Review Catch-up – two shorter reviews incl Book Group report

Still trying to reduce my books to be reviewed pile, here are two more shorter reviews for you.

All that Remains by Virginie Grimaldi, translated by Hildegarde Serle

Knowing that I’ve enjoyed Valérie Perrin’s novels (see here and here), I was delighted to receive a copy of another French bestseller, also translated by Hildegarde Serle, from Europa Editions. Virginie Grimaldi’s new novel was, like Perrin’s books, a great summer feel-good read, following three very different characters over a year of life changes for each of them.

We meet each of the three protagonists in a short prologue taking place a few months before the main story. Jeanne, in her seventies has just lost her husband and is in limbo at his funeral, not really knowing what to do with herself. Eighteen-year-old Théo is homeless but does have a job in a bakery, he manages to scrape the cash together to buy an old car to sleep in. Iris, thirtysomething, recounts her various scars – including Jeremy, her eighth.

The story is very simple. Jeanne decides to take in a lodger and asks to put a card up in the bakery. Théo immediately approaches her and he thinks she sees something in him – he’s sure the room will be his – until another woman, Iris, steps in and petitions her to become her lodger, she’s been living in a hotel while searching for an apartment. Théo is utterly dejected. However, Jeanne makes a big decision – and offers both of them a room. How will they all get on?

Well – Iris and Théo don’t at first. “I left home at the same time as Théo, who is always as pleasant as a pap smear.” But eventually they warm to each other a bit, at least Théo is tidy. Jeanne visits the cemetery every day to talk to her beloved Pierre – then one day she receives a letter – from Pierre… what’s happening? Meanwhile, Iris has a secret which will soon show (*wink*) – will Jeanne force her to move again?

Gradually, the three generations bond to become a self-made family. The mystery of the letters is solved, and Iris’s secret and its consequences are revealed. What’s more, the three lonely strangers discover that they were maybe fated to meet, everything is neatly and cleverly brought together. I can confirm that if you’ve read Perrin, you’ll enjoy this novel too as I did – a heartwarming read, told in a light-hearted style with good humour and pathos. This was my fifth read for Women in Translation month.

Source: Review copy – Thank you. Europa editions paperback original, 259 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.

Rabbits by Hugo Rifkind – Book Group report

We’re on the home straight now in our Book Group’s working its way through a flora and fauna alphabet – many of the ‘R’ pitches involved rabbits – thankfully Watership Down didn’t come out of the hat. Instead we read Rifkind’s debut novel (yes, he is Malcolm’s son), a coming of age story of toffs, boarding school, crumbling piles, parties, booze and drugs and more booze and drugs, hunting and shooting.

It’s the early 1990s, Edinburgh. Our narrator, Tommo is 16, his family are middle-class, his busy father a successful mystery novelist whose books involving a posh butler as sleuth are a hit on TV. His mum is chronically ill, his sister is at university – so it seems natural that he should move to a boarding school, where he makes new posh friends and finds himself invited to their homes during the hols. But I’m getting ahead of myself, for Rifkind opens the novel with an explosive paragraph describing an event that is at the core of the novel:

When the shotgun went off under Johnnie Burchill’s brother’s chin, word had it, the top of his head came off like the top of a turnip lantern. Then it got stuck, by means of a jagged triangle of bone, into the upholstery of the roof of the Land Rover. A thing like that spreads around. The story, I mean. Not the head.

Kind of lets you know what you’re in for doesn’t it? The was it an accident / suicide / something else debate reverberates through the entire story. Meanwhile, Tommo begins to be assimilated into this new life, initially a hanger-on, he’s soon partying with the rest of them and helping to kill a lot of small animals. It’s another world, decadent and hedonistic – at one stage one of the guys rings his mum when he runs out of coke! But all around them, the money is running out, and long-hidden secrets are being exposed as these poor (literally) rich things have to cope with the suppressed truth of incidents like the death of Douglas, and complicated family trees with unacknowledged offspring, which make succession and inheritance bound to be full of arguments…

You’ll spot similarities with Saltburn, although Tommo is benign unlike that film’s protagonist, Oliver. I, like most of our group, really enjoyed Rabbits, although it went on a bit and things got a bit repetitive in the second half – tighter editing to bring it down to 300 pages would have improved the pacing we all thought. One of our group had experienced some of this lifestyle, having been a beater at many a shoot when younger. There is a fatalism about all of these toff families, who resist adapting to survive, which is very sad – not that I or our group felt sorry for them. I won’t share how Tommo comes out of all this. Rabbits was for the most part an entertaining read, with its shock moments, and plenty of darkly funny ones too, generating a good discussion.

Source: Own copy. Polygon paperback 2025, 343 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link (free UK+ P&P)