This is my review of The Soul Of Kindness (Virago Modern Classics) by Elizabeth Taylor.

Beautiful, indulged, emotionally immature with a childlike reluctance to face up to the grimmer realities of life, Flora does not prove for me to be the manipulative monster implied in the publisher's blurb, but her good intentions certainly cause other people grief, if not exactly leading to hell.

Each chapter in this well-crafted novel reads like a short story in its own right, providing sharply observed descriptions of the characters, their thoughts and relationships and the socially conventional, class-conscious, uptight world of Britain around 1960. Everyone except Flora knows a man is gay, but cannot discuss it. If a man has a drink with a lonely female neighbour it should be concealed as evidence of an affair.

The book is perhaps more interesting now than when it was written because it captures a lost world of dense London fogs, middle class women who do not work once married, and have live-in housekeepers in the basement, a safe, dull society on the brink of being shaken by the Swinging Sixties, fast food, pop culture, media manipulation and rampant commercialisation. Yet, some things have not changed, like the tatty sights and smells round an underground station, or a typical English seafront.

Perhaps Elizabeth Taylor is no longer widely read and known since her largely middle class characters seem rather snobbish and dated, there is no overt sex and violence and the drama is subtle and understated with a focus on the ordinary events of daily life. However, the power of her deceptively simple prose is very striking – a satirical Barbara Pym meets Dorothy Parker, by turns funny and moving.

She is also brilliant at creating in a few words a sense of place and nature and how they affect people's moods: starlings tearing up crocuses, gardens in the rain, the sadness of caged animals at the zoo.

It is intriguing to know that the intensely private Taylor may have been a person of hidden passions – respectably married to a businessman, her life said to be too uneventful to induce a friend to write her biography, she had communist sympathies, was a labour supporter and possibly intimate letters to a male friend were destroyed after her death.

I hope to read more of her work, but savour each novel as a model of how to write.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of The Cove by Ron Rash.

This short novel, which has more real content and lasting power to move the reader than many much longer works, has introduced me to Ron Rash whose writing I shall make a point of seeking out in the future.

The prologue – a device which I normally find superfluous – holds many of the keys to his power as a writer: the clear, economical, unassuming prose; the ability to create a sense of place and people; a suggestion of mystery or menace to hook your interest. There is the rural wilderness of some Tennessee backwater, the isolation and superstition of the local people, who have hung protective charms at the entrance to the dark cove into which the sun never shines, where bad luck strikes the inhabitants, the one spot where locals are happy to see a Government official survey prior to flooding it for a future TVA reservoir.

Ron Rash has already begun to hook me with the yarn of this outsider unravelling some tragedy from the past, when he shifts back in the main body of the story to the life of Laurie Stanton, doomed to grow up in the cove after her father's unwise purchase of cheap land where the chestnut woods prove diseased. Shunned by the nearby townsfolk because of an unsightly birth mark, even regarded by some as a witch, this sensitive, bookish girl gives up any thought of education and escape to run the domestic side of the small farm. Her brother Hank, returned wounded with a lost hand from the First World War in distance Europe, is bent on doing up the farm prior to his marriage. He is only too glad to use the services of Walter, the young camper whom Laurie finds lying sick in the woods, after being drawn by his skilful flute-playing. Walter's inability either to speak or to read and write do not prevent his becoming a companion to this lonely young woman.

And so the framework is set up for a tightly plotted, often moving yarn with some moments of high tension. All the threads are brought together for the dramatic climax, which leaves you guessing over some major points to the last page, and even after that with a good deal to reflect on about say, the nature of loss and of life, in which intense personal relationships may be of great value, whilst they are also in the scale of things – the dark, massive cliff of the cove – of no significance at all.

The story is an interesting take on how the lives of ordinary people can be affected by a war on the other side of the world. Rash is good on what sounds like the authentic period detail, including life on a fairly primitive farm. He is very convincing in getting inside the head of a young woman, and his main characters are mostly well-developed with strong, realistic and varying emotions. Perhaps Walter's thoughts remain unclear and some of the minor players tend towards stereotypes, but overall this is a gripping story which succeeds both as popular and literary fiction.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of The Devil’s Beat by Robert Edric.

Since "In Zodiac Light" caught my imagination, I have persevered in attempting Robert Edric's novels, which have also appeared on the shortlists (or longlists) of several literary prizes.

Set in 1910, this story describes a public investigation into claims that a group of teenage girls have been possessed by the devil. Clearly, this echoes the Salem Witch Trials, but compared to the fireworks and high drama of Miller's "The Crucible", it is a damp squib.

