Today I'm reading...

I was going to write yesterday about what I have been reading but another topic caught my eye that I just had to write about!

This week I finished A Dangerous Man by Anne Brooke. Although a little darker and more graphic than much of what I read, I really enjoyed it and read it very quickly, despite having to put it away to study for a couple of weeks. Anne is a talented writer of both poetry and prose who deserves a bigger audience.

I was just about to start What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn which has been getting some great blog reviews AND has been long listed for the Orange prize, when a parcel arrived in the post yesterday. It contained The Fruit of the Tree by another of my blog friends, Jacquelynn Luben and I couldn't resist starting it right away.

It is an intensely personal memoir of the early years of Jackie's marriage, including her experiences of miscarriage and cot death. I've never experienced either, but we could so easily have lost son 1 as a sick, premature newborn and I have friends who have suffered miscarriages, so I have some understanding of the emotions involved. Above all the period covered in the book is the late 1960's through to the early 70's, a time when I was still a child but old enough to remember, so I am really enjoying the period details. I'm already about half way through the book.