We Have Books

My Review As soon as I saw this book on a friends tbr pile I knew it was exactly my kind of read. Historical literary fiction set in a bleak and harsh alien wilderness with its attendant dangers, brings the opportunity to step back in time and slip into someone else’s shoes and I wasn’t disappointed with the time travel experience this beautifully written, wonderful, haunting novel presented. Salt Creek begins in England in the 1870s where Hetty is reminiscing about the years she spent living in the Coorong Australia with her parents and siblings. Coorong is the absolute back of beyond and Salt creek is its armpit! A harsh, bleak and very lonely place, yet it haunts her very existence. Her intractable Papa is a feckless and reckless soul who never quite manages to make a success of any venture he tries yet he is full of big ideas and will never admit defeat. So in 1955 when his life in Adelaide begins to crumble he drags his unwilling family across the plains of Australia to live in a ...

Tall Chimneys by Allie Cresswell Once in a while a book comes along whose description ticks all my boxes and Tall Chimneys is one such novel, so I was delighted to be offered the chance to take part in the blog tour organized by Rachels Random Resources Read on to read my review and an extract. Please join me by reading an enticing extract and please visit some of my fellow bloggers on this tour too. My Review Tall Chimneys is an engaging literary historical novel set in a rambling tumbledown old country house set in a remote dip in a brooding moorland setting which sets the perfect bucolic scene for this nostalgic tale with a dual time twist. With plenty of characters to dislike and the antiquity of the location it sets out to draw us into the baleful world of Tall Chimneys, a book about a house and the people who lived there. Almost as soon as I began reading this book I was reminded of The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. It has the same sombre, brooding, feel of time passing by beh...

Mussolini's Island - Sarah Day Blog Tour My review A tension filled literary historical novel with depth and a revealing look at fascism. The compelling and raw subject matter of this new work of historical literary fiction by author Sarah Day is extremely topical as we celebrate 50 years since the end to outlawing of homosexuality. However this book takes us back to the 1930s and is set in Fascist Sicily where prejudice is still rife and homosexuality enough of a crime to warrant many young gay men being rounded up and imprisoned on a small island San Domino to be kept away from mainstream Italy.  They are treated more like prisoners of war than actual criminals and have a certain amount of freedom to roam on the tiny island they all end up on, but their freedom is curtailed and resentment and anger simmers amongst these passionate and volatile young men ensuring a tense and exciting setting for this captivating debut novel. Am I cynical, or is the very last thing you'd imagin...