family life – Julia's books

Postcard from The Netherlands

We have been regular visitors to The Netherlands for twenty years now and have a small holiday home in the south of the country in the province of Zeeland. The southernmost part of the province (Zeeuws Vlanderen, or Zeelandic Flanders) is an area that has no land border with the rest of the country, being separated from it by the mighty Scheldt river, one of the primary waterways into the heart of Europe. When we first visited Zeeuws Vlanderen you reached it either by a very long detour via Antwerp in Belgium or a small car ferry between the ports of Vlissingen and Breskens. It made it feel remote. Then the opening of a 6km tunnel at the industrial town of Terneuzen transformed journey times and the economy of this part of the country. It has made Zeeuws Vlanderen more accessible and it certainly feels a little less remote these days. We tend to travel there via Calais in France, as it is less than 2 hours drive.

My daughters are both studying for exams this summer and we all needed a change of scene, so we decided to take a short break. The weather wasn’t great and the travel chaos was even less great, but it did us the world of good. This is such an under-rated part of Europe (the only visitors tend to be Dutch, Belgian or German), but for us it was like medicine for the soul!

Friday, 1 April

We leave home straight after the end of school and drive to the Eurotunnel port at Folkestone, a journey of 275 miles. We make good progress, which stalls completely once we are diverted off the M20 (a section of which had been turned into a lorry park, under Operation Brock). The volume of traffic is such that the 2-3 mile journey from Eurotunnel motorway junction to the passenger terminal takes almost three hours! At least once we arrive in France, there is almost no traffic on the roads and we arrive at our destination in the early hours of the morning.

Saturday, 2 April

A long lie-in then a trip to the nearest supermarket in Breskens and a leisurely lunch, which must involve frites!

A stroll around this small town shows that since our last visit, more tourist developments have sprung up. I am happy to see this lovely place thriving, not least since it will benefit us, as we rent out our holiday home, but a part of me has mixed feelings; I’m not sure I want lots of tourists here!

*Some of the lake’s permanent residents pay us a visit!*

The weather is cold, colder than I have ever experienced here in the spring, but we are just happy to be away…and enjoying the wildlife.

One of our favourite things to do here is to take an evening stroll on the dyke beside the village. The views are always rewarding.

Sunday, 3 April

We take a trip to Brussels, to collect my husband from the airport, as he was unable to travel with us on Friday. It’s about 100km, or a 90 minute drive. I am nervous navigating the complicated ring road and finding city centre parking, but it is Sunday morning and therefore less busy. It is still cold, but it’s bright and sunny. Brussels is a beautiful city. It is also big. We stick to exploring the old town, which reminds me of Bruges minus the canals, and enjoy sipping coffee on pavement cafes, hearing clocks chiming the hour, wonderful shops, confectioners and more frites.

Monday, 4 April

No trip to Zeeland for us is complete without a day in Middelburg. This place is a hidden treasure – I’m almost afraid to mention it! This medieval town retains much of its traditional architecture and yet it has the atmosphere of an everyday working place. The quality of life here must be wonderful. My husband and I have often fantasised about renting a house here for a few months once our children have left home! There is a wonderful town square, with its spectacular town hall, edged by pavement cafes and restaurants, a museum, grand churches, picturesque canals and bridges, lovely shops, the best bookshop in southern Holland (De Drukkery), a student population and of course, coffee and frites! We often cycle here from our holiday home – we can bike to the ferry at Breskens and then cycle the 8km beside the canal, using the excellent Dutch cycle paths. But it is too cold and wet today, even for all but the hardiest of Dutch cyclists.

Tuesday, 5 April

The day begins with appelflappen from the village bakery. Then we decide to head to the smart Belgian coastal town of Knokke-Heist, an attractive seaside resort which seems to consist mainly of second homes. It is quiet on a Tuesday. Most of the residential buildings are apartments, weekend homes for a wealthy Brussels elite, most likely. There are many beautiful art galleries and expensive shops, most of which only open at weekends. It has a vast beach, much of which is taken up with beach huts and cafes and bars, and a wide and long promenade. Knokke is only 30 km from our house and we have visited it often over the years. One of our favourite things to do when the children were younger was to take the Kusttram which runs for 67 km along the coast from Knokke to De Panne. You can get on and off to explore the different towns and attractions en route. Today we stayed in Knokke and just strolled around, and sampled yet more frites and ice-cream.

