Book Review: Undertow by Elizabeth Heathcote

This review is based on the audiobook of Undertow by Elizabeth Heathcote which I mainly listened to on my commute to London. I actually opened a 'notes' page on my iPhone fairly early on so I could remember all the points I wanted to make in my review, because... ehem... I knew I'd have lots to say.

The plot is centered around Carmen and her marriage to Tom, who has a rather 'colourful' history with women. His first marriage with Laura spawned three children, but then his affair with Zena, a headstrong, independent woman brought this to an end. But his relationship with Zena was cut short after she went swimming in the sea at St Jude's beach and drowned. 

Carmen is vaguely aware of Tom's history, but until a chance comment from a stranger at the train station, she had just put it all to the back of her mind. That was his past, and she didn't really want to know. Until now. 

The story is set in motion after Carmen is given reason to believe that there is some question over the cause of Zena's death and she decides to launch her own investigation into the truth. (This is a no-spoilers review so I will stop there!)

First things first, I've read a few books recently with the same kind of 'wife not trusting husband' theme, for example Before We Met by Lucie Waterhouse. I have very mixed feelings about the 'genre' because although there's a kind of 'thriller' element which can be quite addictive, the feminist in me rolls my eyes because the men seem to be always portrayed as the ones with the high-powered jobs, strong and holding the power in the relationship. This may be co-incidental but in both books (Undertow and Before We Met), the women are struggling work-wise, while their husbands are making it, and seemingly because of all the extra time on their hands, the wives' entire lives are taken over by worry and anxiety about their husbands! 

Deeper than that though, there were some really worrying situations which played out in Undertow which made me really uncomfortable. At a wedding of a friend of Tom's, he has too much to drink and becomes jealous when a male guest is talking with Carmen. He embarrasses her by getting angry in front of  the guests and then storms off to bed, locking himself in (and Carmen out) their bedroom suite. With help from the other guests, Tom is woken to let Carmen in and is a foul drunken mess. Livid, Carmen tosses and turns all night, but Tom wakes up with sexual urges, telling her to pretend she doesn't want it (creepy?). WHY at this point does she go along with it? He is a repugnant, domineering man, who has a known history of beating up men through jealousy. I'd like to think I'd be bloody hacked off at being embarrassed in front of everybody and the prospect of some casual 3am sex after all that would be unthinkable but Carmen doesn't stand up for herself. 

Nearer the end of the book, when they have a huge fight and Tom has been ignoring all Carmen's pleas for forgiveness, Tom appears in Carmen's bedroom. It's pitch black and she has no idea who is. It could be some kind of murderer for all she knows, and she is motionless with fear. Oh joy, it's a silent and creepy-as-hell Tom, who after an exchange of words then pushes himself on her, and rapes her. But it's okay because Carmen understands that he just "needs to make love". The thing is, this is never discussed or dealt with again. In fact in the days that follow, she asks herself 'why am I crying for no reason'. YOU WERE RAPED?!! Not once does she seem to realise this. 

You might be able to tell, but I found Carmen quite annoying. In the dialogue between her and the other characters she kept repeating their words in a questioning tone, for example, in one discussion with Tom:

Tom: 'It was the kids'

Carmen: 'It was the kids!?'

Tom: 'Jake and Mel'

Carmen: 'Jake and Mel?'

Tom: 'Laura picked them up'

Carmen: 'Laura picked them up!?'

I just found this quite tedious an unimaginative!

Another thing that grated on me was the rather annoying cliché portrayal of the division between classes, Tom having gone to Oxford and Carmen 'never considering "that life"'. Carmen describes Tom's middle-class lot as 'dishonest' and she says they 'expect everything', which is a tedious stereotype! 

Despite my gripes with this, I found that it had a few unexpected twists and turns along the way (though the overall plot was quite predicatable). I think I would have struggled with this one in book format because the annoying protagonist would have frustrated me, but my interest was kept up by the thriller element and I listened to it in just over a week. 

I'm going to give this one 2.5/5. An intriguing but quite 'over done' storyline, with some aggravating elements means I just can't give a 3!  

#IBW2016 Tag

I'll be honest, 2016 hasn't been a good year so far for reading. However, having just watched some of the Independent Bookshop Week Tag videos though (including the original, here, by Vintage Books), I feel very inspired by lots of new titles. I thought I would have a go myself because who doesn't love a good tag.

IBW 2016 is happening from 18th-25th June, so get involved and do the tag if you wish!

