In love and war

Inside the Whale by Jennie Rooney

Chatto & Windus 2008, 272 pages

1939 on London’s Old Kent Road. Stevie (Stephanie) and Michael are in love but are soon separated when Michael is sent to Africa with the Royal Corps of Signals. Fifty years on, a widowed Stevie is living with her daughter and granddaughter, but what is the secret she is keeping from them and why is she unable to mourn her late husband? Michael also has a story to tell but cancer has taken his voice. As he lies terminally ill in hospital, he writes it down with the help of a young nursing assistant.

This book gets my vote simply because one of the main characters is a regular visitor to their local library! With a perfectly balanced narrative, Stevie and Michael tell their story in alternating chapters; there is wonderful attention to detail, making the time and setting strikingly vivid. A gentle and accomplished novel that fully deserves its place on the Costa 2008 first novel shortlist.

Going wild in the country

God’s Own Country by Ross Raisin

Viking 2008, 224 pages

Since his exclusion from school, 19 year old Sam Marsdyke has worked the sheep on his family’s farm on the Yorkshire Moors. From his hilltop vantage point he observes the transformation of the local landscape as the “shadows of the cities” encroach across the valley, revamping the local pub and turning failed farms into housing developments and second homes for “welly weekenders”. Soon his eye falls on the daughter of a new family and the friendship that begins between a solitary young man and a rebellious teenager slowly becomes something more menacing.

Ah’m reight chuffed Ah glegged this on trolley. That Sam Marsdyke, he’s a rum ‘un, fair med me chuckle, next I’m proper choiled up and heart-sluffened. It caps owt!