Wednesday, 6 April

Our short break is over and it’s time to head home. The return journey is thankfully less eventful than the one getting here. We are astonished by the size of the queue of what appear to be thousands of lorries stranded on the M20, waiting to get into Dover. My heart goes out to those drivers, who have no facilities and only the food they will have brought with them.

I did not do much reading while I was away, it being primarily a family holiday with quite a bit more packed in than we had intended.

Audiobook review – “Ducks, Newburyport” by Lucy Ellmann

I reached a reading milestone recently – I finished Ducks, Newburyport. This humungous novel, which clocks in at a whopping 1030 pages (paperback) is easily the longest book I have ever read. I listened to it on audio, brilliantly read by Stephanie Ellyne, and it lasted over 45 hours, easily the length of six or seven “normal” books. I started it around Christmas time I think, so it has taken me months. I would probably have got through it more quickly in ‘normal’ times as I would have listened to it while driving, but I have hardly driven at all this last year. Mostly I listened to it while cleaning the house, which seemed very appropriate.

The un-named central character and narrator is a middle-aged American woman living in Newcomerstown, Ohio. She is a mother of four, cancer survivor, former college lecturer, and self-employed baker, who makes pies for a number of local cafes and restaurants which she delivers each day. The novel is a written in a ‘stream of consciousness’ style, almost entirely in the present, and many of the sentences begin with the phrase “the fact that…” as she tells us about the various aspects of her life, her family, her husband, her dead parents, their parents, baking, her past career, her cancer and American society. The ‘action’, such as it is, takes place over a short period of time, but, let’s be clear, very little happens in this novel.

It has been criticised for its length; indeed, I read that Lucy Ellmann’s usual publisher, Bloomsbury, declined to publish it for this reason, so instead she went with a small independent, Galley Beggar Press, which is based in Norwich.

The themes of the novel are emptiness and loneliness in modern American life, the dilemmas of being a woman, motherhood, loss. Our narrator commentates scathingly on Trump, on guns, and on the violence in society. She bemoans the decline of childhood, how young people have been lost to technology, social media and advertising and the inequalities not just in American society, but across the world. Yet at the same time, she is a woman who wants the best for her children and therefore perpetuates those inequalities. The essential dilemma. She laments climate change and the loss of the natural world while also contributing to it with her own lifestyle. (As do almost all of us). Yet another modern dilemma. She loves her children, but has a somewhat estranged relationship with her eldest daughter, Stacey, who has a different father to her three siblings.

Mostly, the narrator is grieving; there are frequent pained references to “Mommy”. Her mother died some years earlier after a long illness and the narrator cannot let go of her feeling that she should have done more for her mother, and, mostly, that she misses her terribly. The loss continues to blight her life, and she feels deeply the lack of nurturing she has in her own life. She seems to have a good and loving relationship with her husband, bridge engineer Leo, but it cannot make up for the loss of mother.

There is a parallel story going on in the narrative; a female mountain lion roams Ohio, creating fear throughout the state and leading to a frenzy of trackers and gun-owners who try to hunt her down. She is simply looking for food for her cubs and the reduced wild territory available to her means she trespasses on human occupied land. Our narrator is aware of the lion and fears for her children’s safety, while also virtue-signalling and taking positions on habitat destruction for wildlife. The cubs are captured and taken to the zoo, but the mountain lion continues to search, ceaselessly. Her drive to mother is all-encompassing.

This novel is profound and if you can stick with it, it will reward you handsomely. There is so much complexity, it is so multi-layered. The length also means we bond quite closely with the narrator, in a way that I don’t think would have happened if it had been shorter.

I recommend this book highly, while recognising that few will have the time and opportunity to embrace it. Take a year, six months at least. Get the audio – it is read brilliantly and you can at least do the vacuuming/ironing/cooking as you do so!

The end is nigh!

I was all set last week to post a couple of blogs, including a book review of Kiley Reid’s international bestseller Such A Fun Age, a super book which I devoured in a few days. There was no devouring of anything last week, however, as ‘life got in the way’ somewhat. I expect life will get a bit more ‘in the way’ in the coming weeks as Coronavirus restrictions begin to ease. It doesn’t look as if we’ll be packing for holidays any time soon but I can already feel a return to my pre-pandemic busy-ness.