1. What book(s) are currently in your bag?

Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse has been my bag now for longer than I care to admit. I've just got the part where the main character, Hannah finds a thread of possible truth about her husband which might explain why he didn't return home from his business trip to New York. This was my 'post-interview' book a few months back, and it even featured when one of the interviewees asked me what I was currently reading. Despite all this, I'm still only about half way through it. As I said... not a good book year. 

2. What’s the last great book you read?

As already stated a few times in this blogpost (if this were a CV or a cover letter, it would have been thrown in the dustbin by now for careless repetition), I haven't been reading much in 2016, so I just found my 'Notes' App on my iPhone where I have listed all the books I read in 2015. There were some corkers, but it's a toss up between Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (because it's impossible to deny that it isn't a great book) and The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Therialt. 

 


3. What book have you gifted the most?

As Will from the original Vintage Books video said, I don't think there's one book that I tend to give as a gift. It very much differs from person to person. In my family we tend to put book wishlist on Amazon so that we get the ones that we're really after, so it really depends. Saying that, I've had some great ones bought for me which weren't on there. (Side note: I still haven't quite gotten used to this whole 'using the word 'gifted' as a verb' thing!). 

4. What’s your favourite independent bookshop?

I'm going to cheat and pick two...

The first is the Minster Gate Bookshop in York. It's all about the setting for me; picture an old creaky building living in the shadow of York Minster with stairs that somehow keep producing rooms upon rooms of books. This bookshop is a wonderful escape from the busy streets of York. They sell new and old books on everything and even prints, pictures and old maps. 

The second is Shakespeare and Company in Paris. I first visited here on a school art trip to Paris years ago and fell a little bit in love. Every square inch of this place has a book crammed into it, I'd never seen anything quite like it! It feels like a little, intimate den of possibilities. With a piano on the second floor, the occasional Parisian (or tourist) will play to you while you float through the shop with delight. When I saw this shop in the film Before Sunset, I was so excited! Ask for any books that you buy to be stamped whilst you're at the till. It's just what you have to do! 

Shakespeare and Company featured in Before Sunset

Yep, I got mine stamped!

5. What’s been your favourite book recommended by a bookseller (or fellow Booktuber)?

I had to think about this one for a minute, but I think my favourite book recommended by a Booktuber was Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman, recommended by Just Kiss My Frog. The way Leena talks so passionately about all the books she's read just makes me want to rush out and buy every single one. I have chosen this one because for me, it was a gateway drug to everything else Caitlin Moran ever wrote. Upon finishing this book I went into a sort of mad frenzy. I was addicted; watching every interview on YouTube, reading every column in The Times and buying everything she had previously and subsequently written. Thanks Leena, thanks Caitlin Moran, I can now say with confidence that I am a feminist!

6. What’s your favourite bookshop memory?

Meeting the YA Book Prize winners in 2015 at Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross. This was one of the events I attended when I worked in publicity, and I was so lucky to spend the evening with some wonderful and insightful authors including Louise O'Neill and Sally Green! I met some fabulous people that evening, some of whom I am still in touch with now. I even wrote a blog post about it, which is available here. 

YA Bookprize Shortlistees

7. What do bookshops mean to you? What do you love about them?

Bookshops are a place for wonder and discovery. I love meandering around the tables at the front of Waterstones, looking at all the books that I've caught discussions on or seen in the Bookseller list. This excitement was heightened when I used to work in publicity and a number of them were ones I was working on! I love gazing in awe at the beautiful cloth-bound Penguin Classics. I love letting my eyes be drawn in by interesting covers (everyone knows that books really are judged by their cover, at least initially!). I love the feeling that you might find something that can speak to you in a way that nothing ever has before.  

8. What are the books that made you? Which books have most affected or influenced you?

I know I just talked about this one but I've been thinking long and hard and I have to choose How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran. She has single-handedly identified everything that is unfair/unequal/annoying about being a woman today and even laid it out very kindly in handy chapters! 

9. What book do you recommend readers gift for Father’s Day?

If I knew the answer to this, I'd be a very happy lady!

10. What book is currently at the top of your TBR pile?

Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin. 

Blogger Tag (Interrogation)

Good afternoon,

I just had an urge to do another totally pointless yet weirdly fun-to-write tag. As always, I tag anyone who wants to do this as well, not before you've read mine though!

1. How many times do you check your email everyday?

I'm logged on to my work email all day, and pick it up at the weekends now too (yep, I'm starting to become one of those people). My personal is lesser used, but I do try to look at that one when I remember.

