Jacket Synopsis:
In the summer of 1914, the Empress Alexandra, a magnificent transactlantic liner, suffers a mysterious explosion en route to New York City. On board are Henry Winter, a rich banker, and his young new wife, Grace. Somehow, Henry manages to secure a place in a lifeboat for Grace. But the survivors quickly realize it is overloaded and could sink at any moment. For any to live, some must die.

As the castaways battle the elements, and each other, Grace watches and waits. She has learned the value of patience – her journey to a life of glittering privilege has been far from straightforward. Now, she knows that life is in jeopardy, and her very survival is at stake.

Over the course of three perilous weeks, the passengers on the lifeboat plot, scheme, gossip and console one another while sitting inches apart. Their deepest beliefs about goodness, humanity and God are tested to the limit as they begin to discover what they will do in order to survive.

The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton is perhaps most well known for her novella Ethan Frome, but here in The Company of Books we urge The House of Mirth on anyone who breathes the word ‘classic’. The story of Lily Bart, 29 and still unmarried though beautiful and possessed of charm and wit (alas, however, unpossessed of a fortune) this novel exemplifies what what is meant by the expression ‘biting satire’. Mixing in a society where position and appearance are all that matter, Lily struggles to maintain her footing, and we watch as she makes a series of wrong decisions, sometimes for the right reasons, and suffers the escalating consequences. I once saw an online review of this where the reader rather resentfully complained about the misleading nature of the title: ‘There was no mirth in it at all’. The full quotation, however, comes from the Bible: ‘The heart of fools is in the house of mirth’ – which alters expectations somewhat. It is not a joyful read, but this is a book that stays with you, partly for the story itself, but partly too because it really does pull no punches about the vacuousness and cruelty of the society it depicts.

Jacket Synopsis:
‘Having sifted through everything I have heard about the tiger and his wife, I can tell you that this much is fact: in April of 1941, without declaration or warning, the German bombs started falling over the city and did not stop for three days. The tiger did not know that they were bombs…’

A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through the ruined streets and onwards, to a ridge above the Balkan village of Galina. His nocturnal visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall. But for one boy, the tiger is a thing of magic – Shere Khan awoken from the pages of The Jungle Book. Natalia is the granddaughter of that boy. Now a doctor, she is visiting orphanages after another war has devastated the Balkans. On this journey, she receives word of her beloved grandfather’s death, far from their home, in circumstances shrouded in mystery.

From fragments of stories her grandfather told her as a child, Natalia realises he may have died searching for ‘the deathless man’, a vagabond who was said to be immortal. Struggling to understand why a man of science would undertake such a quest, she stumbles upon a clue that will lead her to a tattered copy of The Jungle Book, and then to the extraordinary story of the tiger’s wife.

Our Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

The Snow Child

Wolverine River, Alaska, 1920. Jack and Mabel, a childless couple in their middle age, have moved to a homestead in the Alaskan wilderness to start a new life and try to bury the grief they have carried for years. As the book opens, it seems as though Mabel at least has given up hope of achieving their aim. When she steps out onto the ice-covered river, peering down at the frozen bubbles and large cracks beneath, we hold our breath.

From the opening lines of this novel we are held, not only by the character of Mabel, and then of Jack, but by what is, in effect, the main character in the story – the place itself:

this strange wilderness – guarded and naked, violent and meek, tremulous in its greatness”.

Raw and unforgiving, it is also a place of great beauty, and we watch as each of the characters in his or her own way battles to an understanding of that paradox.

There is magic here (the story is based on an old Russian fairytale), but magic that seems possible; a child living in the woods, a snowflake that doesn’t melt. And there is silence, everywhere silence; the silence of a snowfall, silence full of small unfamiliar sounds, silence filled with absence. This is a truly lovely book, a hymn to a place and way of life by a writer who knows and loves them. There is an old-fashioned charm about the tale, which is told in a simple, beautiful prose. Pared clean, honest, and unpretentious, this is how to make an impression on your debut.

Highly recommended.

Beware of Pity

Before we get to the contents of the book, it must be said that the recent Pushkin Press edition is a satisfying object, reassuringly chunky with a nice clear font and an invitingly smooth cover.  The cover blurb (where did this need for celebrity guidance spring from?) informs us that Colin Firth was “riveted” by it. And well he might be. From an embarrassing but ultimately minor faux pas (pun intended) a series of events ensues, the outcome of which is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts: in 1913 a young Austrian cavalry officer, Anton Hofmiller, asks a girl to dance, unaware that she is lame.  Enter the ‘pity’ of the title. It’s not a particularly short novel at 450 pages, but – I dislike quoting from other people, however the Preface puts it well – “it zips along almost effortlessly, like a clear-running stream”. Such is the power of the writing that as we read we are fully persuaded of the moral dilemma of the young officer and we literally cringe at the decisions he makes – or fails to make – as the situation develops. To quote again from the Preface: “Beware of Pity has moments of high melodrama that, over seventy years on, still have the power to make one put one’s free hand over one’s mouth as one reads”.  And seventy years on, the nature, purpose and point of pity still give pause for thought.

