The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah

In Oregon, USA, in 1995 an old lady, terminally ill, is found scrabbling in her attic by her son. She has an open trunk of memorabilia among which is a French identity card from the Second World War in the name of Juliette Gervaise. Her son asks, who is she?

Rewind to France, 1939, in Carriveau, somewhere in the Loire Valley, where Vianne Mauriac lives. After a difficult adolescence – her mother died when Vianne was 14, her father returned from the First World War an emotional wreck, and her ten-years-younger sister, Isabelle, is a tearaway – she has found happiness with husband Antoine and eight-year-old daughter, Sophie. Of course it cannot last much longer, it is 1939 and Antoine is called up to defend France from the Nazis.

As for Isabelle, now a teenager, she has just been expelled from her latest school and is determined to live in Paris with her father. No chance. As ever, he rejects her and packs her off to her sister in Carriveau.

So much for the set-up; Vianne (26), Isabelle (16), and Sophie (8) become the household at Carriveau at the start  of the war. What follows - invasion, occupation, rationing, privation, persecution of Jews and other undesirables, billeting of German officers, resistance, reprisals, death, destruction, bravery, betrayal, torture, executions, and eventually liberation – forms the guts of the next 400 pages.

Told mainly from the point of view of the two sisters, it provides a rare female perspective on the wartime experience. And as the sisters have polar opposite personalities, it highlights the dilemma for the occupied population – grudgingly collaborate and survive, or resist at the risk death, and not merely your own.

The prose flows well enough and the narrative never stalls, but somehow I never felt immersed, it was always a story I was reading rather than living. Maybe a female reader would empathise more with the sisters’ plight.

Nevertheless, a book worth the reading.

In the Heart of the Sea – Nathaniel Philbrick

This is the true story of the Essex, a whaler out of Nantucket, and its crew of 21, which set sail in August 1819. By this time, the sperm whale population of the adjacent Atlantic had been pretty much wiped out so, for the rich pickings demanded by the ship owners, a long voyage to the Pacific via Cape Horn is needed.

There are mishaps along the way but nothing they can’t cope with, and by the spring of 1820 they are hunting off the coast of Chile. But there is word of better catches north and west, beyond the Galapagos Islands. They reach their destination in the autumn and soon commence work – routinely deploying three whaleboats each manned by six men, leaving three to mind the Essex.

On 20 November a feisty whale bites a chunk out of one whaleboat, forcing it back to the Essex. Back on board, they just have time to fix the damaged boat before they sight a huge whale heading straight for them. Unbelievably, it rams the Essex and water pours in. The men take to the mended whaleboat, and the other two boats abandon their slaughter and race back to the mother ship to join in frantic efforts to salvage food, water, navigational equipment, canvas wood and nails before the ship sinks below the water.

This leaves the men in three small boats thousands of miles from land at the mercy of unhelpful winds and currents which push them south and west further into the vast ocean. The privations they suffer and how they fare is related in grim detail. Some survive to tell the tale, and it is these first-hand accounts that Philbrick picks through to create a gripping narrative interspersed with personal details of the crew and contextual background on Nantucket and the whaling industry.

It is an approach that works well, ensuring the narrative does not become too wearing and the history is delivered in small chunks, providing the reader some respite while the men linger on, day by long day.

It was the sinking of the Essex that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick, but here there is no thought of revenge for Captain Pollard, just a question of survival for himself and as many of his crew as possible.

The Black Loch – Peter May

Fin Macleod, who featured as the detective in May’s earlier Isle of Lewis trilogy, is no longer in the force, nor on the island. He is in Glasgow working for the police in a civilian role monitoring the seedier aspects of cyber-crime. It is unrewarding and is putting a strain on his marriage to Marsaili. So when one night he returns home to hear that his son, Fionnlagh, has been arrested back on Lewis for the murder of a teenaged girl, it is an easy decision to leave it all behind and head for The Isles.

He and Marsaili get the first plane to Stornoway, and Fin wastes no time in using his old contacts to establish the bones of the crime and gain access to Fionnlegh in custody. The circumstantials look bad, the forensics are likely to come back damning, and the lad himself (though at thirty hardly a lad) is uncommunicative and seemingly guilt-ridden.

Fin has no authority but that does not stop him investigating the crime. As he does, connections to his youth arise and memories of past events (some related in the earlier  Blackhouse novel, some fresh) intrude and might even have links to the girl’s murder.

It’s all good – trademark atmospheric descriptions of the Hebridean landscape and weather, gritty realism of island life, and a plot that thickens like a good stew. Fin’s parental instinct to protect his son battles with his ingrained police approach to follow the evidence. To add to the mix, Fin and Marsaili have to confront their own relationship as both stumble over old flames from their youth.

A good read. Links back to The Blackhouse are frequent and a re-read, or pre-read, would do no harm. Or just read it (it’s very good) afterwards.

