what would happen if you tried to dig through the Earth, or what causes deja-vu. If you enjoy odd snippets of information, it’s a good fun read.

The most useful fact in the book isn’t in the main text, but the introduction.

When writing for the quiz, they start with the answer and then craft a question around it. Working the other way around means endlessly researching as they fall down the rabbit-hole (named after the rabbit-hole Alice falls down in Wonderland) finding linked facts when they should be working.

I’m not sure this will help cure my procrastination, but maybe it will do something for you. In the meantime, I need to go a read up on The Auburn and Lidcome Advance. You never know when knowledge of old Australian newspapers will come in handy!

Lockdown reading

Candice: I could write about the fact its been a year and a day since Boris told us all to stay home. But there has been a lot of coverage on that so I wanted to write about something else.

I would say that I haven’t read any more or less that usual in this year of lock down. The biggest problem I have had is getting hold of books. The range in a supermarket is never quite the same as a good book shop, and then at times even getting to a supermarket to buy a book was hard.

I did try and do book sharing with the neighbours but we either didn’t like the same books or they only read on Kindle so couldn’t share.

Phil and I have done some parcels to each other, as we haven’t been able to share books face to face. But we now keep forgetting who sent what to whom!

The other day I spotted and article on the BBC website about celebrity recommendations for lock down reading. BBC Arts – Culture in Quarantine – Meet the authors: What have Big Book Weekend’s guests been reading? so I thought I’d have a look. It was part of the Big Book Weekend, last weekend and you can hear interviews with each celeb about their favourite book.

The one that interested me the most was the book that Russell Kane recommended. It’s called ‘Wild Thing’ by Mike Fairclough. Its all about rediscovering how to be a child again as an adult, taking some of the stresses and strains that make us forget to have fun.

With over a year of not knowing what we can or can’t do, not being able to book or plan ahead to far as things keep changing, and home schooling for some of us, then perhaps its time to go back and take away some of these stresses. I’ve already decided to take time over the weekend when this is over, rather than stuff it full with expensive activities. Someone just wants to run round the garden sometimes, or play on the swings, and perhaps I do to (though I’m better on the trampoline). Anyone for back garden tennis?

A great title WILL sell your book. To me anyway…

Phil: It’s my old editor’s fault. David and I are both VW campervan fans, and the conversions in our vans are by the Folkestone firm of Dormobile.

So, when he posted the cover of Tess of the Dormobiles on Facebook, I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before I read it.

The story concerns Theresa Finbow – a self-published author, and her plan to write the difficult second novel. She borrows a holiday cottage in a quiet area of Norfolk, the plan being to emulate her lead character Tess.

In Norfolk, a trip to the local pub brings her into contact with Billy, a local farmworker who has a mysterious and ominous past. Worse, his brother is the reason that Tess is on holiday without her husband.

Can Tess get her novel finished, survive contact with Billy and resolve the issues in her personal life?

Will Stebbings is a self-published author with at least five books to his credit. Tess of the Dormobiles is printed by Createspace, a print-on-demand house, and sold via eBay, which is where I bought it.

You might expect me to review this with 2 stars and tell you I’d been ripped off. And you’d be wrong.

OK, the text could do with the attentions of a copy editor. There’s too much nerdy detail in places. Both Will and Tess know Norfolk and relate some locations in a very blokeish way with road numbers. I also query what two chapters of the fictional Tess book add to anything.

But, as I read it, one word kept popping up in my head – fresh. The writing is fresh and enjoyable. The plot rolls along well and a few surprises are chucked in along the way, especially the twist at the end. It’s not the best book I’ve read, but a lot better than many efforts by names famous for things other than writing.

I’m pleased the title, which is explained in the story, sold me this book. Reading it was fun. Owning it is a bit of a laugh. Passing it on to La Nolan will be a pleasure.