A change in Altitude

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Genre - Relationships

Popular author Anita Shreve has written about newlyweds Margaret and Patrick setting off to live in Kenya for a year. He is a doctor and she is a photographer and they settle into married life as strangers in a dangerous land. They agree to join a climbing expedition to the summit of Mount Kenya with two other couples without realizing just how testing it will be on them. Both physically and emotionally they are unprepared for the tragedy that unfolds and find they may never recover from it.

---- Reviewed by Sue, Belgrave

Jane & Prudence by Barbara Pym

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Jane & Prudence met & became friends at Oxford. Jane was a tutor & Prudence her student. Now, years later, Jane is a happy but scatty vicar’s wife & Prudence a researcher in London unrequitedly in love with her dull boss. When Jane & her family move to a country parish, she is determined to find a suitable husband for Prudence. Unfortunately, the available men are a selfish widower who adorned his wife’s grave with a huge photo of himself; and a preoccupied MP who would rather complain about his busy life at Westminster than talk to Prudence at a garden party. When a new young man starts work at her office, Prudence looks set to embark on another unsuitable love affair. Barbara Pym’s novels are full of humour & so perceptive about love & relationships.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

La's orchestra saves the world by Alexander McCall Smith

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La (short for Lavender) goes to live in the country when her marriage breaks down. She’s a young woman & with WWII about to break out, she wants to do some war work. She helps out at a poultry farm where she meets Feliks, a Polish refugee, who has been a pilot in the RAF, but is now grounded. La falls in love with Feliks, but she has doubts about his background at a time when everyone is looking for spies. La helps to start up an orchestra in the village along with men from the local air base & people from the nearby town. The orchestra provides a focal point for the members during the worst times of the war with their plans for a victory concert when it’s all over. The descriptions of life in the country during wartime are wonderful, the threat of air raids & the reality of rationing. McCall Smith’s gentle style of storytelling is perfectly suited to this story of a woman trying to overcome sorrow & get on with her life.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Uncommon arrangements by Katie Roiphe

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Genre - Non Fiction


This is a portrait of seven married couples living in London between the wars. Some of the couples, like Katherine Mansfield & John Middleton Murry, and Vanessa & Clive Bell, are still well known. Others, like Vera Brittain & Gordon Catlin are less so. Roiphe is interested in these unconventional couples who tried to negotiate new ways of living. Mansfield & Murry were often separated because she needed to travel to warm climates for her health. Brittain & Catlin had a semi-detached marriage because Brittain wanted to continue working as a writer & journalist while Catlin was an academic in the US. The Bells were at the heart of the Bloomsbury group & had a famously open marriage with Charleston becoming home to Vanessa’s lover, Duncan Grant, & his lover, Bunny Garnett. An interesting look at life, love & marriage.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

Resistance by Owen Sheers

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The women of a remote Welsh valley wake up one morning in 1944 and discover that their husbands have left their farms in the night. The German Army has invaded Britain and the men have been recruited for a guerilla resistance force to impede the enemy’s progress. A German patrol, led by Albrecht Wolfram, is sent to the valley by the SS to retrieve an ancient map hidden there. The soldiers are exhausted, and, when the tide of war moves on, and they are forgotten, they are content to wait for further instructions. Gradually, the women, led by Sarah Lewis and Maggie Jones, come to an accommodation with the Germans. They work together over a harsh winter to keep the farms going, and become wary friends. But the outside world must intrude and the idyll will end. This is a beautifully written first novel by a writer well-known for his poetry. The plot could have become a cliché, but Sheers avoids this, while creating a plausible picture of an alternative history of Europe.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters