My Best Reads of 2014

One of the most exciting things about my first 6 months as Lotus Flower Book Club, has been all of the new books that have come my way. I set a target with Goodreads at the beginning of the year to read 150 books and I am 8 books away from my target. This was helped along by the reading I do for university, but also because this was a great year for reading. After completing the decisions on website and logo I started taking orders in June. An unexpected bonus of using social media for the business has been the offer of writing work; I am now writing reviews on new books and blogs on the experience of reading. Sometimes, I even get pre-publication copies through the post, so I look forward to the postman arriving! So, out of all the books I’ve read this year here are my best reads of the year.

Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield  

Diane Setterfield’s second novel is an unsettling tale of a young boy, William Bellman, who designs a catapult to impress his friends. On a sunny day they compare designs and William wagers he can hit a rook in the next field and to their enormous surprise he does. As they examine the dead bird they notice the colour of the feathers and how the light hits the black creating green and purple highlights. It becomes a thing of wonder to them, but as William walks home later in the dusk he becomes unnerved by the sight of a boy in black in the same field. Years later Bellman is a very successful man through developing the local mill and has made a good marriage to Rose. The couple have many children and to those who know them, Bellman seems to live under a blessing.  Yet strange things start to happen around him. His uncle, the mill owner, dies leaving him in charge. Then his childhood friend dies and Bellman starts to wonder about the strange man in black he sees at the funerals. Why can he never recall his face properly and what does he want? This is a great thrilling ghost story, with increasing tension written into every chapter. I recommend this for curling up in front of a fire with one winter evening.

ISBN: 9781476711959    Publisher: Random House

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

A brilliant debut novel set in 17^th Century Amsterdam where wealth and stifling religion go hand in hand. Country girl Nella Oortman arrives as the new bride of wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt. Nella is intimidated by Johannes sister Marin and the secrets of the huge townhouse that is now her home. Johannes is never at home, but he sends his new wife the gift of a cabinet house; the house is a complete replica of their own and Nella finds a miniaturist to make some special pieces for the best rooms. However, the miniaturist seems to have an agenda of her own and sends Nella mysterious pieces she didn’t order, pieces which could explain to her the secrets of the Brandt household. Despite appearing to be respectable members of society, the Brandt siblings have secret lives that they must keep concealed or lose everything. Burton’s great skill is to combine the historical detail with a surprising revelations and an awful lot of suspense. How does the miniaturist knows their greatest secrets but is she a benevolent observer or will she bring their reputation and even their lives to the brink of destruction. This is an intelligent read that becomes a real page turner as we long to solve the mystery and know the fates of the all the characters.

ISBN: 9780062306814  Publisher: Ecco 

Meeting Jessie Burton author of The Miniaturist

A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Brady

This is a beautifully observed debut novel about the deeply religious Bradley family coming to terms with the loss of Issy who was the youngest member of their family. Taking each family member in turn the book explores their grief in both a moving and humorous way. Father, Ian Bradley is a Mormon bishop who trusts in his faith and is sure everything will turn out right. His wife Claire is less trusting, and needs a sign to help her carry on or at least a pause button till she is ready to re-join the world. Meanwhile their remaining children flounder; Zippy is distracted with first love, while Al has more time for football than the church, and Jacob has more faith than all of them put together and feels the responsibility of keeping his fractured family together. In the church, family is of the utmost importance and this book explores what happens when a family of faith has their world broken apart. Always poignant, the book can be incredibly funny, especially where the children’s understanding of their faith is explored. This is a great book for anyone interested in family relationships and reactions to trauma.

ISBN: 9780553390889  Publisher: Ballantine Books

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Another debut novel, this book is set in 19^th Century Iceland and is based in its bleak landscape. The book tells the story of Agnes, a servant who is found guilty of the murder of her former master and stays on an isolated farm awaiting execution. Agnes’s story is told in flashback as she recounts it to the priest sent to prepare her for her upcoming execution. Toti is the priest willing to try and understand her, despite the suspicion of the farmer’s wife and daughters; they belief the official version of the events and are very reluctant to keep a murderer in their home. However, as the weather turns even worse and they are confined to their small cottage, the women begin to hear a different version of the truth as they overhear Agnes’s story. The book reminds us that everyone has a right to have their story heard and although Agnes is still executed, it is hard to put down because you want to know her part in the murders. Just as the family do, we become drawn in by her tale, but which version is the truth?

ISBN: 9780316243919  Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Spare Brides by Adele Parks

This novel starts on New Year’s Eve 1920 and four friends reflect on the recent end of the Great War, and the new decade to come. There is an air of novelty about this new decade, full of promise and possibility. However, the war casts a long shadow, especially for Sarah who paid the ultimate price in the loss of her husband and for Lydia who can only feel her husband’s cowardice as he stayed behind in a desk job. There are so many women for so few men so it seems that to catch a husband one must be both beautiful and wealthy, but Beatrice is neither and seems destined to stay a spinster. Finally there is Ava, who is both beautiful and wealthy but feels restricted by her marriage now that her husband is home. An incredibly handsome officer comes into their midst, but he is haunted by his war experiences. Once the women encounter him it can only lead to more changes in their lives and everyone around them. This novel is the one of the first I read this year about this period of history and shows how the war broke apart the class structure and gender roles that had been entrenched for centuries.

