The Boy on the Porch by Sharon Creech

The Boy on the Porch
by Sharon Creech

Sharon Creech writes what I could only describe as 'magical' tales (she's written 16 in all). I just loved The Great Unexpected. The Boy on the Porch continues her beautiful heartwarming style, but this one was very simple and, well, short. I still absolutely loved it though, but was glad I only paid 99p for the e-book I read it so quickly!

Married couple Marta and John find a boy asleep on their porch. He has a note "Plees taik kair of Jacob. He is a god good boy. Wil be bak wen we can." Jacob does not speak, but he communicates by tapping and nodding and smiling. Marta and John dutifully take care of him over the next few weeks, wondering who left him there and when they will come back. They grow to love him, and the boy seems to flourish in their company. He reveals many talents - art, music, a love of the animals on their farm, but his biggest talent being spreading happiness and filling their house with joy and love. Then the day comes that Marta and John have grown to dread. A man appears saying he is the boy's father and wants him back. Will the couple be able to hand over Jacob, and how will they able to fill the huge void that will be left in their home without him.

A wonderful story of the innocence of a child, the love and happiness they can bring, and how having a child can be the most enriching experience in one's life. You will cry.

This House is Haunted by John Boyne

This House is Haunted
by John Boyne

I have read quite a few novels by John Boyne and he never fails to disappoint. He has written modern fairy tale (Noah Barleywater Runs Away, The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket), war stories (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Stay Where You Are and Then Leave, The Absolutist), short story collections, and many other titles, and now he has tackled the ghost story genre. Not only a ghost story, but set in the 19th Century, so competing with Charles Dickens. The author even brings in Mr Dickens to make a short cameo appearance, where he is reading one of his ghost stories on stage in front of an excitingly expectant audience.

This story follows 21-yr-old Eliza Caine, primary school teacher, living with her ill father in fog-ridden London. A trip to the theatre in wet cold conditions worsens his illness and he dies. Eliza dreams of starting a new life somewhere, hoping it may bring her happiness and love. She spots an advert for a governess in Norfolk, and she leaps at this opportunity. However, the job at the stately manor calls for more stamina, determination, strength and courage than she could have possibly had imagined. Five out of the six previous governesses have come to a grisly end in very suspicious circumstances, and Eliza battles to overcome attempts on her life from invisible forces within the house.

If you liked The Woman in Black, and The Turn of the Screw, then you will love this.

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

How To Be a Woman
by Caitlin Moran

Caitlin Moran is a columnist for The Times. She is also Twitter user extraordinaire. You should follow her, she really is quite funny. Be warned - she is also rather rude. In a way being one of her many followers on Twitter prepared me for her crude language in this book. She seems to have been using bad words since childhood. To her, the 'f' word and the 'c' word are just that - words, to be used in place of other words that are also just words. But that's by the by.

This book is all her thoughts on the topic of being a woman - from pre-pubescent child in a poor family wearing mum's hand-me-down knickers, to overweight teenager, through drug-addled alcoholic late teen era, boyfriends, jobs, marriage, birth, miscarriage, abortion and plastic surgery. The main topic throughout is feminism, what it means to be a feminist, how to know if you are one and why we all should be. There is not one topic that we don't know her thoughts on. She lays it out for all to read, there is no holding her back. It's hard not to disagree with her. The only times I thought "Hmm, hang on a minute love" were a) when she threw in a very generalised statement "pornography is not bad, it's just sex"; and b) having unprotected sex and then being surprised she's pregnant. But I forgive her these moments of stupidity and thoughtlessness.

The chapters range from very humorous to downright tearfully sad. I defy anyone not to come away teary-eyed from the chapters on going through an awful labour before the birth of her first child, and her decision to have an abortion later in life. Though I did find the detail of the procedure very hard to read. I spent the whole time with my hand over my mouth trying not to be sick.

But that's Caitlin for you. She will tell you anything, she wants you to know everything about her and all of her thoughts. She is not embarrassed by or about anything. She is just having a good old girly talk with us all and sharing her life. You just want to go on Twitter and tell her how great she is.

'Moranthology' is definitely on my birthday list.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life
by Kate Atkinson

In my late 20s I read Kate's first book 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' which won the Whitbread Book of the Year 1995. I still have it and must re-read it, especially after finishing 'Life After Life' and then reading a review of 'Behind the Scenes....' to remind myself what happened. There are familiar themes - death, families, children. She especially seems to like the child death theme. Anyone who has read her later series of novels following  Private Detective Jackson Brodie will recognise this heartbreaking theme.

Which brings us back to 'Life After Life'. We follow the tragic life of Ursula and her family - tragic in that, from birth through to adulthood, we watch her follow different paths which ultimately always lead to her death. She is born in 1910 and lives and dies (through the aforementioned different paths) through the two World Wars, which affect her in different ways depending on which path she has taken in life. This is the Butterfly Effect in full motion. Some scenes are so tragically sad and heartbreaking you just want to moan out loud and shed many tears, and share with whoever may be in the room with you how awful such a scene was and poor poor Ursula. Then you think, but that's ok, because the next chapter she will not follow the same path and everything will be better and happy - but the future for Ursula is not often a happy one.

I read this book on my e-reader, and must admit that at times I was a bit confused with what year I was in and how old Ursula was, as the chapters continually jump back and forth in time. If I was reading a paperback, it would have been easier to flick back to the start of the chapter to remind myself of the year, but with an e-reader it's just a bit more fiddly and you don't bother. However, I found myself getting into the flow of the time changes and it wasn't a problem then.

