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The Raven's Book Bunker, Brighton (2025)

08/11/2025

This is a charming tale, presumably based on the author's own experience of being 're-educated' in 1970s Communist China. 'Re-education' was a process whereby the children of disgraced intellectuals or 'bourgeois' Western-leaning parents were sent as teenagers into rural peasant communities to work, and learn the value of manual labour.
The unnamed narrator, a music lover and son of two liberal doctors, and his friend Luo, son of a dentist who had the effrontery to boast of his work on the teeth of Chairman Mao, are both in their late teens and are sent to a backward mountain village where the inhabitants have never even seen a violin, let alone heard any Western music. They are put to work in the fields by the head man, and gradually win the favour of their hosts by re-enacting films they have seen for the entertainment of the villagers. This allows them the odd day off, which they use either to visit the cinema in the nearest town or to visit their friend 'Four Eyes', stationed at a neighbouring village.
One day they discover that 'Four Eyes' has a stash of Western books hidden away in an old suitcase, given to him by his mother, a former writer and poet. These are books translated from the French, by authors such as Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, etc. 'Four Eyes' is reluctantly persuaded to lend them one, which they first devour themselves and then share with their new friend the 'Little Seamstress' - daughter of the local tailor, to whom both boys have taken a fancy.
'Little Seamstress' dreams of leaving her rural mountain and living a sophisticated city life, and as a romance develops between her and Luo, the narrator resigns himself to the role of chivalrous protector and reader of forbidden Western stories to the girl he secretly loves.
But in bringing Western literature into the life of a simple 'mountain girl', they have opened a Pandora's Box that could put them all in danger from the authorities, and scupper the boys' chances of ever returning to their families, and to civilisation.
It's beautifully written (and translated), and I learned much that I never knew about the horrors endured by young people growing up under Chairman Mao's iron grip. There's no happy ending, but we're led to assume that our heroes lived to tell the tale and hopefully enjoy happier times!

06/11/2025

What an amazing book! The eponymous 'Helm' is the only named wind in Britain - the 'Helm Wind' which blows down the slopes of Cross Fell in Cumbria into Eden Vale, and which in Sarah Hall's narrative takes on a persona of its own. Older than humanity, older even than the dinosaurs, the wind with its visible presence - a heavy bank of cloud resting on Cross Fell - observes the evolution firstly of the geography of Eden Vale and then of its animal and human inhabitants, and is in turn observed, experienced, worshipped, explained and investigated by a series of individuals: a female Neolithic shaman, matriarch of her tribe; a Papal exorcist operating during the Crusades; a Goddess-worshipping herbalist imprisoned in her room by a Christian husband; a Victorian meteorologist; a young girl incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for her wild behaviour; a storm-chasing aviator; and a present-day scientist exploring the effects of human pollution on the Earth's atmosphere.
It's an exhilarating, instructive and sobering read, beautifully and eloquently written, with Helm left wondering, along with the reader, whether the end is indeed nigh for life on this planet, at least in its present form ...

30/10/2025

A sad, tender and utterly believable story about three sisters - Esme, Phoebe and Bea - told in two parts, from the points of view of Esme and Bea and their parents, Tom and Linda. The reason for the absence of a narrative from Phoebe is that Part One opens in the aftermath of her death, aged three, when Esme is seven and Phoebe still in Linda's womb. Phoebe's death devastates the family unit, and by the ending of Part One it is irretrievably changed and broken.
But Part Two opens with Bea, now in her twenties, discovering that she is pregnant, and determined before she becomes a mother herself to find out more about the mother she doesn't remember, the sister who died before she was born, and the reason why her father and older sister have never told her the exact circumstances of Phoebe's death or shared memories of her while Bea was growing up.
It's a very feminine book (though Tom's narrative is perfectly credible), concentrating on the conflicting emotions surrounding motherhood, sisterhood, sibling rivalry and family guilt. And there's light at the end of the tunnel with a redemptive ending. A very emotional read.

