Author: Hilary

Alexander McCall Smith’s Sunshine on Scotland Street has come out in Vintage Canada paperback edition, and once again the Scottish author is fun to read.

McCall Smith is a retired professor of medical law from the University of Edinburgh. He is also an endless watcher of the people around him, as well as those he makes up. They are a motley crew – often droll, mischievous but believable, and in the end appealing.

As well as the 44 Scotland Street Series, McCall Smith has written The Isabel Dalhousie Novels, The Corduroy Mansions Series, The Portuguese Irregular Verbs Series, The No. l Ladies Detective Agency Series and several books for Young Readers. This one makes you feel you are living in Edinburgh, with its old stone houses, elegant Princes Street, view of the castle and beckoning pubs. In spite of its reputation for rain, McCall Smith shows a very sunny side of the city he loves as well as the affection between the various families and inmates of 44 Scotland Street. It’s a very upbeat book.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is a touching story of two young people raised on opposite sides of the Second World War, who eventually meet and fall in love.

As the war rages, the author Anthony Doerr introduces us to the blind daughter of an employee of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, who escapes the Nazi invasion with her father to live in the walled citadel of Saint-Malo. He also brings in the German orphan, Werner, living in an orphanage with his sister in a mining town, when he is chosen by the Nazis to join the academy of Hitler Youth.

The war widens and a series of coincidences brings these two characters together. Doerr writes intimately about the beauties of nature, the love and loyalty of human beings, as they shine through the horrors of war.

He is the author of a number of story collections and novels, many of which have won prizes in the U.S. and overseas. He lives in Boise, Idaho with his wife and two sons.

Review by Anne McDougall

In The Summer Girls, New York Times Best-selling author Mary Alice Monroe weaves a compelling story of three granddaughters who visit their grandmother on her 80th birthday in the old family house they had loved as children on Sullivans Island off the South Carolina coast.

The invitation runs to a 3 month stay, so we get the low-down on the troubles that have caused these girls to grow apart over the years. We also watch a number of steps they all make, and the secrets they reveal, to get closer again.

It is a beautiful spot and Mary Alice Monroe writes lovingly of the environmental characteristics of this particular coast. This includes the changing light on the ocean and endless fascination of the waves rolling in. Monroe is herself an active conservationist and part of the story tells of the amazing attachment between dolphins and humans.

The grandmother has kept her own secrets all these years, so there are revelations all round. It makes for an intriguing summer read.

This is the first Pocket Books paperback edition of The Summer Girls and is the second book Monroe has written in what will be the Lowcountry Trilogy.

 

Review by Anne McDougall

Tom Rachman made his name with his first novel, The Imperfectionists which became an international bestseller and was translated into twenty-five languages. With this second book, also a novel, he tells the rivetting story of a young woman who was abandoned as a child and spent years travelling the globe looking for her forebears.

Rachman himself was born in London and raised in Vancouver. He went to the University of Toronto and Columbia Journalism School and later worked as a journalist in New York, Rome and Paris. When his heroine in this book tramps the streets of Manhattan, or clambers around an island off Vancouver, you feel you are right beside her.

The book opens with Tooly Zylverberg reading in the tiny bookshop that she owns in Wales.  Her assistant, Fogg, is tidying books beside her. From here she sets out to find again the people who had cared for her as a child. It is a tricky story because Rachman includes the rise and fall of the American empire in the past twenty years. He also jumps from decade to decade all the while travelling from Sydney, Australia to Bangkok and beyond. He is a brilliant writer, and also full of surprises.

Review by Anne McDougall

This is a heart-warming, unsentimental story of a German shepherd dog who stuck with his master through some of the most dangerous years of World War ll.

The dog was called Ant, after a dive-bomber used by men of the Czech Air Force before they escaped Czechoslovakia for England and flew with the RAF Bomber Command. Robert Bozdech came across the puppy when he was escaping from a crash-landing in France. It had been abandoned by its owners and left in an old farm-house. Bozdech tucked it into his jacket and from then on managed to keep the handsome, intelligent animal beside him. The most amazing part of this story is the number of commanders  who one way or another allowed this to happen. It is also true that on a number of occasions the dog saved his master’s life.

There are a number of vintage black-and-white photos of Robert and Ant. By the end of the war they had become British war heroes. Ant won the Dickin Medal, the “Animal Victoria Cross” for his bravery.

The author, Damien Lewis, has spent twenty years reporting from war and conflict zones for the BBC, CNN  and other news organizations. He is also a lifelong dog lover and has written two earlier books on military working dogs.

Review by Anne McDougall