The hand that first held mine, The Elephant to Hollywood and One Good Turn

Having already read, and been impressed by,  Maggie O'Farrell's "After You'd Gone", it was obvious that her Costa award winning "The hand that first held mine" would be right up my street. and it certainly was. It alternates between two stories, one set in the modern day, and the other in the 1950's. The first follows the life of Ted and Elina with their new baby and the second centres on young  Lexie who leaves her Devon home for life in London. This seems the far more successful of the two, but the stories have a connection which gradually unfolds. O'Farrell is a terrific writer. Her prose is eloquent and interesting which has produced a highly emotional and dramatic novel.

I read very few autobiographies, I think the last one was Richard Attenborough's. And after reading Michael Caine's "The Elephant to Hollywood", I wont be in a hurry to read another. Not that there were not lots of interesting stories, but that the writing was so poor. Nearly every page had something like (and I opened the book at random here) "... I became good friends with ...". How many friends can one man have? Well I suppose quite a few when you are Michael Caine. I was hoping that there would have been more about the restaurants he owned, but there was not much at all. I guess most people would only want to hear about his movie career.

Back to some brilliant writing with Kate Atkinson's "One Good Turn". There is something clever or witty in nearly every sentence. Again I opened the book at random and immediately found "Martin managed to give him the slip while he was entrenched in negotiations over his hat". It is just her choice of words that I love. It is the second of her novels that includes the private detective Jackson Brodie. But the great thing is he only appears for about one fifth of the book and he does no paid private detecting. It is how Kate Atkinson combines a thriller with dramatic family stories that is so wonderful. Not quite the best of her four Jackson Brodie novels ("When Will There Be Good News" is still my favourite - Jackson is hardly in it) but better than anyone else could write.