General Chat

Please review the following books;
Snowdrops and Still Missing.
After that, Cold Comfort Farm, Death in the Truffle Wood and Hons and Rebels and any that have been read.


Thread put up early to accommodate Perse and myself who are away this weekend.

Still Missing by Chevvy Stevens

Another really good read... I was not too happy with the depravity of the abduction etc... shades of Missing without a Trace or even more so Criminal Minds...where was the FBI, why weren't they profiling but then they only had the one person missing the dead that had gone before were not connected to the abductor. The fact that we started off with her weekly chats with her psychiatrist ensured that we knew she was now safe but it was a fair ways into the book before we knew that he would not be chasing her...plus wondering about the baby yet knowing his twisted mind and his terrifying way of handling the child one guessed what the outcome would be.

There are a lot of people that would do just what he did as we all probably know only too well.Then there was the neat little (?) twist at the end ... I had a list of suspects that I thought may have set this up but the person responsible did not even come close. I have recommended to my daughter.. I don't think many know about this book because normally something of that ilk; I would have had to put in a request for it.

Snowdrops by A D Miller

Reading about Russia and how there is always these additional charges reminded me of Alan Bates playing the part of Guy Burgess, and the fact that to take a bath he had to visit the woman who sat at the end of the hall for the use of the bath plug. My father-in-law took a pair of pliers with him when they traveled overseas..very handy for turning the water on when there was no tap.

The author who had worked in Russia for a period of 3-4 years certainly paints a bleak picture of the place... certainly not a "come and visit us" travel brochure. In
the story he is aware that he is being duped and we are aware of what is going on and looks like this will go on ad infinitum. His literary turn of phrase is excellent
however, I tended to get bored with it and welcomed any diversions. I did not exactly enjoy it.. interesting yes... but it became more like a text book in that I made
myself read it. I do wonder though whether Tatiana Vladimirovna did indeed become a snowdrop. It is one thing for two young girls to become involved in fraud etc but to be accessories to a murder is something else... and I think he should have found out what was going on and introduced some zip, zap and zest to the story.

Death in the Truffle Wood by Pierre Magnan

I took awhile to get going with this.. I had to go back and reread as got confused maybe something got 'lost in translation' from the French.. but once I got going I
did enjoy it and it is a good little read the descriptions are vivid.. the characters are quite amusing with their own little idiosyncrasies and they make the characters other than Robert Poste's child (who is normal) in Cold Comfort Farm seem positively normal.
I was impressed with the pig.

Still Missing
This was one of those rare books that I just couldn’t put down. What this poor girl went through at the hands of a sicko – the constant raping, assaulting, the birth and death of her baby without medical help, and to know that the baby would probably be alive but for her captor’s jealousy – all made it understandable how she was able to do what she did to make her escape. Then, to learn that her mother was initially to blame after seeing a movie! Life could never possibly be the same again.

Snowdrops
This book did nothing for me except to learn how cold it can be in Russia. It was aimed at a young man admitting to an affair which happened prior to meeting his current fiancé. I could guess at an early stage that he was being caught up in a scam, so the outcome was predictable.

Cold Comfort Farm
I saw no reason why I had to plough through many pages of the author’s biography before getting to the actual story – and when I did, I was interested at first, but felt that the young woman was very ‘pushy’. Although some improvements were made, I didn’t feel she had the right to ‘organise’ everyone as she did. It then went OTT when the old aunt not only came out of her room, but attended a wedding dressed in a pilot’s outfit and flew off to Paris. Questions which were asked throughout the story remained unanswered.

I will be nack this afternoon.
P.S. read loads of books!

Snowdrops by A D Miller

A great first sentence -'I smelled it before I saw it'- unfortunately as I was eating my tea when I read it I didn't appreciate the vivid olfactory picture it conjured!
An intriguing mystery and I loved the descriptions, (I'm still waiting to meet a person with a 'face like a perplexed potato'),and found the descriptions of Russia interesting, but yes, I agree, definitely not an enticement to visit. There was a feeling of doom as you read through the book, although I gathered he had not done anything too awful as he expected his fiancée to forgive him. I suppose I was a little disappointed when I finished the book as I felt it tailed off towards the end.

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens.

A very accomplished first time novel although you have to wonder what kind of person Chevy Stevens is to be able to describe all the ways 'The Freak' used to control Annie. I'm glad it was written retrospectively as I am not sure I could have coped with not already knowing she was OK. I did feel the reasons given by Annie's mother for having her kidnapped were rather unbelievable but it certainly made for a great twist at the end.

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford.

What an unusual extraordinary family. Lord and Lady Redesdale had six daughters and one son and all so different, none of them conformists.
This book covers Jessica’s story from a young child to early twenties. She had done more and been to more places in that short time than many of her peers would do or visit in their lives. Set in the thirties with lots of information about Mosely, Hitler, communism and The Spanish Civil war, Jessica ends up in America with her husband, ‘working’ their way around the country until the outbreak of war.
Determined not to toe the class line, although she does have her time as a reluctant debutante, Jessica and her sisters shock their parents by mixing with, in their eyes, undesirables; including their cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew.
There was a lot to read in this book which doesn’t look very big. It was a good read and an interesting one

Review Snowdrops by A D Miller

Well, I read it. I found it hard going for three quarters of the way though then it picked up speed in the last quarter of the book.
The overall story was a good one but I didn’t warm to his style of writing, i found it too wordy.
I know very little about Russia really so have no way of knowing if it is true that there was so much depravity.
And, maybe I missed the point but why was the story told through him talking to his girlfriend at home?

