BookwormBy John Andrews
Now that our thoughts are moving towards holidays, and relaxing moments on some deserted beach, I thought that it may be the ideal occasion to recommend to our busy Newsletter readers three books to pack alongside that bikini.
Holidays can be stressful occasions unless they are meticulously planned. None of this nonsense of sitting on a recliner reading a John Grisham novel, we in The Lee can do better than that! We now have our own shop and we now have our own Bookworm bending over backwards to help, so lets get started.
The first recommendation is the classic book that everyone thinks they have read, may have read, but in any event have forgotten. Daphne du Maurier was forty four when ‘My Cousin Rachel’ was published, and although she would continue writing novels for another twenty years, this would be the last of her great best sellers.
‘My Cousin Rachel’, with its cool contempt for romantic conventions, is the most overtly feminist of du Maurier’s books, yet it is rarely perceived as such. Read it, enjoy the tease of what has gone before, for it is a razorblade of a novel: the blade is well hidden but it is there if you look hard enough, and you will be bad company on that beach while you luxuriate in such a good read.
My second book to pack for that special holiday is ‘The Princess of Siberia’ by Christine Sutherland. This is the amazing story of Princess Maria Volkonsky, wife of one of the leaders of the 1825 Decembrist Rising, which was the first attempt to overthrow the absolute power of the tsars, to bring about constitutional monarchy and to abolish serfdom. The uprising fails and Maria braves the purgatory of a fierce Russian winter to travel 4,000 miles to join her husband in exile. As the Wall Street Journal claimed at the time of publication, “You won't find a more epic romantic tale in current fiction”.
The third ‘must read’, for that final touch of total relaxation, is an extraordinary historical odyssey as well as a musical mystery solved. Russell Martin’s brilliant tale ‘Beethoven's Hair’ is compelling reading from start to finish.
As poor Ludwig lay dying in 1827, a young musician named Ferdinand Hiller came to pay his respects to the great composer and, as was the custom in those days, snipped a lock of his hair as a keepsake. This lock of hair is traced by Russell Martin down the decades, and finally analysed in America via DNA sampling. Will the results tell us more about the great composer’s famously bad health, his deafness, tinnitus and his final mysterious demise? Read on… but remember a good read reduces stress and is the most comforting companion on holiday.