Yesterday, the first anniversary of the start of lockdown in the UK, felt like a sombre and reflective moment for the whole country and there was much radio and television time devoted to thinking about what we have lost in these last twelve months. Interestingly, there was also a lot of space given to people talking about what we have gained – a new sense of perspective and appreciation of others, a re-calibration of wants and needs, a desire to live our lives in a different way. My daughter said at the dinner table the other day that she “misses” the lockdown from last spring, when, for her, the pressure of school was taken away, when we started doing more together as a family, and there was time to walk and appreciate nature more. Plus the weather was lovely, which helped! I know what she means. For me, the days have not been ‘lazy’ by any means, but I will miss all that white space in my diary.

I had my Covid vaccination last week, for which I feel enormous gratitude to scientific endeavour. The ease and smoothness of the process from booking to queuing, to the actual procedure was very humbling and the one bright spot in what has been an otherwise very bleak Covid picture in the UK. I was also deeply aware of my white, western privilege in getting the vaccination and only wish it was being rolled out in other parts of the world that need it just as much as we do. The vaccination left me feeling completely wiped out for a couple of days and my arm is still very sore but it was a small price to pay.

So, that’s my excuse for not posting for over a week. The good thing about being a blogger is that you don’t HAVE to do it (unless it’s also your main income source, of course). I don’t need another thing is my life that I HAVE to do frankly! But I do miss it when I don’t post. The last year has been patchy for me in terms of frequency of posting and I set out at the beginning of this year to be much more disciplined, particularly around my social media (which is a Disaster!), so I am disappointed to have let a week slip by.

*Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay*

I love writing, and I particularly love writing my book reviews; the very act of it, especially when I’m sharing my passion about something I’ve read, is a cathartic and joyful exercise and a little corner of creativity in the midst of life’s more prosaic activity.

So, hello again fellow bloggers and readers, I missed you last week! Let me ask, how do you keep up with the demands of regular blogging? Some of you write fantastically in-depth and thoroughly researched pieces and I am in awe!

My lockdown plans

read-3644847_1920 — **Lockdown means more reading time!** (Image by FotoReith from Pixabay)

What strange times we live in! When I last posted, about two weeks ago, life was going on as normal, I’d just returned from a short trip to France and I was making plans for the coming weeks, including booking train tickets for work trips to London. Sure, there was talk of the Coronavirus in China, a few cases in Italy, but it didn’t seem like it was going to affect me, it was happening somewhere else. How long ago that now seems!

I didn’t post last week mainly because I was in shock. My elder daughter was due to be taking her GCSEs this summer, indeed, I was also going to invigilate at a local school. When the announcement came that exams had been cancelled, I think it hit me then how serious this was going to be. Suddenly, I feared for elderly relatives and neighbours and spent the week calling them, offering (please!) to help. I was comforting my daughter who seemed to be going through all the stages of a bereavement and, having worked so hard for the last two years, suddenly had no clue what she was meant to be doing with her life now. Plus, I could hardly tear myself away from the rolling news and the numbers dying in Spain and Italy increasing by the hundreds. We had to make rapid plans to get my son home from university (I’d only been to see him the weekend before!) and he was finding his local shops were empty by the time he got there – dinner for him one night was a pack of hot cross buns! I found it difficult to focus on anything.

This week is different – the high anxiety of last week has been replaced by a strange calm. We are all now under one roof, school, activities, hobbies, gym, everything now, has been cancelled, even the occasional Flat White at my coffee shop of choice. Unlike some, I’m not too worried about how I’ll cope with the ‘isolation’ – on the contrary, as an introvert who spends most of her days alone, it may be challenging for me to have everyone else around all the time! I think I will actually enjoy the opportunity to take a guilt-free foot off the gas. I will be giving help and support where I can in my community, but I will also be observing closely the need to keep others outside my household at (double) arms-length.

