Life must be filled up

In her new book, out in February, Katie Fforde moves away from cosy British villages to France in the 1960s. Arabella, Annabelle, Artemis - no, her name is Alexandra, is a twenty-year-old orphan who has been left to the mercy of rather vaguely described ‘relations’. Their idea of bringing her up was to send her to boarding school and provide her with a series of governesses or companions. She is living happily in the family home in Belgravia (!) with two girlfriends, while upstairs are David and a couple of his friends. When ‘my relations’ discover that she is apparently sharing the house with a man (gay and lovely), they decide to pack her off to a finishing school in Switzerland. Isn’t she rather old for that? En route, she stops off in Paris, meets a young married woman with whom she strikes up an immediate friendship and in no time is applying for a job with a friend of the friend. What she doesn’t know is that the job is in Provence and her employer a French Comte.

Arriving at the château, she finds three hostile children who say they don’t need a nanny, a vanished housekeeper and nothing to eat but stale bread and cheese. Is she downhearted? Of course not. In no time she has won over the children and is preparing meals. Finding that they don’t go to school and that the youngest can’t even read, she sends for David to tutor them in English and his friend Jack to teach music and maths. David is a wonderful cook and they soon form a happy little household. (These people who love to cook enormous meals for large numbers of people always seem to me the most fantastic element in romantic fantasy. I suppose they do exist.) Papa is often away (and hasn’t he been rather seriously neglecting his children?) but when he arrives, oh dear. Alexandra falls madly in love with him and spends the rest of the book arguing with herself that he’s her employer, he’s too old for her, he has a terrible ex-wife and so on. Did I mention that Alexandra is beautiful and also an heiress? ‘My relations’ pay a flying visit in a Rolls to check up on just what she’s doing and inform the Comte that Alexandra doesn’t come into her fortune until she’s twenty-five, just in case he should be a fortune hunter.

Of course, one gobbles up all the French atmosphere, the château, the delightful characters and the one to hate but the ending is obvious from the moment Alexandra is offered the job in Paris. I can’t understand why the book was set in the sixties; it’s not as if anyone meets Mick Jagger in the local market. Apart from the clothes, I can’t see anything sixties about the way of life. It is, nevertheless, great fun. I read it thanks to NetGalley.
( Trisha Ashley )

Katie Fforde is always a reliable light read. I was of course attracted to a book which has so much in it about gardening. Philly is a young woman who lives with her charming grandfather and runs a small nursery. Her best customer is Lorna, an older woman who is restoring the garden of a big house. The house belongs to Peter, whom she’s known forever and has a tendresse for but he’s taken up with an extremely managing younger woman whom he met on the internet. Peter’s mother Anthea is one of those formidably energetic seventy-somethings we’d all like to be one day. Two more characters then enter the scene: Jack, a sculptor and Lucien, a handsome young man who has broken with his grand family in order to follow his dreams and become a chef.

The garden restoration is perhaps too quickly and easily achieved but this is fiction and at least Katie Fforde bothers to put in some plant names. The ‘Secret Garden’ of the title is found at the bottom of Anthea’s garden: it has a wall and a door covered in brambles and everything! No need of a robin to show the way. This is also transformed remarkably quickly into a magical place.

There are three sets of lovers in this book and it’s nice that two of them are older couples. Lorna’s doubts and fears about starting a new relationship in her fifties are very convincingly described. I found the book a little thin but enjoyed it very much while I was actually reading it. Gardens and happy endings: what’s not to like?
( The Second Bride )

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
More about John & Mary, Grace James
Bertie Plays the Blues, Alexander McCall Smith
The Enchanted April , Elizabeth von Armin
A Perfect Proposal, Katie Fforde
Penelope Goes to Portsmouth, M C Beaton
Isa and May, Margaret Forster
A View of the Harbour, Elizabeth Taylor
Wait for Me!, Deborah Devonshire
London Under , Peter Ackroyd
The Adventures of John & Mary, Grace James
Kisses on a Postcard, Terence Frisby
The Matchmaker , Stella Gibbons
John & Mary Detectives, Grace James
How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran
Still reading: Murder at Mansfield Park, Lynn Shepherd
( thoughts )

No, not Shakespeare: Trisha Ashley.



I picked this up at the library, knowing nothing about it, because it’s yet another book about an old house. Sophy Winter has spent years working for other people in historic houses when she inherits one of her own. There’s a classic chick lit set up when she gets there: attractive but horrible man and man she takes a dislike to but the reader knows is right for her. I liked all the detail in this book about the house, the furnishings and how they are restored plus a lot of information about reconstructing an historic garden.

This book is recommended for people who like Katie Fforde. I've enjoyed several of KF's books but her crown may be slipping. A Winter's Tale is much better than Stately Pursuits because of all the detail I've mentioned. This may be chick lit but it's very intelligently written (that's not meant to be as patronising as it sounds). I liked the way that all the elements are there for gothic horror; a ghost, a challenge to the inheritance, rivals in love but Sophy's common sense prevails in the manner of Georgette Heyer's stronger-minded heroines.

I should write in very small letters that I much preferred it to The Little Stranger; I'm going right off literary fiction in favour of the well written, unpretentiously enjoyable. Having said that, I've just picked up my library-ordered copy of this



I'm the very first person to read it! We'll see how I get on with 650 (gulp) pages. I was pleased to spot another Dandy Gilver Murder Mystery while I was there. Less pleased that it was on one of those awful carousels instead of in the crime fiction section where I'd been looking for it. And Howards End is on the Landing is not in their system yet but I'll be first when it is. Ha ha!

I was going to post today about Mary Portas and her doomed attempt to turn around a failing charity shop but thelondonpauper has said it all brilliantly already. So, having misled you twice...



What do you read in a heat wave? (No sign of it ending today here in Dorset.)
There’s something about the rare summer weather we get that makes people indulge in a Country Living English dream: a garden full of blowsy roses, meals outside (don’t say patio), Pimms, strawberries, just-picked salad leaves, cucumber sandwiches; a sort of Emma Bridgewater/Cath Kidston-fest of chunky china on flowery cloths. Katie Fforde fits the bill here. I’m currently reading Practically Perfect but it’s nothing like as good as Wild Designs, which has an older heroine, a lovely house, gardening and even the Chelsea Flower Show. Raffaella Barker’s story of upper middle class life in rural Norfolk, Summertime, could be photographed to fill an issue of Period Living. For the real thing rather than aspiration, Angela Thirkell is a good choice: try Wild Strawberries, Summer Half or Before Lunch. And you can never go wrong with a P G Wodehouse like Stormy Heavy Weather.

I don’t seem to have finished many books this month. Hermione Lee’s Virginia Woolf is an ongoing read and very good it is, too. As part of that read I’ve dipped again into Mrs Dalloway (goodness, those first pages are a wonderful piece of writing) and A Room of One’s Own.
( more books )