27/10/2025

I first read this book back in the 1980s, on the cusp of deserting the Catholic Church for Neo-Paganism, and found it very exciting and inspiring! This edition, with a new preface from 1987, was a joy to read again and doesn't disappoint. It does help if you're familiar with the doctrines and history of the Catholic Church, but it's written in a very accessible way, so even the scholarly bits aren't daunting.
Ashe starts off, after giving us an overview of Marian worship, by laying out what we know, or can claim to know, about the historical Mary. 'If Christ himself existed, Christ's mother did' - and since the existence of the historical Jesus of Nazareth is attested by contemporary sources outside the Gospels (and outside of Christianity), this is the logical and only starting point. He takes us through every mention of Mary in all four of the Gospels, and puts together a possible sequence of events in her life, and in her relationship to her Son. So far, so logical (and acceptable to Protestants as well as Catholics).
But then, as the Church grew and evolved, as Christian doctrine and beliefs were laid down and began to coalesce, as Jesus Christ was established as a unique figure, both wholly human and wholly Divine, attitudes towards his Mother were bound to evolve also.
Ashe's argument is that Christianity with its all-male Trinity failed to fill the 'Goddess-shaped hole' in humanity's perception of the Divine; and the contortions required of the later Church to assign to the Blessed Virgin Mary so many of the attributes of Goddesses such as Isis, Athene, Neith, Asherah, Cybele and many other Mother and Virgin aspects of the female Divine, whilst still insisting that she was subordinate to her Son and was not to be worshipped, are laid out in meticulous and sometimes amusing detail.
Ashe goes so far as to claim that Marian devotion, and the elevation of the Virgin Mary to almost the status of Co-Redeemer, actually saved the Church from an early death during the 4th and 5th centuries CE, at a time when Paganism still held sway in the hearts of the people and in-fighting between Eastern and Western factions threatened to implode the new religion. To many Catholics, Mary is secretly dearer than Christ himself because as a female, as a Mother, and as a human she is more accessible; and with the re-emergence of the worship of the Goddess today, the parallels with the Divine Mother whom the human soul is hard-wired to long for are all the more obvious.
If nothing else, this is a thoroughly thought-provoking read for Christians and non-Christians alike.

19/10/2025

Well, if anyone had told me that I'd be transfixed by a novel set in a 1970s American summer camp, I'd have laughed at the idea as it's so not me. But 'The God of the Woods' is so brilliantly written and skilfully crafted that it had me hooked right to the (suitably satisfactory) end.
The summer camp in question is owned by the wealthy Van Laar family, a thoroughly unpleasant lot -at least the men are - and run by a family in their employ, the Hewitts. When Barbara Van Laar, rebellious teenager and problem wild child, insists on spending her summer at the camp instead of up the hill with her family, her parents are glad to have her out of the way for a while - until she disappears without trace, something which happened to her brother Bear fourteen years ago, before Barbara was even born.
The story is told in parallel narratives from various different characters, a device that can sometimes be confusing but here is done so skilfully, switching narrators at various cliffhanger points and jumping back and forth between the present and the past, that it all adds to the tension and intrigue of the story. For example, we hear from Bear and Barbara's depressed and despised mother, Alice, from Tracey, a lonely girl she befriends at the camp, from Louise, one of the camp counsellors, and from Judyta, the female investigator (one of the first in the country!) assigned to her case. The lone male perspective comes from the employee and volunteer fire officer who comes to be suspected of Bear's murder, Carl Stoddard. All of the narrators are victims, in one way or the other, of the arrogance, narcissism and snobbery of the odious Van Laar men and their wealthy associates (who by the way are not aristocrats, but successful bankers).
As present and past collide, and the search for Barbara gathers pace, we gradually learn the truth of what happened to Bear and who is responsible - but only one narrator gets to find out where Barbara is. A brilliant read from beginning to end!