Whilst I don’t want to start creating lists of jobs for myself, I am better when I’ve got some goals, so here’s what I plan to do with all the found time:

Top of the list is reading, of course. I have been wondering how I was ever going to get to The Mirror and the Light, the third and final part of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy….!
Re-read Ulysses – I am not a big re-reader, but I read this when I was much younger so I want to read it again through more mature eyes. This was one of my aims for 2020.
Appreciate my garden, especially if this wonderful spring weather continues.
Breathe – I’ll miss my yoga classes most of all but can practise at home.
Take a virtual museum tour – perhaps the Guggenheim in Bilbao, somewhere I’ve long wanted to visit.
Write – I have been finding it very difficult to get back into the re-writing stage of my book since my mother died, but perhaps this is the impetus I need.
Keep in touch with my relatives.
Make some photobooks – we don’t really print photos any more do we? I’ve made a few family photobooks over the years, but there are a few years missing.
Clear out our files – paperwork, paperwork! My husband and I are terrible hoarders and keep everything, but do we really still need all those invoices from 10+ years ago?!
Pay attention – we can still go out, once a day, for the moment at least, so whilst we still can I will enjoy my neighbourhood, with all its wonderful trees, and enjoy the lack of vehicle and aircraft noise!

I would love to hear what your plans are for ‘lockdown’ – above all, follow all the advice and stay well and safe.

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Why I’m giving up negative thinking for Lent

girl-1721432_1920 — Image by Jess Foami from Pixabay

Sitting down with the family for our traditional Shrove Tuesday pancake feast yesterday evening, we got into the usual conversation about what each of us was giving up for Lent. We are not at all a religious family; I would describe myself as agnostic, and my children have inherited their parents’ religious scepticism. But we are interested in the bigger picture, and do not demur from Christmas gifts and Easter eggs!

In the past I have given up things like biscuits, or sweets. Scratching around for ideas this year, I suggested I might give up cake, but then remembered that I’m going away for a weekend with a couple of girlfriends shortly so that seemed a bit daft! We talked mainly about food items that might be given up, so what else was there – coffee, alcohol? Well, I don’t really consume a lot of either, but my morning coffee and a glass or two of wine now and then are small but important pleasures, so giving up those seems like reckless self-denial. I questioned my elder daughter about what the point of Lent might be for someone like me (she will be sitting her RE GCSE in a few short weeks and so is very hot on these questions at the moment). She said that for religious people the act of self-denial becomes about that person’s relationship with their god, but for the agnostics amongst us, she could see little benefit beyond it being another opportunity to make some sort of resolution, but which does not last a whole year.

I am very content with my relationship with food, and consider my diet good, on the whole. I don’t have many bad habits (I gave up Newsnight already, which was a terrible wrench, but it was a major cause of too many late nights!) and I don’t smoke, but I’m really not perfect. So, I stopped thinking about my body and started thinking about my mental habits. One of my resolutions for 2020 is to address finally my chronic self-esteem problem. I have been working through a book I discovered in my local library (one from the excellent ‘books on prescription’ selection) called Overcoming Low Self-Esteem by Melanie Fennell. I have ended up buying my own copy because I realise it is one I will want to hang onto for a long time, which seems unfair to other library users, and I find myself scribbling on copious post-it notes throughout.

Overcoming Low Self-Esteem img The book incorporates cognitive behavioural therapy techniques into exercises for addressing, for example tendencies to be self-critical. Low self-esteem can lead to debilitating inhibition, irrational fears, in both social and professional situations, and, I believe, can truly limit one’s life experience, achievement, enjoyment in life and personal relationships. I have found it really tough working through this book, particularly the chapters which focus on understanding the causes of poor self-esteem. Thinking about my relationship with my parents, in the aftermath of my mother’s death just a few months ago has not been easy.

What has become clear to me already (and with this book I feel I have started on a journey that will last many months) is my tendency to think negatively, mainly although not exclusively about myself, and this has been a source of pain and of conflict at various times in my life. So, I am going to try to give up negative thinking. Even being aware of when it is happening, will probably be a revelation.

I’ll let you know at Easter how I’ve got on, although I hope I won’t then want to go on a negative thinking binge!

Will you be giving up anything for Lent?

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Reading time deficit

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by my reading situation at the moment. A quick glance at my Goodreads profile will tell you that I have three books on the go right now. This is not by choice; I was reading The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, but this was taking me longer than expected. Then I realised it was getting close to the end of the month and I hadn’t even started April’s choice on my Facebook Reading Challenge, Colin Thubron’s To A Mountain in Tibet, so I started that. It’s fascinating and enthralling, but written so beautifully, that you have to read every word, so it’s a slow read and has also therefore taken me longer than expected. At the beginning of last week, I glanced at my diary and saw that it was my book club on Thursday and I hadn’t even started our book. Fortunately, out choice for this month was Why Mummy Drinks by Gill Sims, which is, unlike the Thubron, a very swift read, so easy to whizz through sufficient pages to have a conversation…but still I have not completed it.

So, this all feels strangely messy to me. I know some people like to read a number of books at the same time, but I don’t. I prefer to immerse myself in just one and see it through to the end, before starting on another. I’m loyal like that! They are all very different books, so it’s not like I’m getting storylines mixed up or anything, but, when I do have some reading time, I find myself quite torn about which one to pick up.

The other problem is lack of reading time. It’s been a busy month so far, between work and my kids’ commitments, not to mention one of them deep in major revision mode, and we are decorating the last room in our (so far) four-year long house refurbishment project, which has involved much time poring over light fittings, carpet samples, colour charts and radiators, as well as handling tradesmen, people who measure stuff and retail professionals.

It’s all good, but I think it must be a problem unique to book-lovers, and perhaps also introverts (I am both), that the absence of reading time has a detrimental psychological impact, rather like a lack of vitamins leads to a deterioration in some aspect of physical health. That’s how it feels to me anyway. Many book lovers I know are also a little bit obsessive about certain things and having three books on the go, none of which I seem to be progressing in a satisfying way, is making me a little bit twitchy. I have just completed the audiobook of Professor Steve Peters’ The Chimp Paradox, though, so I know this is just my chimp talking.

I’m very nearly there with Colin Thubron and with Gill Sims, so my Goodreads profile should be back down to just the one book by the end of the week and I may start to feel a little more settled. And be able to post some book reviews again!

How does it make you feel when your days lack reading time?

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Audiobooks can be a great way to access books if you’re time-poor

I know so many people who love reading, but find it hard to find the time to do so – when you have a family, work and find yourself under pressure to provide taxi services, help with homework, cook interesting and nutritious meals, check emails….the list goes on. Reading often drops off the list. And how many of you do your reading at bedtime and find you fall asleep before you’ve even finished a chapter?

It’s a common problem. I am a great believer in two things, however. First, if you want your kids to read they have to see you doing it too – so you’re actually being a good parent by finding time to read. Second, reading can be a wonderful way of escaping all the chores and pressures of life, so you will benefit from even 10-15 minutes here and there.

glass-2557577_1920 I’m a big fan of audiobooks as a way of passing otherwise dead time in a more constructive way – for me it’s car journeys, or whilst exercising. It might also be while you’re waiting for swimming lessons to finish or at the supermarket. You have to choose your titles carefully though, because it’s not just about what you listen to, but the narrator is really key to the enjoyment. For example, audiobooks I have enjoyed have been Holding, narrated brilliantly by the author Graham Norton, Frankenstein, narrated by Derek Jacobi and 1984, narrated by Andrew Wincott (Adam from The Archers). Their reading styles enhanced my enjoyment. A title I enjoyed less because of the narration was The Girl on the Train, where I felt the male voices were not done well.

I have recently finished listening to The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, Book Two in her Neapolitan Novels series. I have listened to and reviewed here, Book One, My Brilliant Friend, and the narration by American actor Hilary Huber is sublime. The Story of a New Name continues where Book One left off, with Lila marrying the grocery-store owner Stefano Caracci. Lila acquires a new social standing and some material wealth, but it is a loveless affair, and the marriage soon deteriorates into violence and enmity.

Lila’s childhood friend Elena, chooses a different path; she continues her education and though at first she barely scrapes through with adequate grades, she eventually graduates and is accepted at the university in Pisa. While Lila’s life is coming apart (despite her many talents, her beauty and her magnetic appeal), Elena’s eventually triumphant academic trajectory comes as a surprise to many as her abilities and potential were not thought to be as great (especially by herself).

This book has the same wonderful setting, 1960s Naples, the same cast of fascinating characters, mostly sinister and flawed, and develops the themes of friendship, and its many complex facets, jealousy, family feuds, conflict, love, hatred and the position of women in society.

The book is long (over eighteen hours worth of listening, or nearly 500 pages in paperback), but it is epic in scale and epic in achievement. On my audiobook app you can select a faster reading speed; I tried listening at 1.25 speed, but I went back to standard speed, because Hilary Huber’s American drawl is a treat for the ears and brilliantly suited to the story.

