Pink Sugar by O. Douglas (Anna Buchan)

24 June 2011 00:34

I had no intention of reading this book any time soon but it sort of jumped out at me when I went up to the library to snaffle The Slaves of Solitude last week before anyone else got to it. I thought I might as well give it a go, I’m sure I saw it mentioned favourably on a blog quite recently. The book was first published in 1924 and it runs along similar lines to her earlier book Penny Plain.

Kirsty Gilmour is just 30 years old and is quite well off but for most of her life she has had to travel around with her very demanding and selfish step-mother who liked to live her life just moving from hotel to hotel. The hotels were never in Scotland because the step-mother hated that country so Kirsty hadn’t been home for 22 years. In all that time Kirsty longed to go back to Scotland, her place of birth so when her step-mother died Kirsty rented a lodge house in Muirburn, a small village in her beloved Scottish border country. It’s the first real home which she has ever had and the house goes by what I think is a wonderful name – Little Phantasy.

Kirsty’s whole life has revolved around her step-mother and she finds it difficult to live just for herself so when her elderly Aunt Fanny suddenly finds that she has to give up her own home Kirsty is delighted to offer her a room at Little Phantasy. Then Kirsty hears about three motherless Scottish children who are relatives of a friend and the poor wee things are having to spend the summer in London. Before you know it they are at Little Phantasy too and the usual servants of that time complete the household.

The children provide the humour and it’s almost exactly the same as Penny Plain really. It’s a sort of Mapp and Lucia meets Just William at a Scottish Cranford. Quite enjoyable in a way and something that you can safely recommend to any delicate souls of your acquaintance. If you enjoy Scottish settings of the early 20th century then you’ll probably like this one. The landscape is painted with real affection and becomes as important as any characters, which is usual in most fiction by Celtic writers, I think.

The title Pink Sugar comes from the pink sugar hearts which Kirsty wanted to eat as a child but she was never allowed to because it wasn’t wholesome. Ever since she has had a weakness for pink sugar.

“Surely we want every crumb of pink sugar that we can get in this world. I do hate people who sneer at sentiment. What is sentiment after all? It’s only a word, for all that is decent and kind and loving in these warped little lives of ours…”

I think from that that O. Douglas must have been condemned by reviewers for being too sentimental and she was determined to have her right of reply.

O. Douglas was John Buchan’s sister but she didn’t want to use the family name in case people thought that she was trading on his name as he was already very successfull as a writer.

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The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin

14 December 2010 21:46

This book was first published in 1998. I must say that I didn’t enjoy this one as much as Let It Bleed. It’s a very personal storyline for DI John Rebus with his daughter being knocked down in a hit and run incident. Is it his fault given that he is involved with gangland warfare on the streets of Edinburgh?

There is also the possibility that a WWII Nazi war criminal is living in Rebus’s patch. Coupled with the fact that there are also foreign gang members from Japan and Chechnia and a young woman who is being forced to work as a prostitute in the mix too – there’s definitely a lot going on.

But somehow this one wasn’t a page turner for me although I did carry on to the end. I think I’m going to give Rebus a bit of a rest for the moment and my bedtime read is going to be Margery Allingham’s The Tiger in the Smoke, which is supposed to be her best.

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Black and Blue by Ian Rankin

8 December 2010 20:43

The blurb on the back of this book says: Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer – who just might lead back to the infamous Bible John. And he’s doing it under the scrutiny of an internal inquiry led by a man he has just accused of taking backhanders from Glasgow’s Mr Big.

I enjoyed this one too, it takes us away from Edinburgh which is Rebus’s comfort zone and has him travelling over to Glasgow and up to Aberdeen and even over to Shetland and on to an oil rig. The storyline involves the oil industry and a murderer who is going by the name of Johnny Bible, a copycat killer who is styling himself on Bible John who was a real murderer in the Glasgow area in the late 1960s. He was never caught and just ‘disappeared’ making most people believe that he had died.

Black and Blue was published in 1997 and Ian Rankin couldn’t have known that nearly 20 years later a murderer called Peter Tobin was going to kill a young Polish woman whom he knew through their Roman Catholic church – he buried her under the church floor and during the police investigations they realised that he had links to areas where young women had disapperared. Men in their 70s don’t suddenly begin a career in murder.