15/10/2025

This one has so many plot twists it's left me feeling quite dizzy! It all centres on three neighbours, Margot, Anna and Liv, who each have secrets to hide. The narrative starts off as dramatically as it proceeds, with Margot, bound and gagged and stuffed into the November 5th bonfire; then flashes back to the preceding December, when new neighbour Liv first arrives on the scene. Margot is a former girl-band member and disgraced Strictly contestant, married to her former dance partner and stepmother to his children; Liv is the mother of two young children and in the process of setting herself up as a wellness practitioner, with money she and handsome husband Grant have earned via some dodgy extracurricular activities. Both are ambitious, well-groomed and apparently wealthy, whereas Anna, who rents her property along with her scruffy alcoholic partner Drew, is neither, and appears at first to be the hanger-on and peacemaker of the trio.
But there's more than meets the eye to every one of these characters, and by the time we catch up with Bonfire Night we've been spun more yarns and fed more red herrings than you can shake a stick at - only to discover that we're only about three quarters of the way through the book and that there are more revelations to come!
I could actually have done with a few less twists, as it becomes a bit confusing towards the end, but it is all neatly tied up in the denouement, and it certainly kept me on the edge of my seat throughout! If you like your psychological thrillers fast-paced and twisty, this one's for you!

27/09/2025

Ah, you can't go wrong with Alan Bennett! I laugh out loud every time ... even when the subject matter is the ravages inflicted by Covid on an old people's home.
There are the usual Bennet suspects such as the flasher the 'foot feller' and the closet queen, joined by a randy window cleaner, a wannabe archaeologist, a compulsive knitter and an alumna of Bletchley Park who wonders whether she's still bound by the Official Secrets Act.
When the bossy and pretentious proprietor of Hill Topp House, Mrs McBryde, is hospitalised with the virus along with the lead carer, the residents, far from being further restricted, are temporarily free to get up to all sorts of mischief - there's sex in the bicycle shed (yes, really), a roaring bonfire, the recycling of designer gowns to make fancy masks, reminiscences of an affair with Molotov ('Oh, like the cocktail...') and, inevitably a few deaths - but the Hill Topp residents certainly know how to make an exit! I loved it!

26/09/2025

It took me a while to get into this, and at first I thought I might have read it before, but that's because it's so similar to Claire McGowan's 'What You Did', which also deals with the reunion of a group of University housemates who were witnesses in the case of a friend's murder.
This, however, is different in that old gang are called together by a True Crimes podcast that specialises in showcasing wrongful convictions. In a rather unbelievable scenario, they all consent to return to their old college accommodation to try and prove that none of them is the real murderer of former housemate Daisy, whose tutor committed suicide after spending years in prison for the crime.
It's bit ploddy, especially the bits where they're forced to listen to excruciating voice notes sent at regular intervals by the podcasters saying stuff like 'And now, to sum up what we already know about you all ...' but I did get more involved towards the end, especially as I wanted to know whether I'd correctly guessed the killer (I had). So enjoyable enough, but not the sort of gripping read I prefer in a psychological thriller.

23/09/2025

A fast-paced read with plenty of red herrings, 'The New Neighbours' is presented from several different characters' perspectives, but mostly from that of newly-separated, forty-something Lena, whose teenage son is dividing his time between her mother's house and his father's flat. When middle-aged couple Henry and Marielle move in next door, Lena initially welcomes the chance to make some new friends. But curiosity about the new neighbours quickly turns to suspicion when she overhears them discussing a nefarious plan, the details of which remain obscure. Gaining admission to their house with the old neighbour's key, she finds a series of press cuttings that seem to relate to her own past, and in particular to two of the colleagues she encountered during her days as a student midwife.
I didn't find the ending sufficiently convincing, after such an extensive build-up, it all seemed too hastily tidied up for my liking and I was looking for a final twist that didn't come. But still an enjoyable and immersive read.

The Raven's Book Bunker

08/11/2025

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30/10/2025

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