I would highly recommend this audiobook – the cast of characters is complicated and sometimes I forgot who was who, especially when shortened or ‘pet’ names are used in the dialogue. I found it helpful to look up a cast of characters online so I could keep track. There are two more books in the series – Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child. I will certainly stick with the series and get both of these – even though it might take another year to get through listening to them!

Does the narration style affect your enjoyment of an audiobook?

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Book review: “Just Fly Away” by Andrew McCarthy

I posted earlier in the week about getting your teenagers reading in the school holidays. Well, here’s a book they might like, and the author brings back memories of my own teenage years! Andrew McCarthy is better known as an actor and director (Pretty in Pink, St Elmo’s Fire), but in recent years has turned his hand to writing. This is his second book and his first work of fiction and is aimed at teenage readers. As regular readers of this blog will know I have launched an online reading challenge through Facebook, with a different genre or theme for each month. January’s was a YA novel, for which we read The Disappearances by Emily Bain Murphy. My book club decided to follow suit and we selected Just Fly Away. Just to warn you, this review contains spoilers, as I’m writing this for parents who might be looking for reading material for their teenagers and want to know what the book is about.

Just Fly Away img2

The central character in the novel is Lucy Willows, a 15 year-old living in New Jersey with her parents and younger sister, Julie. The novel opens with the family enjoying a day out at an amusement park on the Jersey Shore. It is a normal happy existence and Lucy’s life appears to be like that of any other teenager, a mixture of the humdrum and the special where family relationships go through the usual ups and downs. Then Lucy overhears a conversation between her parents about someone her father “would be proud of” and her fear and curiosity are aroused. She confronts her parents about it and they decide it is time to reveal to their daughters that Lucy’s father had an affair some years earlier which resulted in the woman having a child. The boy, Thomas, is now eight years old and lives in the same town.

Lucy’s world is turned upside down. It is important to note at this point that whatever issues there may have been between Lucy’s parents, they have put the matter behind them, and Lucy’s mother appears to be completely reconciled to her husband’s past infidelity and to have forgiven him. It is in fact she who started the conversation with her husband about Thomas. As an adult reader, I was inclined therefore to think a) it’s the couple’s business not Lucy’s, and b) so what? If they are over it, Lucy should accept it and move on too. But that is to miss the point, and one of the aspects of the book I really liked, the fact that the story is told entirely from Lucy’s point of view. Any parents of teenagers will know that they tend to see the world entirely from their own perspective, their capacity for empathy at this stage in their development can often be quite low, particularly where their parents are concerned! Therefore it is entirely credible that Lucy should react so strongly to the news and to have the reactions she does to her parents. She hates her father at this time and seems also to despise her mother for not having left him!

An important sub-plot to the novel, and which will broaden the appeal to young people is that Lucy develops a relationship with Simon, the older brother of a school friend. Simon is ‘different’; he has some sort of learning difficulty that is not fully explained, and goes to a different school. Simon is handsome, charming, warm, sensitive, and caring. He proves to be a great support to Lucy.

Lucy is curious about Thomas and finds out where he lives. She persuades Simon to go with her and the two make contact with him, without revealing the connection. Lucy thinks this encounter might help but instead it throws her into a tailspin. One day, whilst heading out to the shops, she decides on a whim to take the train to New York City and from there to travel to her grandfather’s house in Maine, whom she has met only once previously as there has clearly been a difficult relationship between him and Lucy’s father. Her journey is more than just a series of scary late night encounters and bus rides, it is a metaphor for her growing up and away from her parents, making it on her own, with limited funds and a new-found resourcefulness. Through the contact she then has with her grandfather, she glimpses some of the challenges to be faced in parent-child relationships and it helps her to reframe the situation she finds herself in with her own parents.

Spoiler alert…

Whilst Lucy is staying with her grandfather he has a massive stroke. Lucy’s father travels to Maine both to collect Lucy and to visit his Dad. Upon his arrival, Lucy’s father starts to ‘tell her off’ but it is clear that Lucy has grown out of this sort of admonishment and his reprimand seems hollow and out of step. Grandfather dies and this is an emotional element to the book, but I think this will be tolerable to teen readers because he is elderly and his peers seem to accept it as natural and not untimely. The event also serves to bring the family back together and into a new phase. Simon also makes the trip to be at the funeral for Lucy, and so he gets to meet her parents, and they seem to approve of him and accept their daughter’s maturity.