A few scenes are quite dynamic, as when the investigator Merrit and Doctor Nash (perhaps the liveliest character) are pursued by journalists on their way to view some graffiti related to the case, but most of the chapters make turgid reading, with very stylised, unnatural exchanges.

Chapter 6 begins, "The opening of the inquiry proved to be the disappointment Merrit always knew it would be." And so this proves to be the case for us as well. But why tell us this and then prove it with a laboured description? There was no hint beforehand that Merrit expected to be disappointed. Wouldn't it have been more dramatic if this had come as a surprise?

Although earlier books like "In Zodiac Light" or "Gathering the Waters" contain passages of striking, finely observed prose, I could not find many further examples here. The characters are developed as distinct personalities but one is told too often what to think about them, as opposed to deducing this for oneself. Individuals are portrayed as weak, domineering, clever, stupid, devious as the case may be, without much opportunity for the reader to sense any nuances in behaviour, or to note any changes over time.

They also all talk in the same highly articulate fashion. Since the setting is an imaginary Nottinghamshire town, I would expect the local characters to have more of a regional turn of phrase.

As in previous books, Edric creates a sense of anticipation, but the plot fails to deliver much action or insight. Unlike other reviewers, I found the ending quite subtle and effective, but the business of getting there required too great an effort. There is too much plodding detail to engage one's interest.

I had to suspend disbelief over the clumsy operation of the inquiry, with Merrit asking leading questions and getting wrong-footed like a novice. The way the other panel members were allowed to interrupt and pontificate made the whole process into an elaborate word game rather than a realistic inquiry.

Other reviewers have spoken of the background of interesting social change, but this did not seem to me to have been developed much.

Edric comes across as a deeply committed writer but for me, this novel lacks the vital spark, deep purpose, quicksilver wit , power to move or original idea, any one of which would set it apart as a good novel. Yet, on reflection, there is the framework for a gripping story, calling for a lighter touch, more ambiguity on the way rather than at the end, and scope for the reader to speculate, to be misled, and then be drawn, along with some of the main characters, to reassess the situation, rather than have prejudices confirmed.

I would recommend instead his previous "A London Satryr" as being more original and better plotted.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Return of John Macnab by Andrew Greig.

This modern update of John Buchan's 1920s classic recounts the attempt of three men who have become jaded with life to spice it up with a wager to poach game "by fair means" and return it to three large Scottish estates, including Balmoral: the loser in each case will pay a donation to charity and cast a vote for "the political party of the winner's choice". You need to suppress the question of why on earth any estate owner should honour a one-sided wager imposed on him. Also, apart from a desire to expose the shortcomings of the laws on access to the Highlands, aren't there a host of more worthwhile challenges to achieve?

The plot is quite intriguing, with an unpredictable yet satisfying ending, and the author conveys his deep knowledge and love of the Scottish Highlands, where the blue hills resemble hump-backed whales.

Greig becomes at times the all-knowing narrator, observing that a scene may not have occurred quite as described, or that a certain character who is mentioned in passing will never appear, and that the young daughter of one of the men will remember in seventy years' time the nostalgic pleasure of listening to the adults plotting how to escape from the gillies with the poached game. This writing ploy only served to distance me from the drama.

The word "nostalgia" is key, along with "sentimentality" and "escapism", which may be the book's appeal for many readers, but I felt with growing unease that I was reading a mixture of "The Famous Five Never Grow Up and Go to Scotland" and a male take on a "Mills and Boon" romance, in which the female love interest is a jolly tomboy who holds her drink but can act the femme fatale when required, with something deeper and finer underlying all this. This plucky heroine Kirsty, whom I sensed I was meant to love, irritated me continually, such as when she kept calling herself "a silly old tart" and, when she should have been totally incapacitated by drink, leaping up to perform old pop songs uninvited to an apparently enraptured pub audience and guess what, her maybe love interest, the reserved and moody Neil can spring into a vaudeville act at the drop of a hat too!

The conversations between the female characters struck me as particularly unnatural and cringe-making plus many small points grated, such as the unlikely fact that dishy, middle-class dark horse Neil is godfather to dyed-in-the-wool left-wing agitator Murray's daugher Eve. This seemed to me to reveal the author's unconscious assumption of conventional, "establishment" values which the book purports to flout – I'm taking this too seriously, I know.

The suspense depends a good deal on revealing only slowly, or not until the last minute, what is afoot, but the resultant short, fragmented scenes cutting between various characters make the narrative tedious when it is unclear what is going on for pages on end.

Eventually, in the middle of a bitty account of an attempt to capture some grouse, I lost patience and skimmed to the end to be able to discuss the novel at a book group.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars