What I've been reading

Mary Anne
by Daphne du Maurier

narrated by Carole Boyd

"Mary Anne knew the grinding heel of poverty, and determined it would never grind her again. With beauty, brains, ambition, and the glittering decadence of Regency London to sustain her, she chose the only route that could take a cockney girl to the top, as mistress to the Royal Duke of York. But soon she provoked a scandal that rocked the country, placed the Duke on trial before Parliament, and risked losing everything."

I love the way Daphne du Maurier writes, but don't all run out and read her, it may be a girl thing. If I'd been an Edwardian lady in corsets when I read 'Frenchman's Creek', I'd have been swooning all over the drawing room. Except that 'Frenchman's Creek' wasn't written in time for Edwardian ladies to read it. And perhaps Edwardian ladies didn't wear corsets, I'm no historian. 'Mary Anne' isn't as romantic, but it's wonderful nevertheless, and all the more interesting because it's based on the life of the author's great great grandmother.

Carole Boyd is a fantastic audio book reader. The listening experience could be affected because her voice is extremely familiar: she plays Lynda Snell in The Archers (long-running UK radio soap). It is testament to her supreme skill that you don't even think of Lynda when she's narrating with another voice. I've listened to Carole Boyd reading 'The God of Small Things' and she was outstanding with that one too, to the extent that if Audible offered that book I'd listen to it again. That's really something special.



Death of a Red Heroine
by Qiu Xiaolong

"Shanghai in 1990. When the body of a prominent Communist Party member is found, Chief Inspector Chen is told to keep the party authorities informed about every lead, and keep the young woman's murder out of the papers at all costs. When his investigation leads him to the decadent offspring of high-ranking officials, he finds himself instantly removed from the case and reassigned to another area. Chen has a choice: bend to the party's wishes and sacrifice his morals, or continue his investigation and risk dismissal from his job and from the party."

Mr A recommended this one after he borrowed it from the library (I mooched it). It's very interesting, reading a book from such a different culture, and the story is good enough to carry the strangeness of the surroundings. Mr A told me that it frequently describes food, but actually the food is overshadowed by the poetry, given that the author is also a poet. Funny choice, for a poet to choose to write a detective novel, especially as it gets quite nasty towards the end.

I'm off for a few days camping with Lola II. There may be adventures to report when I return.