Lucy is a great character and not too feminine so I think even young male readers could identify with her. It’s a good story, easy to read and whilst Lucy, to an adult reader, might seem to overreact at times, it is a reminder that, as a parent it is important to realise that what may seem ‘small stuff’ to us can be ‘big stuff’ to them.

There is some light sexual content and occasional swearing. Recommended for 14-17 year olds and a nice read for grown-ups too!

Do you have any suggestions for YA novels for older kids to read?

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How to get their noses in a book this half term

When my children were young, I found it relatively easy to entertain them during school holidays; they still liked going to parks (sighs wistfully!), did not roll their eyes when I suggested a museum or gallery (usually running a school holiday activity), even a bus or train ride was a novelty! And if I needed to work or just needed a break, there were always organised activities, sports clubs, etc. Now, two of my children are teenagers, and the third is there in spirit if not in chronological years. They can entertain themselves, often making their own arrangements with friends, requiring only transport assistance from me, and this is great; they are independent and there is a lower impact on my writing life.

girl-672267_1920 However, with autonomy comes power – if they are having an ‘at home’ day they can simply slip under the radar and spend a great deal of quality time with their phones and tablets (oh for the days when I only worried about how much Balamory they watched!) They can secrete themselves in their bedrooms while I lose myself in all my usual activity. At their age, sure I watched a lot of telly while my parents were out at work in the school holidays, but I also spent plenty of time with my nose in a book. Digital distractions were fewer and less powerful.

I’m not looking back with rose-tinted specs thinking ‘if only their lives could be like mine…’ no way; I know I would have loved the internet! However, now I’m a 21st century parent I can see how easily it is for the reading, no, the whole cultural habit to slip away and get lost in the mire of competing forms of entertainment. So, what can be done? Well, if the scenario outlined above sounds familiar and, like me, you would like your young people to engage more with paper and page-turning rather than screens and swiping, here are some thoughts for you:

Don’t panic and don’t give up – even the most avid readers have dry periods and the teenage years are unique and short-lived. They have many things to contend with and reading may not be top of their list. Hang on in there and see below.
Let them see you reading – I work mostly from home and my kids are fascinated by what I do all day! When they are off school I make sure they see me switching off the phone and the computer and reading; don’t save your reading until bedtime. Ten minutes reading in front of your kids is far more powerful than all your verbal exhortations to read – they listen to nothing you say but they watch everything you do. Model the desired behaviours.
Bring books into their life – yesterday I went out with one of mine and treated them to a hot chocolate…in the bookshop cafe! And afterwards we had a browse. Later in the week I may find I need to call into the library while we are out.
Seek out literary-themed days out – you may have at least one planned day out while your kids are off. Did a favourite author live nearby, whose home you could visit? Is there some literary link to a local beauty spot? I live in Manchester in north-west England and we are very fortunate to have a rich local literary heritage – Elizabeth Gaskell’s house, four fascinating libraries (Central library, John Ryland’s, Chetham’s and the Portico), and the Lake District is nearby (Charles Dickens, Beatrix Potter, Arthur Ransome).
In fact, any culture will do – museums, galleries? Many are still free so there is no pressure to spend all day there, just hang out for an hour or so. Engagement with any kind of cultural activity will demonstrate to your teens that life exists beyond the screen and even if they start bored, they will probably have to read something, even if its only the descriptions of the exhibits.
Watch a movie adaptation together – the key word here is ‘together’. If it’s their choice, maybe an adaptation of a YA novel, so much the better. If they like the film, but haven’t read the book, suggest getting it for them.
Revisit a once-loved childhood classic together – were there books they loved reading as children? Perhaps dig out an old favourite, they’ll enjoy the nostalgia. My eldest still goes back to Harry Potter from time to time.
Buy newspapers and magazines – all reading is good.
Finally, leave all kinds of reading material lying around, in every room, even the kitchen and bathroom. When they’re off school and they’ve more time on their hands they may be inclined to linger.

The key thing is to show an interest and not to judge. I consider myself an avid reader these days and I did read a lot of classics when I was young, but I read some ‘trash’ too, and I loved comics and teen magazines. Value their choices, even if you secretly wish they’d read something different, and talk to them about what they’re reading.

What do you do to try and get your kids reading, particularly the older ones?

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