Tobin had moved to England and had lived at numerous locations, in the garden of one house they found the body of a Scottish teenager who had been abducted from a bus station 20 odd years before. Tobin still had a distinctive bracelet which she had worn and her father was able to identify, and what is even scarier is that Tobin apparently had lots of pieces of women’s jewellery, but he isn’t saying who it all belonged to. The body of another young woman was found at another house he had once lived in and he has been convicted of those murders too. However he claims to have killed 48 women, but won’t give any details. But there is one woman who miraculously survived a Bible John attack, and having seen photographs of Tobin which were taken in the 1960s – she is sure that Tobin is the man who attacked her and left her for dead.

The police photofit picture of Bible John was in every train when I was a 10-12 year old and it was very similar to photographs of Tobin so it would seem that Bible John didn’t die but just carried on killing in different places until he was caught by the Glasgow police as an old man.

So back to the book, Black and Blue was just a bit strange because of the recent developments in the Bible John case and also the fact that Rebus goes ‘on the wagon’ towards the end of the book and starts drinking orange juice, so no Irn Bru was required by me!

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September by Rosamunde Pilcher

30 November 2010 00:00

It’s St. Andrew’s Day – Scotland’s patron saint, but we don’t really do anything to celebrate it, no flag or kilt waving. But I thought it would be nice to read and ‘flag up’ a Scottish book for the occassion. Here it is!

September was first published in 1990 and is a sort of loose sequel to The Shell Seekers in that Noel Keeling appears in it as a minor character and there are references to the wider Keeling family in it.

Although I really enjoyed The Shell Seekers I have to say that I loved September, it’s a real comfort read and I can see myself going back to this one from time to time over the years.

It’s set mainly in Scotland in a fictitious place called Relkirkshire which is described as being north of Fife, which is where I happen to be sitting at the moment, so I imagined the setting as being Perthshire, the descriptions certainly sound like that lovely county which is a wee bit north of here.

The book begins in May and finishes in September and in the middle of it Rosamunde Pilcher takes us off on a summer holiday to Spain to get a wee bit of summer sunshine and escape from the rain in Scotland, just as lots of people do in real life. She did the same thing in The Shell Seekers only in that one she took us off to Portugal.

It’s a family saga involving lots of the families within the Balmerino estate and the wider neighbourhood from the laird and his wife to the Indian family running the local shop and there’s even an evil mad-woman whom Pilcher has given the surname of Carstairs, which happens to be the name of the State mental hospital in Scotland.

I’m not going to say any more about the story because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone as I definitely recommend it as a book to immerse yourself in when you are in need of a bit of rest and recuperation. It’s one of those books that you really don’t want to come to an end.

I didn’t see much Scottishness in The Shell Seekers but with September Rosamunde Pilcher definitely proves herself to be a Scottish writer. She even understands the standing which the Episcopal Church has within Scotland and its relationship with the Church of Scotland, and I can assure you that there are plenty of Scots who are completely clueless about that.

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Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin

25 November 2010 22:45

This is the second Rebus book by Ian Rankin which I’ve read and I’m sure I’ll be reading quite a few more of them. To be truthful, my heart did sink just a wee bit at the beginning because for a minute it seemed a bit purple prose-ish but he soon settled down into a more relaxed style.

I don’t want to say too much about the storyline because I know that quite a few people are reading Let it Bleed. Judith (Reader in the Wilderness) and her Ken have been enjoying it. Suffice to say that Rebus is the passenger in a police car on the Forth Road Bridge on a freezing winter night. He and his colleague are chasing a Ford Cortina which might have the Lord Provost’s daughter in its boot. The Ford is heading for Fife and they are determined to stop it from reaching there because they want the ‘collar’.

But that’s just the beginning and big business and politics play their parts in this book too.

I get completely engrossed in good books and at one point Rebus was doing a helluva amount of hard drinking and I actually found myself thinking – Thank God I’ve got a bottle of Irn Bru in the pantry – which is a well known Scottish fizzy drink, famous as a hangover cure!