No I don’t think i would choose to read any more of his books, not my type of book at all.

Review.

Still Missing

I hadn't even heard of Chevy Stevens before this book came up on the list of suggestions, so would not otherwise have read the book.

Very pleased that I did read it.

Although Annie had escaped her capture from the very start, the story was still very tense.

I felt her fear, and read the story (almost) in one sitting, because I was so fearful, both for her and with her.
The book brings to life recent (True) stories of people being imprisoned by their abductors for a considerable amount of time. As well as the absolute control the "Freak" and people like him have over their victims.

Stevens portrays very well the fearfelt by Annie while she was imprisoned and after she got home. As well as her feeling of not being in control.
Along with her I felt that the matter was not yet over - something was unresolved!!

A gripping story that kept me interested and concerned all the way through.
I was waiting the the twist or the sting in the tail, but was still shocked when the truth was revealed.

I would highly recommend this book, well worth reading . . . . . unless you are of a nervous dispersition. (sp)

Review

I also read
The Rapture by Liz Jensen

(saw it on the library shelf and couldn't resist)

Just a few quick comments .. from the back of the book ---
I would agree with the comments of Kate Mosse (author, well known to GReaders) in The Times
" Part literary ecological disaster, part critque about the dangers of evangelical religion, this is a pacy, imaginative novel, full of twists and turns that deserves to be read in a sitting"


Metro
"Mind bendingly original. . . science, psychiatry, hellfire-and -damnation
religion and an over heated world on the brink of self-destruction create a convincing and compelling story.

My comment
The worst thing about this book is that it is believable!!
Don't have nightmares.
This book is a danger to housework - you won't be able to do any till you have finished reading it.


Have also read Snow Drops and two others.

Will be back when my brain is refreshed

Back again. I had to request Snow Drops from the library. There was a bit of a wait as it is demand.

I might have enjoyed this more if I'd reasd it BEFORE Still Missing.

Unlike Still Missing, I had no sympathy for the main charactor, Nick, in fact, I was rather impatient with him and didn't like him.

The nly people I "felt" for were Tatiana Vladimirovna and Nick's neighbour, who was searching for his friend.

However, it was a good story, I wkept trying to guess what had happened, but confess, that for a long time my guesses were wrong.
This was a story about lies, greed and deception (including self-decepition) I found much of it rather depressing.

If I had read Snow Drops at a different time I may have been more enamoured of it.
I probably would have been swept up by landscape as well as the story and the brooding atmosphere.
Might also have been more accepting of the method of telling the story i.e. using the awful Nick as the narrator.
It was interesting to read about modern Russia, while still referring to the reent past.
An eye opener to what like could be like in a new democratic and competitive world.

Yet another review (I told you that I had done a lot of reading!)

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.

I read this book many years ago after hearing it recommended on radio by people like Dennis Nordon.
Was very disappointed at that time. Didn't like Flora and her busybody ways at all.

On seeing it on the list of suggestions, thought that I would give it another chance.
Found out that it was written in 1932 (despite mentioning dates in the 1940's).
I also (sort of) read the Introduction by Lynne Truss. From her I found that Cold Comfort Farm was a "wicked parody of many rural novels" eg "Precious Bane by Mary Webb. There were many of these "rural novels" being written at the time.
I had to rethink my opinion and look through different eyes (Think "Airplane" the film, - "Flying High" in Australia, N.Z. and South Africa - in relation to disaster movies.)

This changes the feeling of the book completley.
The names of people and animals are really funny, some of the "country words" have been made up by Gibbons I can imagine that when it first came out people were quoting from it ... eg I saw something nasty in the woodshed. Just as my friends used to quote from Airplane.

Armed with this knowledge, I enjoyed the humour. the mocking of stereo types and the far fetched incidents that happened in and around Cold Comfort Farm.
Now perhaps I will have to read "Precious Bane".

Snowdrops by A.D.Miller.

The first thing that struck me about the book, published last year, was that there were under three hundred pages. It was short listed for the 2011 Man Booker prize.

Briefly, the story is about how Nick Platt, (no, not him from Coronation Street!) an English Lawyer, was picked up by two girls Masha and Katya. They were a couple of con-artists who fleeced him for a lot of money and they also conned an old lady out of her apartment.

I liked the descriptions of Moscow and the book describes very vividly what life is like in the Russian Capital. It isn’t a place I would want to visit during the harsh winter season.

Apart from being a flower, the word ‘Snowdrop’ is Moscow slang for a corpse that lies buried in the snow and is only found when the thaw happens.

A cheerful thought to end this short synopsis.