Page 73 - Phonebox Magazine December 2009

Book Review
By Oxfam Bookshop, Olney
The Girl on the Landing by Paul Torday
Each of Paul Torday’s novels has been quite original, from the highly amusing ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’ to the rather more serious ‘The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce’ with its portrayal of a young man sinking into alcoholism, and now ‘The Girl on the Landing’.
Michael has been married to Elizabeth for ten years, and the novel is related by each of them, giving two widely differing points of view. It is on a brief visit to Ireland that Michael is captivated by a painting at the top of the stairs, of an interior which shows a shadowed landing, with a young girl in the background, merely sketched in, but her head surrounded by a nimbus of light. When he mentions the painting to his hosts, they claim it is just an unremarkable interior. When Michael refers to the girl in the painting, they look puzzled, and sure enough, when he looks at it next day, there is no human figure to be seen.
After this rather unsettling experience Michael and Elizabeth return to London, where he resumes spending his days at Grouchers, his club, interspersed with visits to Beinn Caorrun, a Scottish property he has inherited from his father. However, Elizabeth is aware that Michael’s behaviour has changed, become more erratic since their visit to Ireland; she suspects that he may be having an affair, but the reason for his sudden changes of mood is more sinister, and the reader is drawn into the mystery of his atypical lifestyle and strange obsessions, a mystery which Elizabeth herself is attempting to solve.
This is one of those books which it is almost impossible to put down, told, as it is by the two main characters. Whose attitude is the one we accept? Which is the one which is slightly skewed, and why? It is only in the final pages that the mystery is solved and everything becomes clear. Until then we just have to read on!
Review by Thelma Shacklady
The Silent Shore, The Beckoning Hills, The Dividing Sea and Beyond the Orchid House, by Ruth Elwin Harris
Review by Arthur Wicks
Reviews brought to you by Oxfam Books & Music Stanley Court, Olney
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Sarah is the youngest of the four Purcell sisters and the story of her childhood, told in The Silent Shore, begins in 1910 when the girls are suddenly orphaned and find themselves having to cope on their own, but with the support of the neighbouring Mackenzie family, whose story this is too. Sarah is quiet and clever and bookish while her older sisters are artistically talented and more outgoing, particularly the eldest, Frances, whose struggle to become a painter and whose relationship with the eldest Mackenzie son is the focus of The Beckoning Hills,
The time frame of the books spans the stable, ordered world of the early twentieth century, the tragic years of the First World War and the beginnings of the modern world in the years before World War 2. Central to each book is an idyllic walking trip in the Quantock Hills undertaken by the young Purcells and Mackenzies which proves in later years to have been not only a high point but a turning point in many of their lives. Although the stories overlap the emphasis in each book is on a different era so that central to Julia's story, told in The Dividing Sea, is her time spent nursing in France in World War I and the effect it has on her life afterwards; while Gwen, who is the stay-at- home sister, finds herself suddenly and dramatically having to come to terms with events in distant Germany and the looming certainty of another world war in the 1930's in Beyond the Orchid House.
Harris' canvas is wide but she balances her picture of family relationships, the devastating impact of the first world war on people's lives and the changing social conditions in the early part of the 20th century extremely well, to make not one but four very satisfying reads.
The books reviewed above are from Oxfam Books and Music, Olney, which sells donated books, records, CDs, tapes and music to raise money for Oxfam’s work in combating poverty around the world.
Abba at the Carlton
House Club in Olney You knew the venue and
the time: Carlton Club, Saturday 21st.
It was a sellout. If you missed it, you missed out. More photos on our website: www.phoneboxmag.co.uk
Phonebox Magazine 73