Shortlisted for both the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013 and the Costa Novel Award 2013, this brilliant novel would be one of my contenders for Book of the Year 2013 (along with Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch).

A Boy Called Hope by Lara Williamson

A Boy Called Hope
by Lara Williamson

This book was such a scream, I had a smile on my face nearly all the way through and chuckled out loud in a few places. But beware the last chapter - there's a bit of a bombshell and it's so sad it'll have you weeping. What a rollercoaster of emotions in just a few pages!

The boy called Hope is Daniel Hope who lives with his sister Grace, his mum and her boyfriend Big Dave. Daniel's dad left when he was about 4 and since then he hasn't heard anything from him, not even a birthday card. But then he and his sister see him on the local news - as a presenter. Daniel finds out where he lives and begins to formulate a plan to meet with him and finally have his dad back. Unfortunately the best laid plans often go awry, but Dan has his friends and family around to help him through.

The book is full of great characters - the awful older sister Ninja Grace, the school friend Christopher who has secrets of his own, the best friend Jo who has a love of all things saintly, and the family dog Charles Scallybones who eats and sicks up again just about everything. A great read, highly recommended for readers aged 9-12.

Trouble by Non Pratt

Trouble
by Non Pratt

I must admit, from the first sentence I didn't think I was going to like this book at all. The first few pages were full of sexual references, crude language and inappropriate behaviour - all from 15-yr-old girls and boys. Do the teenagers of today really talk and behave like this? It's disgusting - and frightening. I have an 11-yr-old daughter and behaviour like that in a few years time is my worst nightmare. Then so is what happens to 15-yr-old Hannah - she becomes pregnant. And that is when the book turns a different corner and I began to enjoy it.

Even though we would never wish anything like that on such a young girl, the way it is handled in the book is with warmth, encouragement, sensitivity, understanding. Of course, there are the expected taunts and bullying from some of Hannah's classmates, and the fact that the father of the baby does not want to accept responsibility (but you will find out why), but Hannah's emotions during this period of turmoil seems very true to life. She is afraid of telling her parents, she wonders if her decision about the baby is the right one (and what a decision for a 15-yr-old to have to take). She is also about to take her exams.

Then there is Aaron - new to the school, son of one of the teachers, hanging out with a crowd he doesn't really want to be with, carrying the weight of a horrific incident from the past. He befriends Hannah and offers to do something that no other boy would do - pretend he is the father of the unborn baby. So begins a friendship which is strong enough to carry both of them through the rocky 9 months ahead. But then, being a pregnant 15-yr-old schoolgirl is never going to be easy.

Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe

Love, Nina
by Nina Stibbe

There was this lady who used to come into our bookshop in Truro with her children. She normally had a massive rucksack with her and never wanted a bag, sometimes we'd see them all with cycling helmets and waterproof jackets. She was a friend of one of my colleagues. She was very chatty, very funny, you got the feeling she was probably a little scatty, she loved books (she told me she used to work in publishing). She had huge eyes and a Roman nose. Then I stopped seeing her in the shop. Then about a month ago, I read about this book being published which was a series of letters from a young lady working as a nanny in London to her sister. It had a good review, so I requested a copy. Blow me down with a feather, if the young lady on the front cover didn't bear a very close resemblance to the aforementioned customer (I never found out her name before this). Of course, it turns out she is the one and same.

My colleagues had said this is a good book to dip in and out of, but I had to read it all. It was very funny. When she was 20, Nina worked as live-in nanny to Sam (10) and Will Frears (9), sons of Mary-Kay Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books, and Stephen Frears, director of films such as The Queen and High Fidelity. They all lived in a large house in a very literary part of London. Alan Bennett lived next door, Claire Tomalin just round the corner, Jonathan Miller up the road. But Nina was never fazed by any of this, indeed you get the impression that she didn't know who any of these people were at the time. Alan often pops over for dinner (food is mentioned in nearly every letter - Nina seemed to do most of the cooking, some a success, some not) and the conversations they have over dinner are hilarious. They all get on brilliantly, especially Nina with Sam and Will. She often mentions Sam's 'illness' and trouble with his eyes, and having to take him to Great Ormond Street Hospital.  We never find out what is actually wrong with him. On researching, I found that Sam actually suffers from a rare condition called Riley-Day Syndrome - he wasn't expected to live beyond the age of 5. The condition affects the nervous system. He is going blind and cannot feel pain. But when he was 10 in this book, you wouldn't have noticed anything different, from the way the family and Nina are with him. The boys are very mature for their age, and their sense of humour is hilarious. Swearing appeared to be allowed by all in the household - funny and shocking at the same time.

All the letters are one-sided, from Nina to her sister Victoria. Nina openly admits that she never kept any of her sister's replies, not for any other reason other than not wanting to keep more paper than necessary in the house and having a good clearout.

She talks about becoming a mature student and studying English Literature at Thames Poly, and a little about her boyfriend Nunny. You feel that perhaps it's not a serious relationship, they hardly seem to see each other, and Nunny sounds like he's having fun with other girls when he's away. You feel the relationship is doomed. You get to find out in the Afterword at the end what happened between them.

There's possibly more letters coming in the future, and even a novel by Nina. Watch this space.