feather_ghyll: Woman lying under a duvet covered by text (Reading in bed)
Clouds Among the Stars: Victoria Clayton. Harper Collins 2004

The opening of this book, and it’s a cracker, is, ‘The day my father was arrested for murder started promisingly.’

I thought I knew what to expect from Clayton, having read a few of her books before: Read more... )
feather_ghyll: Girl reading a book that is resting on her knees (Default)
Speaking From Among the Bones: Alan Bradley. Orion, 2014

It’s been a while (I checked, and it’s been over seven years), but I have returned to the Flavia de Luce murder mystery series. My motivation was that I'd bought other books from later on in the series second hand, so I thought I’d better get and read this. This, the fifth book is set during Easter (fun to read just after Christmas.) Our heroine is Read more... )
feather_ghyll: Lavendar flowers against white background (Beautiful flower (lavender))
The Quiet Girl
Original title: An Cailín Ciúin (2022) Rated: 12A
Written by: Claire Keegan, Colm Bairéad
Directed by: Colm Bairéad
Starring: Catherine Clinch, Andrew Bennett, Carrie Crowley


This is a rich, character-driven film that was quite recently up for a Best Foreign Language Oscar, as it’s mainly in Irish Gaelic, Read more... )
feather_ghyll: Tennis ball caught up at mid net's length with text reading 15 - love (Anyone for tennis?)
The second week of the French Open is starting to shape up, Read more... )

It’s become clearer to me what the LTA and UK Government are doing about Russian and Belarussian players for the English grass-court season, which has started at Surbiton. If players sign up to certain requirements, they can play as neutrals, with the LTA ceding to the general tennis arrangements so they won’t get fined, and so all players will gain ranking points as well as prize money. But the Home Office will be doing extra checks before granting them visas, so there’s a possibility some players may not get to play as a result.

As I can’t really watch tennis (I try to listen to coverage, but it depends on whether I can find something else to be doing that doesn’t demand too much attention, and I certainly haven’t found anything that lasts a whole match), I watched the first episode of The Gods of Tennis.

Read more... )
feather_ghyll: Girl reading a book that is resting on her knees (Default)
Prep: Curtis Sittenfeld. Black Swan, 2010.

I can’t pinpoint why I didn’t read this sooner. I’ve read ‘An American Wife’ and ‘Sisterland’ by Sittenfeld and was aware of this novel. Literature about American boarding schools has always fascinated me, mainly as a subset of the girls own genre because of the different context. You’d have thought I’d rush to read a novel in this setting by an author I admired, but I’ve seen more than one copy in a charity shop and passed it.

Well, a time came when I picked a copy up. Read more... )
feather_ghyll: (1950s green outfit)
I am partly bothering to post about this so that I could use the icon.

Phantom Thread (released this weekend) (rated 15 for strong language)
Written and directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5776858/

There's also the fact that this is an excellent film, Read more... )
feather_ghyll: Lavendar flowers against white background (Beautiful flower (lavender))
Assignment in Brittany is an early book by Helen MacInnes, set in occupied France during world war two, with one of her very competent heroes, although the challenges he has to face keep mounting. It’s a different setting to her usual Cold War stories, but certainly suspenseful.

Rules by Jane Beaton is the second in the Dorney House series, (I reviewed the first book Class here). It ends with a cliffhanger for the main character, which left me wondering where all the other books in the series the writer claims to have planned in the afterword are. This was published in 2009.

Read more... )

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley is the latest Flavie de Luce book that I read. Looking back, I see that I haven’t posted anything about the previous books that I read. Flavia’s a rummy girl, isn’t she!? I kept putting this book down, which isn’t like me and I don’t remember finding the other books in the series such a slog. Apart from stumbling across crime scenes and ruining dresses with her intrepid investigating, Flavia has to deal with a lot of family drama - her relationship with her older sisters is particularly twisted - and her dead mother Harriet seems to be much more of a presence, and naturally (or supernaturally), a mysterious one, than in the previous books.

I see that I read much more traditional girls own books over last Easter. Hmm.
feather_ghyll: Lavendar flowers against white background (Beautiful flower (lavender))
I recommend both, although they’re very different – the main character of one is a five year old girl, and the other film strongly features a quartette of young women.

The Beasts of the Southern Wild (12A) is going to get award attention. If you can, try to see it. It’s a fable about climate change and how it affects one family, their bayou and the way of life that’s grown up about it. It is both arty (comparisons have been made to Terrence Malick’s work, although it’s not quite up there for me) and folk art, if that’s the right phrase. The lynch-pin is the mesmerising Hushpuppy, the little girl at the heart of it all. In some ways, this reminded me of Ponyo (similarly aged heroine, the threat of rising waters, the power and wonder of nature) although this is a much fiercer film than the Japanese one. There are some astounding scenes towards the end.

The Sapphires (PG) is F. U. N. Three Aboriginal sisters and a cousin in the sixties join with a hapless but passionate about soul Irishman (Chris O’Dowd, very funny) to create the titular girl group and perform for mainly African American soldiers in Vietnam. There’s a down-to-earth humour about it, you can’t help root for the girls to get over their rivalries and issues, for a few of them to find love and for all of them to stay safe. Although the tone is mainly light-hearted, it doesn’t shy away from racism and its heartbreaking effects. The audience that I saw it with laughed, cried and sung along with the numbers. Sometimes, it was let down by budgetary constraints, but you were always rooting for the sparky Sappires.

Hopefully, my next post will be a tale of folly, great drama and a faulty memory...
feather_ghyll: Boat with white sail on water (Sailboat adventure)
Ginger and Rosa 12A
Written and directed by: Sally Potter
Starring: Elle Fanning, Alice Englert, Alessandro Nivola, Christina Hendricks etc.

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt2115295/

Read more... )
feather_ghyll: Girl reading a book that is resting on her knees (Default)
A Popular Schoolgirl: Angela Brazil

I had an ‘oh, Angela’ moment when Read more... )

Sara Gay Model Girl in New York: Janey Scott

That's New York, 1961 - fit for girls. Read more... )

Dance with me by Victoria Clayton

Recommended. Read more... )

I look forward to reading more by Clayton (I think another book of hers may have been recommended by [personal profile] callmemadam.)

Finally I reread Three go to Switzerland: Mabel Esther Allan

It can’t have made much impact on me before, because I didn’t remember anything as I read it. Read more... )

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