The House at Riverton - Kate Morton

Hello book worms

Now I am organised again I have this blogging thing off to a tee and am back in full swing - what a lot of sporting metaphors.

Great book. We all enjoyed this one.



Synopsis from Amazon
Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long-consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge; something history has forgotten but Grace never could. A thrilling mystery and a compelling love story, "The House at Riverton" will appeal to readers of Ian McEwan's "Atonement", L.P. Hartley's "The Go-Between", and lovers of the film "Gosford Park".

I have even managed to get our reviews this time..

Pippa
8/10 A good book to curl up in front of an open fire on a Sunday afternoon. A romantic read

Sarah
8/10
Lost the plot but a good read.

Kath
7/10
Love the ending but wish it had appeared earlier in the book. All the story is at the end.

We ate at The Globe in Rye. A very good meal with interesting 1940's decor. It was quite pricey but worth it I thought.




Here we are looking gorgeous as ever.



If you are a romantic and like costume dramas you would love this book.

Kate

A History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Maria Lewycka

Dear Readers

I loved the cover of this book and also the book was good. Great characters



Synopsis from Amazon
'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.' Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth. But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget...



We ate at The Langate Bistro in Rye. Another set meal which I was feeling a bit dubious about after our last one but it was good food and resonably priced.

Half a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Hello

This was my choice of book..

Another book I would recommend but a bit explicit in places so not for the faint hearted.



Synopsis from Amazon
The sweeping novel from the author of 'Purple Hibiscus', shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and winner of the Commonwealth Writers Award. This highly anticipated novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood. The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. The other is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. And the third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna's twin sister, a remote and enigmatic character. As these people's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events. This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.



We ate at The Great House in Hawkhurst which was so disappointing. It was a set menu and so small in portions that we left hungry. Good thing that Kath was unable to make this one as she would have been very annoyed. Oh and yes they tried to overcharge us yet again.

After You'd Gone - Maggie O'Farrell

Here we are again

Kath choose After You'd Gone which sounded a rather serious title but was in fact a good read.

Synopsis from Amazon
A distraught young woman boards a train at King's Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London. After You'd Gone follows Alice's mental journey through her own past, after a traffic accident has left her in a coma. A love story which is also a story of absence, and of how our choices can reverberate through the generations, it slowly draws us closer to a dark secret at the family's heart.



We ate in Tenterden at Restuarant 87 (?) which had a special offer on. Good enough food but it was very quiet so not a lot of atmosphere but then again it was a week night.

Our Farm - Rosie Boycott

Hello all those readers out there

I apologise for the long long delay in writing our Blog - I have no excuse.

This was chosen by Pippa and a lovely hardback book.

Synopsis from Amazon
What's a city girl doing in the country? After leaving the editorship of the "Daily Express" in 2001, Rosie Boycott wasn't sure what to do next. The natural step would have been to stay in London and continue her highly successful media career. But an horrific car accident which left her on crutches for eighteen months forced Rosie to rethink her life, turning her in a direction she would never previously have imagined. When an opportunity arises to rent a small farm in Somerset, Rosie and her new husband Charlie decide to take it, determined to throw themselves into a new challenge and to make the land profitable. It proves a daunting task, but it also reaps rewards that have nothing to do with money, rewards they never expected. For what follows is an immersion in rural living which is often hilarious, sometimes profoundly moving. Pigs, ducks and geese are fattened for the butcher, occasionally with lamentable results; vegetables and cut flowers are grown for a reluctant marketplace, as Rosie and Charlie discover more and more about the hard graft of running a smallholding. Gradually they, the land and the seasons being to work harmoniously together. They learn, too, about the boisterous personalities of the animals in their care, and about weightier issues that affect the local community of Ilminster - particularly the new supermarket which threatens the soul of the local town centre. As well as giving this compelling and endearing account of a new life in the country, Rosie finds recovery in the rhythms of the seasons and the complex patterns of the natural world. Throughout, she reflects deeply on our intimate relationship with nature and, ultimately, its power to heal.



I really enjoyed this book although I felt she was a bit condescending at times. I enjoyed learning about the various pitfalls and ups and downs of raising pigs and running a smallholding but felt as she did not need to do it for income it was not quite real life. I would recommend it for lovers of the country.



We ate at The George in Rye. The food was good and a very helpful waiter who showed us a pretty function room.




Not cheap but a good place to eat.