I can’t think of anything particularly ‘Scottish’ which would have to be explained to anyone, but I have heard some English people prononunce the Irish name Siobhan (Rebus’s sidekick) as – See o ban- when of course it should be Shivon.

I hope that you’re reading this, Joan Kyler of Pennsylvania, whose name always comes with a soundtrack in my head – (65-0-0-0) because you might like to see if you can borrow this one from your library, especially as it features that ‘scary bridge’ which you drove over some years ago.

I think Ian Rankin is particularly good at conveying just how cold it feels in the east of Scotland during the winter. It’s the wind chill that gets you and as he says sandblasts you, so it’s always a lot colder than the thermometer says.

This is one of my favourite Irn Bru adverts. Have a look if you want a laugh.

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The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

20 October 2010 12:21

I’ve been meaning to get around to reading The Shell Seekers for absolutely donkey’s years but I was really surprised to see that it is number 50 in the BBC Top 100 Books list.

Does anybody fancy joining in reading The Shell Seekers together and having a bit of a chat about it, possibly on November the 30th, which is St Andrew’s day! If so, let me know.

This book would fit in with any Scottish challenges, personal or otherwise, that are going on at the moment. Although Rosamund Pilcher was born in England she has lived in Scotland (Dundee) for most of her adult life. The Shell Seekers was a best seller when it was first published in 1987 and has been translated into lots of languages. It’s particularly popular in Germany, my childhood German pen-pal is a big fan of the book. Which was a surprise to me because it is set in London and Cornwall from World War II until the present day (1987).

It’s a bit of a doorstop at 509 pages but I think it’ll be easy reading and the end of November seems quite far away at the moment. No doubt it will gallop up to us in a flash though.

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Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin

9 October 2010 12:24

Fleshmarket Close cover

Ian Rankin is another local author as he was born in Cardenden, Fife just a few miles from where I live and I thought it was about time I got around to reading something by him. The Rebus books have been dramatised for tv and I always watch them. I usually stick to vintage crime books but I did really enjoy this one.

Set in Edinburgh of course, and it’s nice to be able to drive and walk around the place in your mind if you know the city. Detective Inspector John Rebus’s police station has been closed down and the resulting reorganisation means that Rebus doesn’t even have a desk in his new station. It’s a big hint from the top brass that they want him to retire but Rebus has no intention of doing so.

When a murder victim is discovered in Knoxland, a rough housing-scheme, Rebus and his side-kick Siobhan have the task of finding out who he is before they can even start to find the murderer. During the investigation they uncover an illegal immigrant operation and the whole thing becomes quite convoluted with several different crimes being looked into.

Amongst other things, this is a book about the terrible plight of asylum-seekers and their exploitation. But it isn’t all doom and gloom and there are flashes of dry comedy here and there.

Ian Rankin does seem to have a thing about half-moon glasses. I’m sure that there were three minor female characters in this book who were described as being about 50 and wearing half-moon glasses. I haven’t seen anyone with those for absolutely years.

It’s a fairly large book at 399 pages but it flows easily so it didn’t take long to read. I tried to read Rankin’s first book years ago and I gave up because, if I’m remembering correctly, it was cliched and I didn’t like the style at all. However I heard recently that Ian Rankin described his earlier work as not being great, so I thought I should give him another go. I’m glad I did and I will read more of his work now.

You might want to take a look at his official website here.

According to the blurb his books are bestsellers on several continents and have been translated into 22 languages. He lives in Edinburgh now!

On a personal note, I just wish that he hadn’t given the housing estate the name of Knoxland because that was the name of the primary school that I went to. It was supposed to be THE school in the west of Scotland town that I grew up in, so has completely different connotations for me.

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The Charming Quirks of Others by Alexander McCall Smith

23 September 2010 23:35

The Charming Quirks of Others cover

This is the latest in the Isabel Dalhousie series and although I have to say that I don’t like this series nearly as much as the Scotland Street books, it’s still worth reading, especially if you like anything set in Scotland. Apparently a lot of people do because McCall Smith books have been translated into 45 different languages. I doubt if I could name 45 languages.

