Archive | January 2024

Hidden Fires by Sairish Hussain

Jan18

Tragic & Heartbreaking

Hidden Fires by Sairish Hussain is a powerful and absolutely heart-breaking novel that will mess with your emotions. It will make you angry as you witness the terrible consequences of man’s inhumanity to man, whilst simultaneously making you weep.

The novel is mainly set in Bradford in 2017, just at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire. The main characters are an eighty year old grandfather and his sixteen year old granddaughter. They are similar but different as both try to deal with their problems alone, whilst pretending all is well. “We’ve drifted away into our own corners of ourselves.” For the granddaughter, it is the bullies at school. For the grandfather it is guilt and loss that has followed him down seventy years after the dreadful events of partition in 1947 India and Pakistan.

The grandfather is not the only male, his age hiding guilty secrets connected with partition. Events haunted a generation. The reader is horrified and saddened for what theses young boys saw in 1947 – events, so shocking, they never left them. “We had to run for our lives from people who looked just like us, spoke like us, lived beside us.”

As her mother is ill and her father is a workaholic, the granddaughter is used to being alone. Her father is a social worker who helps other people’s kids but misses the trauma in his own daughter. “He’s too busy.”

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The Forgotten Bookshop In Paris by Daisy Wood

Jan17

Powerful Dual Timeline

The Forgotten Bookshop In Paris by Daisy Wood is a fabulous dual timeline novel that I just could not put down.

The story is set in present day and during World War II in Paris. The time periods are linked as a granddaughter researches her late grandmother’s life during the war. She also desires to open up the bookshop that she sees in her grandmother’s painting.

The bookshop is a time capsule, hiding secrets amid the dust and the shelves. It needs to be awakened and lives remembered.

We see the bravery of some during World War II. While many sat idly by, a few brave souls risked their lives in order to save and hide others. There were pockets of mutual respect to be found in some German hearts, as characters bond over books. We see a character who lays down his life in order to save the innocents.

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The Austrian Bride by Helen Parusel

Jan15

Powerful

The Austrian Bride by Helen Parusel is a marvellous historical novel that will educate you as you read. The main characters are fictitious but the events are true.

The novel is set in Linz, Austria in 1938 and up to the outbreak of World War II. It was a time of great change. People voted for the Anschluss with Germany but were ignorant as to what that really meant. They believed it would be jobs, peace and prosperity. The reality was a reign of terror. Many felt guilty about voting for unification with Nazi Germany.

A character also feels guilt from an event thirty years earlier. How different life would be for the whole world if she had just made different choices.

Persecution of the Jewish people began. We hear of Kristallnacht and see the cruelty and man’s inhumanity to man. “To defy the Nazis was to be prepared to die.” – not many were that brave, however when one character speaks up, others join their voice.

As Edmund Burke famously said “for evil to flourish, it just needs good men to do nothing.” Far too many blind eyes were turned. However, there were those souls who were brave, and stood up to help those in need.

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Vision Of Light by Gillian Poucher

Jan14

Shining In The Dark

Vision Of Light by Gillian Poucher is a simply marvellous Christian contemporary suspense that captured my attention from the start.

The novel explores the theme of life being a battle between the powers of good and evil. We witness the presence of evil as we ‘hear’ the voice of the murderer. The reader tries to work out who this is as we periodically drop in on their thoughts. In a twisted way, the murderer believes they are performing a service, providing mercy killings.

We follow a character who can smell and sense goodness and evil. A character is called to battle and to overcome the darkness, even before they know Jesus for themselves. The light of Jesus is far greater than the darkness around.

A character is consumed by guilt from his childhood, believing “there can be no healing from the scars of the past.” Jesus is the great physician. He can take our guilt, pain and hurt, and redeem us, setting us free from the prison of the past.

There is power in prayer. It does not need to be elaborate, just heartfelt. “He isn’t at all sure that God will answer the simple prayer of an ordinary man.”

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