2. How many times a day do you go on Goodreads?

First of all, find me on Goodreads here!

I don't go on Goodreads every day, but I do like it, as the reviews are helpful, and I love reading them after I've finished a book to see if other people thought the same as I did. I find though, it encourages me to see the books I've read as 'just a number' and I always want that number to be bigger than it is!

Goodreads is quite helpful for my job sometimes; most recently the book quotes pages have been useful.

3. How long does it take you to edit your posts?

In my typical lazy fashion, after I've written my posts, I do the quickest of skim-throughs and then press 'publish'. I like looking at my post on the actual blog, rather than on the view you see when you're editing it, so then when I do have a look, I usually notice a ton of mistakes and go back and edit! I'd have made a terrible editor!

4. What kind of laptop do you use?

My own laptop died a death in a very untimely fashion during my university dissertation! I have since been using an ancient hand-me-down which is a HP (not sure which specifically but it has pretty swirly patterns on the top and the inside!).

5. How often do you check Twitter?

I go through phases of being massively into it and then not so much. Most of the time I'm on there pretty regularly and it gets quite addictive! I've been on it more recently now, because there is a lot of Tweeting and Twitter checking I have to do at work. So much so, that I had to get Tweetdeck the other day, which confuses me slightly, but I'm sure I'll work it out sooner or later!

6. Why do you use Blogger, Wordpress, etc?

Obviously I'm on Blogger at the moment, and I chose this platform because all the blogs I tended to be reading were using this one too. I like it because it's relatively easy to use and I think it looks quite good.

I've actually had a blog on a ton of platforms over the years, including WordPress (it still exists, but I'm going to leave you to find it for yourselves).

7. Are you good at keeping up with your reviews, tags, etc?

In a word: no! I definitely go through phases; some weeks I'll be great and other weeks, work just gets on top of me and I just can't find the time, unfortunately. I do love blogging though, and book reviews are always fun to write. The longer I leave them, the harder they are to actually write, as I just forget what I really thought of the book!

8. How many times a week do you post? 

It's really not regular, and I don't stick to a schedule for blogging at all! If I made one, I would only fail at keeping it! The aim is to get better though!



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Book Review: Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

I hope you're all having a lovely Easter weekend!

I thought I'd stop by with another book review. I bought Bridget Jones's Diary a few years ago whilst I was at university, and somehow it took this long to make its way into my hands again. Most of my reading time occurs on the train to and from London for work. If like me, you read in public spaces, let me warn you now, you will laugh out loud and you won't be able to control it!

Bridget writes to us in diary entries for a year, detailing her hysterical exploits in love, work and friendship (I'm sure you've seen the film...who hasn't!). Despite knowing all the words to the film backwards, it was nice to read the book, as there were some differences in plot! In the book, Bridget's mother gets into quite shocking situation with a criminal who relieves the family and friends of all their money, leaving Mark Darcy to save the day!

I loved this book, and although some of the references now are rather outdated (confusion over how to use the TV recording set and lack of mobile phones), it doesn't affect the story at all! In fact, I think I really read this book at the right time as I am about to move to London, and I have just got a job in Publishing, like Bridget! So from that perspective it was fun to read!

I recommend this book if you have done a lot of 'heavy' reading recently and want something lighter for a change!

I am rating this book 5 stars because Bridget Jones is the ultimate chick-lit novel! It doesn't really come better!

Mother's Day

I hope you all had lovely Mother's Days!

I love to make Mum breakfast on her birthday or on Mother's day, as it's a simple way of doing something nice! I made poached eggs with salmon and hollandaise sauce on brioche toast this morning for Mum, of course with a cup of tea!

We then went for a lovely walk in the town of Buckden, where Mum grew up, not too far from us. We went to the church where she and Dad got married and had a little look round.

For lunch we took Mum out to East Restaurant in Peterborough, which is actually on a boat, which I find really cool! They do wonderful pan-Asian food; things like crispy noodles, Singapore curry, tempura vegetables, all so delicious!

 Mandarin Toast (above) 

After this delightful lunch, we came home to our dessert (after a rest!). I made orange and almond cake with passionfruit icing. This seemed to go down a treat, especially with a cup of tea (again, essential!). The recipe for the cake came from This Morning on ITV, the details of which can be found here. I definitely recommend this one, it was easy, and that's coming from me!!

I sprinkled some freeze-dried raspberries on the top, which wasn't in the recipe but I went a bit crazy down the cake aisle of Waitrose! I had no idea which petals they were on about in the video (linked), but I couldn't find them, so I went for some delicate little iced rosebuds.

