Those Who Wait: Donald Hounam

by TCW | Jul 12, 2024 | Book review

Another book review this week.

Full disclosure: Donald is a friend I used to go street-skating with. So when he wrote a book about a teenage street-skater who gets involved with a ghost, I sort of had to read it.

I’m glad I did because it’s a blast. Fifteen year-old Stephen is orphaned when his dad dies of a heart attack while Stephen is out skating, leaving his son racked with guilt. Stephen’s father’s will has made his aunt Teresa his guardian. Teresa lives in Paris, so Stephen moves in with her in her apartment filled with old books of magic, the memory of her dead lover, and the ghost of a young boy.

Teresa used to be a research scientist working in the field of subatomic particles. Hounam has fun with the idea that modern quantum theory makes about as much sense to most people as magic. Teresa thinks that she can use quantum physics to recreate ancient magic. She tells Stephen that she might be able to use magic to summon the ghost.

Who is the ghost? Can Teresa really perform magic? Why have two young boys vanished mysteriously, close to Teresa’s apartment? And is Stephen himself in danger?

The mix of magic, mystery, murder, and other things beginning with M makes a satisfying page-turner of a story but Hounam uses this as a framework to hang a coming-of-age story on. Stephen is learning some hard truths about love, family, and relationships in between skating the famous Pari Roller mass street skate and learning to slalom on his roller blades. Hounam’s enthusiasm for the Paris street skate scene shines through and would probably have me picturing it even if I hadn’t actually lived it with him when we were both old enough to know better.

The assorted digressions from the main plot (an aunt with an obsession with religion, some nice observations of the casual cruelty of older teenagers to younger peers with romantic inclinations, discussions of guilt and loss) raise this above your standard ghost/horror story. I enjoyed it a lot and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to read something out of the ordinary, even if they’ve never been on skates in their lives.

Those Who Wait is available on Kindle: Those Who Wait eBook : Hounam, Donald: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Operation Tulip: Deborah Swift

by TCW | Jul 5, 2024 | Book review

Operation Tulip is the third and final book in Deborah Swift’s World War 2 Secret Agent series. Our heroine, Nancy Callaghan, started the war with the SOE, as a cipher clerk at their offices in Baker Street. She went on, though, to become a field agent, working as a radio operator in occupied Holland.

Operation Tulip is essentially a spy thriller. I won’t detail the plot because of spoilers. I hope you’ll read it and enjoy it for yourself. It really is a very good read. Deborah Swift is one of those writers who can really hook you into a story and (very unusually for me) I twice nearly missed my stop while reading Operation Tulip on the Tube.

Swift not only tells a good yarn but packs in a lot of history. It’s fair to say that she doesn’t like the Nazis. This was once such a given that it seems odd to be remarking on it, but nowadays so many people are prepared to suggest that extreme right wing politics has something going for it that it is worth reminding ourselves what happened when Europe last decided to give fascism a go. Swift is unsparing in her descriptions of Nazi atrocities. As her historical note (well worth reading) points out, in the winter of 1944/5, when this story is set, more than 18,000 Dutch civilians starved to death with a further 980,000 classed as malnourished. In places, Operation Tulip is not an easy read.

Given the amount of historical detail, I would have welcomed more about the relationship between the SS and the Gestapo. I suspect my interest in the details of the organisation of the Nazi party and its agencies is not widely shared but lots of people are interested and, given that both the SS and the Gestapo feature a lot in the story, I worried about the details of the relationship between the two. I would have liked more about this, even if Swift had felt it would have been better dealt with in her historical note.

Swift is such a good storyteller that even a subplot which sees her boyfriend mounting a one-man rescue operation across the allied frontline manages to carry you along, although here we are moving rapidly away from the nitty gritty detail of SOE operations into James Bond territory. It’s all terribly readable, though, and certainly adds even more excitement and tension to an already gripping story.

In summary, this is a thrilling spy story set against a historically detailed background. I enjoyed it Immensely and I’m sure many others will too.

Operation Tulip goes on sale on 10 September and is available to pre-order now.

A very short review of ‘Tipping the Velvet’

by TCW | Mar 19, 2024 | Book review

I’ve not been doing much writing over the last few months which has at least meant that I’ve been able to catch up on some of my reading.

I’ve had Tipping the Velvet on my list of books I want to read for ages and now I’ve finally got round to it. There’s an Afterward by the author, Sarah Waters, where she complains that “like many first novels by inexperienced authors, it is baggy and over written.” I’m nervous about disagreeing with her so much – she wrote it, so you’d think she’d know – but this is just wrong. I loved this book on so many levels but the first thing to grab me, from the very first paragraph, was the sheer wonder of the writing. Sarah Waters can summon up a place, a feeling or a person with apparently effortless prose. And that’s before we get to the story.

According to Waters herself, it’s a romp. It’s also, of course an exploration and celebration of lesbian history and gloriously, obscenely, wonderfully filthy.

Besides the sex, there is lovingly indulgent praise of the joys of the Whitstable oyster, a brilliant evocation of the music hall of the 1890s, an exploration of East End life and the birth pangs of socialism and, ultimately, [SPOILER] a surrender to romantic love and the joys of domesticity.

It’s one of those wonderful books that is widely and lavishly prised and which turns out to be even better than its reputation.