Jacket Synopsis:
An orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena, and an artist’s servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. In a Victorian photography studio, a woman holds a book that she barely acknowledges which she waits for the exposure, and in a Shoreditch bar in 2008 a woman reading catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture.

Our Rating: ★★★¾☆ 

Me and You

Fourteen-year-old Lorenzo Cuni hates people. Having seen a documentary about a type of fly that makes itself look like a wasp in order to protect itself, he has learned how to fit in by appearing to be like those around him. In order to stop his mother in particular by turns nagging at him and worrying about him, he has told her he is off skiing for a week with some classmates. In fact, he heads down to the cellar with his headphones, his Playstation, some tins of tuna, and a fake tan spray. He hasn’t counted on his half sister Olivia turning up  . . .

The setting is ripe for comedy, and there are amusing moments in this short but thoughtful book. However, taken as a whole there is more here that is sad than funny. The larger picture is painted in apparently simple brush strokes but, looked at closely, reveals telling details of a broken family and some damaged people. At times the narrative threatens to veer slightly into soft terrain, but manages to stay the right side of schmaltz.  The ‘me and you’ of the title, for example, becomes a poignant refrain when Olivia recounts an incident from Lorenzo’s childhood that he himself has forgotten, and he is patently struck by the idea that at one moment at least he was not alone:

‘Then the motorboat took off. And me and you, we stayed down in the cabin where it smelled of bilge and everything was shaking and rocking.’

‘Me and you?’

‘Yes.’ She took a drag of her cigarette. ‘Me and you.’

A one-sitting read that will repay a second visit.

From the ship’s rat, scurrying between the pages (‘follow the food, follow the food’) to the businessman Bruce Ismay (‘Why clutter a ship’s deck with lifeboats? / First-class passengers would rather see the sunrise’); from Harold Bride, the Spark, overjoyed to be appointed to Titanic’s message room with her new technology (‘For the next six days, we will be Titanic’s only ears / Titanic’s only voice’) to Captain E. J. Smith (‘My career has been uneventful. I am content / to run the straightest line between the two coordinates’), Allan Wolf has conjured twenty-four voices from the Titanic and taken a fresh and very different approach to the events surrounding the sinking of the ship in April 1912. The novel moves back and forth between short monologues, drawing you in from the opening page. The various portraits are sensitively imagined.  The research is here, unobtrusively. (All the people named were actually on board the vessel.  The sources are presented at the back of the book.) Where facts are scarce, Wolf has filled in the outlines plausibly; where they are known, they are presented by the by, discreetly.  Yes, we know what happens in the end. But these pieces with their touching human details bring you on board with the various ‘characters’ and make you hope that somehow it won’t. And throughout the whole thing whispers the most compelling voice of all – that of The Iceberg, a villain of decidedly Shakespearean cast:

‘Within my frozen mass I cannot find / an equal to the heart of humankind. / I’ll have my heart when ship and ice align. . . . The ice will have his pick of human hearts / as soon as fair Titanic plays her part.’

If you’re a Titanic buff, this is a creative new angle on familiar material; if you’re someone who wants a gripping story that happens to be true, it’s a moving, memorable and, yes, respectful piece of work.

Susan Hill was one of the 2011 Booker judges whose priority for prizeworthiness was “readability”. It has to be said that the woman practises what she preaches. The Woman in Black is hugely readable, atmospheric, absorbing and subtle. Read it before the big screen ramps up the melodrama and adds a soundtrack that the eerie stillness of the book really doesn’t require.

Jacket Synopsis:
The year is 1803, and Darcy and Elizabeth have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the Pemberley nursery, Elizabeth’s beloved sister Jane and her husband Bingley, live within seventeen miles, the ordered and secure life of Pemberley seems unassailable, and Elizabeth’s happiness in her marriage is complete. But their peace is threatened and old sins and misunderstandings are rekindled on the eve of the annual autumn ball. The Darcys and their guests are preparing to retire for the night when a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley’s wild woodland, and as it pulls up, Lydia Wickham, an uninvited guest, tumbles out, screaming that her husband has been murdered.

In a pitch-perfect recreation of the world of Pride and Prejudice, P.D. James elegantly fuses her lifelong passion for the work of Jane Austen with her talent for writing detective fiction.

Our Rating: ★★★¼☆