The cake seemed to be generally appreciated by the whole family, evidenced by the above picture!

I hope you all had a lovely time and managed to celebrate in some way! Let me know in the comments or link your blog if you posted anything, as I'd love to read about it!


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Book Review: The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault

Wow, this book...! It is probably one of my favorite books to date!

The story follows Bilodo, a French postman who earnestly delivers post, has his lunch in a little café after his shift and then promptly comes home to his quiet little flat to some alone time, rarely breaking his routine. However he has a secret. The thing sustaining Bilodo is the time he spends steaming open and reading the letters between a long-distance couple, who write to each other in only beautiful Haiku poetry. For Bilodo these letters are a curious feast for his guilty eyes, but his obsession becomes his undoing.

The poetry of the writing combined with the intense and curious plot and the genius ending meant that this book stayed with me for a good while after I'd read  it. As well as being swept up in the goings on in Bilodo's life, I liked the fact that we learn, along with Bilodo, about elements of Japanese culture and tradition, of course, all written stunningly. This book was truly a pleasure read from cover to cover, and I would recommend it to anyone (in fact, my Mum has it now, hence why I have not managed to take my own photo!).

The last thing to say is that this has been wonderfully translated by Liedwy Hawke, especially the Haikus!

♥♥♥♥♥ (5/5!)




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Book Blogger Tag

I found this tag on The Bookish Owl's blog. I tag everyone who wants to do this to do it, whether you're a book blogger or not (hey, I'm clearly not!). I've changed it round a little bit, so do have a look at the original if you want to do it!


1. Which book, most recently, did you not finish?

An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel. This was the first (and only) Mantel novel I've picked up so far. I spent a lot of the novel hoping something would just happen. Anything. I didn't care, but there was just nothing! I got about 20 pages from the end, incredibly, and just couldn't be bothered to finish it!! I think there are 'subtleties' to be appreciated such as the explanations of the characters, by delving into their entire life story. Even when I try and say something positive it comes out badly. I'm going to stop now!



2. Which book is your guilty pleasure?

One Night: Promised by Jodi Ellen Malpas. Similar to 50 Shades of Grey (though I haven't actually read that series), cheesy clichés and extremely questionable storyline. Yet I can't stop reading! The description of this 'perfect man' is intriguing and just strangely addictive to read!



3. Which book would you throw into the sea?

Getting Over Mr Right by Chrissie Manby. I read this book a few years ago now, so can't entirely remember the plot (probably for the best) but in sum, we encounter the recently dumped-via-facebook Ashleigh go to extreme measures to win over her ex. These include blowing all her funds on psychic readings, voodoo dolls and sitting by the telephone for days on end waiting for this 'Mr Right' to call. She's such an annoying character it's actually hard to explain how frustrating it is to read about her mistakes! Argh!




4. Which book have you read the most?

I've never been one for rereading books. However I used to have the Harry Potter audiobooks read by Stephen Fry and (if this counts) then these for sure. I used to listen to them so much that I knew them off by heart!














5. Which book would you hate to receive as a present?

Anything I wouldn't read, because I'd just feel guilty. I'm not really into historical novels (although I want to give Philippa Gregory a go), or sci-fi, or anything supernatural (I could deal with Twilight, but other vampire/ghost/strange mythological beasts aren't really my thing). Things like Game of Thrones don't interest me so anything like that with gory battles are also probably a no.

6. Which book could you not live without?



Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is a series of short stories with themes of music and love running through them all. I've read them all a few years ago, so it's lovely whenever I come back to these wonderfully written little stories again and remember the curious tales. This book will come with me wherever I live.

Equally, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. I bought this book as a present for my Mum, and ended up hijacking it. I was so struck by the story, and I identified with Holden Caulfield's cynical view of 'fake' people, and I've come back to this story a couple of times, and will always remember it fondly.

7. Which book made you cry the most?



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling and I believe The List of My Desires by Grégoire Delacourt made me cry on a train to York!

8. Favourite book cover?


 

This question initially was 'least favourite book cover' but I really don't think I have one, so I changed it! The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency reminds me of linocut print, and it's just so colourful that it portrays the lovely positive atmosphere Alexander McCall Smith describes in Botswana. The cover for Mischeif by Fay Weldon is stunning, helped by the fact that it's cloth bound, and woven in is a beautiful entanglement of colourful butterflies. Must read this.

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