ISBN: 9781472205391  Publisher: Headline

The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman

Set in New York City in the stormy first decades of the twentieth century, Alice Hoffman’s latest book is a love story set between two very different people. Coralie Sardie is the daughter of a Coney Island freak show owner and is made to perform in his museum because she has webbed fingers. He creates a water tank and a tail and she performs as a mermaid by day, while in the early morning he trains her to swim in the Hudson River to create the story of a river monster. One morning, she swims off course and climbs out of the river where the city meets forest and she accidentally meets Eddie Cohen. Eddie is a photographer who has run away from his father’s Russian Orthodox community and his job as an apprentice tailor. The two have an instant connection, but Eddie is embroiled in the mystery of a girl who went missing during the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and Coralie is kept almost prisoner by her father, and his requests of her become more disturbing. This is a magical story set in an incredible world of Wolf Men, Butterfly Girls and ancient turtles. Despite the engaging love story at its centre, the star of this novel is the developing city of New York in all its wonder.

ISBN: 9781451693560  Publisher: Scribner

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

This novel is really a slightly disguised autobiography of Moran’s first years as a writer for a music magazine in the 1990’s. Johanna Morrigan is an intelligent, but uninteresting teenager who is a social recluse and makes a fool of herself on local television. Using all her experience of writers from Jo March to the Brontes, Johanna decides she will save her poor family through writing. She reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde – music reviewer and Lade Sex Adventurer. For someone who grew up in the 90s this is a hilarious romp where Dolly does all the things I wish I’d done – she sleeps with sexy band members, drinks, smokes and rips crap bands apart in 600 words. I spent half the time laughing, and the other half trying to work out who the band members really were. Moran captures all the awkwardness of being sixteen, poor, and a little bit fat. This book is glorious.

ISBN: 9780062335999  Publisher: Harper

The Missing One by Lucy Atkins

Kali Mackenzie has had a difficult relationship with her mother and after her death there are so many unanswered questions. As she clears out her mother’s things she finds a series of postcards from a woman called Susannah and they all say ‘thinking of you’. Kali has never heard of this woman and in a desperate attempt to find out about her mother’s life she decides to take a trip to British Columbia and visit this woman. The remote island where she lives is known for storms and killer whales and Kali finds out that her mother studied these creatures back in the 1970s. Susannah is an enigmatic person and she doesn’t give up her secrets easily, but is she slightly too interested in Kali’s son Finn and why is her behaviour becoming erratic? This is a great story of a relationship between mother and daughter and how keeping secrets, even to protect our children, can sometimes be the most dangerous thing to do.

ISBN: 9781848663206  Publisher: Quercus

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

This is the second book about post WW1 that I read this year and from one of my favourite authors who never disappoints me. Set in 1922, Frances and her mother live in a villa in Camberwell, South London. This has previously been a genteel area and the Wrays have been used to house filled with a husband, and a brother, plus a few servants. Now entirely alone and still struggling with their bereavements and lowered circumstances, they feel the need to take in lodgers in order to keep their home. Their new tenants, Lilian and Leonard Barber are from the new ‘clerk class’ and will shake up their lives more than they ever imagined. Frances and Lillian have an instant connection, but Frances has given up a potential relationship in the past in order to stay with her mother. Waters explores all the rules of the pre-war society and how they have been dismantled by war. Women who have worked through the war no longer want to return to the home sphere, and the classes move more freely together than ever before. This is both a love story and a thriller, with the wonderfully rich backdrop of a country in mourning and all the upheaval of social change.

ISBN: 9781594633119      Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover

Wake by Anna Hope

This is another book set where society is hovering between the days of Empire and Modernism. Wake set against the backdrop of an unknown soldier being returned from Northern France to be buried at Westminster Abbey. It follows three very different women dealing with the changes WWI has wrought in their lives. Hettie is a dancer for sixpence at the Hammersmith Palais; Evelyn is a civil servant in the pension’s office; Ada is a housewife who is unable to move on after the death of her son and sees vision of him, but when a visitor arrives at her door with a war mystery it binds all of them together. Set over five days in the year 1920, the mystery slowly unravels towards the day the Unknown Soldier arrives to crowds of people in London. This novel has beautiful period detail and captures that feeling of being on the brink of a new era.

ISBN: 9780857521941  Publisher: Doubleday 

The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Pheonix by Paul Sussman

This is an excellent novel ; a dark, funny and utterly delightful look at the Twentieth Century through one man’s eyes. I saw the cover and simply knew it was for me. Raphael Ignatius Phoenix lives alone in an isolated castle by the sea as the millennium draws near. Born in 1900, he is determined to die on the eve of the new millennium and to help him he has a mysterious pill. However, before he ends it he feels a need to get his affairs in order and write down his incredible history. Using the walls of the castle as his manuscript he begins to write an extraordinary personal history, but wonders how to structure his story. Starting with his first adventure with his mysterious friend Emily, he then splits his life into chapters and each chapter is structured around one of his ten murders. Despite his murderous nature, Raphael is an excellent storyteller and it is hard not to enjoy his riotous and unusual gift for weaving a story. Quirky and darkly humorous.

ISBN: 9780857522184      Publisher: Doubleday

So, a wonderful year of reading with some surprises and some interesting themes that occurred unconsciously such as post WWI novels. I feel like I was given a gift every time I discovered a new novel or author. There are just as many book I discovered in 2014 that were published earlier such as The Girl With The Glass Feet by Ali Shaw or Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. I am looking forward to a new year of discovery and possibility. Happy New Year and Happy Reading!