The Missing Husband – Amanda Brooke

 Jo Taylor’s husband, David, fails to return to his suburban Liverpool home following a works training session at Leeds. He has messaged to say he is on the train, then – nothing, and his phone is off. A worry for Jo of course, but then they had parted that morning with cross words, she refusing to drive him to Lime Street, making him leave early for a connecting commuter train. Is he making a point? She goes to bed.

Next morning, still no sign and he does not arrive at work (they both work for Nelson Engineering where they met ten years back). Police are contacted, and friends and family gather to give mutual support. Appeals are made, CCTV is pored over, no body turns up; it all points to David just disappearing. For no reason.

Except, Jo knows, there may be a reason. After ten years of living the DINKY life (dual income no kids yet) of exotic holidays and globetrotting adrenalin trips, Jo wants a baby. David doesn’t, yet. Jo makes the pre-emptive move of coming off the pill, and the result forces the issue. How pissed off is David? A bit, but enough to abandon his wife and unborn child?

Evidence trickles through: a history of cash withdrawals, a scribbled note in a trouser pocket, the cryptic words in the last text message. Then fresh, post-disappearance, ATM visits. It all points less to a missing person and more to him doing a runner.

A huge chunk of the book deals with Jo’s state of mind, understandably fragile in her circumstances, which deteriorates through and beyond pregnancy. A state of mind that may only improve once she gets closure on the disappearance of her husband. Will she get it?

And that is the hook that keeps the reader going through the (for me repetitive) days and weeks and months of Jo’s self-questioning, second-guessing, trials and tribulations. All very mental health aware, but as wearing on the reader as on Jo.

A reading group choice, otherwise I may not have stuck it out to the end, when thankfully and despite my worse fears, a resolution occurs.

Oxygen – Andrew Miller

Alice valentine is dying, but not before a last birthday is due, and under the circumstances she wants her family around for the occasion. That means sons Larry and Alec. No problem for Alec, he is single, works as a freelance translator, and has already moved into the West Country family home to support his mother. For Larry, ex tennis star and latterly soap actor, it means a return from the US where he lives uneasily with second wife, Kirsty, and kleptomaniac six-year-old daughter, Ella.

Meanwhile in Paris, playwright Laszlo Lazar, Hungarian exile since the 1956 uprising, is hosting a small dinner party. Guests are his live-in secretary Kurt Engelbrecht, an artistic American couple, and a fellow eastern European émigré.

The two narratives move forward - the Valentines’ painful reunion and Laszlo’s party and aftermath. The connection between the two is tenuous – Alec Valentine’s latest commission is to translate Lazar’s new play ‘Oxygene’. But (no spoiler, there is nothing to spoil) the expected collision of the two strands never happens. What commonality there is concerns the emotional states of the key characters. Loss of purpose, regret for past action (or inaction), timidity to grasp opportunity, to name but a few.

Lives are laid bare by Miller’s precise nuance-filled prose, so that by the end the reader knows these people well; and as each is challenged afresh, has a good idea how they will respond this time.

A quietly intense piece of writing that draws you in and keeps you interested to the end.

Review of 2025 Reading Year

Another productive year with 39 books read, including four non-fiction. The male to female author ratio was 24:15 and the same ratio applied to previously read against new to me writers. The eleven reading group selections included three I did not fancy, but the other eight helped the ratios with majority female and new to me authors; also, two make it onto the highlights reel. It was a good year for the Book-et List - four ticked off leaving six outstanding.

 

My nine best books of the year are: (Month of full review in brackets.)

 

Phosphate Rocks – Fiona Erskine: Interestingly constructed mix of science, memoir, and whodunnit set in the chemical industry. (Feb)

 

Should We Stay or Should We Go – Lionel Shriver: Darkly playful exploration of late life choices. (Apr)

 

Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell: Moving re-imagination of how the loss of the playwright’s son affected the man himself and his family. (Apr)

 

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr: Masterful twin track tale of two young people caught up on opposite sides of the German occupation of France in the Second World War. (Jun)

 

The Bee Sting – Paul Murray: Set in Ireland, the disintegration of a family, comic and tragic by turns, is told from the wildly different perspectives of Dad, Mum, Daughter, and Son. (Jul)

 

Bridge of Clay – Markus Zusak: Another tragi-comic family saga, this one set in Australia where five brothers make their rough and ready way following the loss of both parents. (Aug)

 

The Muse – Jessie Burton: Two timelines – 1960s swinging London and 1930s revolutionary Spain – become improbably but cleverly linked as mysteries unfold. (Sep)

The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne: Cleverly constructed story of a life in seven decade-skipping episodes - each told with wit, humour, and wisdom – and together providing satirical comment on the last seventy years of Irish society. (Oct)

 

You Are Here – David Nicholls: No longer boy meets no longer girl on a hike. Will opposites attract or will ingrained habits get in the way? Funny and moving by turns. (Dec)