A Review By Keith Smith

I fairly recently returned to some of the original James Bond novels, and only then remembered how good a writer Fleming was. They are really rather good. Taut writing, exciting plots, page turners. So, it was with interest that I turned to Jeffery Deaver’s version of Bond. Obviously Deaver is a much acclaimed thriller writer in his own right, and one might expect a novel that stands on its own. But this is so disappointing. The writing is not taunt, the plot is convoluted, and I ended up not really caring whether Bond solved the big plot, and sorted out his love life or not. Deaver tries to be better than Fleming…unfortunately he is not a patch on him. It’s quite a long book, I persevered, and wished I had not.

A Review By Keith Smith

Lady Fiona Carnarvon became the chatelaine of Highclere Castle – the setting of the hit series Downton Abbey – eight years ago. In that time she’s become fascinated by the rich history of Highclere, and by the extraordinary people who lived there over the centuries. One person particularly captured Fiona’s imagination – Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon.
Fiona’s book revolves around the lives of Almina and her immediate family, and we learn about her life and her management of the enormous house and staff, all threaded through with the major events of the day. Whether it’s loss of lives in the Great War, magnificent house parties for 500, her husband’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, her founding of various hospitals, there’s enough in here to keep us absolutely fascinated and wanting to know more. And of course it is all so much more immediate, more interesting, subtler, than anything Downton can throw at us. But that’s the way….real life is so much more exciting than a wooden soap opera….

A Review By Rev David Boulton

I am almost inordinately fond of ghost stories, but in a long career of reading them and writing them (I began reading ghost stories in earnest when I was about ten or so) I have only come across two which made me feel genuinely uneasy: The House on The Borderland, By William Hope Hodgson, and now Dark Matter by Michelle Paver.

The Observer newspaper literary critic wrote that it is a test of a good ghost story that the reader feels panic when reading it in bed at midnight. I found the story sufficiently eerie to give rise to a feeling of unease when sitting reading in my chair on a summer’s evening. The suspense, and sense of something not quite right, something uncanny, builds slowly and inexorably from the start.

Ms Paver wonderfully conjures the frozen wastes of the arctic circle, the oppressive nature of the polar night with its strangeness, its dawnless days and the utter, bewildering silence of the barren, icy wilderness. This masterly evocation of place and atmosphere contributes to the steady building of suspense until this reader’s nerves were almost at screaming point.

Jack is the obsessed narrator with a chip on his shoulder. Dark Matter is the tale of a lurking vengeful presence that tries to drive him away, from Gruhuken, where he is forced to man a weather observation station alone because of misfortunes that have befallen his fellow members of an Arctic expedition. Ms Paver records Jack’s growing terror in his own, increasingly fearful words, with compassion and empathy. She makes us believe that Jack himself really believes everything he records, but at the same time leaves open the possibility that his enforced solitude is actually driving him mad. Not since The Turn of The Screw has any writer achieved this feat so well.

Read it, I dare you.

The Rev’d David R. Boulton

Bishop’s Curate, Southern diocese, Free Church of England.

A Review By Tamsin

‘Give me your buns and your biscuits! Give me your chocolate éclairs!

For I am the Rat of the highway, and the Rat Thief never shares!’ Life is not safe for those who live alongside the highway, as the villainous Highway Rat gallops along, stealing food from the other animals. Clover from a rabbit; nuts from a squirrel – he even steals his own horse’s hay. The Highway Rat gets fatter and fatter, while the other animals struggle to find enough to eat. But he’s reckoned without one cunning little duck who to plans to teach him a lesson. Written by the authors of favorites like ‘The Gruffalo’, ‘Room on the Broom’, The Smartest Giant in Town’ and ‘Zog’, in the usual, fabulous, rollicking rhyme.

Donaldson has based the rhythm of her poem on the famous Alfred Noyes poem, ‘The Highwayman’. Another clever, fun tale by Donaldson, completed by typically witty illustrations from Axel Scheffler. As we have come to expect from this partnership, this is clearly another classic in the making. Charming. As ever.

A Review By Tamsin
From the Caldecote Medal Winning creator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonder Struck once again takes its readers into an awe-inspiring world which is rich, complex and utterly wonderful. Playing with the weaving structure he developed for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Selznick introduces us to Rose and Ben, part narration part graphic novel, children separated by 50 years, but whose worlds are strangely entwined in a truly fearful symmetry. Selznick takes that final step in uniting artwork and prose – the pictures tell the story here, rather than tag along to provide light relief on the journey.

Rose and Ben both wish their lives were different. Rose is obsessed by the life of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook, and Ben wishes to be with the father he has never known. After two apparently chance discoveries, both children set out on separate quests. The novel weaves back and forth in time as the children try to find what they are missing.