Reviews from the North

Here are another couple of book reviews from our northernmost Rodney Library up at Wellsford.

A place in my country: In search of the rural dream By Ian Walthew

After having lived on the continent fro a number of years the author, a newspaper director, is transferred back to London. However, he and his Australian wife, after a visit to the Cotswolds, decide on a whim to buy a cottage and resign his job.

We meet a wonderful array of eccentric characters who reside in and around the village. “The delightful aspects of village life and an ever-changing landscape are evocatively captured, but all is not well in ‘paradise’.” One neighbour relies on his skill of fastening gates and fences with binder twine and wire with the inevitable escape of his cattle causing havoc for passing motorists who end up helping with their capture.

Here is a tale of a rural escape that is different, amusingly told, with brilliant descriptions of the Cotswold scenery and some insights into the effects of industrial farming on the English countryside.


Trick or treat By Kerry Greenwood

Australian author Kerry Greenwood has 2 ‘heroines’ which she writes about. Phryne Fisher, lives in the 1920s in Melbourne and is a glamourous, witty and courageous sleuth surrounded by intriguing characters and dastardly villains. Ms Greenwood’s other heroine is definitely a 21st century person, Corinna Chapman and she too has interesting friends and gets involved with villains who have more current issues. In Trick or treat Corinna, who is a baker by trade, finds that the alley behind the bakery is attracting people who have taken a drug that has them hallucinating. Corrina’s livelihood is affected – as is her competition. What is the drug & why have the police decided to shut down the bakeries? There are other plots involving WWII spoils going on in the background. Ms Greenwood certainly writes a lively story involving many of the same characters that she introduced in the first book about Corinna - Earthly delights.