Friday book review - Daughters-in-Law by Joanna Trollope

The first Joanna Trollope book I ever read was The Rector’s Wife. I was so captivated by her 90s tale of a vicar’s wife who shocks everyone by taking a job at a supermarket to make ends meet that I was desperate to read her earlier books. The instant I’d finished that one I rushed out to buy another, feverishly working my way through her backlist in the way I used to gobble up Enid Blyton stories as a child.

But in recent years I haven’t found her books quite so gripping. She’s as prolific as ever – Daughters-in-Law, her 16th Trollope novel, came out in paperback last month while her 17th, The Soldier’s Wife, is published in hardback this week. I’ve clearly got a bit of catching up to do because I’ve only just read Daughters-in-Law and while I found it enjoyable enough I wasn’t bowled over by it.

In theory Daughters-in-Law sounds exactly my cup of tea. It’s the story of Rachel, the mother of three grown-up sons. She’s devoted her life to bringing them up in an idyllic-sounding house near the Suffolk coast. But now the trio have their own lives to lead. The three sons, Edward, Ralph and Luke, have all married and two of them have children of their own. Suddenly Rachel isn’t at the heart of everything, as she once was, and she clearly doesn’t like it. As she tells her endlessly patient husband Anthony: “…nobody wants me to do something I’m good at any more.”

The trouble is that I didn’t care enough about any of these characters. Rachel isn’t exactly the mother-in-law from hell, but she’s blooming annoying, with a tendency to feel sorry for herself when things don’t go her way. Ralph, her middle son, doesn’t know whether he wants to be a city slicker or to drop out and live by the sea, and as for his hippyish wife Petra, well I didn't find her believable at all. I also had a problem with Trollope’s dialogue. It’s full of wise observations, articulately expressed, but everyone sounds exactly the same. If I closed my eyes and listened to it, I’d be hard-pressed to work out who was speaking.

But despite my reservations I’m still keen to read The Soldier’s Wife. It focuses on the lives of army families and sounds a far more substantial read. An army wife interviewed on Woman’s Hour this week glowingly said that Trollope had got every single detail right. Praise indeed.


Daughters-in-Law by Joanna Trollope (Black Swan, £7.99)

Marian Keyes and her new baking book

The best news of the week is that the brilliant Marian Keyes has written a new book - and it's out this month.

For the past two and a quarter years the bestselling Irish novelist has suffered from debilitating depression, unable, as she writes in her latest (and very moving) blog, “to get out of bed or concentrate on a sentence or motivate myself to do anything.”

But on her better days she found the one thing that appealed to her was baking cakes. In fact she found it so comforting that she started writing the recipes down, and hooray, her book on the subject (called Saved by Cake) is out in two weeks time. It’s not only an honest account of how she coped with depression but how baking helped her get through the day. As she baked and worked out the recipes, she found that little by little her depression started to lift.

Keyes has also revealed that she’s almost finished a novel – great news for her millions of fans. Part love story, part thriller, it doesn’t have a title yet but will be out in the autumn. I can’t wait to read it.

 

I discovered Keyes’ novels when I had to spend a month lying on my side after an eye operation. I couldn’t read, use the internet or watch TV, so to pass the time, my daughter downloaded a ton of audio books for me to listen to. The hours flew by as I worked my way through all the books Keyes had written.

I don’t know how she does it but she manages to puts a smile on your face and makes you think. All at the same time. Her books - my favourites are Last Chance Saloon and The Other Side of the Story - are warm, witty and wise. Even when she’s writing about hard-hitting subjects like divorce, depression or alcoholism, she’s never preachy or pious. Her dialogue is true to life (unlike other novelists I could mention) and her characters are utterly believable. And how can you not love a writer who comes up with cracking one-liners like “never trust a man with two mobile phones” and “there’s not much in life that can’t be fixed by cake?” As she's found out herself.

Picture: Neil Cooper

Nails Inc and the rise of the nail bar

It's not just the weather that's chilly right now. The economic climate is bleak too, and shopkeepers are struggling to make a living.

But there’s one bright spot on the horizon – and that’s nail bars. Apparently we can’t get enough of them.

Up and down the country they’re among the fastest-growing businesses on the high street. Sales of nail varnish soared to a staggering £179 million in 2010, while in the last three years nail bars have accounted for a sixth of all new retail outlets. Actually, I can vouch for that. A local town near us boasts four nail bars in one short street!

Former Tatler fashion editor Thea Green spotted the trend way ahead of the crowd. She set up Nails Inc in 1999 after visiting nail bars in New York and realising that customers on this side of the Atlantic would love them too. Nails Inc now has 59 stores across the UK and is making plans to expand abroad.

I’m a big fan of Nails Inc (especially the witty London-themed names of their polishes). My idea of a real treat is to walk into Oxford, sit at the sleek white Nails Inc desk on the first floor at Debenhams and have my nails painted a chic grey shade called Porchester Square. For next time I’ve got my eye on a silver-blue glittery one called Maida Vale or Portobello Polish, which is bright orange. You can even buy an aptly-named base coat called Harley Street and hand cream called Kensington Caviar.

I was a nail-biter as a child and even now, seeing my nails buffed to perfection and expertly polished feels special. Even better, it doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, fat or thin. You can still have style at your fingertips for a fraction of the cost of a new outfit or hamdbag.

PS. If having your nails painted one colour is old hat, try Wah Nails. Founded in London’s East End in 2008 by Sharmadean Reid (who wanted to open a salon where you could have “whatever you wanted on your fingertips”), it turns nails into work of art. You can have everything from gold glittery leopard print nails to miniature stars and stripes. I might just give it a go…

Picture:  SFriedbergPhoto on Flickr (Creative Commons)

Snow - and my embarrassing attempts to learn how to ski

Snow is on my mind. The far north is blanketed in the stuff and there's a cold weather alert for the next couple of days, with temperatures predicted to drop to minus ten degrees. Brrrr. 