Anyway, the book suffers from quite a lot of info dumping early on, for people who don’t know much about Scottish history presumably. Isabel now owns the Review of Applied Ethics, as well as being the editor and the book is liberally dotted with ethics with Isabel wondering what she would do in particular situations, and that can come across as being a bit ‘holier than thou’.

Isabel has been approached by the wife of a trustee of one of the posh schools in Edinburgh. The school is interviewing for a new headmaster and they have got it down to a short leet (list) of three. A poison pen letter has been sent claiming that one of the applicants is unfit for the position, but doesn’t elaborate. Isabel is asked to look into the backgrounds of the interviewees.

The blurb says: Level-headed, sharp-eyed and judicious, Isabel Dalhousie picks her way through her latest set of moral challenges with unfailling intelligence and proves herself yet again to be one of Alexander McCall Smith’s most lovable and enduring creations.

I can’t say that I agree with that because I find her annoying and therefore not very likeable. Plus Isabel has upset her niece by taking up with her one time boyfriend. Most women wouldn’t ever do that so the morality is only there when it suits her, not that I’m being judgemental or anything! This series lacks the humour of the Scotland Street series but there’s no doubt that other people enjoy them a lot.

McCall Smith also mentions in passing that cricket is hardly played in Scotland and when it is it is because of English influence. That is a piece of nonsense because cricket is played all over Fife and the West of Scotland. The author of Peter Pan was a huge cricket fan and he had played it in his youth in Kirriemuir where he built a lovely wee pavilion for the town. Fellow Scots Arthur Conan Doyle and A.A. Milne also played in his cricket team called the Allahakbarries. Perhaps McCall Smith should read the book Peter Pan and Cricket by David Rayvern Allen which would enlighten him on the subject.

As I got towards the end of the book it struck me that this is the sort of thing which could have been serialised in The People’s Friend, that ‘couthie’ magazine beloved by old ladies in tweed skirts.

At 245 pages it is a very quick and light read.

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Blooding Mister Naylor by Chris Boyce

25 August 2010 22:24

This book was published in 1990 and my husband thought that I might enjoy reading it, and I did. Chris Boyce was a Scottish writer who wrote mainly science fiction but this one is a political thriller which is set in and around Glasgow. Just like I used to be, in fact the very first paragraph mentioned The Dumbuck Hotel, Dumbarton, which is where I worked when I was a schoolgirl and is a 10 minute walk from the house which I grew up in.

When Lexie Beattie, a veteran left-wing nationalist is discovered beaten to death in her own home, Alan Banks, one of the activists based at the peace camp (obviously modelled on the one at Faslane Naval Base) is accused of the murder and local lawyer and ex-army captain Jackie Naylor is given the job of defending him. He has defended the peace campers before but has never dealt with a murder and the senior partners in his firm do not want him to take the case on.

He soon discovers that there is a lot more to the case than he thought and he becomes embroiled in a world of double-dealing and violence.

It isn’t all doom and gloom, there is some humour scattered throughout the book, well it wouldn’t be Glasgow without humour and verbal duelling.

I did like this book but for me the fact that I could picture all the locations in my mind added to the whole thing and obviously that wouldn’t be the same for everyone.

It was published by Dog and Bone who are no longer in existence, which is a pity. I was going to offer myself to them as a proof-reader. The book is full of typos, extra words, missing words, just lots of mistakes, which is very annoying.

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Inveraray

21 August 2010 01:06

Inveraray is definitely a highland town. Actually, the road signs are in Gaelic long before you get there. That’s something which has changed since my childhood. It’s politically correct to push Gaelic like crazy now but I don’t know anyone who can speak it despite the fact that loads of money has been put into promoting the language.


I was really surprised to see The Vital Spark tied up in the harbour, which is really just at the end of the main street.

Neil Munro wrote The Para Handy stories which featured The Vital Spark and her crew. The tv programmes were very popular in the 60s when I was a wee girl. They did an updated version recently but obviously they didn’t have the same nostalgic charm.
You can see some of the oldies on you tube.

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