Further south there have only been a few flakes, but I saw loads of snow yesterday when my son asked me to drive him to Milton Keynes for a snowboarding session. 

SNO!zone (above) boasts an indoor ski slope made of 1,500 tonnes of real snow and he reckoned it would be the perfect place to hone his skills for his forthcoming school trip. He could hardly contain his excitement as he hired his salopettes and board. But I was distinctly underwhelmed. Why? Because just watching the scores of skiers and snowboarders whizzing stylishy down the slope at SNO!zone reminded me of my ultra-unsuccessful attempts to learn to ski.

The first time I tried was at Aviemore, when my mum’s best friend Sally sweetly took me and my sister on a skiing holiday. We travelled overnight from Victoria station on a Wallace Arnold coach and the moment we arrived we headed straight for the beginners' slope.

The biggest ignominy was that neither of us had any proper skiing gear. We’d learned to sail that summer and for some reason everyone thought sailing waterproofs would be fine to ski in. I’ll never forget the horrified look on our ski instructor’s face as we pitched up in bright yellow oilskin trousers and tops (mercifully we left our matching souwesters at home). Worst still was the fact that the oilskins had no grip at all – so every time we fell over (which was a lot in my case) we slid embarrassingly to the bottom of the mountain.

As well as having no aptitude whatsoever for skiing, I couldn’t get to grips with the dreaded T-bar lift at all. Almost every time I used it I fell off halfway and couldn't scramble out of the way fast enough with my skis on. The upshot was that the whole system had to be stopped countless times as irritated instructors hurried across to disentangle me.

As I watched my son zig-zag elegantly down the slope at Milton Keynes I sat in the café and read my book. Skiing and snowboarding are clearly great fun – but they're not for me. 

The glorious David Hockney exhibition - A Bigger Picture

My serial moving habit is something I’ve written about before. We’ve moved house (take a deep breath here) an embarrassing 12 times in the last 25 years and I’ve got a sneaking feeling that we might do it again one day. 

But one of the places we lived when my children were small was Yorkshire, in a sweet redbrick cottage with horses that popped their heads over next door's fence and views over the rolling fields. They were happy days – days that came flooding back to me last week when I pitched up at the glorious David Hockney exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts.

Hockney is a Yorkshireman through and through. Now 74, he was born in Bradford, studied at Bradford Art College and seven years ago swapped the delights of sunny LA for life near Bridlington on the East Yorkshire coast. "On the road to nowhere," he told Andrew Marr when the broadcaster visited him in Brid for BBC Radio 4's Start the Week.

His new show, which includes oil paintings (many of them massive), charcoal drawings, sketchbooks, iPad paintings and short films, is a breathtaking tribute to the Yorkshire landscape. 

Hockney loves to observe the same place at different times of the day and during different seasons of the year. One of the most stunning collections of paintings is his 2006 Woldgate Woods series - he placed his easel at a fixed point and returned to the same spot countless times to capture it. Another room is devoted to paintings of hawthorn blossom, while the largest gallery features The Arrival of Spring on Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (Twenty-Eleven), a huge installation made up of 32 oil paintings and 51 iPad drawings printed on paper.

The colour in many of his paintings is vibrant and bold, with purple roads winding through the countryside, stripey orange hayfields, violet tree trunks and turquoise hills. Some critics, including his own former art teacher, have found them “too garish,” but I adored them. Their zinging colours are a dramatic contrast to the more muted hues of his earlier work but bring the landscape he loves dazzlingly alive.

The tiniest details rekindled memories of our far-flung Yorkshire days. A small, red-roofed farmhouse sitting squarely in a field, a tunnel of trees near Kilham and handsome Salt’s Mill – all these and more were the perfect tonic to a chilly midwinter's day.

David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture is at the Royal Academy of Arts till April 9 2012.

Queuing for a free Hummingbird Bakery cake

The queue of expectant customers snaked out of the shop, along the pavement and right round the corner. The occasion was the opening of The Hummingbird Bakery’s fifth London shop and they were giving free cupcakes to the first 1,000 customers to visit. News had spread fast via Twitter and Facebook and the mood was very party-like for a chilly Friday morning in January.

I had a meeting near Angel tube station so I jumped at the chance to line up in the sunshine and get my brilliantly named red velvet cupcake (plus buy three more for everyone at home – they’d be furious if I’d arrived back empty-handed). When I reached the front of the queue the staff were charm personified – and impressively smiley considering they’d been handing out cakes at the rate of knots. A couple of hours later the shop posted the following message on Facebook: "Islington, you managed to munch your way through 1,000 cupcakes in just over two hours! That's some incredible cupcake love."

Judging by the turnout, I’m not the only one partial to a freebie, especially in these bleak economic times. Actually, I’ve been really lucky this week. First my local cinema, the Phoenix Picturehouse, offered members the chance to see a free preview of Carnage, the new film starring Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet. Then my daughter, now a Friend of the Royal Academy (a great birthday present from my sister) sweetly took me to see the fabulous David Hockney exhibition as her guest. 

Like everyone I know, my wallet is stuffed full of bits of paper offering discounts and bargains. I’ve got a coupon from Marks & Spencer offering £5 off if I spend £25 by Tuesday and a £2.50 one from Tesco. The only voucher I’m mystified by is the Sainsbury’s Brand Match one promising me the princely sum of 7p off my next shop.  Still, as the Tesco’s saying goes, every little helps...

The Hummingbird Bakery, 405 St John Street, London EC1V 4AB